Monthly Archives: March 2012
Bioware Cupcakes
Best ending line in a gaming news article goes to Kotaku.
The short version of events leading up to that article is that, similar to the (shut down) Child’s Play charity drive, a group of gamers decided to “protest” Mass Effect 3’s ending by sending Bioware 400 cupcakes… each one identical, aside from red, blue, or green frosting. The cupcakes arrived, and then this happened (emphasis mine):
Writing on the company’s forums, Chris Priestley says that while “we appreciate creative and thoughtful” acts of feedback, “we decided ultimately the reason that they were sent was not done in the context of celebrating the work or accomplishment of the Mass Effect 3 team.”
As a result, instead of eating them all up, BioWare donated all 400 cupcakes to a local youth shelter. Where, presumably, after picking their colours and finishing their last bite, the kids were left wondering whether their choice had really been that important, and if somebody could please come in an explain what the hell just happened.
I’m sure that, one day, I won’t find these stories so goddamn hilarious. Today is not that day.
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In other news, I have added a new section to the site called “Currently,” as in Currently Playing/Reading/Watching. I do not expect it to become relevant to the blog proper, but if you enjoy occasionally seeing what other bloggers are up to (as I do), there you go.
WoW Should Lose Millions of Subscriptions More Often
Ever have that moment in your academic career, usually right after midterms, when you sort of wake up and realize “Oh, yeah, this might actually be important enough to take seriously”? I am getting the distinct impression Blizzard is going through that right now, as evidenced by their refreshingly direct Dev Blogs lately. The most recent was about the new direction they are taking the Mists of Pandaria loot system. One section reads:
Here is a model I’ve seen some people say they want:
- The boss dies.
- I get the exact item or items I want.
- I never have to come back and kill this boss again.
- I politely ask Blizzard when there will be new content for me to run.
I added that, somewhat tongue in cheek, to point out that the intent of the new system is not to make killing bosses or getting loot more efficient, or to let you choose buffet-style which items you get. We like random loot being random, as long as it isn’t so frustratingly random that you stop enjoying the experience. The intent of the new loot system is really to relieve social pressure on a group of random and anonymous strangers. We think it is reasonable for groups of friends, such as the typical raiding guild, to have a discussion about how to divvy up loot. That discussion is a tried and true RPG tradition going back to D&D or earlier. We don’t think that is a reasonable expectation for Raid Finder, though.
This is such a frank representation of the very essence of MMO gameplay (e.g. random loot creates content), that it honestly shocked me to see it written so casually. The explicit admission of the (warped) social dynamics of LFR is similarly amazing. It is one thing to see these issues examined in blogs and on forums; it is entirely another for a developer, in an age of David Reid-esque bullshit, to treat the audience like adults.
It feels like when the carnie game operator lets you in on the trick.
Another sample section:
Bonus Roll
We have one other new system that will use part of the personal loot model. This is what we’re calling the bonus roll.
Once upon a time, raiders had to invest a lot of time and effort every week preparing for a raid. This felt kind of cool in the abstract because it built anticipation, rewarded players who prepared for raid night, and otherwise just added a little more ceremony to the act of entering the dragon’s lair to seek glory and treasure. The reality is that you spent your time killing mobs to farm flask materials or gathering Whipper Root Tubers. The reality didn’t match the fantasy and we eventually greatly minimized the need to farm consumables altogether. Of course, that led to another problem, as raiders would log on for raid nights, finish, and then have nothing to do the rest of the week. The bonus roll is intended to give those players something to do that is hopefully more enjoyable than grinding elementals or Blasted Lands boars. We want to see players out in the world doing stuff, and we want that stuff to be a little more interesting (if not downright fun) than farming mats.
This is one of those things that, intellectually, shouldn’t be true. But it is.
I am (still) playing Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer and loving it. Is it fun in of itself? I… guess so? Would it still be fun if I had 100% of the guns unlocked, max ranks, infinite consumables, etc? I can tell you right now with a completely straight face: no, it would cease being fun. I derive pleasure from both the act of playing, and the feeling of increase that comes from progression (the accumulation of credits to unlock random weapons, in this case). The only sort of rationalization I can give you to explain this phenomenon is that I can both have fun and experience progression in any number of other games, which puts “just fun” games at a disadvantage.
Game designers undoubtedly realized this years ago, which is why you see “RPG elements” in damn near everything these days.
Back to the Dev Blog (emphasis added):
Area of Effect Looting
Yes, we are doing area looting. After killing a group of enemies, you may have a bunch of corpses lying around (perhaps because you went all Bladestorm on a bunch of hozen). If you loot one of the corpses, the loot window will include items from all of the nearby corpses for which you have loot rights. Some recent games have incorporated a similar feature, and it’s one of those things that players just want in their MMO these days. It’s already in and it works fine.
Does this sound like the Blizzard of WotLK, or TBC or Cataclysm for that matter?
I am not entirely sold on the concept of Valor Points being turned into gear upgrade fuel, for exactly the reason Ghostcrawler mentions: “There will be a bit of a game in trying to decide when to upgrade your gear versus hoping for a new piece to drop from a raid boss […].”
Other than that? I am very impressed by what I have seen thus far. Female Pandaren are in a much better place than female Worgen ever were, the MMO-Champ emote videos really highlights how far animations have came since I started playing in TBC, no major feature has been Dance Studio’d yet, and Blizzard overall seems to be operating at a level of humility and industry not hitherto seen. I mean, hell, Blizzard has already started work on the sixth expansion, i.e. the expansion after the expansion after Mists.
Seems to me that WoW should lose a few million subscriptions more often.
[ME3] What I Want to See from Bioware
Yeah, yeah, I thought I was ready to move on too.
The two things that have really been getting my goat, though, are the Ending Apologists and the Art is Inviolate camps. In truth, they are two sides of the same coin, neither of which seem capable of acknowledging the possibility of ME3’s ending(s) being half-assed. So, I feel compelled to offer counter-rebuttals to their rebuttals, in the form of massive spoilers after the following unbearably cute picture I have bastardized for my purposes.
So, stop reading and start finishing Mass Effect 3, dammit.
Spoilers below this line!
Before I get started in earnest, whenever I use the term “plot hole,” I am referring to the definition provided via Wikipedia:
A plot hole, or plothole, is a gap or inconsistency in a storyline that goes against the flow of logic established by the story’s plot, or constitutes a blatant omission of relevant information regarding the plot. These include such things as unlikely behavior or actions of characters, illogical or impossible events, events happening for no apparent reason, or statements/events that contradict earlier events in the storyline.
The Normandy Scene
What. The. Fuck.
Exhibit A.
More than anything else in the game, the Normandy sequence at the end almost completely and totally ruined the game for me. There is no logical, thematic, or even artistic reasoning for what occurred.
Okay, let me back up. There are two things that this sequence accomplishes:
EstablishesImplies that there is no escape from the Red/Blue/Green explosion. As in, no corner of the galaxy is safe, there won’t be pockets of Reapers hanging out, etc.- It looks cool.
The thing that I want to note though, is that up until this point – beginning from when Shepard stands up post-laser – I had it in my mind that I was going to have to replay the final mission again. Why? Because I had taken EDI and Liara with me, my two favorite characters, and I presumed they were dead. They had to be… otherwise, where were they?
So imagine my surprise when I see this:
Exhibit B.
The Normandy sequence is the very definition of plot hole. Why was Joker flying away? How did he know to fly away? How did crew that was with you at the beam suddenly appear on the Normandy?
There have been various (tortured) “explanations” I have seen. For example:
Q: How did Normandy end up caught up in the Mass Relay explosion with the people who were on earth?
A: There are clearly some parts of the ending scene that the player doesn’t see. There’s two segments where Shepard blacks out between first running for the beam and his final choice. There’s also a clearly defined scene skip between him rising on the platform and ending up where he meets the ghost child thing. These skips give room for an arbitrarily long period of time for Normandy to escape. Given that Normandy made it that far it seems that this is a reasonable series of events:
1. Somehow off camera(Shepard doesn’t see this happen) the two squadmates you choose get separated during the run for the beam.
2. Everyone gets blasted by the Reaper on the way to the beam.
3. The radio calls go out saying Shepard, along with the rest of the Hammer team is dead, that nobody made it to the Citadel
4. The Alliance fleet calls for a retreat, intending to regroup somewhere else.
5. Normandy picks up the crew still on Earth, then flies out to the Mass Relay, takes it
6. The Crucible, along with the slower ships in the fleet see the Citadel arms open and figure(correctly), that this means Shepard actually survived and opened it.
7. The Crucible docks.
First of all, the necessity of any explanation is proof of a plot hole – who sees the Normandy sequence and goes “yeah, I expected that to happen”? Nobody. Secondly, it has never been established that Shepard is the only person who can open the arms of the Citadel. What that means is that even if the crew “gets separated” or assumes that Shepard is dead, they still should have continued their own individual attempts to make it to the teleport beam.
But, fine, let us assume that the other two crew members were knocked out, and woke up only after Shepard got up and teleported. Why did they not make their way towards the beam then? If the Normandy was capable of making a safe landing to pick up the crew members, whether said crew members were conscious at that point or no, the Normandy could have dropped off additional troops at the beam. Indeed, if the Normandy picked up the crew before Shepard woke up, we would expect them to drop off more troops at the beam (if not search for Shepard’s body). The only excuse explanation I can see for why none of this occurs is an assumption that Shepard woke up first and the beam turned off after Shepard took it (but not before Anderson “followed”).
For now, let us assume that the Normandy had sufficient time and opportunity to pick up the crew members on Earth between the time Shepard opens the Citadel arms and when the Crucible is fired. The fact that the Citadel arms opened and the direct communication with Admiral Hackett proves that the Alliance knew Shepard was both alive and on-board; this disabuses the notion that the Normandy was fleeing to regroup, or for any rational reason. If anything, I would assume that Joker and crew would be waiting around to pick Shepard up, having the only ship capable of doing so.
“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”
– Albert Einstein
Incidentally, unlike many others, I am not actually assuming that the Normandy was taking a Mass Relay in that final sequence. It seems to me that the visuals would have looked the same if the Normandy had engaged its normal FTL drives – the explosion only looks like a “beam” because of the Doppler effect of FTL travel. In other words, I can imagine that the sequence itself would have occurred if Joker was trying to avoid either the initial energy explosion from the Citadel, or the secondary explosion from the Mass Relay.
That does not explain why Joker was trying to avoid it, nor whether the damage the Normandy took was because of engine stress or whether all spaceships took similar damage off-screen (e.g. possibly wiping out the space fleet).
What I want to see from Bioware:
- Best Case: an explanation of how the crew (EDI and Liara, in my case) got back on-board the Normandy, what the Normandy was doing while I was on the Citadel, if they knew/suspected Shepard was alive or dead, and why they were running away.
- Worst Case: ensure that the crew with you on the final mission don’t show up in the final scene.
To be honest, it wouldn’t make more sense to see the other crew members, given that everyone was on Earth and fighting to the death. However, it is that much more plausible to see others exiting the Normandy rather than the very people at your side.
Kill the Indoctrination Theory
First off, I want to make it clear that I find the Indoctrination Theory extremely convincing. Indeed, it “solves” a lot of the problems I have with the end of the game, and makes a certain amount of lore sense.
At the same time, it also proves the Bioware writers are terrible.
I get it now! Shepard was Master Chief all along!
That notion might not be immediately obvious, but it can be summed up by this quote by Shamus, in the Mass Effect Ending Deconstruction article:
And no, I’m not a believer in the “indoctrination theory“. I think that would be better than the ending we got, but I don’t think it it was ever intended by the writers. This theory involves an incredible level of subtle symbolism, which goes against just how ham-fisted the rest of the story is. To wit: If these writers thought Shepard was indoctrinated in the last stage of the game, we would know it.
Milady also has a recent article on the same subject, entitled The Intentional Fallacy:
[…] To me, the theory is disproved due to a fault in consistency. The unreliable-narrator hermeneutics is not supported by the work’s tone and structure. Mass Effect had until then never attempted any plot exposition that was not direct (like showing videos of the Cerberus scientists at various locations degenerating because of indoctrination, instead of silencing the facts and allow for the player to draw her conclusions based on the environment; that simply had never been done), and surely Mass Effect had not had any dream-like sequences, any instance of unreality, ambiguity. Shepard’s dreams are merely dreams, by what we gather from our previous experience of the game.
In other words, if Bioware intentionally had Indoctrination in mind (har har), they would have wrote it into the story more. I understand that that sounds like a backhanded dismissal of the very evidence brought up in support of the Indoctrination Theory, but I get where Milady and Shamus et tal are coming from. Remember the TV show Lost? Do you honestly believe the writers set out to make a sickeningly cliche religious allegory starting in Season 1? Of course not. In fact, it was pretty clear they were making shit up as they went along until the end of Season 3, when they announced that there would only be six seasons total.
There is also the fact that Indoctrination negates the last half hour of the game. In other words, Commander Shepard starts breathing in the rubble, gets up, and… what? Heads back towards the beam, gets teleported, and still has to open the Citadel so the Crucible (still orbiting Earth) can dock? Or do you suppose that while Shepard was “dreaming” the ending, the Catalyst actually opened the Citadel arms and fired the Crucible with Shepard’s remote orders? I don’t see why he would.
And then you start seeing conspiracies everywhere.
Personally, Indoctrination actually makes the ending worse for me. When I was presented all three choices, I actually chose Synthesis. While many Indoctrination supporters list that as being “what the Reapers were after all along,” that is not really the case. The Reapers were trying to preserve the existence of organic life in the face of an inevitably synthetic-only future – synthesis allows both organic and synthetics to coexist, by removing the difference between them. There is no creator to rebel against.
Even if we assume that Reapers are examples of said synthesis… so what? If everyone is able to keep their own form, as implied both with the ending and the very existence of Shepard (has he/she not already been synthesized?), what is the problem? The Reaper method was bad because you were killed, liquified, and otherwise extinguished as an individual. If you were capable of retaining individuality and agency… what are the downsides?
Oh, right. The downside is that Bioware put in that goddamn “breath scene” only in the Destroy ending, making it a choice between beating the Reapers and living, or doing the right thing (IMO) and dying.
What I want to see from Bioware:
- Best case: Settle the Indoctrination debate once and for all. If Indoctrination is real, include a true final battle scene, potentially followed by the same sort of choices.
- Worst case: Remove the breath scene.
Pave Over the Other Plot Holes
This is really kind of a catch-all category.
What happened to the people aboard the Citadel when it was captured by the Reapers? How did the Reapers gain control of the Citadel? If the Reapers were capable of capturing the Citadel, why didn’t they do it earlier? I mean, Christ, if the entire Reaper modus operandi was to warp to the Citadel to decapitate the galactic leadership… err, why did they change their plans this time around? Just because they couldn’t warp right there doesn’t mean the galaxy is that much less screwed when the Reaper armada shows up manually. Hell, Reapers show up at Earth, Shepard heads to the Citadel to get help, and then finds that the Reapers are already there. Game over.
Of course, this rabbit hole is probably bottomless.
After all, if the Catalyst is in the Citadel the entire time, why does he need the Keepers to do anything? Why not just turn the Citadel radio dial to WRPR 106.1, Reaper FM? How is it possible that the plans for the Crucible have escaped Reaper attention across countless millennia? How is it that countless different species even knew what they were making? As Shamus later states:
Case in point: The crucible is the ultimate weapon, derived from Prothean ruins, yet it was never mentioned or hinted at in any of the previous games. None of the beacons talked about it. Vigil didn’t bring it up, and I’m willing to bet the Prothean squadmate (a DLC character) doesn’t mention it either. This is because it wasn’t planned at the outset. It’s a late-story asspull done by writers who never had a plan.
It is one thing to leave story hooks for future titles; it is quite another to leave plot holes so big you could fly a whole new trilogy through them.
What I want to see from Bioware:
- Best case: Shore up these plot holes via Codex entries, FAQs, or at least acknowledge they exist.
- Worst case: leave everything vague and unsettled.
Conclusion
I do want to make one thing abundantly clear: I still love the Mass Effect series overall.
I just think it should be acknowledged that “artistic integrity” does not mean that the ending was not half-assed, or shouldn’t be changed based on (fan) feedback. If it was Bioware’s story when they wrote it, it will still be Bioware’s story when they rewrite it, regardless of the reasoning behind the revision.
Is there something you would like to see in the DLC? Would you prefer Indoctrination Theory debunked, proven, or left ambiguous? Would you even be interested in DLC set before the final battle, e.g. taking back Omega, etc?
Bioware “Addressing” Mass Effect 3’s Ending(s) via DLC
Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare, has a blog post up regarding Mass Effect 3’s ending and resulting controversy. The money-shot (literally), is this paragraph:
Building on their research, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April. We’re working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we’ve received. This is in addition to our existing plan to continue providing new Mass Effect content and new full games, so rest assured that your journey in the Mass Effect universe can, and will, continue.
My first, immediate reaction? Summed up by this picture I saw on the Kotaku forums:
Burn Level: Legendary
Between the wording of that paragraph and the extent to which he stresses that the team was “surprised” at the “passionate reaction of Bioware’s most loyal fans,” this news does not exactly inspire confidence. Implicitly, it sort of disproves Indoctrination Theory, yeah? And even more depressingly, it implies that the team of writers who had crafted this brilliant narrative up to that point felt like the Normandy bit at the end made a single goddamn piece of sense.
I think I need to make a post dedicated to narrative/artistic integrity at some point, if for no other reason than to try and hammer out my own feelings on the subject. I felt post-ending DLC worked well in Fallout 3 (regardless of whether it was based on fan reaction or not), but at what point does this become indistinguishable from game companies selling us the final chapter to incomplete products? If Bioware changes the ending, is that them “caving to pressure?” Is a revised ending still the inviolate artistic expression it was before? And what if the new ending is actually good? Will you be able to, as a player, re-immerse yourself without the nagging feeling of patronization?
While I do some soul gerrymandering on the subject, don’t miss Kotaku’s “Why I’m Glad Bioware Might Change Mass Effect 3’s Ending for the Fans” article, or Forbes’ awesome “Mass Effect 3 And The Pernicious Myth Of Gamer ‘Entitlement’” take-down (thanks to Liore for pointing it out). They sum up my general feelings on the subject, although… well, suffice it to say, I’m the kinda guy that got annoyed that the Oracle was played by a different actress in Matrix 3 (and how they handled the transition) even though the first actress died IRL.
The Weaponization of QQ
The end goal of all QQ is for a game (etc) you enjoy to be fixed or changed for the better.
If you look at something like the WoW forums, or any game forums really, you will see dozens and dozens of impassioned arguments as to why the author is quitting. I seem to recall there being an actual study that demonstrated that the vocal complainers spend the most money on a given game, far in excess of the average; considering I cannot find said link though, let us assume the opposite for now. Why tell tens of thousands of anonymous readers that you are unhappy with the game? Why not just shrug and uninstall?
The ideal scenario in an “I quit” post is for you to continue playing a game you enjoy (in most respects), and for other people to quit. It is like “voting with your wallet,” using other peoples’ wallets. As strategies go, it never seemed too effective, although obviously it is effective enough that moderators tend to shut it down pretty quickly. Besides, the only audience you can reach by posting on forums are the people who read the forums, so any damage is pretty limited.
Oh, the times they are a-changin’.
Welcome to the future.
I do not know whether Modern Warfare 3 was the first Metacritic salvo in a post-Weaponized QQ landscape, but it has become increasingly obvious that it will not stand (or fall) alone.
Now, obviously, there is nothing inherently wrong with a game receiving universal critical acclaim by professional gaming journalists, while being panned by uncouth Philistines. Or vice versa! But if you dig a little deeper, an incredibly large portion of the negative reviews for those three games (and who knows how many others) stem from issues not necessarily connected to the game itself – complaints about the state of the game industry, or the existence of Day 1 DLC/multiplayer, or people who wanted a sandbox instead of a themepark.
Maybe those things are connected to the game. Maybe you do enjoy MW3 less knowing how much was copy-pasted from MW2. Maybe people have wildly differing views on what constitutes a “review.”
What I do know is that, going forward, we can expect more of this:
Head to the bunker.
That right there is the present scoring of Mass Effect 3 for the Xbox 360 on Amazon. The PC version has less reviews, but it too is 2/5 stars.
What ever you think about the ending, and how much ever it may have soured the entire experience in your mind… is the game really 2/5? Were all of the emotions you felt during the journey not worth it? I am not entirely sure I want a philosophical debate about the nature of objective experience (or the nonexistence thereof); I just want everyone to know that this is our future.
Believe me, I am the first in line to say that customers have the right to question the creative decisions of designers/writers. However… is this what we want? Do we want developers worried that any reasonably controversial aspect of their work will lead to highly visible backlash? Does that actually encourage higher quality games, or simply encourage safer games? Or are the collateral effects of public catharsis simply their problem?
I used to believe the latter. Now… I’m not so sure.
Interview Overload
Ever read about an hour’s worth of interview transcripts about a game you’re not even technically playing anymore? I have! [emphasis added throughout]
- “However, mounts are sacred–one of the only things left that’s visual prestige. So we do want to make sure we give them out for the right things, like the Challenge Mode achievements Tom spoke about.”
- Re: Guild Leveling. Blizzard isn’t sure they will be increasing the level cap; they may just be swapping out abilities (i.e. Have Group, Will Travel is getting axed). Other big news here is that no daily/weekly XP or Reputation caps anymore.
- “LFR has been huge for us–one of the most successful features in the game, similar to when we implemented the Dungeon Finder. We can watch the numbers exponentially grow–the number of people that are raiding now, compared to before 4.3, is incredibly dramatic–it’s so much more. We can’t tell you the exact percentage, but it’s massively larger. And not only that, they’ve continued to raid, and these are players that have never raided before.”
- Re: Firelands dailies: “What didn’t work is that it’s staged out to take too long for the number of quests you need to do. I think that to get all the marks you needed to get was excessive amount of time.”
- Blizzard doesn’t actually seem to know how the Beta will actually pan out, given that over 1 million people will be getting in.
- You can (i.e. will) farm tokens to buy a consumable item that gives you, personally, an extra shot at getting gear from a boss. It works in LFR, Normal, and Heroic versions of raids. Yes, an extra shot at heroic raid loot. Yes, every heroic raiding guild will require it.
- Blizzard nixed the whole “monks don’t auto-attack” thing. Called that one.
File under Missing the Point:
Q: In addition to the linear nature of Cataclysm questing zones, many players felt that it was hard to feel completely engaged in a zone due to heirloom/guild xp bonuses. They’d outlevel a zone before completing a lot of the major plot arcs. The revamped 1-60 content is complete, but was there anything to learn from this in designing future zones? Especially now that Pandaria has more zones than we first heard about at BlizzCon.
A: Well, actually, we are very deliberately trying to set it up so you can skip some amount of content on the way to 90. We feel those decisions make the World of Warcraft seem like a world. If you look back to original WoW, we had Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, for players to quest in at any given time. There was an amount of choice in what you did–sometimes that choice diminished somewhat, but generally speaking, there were different options.
We’d like to capture that as much as possible, so not only is the quest flow itself a bit less linear, but also your zone choices is a bit less linear. That inherently means you won’t get to do all the quests on the way to 90, but it does mean that if you play the game on an alt, you have an option to do something new.
I think the problems you’ve described with heirlooms or guild xp bonuses and everything stacking becomes worse when it’s linear, because when you end that linear experience before you’re supposed to, it’s a lot more noticeable.
Actually… is Tom Chilton missing the point at all? Reading the response over again, it seems to me he wants WoW questing to get away from zones even having “major plot arcs” for heirlooms and leveling bonuses to trivialize. After all, isn’t the complaint that a person out-levels, say, Duskwood before finishing all the quests in the area? That is only a “problem” if one views the zone as something to be completed. If the zone is instead looked upon as a playground with different equipment – Raven Hill as a Merry-Go-Round, Darkshire as the swing-set, the southern portion as a series of muddy sandboxes – then “out-leveling” it does not make a whole lot of sense.
On the other hand, Chilton cannot have it both ways, right? Players are funneled into Duskwood from Westfall, and thus they encounter Raven Hill first; Darkshire’s issues are as much a part of Raven Hill as the other parts of the zone. Less linear is fine in theory, but there is a meta-narrative that has to glue these quests together in some way. And what about the people who come to enjoy a given zone’s zeitgeist? I love the idea of being able to skip entire zones (Wetlands and Arathi Basin are terrible for Alliance), but the issue at hand is not being able to stick with the zones you actually like. Non-linearity does not fix the issue of quests going gray.
Re: ZA/ZG
With Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub, they got a worse reputation than they deserved. A big mistake was going from a tier of content that had 9 instances to run, down to a tier of content where you only have 2 instances to run and no raids. If you run people through the grinder of the same two instances over and over, it ends up feeling much worse. If you take any instance and say ‘these are the only two instances you get to run for many months,’ then that ends up feeling pretty bad.
Re: Community
Q: Last question–about community in WoW. There’s been a lot of changes with people coming back and playing together, and using tools like Real ID and Looking for Raid across servers. How do you balance player-created communities across servers with pre-existing raiding guilds, that are facing challenges now like downsizing from 25s to 10s or dealing with real life and scheduling conflicts among older members?
A: I think that is an important balance to try to achieve. Over time, we’ve gone in the direction of making the game accessible to a lot of different people, such as queueing up for dungeons and raids with friends–which have impacted these guild ties and such. So I think that for us, one thing we’re hoping to do is get guild community back with challenge modes, without excluding your average player from content. Certainly with challenge modes, we don’t plan for you to queue up. We feel that if you queued for a challenge mode in Dungeon Finder, that would cause a lot of problems. That guy being yelled at by his wife for 15 seconds will make everyone else pull their hair out and panic that they’re going to miss a medal. It’s an interesting opportunity for us to really emphasize both playing with your guild and friends without it feeling like the average player is missing out on seeing an instance.
Re: Raiding
Q: So you are in discussions about possibly changing how the raid lockouts work?
A: Sure. I think we’re gonna look at how the 10/25 person lockout worked as a shared cooldown. Was that the right decision, or do we want to do something different? I don’t really know what the right answer is yet. We haven’t decided.
And then we get to the Ghostcrawler interview…
Q: So I was playing the Monk a little bit, and I noticed a couple things that were different from Blizzcon. There’s no more dark Chi.
A: <some debate about how to actually pronounce “Chi”>
Q: So there’s no more dark Chi…
A: Dark balls.
Q: There’s no more dark balls, yeah. What prompted that sort of change?
A: [snip]
I am not sure if I mentioned it before, but I genuinely enjoy having Ghostcrawler around. He may be the face of the B Team, he may be a straight-up design troll in some respects, but hey… at least he has a face, yeah? In a world of Bobby Koticks and David Reids and faceless community managers, I am all for more Greg Streets and Curt Schillings, even if they get things wrong.
Q: […] Glyphs was one system I was looking at and trying to wrap my head around the changes. I think you guys had said something about this somewhere, but prime glyphs are basically gone now.
A: Yeah. We apologize for prime glyphs. They were a bad idea. At the time, we were worried that, say, a Paladin who didn’t have a glyph for Crusader Strike would be like, “What the hell? This is my most important ability! I need to glyph Crusader Strike! I don’t want to glyph… I don’t know, Turn Evil or something like that, because I want a glyph for Crusader Strike.” So we did that, and it ended up just complicating everything because now we have to imagine that, “Oh yeah, everyone has stupid prime glyphs that give them 5% damage or crit or something like that.”
See? After talking about a new glyph for Prot paladins that lets you aim Consecration (ala Death & Decay, but shut up), the followup is:
Q: <grinning> See the grin on my face?
A: <laughs> The Glyph of Divine Plea, which Divine Plea is Holy only now, changes it from a “for the next X seconds you’re a bad healer” to a cast time, and then at the end of that cast time you get all the mana right away. So you have to pay the cast time, and while you’re casting you’re not doing anything, but at the end of the cast time you get all the mana and there’s no self Mortal Strike that a lot of Paladins hate.
Want some more? Here was a show-stopper of an admission, from the answer to the problems with Legendaries:
I think part of that is because almost every raiding Rogue had an expectation of getting a legendary. That’s something I’ve talked about a little bit recently. So, one dark secret that players have probably all figured out by now is that Blizzard designers tend to careen from one extreme to the other, and so, when we decide something doesn’t work out, we go to the complete opposite, illogical extreme, and then we reel it back in a little bit. So, we were kind of reacting against the Warglaives model where, “You have a tiny percent chance of getting a legendary! Congrats!” to trying to make it a little more predictable, and the way we did that was with the style where you need so many parts, and the parts have a fairly predictable droprate, and eventually you’ll have your legendary, which then led to the opposite problem of they’re super predictable, people could point to a calendar day and say, “April 20th! That’s when I get my legendary!”
What sort of designer admits that? Bad ones? Good ones? Final quote:
Q: Interesting. So you did a blog post a while ago about the “Great Item Squish (Or Not) of Mists of Pandaria.” I noticed that the combat text was popping up and saying things like “14K” instead of 14,000 or whatever. Is that the route you decided to go with, like the “mega damage” approach?
A: Yeah, we went with the “not.” Mega Damage, here to stay. So we had this all in and working. We squished everything, and it was working. We had the whole thing implemented, and we sat down and tried it out, and, you know, Mortal Strike hit for 200, and Fireball hit for 150, and we were like, “This feels wrong.” We knew exactly how it would feel like, and we knew that our damage as a percentage didn’t go down, but it felt terrible. And we were like, “Okay, this is now super risky”, because we’re going to change talent trees on players, and even though we think it’s a great design, and we think players will love it, it’s a hard sell. And to do that, and have them hit really wimpy, I think even if players understood why we did it, deep down they wouldn’t like it.
So we decided to back off of that. We’re trying the solution with commas, and K’s, and M’s, and to be honest, it helps a lot, and our hope is, by 6.0 or 7.0, players are demanding the item squish, and by then it’s not controversial at all. It’s like a celebration when we finally do it.
Okay, so that is a lot to digest.
Instead, I think I’m going to play some more Mass Effect 3 multiplayer.
A Bad Good Idea
Or would this be a good bad idea? You be the judge (emphasis added):
[…] Finally, we’re also going to have players be able to queue against other players [in Pet Battles]. But one of the important values for us with the queuing system is that we keep this very light and very casual. And as a result of that, we are doing everything that we possibly can to eliminate the shame of defeat. One of the things that really keeps a lot of players out of PvP types of activities is feeling bad about when they lose. ‘Cause ultimately, that’s really what drives a lot of people out of it. So we’re trying to do everything that we can to make sure that you do not feel bad about losing this.
We’re doing that in a number of different ways. For one, when you’re fighting an opponent in a match made battle, you’ll have no clue who they are, and they’ll have no clue who you are. So you’re playing this cross-server against who knows who. You won’t see their character name. You won’t be able to talk to them. They won’t be able to talk to you. So there won’t be any trash talking going on as they stomp your face in or whatever. Or you won’t be able to trash talk as you stomp their face in. It will feel a lot more like just some relatively intelligent AI then it would a normal kind of PvP ingame. In addition, not only will you not know who they are or not be able to communicate, but we also aren’t going to tabulate a running number of losses that you had. We’ll keep track of how many wins you had in your own statistics page, so you can always look at that out of curiosity. But the game is not going to record how many times you’ve lost. Again, we are really trying to eliminate all the sort of negative emotions that go along with PvP. So, that sums it up for the pet battles.
I know there are going to be people going into an apoplectic shock after reading this.
Something that should qualify as good good idea:
Could the gear scaling that is being added for challenge mode dungeons be applied in a similar manner for older content, allowing players to go back and play through old dungeons with an appropriately powerful character?
It’s like someone is reading our minds. That’s something that could 100% work for that. What we are starting with for challenge modes is the concept of doing it with the shipping dungeons for Mists of Pandaria. Then we’re going to watch it, see how it plays out and see how things go. Then the idea is if that goes well, we totally want to backdate that to some of our older dungeons. I mean, obviously it will probably be in thing like Scholomance, because that’s coming as new dungeon. But if it works out well, there’s no reason we couldn’t backport that to older dungeons. That could end up being in any of the more classic dungeons that players really like. That’s the kind of tech that we develop at the beginning to know that it could work in other places. Gear scaling that is something that could also work in a scenario if we really wanted to because it’s an instance. We could decide that we could build a scenario for say level 35, it takes place in say Southern Barrens, but then you could also play that scenario at level 90 because we could scale your gear. So in that way we could make content that works for the level up, but also for the max level. So there’s a lot of options of being able with being able to scale gear on players that we can use.
Yes, other games did it years ago. Yes, Guild Wars 2 will be doing it this summer. But just imagine: all the people who loved TBC could (potentially) go back play that content at its intended difficulty! Assuming you could find 24 other people willing to do so, of course.
What Could Mass Effect Online Look Like?
[Spoiler-Free Zone!]
In the last three days I have spent probably around 8-10 hours playing ME3’s multiplayer. My conclusion? Bioware might be onto something.
At its core, the ME3 multiplayer consists of ~11 rounds of 4-player co-op, Horde-style survival across six maps taken from the single-player game itself. Every third wave is what I’d call a “cash round,” in which you get a specific objective: King of the Hill, Kill 4 specific mobs, or Activate 4 Nodes. Completing those cash rounds successfully earns you credits whereas all the other rounds awards XP. During the final extraction wave, you have to be in the evac area by the end of the mission timer in order to get the highest point score bonus (e.g. XP).
The first thing I would say is this: the multiplayer is fun. It probably goes without saying, but if you enjoy the combat in any of the three Mass Effect games, you will enjoy it here too. You shoot from cover, you gain XP, level up, decide which weapons/mods to outfit your character with and so on.
Other bloggers have mentioned the similarities between the gear situation and Magic: the Gathering… and it’s true. There are three tiers of gear packs – 5k, 20k, and 60k credits – and each pack has 5 random “cards” that represent either one-use consumables (Medi-gel, extra ammo, missile launcher), new weapons (or upgrades to already found weapons), weapon mods, new races for a class, or class XP (which raises the baseline level of new characters of that class). The mid-line Veteran Pack comes with 1 Uncommon item or better, while the Spectre Pack has a guaranteed Rare “or better” (whatever that means).
I am not a huge fan of companies putting literal gambling in even their F2P offerings, mainly based on my Magic Online experience. I played the physical form of M:tG for nearly a decade already, but after a particularly bad night of Magic Online wherein I realized I paid $60+ on a series of Booster Drafts, I deleted the game off my hard-drive and went and bought WoW the next day.¹
That got me thinking though… how different is that really from random loot in MMOs? Could, in fact, Bioware turn Mass Effect into an MMO without much effort at all?
Most of the set pieces are already in place.
Classes/Talents/Abilities
Check, check, and check.
Originally, I found the ME2 pivot towards Biotic/Tech power spam (6 second cooldown Biotic Charge, what?) to be disconcerting. I suppose it doesn’t make any less sense than Omni-Tools materializing out of thin air or the titular mass effect, erm, effect in general. By the time I was halfway through ME3, the dynamism of power use was a core part of the entertaining gameplay.
You could even go so far as to imagine the Trinity system existing within the game realm, without too much of a stretch. Unlike Star Wars, it seems intuitively viable to heal people with Tech (Medi-Gel) or even Biotics, or perhaps simply refreshing their shielding with either. Or we could (perhaps preferably) see them go the purported Guild Wars 2 route and have shared role responsibilities – anyone can rez any downed member in the ME3 multiplayer, for example.
Races/Setting/Enemies
Mass Effect has them all in spades.
There are six races in multiplayer already, all with their own sort of racial-esque abilities, motivations, politics; we can imagine Batarians, Geth, Vorcha, or even Protheans being added to that count. I am not a fan of two-faction systems, so I would be overjoyed to see a situation wherein there are no “red vs blue” factions period, but rather players fighting for specific (mercenary?) movements of their choice. Did you choose Krogan and your friend choose Geth? No problem!
Indeed, without spoiling anything, the time period following the events of ME3 would be perfect, perfect for this kind of integrated gameplay. As Mass Effect players, we are already used to mission-based activities spread throughout the galaxy, taking orders from quest-givers, and so on and so forth. Expansions could come in the form of dormant² Relays or new star systems being discovered without breaking any suspension of disbelief.
As far as enemies go, while the main three – Geth, Cerberus, Reapers – have been… explored to various degrees, again, the time period following ME3 will undoubtedly be a fairly chaotic place. And remember, we got along perfectly fine in ME1 without having the geth be the only bad guys. There is no reason why pockets of resistance couldn’t spring up, pirates, mercenary groups, terrorist cells, or even the Salarian STG (or Spectres!) could decide they need to achieve X or Y goal, in opposition to your orders.
Shepard made galactic peace possible. It is up to us to maintain it.©
Itemization/Rewards/Crafting
Whether Bioware makes itemization deeper or keeps it fairly level, the fact is that it already exists. Shepard can wear 6-7 different helmets with different stats, independent of what kind of leg armor he/she has. “Tier sets” exist. There are dozens of different guns, upgrades, and weapon mods. It has been established that new item technologies can be researched and produced, all in the same universe in which “Fabrication Rights Management (FRM)” technology can keep certain items unique (e.g. effectively soulbound).
Now, I have a hard time imagining that chasing +5 Flaming Shotgun M-23 Katana V upgrades would sustain any sort of ME:O endgame the same way fantasy MMOs can get away with it. But sort of assumes there is necessarily an endgame gear grind at all. Which leads me to…
MMO Structure/Themepark vs Sandbox
I am going to suggest Synthesis here.
Is it possible to have a sandbox in the themepark? I have no idea. But as I was glancing at the Galaxy At War map, I could not help but notice how the southern portions were labeled as Earth Systems Alliance Space, Inner Council Space, Outer Council Space. Meanwhile the northern portions were the Attican Traverse and the Terminus Systems. So… perhaps Terminus = nul-sec? Hell, we can already imagine fighting over bases, planets, and star systems in the Mass Effect universe right? Meanwhile, the people who want missions from High Command can get them while following a proto-typical MMO/ME storyline.
It does occur to me that, in many ways, SWTOR has already laid claim to this particular niche. Voice acting, the dialog wheel, everyone having their own spaceship, and so on. But I believe, in retrospect, that Mass Effect Online would have been a much better fit; with SWTOR, too many mechanics were shoehorned into the MMO mold. The odds of Bioware eating up their own market-share with such a thematically similar product is basically zero, of course.
Something is going to happen with the franchise, though, and I can’t wait to see what that is.
P.S. Apparently Massively beat me to the punch by a day.
P.P.S. Then there is this.
¹ My entire opposition to MMOs up to that point had been “I refuse to keep paying for a game I already bought.” That $60 lasted me about 3 hours in Magic Online, but would have been four months in WoW.
² Shh… it could happen.
Moving Past Mass Effect
First, I apologize in advance for another “blank” entry.
As someone who typically plays games that are old and on Steam sales, I can appreciate the frustration of people who are waiting on ME3 and yet are inundated by spoiler-laden posts on their Readers/blogrolls. In fact, I do not even like friends telling me they liked or disliked an ending to anything – my mind immediately starts analyzing the kinds of things my friend likes/dislikes (“Hmm, he wasn’t a fan of FF7’s ending…”), and extrapolates possible ending scenarios from there.
If you are such a person, or don’t want ME3 spoilers generally, last chance to bail.
Yeah, we kinda do.
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us… We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
–Franz Kafka
Since finishing Mass Effect 3 Monday night, I have been in turmoil. Post-game depression is fairly typical for me, and endings like this one are a sort of double-whammy.
Rohan described the break as being “pre-beam” and “post-beam,” but it actually started earlier for me. The invasion of Earth itself was curiously… off. What should have been a momentous emotional occasion was, well, not. Where was the stirring music? Fires and Reapers and silence. For a while, I was actually worried that there was a bug preventing any music from playing.
Once back aboard the Normandy, things started feeling right again. This was Mass Effect, this was what it was about. In fact, it was not until ME3 specifically that I even felt I knew what the series was about. Interstellar war was one thing, but what I cared about was landing in a situation, and being the right man at the right time. Shepard was not setting out to dictate galactic policy, Shepard was not some god-figure who arbitrates which species lives and which dies. He (or she) simply happened to find himself in that position, at that turning point in history, and does the best that he can.
It is in that context that I felt the post-beam sequence was fine, for what it was.
Through the prism of the ending, I felt that Shepard the character got the closure he needed in the hours leading up to the end. The romance section put it in sharp relief: I was so worried about getting “locked-in” too soon that I accidentally past the point of no return without anyone at all. When I reloaded and made my choice, the stark difference between my feelings of the game – based simply upon those two scenes, one alone and the other with Liara (sorry, Tali) – drove home the fact that I love this series, no matter what happened.
Ever read The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan? As of today, the series is one book away from completion, and I have become so invested in the final outcome that I can barely stand it. But… what kind of ending should there be? The one I want, or the one I deserve? What if the ending is simply terrible, like how I felt ME3’s was at the time I was experiencing it?
With Wheel of Time, that answer is largely moot. There was one point in Winter’s Heart (book 9), one perfect moment, when everything in the narrative came together for me; a great character catharsis, independent of any kind of grand action event. I remember sighing, and a tension I did not even know existed, releasing. No matter what happens in Book 13, no matter what the Wheel weaves, they can never take that moment away or cheapen it.
I am coming to understand the same with Mass Effect.
Bioware cannot take away the feeling of immense depth with Mordin, when the Salarian stereotype fell away to reveal a reservoir of guilt for necessary evils; a doctor moved to inflict harm, faced with impossible choices. Bioware cannot take away my own feeling of guilt when I heard Kaiden’s “Belay that order!” command repeated in the forest dream sequence; a sacrifice I readily accepted at the time to save a woman I had feelings toward and ultimately passed over. Bioware cannot take away EDI and Joker and all the other hilariously poignant moments in the entire series, but ME2 in particular. Bioware cannot take away the bromance with Garrus, or the absolute struggle I had in choosing whether to intentionally miss that shot or not.
Here, here.
So, if you struggled as I have, or struggle still, I have a recommendation. Listen to To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra. Listen to it again. Then read this Kotaku article. Then remember every time you felt this way before – maybe Cowboy Bebop, maybe End of Evangelion, maybe Saving Private Ryan – and try to remember the last time you have felt so wounded by a video game. Have wanted something different so bad you could taste it.
And then… try to let go. If you are anything like me, I am having an exceedingly difficult time wanting to.
Good game, Bioware. Good game.
P.S. Epilogue: For what it’s worth, I still believe Bioware should have handled the ending better (and I am aware of the “secret ending”). The tone and recycled outcomes were one thing, but the incongruent Normandy bit was quite another. At first, I railed against the notion that Bioware was planning on going the “if you want the true ending, it’ll be $9.99 DLC” route, and the implicit dream/indoctrination sequence that implies. But the precedent already exists: Bethesda did just that in the Fallout 3 “Broken Steel” DLC.
The difference being, of course, that Fallout 3 was immensely cathartic in wrapping things up at the end, straight out of the box.
In An Age 
The Gray Moral Morass
Mar 29
Posted by Azuriel
You may or may not have been following the whole EVE cyberbullying thing.
Syncaine being Syncaine, he is both morally repugnant and technically correct in his deconstruction of the argument. What exactly can one do in defense against the emotional blackmail of “I’m suicidal?” Is that not carte blanche acquiescence to every situation, including purely PvE concerns of “loot didn’t drop, so I might as well”? And what about the in-game incentives CCP purposely built into EVE to encourage competition, subterfuge, and retribution?
So, on a whim, I decided to check EVE’s Terms of Service. And I don’t even recognize what game they believe it’s for (emphasis mine):
As an Eve Online subscriber, you must observe and abide by the rules of conduct and policies outlined below, as well as the End User License Agreement. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in the immediate termination of your account and you will forfeit all unused access time to the game. No refunds will be given.
1. You may not abuse, harass or threaten another player or authorized representative of CCP, including customer service personnel and volunteers. This includes, but is not limited to: petitioning with false information in an attempt to gain from it or have someone else suffer from it; sending excessive e-mails, EVE-mails or petitions; obstructing CCP Employees from doing their jobs; refusal to follow the instructions of a CCP Employee; or implying favoritism by a CCP Employee.
2.You may not use any abusive, defamatory, ethnically or racially offensive, harassing, harmful, hateful, obscene, offensive, sexually explicit, threatening or vulgar language. (Alternate spelling or partial masking of such words will be reprimanded in the same manner as the actual use of such words.)
3.You may not organize nor be a member of any corporation or group within EVE Online that is based on or advocates any anti-ethnic, anti-gay, anti-religious, racist, sexist or other hate-mongering philosophies.
4.You may not use “role-playing” as an excuse to violate these rules. While EVE Online is a persistent world, fantasy role-playing game, the claim of role-playing is not an acceptable defense for anti-social behavior. Role-playing is encouraged, but not at the expense of other player. You may not create or participate in a corporation or group that habitually violates this policy.
Did I pick the wrong ToS? This is for EVE – EVE – right?
There was also Rule 9:
…but after some thought, it was probably intended to prevent IRL pyramid scheme spam.
So, assuming that CCP enforces their own ToS, there clearly are lines in-game actions can cross, the people behind the pixels are protected to an extent, and it is not the exact free-for-all that it is made out to be. That said, I do wonder about the degree of dissonance between the “no harassment” policy and in-game bounties, war-decs, and general grief potential. Is there any evidence that CCP has acted on this policy before? Is it harassment if I get shot down by a Goon ship every time I enter Goon territory? They just won’t leave me alone!
Incidentally, here is Blizzard’s stance on harassment on PvP realms:
In related news, the deal will probably be over by the time this post goes up, but did you know this happens:
Cheaper than most F2P games!
That’s… almost tempting. And kinda ridiculous at the same time.
Posted in Commentary
11 Comments
Tags: Cyberbully, EVE, Harassment, Moral, Terms of Service