Mythic's recent patch notes have been rubbing me up the wrong way. Now, let's not take this to mean that I don't like WAR, and I'm still impressed by the speed of their patches, but I'm starting to get offended by the marketing gimmicks gift-wrapping hidden grind.
It starts with the Halloween Event - Witching Night - in which there are RvR PQs dangling nifty prizes, which apparently involve a lot of PvP grind (kill 100 players), before a quick PvE boss battle. All for the chance of getting some cool armor loot. These PQs also reset on a 2-3 hour timer, supposedly. So if I want some of this, are you saying that I have to hang around for hours on end in your game, hoping to see a PQ reset? Argh. Hello, I'm a working adult. That's how I can AFFORD to subscribe to multiple games at a time (YOURS, among others).
And this lasts for only 5 days or so. Hrmph. So my chances of just seeing some of this action go down even further.
The masks, that are made a big deal of and pics shown on the website, are said to be very rare drops from killing monsters or players. (Does that sound like a recipe for endless farming already?)
Then comes the next special Live Event they have announced. Heavy Metal! Which is a cute phrase to steal to market the two incoming tank classes. Except now they dangle a reward of being able to play these new classes a week early...how? By doing...daily quests! Which may be quite difficult, and to get that ultimate award, you really must log in everyday and complete them!
This smells like a gimmick to try and make sure people don't cancel for a month or two as Wrath of the Lich King and Mines of Moria launch.
As rotten as it smells, I confess that the rewards are fairly tempting. I'm considering attempting it. Except that I'm worried about the amount of time it'll take - all I need for an MMO addiction label is dysfunctionality - if I am fooled or rationalize myself into spending way too much time I can't spare doing a daily quest, this smells of fucked up addictive design.
And one more last kicker that is stopping me:
I'm getting seriously tired of jumping through hoops on someone's say so.
I'm getting sick of an artificial 'want' to do things just because there's something nifty at the end. To my mind, this is an already proven way to kill all internal motivation to do something, if you get yourself used to expecting an external reward at the end of it all.
I don't like someone else to force or dictate or otherwise influence the way I want to play.
I'm thinking everything is becoming too linear 'quest' on rails, and wondering where the heck the sandbox effect of MMOs is these days.
And there's just something hideously offensive about the idea of a 'daily quest' where you are encouraged to check it off on a 'todo' list before you feel like doing anything else.
This smells of WoW grinding. Not the WAR, 'oh, what shall we do now, let's check out the open groups to see if there's any RvR or PQ action going on and join in' spontaneity.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Time to Win, Time to Lose
Today, I want to talk about feelings of entitlement and expectations in games, and how things seem different from PvP and PvE perspectives, and muse about whether the WoW mindset has skewed an entire gamer generation to unrealistic demands or if it's just something more innate that stems from singleplayer game roots. And if WAR will reteach some new lessons to us players, or sink under the tidal wave of player tantrums.
Except I'm not really sure where to start. Just going to go for it and give it my best shot.
It all begins with the news that Destruction conducted an early morning 'city raid' into Altdorf and pretty much steamrolled over Order on the Averheim server. They apparently faced insufficient player defence, possibly due to the timing or the simple lack of numbers as not everyone is Tier 3-4 yet, and were only repelled from the city because one of the PvE challenges to take over the city was too tough for the organized Destruction alliance (over 300 on vent, comprised from multiple guilds) and stomped them into the ground. Possibly not yet quite balanced content yet, I'd say.
Yet the largest outcry came from Order players who were INCENSED that they had no chance to participate in the defence of the city because of a) timing or b) lack of levels, or c) lack of numbers, apparently equalling no guts to walk in and become a speedbump in the wake of the Destruction zerg, if there was no equal chance of winning.
I get the impression that they feel Mythic ought to do something for them, give them some sort of outnumbered player advantage in terms of stronger keep guards or more percentage bonuses to even things out.
There is also a subset of people who are just somewhat miffed that the whole city takeover seems to last only a quarter to half a day at most. They were expecting something epic and long-term, incremental progress or some such.
From the perspective of a Destruction player, my first impulse is to say, well QQ more, suck it up and so on. Destruction got the better of you this time around. I mean, they put in the effort to organize and muster 300+ people together at 7am on a Sunday, of course they are going to steamroll right through 30-100 Order people taken completely by surprise. What did you expect?
My second, more honest, introspective opinion is to muse about the expectations and entitlement issues of two kinds of players, PvE and PvP.
I mean, I am first and foremost a staunch PvE type of person at heart. I'm a frigging carebear. I'm finding some lessons in WAR a little tough to swallow (more on this later.) I chose Destruction not just because it looked cool and had races I wanted to play, but because I like to be on the winning side. And I'm pessimistic enough to believe that zerg-like numbers spell more chances at success, hence self-interest eggs me into joining the tidal wave of 'spikey ebil.'
I can indeed relate to some extent with those Order folk who are well and truly pissed that they got rolled, humiliated and dammit, lost.
On the Darklands server, I am guilty of getting discouraged if I'm playing an alt, just puttering around in a PUG scenario, and then this helluva-more-organized Order team just pounds our face into the dirt. Human nature. There's only so much defeat one can take, and sooner or later, you just give up if there's no foreseeable hope in the future and you're confident that your allies are a bunch of mutts self-interestedly looking up their arse and won't respond to a rally call.
I suspect this is because PvErs, and singleplayer gamers, are very used to railroaded experiences, not a sandbox in a playground.
We are looking for a challenge, that is within our skill levels. If one recalls the "Flow" diagrams, something that is too easy becomes boring (aka grind), and something that is too hard becomes frustrating, and tends to make us give up and start bitching and complaining.
That's all very well when you are the center of the universe in a singleplayer game, or in a MMO like WoW which tricks you into feeling like that until max level, but most multiplayer experiences with a bit of PvP are different, aren't they?
For every game of PvP, you have a winner and a loser. For someone to win and feel good, someone else must lose and feel bad.
The best you can say for it, is that a good PvP game would be exactly fair. A 50% chance for both parties to win or lose.
I think a lot of people have trouble dealing with this concept. Hence the ruckus. -I- have trouble coming to terms with it, from an emotional standpoint, though I am striving to, because I think there's valuable lessons to be learned from this.
See, PvE is not zero-sum like that. In PvE, two people can team up to defeat the computer, and both can feel good because they won together, and the computer doesn't feel anything.
But when we come to WAR, RvR is ultimately a PvP game at heart. It's just made a little more fair, and the overall win/loss is masked by lots of potential for individual mini-wins and good feelings and all the pushing/shoving that stems from getting to the win/loss.
Here we get to the heart of the matter. For me, my personal gut reaction is that I like the push/shove experience. I like the battle. I like the fights. I love it when things are nice and long and strung out and there's this epic push towards victory or a final desperate last stand of "Not this day!"
And as a carebear, I like the mini-wins too cos they give me a little Skinner box buzz to keep playing.
In WAR as is, I find it perfectly reasonable how city sieges exist now. It takes the place of a hardcore raid game. It sounds rather fun to get a whole bunch of guilds working together in alliance to create a weekend to remember. There needs to be a reason for guilds to exist, after all. It encourages the ultimate teamwork.
To have someone insist that oh, a casual soloist should have a good chance of repelling an organized wave of attackers, by buffing up NPC guards just strikes me as "I am the center of the universe" syndrome. Heaven forbid they tried to take your city when you were sleeping. So you missed it. Big deal.
To some people, it seems to be the end of the world. I don't know if it's misplaced realm pride, or just plain unreasonable selfishness. So your side is fallible. Does this mean you quit because you lost? Or do you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and tell yourself, dammit, we're taking it back, we're doing better and we're going to push 'em back into their own city?
Seems like they're just going to surrender to the 'inevitable' "Oh noes, they have more numbers than us right now" and run away back to WoW where they can outnumber their raid mobs 25 to 1, give or take 15 or so.
I think the back-and-forth flow of PvP wins/losses is something many PvE players have yet to really wrap their heads around.
I admit that I hate losing. When I'm getting repeatedly pounded by a far-better organized team in a scenario, after a while, I decide that I will stop feeding them renown and go look for something else to do.
But I don't give up scenarios forever either. I do at least realize that the balance of power will always flow back and forth, so maybe try it again when the organized guild group finally logs off.
Or I look for solutions. For example, there was a point where all my late night teams had zero tanks. Lots of healers, some DPS, nada on tanks. This was just asking for Order tanks to rampage all over us squishies, and we were smashed against our own respawn and pretty much humiliated on point score. After 3-4 scenarios of this, I got frustrated enough to stop and start leveling a baby tank, since it seems all the late night PUG people weren't raising any tank characters.
Worse come to worse, I figured I would at least learn what it was like on the tank side of the equation. Personal benefit, at any rate.
I have indeed learned from keeps in the RvR lakes that a back-and-forth does happen. Some days, Order takes over everything and Destruction can't be bothered to take them back, and if you go in as a solo or small group, you can't do much. And some days, Destruction makes use of its generally superior numbers and overruns everything and Order runs off because they can't put up a fight either.
But I suppose my server is fortunate in that it's a mix of Aussies and Singaporeans and other Oceanic-timezone players, and both sides have strong guilds, and seem unwilling to throw in the towel without a fight.
Because I note that it's usually a guild who starts it off, and then randoms will join in and follow the zerg wave and take over things.
When both sides do it and clash, ah, then the epic battles begin.
If not, one side overruns the other. Sometimes with a fight, sometimes with a massacre, and the losers run off to fight another day.
Or another hour. Because the victors sweep through everything, get bored, and go looking for something else to do.
Then the next moment you look at the map... the losers have slunk back, licking their wounds, and taken back what you took back.
And normally you don't go back and do the same thing because the hour's late and people need to leave, so both sides end up feeling like they accomplished something, and even if you did, then the whole cycle would probably start again the next day or whatever.
But this back-and-forth is probably a good thing. After all, if the best loot comes from keep lords, the exchange of hands better happen enough so that we can all get some.
So I do see why it's a good idea to have a short city siege so that everything will reset in a few days at most, and no one will be affected too much over too long a time.
Yet I also wonder how it would be like if it were more strung out.
As mentioned before, there was a time playing Natural Selection when things were freaking epic, and I loved every single second because you just couldn't tell who was going to win, there was the chance for come-from-behind victory. But when things became predictable, an inexorable progress into unstoppable zerg victory or skull-raping defeat, I started to get depressed with it.
So if one side starts to feel that they have no hope, it may end up sliding into something horrible and not fun.
Well, I guess time will tell.
Except I'm not really sure where to start. Just going to go for it and give it my best shot.
It all begins with the news that Destruction conducted an early morning 'city raid' into Altdorf and pretty much steamrolled over Order on the Averheim server. They apparently faced insufficient player defence, possibly due to the timing or the simple lack of numbers as not everyone is Tier 3-4 yet, and were only repelled from the city because one of the PvE challenges to take over the city was too tough for the organized Destruction alliance (over 300 on vent, comprised from multiple guilds) and stomped them into the ground. Possibly not yet quite balanced content yet, I'd say.
Yet the largest outcry came from Order players who were INCENSED that they had no chance to participate in the defence of the city because of a) timing or b) lack of levels, or c) lack of numbers, apparently equalling no guts to walk in and become a speedbump in the wake of the Destruction zerg, if there was no equal chance of winning.
I get the impression that they feel Mythic ought to do something for them, give them some sort of outnumbered player advantage in terms of stronger keep guards or more percentage bonuses to even things out.
There is also a subset of people who are just somewhat miffed that the whole city takeover seems to last only a quarter to half a day at most. They were expecting something epic and long-term, incremental progress or some such.
From the perspective of a Destruction player, my first impulse is to say, well QQ more, suck it up and so on. Destruction got the better of you this time around. I mean, they put in the effort to organize and muster 300+ people together at 7am on a Sunday, of course they are going to steamroll right through 30-100 Order people taken completely by surprise. What did you expect?
My second, more honest, introspective opinion is to muse about the expectations and entitlement issues of two kinds of players, PvE and PvP.
I mean, I am first and foremost a staunch PvE type of person at heart. I'm a frigging carebear. I'm finding some lessons in WAR a little tough to swallow (more on this later.) I chose Destruction not just because it looked cool and had races I wanted to play, but because I like to be on the winning side. And I'm pessimistic enough to believe that zerg-like numbers spell more chances at success, hence self-interest eggs me into joining the tidal wave of 'spikey ebil.'
I can indeed relate to some extent with those Order folk who are well and truly pissed that they got rolled, humiliated and dammit, lost.
On the Darklands server, I am guilty of getting discouraged if I'm playing an alt, just puttering around in a PUG scenario, and then this helluva-more-organized Order team just pounds our face into the dirt. Human nature. There's only so much defeat one can take, and sooner or later, you just give up if there's no foreseeable hope in the future and you're confident that your allies are a bunch of mutts self-interestedly looking up their arse and won't respond to a rally call.
I suspect this is because PvErs, and singleplayer gamers, are very used to railroaded experiences, not a sandbox in a playground.
We are looking for a challenge, that is within our skill levels. If one recalls the "Flow" diagrams, something that is too easy becomes boring (aka grind), and something that is too hard becomes frustrating, and tends to make us give up and start bitching and complaining.
That's all very well when you are the center of the universe in a singleplayer game, or in a MMO like WoW which tricks you into feeling like that until max level, but most multiplayer experiences with a bit of PvP are different, aren't they?
For every game of PvP, you have a winner and a loser. For someone to win and feel good, someone else must lose and feel bad.
The best you can say for it, is that a good PvP game would be exactly fair. A 50% chance for both parties to win or lose.
I think a lot of people have trouble dealing with this concept. Hence the ruckus. -I- have trouble coming to terms with it, from an emotional standpoint, though I am striving to, because I think there's valuable lessons to be learned from this.
See, PvE is not zero-sum like that. In PvE, two people can team up to defeat the computer, and both can feel good because they won together, and the computer doesn't feel anything.
But when we come to WAR, RvR is ultimately a PvP game at heart. It's just made a little more fair, and the overall win/loss is masked by lots of potential for individual mini-wins and good feelings and all the pushing/shoving that stems from getting to the win/loss.
Here we get to the heart of the matter. For me, my personal gut reaction is that I like the push/shove experience. I like the battle. I like the fights. I love it when things are nice and long and strung out and there's this epic push towards victory or a final desperate last stand of "Not this day!"
And as a carebear, I like the mini-wins too cos they give me a little Skinner box buzz to keep playing.
In WAR as is, I find it perfectly reasonable how city sieges exist now. It takes the place of a hardcore raid game. It sounds rather fun to get a whole bunch of guilds working together in alliance to create a weekend to remember. There needs to be a reason for guilds to exist, after all. It encourages the ultimate teamwork.
To have someone insist that oh, a casual soloist should have a good chance of repelling an organized wave of attackers, by buffing up NPC guards just strikes me as "I am the center of the universe" syndrome. Heaven forbid they tried to take your city when you were sleeping. So you missed it. Big deal.
To some people, it seems to be the end of the world. I don't know if it's misplaced realm pride, or just plain unreasonable selfishness. So your side is fallible. Does this mean you quit because you lost? Or do you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and tell yourself, dammit, we're taking it back, we're doing better and we're going to push 'em back into their own city?
Seems like they're just going to surrender to the 'inevitable' "Oh noes, they have more numbers than us right now" and run away back to WoW where they can outnumber their raid mobs 25 to 1, give or take 15 or so.
I think the back-and-forth flow of PvP wins/losses is something many PvE players have yet to really wrap their heads around.
I admit that I hate losing. When I'm getting repeatedly pounded by a far-better organized team in a scenario, after a while, I decide that I will stop feeding them renown and go look for something else to do.
But I don't give up scenarios forever either. I do at least realize that the balance of power will always flow back and forth, so maybe try it again when the organized guild group finally logs off.
Or I look for solutions. For example, there was a point where all my late night teams had zero tanks. Lots of healers, some DPS, nada on tanks. This was just asking for Order tanks to rampage all over us squishies, and we were smashed against our own respawn and pretty much humiliated on point score. After 3-4 scenarios of this, I got frustrated enough to stop and start leveling a baby tank, since it seems all the late night PUG people weren't raising any tank characters.
Worse come to worse, I figured I would at least learn what it was like on the tank side of the equation. Personal benefit, at any rate.
I have indeed learned from keeps in the RvR lakes that a back-and-forth does happen. Some days, Order takes over everything and Destruction can't be bothered to take them back, and if you go in as a solo or small group, you can't do much. And some days, Destruction makes use of its generally superior numbers and overruns everything and Order runs off because they can't put up a fight either.
But I suppose my server is fortunate in that it's a mix of Aussies and Singaporeans and other Oceanic-timezone players, and both sides have strong guilds, and seem unwilling to throw in the towel without a fight.
Because I note that it's usually a guild who starts it off, and then randoms will join in and follow the zerg wave and take over things.
When both sides do it and clash, ah, then the epic battles begin.
If not, one side overruns the other. Sometimes with a fight, sometimes with a massacre, and the losers run off to fight another day.
Or another hour. Because the victors sweep through everything, get bored, and go looking for something else to do.
Then the next moment you look at the map... the losers have slunk back, licking their wounds, and taken back what you took back.
And normally you don't go back and do the same thing because the hour's late and people need to leave, so both sides end up feeling like they accomplished something, and even if you did, then the whole cycle would probably start again the next day or whatever.
But this back-and-forth is probably a good thing. After all, if the best loot comes from keep lords, the exchange of hands better happen enough so that we can all get some.
So I do see why it's a good idea to have a short city siege so that everything will reset in a few days at most, and no one will be affected too much over too long a time.
Yet I also wonder how it would be like if it were more strung out.
As mentioned before, there was a time playing Natural Selection when things were freaking epic, and I loved every single second because you just couldn't tell who was going to win, there was the chance for come-from-behind victory. But when things became predictable, an inexorable progress into unstoppable zerg victory or skull-raping defeat, I started to get depressed with it.
So if one side starts to feel that they have no hope, it may end up sliding into something horrible and not fun.
Well, I guess time will tell.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Common Sense Ain't Common
I'm still trying to figure out how some of my guildmates think. They bitch exceedingly hard about losing every second scenario, and how their PUGs are stupid, so I joined up with one or two of their groups to back them up on my melee healer.
And I'm amazed at the stupid antics they themselves are pulling.
Like running into a group of 10+ Order people. Alone. Fine, you're on a tank.
The only healer in your group is my melee healer, who is capable of giving you two slow but steady heal-over-times, a couple of decent direct heals from a channeled spell that requires me to be in melee hitting somebody, and a strong direct heal that builds up over time and has a cooldown of 60 seconds once used.
You MAY get heals from two other zealots, who are the healbots of Destruction, who have a strong heal over time, and can pulse a decent direct heal IF they have you targeted.
And did I mention that there are lots of other people running around with 30-50% hp left on their bars?
Seriously, what kind of heals can you expect will keep you upright under the face of focus fire from 10 Order folk, a good half of which are Bright Wizards and engineers, aka ranged DPS, and the other half are melee DPS and healers who can do damage?
Then there's the witch elf, meant to be a stealth melee DPS class, in light armor, mind you, pulling the exact same stunt and expecting to live. Haha. If you weren't in my guild, I wouldn't have bothered throwing my two HoTs on you. But I'll spend the 5 seconds and my precious soul essence (without which, I cannot heal) just for the principle of things.
I just don't get it. Perhaps it's my unique perspective from playing both MDPS and a melee healer, or my innate sense of low-down female "kick 'em in the jibblies when they're down" cunning, but I do pride myself on enough common sense to NOT be the first guy in to attract all the tab-target focus fire.
I dance around the edges of combat. I look for guys with low hp, preferably non-tanks, and finish them off for a kill. I look for healers on the edges of the battle, lone engineers who think setting up to one side gives them a good view and squishy light armor melee as targets.
I don't barrel alone into the middle of the enemy zerg to get snared and fire caged while attempting to reach the very last healer in the back row, while everyone just swivels and let loose the firestorm of the century on my backside.
At most, I have run up to a group to attempt to scatter and distract with my AoE mutation arm, for 3 seconds, before dashing back out of range because I know the limits of my health bar. Or I run into the group to take out one healer, and back off again because of the focus fire I know will be coming. But I do it only when I see the opportunity to make a clean gettaway. I don't suicide on purpose, rationalizing that my death served the greater good of the team. It didn't. You just gave the enemy free points, free kills, free xp and free renown.
Of course, I'll grant that if everyone thinks like me, everyone will end up retreating and then getting bombarded with enemy fire, forcing healers onto the defensive and generally get rolled anyway. (Which has happened in more than one scenario because the enemy kept a tight group and we had no ability to scatter them.)
But I believe the idea is to run in together. Not alone. And a little bit of situational awareness (like realizing half your teammates are dead, maybe you'd better retreat and regroup after they respawn, or that your 3 healers are getting harassed by 4 tanks and an MDPS or two so they're retreating madly and maybe you'd better not choose this exact moment to dash out of heal range into the enemy zerg) would help.
I miss my co-guild leader. He's gone off on a ten day holiday with his significant other, and I must say, those two are the core 'center' of this guild. (If you remember the 'center' theory from the MUD organization days.)
When they are about, people rally to them, and it helps that he plays a Chosen tank, his SO is a healbot zealot, and both of them are REALLY good at their jobs.
Y'see, his Chosen can run into a group of Order and survive because:
a) it's not 10+ people, more like 5-7,
b) he never does it alone either, other people run in with him to harass and distract
c) his pocket healer is watching his hp keenly
d) his auras debuff the opposition, a Black Orc tank doesn't get those
e) his gear isn't too shabby, and his level ain't bad either
f) he was a closed beta elder tester, and you bet he knows all the ins and outs of Warhammer
Meanwhile, we have these other people trying to follow in his footsteps and crying that their teammates suck and they don't get enough heals.
Sigh.
It's an odd state of affairs. Without the 'center' present, my guild feels like a troop of whiny loners, who form up into an incompetent mass of casuals who get pwned. It's enough to make one think about shopping around for another guild.
With the two of them around, they rustle up group activity every night and we go around together like a small zerg to do various interesting things like RvR, keep sieges, scenarios, and all.
Going to be a long ten days.
My alt is nearly the same level as my main, which I was holding back on so I can move together with the core two.
So I can either level up the main, into more PUGs, or I'm tempted to level a tank alt or two - just so I can see things from their point of view.
And do better. Cos I'm mean that way.
And I'm amazed at the stupid antics they themselves are pulling.
Like running into a group of 10+ Order people. Alone. Fine, you're on a tank.
The only healer in your group is my melee healer, who is capable of giving you two slow but steady heal-over-times, a couple of decent direct heals from a channeled spell that requires me to be in melee hitting somebody, and a strong direct heal that builds up over time and has a cooldown of 60 seconds once used.
You MAY get heals from two other zealots, who are the healbots of Destruction, who have a strong heal over time, and can pulse a decent direct heal IF they have you targeted.
And did I mention that there are lots of other people running around with 30-50% hp left on their bars?
Seriously, what kind of heals can you expect will keep you upright under the face of focus fire from 10 Order folk, a good half of which are Bright Wizards and engineers, aka ranged DPS, and the other half are melee DPS and healers who can do damage?
Then there's the witch elf, meant to be a stealth melee DPS class, in light armor, mind you, pulling the exact same stunt and expecting to live. Haha. If you weren't in my guild, I wouldn't have bothered throwing my two HoTs on you. But I'll spend the 5 seconds and my precious soul essence (without which, I cannot heal) just for the principle of things.
I just don't get it. Perhaps it's my unique perspective from playing both MDPS and a melee healer, or my innate sense of low-down female "kick 'em in the jibblies when they're down" cunning, but I do pride myself on enough common sense to NOT be the first guy in to attract all the tab-target focus fire.
I dance around the edges of combat. I look for guys with low hp, preferably non-tanks, and finish them off for a kill. I look for healers on the edges of the battle, lone engineers who think setting up to one side gives them a good view and squishy light armor melee as targets.
I don't barrel alone into the middle of the enemy zerg to get snared and fire caged while attempting to reach the very last healer in the back row, while everyone just swivels and let loose the firestorm of the century on my backside.
At most, I have run up to a group to attempt to scatter and distract with my AoE mutation arm, for 3 seconds, before dashing back out of range because I know the limits of my health bar. Or I run into the group to take out one healer, and back off again because of the focus fire I know will be coming. But I do it only when I see the opportunity to make a clean gettaway. I don't suicide on purpose, rationalizing that my death served the greater good of the team. It didn't. You just gave the enemy free points, free kills, free xp and free renown.
Of course, I'll grant that if everyone thinks like me, everyone will end up retreating and then getting bombarded with enemy fire, forcing healers onto the defensive and generally get rolled anyway. (Which has happened in more than one scenario because the enemy kept a tight group and we had no ability to scatter them.)
But I believe the idea is to run in together. Not alone. And a little bit of situational awareness (like realizing half your teammates are dead, maybe you'd better retreat and regroup after they respawn, or that your 3 healers are getting harassed by 4 tanks and an MDPS or two so they're retreating madly and maybe you'd better not choose this exact moment to dash out of heal range into the enemy zerg) would help.
I miss my co-guild leader. He's gone off on a ten day holiday with his significant other, and I must say, those two are the core 'center' of this guild. (If you remember the 'center' theory from the MUD organization days.)
When they are about, people rally to them, and it helps that he plays a Chosen tank, his SO is a healbot zealot, and both of them are REALLY good at their jobs.
Y'see, his Chosen can run into a group of Order and survive because:
a) it's not 10+ people, more like 5-7,
b) he never does it alone either, other people run in with him to harass and distract
c) his pocket healer is watching his hp keenly
d) his auras debuff the opposition, a Black Orc tank doesn't get those
e) his gear isn't too shabby, and his level ain't bad either
f) he was a closed beta elder tester, and you bet he knows all the ins and outs of Warhammer
Meanwhile, we have these other people trying to follow in his footsteps and crying that their teammates suck and they don't get enough heals.
Sigh.
It's an odd state of affairs. Without the 'center' present, my guild feels like a troop of whiny loners, who form up into an incompetent mass of casuals who get pwned. It's enough to make one think about shopping around for another guild.
With the two of them around, they rustle up group activity every night and we go around together like a small zerg to do various interesting things like RvR, keep sieges, scenarios, and all.
Going to be a long ten days.
My alt is nearly the same level as my main, which I was holding back on so I can move together with the core two.
So I can either level up the main, into more PUGs, or I'm tempted to level a tank alt or two - just so I can see things from their point of view.
And do better. Cos I'm mean that way.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Equal Opportunity Streaking
Indulging a sudden spurt of alt-holism, I created a bunch of Warhammer character classes that intrigued me (which was practically all of them). Then I took a couple of them out for a spin.
I blame the goblin squig herder. I suddenly remembered that there were tome unlocks for running around *hem* unarmored, and I figured, what the heck, he had a squig to tank for him, and the lowbie armor gave like 1 or 4 points of armor anyhow.
The unlocks came fast and heavy, 500 damage done while nekkid, 500 damage taken while nekkid, 5000 damage done, 100 abilities used, yadda yadda. In fact, I even dared a scenario while stark gobbo-naked and things were totally fine because I hid in a bunch of tall level 9-11 Destruction people, and sent my squig out to harass while I plinked away with my arrows.
But anyway, near-naked gobbos are funny. Cute funny.
When I did the same thing to my male Chaos zealot, I got a mite bit uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the skin color I chose for him. Blended rather well with the 'briefs' they offered to censor the naughty bits.
But what the hey, people do this with their female characters all the time, right!
So I ran around the lowbie zone indulging myself in being an eyesore for the predominantly male, potentially homophobic gamer population, giggling like a maniac.
Surprisingly buff for a hunchback Chaos mutant
I wonder if any typical male gamer would dare do the same thing with this view awaiting them?
I did NOT however dare to do a scenario naked.
Maybe it's my sense of common decency... or my innate dislike of drawing attention to myself.
Or maybe I was just scared that they would all target the squishy naked man. Healers have to blend in with the crowd to stay alive, y'know. :P
I blame the goblin squig herder. I suddenly remembered that there were tome unlocks for running around *hem* unarmored, and I figured, what the heck, he had a squig to tank for him, and the lowbie armor gave like 1 or 4 points of armor anyhow.
The unlocks came fast and heavy, 500 damage done while nekkid, 500 damage taken while nekkid, 5000 damage done, 100 abilities used, yadda yadda. In fact, I even dared a scenario while stark gobbo-naked and things were totally fine because I hid in a bunch of tall level 9-11 Destruction people, and sent my squig out to harass while I plinked away with my arrows.
But anyway, near-naked gobbos are funny. Cute funny.
When I did the same thing to my male Chaos zealot, I got a mite bit uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the skin color I chose for him. Blended rather well with the 'briefs' they offered to censor the naughty bits.
But what the hey, people do this with their female characters all the time, right!
So I ran around the lowbie zone indulging myself in being an eyesore for the predominantly male, potentially homophobic gamer population, giggling like a maniac.
I did NOT however dare to do a scenario naked.
Maybe it's my sense of common decency... or my innate dislike of drawing attention to myself.
Or maybe I was just scared that they would all target the squishy naked man. Healers have to blend in with the crowd to stay alive, y'know. :P
Friday, October 03, 2008
Gaming as a Hobby
I was talking to Ed the other day when he revealed that he has not been gaming much recently.He felt that he would still enjoy "hardcore" (i.e. games that require time commitment and grinding), but he did not feel he should spend all his time on that anymore. Hence, he only plays games that he could get in and out quickly. Games like Teamfortress 2.
That is pretty much how I feel about gaming now, I responded.
Gaming is a hobby. It's as legitimate a hobby as knitting, or playing chess, fitting jigsaw puzzles, or any of the other hobbies people take up. People decide what hobbies to take up, and how much time they want to spend on them.
Gaming isn't my only hobby. It is just the hobby that's taken up a lot of my time as long as I can remember. But my interest in gaming is waning. I still enjoy gaming, but I find myself changing, wanting to do other things than gaming.
Things that could be as "boring" as just walking around a park, or reading a book.
The urge to turn off the computer with the habit of having the computer around and on.
I ask myself these questions:
1) How much do I enjoy gaming? (As compared to: how much do I enjoy doing [insert blank]?)
2) What playing a computer game do for me as a person? (In contrast with: What does [insert blank] do for me as a person?)
3) (When gaming,) should I be doing something else right now, that I am not doing because I am gaming? (In contrast with: when doing [insert blank], is there something else I should be doing right now, that I am not doing because of what I am doing?)
I find the answers to these three questions not very encouraging. Of course, the unencouraging answers also apply to other things than gaming...