Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Solforge:OREIAN JUSTICAR incoming to shake up the meta

The meta in Solforge currently is centered on the Savant cycle cards (Flamehaper, Darkshaper, Lifeshaper, Steelshaper), but a nerf was already incoming for the cycle in the next patch. Beyond the Savants, the meta was looking to be shaped by powerful cards such as Zimus the Undying and Everflame Phoenix who rely heavily on being able to come back on the battlefield. They both are very hard cards to deal with, especially Zimus which has very few reliable counters that can keep it off the board. Queue the Oreian Justicar; a beefy Aloyin card that causes any creature entering the field to lose massive amounts of attack power if they were not played from your opponents hand. Have a 14/7 level 3 Zimus coming back on the field? It is now a 4/7 with a level 3 Justicar in play.

This is a great for Solforge and indicates that developer Stoneblade Entertainment (SBE) is on the right path for balance. This is very much a "counter the overpowered with a direct counter" instead of an outright nerf (though there are still situations like the Savant cycle which clearly scream the need for NERF, but thats OK for a pre-release product). The Justicar is an exciting card and I think will push the Steelforged Avatar decks up a notch to the cream of the crop of meta decks. However, Justicar can be splashed in many different decks to be effective and can even be used in a deck it is specifically meant to counter which offers players wielding powerful Zombie themed decks that rely on reappearing creatures an excellent counter in a mirror match.

Well done SBE, well done.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Judged: Guild Wars 2

Better late than never. Right? Right? Tap tap… is this thing on. Ok, there we go.

After a few restarts, I’ve reached level 80 in Guild Wars 2. (pause for applause)

This push was with an Asuran Guardian and in less than 40 hours /played I was level 80. (pause for applause)

I enjoyed my trip to 80. Leveling in GW2 is a simple process. Every action a player takes, from harvesting to crafting to killing to exploring, results in experience that contributes towards leveling. Each zone is broken down into “hearts” and dynamic events that also result in experience bonuses when completed. Zones scale players to the level of zone allowing players to play in any level zone they choose. In combination this makes leveling in Guild Wars 2 very easy and players can feel rewarded, experience-wise, for everything they do no matter where they do it.

However, with the ease of leveling and being rewarded based on their actual level in any zone, the system erodes the motivation to explore the world. Once I hit Kessex Hills and Harathi Highlands I was completing events in chains and gaining 3-4 levels per play session. Plus the current live event, Tower of Nightmares, was centered in Kessex Hills which meant that the frequency with which the events in the zone completed was increased exponentially. At one point I was literally just running from spot to spot and collecting enough experience for 25% of a single level. It seemed crazy at the time that I would move away from that gravy train of experience since the leveling curve in GW2 is flat.

I leveled to 70+ by playing in the aforementioned zones which are meant only for level 15-35 players. In terms of world completion I only hit 19%. This is all possible because of the level down mechanic which balances the player’s level (and thus reduces their inherent strength) to match the content in the zone, but it continues to provide rewards consistent with the player’s actual level as the content is evenly matched by the downgraded player level. This was a refreshing mechanic considering how most MMOGs like GW2 are designed the complete opposite and aim to punish players that don’t play in the zones that are on the cutting edge of their level range.

Yet, even though I was generously rewarded for doing what I wanted, I found myself feeling cheated once I hit 80 and I started exploring many of the zones I had not visited during leveling. There were so many events and story lines I had missed and at level 80 the progression goes from vertical to horizontal so there was little incentive for me to go and visit.

Experience is still worth gaining as each level of experience after 80 generates a skill point (which in turn can be turned into skill unlocks or converted to other rewards). However, experience gain is not a driving force at level 80 and outside of gaining karma from unfinished hearts or going for world completion I found nothing to push me towards investigating the 80% of the world I had yet to visit.

And looking further into the horizontal progression model of level 80 GW2 I quickly realized that the “path of least resistance” was the dominant theme. This pushed me further away from visiting the higher level zones as I found out about min/max things such as the Queensland champion trains. Basically, one of the most efficient gold and karma gaining methods is for level 80 players to just repeatedly complete the event chains in the level 1-15 zone (this is possible because, again, the level down mechanic balances power levels while maintaining the level appropriate rewards regardless of zone level). This simply was not appealing to me even though I’ve been known now and again to get my farm on in many an MMOG.

Some experienced GW2 players may try to point out that it is actually dungeons where the real “time vs reward” battle is won and I would probably not argue with them. However, for my tastes, I found the dungeons in GW2 to be Boring with a capital B. For the most part dungeons come down to one mechanic and one mechanic only: damage per second. DPS is king in GW2. Group healing and tanking are replaced by individual player mechanics. Every class has its own self-heal and group-based heals are weak and ineffective in dungeons. Tanking is non-existent as damage mitigation is all reliant on dodging by each player individually.

On top of this the damage-focused combat, the dungeons have been min/maxed to the extreme and outside of the occasional group looking to complete the story modes, players are looking at speed runs aimed at knocking the dungeons out quickly for maximum gain. That means even further min/max to the damage per second making everyone, regardless of class, shooting for the same exact berserker based equipment. It is just a terrible model and depletes dungeons of any sense of awe or adventure. They are simply a numbers game.

Unfortunately the poor dungeons just highlight the underlying problem with GW2: the combat system. It is fun when playing solo and makes complete sense one on one versus a creature or another player. In fact, avoiding other players for the majority of my leveling (outside of the Kessex Hills events), was the key to me lasting until level 80 this time around because once more than a couple players show up the combat breaks down and becomes devoid of feedback to the players. The sheer number of times I’ve randomly died in a group of players without a single clue as to what was about to or actually hit me is insane. Throw in champion boss enemies that are all just about standing around and beating on them and you may as well just throw the action combat out the window because it’s pointless in a game meant for players to play together. I didn’t even bother to mention the completely insane over use of area of effect skills and spells.

Fortunately World vs World vs World saves everything. Right? The Wuv d Wuv, the WuvWuv, the WvWvW, the promise of Guild Wars 2! Wrong. It’s crap. It’s so crap that I hate to even waste time typing about it. The combat problems from PvE are simply multiplied out tenfold as even more players are crowded into even smaller areas where even more AoE can be dropped. Defense? Impossible. WvW is all about zerging from point A to B to C and hoping your zerg doesn’t meet a bigger zerg that will wipe it out. It’s more efficient to let a capture point be lost than it is to attempt and defend it. Even if a good defense is put up, the doors to the keep are going to fall in a couple minutes and the keep’s champion even faster. There is no hope for a smaller defensive force to prevail. If you aren’t in the zerg you are just wasting your time.

Now I’m just angry as I type about the aspects I don’t like about Guild Wars 2. I could continue on and break down the Trading Post that makes ZERO logical sense related to the game or I could bash the completely one-dimensional crafting system but that would just grind my gears even further. In conclusion the same things that caused me to stop playing GW2 the first few times around are the same reasons that I’ve stopped playing it again after finally reaching level 80 with a character. The “action combat” makes combat feel floaty and unpredictable. Horizontal progression is just a clever way of saying grind. The use of AoE is completely out of control.

The game is absolutely gorgeous from a world design perspective, but it does nothing to encourage the exploration of or use of that world on a regular basis. Over all, the concepts of GW2 are great on paper but they are all poor in execution. I would love, and would pay handsomely, to play the game that GW2 was on paper before it launched.

Monday, November 11, 2013

The 3 MMOs you should NOT have paid attention to and the 2 NEW games TO pay attention to

In a follow up to my post from May 2012, I wanted to point out the three MMOs that you probably really didn't need to pay any attention to.

First up there was Dominus which actually had shuttered its doors prior to me even posting it's name in my 2012 post.  This was clearly a game that didn't need any attention paid to it.

The next was Salem which closed its doors in June of 2013 before ever getting to a launch phase.  Amazing ideas wrapped up in a pretty terrible game.  Please look the other way.

Lastly there was The Otherlands based on Tad Williams' novels of the same name.  This is still kicking around in Closed Beta and still has all the premise that it had last year.  However, Wildstar has pretty much come along to promise almost all the same features in a much more promising package.  I still am interested in The Otherlands, but doubt it will swing many heads it's direction when (and if) it ever launches.

Basically I suck at picking niche games that will make it big (though I still maintain I was an early adopter and fan of Minecraft before it exploded).  Instead I should probably focus my time on games that have broken out of that initial phase of skepticism and have begun proving themselves on the market.  So I present to you faithful reader the two games you should probably get up to speed on if you are not already.

Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone

If you have followed the gaming media over the past couple of weeks it would have been hard to miss the news coming out of BlizzCon 2013.  Not only was another World of Warcraft expansion announced, but Blizzard also put on display two of it's more niche titles: Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone.




Hearthstone is a digital card game that has exploded exponentially since it's initial announcement.  The BlizzCon tournament was streamed to more than 100,000 peak concurrent watchers.  The game is only in early beta and is taking the digital card game scene by storm.  It absolutely puts to shame the focus on digital card games such as Solforge and Hex that were the Kickstarter darlings of this genre.  Hearthstone is poised to dominate and dominate quickly.  The Blizzard polish is present and the "easy to play, hard to master" mantra is on target.

Heroes of the Storm (HotS) is Blizzard's take on the MOBA genre.  They went back into the hopper with Blizzard DotA and out comes HotS which at first glance looks to be an amazing overhaul of a genre that has been, in my opinion, completely stale and unwilling to change.  League of Legends took a tiny step forward out of the hardcore insanity of what the original Defense of the Ancients was while DOTA2 from Valve copied it wholesale.  HotS is a giant leap from both.

The immediate draw to HotS is that it destroys the "learning wall" that is present in other MOBA games.  The game looks immediately approachable and understandable for the casual gamer.  Matches are on smaller maps with clear goals.  Different maps offer different ways to victory with some pretty neat graphical displays such as a ghost ship firing it's cannons to down one of the two sides defenses.

However, just as with Hearthstone, there is a very clear "easy to play, hard to master" vibe going on.  The Heroes all seemed simple enough to play without deep concerns about certain Heroes serving no purpose in a casual game.  At the same time there appears to be higher-level tactical decisions to be made.  Items and shops are gone in favor of decision trees after leveling up.

The presentation of the game also looks to be friendly and has the classic Blizzard polish.  The game is not even in a true beta form and it is being displayed and shoutcast live at BlizzCon.  This is classic Blizzard. This is why their games are amazing and leaders in their respective genres.  I've often said that World of Warcraft has spoiled me.  I have not played a game outside Minecraft, let alone an MMO, since World of Warcraft that can grab me within minutes.  I suspect both Hearthstone and HotS will be immediately familiar once my fingers set down on WASD.


Tuesday, November 05, 2013

WAR, finally free 2 play

WAR is finally going free 2 play.  Unfortunately it is only until the game will be shutdown come December.
"To give Warhammer Online a proper sendoff we are opening the game to anyone free of charge that has or had an account in good standing starting October 31st, 2013," said the Warhammer team in an announcement on Friday.
I don't have much to comment on at this point.  I will probably have more to say once the game shuts it's doors for the final time.