Age of Conan

FLEABttn    9:04 PM

I feel like when I write things for this, it comes off as very forced and shitty. Given that, I'm going to organize my thoughts like this for AoC: The Good: + Graphics + How well it runs on my machine + Combat System + Questing system + The noob starting area (rivals if not exceeds anything found in WoW) -While the 40's aren't bad, they're slower than anything before them due to a lack of leveling areas (specifically, 2) -50+ game sucks. There's really only 1 leveling area per 10 levels, so you run out of quests and resort to grinding -I never got there cause I didn't want to deal with the 50's but there's apparently nothing to do at level cap. I guess there's a raid or two but they make Molten Core look like Sunwell Plateau so they're easily pugged, so much so that people don't even want to do them anymore. -PvP is apparently lacking. I don't know how true this is because I don't know what kind of expectations people have for PvP, but nobody seems to like it. Endgame seems to be more casual than LotRO, which isn't good if there isn't really anything for people to do at 80. It's too bad really. AoC is fantastic until 50, but seriously falls off. Maybe it'll be worth playing in 6-12 months, but by that point, the community might not be there.

Friday, May 02, 2008

Warcraft PvP sucks

FLEABttn    4:09 PM

Over the course of time, I have grown ever more weary of Warcraft's PvP. What originally seemed like an interesting system has proven to be both shallow and inflexible, rewarding those who picked the correct class and punishing those who have no chance. 1) Arena is a joke. While the original idea was certainly interesting and not off base (as after the original BG PvP system, people wanted some sort of ranked PvP system that rewarded skill and not time invested), the implementation has been marginal at best if not downright bad. Class balance is notoriously hard for PvE alone, but a near impossibility for PvP. The players aren't stupid as well, and pick up on which class combination work best for certain brackets. What this has done is cause there to be vast differences in class numbers for PvP, with certain classes being almost completely locked out of high end play. Combine this with a system that doesn't encourage people to keep playing well (which in turn encourages point selling/smurfing) and allows people to win trade, and you have an utterly pointless and imbalanced ranked PvP system. Ranking limits on the arena gear are stupid as well, considering that some classes will never get rankings that high, simply for being a particular class, and not because that person playing the class sucks. 2) BG's are old and stale. Conversely, they don't provide enough reason to keep going to them. You may find these points to be opposing (which is sort of true) and the second point to be wrong, but I will explain. First off, we've been playing three of these BG's now for about 3 years. We're tired of them. Very, very, very tired of them. Please scrap them or put them on rotation or something and make new ones. If you don't, please make them more rewarding. For reasons outside of people's control, the honor grind can be stupidly long for marks reasons. Ditch the mark system. Replace it with something else, something that rewards active participation but that doesn't make the losing team take 3 times as many games to get a gear compared to the other side. Remove arena ratings from honor gear. That sucks. Allow the same factions to face off against each other, or allow the two factions to be on the same team. It breaks lore but your lore is lol already, on top of the fact that it doesn't necessarily lend itself for good gameplay. 3) World PvP is at best a joke and at worst dead. Lowbie ganking is out of hand (getting progressively worse which each character I level), with no means to do anything about it. Blizzard's response is to call in friends to help, but good luck with that. Killing gankers provides almost no reward, so there's no point to going after that 70 hunter who's been killing lowbies in Grom'Gol for 3 hours straight. World PvP provides almost no rewards period, which is why the days of Tarren Mill are dead. Flying mounts also allow for people to pick fights at their leisure, so people shitting on other people with no recourse have become common place. It's stupid.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

WoW Patch 2.1: The uber patch is too little too late

FLEABttn    3:56 PM

Patch 2.1 is currently up on the PTR's, and when it finally hits on May 22nd, it will be 126 days since the game was last majorly patched. Before even going into why the patch in and of itself still fails, it's worth mentioning that 126 days is just over 4 months. 4 months between any kind of content patch is absurd for ANY MMO, but particularly absurd for TBC, where balancing issues, gear issues, alchemy issues, and other such issues (oh, and new content, LOL) are being paid for by millions of people, with no action on Blizzard's part. While it makes for nice patch notes, it makes for a bad game. Nobody wants to wait 4 months for some of this shit in the patch. Things like nether drakes should have been in at release or patched in soon after, NOT patched in 1/3rd the way through the development cycle to your next expansion pack. Nobody also wants to wait for you to put your next big raid instance in the patch when nobody's even close to attempting the raid instance before it; Black Temple isn't going to be used by bleeding edge guilds for months, none of them are even in Mt Hyjal yet, the patch could have been released earlier leaving this raid instance out. 0.5% of your playerbase isn't even going to see Hyjal, let alone Black Temple, why the fuck is your new 5 man content so lacking? Why introduce new faction grinds? Nobody fucking likes faction grinds! As I predicted in my last post, class balancing in regards to paladins and priests was paladin healing got nerfed and nothing happened with priest; in Blizzard's world, misery does love company. This was expected though. However, even the WoW community thinks the lack of healer and hybrid love is stupid at this point, especially given that the same patch is buffing rogues and warlocks continue to be warlocks. Irregardless, this level of balancing should NOT have taken 4 months to push our the door, especially when it does nothing but make the two most arguably most complete classes more complete or unchanged, while screwing around with classes that actually need help. The alchemy change is too little too late. While they've gotten rid of the ability to really buff yourself through pots and flasks, and decreased the amount of mats required, the new maximum for buffs will still be required. Content is still tuned off the notion that you're going to be potting, and you're still required to farm or drop a great deal of money on mats. Not cool. Here's looking to 2.2!

Saturday, March 24, 2007

WoW: Where Blizzard went wrong

FLEABttn    5:50 PM

I'm not going to create some huge essay; this is going to be bullet points and my rants, updated every now and then. I really don't have the patience to sit down and write a 10 page essay. Plus I doubt anyone will really read this. Well... In case people do start reading these, I may clean them up when I'm bored, but otherwise don't expect things to be too neat. Onto the bitching.. Racial balance is non-exsistant While the entire idea behind racials is neat (each race/class gets its own unique bonus), the execution has been bad. Certain race/class combos have such awesome racial abilities, you'd be stupid to not get them. In fact, some of these racial abilities were SO awesome that recruitment was based purely off them. Many guilds that have been "full on priests" have recruited Dwarf priests for the sheer fact that Fear Ward would trivialize certain fights. Some classes have utterly useless racials. A night elf priest gets Starshards, a fairly low damage spell that's channeled and scales worth shit with +dmg gear. Elune's grace is even more of an insult, I can't think of any priest using it seriously. Some racials negate entire classes. Orc stun resist was loathed by rogues because they basically were useless against Orcs because of it. Racials should exsist to add a little something to your character, not define or negate it. -Factions were stupid in WoW, factions are retarded in TBC One of the dumbest, most mind numbing things that was ever introduced into Warcraft was the idea of factions. The idea was: you complete a quest (or kill something), and for it, you get a rep for a certain faction. However, rep gains were god awful slow with rewards usually being fairly shitty. Grinding furbolg rep at 2k an hour for the 15 agi weapon enchant was suicide inducing, considering how much rep one had to grind. It was 10+ hours of pure grinding of two different kinds of furbolgs in a tiny little area. Not cool. Luckily, Blizz didn't do very many of them, with even fewer reps having anything worth getting from them at the lower rep levels. Even then, it was still stupid. TBC came out and made this problem worse. What was originally a more limited game mechanic became widespread because of making it easier to get rep. Instances were associated to a faction which would then be used to unlock a harder version of the instance. However, this is a shit retarded mechanic, as it discourages alts and makes it harder to recruit replacements. Someone can't level an alt and then hit heroic instances or raid instances without an absurd amount of backflagging. This forces the alt in question to either force his guildmates to help farm rep for him, or it forces him to PuG, which is a god awful way to rep grind. Rep grinding to be allowed access to content also limits the pool in which guilds can recruit from, due to the individual more of less needing to be in a guild to begin with to get himself keyed. It's hard enough killing raid bosses for an item to get keyed to to the next raid instance, it's just unnecessary to have something like a really hard onyxia key chain to come before all of it, especially when it requires a faction grind. -lack of definition of rolls or -Pure classes are the mongoose to my hybrid snake These are two separate but still connected issues. While not posing as large of a problem pre-raid, once raiding the min/max game kicks in. Due to this, any class that's not number 1 in damage or healing or whatever will be brought in on an "as-needed" basis. i.e. How many fury warriors were in killshots for bosses in Naxx? How many fury warriors are in killshots for Gruul or Karazhan? Exactly. Classes need to be wanted, however, this need cannot be seen as a "gimmick" or else it creates contempt towards the gimmicky class. i.e. How many hunters did your guild bring to raids? How many did they really want to bring? You'll find that the number between these two questions on average will differ, with how many wanted pre and post-TBC to be completely different. Tranq shot was hunter "utility" however nothing but contempt was held for most hunters pre-TBC, as they were seen as being brought to the raid only for tranq shot and not for anything else. Many people in high end raid guilds I knew didn't want to bring any hunters for the sheer fact that they could bring in fury warriors or mages instead, but the fight required 2-3 hunters. However, when TBC hit, the amount of AoE and 360 degree cleaves on bosses had increased dramatically, making hunters more valuable. This still isn't fixed though. Despite rogue dominance on many fights, too many are seen as being "too hard" for rogues, so adjustments are being made to make fights more rogue friendly. The hunter is most likely going to end up where he started at, Tranq bitch and loathed for it. Defining class rolls based of something not seen as a gimmick increases class diversity while also helps lessen raid stacking. This branches off to the fact that hybrid class implementation in WoW is stupid. Given min/maxing, why pick a class to do something when there's a class that can do that very same thing better? Nobody used druid tanks pre-TBC seriously because a non-prot warrior with enough defense could do better. Nobody uses moonkins because their damage is weak compared to other casters and their group buff didn't more than make up for damage lost. Given hybrids flexibility, they theoretically will never be as good as the "parent" or "pure" class. This marginalizes their roll to what they "suck at" least, which, especially prior to TBC, is healing. Pure DPS classes are easy to get and will outperform the hybrid, warriors are (in general) better tanks than hybrid tanks and are still semi-easy to get, and nobody wants to heal. Really. Anyone who's been an officer in a guild that's not DnT or EJ or FoH knows how god damn hard it is to recruit healers. So paladins, shaman, and (to a lesser extent because of class changes for TBC) druids allllllll get to heal, which they don't want to do, because they most likely rolled that class to be a hybrid and to hybrid things. Being marginalized completely negates the point of being a hybrid. Something as broken as that but from the other side is when a hybrid class can outperform a parent class's primary function. A holy paladin with proper healing gear will outheal a priest specced to healing, and can do so with around 20 points left to spend on other, non-healing points. A holy priest has to be all 61 points to heal less effective than a paladin, plus the paladin gets increased solo and pvp capabilities. Unfortunately, action won't be taken most likely in this case, and if it is, the paladin healing will be nerfed, making them less happy, and priests no happier as they'll be as gimp as they were before. Which leads me to my next point... -Dedicated healers suck Nobody likes to be the bitch healer. Sure, there are some, but they probably have some hormone imbalance. Let me explain... A rogue's job is to run up to a tanked mob, and beat the living shit out of it until it dies. In this, he needs to make sure he doesn't pull too much aggro, so he can use a poison to lower the amount of threat generated, or he can use feint to decrease the amount of threat he holds, or worst case, he can vanish and drop to 0 aggro. He can solo very well and farm very easily. In non-arena PvP, he can take down people fairly easily while not being the first to die from the assist train. While not as deadly in arena pvp, he's still not the first on the assist train. A healers job is to sit in the back, or second to the back, and click on a bar, then hit a button. Then click on another bar, then hit a button. A healer needs to try to heal as much without pulling aggro, but in case he does, there's a good chance that he's SOL as most healers don't have a good way to get rid of aggro. Some healers can solo better than others, but the holy priest is probably one of the worst solo classes there are. In non-arena pvp and arena pvp, the assist train goes for the healer first, and they are more likely to die before anyone else. You're also the most likely to be blamed for any sort of fuck up your group does, even if you're not the one who did it. While someone might argue that the rogue too just hits buttons, I will add that he's actually in the fight. A healer is sitting in the back of everyone reacting to the fight, whereas a rogue is an active participant. Don't buy that theory? Okay. Do 5 DPS classes alone ever charge a group in PvP? All the time. Do 5 heal specced people alone charge a group in PvP. Fuck no. It's suicide. They react to fights around them because anything else leaves them both unproductive and dead. Most heal specced classes, when trying to participate in the fight, get told to back off and to heal people, to react to the fights around them. Let's also not forget that a rogues "PvE" spec is pretty much applicable to PvP and solo gameplay, whereas a heal specced bitch is only good for being a heal specced bitch. This idea applies to gear as well. A rogue carries one set of gear for everything, not including any sort of resist sets. A heal specced bitch requires a minimum of two sets, one that increases healing, the other damage. It's bad enough being a bitch, it's worse being a bitch and not being able to do normal everyday actions while being the bitch, and it's fucking stupid being the bitch on top of being the first to die. Plus you're the first bitch to die who needs two sets. Awesome. Fixing this can be hard or easy. The hard way to change the mechanics of the entire fucking game, making it so that a heal specced bitch can actually participate in the fight while being effective, giving them survivability, etc. The easy way to fix this would be to either let everyone have two specs or to decrease the cost of respecing to something insignificant, like 5g. It's a small enough amount to where people will do it more often than they are now, and because of that it still remains to be a viable money sink. -PvE and PvP balance needs to happen separately Blizz tries to balance two games around one set of skills. This leads to clashes of balance and design, and their solution so far is to sacrifice one aspect of the game for the other. i.e. -The paladin avenging wrath change that didn't end up going live. It's an indirect nerf to PvE to balance PvP. -Warlocks. Dots were made powerful to compensate for high aggro generating shadowbolts, and weaker damage from them, fear being added for god knows what reason, perhaps because of a lack of other options? This is less a problem in TBC, except that Warlocks are now ridiculous in both PvP and PvE. -Nerfing mangle sort of. Blizz nerfed mangle on both fronts, PvE because bears were able to out-tank prot warriors while maintaining a higher DPS, and PvP because bears were extremely hard to kill on top of putting out the pain. What this also happened to do was nerf druids in both PvP and PvE for cat form. It was an unfortunate choice of Blizzard to integrate the "melee DPS" tree and "tank" tree into the same tree, which makes the marginalization of the druid worse than it could be. There needs to be a distinction between PvP and PvE mechanics in regards to skills. Don't nerf something because it's OP in one part of the game and not in the other, it creates an imbalance. Change it so the skill works one way in arena's and a different way everywhere else. It's not hard and it lets you nerf a skill without the potential of totally decimating another aspect of the skill.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

What this blog is

FLEABttn    1:16 AM

What I have decided to do with this blog is get my game ideas down on paper and out of my head. Having played MMO's for more than two years now, I feel that I qualified enough to argue game design. This isn't going to be some cesspit blog, I'm not going to get THAT detailed, it will probably be something closer to patchtimer, but with a somewhat less hardcore spin. I'm not one for free epics comming from the in game mail system, but I'm not one for purely huge raids either; you'll find me somewhat a moderate in regards to the casual/hardcore debate. However, I do think my perspective is an under-represented one in both games and mmo blogs, so what shall be found here should be rather fresh. Game design shall be posted in the upcommings days and weeks (and the ideas and articles should be more entertaining that this, introductions were never my strong point in writing).

Original layout and pictures by Jandaman. New pictures by Gilbert Hernandez. Site up kept and ran by Tyler Ash.