Author Archives: ChaosConstant

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October 13, 2015

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Subscription Guilt

I’ve just remembered why I don’t subscribe to MMOs anymore. I feel a sense of guilt for not playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, which I am currently subscribed to (technically my subscription is canceled, but I have the better part of a month left). I haven’t played Marvel Heroes as much as I’d like to lately, and my Guild Wars 2 guild probably thinks I’ve fallen off the face of Tyria. There are also, of course, a number of non-MMO games that I’ve wanted to play, like last weekend’s beta of Star Wars Battlefront (not to be confused with the 2004 game Star Wars: Battlefront), which, incidentally may break my general apathy toward shooters. Playing those games isn’t as fun right now because I have the swiftly approaching deadline of Knights of the Fallen Empire hanging over my head, and with it the end of the 12x XP bonus that I subscribed for. I’m really in love with the newly-F2P WildStar right now, so I’ve actually been playing that a lot, but every time I launch the game, the SWTOR icon right next to it calls out reminding me that I have less than a week to get my characters to 50, or they’ll have to go back to the normal leveling slog that I’ve had to do in the past. I keep consoling myself with the fact that I’ll be getting a free insta-60 token at the expansion launch, but I really want to wrap up a couple of the class stories before the deadline.

My normal philosophy when it comes to games is that you should play the thing you get the most fun out of at the moment. It’s a game. If it’s not fun, it has no purpose. There’s a certain amount of deferring fun for the promise of future fun that I can stand, but I have a lot less patience for that in a game than, I don’t know, real life. But on the other hand, I paid $15 for a month of SWTOR game time, and if I don’t play during that time, I’m essentially throwing away a chunk of my limited gaming budget for the month. WildStar isn’t going anywhere any time soon. In fact, if I wait a couple weeks there will probably be less random lag.

And the thing is, it’s not that I’m not having fun when I log into SWTOR. I still want to play it, it’s just that WildStar is more shiny right now. And in a few weeks, Guild Wars 2’s expansion will be more interesting than that. That’s just the way things work, and it’s frustrating that, so often, they all hit at the same time. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for gaming.

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October 6, 2015

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My WildStar F2P Checklist

Reloaded
In case you missed the media circus, WildStar is now Free-to-Play. It’s been a rocky start so far, with multiple outages, ridiculous login queues (often 1-2 hours or more), and, worst of all for an action combat MMO, absurd amounts of lag. So, basically, exactly what you’d expect from a F2P relaunch. It didn’t bother me too much, since I was in bed with a killer sinus infection for almost two weeks around the time of the relaunch (hence my general lack of blog activity, sorry). A couple days into the launch, Carbine rolled out some extra servers to balance out the load, which has helped, though there are still some problems. Wisely, the devs are making it clear that the servers are a temporary measure, naming them (at least here in the States) Entity-2 and Warhound-2, respectively. I always cringe when games throw a bunch of servers into production for a launch, only to have to merge them back down a few months later. It’s a real paradox; leave the servers alone and you’ll get flack for poor player service, seemingly not caring about their hour-long queues to get into the game they just spent hours downloading. Put servers up, and, when you inevitably merge them back down to what you had before, you get all kinds of bad PR and naysayers crying “SEE! Proof that this game is failing just like I said it would!” Neither is good, and this is yet another reason why I never want to ever work in the MMO business. Let’s all take a minute to collectively feel bad for the IT guys at Carbine and hope they get to eat and see their families soon. But not until you get our game working, dangit.

Anyways, enough about the launch. Ever since I canceled my WildStar subscription a couple of months ago, I’ve been thinking about what I’m excited to do once I get back to Nexus. Here are a few of the more major points.

Work on my house
So far the two houses I’ve made have consisted mostly of a smattering of plants, the pack of items they give you when you buy a housing plot, and maybe a few plush Rowsdowers and such that I’ve gotten from events out in the world. I haven’t actually made an effort to plan out what I want to do with my plot yet. I have a few disconnected ideas inspired by things I’ve seen, but nothing specific. That said, when I last subscribed, I shipped a bunch of materials to my Architect character, so hopefully I will soon be able to make something other than scrawny bushes and ugly metal planks.
I’ve also spent some of the more lag-infested play sessions just messing around in people’s public houses getting ideas for what to do in the future. People do some crazy stuff with their plots. Why play Minecraft when there’s Wildstar? A lot of people don’t even use the prefabricated houses they give you, opting to create their own, much more elaborate buildings out of decor items. I’d be curious to find out how much money some of these people have dumped into their housing plots. Do people just accumulate some of this stuff as they go, or are they burning through hundreds of platinum so their house looks cool? Or is it just the product of a crapton of crafting? I’m sure the answer is usually “all of the above.”

Actually get a character 50
As my readers know by now, my biggest weakness in MMOs is that I get distracted easily. I really want to play endgame content, but I’ll get a character about half to two thirds of the way to the level cap and–hey look, a shiny thing!

Hit the gear treadmill
Man, I miss healing groups. I flew through Little Healer (Android/iOS) and it gave me so much nostalgia for playing a healer (plus, you can wipe as much as you want without getting yelled at!).
Honestly, I’ve never done raid healing in any of the games I’ve played. I’ve done a fair amount of dungeon healing, and dabbled in raid (off) tanking, but I’ve never stuck with a character/game that had actual raids long enough to get geared enough to be viable at raiding. But what I have done has been some of my favorite group activities in MMOs. And since I doubt I’ll be getting my ranger to 80 for the Shaman healing Elite Spec in Guild Wars 2 any time soon, WildStar seems like the perfect place to get back into healing.

Roll a new character
Completely counter to my above two goals, I always feel the need to roll a new character when returning to a game after an expansion or other big update. Especially one like this one that streamlines the story at the lower levels. This is why I never achieve the above goals. This time I think a new gunslinger looks tempting, especially since I hear they’re the best raid healer. Early on I got frustrated with the class, since their targeting area is this game’s equivalent of a single-target spiker, but I figured I’d give it another shot (no pun intended). Hopefully, now that the skill unlocks are all free, I’ll find a build that I like better this time around.

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September 22, 2015

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Three Features Every MMO Should Have: Star Wars: The Old Republic

This is a part of my Three Features Every MMO Should Have series.
Well, that’s possibly the longest post title I’ve ever done. In keeping with my SWTOR post from yesterday, here’s three features from my latest obsession that every MMO should have.

Lightsabers
Let’s be honest here; the lightsaber is the coolest weapon known to man. Followed closely by the double bladed lightsaber. What game wouldn’t be improved by a few glowstick swords? Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Bounty Hunters
Because Boba Fett didn’t get enough screen time in the movies. Spamming missiles and flamethrowers FTW!

Storytelling
Ok I’m being a bit silly with this list. But let’s face it, the IP and storytelling are the only things that make SWTOR really stand out. Its combat is ripped straight out of WoW, and many of its other systems–player housing, PvP, group content, quest structure, even its F2P model–are just imitations of those of other games, ranging from passable to mediocre. I’m convinced that, if BioWare had decided to make a Dragon Age MMO instead of a Star Wars one, by now it would have been branded as a white noise, generic fantasy MMO with a some ambitious storytelling and character development ideas, and slowly slipped into obscurity. As a whole, it’s actually pretty fun, but if it weren’t Star Wars I’m sure I would have never played it.
So here’s my real three features from SWTOR that every MMO should have, all based around its story.

Class story
As I talked about last time, I recently subscribed to SWTOR for the class story XP boost, and playing them as a more cohesive whole has reinforced how well written the class stories in this game really are. Giving each class its own story was the best decision BioWare ever made when it comes to making SWTOR. Games like Guild Wars 2 do unique stories based on your race, which is the next best thing, and works for that world, but I prefer class stories and they definitely fit the Star Wars universe much better. SWTOR’s classes all represent people from very different walks of life whose archetypes are ripped straight out of the movies themselves. I’ve always felt like games like LotRO have had to water down their stories because every character plays the same story; the Lore Master never helps anyone out by sending a bird messenger to Gandalf, the Captain can rally exactly one soldier to help the Fellowship’s cause, and the Burglar does surprisingly little burgling. Every player just follows the same path with no mention of their individual talents. Not only does it make more story sense to personalize your story to your story to your particular character, it also makes me a lot more likely to roll a new character (not that I particularly need a good reason, but you get the idea). For instance, the Bounty Hunter class isn’t even that exciting to me at this point, but I’ve been enjoying playing mine because the story is good. I understand that a lot of games don’t have the budget to come up with class stories of the scope that SWTOR has, but if at all possible, it would make alt-lovers like me a lot happier.

Compansions
Granted, the companions in SWTOR are not as developed as those of other BioWare games–I’ve recently been binge-playing the Mass Effect series and dabbling in Dragon Age Inquisition, and now I understand why people were so disappointed with SWTOR’s companions–but they sure beat anything I’ve found in any other MMO. It’s always fun when companions interject in conversations, either to affirm or admonish you for your chosen actions, or just to make a smart aleck remark on the side. Even more interesting are the companion missions. They range from a short conversation to a full-on quest chain. Gain enough affection points, and you can even get married to some of them. Obviously not every game has or should have companion characters, but this kind of supporting cast of recurring NPC characters goes a long way toward making me feel like the players’ characters aren’t the only sentient beings in the universe.

Forced roleplay
I’m not really in to RP. I know people who live for it, but I’m just not interested in playing a character in most game worlds. I’m not against it–it is called a Roleplaying Game after all, you should be free to roleplay as long as you don’t disrupt people’s gameplay–I’m just not generally into it. But somehow SWTOR, and BioWare games in general, have really gotten me sucked into getting inside my character’s head. BioWare’s genius is that they force you to decide as you go who your character is in every conversation. Is Shepherd a renegade or a paragon? Is the Inquisitor a Chantry loyalist? How far will your smuggler go to make a few extra credits? A lot of SWTOR players just play in such a way to get the maximum light/dark points, or maximum affection with their companion, but I’ve found it’s a lot more fun to pick one option or the other based on what I feel my character would do, regardless of the alignment gain. Besides, light side and dark side gear isn’t generally that exciting, and affection can usually be gained more efficiently through companion gifts.

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September 16, 2015

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SWTOR’s 12x XP: An Altaholic’s Dream

Ricoshay Relaxing
I think the last time I subscribed to a game was early 2012, and before that circa 2009. Now, I’ve suddenly been subscribed to two different MMOs in the span of three months. Fittingly, the last game I was subscribed to was SWTOR, and now BioWare is once again taking my money. This time, however, the Game Tax comes with the perk of a huge XP boost to the class story rewards that allows players to level to 50 exclusively through their story from now until the expansion hits on October 19th. As much as I love the charm of a lot of the sidequests in SWTOR, I have to begrudgingly admit that I agree with everyone who’s saying that the story-only leveling is actually a really nice experience. It feels more like playing a single-player RPG; one main story with only as many sidequests as you choose to do. It’s also great because I can play as many different classes as I want and don’t have to replay the same quests I’ve just done. So far I’ve almost finished my powertech’s class story, and my sorcerer is in her mid 30s. I’m planning on finishing off my operative next, who is around level 40.

A lot of the reason why SWTOR has never stuck for me is that I want to play every class, and I want to simultaneously be at endgame right now and experience as much of the story as I can. So basically this is exactly what I’ve always wanted. I’m not sure if I’d recommend it to someone who’s never played the game, as it kind of rushes you through the learning stages of the game, but as someone who’s played off and on since the beta and dabbled in all of the classes at one point or another, it’s great. I’ve seen some discussion among players of just scrapping the sidequests and keeping the class story XP boost on all the time, probably only for subscribers. I have a hard time being excited about this, because there are a lot of memorable quests and quest lines outside of the class story that I would miss–who can forget the Black Bisector series, or the first time you became a Revanite?–not to mention all of the light/dark decisions, companion affection, and gear drops we’d miss out on (I’ve been living on almost nothing but commendation gear since I subscribed). I know they’re reworking the leveling process for the expansion, but I don’t think they’ll be so lazy as to just leave the boost on all the time. The best solution I’ve heard is somewhere in the middle: boost the XP payout of all of the quests (both class story quests and traditional ones) by 3-5 times and leave them all in. This way you’re still progressing at a more normal rate, but you can pick and choose which quests you want to play. Either way, I’m sure the leveling experience will be better. And if it’s not, they’ll be giving you an insta-60 with the expansion (free with a subscription) so you can skip it entirely. I’m planning to use mine on a Sith Juggernaut, since my old main character was the mirror class on the Republic side, but my new guild is mostly Empire. I’ve never done the Warrior’s story, though, and I’m told it’s pretty good, so it would be a shame to skip it. We’ll see.

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September 9, 2015

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Three Features Every MMO Should Have: Rift

This is a part of my Three Features Every MMO Should Have series.

Class customization, with premade classes
Rift, despite trying desperately to appeal to the ex-WoW crowd, doesn’t have traditional WoW-like classes, but instead has four (soon to be five) “callings,” and each of those callings has a number of different “souls” that determine your skill trees. In essence this allows you to make up your own class by choosing which trees you pick. This complexity would be a huge turnoff to me–after all, if there’s anything you shouldn’t overcomplicate, it’s the character creation process–except that Trion has taken the time to hand out a selection of premade classes, with a few even created by players. If you’re happy with your premade class, you can just keep hitting the auto-level button and it’ll put points where they matter most. Then, later, when you have a little more experience with the game, you can start tweaking. I think it’s a great idea; I can’t tell you how many classes I’ve played that have been almost perfect, but were missing that certain something. In Rift, you can simply swap out one of your souls until you find that something. It also happens to be a great cure for altaholism, as you can simply respec and get a fresh play style without having to reroll.

Instant Adventures
I didn’t play Rift for very long (as I recall my highest character is maybe level 25 at best), but when I did I played a lot in Instant Action, probably much to the dismay of my much higher level teammates. For those who haven’t played Rift, Instant Action is a system where the game throws you into a group with a bunch of people, dumps you into some random place, adjusts your level accordingly, and gives you a series of mini quests to do for rewards. The objectives are pretty simple–mostly kill 10 rats type quests–so it’s not like you need much coordination in your group. You can do this for as long or as short as you want, which is great since the game in general tends to be unfriendly to short play sessions.

Wardrobe
Most MMOs these days have either a wardrobe feature or the ability to transmute/transmog gear to look how you want it to, but few of them do it as well as Rift. Every piece of gear you’ve equipped on any of your characters is automatically unlocked in the wardrobe. Simply choose your look from the list, dye it, and keep on questing. The best part is, there’s no fee for doing this, and dyes are one time buys for unlimited uses. Also nice is the fact that the armor class for the gear you’re showing doesn’t have to be the one for your class, so your mage can run around in full plate armor if you’d like. I’ve always wondered how much this is used in PvP to confuse people as to what calling you are, but with the game’s aforementioned customizable classes I’m not sure it mattered much what calling you were fighting anyway. Sadly, one of the reasons why Rift never stuck with me is because I didn’t care for the overall graphic aesthetic (especially the character models), and most of the gear I got looked really boring. To be fair, though, I was pretty low level when I got bored with the game, and all low level gear looks bad, right? It’s unfortunate to have a great wardrobe system trapped in a game that doesn’t deserve it, but at least if you do manage to find a piece of gear you like you can keep it.

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September 1, 2015

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RuneScape: The Best Awful Community Ever

RuneScape_Logo
I’ve been perusing the history of Runescape eBook that was recently released by RSHistory, and it’s got me feeling a lot of nostalgia. I played RuneScape from 2005 until around 2010. It was my first MMO, and the one I played for the longest. During that time, I saw every kind of troll, scammer, exploit, vulgarity (despite the hyper-restrictive chat filter), and general player-created annoyance you can imagine. I saw servers that seemed to have more bots and gold spammers than actual players. I watched the rise of a system for stopping gold sellers and scams by forcing trades to be balanced (through dynamic price fixing), and its fall due to constant complains and protests from players, and predicted the subsequent influx of bots and spammers (personally, I preferred the price fixing). I was even a player moderator–a player hand-picked by the game’s developers to have high priority rule breaking reports, as well as the ability to mute players who are spamming or otherwise abusing chat–with all of the privileges and abuse that come with that (mostly abuse; being a “game cop” isn’t as glorious as some people seemed to think). I stuck with RuneScape when all of my friends jumped ship and played WoW, then came back, whined about how it wasn’t WoW, then went back to WoW again.

The point is, RuneScape isn’t exactly known for its exemplary community. Yet it’s the only game I’ve played where I actually felt like I made friends who I’ve never met in real life. RuneScape is unlike most modern MMOs in that it’s pretty hands-free game; combat, crafting, and movement are all mouse-driven, and the gameplay is pretty much nothing but grinding. This frees up players to chat with people who are in the same area killing stuff, fishing, mining, or whatever. Given that the average age of the players of RuneScape was, at the time, probably somewhere around junior high, you can imagine that this sometimes lead to some rather… interesting topics of conversation. But the point is it actually lead to conversation. It blows my mind to think about the fact that I had more conversations in “say” chat (unless you sent a direct message to someone on your friends list, you could only talk to people you could see, and the game’s draw distance was atrocious) than I ever do now in zone chat, or even guild chat in some games. When you found someone who wasn’t a total jerk, you bonded a little. RuneScape had a somewhat unusual user culture in that it was commonplace to add anyone you had a civil conversation with to your friends list. If you didn’t have your 200 friends list slots filled (and a few ignore slots) by level 50 you were probably a social recluse. People would strike up conversations in private messages, be it about the game or something outside of it.

I’ve often wondered what exactly made RuneScape’s community feel different from that of games I played later. First and foremost I think it’s because of the aforementioned mouse-driven grindfest gameplay that frees players up to type while they play. Also, the fact that there were no guilds in the game (well, people grouped up in “clans,” but there was no official system for it back then, and you technically weren’t allowed to tell anyone to go to any website that wasn’t run by Jagex), so a lot of the social dynamics were person-to-person instead of a group. It also probably helped that, with the MMO market being dominated by subscription-only games, players tended to stick with one game at a time a lot more back then. Most of all, however, I think it was just a very different time in the Internet’s history; people still hung out in chatrooms for goodness sake. The MMO genre was still in its infancy, and people were still figuring out the social dynamics of communicating and cooperating with people from all over the world. Come to think of it, people I know who played older games like Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies, and City of Heroes had similar experiences, so I think the different Internet culture had a lot to do with it. Games have gotten more engaging since then, but are we really better off? I’m not sure.

Anyways, thanks for letting me vent some of my gaming nostalgia.

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August 25, 2015

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Three Features Every MMO Should Have: WildStar

Today I’m starting a new series: Three Features Every MMO Should Have. It’s pretty self-explanatory; I take the top three unique features from each MMO I play (or have played in the past) that I wish would follow me to every game. For some games, it’s been hard to pick only three, and for others… well, you’ll know when I get there. I thought I’d kick things off with my latest obsession, the soon-to-be-F2P WildStar.

Housing
If you know anyone who plays WildStar, you probably knew this was coming. Given that this is a game that tried really hard to bill itself as the savior of hardcore raiding crowd, it’s a little odd to find that their housing system is perhaps the best casual, out of combat feature of any game on the market. There are other games that have housing, but I know of no other game that combines so much creative freedom with the wide variety of whimsical housing objects that WildStar has. Sometimes I log on just to visit random other peoples’ public houses and see what creative things they’ve done with their housing plots. Thus far my favorite is an Aurin who turned their “house” into a giant aquarium (underwater theme, a large glass pane in front of the door, aquitic-looking plants, and I think some kind of fish?) and had built a giant tree house in the forest of glowing trees outside. I know there are more elaborate houses out there, but for some reason it struck me as somewhere I would actually like to live, something that doesn’t happen for me in just any video game location. I wish I could say my housing plot was super awesome, but so far I don’t have tons of money to throw at housing, and the character that ended up being my main character (a human medic) isn’t an Architect by trade. I can’t wait to see what people with the significantly increased number of housing item slots coming with the massive patch accompanying the F2P transition.

Mobility
Ronen_Zell.150806.230349This is an odd one, and it took me a while to put my finger on it. One of the things that makes WildStar feel so good is its sense of mobility. I’m not just talking about hoverboard mounts, though those are a joy to ride as well. I mean that, in general, moving my character around the world feels very fluid and natural. This is surprisingly hard to get right in an MMO, especially with varying character model sizes that all need to run at the same speed, but it’s absolutely crucial in a game with very active, mobile combat like WildStar. It’s also not just about running around; it’s surprising how much the double jump adds to the game. Seriously, Guild Wars 2, you need to get on that. It would make your all-too-frequent jumping puzzles much more enjoyable. And then there’s sections of the game with low gravity. Forget flying mounts; I’d rather jump a hundred feet in the air between floating bits of rock.

Nameplate icons for kill quests
nameplate iconsFile this one under “why the heck didn’t someone do this sooner?” WildStar puts an icon next to the names of enemies you need to kill for quests. No more guessing if this is the particular brand of rat you’re supposed to kill for your “kill 5 rats” quest. There’s even another icon for things you need to kill for challenges. It seems like a really small quality of life thing, but it’s the one I would gladly take with me to other games over the other two on this list, possibly more than any other feature in subsequent lists. If clicking quests in the quest log didn’t put an arrow over your head that points you in the direction of the quest (feature every MMO should have number four, but that’s cheating), I probably wouldn’t ever need the quest log, because my targets are obvious just from looking at them.

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August 18, 2015

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Marvel Heroes: Lawyered

So I’ve had more than 400 Eternity Splinters burning a hole in my inventory for a while now, and haven’t been able to decide on which character to buy. Magneto? Seems too much like the AoE nuker classes I’ve been favoring a little too much lately, and I’m looking for something different. Rocket Racoon? I was pretty close to picking him up, but then I heard his summons got a big nerf, so that was a turnoff. Cyclops? Everyone says you should at least level him to 50 for the XP bonus synergy, but they also say he’s really boring. I could go on, but you get the idea. So the other night I was bored and started messing around with a few of the classes I haven’t tried with the new “every character is free up to level 10” feature they added a while back. For some reason, I tried out She-Hulk, because, while I’m a little put off by Marvel’s proclivity toward making female versions of every super hero, come on, she’s way cooler than the original Hulk. Not as strong perhaps, but how cool is it that she’s a green superhero lawyer? Not to mention all of the legal puns involved. After about 15 minutes of playing her I knew I had to buy the unlock. I just fell in love with her playstyle; stomping around and punching baddies to build up combo points, then spending them on one high-powered AoE slam to finish them off. I really like how some skills require zero combo points to be at full power, and others require–but don’t use up–full combo points. She also has a refreshing way of doing melee, a playstyle that I generally don’t like in this game (I have both Thor and Wolverine, and both got boring really fast) by giving her a variety of powers that make her leap into the fray. Plus her “Objection!” skill makes her lob a briefcase full of legal documents at her enemies. What’s not to love?

Forget headphones Star-Lord, make a $20 Phoenix Wright costume for She-Hulk and you'll make millions.

Forget sweatpants Hawkeye; make a $15 Phoenix Wright costume for She-Hulk and you’ll make millions.

Long story short, I got her to level 25 Friday night alone, which is a leveling speed record for me. I had planned to play WildStar that night, but couldn’t tear myself away from Marvel Heroes. I’m also seriously considering buying her lawyer outfit next time there’s a costume sale, because I think it’s a lot cooler than the weird swimsuit thing she comes with. Considering that I’ve bought a grand total of one costume up to this point, that’s saying something.

If you had told me when Marvel Heroes came out that my favorite characters would be people like Squirrel Girl, and She-Hulk, I probably would have thought it was some kind of joke, because I would have been completely unaware of the existence of any of those heroes if not for Marvel Heroes. That’s one of my favorite things about the game; it exposes non comic readers like me to some of the more obscure heroes and villains of the Marvelverse that will likely never make it into the movies.

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August 12, 2015

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Dear MOBAs, I Tried

Dear MOBAs,
I tried.
I really did. I tried back in the day when the original Defenders of the Ancients map was big in Warcraft III. I tried when League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth (is HoN even a thing anymore?) were in open beta. I’ve tried hybrid games like Smite and Marvel Heroes’ Fire and Ice PvP. I’ve been in to two different MOBA alphas (Heroes of the Storm and one that’s still in NDA) and barely played either. I just can’t seem to find the appeal of the genre (and I use the term “genre” loosely here, as it’s basically just one game with a bunch of different skins on top of it). I feel like I should–I know a lot of people who used to have the same tastes in games as I did who now think LoL is the best game since Tetris–but I just can’t.

There are other genres that I don’t like that I can find one or two redeeming titles in. Take shooters for example: I don’t really like shooters in general, but I love the Mass Effect series, the the Metroid Prime games, and I even played my share of Star Wars Battlefront back in the day (not that I was good, but it was fun). With MOBAs, despite my best efforts, I just haven’t found anything that really draws me in.

One of the biggest factors barring my entry is that I’m not very good at MOBAs, and MOBA isn’t a genre that lends itself to learning slowly. In MMOs, we have tutorials, skills are introduced to you slowly as you level your character, and those skills are usually learned while you’re in a town, or at least out of combat. MOBAs are, by their very nature, pure PvP arenas where your character is already built, except for some small “level up rewards”–which amount to buffs–that last only for the length the match. Then there’s the whole character rotation thing. Unless I shell out some cash, I can’t play the same character from one day to the next. All in all, not very conducive to learning.

Another prohibiting factor is that the MOBA community isn’t much of a “community” at all; it’s extremely competitive and negative, even within your own team. I thought my friends’ WoW raid leaders were bad, harassing their own group for not doing good enough; some of the MOBA players I’ve seen are even worse. If we were talking championship eSports level I’d understand, but we’re all just average players here. It’s like that guy that thinks he’s hot stuff because he’s the starting quarterback at an NCAA division three college (holy hackers, I just make a sports metaphor?). It’s worse in some of the bigger games like LoL and DOTA 2, but even some of the more niche games are pretty hostile if you don’t know what you’re doing.

The worst part is that I really don’t understand why I don’t like MOBAs. I’m not very good at StarCraft II, and it has a very competitive fanbase, yet it’s one of my favorite games. I like ARPGs and RTSes, and MOBAs are basically just a fusion of those two genres. Maybe some day I’ll find a game that clicks with me and shows me what I’ve been missing (probably about a year after everyone has moved on to something else), but until then, I’m a little mystified as to why I can’t seem to enjoy MOBAs.

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July 29, 2015

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Hotbars: Less Is More

Hotbars
There has been a trend recently in MMOs away from the WoW-like hotbar interface, i.e. three on the bottom and at least one on the side, to a more ARPG-like one, that allows only one row of slots. The three MMOs I bounce around between right now–Guild Wars 2, Wildstar, and Marvel Heroes–all have limited hotbar space. At first I disliked this change and viewed it as a dumbing down of my favorite genre. Now I recognize it as a design choice which, while occasionally frustrating, is actually preferable in the long run.

As an altaholic, the best thing for me about this trend is that it makes it really easy to get back into a class, or game for that matter, after being away for a while. The reason why I’ve never gotten past Moria in LotRO is that every time I come back I’m faced with the daunting task of relearning what all of my skills do and how they fit together, so I usually end up rerolling so I can relearn how to play over time. In games like Guild Wars 2, or Marvel Heroes, I simply have to go down the line of 10 or so skills I had active when I parked this character and read their tooltips and I’m set. Later I may swap out some my skills if they don’t fit the playstyle I’m looking for right now, but for the most part I can jump in and start playing with minimal thought.

Another recent trend that the changes in hotbars facilitates is the move away from rooted casting. Honestly, I’m trying to remember why anyone ever thought this was a good idea. Especially in dungeon settings, where players often have to run out of the way of things, putting casters at a big disadvantage. I guess it took away the disadvantages that melee classes have that I’ve been noticing in WildStar, i.e. squishy ranged classes can run and gun to avoid damage, but melee classes are kind of forced to just tank it out. Either way, one archetype or the other is going to suffer, and I’d rather not be forced to stand it one spot for several seconds at a time to heal or hit big numbers.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, forcing a small number of hotbar skills means that the skills that are on the hotbar are more generalized and less situational. There are no spells in Guild Wars 2 that do extra damage to undead or only put fear on animals (there are potions that do extra damage to one type, but that’s different). Wildstar doesn’t have different breaks for different types of lockdowns. Everything is generalized. This is one of the places where it seemed like the genre was being dumbed down. But really, why should I have to remember which of my obscure hotkeys I only use once in a blue moon is the one I need in this situation? Is that really what the game is or should be about?

I am still a little frustrated with smaller hotbars. For one, as nice as it is that developers have done their best to reduce the number of situational skills, some still need to exist. Many times I’ve charged into combat in Guild Wars 2 with a portal or stability or run speed increase in my slot skills because I needed them once and forgot to flip them back to skills actually useful in combat by the time the cooldown ended. I also feel like Wildstar discourages me from experimenting with my build, partly because I have to buy my skills before I know if I want to use them or not, but mainly because I don’t want to give up part of the rotation I have now to see if something else would fit in better. Overall, however, I think the trend is a good one. If I continue to gravitate toward games that force fewer hotbar slots, it would seem to be a good trend.