Right now I have an ongoing Heroes By Trade game going and one of our members is dropping out. Apparently he is some kind of sissy and won't commute from San Francisco for game nights. Weaksauce, right?
Anyway, we are looking for someone to join up in the next little while - we have a full roster for the next week or two but after that space opens up. We play weekday nights near Lawrence Station in Toronto from 7:30 to 10:30 or so. We try to play 2 of every 3 weeks.
If that appeals then send me a message and let me know. (Email on the sidebar). We aren't looking to pick up just anyone and will make sure you are a good fit for the group. In particular you will need to be okay with the fact that we are playtesting and every six months or so the rules will undergo some changes as I work on the system. The game is getting really good though and I think anyone familiar with fantasy gaming at all will be able to pick it up quickly and easily.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Getting dead
In the last Heroes By Trade session The Poet died. We were battling a terrible demon that tried to defend itself by turning into a giant dark cloud but which was forced to fight us straight up because we blew up the roof and let the sun destroy the cloud of darkness. You know the session went well when the party dropped the roof of a temple on the enemy! Unfortunately for us the demon, when forced into physical form, was very nasty indeed and the clumps of shadow surrounded The Poet and bashed him into submission. I tried some desperate maneuvers to save him but there was no getting around it in the end.
Here is the trick though: The Poet died with three Fate Points in reserve. Fate Points are powerful 'get out of jail free' cards that let you do amazing things either in or out of combat. They can be used simply to remove a Condition, gain some HP, turn a Miss into a Hit, or recharge a Power instantly. The three Fate Points sitting there could, nay should, have been used to do something, anything, to desperately get out of that situation. We hassled The Poet about getting dead without trying something crazy to survive, as one must, but it did make me think a lot about how Fate Points are working and whether my implementation is right.
Fate Points can be used to break the rules in very interesting ways that aren't predictable. In the previous encounter I used one to augment my Intimidate check when some local people tried to join in against us in an ongoing battle. The people in question were just ordinary folks and had been bamboozled into following the demons we were battling. I ran up to them, screamed at them to leave, and used a Fate Point to make my Intimidate extra terrifying. As I am already very good at Intimidate they all dropped their weapons and fled. Much better than simply butchering them, I think, and worthy of a Fate Point. In the fateful battle Naked Man used one to leap on his Gryphon and join the ongoing battle instantly instead of waiting a turn to make it happen. Again, flying into battle with a desperate acrobatic maneuver is a fantastic use of a Fate Point. Both of these are far more interesting than a simple "I gain some HP!" or "I hit!"
The trick is that some but not all people come up with all kinds of odd ways to use Fate Points in the middle of challenging situations. I want to encourage that! I like the idea of chandelier swings, marvellous coincidences, and other heroics and I think Fate Points are a good way to let people do that sort of thing. However, some people clearly struggle to figure out when they can do something crazy and wonderful and aren't sure when to spend their Fate Points. I have the basic and kinda boring things listed so that people who don't have that flair for the dramatic to get some use out of their Fate Points.
What I am wondering is if I should really force the issue. If I write up Fate Points and say that what they do is let you break the rules but refuse to provide a numerical benchmark then people are going to have to sort something out. Either that or just watch their Fate Points vanish into thin air since you can have at most three of them stored up. Perhaps by providing the option to simply gain HP or land a successful Hit I am providing a crutch for people to not push themselves to do the awesome stuff that makes for long lasting memories.
In the case of The Poet I am not sure this would work. He isn't much for dramatic gestures and tends to hoard his resources so I suspect no matter what the system is he will end up with his Fate Points maxed and still not spend them. However, it seems to me that I might well do better with some other people. Make it clear that Fate Points are for cool stuff and aren't about just hitting more and see if that incentive gets them thinking outside the box.
At least getting dead let us try one hilarious thing: The Reincarnate Ritual! Sadly for The Poet a six was rolled so instead of returning in a new but somewhat similar body he turned into a bear that got very grumpy at the party and ran off. The mercenaries we hired that got blowed up fared somewhat better and four of the six of them ended up back alive as people - though a couple of them weren't the same species as before! I am not sure that they will continue to follow us, and certainly the turtle will just have to make its own way in the world now. The cat that remembers being a person is apparently going to come with us, at least until a fireball takes him out for good.
Here is the trick though: The Poet died with three Fate Points in reserve. Fate Points are powerful 'get out of jail free' cards that let you do amazing things either in or out of combat. They can be used simply to remove a Condition, gain some HP, turn a Miss into a Hit, or recharge a Power instantly. The three Fate Points sitting there could, nay should, have been used to do something, anything, to desperately get out of that situation. We hassled The Poet about getting dead without trying something crazy to survive, as one must, but it did make me think a lot about how Fate Points are working and whether my implementation is right.
Fate Points can be used to break the rules in very interesting ways that aren't predictable. In the previous encounter I used one to augment my Intimidate check when some local people tried to join in against us in an ongoing battle. The people in question were just ordinary folks and had been bamboozled into following the demons we were battling. I ran up to them, screamed at them to leave, and used a Fate Point to make my Intimidate extra terrifying. As I am already very good at Intimidate they all dropped their weapons and fled. Much better than simply butchering them, I think, and worthy of a Fate Point. In the fateful battle Naked Man used one to leap on his Gryphon and join the ongoing battle instantly instead of waiting a turn to make it happen. Again, flying into battle with a desperate acrobatic maneuver is a fantastic use of a Fate Point. Both of these are far more interesting than a simple "I gain some HP!" or "I hit!"
The trick is that some but not all people come up with all kinds of odd ways to use Fate Points in the middle of challenging situations. I want to encourage that! I like the idea of chandelier swings, marvellous coincidences, and other heroics and I think Fate Points are a good way to let people do that sort of thing. However, some people clearly struggle to figure out when they can do something crazy and wonderful and aren't sure when to spend their Fate Points. I have the basic and kinda boring things listed so that people who don't have that flair for the dramatic to get some use out of their Fate Points.
What I am wondering is if I should really force the issue. If I write up Fate Points and say that what they do is let you break the rules but refuse to provide a numerical benchmark then people are going to have to sort something out. Either that or just watch their Fate Points vanish into thin air since you can have at most three of them stored up. Perhaps by providing the option to simply gain HP or land a successful Hit I am providing a crutch for people to not push themselves to do the awesome stuff that makes for long lasting memories.
In the case of The Poet I am not sure this would work. He isn't much for dramatic gestures and tends to hoard his resources so I suspect no matter what the system is he will end up with his Fate Points maxed and still not spend them. However, it seems to me that I might well do better with some other people. Make it clear that Fate Points are for cool stuff and aren't about just hitting more and see if that incentive gets them thinking outside the box.
At least getting dead let us try one hilarious thing: The Reincarnate Ritual! Sadly for The Poet a six was rolled so instead of returning in a new but somewhat similar body he turned into a bear that got very grumpy at the party and ran off. The mercenaries we hired that got blowed up fared somewhat better and four of the six of them ended up back alive as people - though a couple of them weren't the same species as before! I am not sure that they will continue to follow us, and certainly the turtle will just have to make its own way in the world now. The cat that remembers being a person is apparently going to come with us, at least until a fireball takes him out for good.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Secrets
In building Rituals for Heroes By Trade I have stumbled down some incorrect paths. One of the defining features of the system is that there are things called Epic Rituals that have amazing powers but require tremendous investment to acquire and cast. They allow people to summon volcanoes, coat the land in darkness, plant Trees of Life, become a new star in the sky, and raise the dead. In short, they are the sorts of things that make stories in fantasy worlds turn.
The trouble is they aren't very *useful*. Sure, it is cool that you have to carry a seed on your person for ten years and then you can plant a Tree of Life, but that isn't going to come up. Coating the land in darkness is pretty cool, but it too isn't a thing you cast every day even if you could come up with a shroud from a pure hearted hero's grave on a regular basis. Initially I solved this problem by having people gain Epic Rituals automatically as they learned other Rituals - every five regular Rituals you get an Epic one. The trouble is that this led to people getting Rituals they had no interest or investment in.
My new structure is that you have to pick Epic Rituals but when you do you gain a Secret. Secrets are powerful abilities that make you better; mostly by improving your ability to cast Rituals. A full list of Secrets is at the end of this post. Thematically I like this as it seems right that mastering an Epic Ritual that has world shattering effects improves your understanding and skill at using all Rituals. It also creates an interesting choice as players must decide between utility / flexibility or raw power. I think I personally would end up taking lots of Epic Rituals because that seems way cooler. I am okay with a system that generally leans towards players learning crazy and interesting powers.
The way things are currently structured is that all Rituals are divided into four schools (Blood, Shadow/Light, Nature, Arcane.) Each school has a bunch of subgroups that are divided thematically. For example, Blood has a Strength subgroup, Arcane has Time, Nature has Plants, etc. Each subgroup has a simple, cheap Basic Ritual, two Advanced Rituals that have higher costs and much more sweeping and complex abilities, and an Epic Ritual that does something nutty. The first Ritual learned in a group must be the Basic Ritual, then an Advanced Ritual. After that the player can learn either of the remaining two Rituals in either order. The idea is that some people will dabble about, taking a bit of this and a bit of that, and some will invest in buying full subgroups to gain the Secrets associated with doing so.
Example:
The trouble is they aren't very *useful*. Sure, it is cool that you have to carry a seed on your person for ten years and then you can plant a Tree of Life, but that isn't going to come up. Coating the land in darkness is pretty cool, but it too isn't a thing you cast every day even if you could come up with a shroud from a pure hearted hero's grave on a regular basis. Initially I solved this problem by having people gain Epic Rituals automatically as they learned other Rituals - every five regular Rituals you get an Epic one. The trouble is that this led to people getting Rituals they had no interest or investment in.
My new structure is that you have to pick Epic Rituals but when you do you gain a Secret. Secrets are powerful abilities that make you better; mostly by improving your ability to cast Rituals. A full list of Secrets is at the end of this post. Thematically I like this as it seems right that mastering an Epic Ritual that has world shattering effects improves your understanding and skill at using all Rituals. It also creates an interesting choice as players must decide between utility / flexibility or raw power. I think I personally would end up taking lots of Epic Rituals because that seems way cooler. I am okay with a system that generally leans towards players learning crazy and interesting powers.
The way things are currently structured is that all Rituals are divided into four schools (Blood, Shadow/Light, Nature, Arcane.) Each school has a bunch of subgroups that are divided thematically. For example, Blood has a Strength subgroup, Arcane has Time, Nature has Plants, etc. Each subgroup has a simple, cheap Basic Ritual, two Advanced Rituals that have higher costs and much more sweeping and complex abilities, and an Epic Ritual that does something nutty. The first Ritual learned in a group must be the Basic Ritual, then an Advanced Ritual. After that the player can learn either of the remaining two Rituals in either order. The idea is that some people will dabble about, taking a bit of this and a bit of that, and some will invest in buying full subgroups to gain the Secrets associated with doing so.
Example:
Blood Rituals
Subgroup Name
|
Basic
|
Advanced
|
Epic
|
Change
|
Adaptation
|
Alter Shape
Body of Earth and Air
|
Transcendence
|
Healing
|
Awaken
|
Transfer Health
Purify Body
|
Resurrection
|
Strength
|
Boundless Strength
|
Firewalker
Shout
| Invulnerability |
| Life | Moment of Rest | Feign Death Blood Linke | Life From Death |
I hope that this structure makes Epic Rituals feel more fun and makes people happy to choose them. I know that having them in the game is something I want but it is really important to me that they feel relevant and that people care about them. If I get it right they should fit into the structure naturally and people should look forward very much to using them, if only rarely.
Full list of Secrets:
Secrets
Each time a character learns an Epic Ritual they drastically increase their knowledge of their chosen Ritual school and expand the capabilities of their body or mind. Learning an Epic Ritual grants the character access to a new Secret which must be chosen from the list below. Some Secrets are available at any time but others can only be selected if the Epic Ritual being learned is of the school listed. Secrets cannot be saved for later nor changed as once an Epic Ritual is mastered the alteration of the person is permanent. Most Secrets can be selected many times and they stack but any Secret with the word Unique under the name can only be taken once.
Incredible Healing
School: Any
Effect: Your body becomes capable of incredible feats of repair as your master the ebb and flow of your own energy and life force. Your healing per day is increased by 2.
Fortitude
School: Any
Effect: Your inner reserves and the resilience of your body increase to superhuman levels. Your KO value is increased by 4 and your Death threshold is increased by 8.
Blood Power
School: Blood
Effect: Your blood becomes incredibly potent, humming with the potential to strengthen the Rituals you cast far beyond what other mortals can accomplish. Once per day you may double the effect of a Ritual in one of the following ways: Duration, numerical bonus, number of targets, range, or size of effect. Taking Blood Power additional times allows you to use it one more time per day. You may use multiple uses of Blood Power on a single Ritual but each use must affect a different value.
Last Spark
School: Light/Shadow
Effect: You can power your Rituals and draw forth sustenance from the last spark of hope and despair in the mind of a dying creature. Once per day you can touch a creature that died in the last minute or is KO. Doing so in combat requires you to use a Move or an Action to accomplish it. The creature must be one that is capable of both hope and despair so most animals are not usable because they are not intelligent. Doing so ends their life immediately and you heal 3 WP damage and have a buffer of 3 points that may be used to cast Rituals in lieu of WP damage. These points last 24 hours. Taking Last Spark additional times increases the healing and Ritual points by 3.
Nexus Energy
School: Nature
Effect: Your Nexus becomes capable of powering your Rituals by drawing on your surroundings instead of using your own body as a source. Once per day you may cast a Ritual without paying any WP to do so. Each additional time your take Nexus Power you may cast one more Ritual per day without paying any WP.
Rapid Casting
School: Arcane
Effect: Pushing your mastery of time and space you increase the speed with which you can cast Rituals. You reduce the casting time of each Ritual by one step along the following chart. This cannot reduce the speed of Rituals below Action. Taking Rapid Casting additional times moves each Ritual one more step along the chart.
1 day
|
1 hour
|
10 mins
|
1 min
|
Action
|
Resilience
Unique
School: Blood
Effect: Your skin becomes stronger and sturdier allowing you to shrug off blows that normal mortals would succumb to. Your Armour value is increased by 1.
Iron Will
Unique
School: Light/Shadow
Effect: Your control over emotions allows you to push yourself further than others in combat and reach deep for the strength to use greater Powers. Your Vigour is increased by 1.
Great Stalker
Unique
School: Nature
Effect: You use your connection to the natural world to move more quickly through it either to chase down your prey or avoid being caught yourself. Your Speed value is increased by 1.
Anticipation
Unique
School: Arcane
Effect: You can reach a tiny bit into the future to anticipate harm that might come your way and avoid it before it even happens. Your Dodge value is increased by 1.Friday, October 3, 2014
No integrity
Gamergate is continuing to be a thing that sucks up all the air in the gamer blogosphere. There are endless examples of people arguing back and forth about what did or did not happen to specific people, accusations of fraud, intimidation, and fabrication and there is no end in sight. The details of all the things that have happened to the people involved in this mess are far beyond my knowledge, but I don't need to know those details to know what is going on.
It isn't about journalistic ethics. It isn't about the reliability of game reporting. It is about a giant internet battle with feminists and social justice warriors on one side and misogynists on the other. There are plenty of people who don't identify as one or the other out there blasting away but realistically these are the battle lines that have been drawn. Supporting one side or the other is going to get you lumped in with that group, like it or not.
Game reporting is not some kind of responsible, trustworthy industry, nor could it ever be. Game articles are based on guesswork, false hopes, and most importantly are entirely subjective. If you think that game articles could somehow be all about objective truth you are deluding yourself. The money from game developers certainly does affect game articles, but so what? Even if the money wasn't there the articles would still be random shots in the dark subject to the whims and deep seated prejudices of the writer. Game reporting isn't objective and it never will be.
All the people out there making serious faces and talking about cleaning up the corruption of the video game reporting sector are kidding themselves. If you want gamers to have a better reputation, if you want games to have a more broad appeal, and if you want to make the world a better place for gamers then the way to do that is to support women in game development, to push for more variety and diversity in games, and to tell the assholes to shape up. Objective reporting about games is an unrealistic and ultimately unimportant goal compared to changing gamer culture to be more inclusive.
If you really do want to talk about corruption in game reporting then take the time to do it right. Make sure people know that you aren't talking about the minutiae of gamergate but are specifically referring to big game companies buying reviews. Be clear that you support the people standing up for diversity in game production and game worlds and that you don't support the harassment campaigns against Quinn, Sarkeesian, etc. I won't care much about your opinions on the matter quite frankly, but at least you will be on the right side of history.
It isn't about journalistic ethics. It isn't about the reliability of game reporting. It is about a giant internet battle with feminists and social justice warriors on one side and misogynists on the other. There are plenty of people who don't identify as one or the other out there blasting away but realistically these are the battle lines that have been drawn. Supporting one side or the other is going to get you lumped in with that group, like it or not.
Game reporting is not some kind of responsible, trustworthy industry, nor could it ever be. Game articles are based on guesswork, false hopes, and most importantly are entirely subjective. If you think that game articles could somehow be all about objective truth you are deluding yourself. The money from game developers certainly does affect game articles, but so what? Even if the money wasn't there the articles would still be random shots in the dark subject to the whims and deep seated prejudices of the writer. Game reporting isn't objective and it never will be.
All the people out there making serious faces and talking about cleaning up the corruption of the video game reporting sector are kidding themselves. If you want gamers to have a better reputation, if you want games to have a more broad appeal, and if you want to make the world a better place for gamers then the way to do that is to support women in game development, to push for more variety and diversity in games, and to tell the assholes to shape up. Objective reporting about games is an unrealistic and ultimately unimportant goal compared to changing gamer culture to be more inclusive.
If you really do want to talk about corruption in game reporting then take the time to do it right. Make sure people know that you aren't talking about the minutiae of gamergate but are specifically referring to big game companies buying reviews. Be clear that you support the people standing up for diversity in game production and game worlds and that you don't support the harassment campaigns against Quinn, Sarkeesian, etc. I won't care much about your opinions on the matter quite frankly, but at least you will be on the right side of history.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
The big drop
I have been grinding away at Diablo 3 these past few days and when I manage to focus purely on what I am doing I have a grand time; unfortunately I end up reading forum posts about what everyone else is accomplishing and then I feel quite inadequate. There are many components to why I am doing rift 32 and other people are on 39 (in which I think the monsters do roughly double the damage and have double the HP!) including them being 400 levels higher than me and having more practice. However, the biggest single reason is a couple of ludicrously powerful drops that I don't have, specifically a Star Metal Kukri and a Invulnerability enchantress token.
It is hard to overstate how big a difference these two items make. The token will give me 50% damage reduction. That in itself is enough to get me from rift 32 to 39 in terms of damage taken. The SMK grants me, at best guess, a 60% raw damage increase as well as giving me a much more rapid cooldown on a key skill that should improve my progression notably. Now this wouldn't be so absurd if I was a new character geared in junk because we all know in this sort of game the first few big drops you get are very impactful, but I have a very good gearset with extra copies of nearly all the best items. It is just that these two items in particular are completely ludicrous.
So here is the question I have been pondering - what should the stair steps for gearing look like in a game like D3? There is certainly an appeal to having extremely rare items that have really big impacts on gameplay to keep people salivating over what they will find next. However, when items that are 100% required to be anywhere near the top of progression are ludicrously rare that makes the idea that the game is at all competitive seem kind of silly. I am not anywhere near the top, probably tens of thousands from the edge. I could log on tonight for five minutes and with incredible luck I would be ready to push the top fifty. (I couldn't be at the top because I am still 400 levels off the pace!) That kind of difference is not especially appropriate in a game trying to provide a serious competitive environment.
The thing is though for a game that is played solo or with a few friends there is nothing wrong with that model at all. Fundamentally there is nothing different about playing rift 32 vs. rift 39 except that the monsters do twice as much damage and have twice as much health and if my gear doubles my damage and halves my damage taken my experience is the same. It hardly matters that my progression is slow since I can make progress by grinding up my gems, finding incremental upgrades, and levelling up, and all the time I can think about how great finding a SMK is going to be. If I suddenly get awesome I can help carry my friends and everybody is still happy.
Problems only really exist when I spend my time comparing myself to the others who have those key drops and arguing about progression on forums. When I am exposed to people who are massively more powerful than me and there is nothing I can do to close that gap aside from get lucky it is disheartening. I can accept that I am not as good as others when it is a function of my own failure - I am a terrible chess player because I don't practice chess except against a seven year old. No problem. It is tough to look at an environment that purports to be about skill when I know that I could never be anywhere close to competitive no matter how great my ninja clicking skills.
What this ends up meaning to me is that the current loot format in D3 is a fine format for a fun silly game where you blow up monsters and try to hunt for awesome stuff. It just isn't a good competitive game though, and that is ok. I just have to get it through my head that I play it to find fun stuff and watch my minions slay my enemies, not to compare myself to others.
It is hard to overstate how big a difference these two items make. The token will give me 50% damage reduction. That in itself is enough to get me from rift 32 to 39 in terms of damage taken. The SMK grants me, at best guess, a 60% raw damage increase as well as giving me a much more rapid cooldown on a key skill that should improve my progression notably. Now this wouldn't be so absurd if I was a new character geared in junk because we all know in this sort of game the first few big drops you get are very impactful, but I have a very good gearset with extra copies of nearly all the best items. It is just that these two items in particular are completely ludicrous.
So here is the question I have been pondering - what should the stair steps for gearing look like in a game like D3? There is certainly an appeal to having extremely rare items that have really big impacts on gameplay to keep people salivating over what they will find next. However, when items that are 100% required to be anywhere near the top of progression are ludicrously rare that makes the idea that the game is at all competitive seem kind of silly. I am not anywhere near the top, probably tens of thousands from the edge. I could log on tonight for five minutes and with incredible luck I would be ready to push the top fifty. (I couldn't be at the top because I am still 400 levels off the pace!) That kind of difference is not especially appropriate in a game trying to provide a serious competitive environment.
The thing is though for a game that is played solo or with a few friends there is nothing wrong with that model at all. Fundamentally there is nothing different about playing rift 32 vs. rift 39 except that the monsters do twice as much damage and have twice as much health and if my gear doubles my damage and halves my damage taken my experience is the same. It hardly matters that my progression is slow since I can make progress by grinding up my gems, finding incremental upgrades, and levelling up, and all the time I can think about how great finding a SMK is going to be. If I suddenly get awesome I can help carry my friends and everybody is still happy.
Problems only really exist when I spend my time comparing myself to the others who have those key drops and arguing about progression on forums. When I am exposed to people who are massively more powerful than me and there is nothing I can do to close that gap aside from get lucky it is disheartening. I can accept that I am not as good as others when it is a function of my own failure - I am a terrible chess player because I don't practice chess except against a seven year old. No problem. It is tough to look at an environment that purports to be about skill when I know that I could never be anywhere close to competitive no matter how great my ninja clicking skills.
What this ends up meaning to me is that the current loot format in D3 is a fine format for a fun silly game where you blow up monsters and try to hunt for awesome stuff. It just isn't a good competitive game though, and that is ok. I just have to get it through my head that I play it to find fun stuff and watch my minions slay my enemies, not to compare myself to others.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Competition
Diablo 3 is trying to be a competitive game. Blizzard is making a go at setting up an environment where only the extremes of skill and effort will be successful. The system they have gone for is Greater Rifts, where rifts are timed and become more and more difficult with each level. The increments are multiplicative so no matter how good you are eventually the enemies will one shot you and you will be unable to beat them within the fifteen minutes alloted. There has been quite the outcry recently because recently Blizzard changed the way people get access to high level GRifts. In short, they made it much harder to jump immediately into the highest level GRifts and forced people to beat lower level ones and grind their way up. This would have been fine except that people can't actually beat any of the GRifts near the top at all and now it is nearly impossible to advance.
The fundamental issue here is that GRift difficulty is hugely variable. The way people were getting top scores is not be being better, but rather by dashing into GRifts to see if the monster composition was favourable and then usually dashing back out again in ten seconds to try again. Even with a favourable composition the only way to get a really top time was to get lucky and get a conduit pylon. People were literally unable to beat GRifts above say 38 consistently but because they could get into GRift 42 and just keep on trying until they got a super easy one they could win - rarely. Now that you actually have to beat 38 and then 40 to get into 42 fishing for an easy 42 is nearly impossible. This is not a good competitive environment, particularly when new players find the scores that are posted are effectively unbeatable due to mid season changes.
I am not entirely convinced that competitive GRifts are actually the thing to do but if Blizzard wants to do them what they need to go for is preset levels. If every single level 42 looks identical then people can truly practice and theorycraft the best way to beat it and the game won't come down to seeing who gets the lucky 1 in 1000. An actual competitive way to build this would let players simply select any level from 1 to 42 as long as they have beaten 41. Go nuts and keep slamming your head into that wall if you want, and let those who build properly and practice diligently succeed. With preset GRifts it is completely okay to have some levels be easier than expected - as long as 38 is super trivial for everyone it really doesn't hurt things overall.
A slightly less extreme way to accomplish the same end is to remove all Pylons from GRifts and group monsters in a less random way. As long as there was always a mix of easy monsters (Zombies!) and brutal monsters (Anarchs!) then it should be fine, or at least fine enough. Of course this further tinkering would completely shut down any new attempts to beat current records and season 1 would be effectively over, at least for those wanting to be anywhere near the top. This would preserve some randomness in the system which would be nice for those like myself who aren't anywhere near the edge but still like bashing our way through GRifts for fun.
Something Blizzard has to learn to deal with though is how much precision and control is required to have a competitive environment. You can't just wander in and make changes to the system and not completely upset the very delicate balance at the absolute bleeding edge. If they want to patch in new abilities and alter systems on a semi regular basis there simply cannot be a really competitive environment. Their current strategy is very much like the Tour De France deciding that bikes may not be made of a carbon and announcing that after three days of racing. Nobody would take the competition seriously, and rightly so.
What I actually expect to see is a set of changes that flattens the randomness of GRifts very seriously but I don't think that will actually come in until the next season. Both monster mixes and pylons will be addressed for the start of season 2, and not before. I don't think Blizzard actually intended to bork the season up with the latest batch of changes as their intended effect of making things less punishing for melee actually worked out just fine. What I do think is that they didn't anticipate the serious change to the top players their seemingly minor alteration made and they don't want to wreck things up further until a full reset is happening anyway. I also suspect when this happens they will alter the scaling so that old records will fall easily to give people something to shoot for. They would likely have to change it so that 40 then is roughly as hard as 35 is now to give people a reasonable shot at beating the old records, though it might even have to be more extreme than that.
The fundamental issue here is that GRift difficulty is hugely variable. The way people were getting top scores is not be being better, but rather by dashing into GRifts to see if the monster composition was favourable and then usually dashing back out again in ten seconds to try again. Even with a favourable composition the only way to get a really top time was to get lucky and get a conduit pylon. People were literally unable to beat GRifts above say 38 consistently but because they could get into GRift 42 and just keep on trying until they got a super easy one they could win - rarely. Now that you actually have to beat 38 and then 40 to get into 42 fishing for an easy 42 is nearly impossible. This is not a good competitive environment, particularly when new players find the scores that are posted are effectively unbeatable due to mid season changes.
I am not entirely convinced that competitive GRifts are actually the thing to do but if Blizzard wants to do them what they need to go for is preset levels. If every single level 42 looks identical then people can truly practice and theorycraft the best way to beat it and the game won't come down to seeing who gets the lucky 1 in 1000. An actual competitive way to build this would let players simply select any level from 1 to 42 as long as they have beaten 41. Go nuts and keep slamming your head into that wall if you want, and let those who build properly and practice diligently succeed. With preset GRifts it is completely okay to have some levels be easier than expected - as long as 38 is super trivial for everyone it really doesn't hurt things overall.
A slightly less extreme way to accomplish the same end is to remove all Pylons from GRifts and group monsters in a less random way. As long as there was always a mix of easy monsters (Zombies!) and brutal monsters (Anarchs!) then it should be fine, or at least fine enough. Of course this further tinkering would completely shut down any new attempts to beat current records and season 1 would be effectively over, at least for those wanting to be anywhere near the top. This would preserve some randomness in the system which would be nice for those like myself who aren't anywhere near the edge but still like bashing our way through GRifts for fun.
Something Blizzard has to learn to deal with though is how much precision and control is required to have a competitive environment. You can't just wander in and make changes to the system and not completely upset the very delicate balance at the absolute bleeding edge. If they want to patch in new abilities and alter systems on a semi regular basis there simply cannot be a really competitive environment. Their current strategy is very much like the Tour De France deciding that bikes may not be made of a carbon and announcing that after three days of racing. Nobody would take the competition seriously, and rightly so.
What I actually expect to see is a set of changes that flattens the randomness of GRifts very seriously but I don't think that will actually come in until the next season. Both monster mixes and pylons will be addressed for the start of season 2, and not before. I don't think Blizzard actually intended to bork the season up with the latest batch of changes as their intended effect of making things less punishing for melee actually worked out just fine. What I do think is that they didn't anticipate the serious change to the top players their seemingly minor alteration made and they don't want to wreck things up further until a full reset is happening anyway. I also suspect when this happens they will alter the scaling so that old records will fall easily to give people something to shoot for. They would likely have to change it so that 40 then is roughly as hard as 35 is now to give people a reasonable shot at beating the old records, though it might even have to be more extreme than that.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Details!
I have been slugging away at the half formed idea I had for a camping themed cooperative game. The basic mechanics are down and seem very good but as it is a game that requires a whole bunch of cards with wildly different effects on them it will take a while to actually flesh out. This process is illustrating to me just how little the basic idea matters in game design. People who have an idea for a game often get completely wrapped up in secrecy and worrying about somebody stealing it when that is a laughable proposition in nearly all cases.
The hard part about building a game is very rarely a simple, raw mechanic. There is so much to do to polish it, to create all of the working bits, and to get everything to feel right that even if you tried to get people to take your game ideas they wouldn't bother. That is all not to mention the real challenge, which is to build prototypes and get the game published and convince people to buy it. Heck, even if you took a complete set of game rules and tried to get somebody else to go through the mess of getting that published it would be hard to find takers.
I am very excited about the build. I look forward to seeing people trying to deal with bear attacks in the middle of the night and yelling at one another about who gets to control the marshmallow stick to produce delicious smores. Obviously in a coop game everyone could play along nicely and such, but a little bit of conflict over what to do about the raccoons seems like it could be pretty amusing. Kill them! Bribe them with shiny things! Just wait until they go away! Feed them to the bears? And when the Park Rangers show up, definitely just bribe them with beer.
The pictures for the cards are going to need to be cute. I am thinking of a vibe similar to Munchkin with cards mocking the terrible things that happen on camping trips being portrayed in silly cartoon form. I have no talent for drawing such things myself and art is getting way, way ahead of myself but I think having a vision for where I want to go at the end is a useful thing.
Hopefully over the next few weeks I can get documents up here so everyone can see what I am working on. If you have suggestions for a name for a silly camping themed coop game, get them in now!
The hard part about building a game is very rarely a simple, raw mechanic. There is so much to do to polish it, to create all of the working bits, and to get everything to feel right that even if you tried to get people to take your game ideas they wouldn't bother. That is all not to mention the real challenge, which is to build prototypes and get the game published and convince people to buy it. Heck, even if you took a complete set of game rules and tried to get somebody else to go through the mess of getting that published it would be hard to find takers.
I am very excited about the build. I look forward to seeing people trying to deal with bear attacks in the middle of the night and yelling at one another about who gets to control the marshmallow stick to produce delicious smores. Obviously in a coop game everyone could play along nicely and such, but a little bit of conflict over what to do about the raccoons seems like it could be pretty amusing. Kill them! Bribe them with shiny things! Just wait until they go away! Feed them to the bears? And when the Park Rangers show up, definitely just bribe them with beer.
The pictures for the cards are going to need to be cute. I am thinking of a vibe similar to Munchkin with cards mocking the terrible things that happen on camping trips being portrayed in silly cartoon form. I have no talent for drawing such things myself and art is getting way, way ahead of myself but I think having a vision for where I want to go at the end is a useful thing.
Hopefully over the next few weeks I can get documents up here so everyone can see what I am working on. If you have suggestions for a name for a silly camping themed coop game, get them in now!
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