I've been captivated by GW:Factions. It's amazing.
For some reason, I'd always been under the impression that it was going to be a faux cheesy blend of Eastern cultures (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) treated with the same lack of respect and horrible attempts at accents that we've all come to expect from Westerners.
That, and the fact that I'd run aground in GW: Prophecies at Thunderhead Keep - making me one miserable puppy, suggested I would get more of the same scenery and level of gameplay out of Factions, except that it would be set in fake China (ugh!)...
Well, I've been very pleasantly surprised. Part of it is good design. (And when people are saying the Factions team wasn't as good as Nightfall, it makes me really drool at the prospect of the third campaign.)
For example, I really dig the fantasy setting. Yes, it's an odd blend of Chinese, Korean and Japanese cultures, but it seems to work. And they've really gone over the top and created some beautiful building facades, staying more or less faithful to the source but adding that 'fantastic' touch.
I do like Eastern architecture, despite my complete inability to even pronounce a single building-related word in any of the mother tongues. And when colored with a 'fantastic' palette of strong acrylic shades, and stacked floor to ceiling, end to end, the cityscape is glorious.
And I'm glad they didn't stop there and rely back on the same Ascalon-type backgrounds which covered all the terrain. On reading the Lore part of the manual, I'm excitedly anticipating arriving at the petrified forest and the petrified sea... One made of stone, and one made of jade...
The feel of the missions have changed slightly because they now stick a pretty much compulsory jaunt through an explorable area to get to the next mission. I'm undecided on whether this is good or bad, but certainly, it makes it different from Prophecies.
Anyhow, I suspect the other part of why I'm enjoying my jaunt in Guild Wars is that I've matured in my MMO game understanding.
Two years in CoX and a stint in other games have helped to refine my preferences for certain character types. I'm also more open to the idea of reshuffling my build and min-maxing for efficiency. And I'm armed with generic 'name-types' and understanding as to where they fit into patterns of killing - that is, Enhancements are 'buffs', Hexes are 'debuffs' and so on...
The first pointed me to try a melee class for Factions. (And also suggested why my ranger/monk bogged down.)
The warrior just looked better than the assassin (whose starting clothing is like a poor down-trodden street waif's) so I went with that.
Deciding on a secondary class was much trickier. Ranger was tempting. There was the whole "lookee a pet tiger fighting alongside me" deal as well as various blocking stances - which I now knew was pretty important for tanky survivability. Thing was, I didn't want to repeat myself, I was probably going to take the Prophecies ranger through Factions some day, and I wanted to unlock skills... The gotta collect 'em all factor was a serious pull to restarting Guild Wars - since GW2 is around the corner of next year and all.
How about a new class? The ritualist seemed awfully immobile. More suited to rear support and probably spellcasting. Assassin was very tempting. A lot of shadow arts skills that helped survival, and even a teleport into melee skill... Problem was, some skills were reliant on dual daggers and as a warrior, I already was going to have trouble deciding between hammer, axe and sword on a regular basis.
I was running a baby W/Nec through Prophecies, so again, didn't want to repeat that. Not another Monk, no way, never. (NPCs react so much better and faster in a healer role, if you ask me.) An elementalist was also tempting, run in, melee and then shoot fire in people's faces. But warriors have pathetic energy stores, so I was worried about that. Eventually I settled on mesmer, just cos I love the 'new' innovation of health degeneration/regeneration and how rapidly it can slice through the health bar.
Character feels good. Feels tanky. Feels also like it can do some nifty damage.
I'm itching to get Nightfall, but the only thing that stops me is...greed. :) I want the Collector's Edition. I bet I can find it going for pretty cheap now in stores here, but that assumes I actually have a free day to go hunting for it.
Meanwhile, to stave off the desire (and to get Heroes, which is my main lure), I caved in and bought Eye of the North. I reasoned that the person who -really- needed Hero support was my ranger/monk, who just couldn't seem to get past Thunderhead Keep. And he was level 20, so I could pick up some Heroes for it via GW: EN.
Story seems cool so far, and I must say, I looked with a far more critical eye at the junk heap I was calling a skill bar and reworked the ranger/monk into a 'pure' ranger and he seems to be a little better. Must try the old Thunderhead Keep mission at some point again.
Got two heroes at the moment, a monk and an elementalist, and they seem pretty fun too.
Also found a very good reason to try and get a hardcopy of Nightfall... waiting for too-long downloads between missions is not really that fun. Now I just need to keep telling myself that and resist the siren song of digital purchasing.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Monday, September 03, 2007
Significant Variability
One week later, I'm officially done with my sojourn in WoW. Yeah, I have three days more on this ten-day trial, but I decided that erasing the thing from my hard disk allows me to concentrate on the rest of my games.
I've been pondering level progression, the ease of doing so (and advancing skills), and the benefits of a clear path versus multiple significant choices.
Take WoW for example: My guess is that it appeals to newbies because it offers a clear path of progression. The quests have you wandering in a set area, and then take you to the next town/inn and let you wander there for a bit before chasing you off to the next appropriately leveled area, etc.
Hell, even the choices of weapons and armor at the stores are pretty much fixed. At such and such a level, you can buy this weapon which is pretty much guaranteed to be better than your old one. Usually twice as good. And the type of weapon is restricted by your class, so you never have to wonder...do I use an axe or a mace or sword?
Now and then, you luck out and pop something off a mob, which might be better than the store-bought one...so you put that on. Otherwise, you sell it...
I also began to notice the sneaky increase in timesinky 'grind.' My last few innards quests started taking longer and longer because the parts refused to pop off the mobs. And the last one wanted 24 something or others... which proved to be the last straw for me, but someone less attuned to MMO design would probably keep at it.
Sure, there are a good number of other less linear systems inside WoW. Crafting would be ever so slightly less linear (though still greatly so.) At least fishing was. Basically it looked like you ground the skill getting a +1 increase every success, and that would let you fish in higher and higher spots. Which conveniently were arranged right next to the same leveled areas.
The pet system for hunters was quite non-linear. In the sense that you could choose quite a number of different types of pets. And in fact, it was good to stable a pet and go out and catch others to learn their skills so that you could teach your chosen type of pet (which had a great variance of mob types.) And certain pets were more heavily armored, and some were higher damage, etc. Much more significant choice there.
But in essence, WoW is primarily a level-based clear path grind.
What about CoX?
To an extent, there are a number of different skills to choose per level, and you can only choose one of them versus WoW's "ground enough cash? get 'em all!"
Usually there are certain clearer cut more beneficial choices to the powers though, over others. Smoke vs fire blast is not very difficult to choose between. :)
Before IOs, the enhancement system was fairly linear too. Got DOs? Better than TOs. SOs rule all. Hami enhs were the only exception to the rule, and only applied to those with the time to collect a boatload of 'em.
Post-IOs, the choices have become so complex, most people need Mids' or a calculator to help them plot their enhancements. :) Though the initial simple system still remains in place, and remains at a competitive level in PvE.
The real place where CoX fails is in offering significant choice for quests, or missions. With the exception of reading different story text, or magic vs tech salvage (which only came in post-IOs), or Freakshow (xp!) versus others, or anything-NOT-CoT (debt avoidance! no caves! down with Oranbega!) versus others, etc.
But then, few, if any, MMOs have even attempted to vary this. I'm thinking of everything from DDO, Guild Wars, LOTRO, an unnamed beta, etc, and none have really strayed from the standard "Collect a bunch of quests from this area, go complete all those nearby, and turn them in, and proceed to the next area."
Ditto significant reward attached to the quests. It's usually one or other choice that always looks better. Mostly because you can use one and the rest are for other classes.
I wonder if it's ever possible to create a different type of quest or level progression system. Or even offer choices of reward that really make you stop and think.
I'll admit that the unnamed beta offers some interesting permanent choices at certain levels. But if it's only at three points in one's life, is that significant enough?
LOTRO tries to soften the boundary. There are a couple quests which pretty much make you travel across a bundle of zones, or stuff you should really wait until a certain level for. That's probably why they let you collect 40 quests at a time. (And I've easily exceeded it now and then.) A couple quest rewards have not been so easy to dismiss as being 'for another class' and one has had to decide between a niftier piece of armor or a weapon that would improve me too.
Granted, the choice sometimes doesn't seem significant. +10 increase in this or that stat only inches one forward ever so slightly in some aspect. Which leads to a lot of WoW fanboi complaints - stuff isn't as clear cut, or exaggerated, or as 'significant' an increase as they've been trained to expect. But then, not every game can start you off with 9-10 points of damage, and keep doubling it until you're doing 1000s of damage easily.
Guild Wars appears to have significant choice regarding one's skills. Which is part of the reason why I'm attracted into going back to explore it further. When you've got 100-500 available skills and only 8 slots to fit stuff in...that's got to be worth some thought.
P.S. I haven't heard of Hellgate: London until quite recently. But I'm quite optimistic about it now. Who konws, it might offer some faster FPS action. But the main feature that I'm drooling over... VARYING dungeons. At last, an MMO who has taken the lesson of the roguelikes and 2D Diablo and managed to develop it in 3D?
There's nothing that helps replayability than different layouts of rooms and mobs (and more than one character class, of course.)
Worth seeing if they can pull it off.
I've been pondering level progression, the ease of doing so (and advancing skills), and the benefits of a clear path versus multiple significant choices.
Take WoW for example: My guess is that it appeals to newbies because it offers a clear path of progression. The quests have you wandering in a set area, and then take you to the next town/inn and let you wander there for a bit before chasing you off to the next appropriately leveled area, etc.
Hell, even the choices of weapons and armor at the stores are pretty much fixed. At such and such a level, you can buy this weapon which is pretty much guaranteed to be better than your old one. Usually twice as good. And the type of weapon is restricted by your class, so you never have to wonder...do I use an axe or a mace or sword?
Now and then, you luck out and pop something off a mob, which might be better than the store-bought one...so you put that on. Otherwise, you sell it...
I also began to notice the sneaky increase in timesinky 'grind.' My last few innards quests started taking longer and longer because the parts refused to pop off the mobs. And the last one wanted 24 something or others... which proved to be the last straw for me, but someone less attuned to MMO design would probably keep at it.
Sure, there are a good number of other less linear systems inside WoW. Crafting would be ever so slightly less linear (though still greatly so.) At least fishing was. Basically it looked like you ground the skill getting a +1 increase every success, and that would let you fish in higher and higher spots. Which conveniently were arranged right next to the same leveled areas.
The pet system for hunters was quite non-linear. In the sense that you could choose quite a number of different types of pets. And in fact, it was good to stable a pet and go out and catch others to learn their skills so that you could teach your chosen type of pet (which had a great variance of mob types.) And certain pets were more heavily armored, and some were higher damage, etc. Much more significant choice there.
But in essence, WoW is primarily a level-based clear path grind.
What about CoX?
To an extent, there are a number of different skills to choose per level, and you can only choose one of them versus WoW's "ground enough cash? get 'em all!"
Usually there are certain clearer cut more beneficial choices to the powers though, over others. Smoke vs fire blast is not very difficult to choose between. :)
Before IOs, the enhancement system was fairly linear too. Got DOs? Better than TOs. SOs rule all. Hami enhs were the only exception to the rule, and only applied to those with the time to collect a boatload of 'em.
Post-IOs, the choices have become so complex, most people need Mids' or a calculator to help them plot their enhancements. :) Though the initial simple system still remains in place, and remains at a competitive level in PvE.
The real place where CoX fails is in offering significant choice for quests, or missions. With the exception of reading different story text, or magic vs tech salvage (which only came in post-IOs), or Freakshow (xp!) versus others, or anything-NOT-CoT (debt avoidance! no caves! down with Oranbega!) versus others, etc.
But then, few, if any, MMOs have even attempted to vary this. I'm thinking of everything from DDO, Guild Wars, LOTRO, an unnamed beta, etc, and none have really strayed from the standard "Collect a bunch of quests from this area, go complete all those nearby, and turn them in, and proceed to the next area."
Ditto significant reward attached to the quests. It's usually one or other choice that always looks better. Mostly because you can use one and the rest are for other classes.
I wonder if it's ever possible to create a different type of quest or level progression system. Or even offer choices of reward that really make you stop and think.
I'll admit that the unnamed beta offers some interesting permanent choices at certain levels. But if it's only at three points in one's life, is that significant enough?
LOTRO tries to soften the boundary. There are a couple quests which pretty much make you travel across a bundle of zones, or stuff you should really wait until a certain level for. That's probably why they let you collect 40 quests at a time. (And I've easily exceeded it now and then.) A couple quest rewards have not been so easy to dismiss as being 'for another class' and one has had to decide between a niftier piece of armor or a weapon that would improve me too.
Granted, the choice sometimes doesn't seem significant. +10 increase in this or that stat only inches one forward ever so slightly in some aspect. Which leads to a lot of WoW fanboi complaints - stuff isn't as clear cut, or exaggerated, or as 'significant' an increase as they've been trained to expect. But then, not every game can start you off with 9-10 points of damage, and keep doubling it until you're doing 1000s of damage easily.
Guild Wars appears to have significant choice regarding one's skills. Which is part of the reason why I'm attracted into going back to explore it further. When you've got 100-500 available skills and only 8 slots to fit stuff in...that's got to be worth some thought.
P.S. I haven't heard of Hellgate: London until quite recently. But I'm quite optimistic about it now. Who konws, it might offer some faster FPS action. But the main feature that I'm drooling over... VARYING dungeons. At last, an MMO who has taken the lesson of the roguelikes and 2D Diablo and managed to develop it in 3D?
There's nothing that helps replayability than different layouts of rooms and mobs (and more than one character class, of course.)
Worth seeing if they can pull it off.