Adrift: 1 hour mmo

Normally adrift is about rpgs that we will never run, in this case I'm going with complicated computer RPG that I will never create.

I don't have a great relation ship with MMO's, I know lots of people who put a lot of hours in on them, playing multiple characters to max level. My experiences have been different, I usually play for a while, get about a quarter of the way through the level grind, get bored and move on. The only MMO that I played to max level was Guild Wars 2, and there is probably a good blog post in what GW2 does right. Despite having never enjoyed an MMO long term I have had enough good experiences that sometimes I get that hankering, I hear about a game, or just decide I need to level something up. The lure of building a character up over time dances just at the edge of reason and I download some tedius free to play. But in general I'm looking for a more condensed experience.

Early on when I was telling my friends about League of Legends I described it as having a character that you level up and buy gear for over the course of 40 mintues, a hyper accelerated diablo. But League really isn't that, it is a twitch pvp game with some rpg elements, but it got me thinking, what if the super fast rpg did exist? What would it look like? The one hour MMO.

The base idea is that you do all the things you do in an MMO over the course of a single hour. You get a fresh character at level 1, and over the course of the next hour you explore, adventure and level up. At the end of the hour the world resets and you do it all over again. Speedrunning for MMOs. The fact that each game you are going from 0 to max level means that you can play with your friends without worrying about who is what level.

So how do you make a game like that interesting and not frustrating? I think you make it incredibly difficult. Kind of like a dark souls situation. The world would be mostly static with set world bosses, dungeons and locations. There would be some randomness in creature spawns perhaps, but in general a person should be able to get better at a particular dungeon or location over time. I would set some kind of crazy goal to 'win' the game. The world is destroyed over and over reborn in fire and monsters, but if all the world bosses are defeated everyone on the server gets a 'win'. There would be a ton of mini bosses scattered around a piles of achievements. Even though the game experience is only an hour, there would be lots of goals that persist on your account. Who will be the first person to kill one of every mob, or complete all the dungeons?

There would be tons of highly specialized classes. As you play and complete goals you unlock more classes that you can play in future worlds. Maybe some classes would even be specialized for defeating certain world bosses or whatnot. There would be specialized gathering and crafting classes. Of course that means that there is gathering and crafting.

Gathering and crafting would be different than most MMO's there would be no market or gold economy to speak of. As you gathered materials they would either go to your personal inventory for crafting or more likely materials just instantly go into a global bank of resources anyone can craft out of. If you are in a guild maybe your materials all go to the guilds bank. Probably there would be an xp buff for sending your resources to the global bank. There would be of course be tiers of resources, and unlocking classes would allow you to gather more epic resources. Maybe some percentage of the resources you harvest would persist into your next games bank, so if you were a crafter you don't 100 % have to depend on other people gathering.

Crafting would be stolen from my friend Chris's table top version of an MMO, swordsphere. Basically in addition to basic materials there would be a mat called essences. Essence drops rarely when you kill a monster, bosses and mini bosses drop unique essences. There are no set crafting recipes, so you wouldn't be able to look up the stuff on wiki and know how to build everything. Maybe there are some basic set recipes, like making a sword is the same for everyone. But if you throw essences or other random mats in while crafting you have a chance to create a unique magic item. You take a sword and throw a swamp essence in, maybe a hamburger, and if you get a lucky roll you get the Misty sword of condiments. It has a chance to proc swamp based effects or hamburger based effects. Most of the time when experimenting you won't get anything, but when you do you get a unique recipe that belongs only to you, so as long as the mats are in the bank you can make that sword all day.

There are no shops and you don't have to return to town to shop. So if you are out adventuring and you see someone crafted the burger sword in the trading window you can get it. Weapons would have level requirements, and there would be a way for crafters to see what kinds of items are on the most wanted list.

Classes might be extremely specialized, each one with only one weapon type, or a set of spells, or damage type. I could see it like an inverted branching pyramid where you unlock the two classes under a particular class to unlock it.

So I would see the game working something like this. I log on and get into a pre world lobby. That lobby lists all the classes that everyone else has picked already. I see that nobody is gathering wood yet, so I pick woodcutter. None of my other friends are on, so I'm ok gathering this game. The world boots up and I wander into the woods and have a chill stardew valley like experience chopping down trees, fighting wandering beasts and stacking logs in the bank. Maybe I see someone crafted a unique chopping axe, so I pick that up. I earn xp toward lumberjack, and ranger which are both advanced classes that can gather wood. Maybe if I have played a shaman before I can get unlock points toward druid.

Another night three of my friends are on, so we all get set to roll with a tank dps healer trio, and make a run on a minor boss that none of us has killed before. We meet some people who are going for a world boss raid, go on the raid with them and get destroyed because we don't have the right kinds of damage etc for it. Getting a 'win' on a world would require several guilds working together each going after a different world boss. You would have to farm the proper mini bosses to feed the crafters the right essences to build their unique epics. You could have a fun hour doing whatever random thing you want, but the hardcore crowd also has their super challenges.

Sorry for the random brain spill on this one, wasn't sure how to start eating the elephant on this one.

Like a Boss

I was watching a streamer on Twitch the other day play through the latest DLC for the game Dark Souls 3.  I like watching people play this game.  I love the sense of exploration.  I love the loot that you can find in the game and the fact that a large portion of the game world's lore is actually found when you inspect each item you find and read it's description.  I love that the equipment is not just another sword or helmet, but it was someone's helmet, and they had a story, a purpose.  The enemies are almost artistic in their art styles and their varied fighting techniques.  There is artistry in the incredible visuals, the mind-blowing music, and the attention to details that many may overlook in a rush to beat the game.  It is a world that invites you to stay and explore, to become part of it's story.  But I said I love watching it played.  What I do not like is playing it.  And that is for one reason:  the boss fights.  If there is one mechanic in gaming that I dislike more often than not, it is the boss fight. 

The Dark Souls franchise is built on a foundation of wild and intricate fights with epic boss characters, each a feast for the the eyes and the ears.  All of the exploring and loot-gathering is merely a preparation to face these gods of the game world.  And each boss fight is a game unto itself.  Dark Souls is not easy.  It is not meant to be easy.  Dying to a regular mob is not uncommon.  But the bosses, they are on another level.  They each have their own powers and moves, their own phases (new parts of the fight that unlock after getting them down to a certain health level), and it is your job to learn the dance that comes with these moves and powers in order to defeat them.  I have heard of people spending hours and hours on one boss fight alone, encountering the boss, trying to learn a bit more of the dance, then dying, and repeating the cycle.  I played the first game, loved it right up until I hit the first boss.  Then, after trying a couple of times, I set down my controller, got up, removed the disk from my machine, and never went back. 

Boss fights are like nails on a chalk board for me.  I get why people like them:  they are the epic finale to everything that you work for in many games.  They are the root of the problem that you are trying to solve, and the quickest way to solve it is to punch it, shoot it, stab it, or kill it by whatever means you are equipped with at the time.  There is a sense of accomplishment at fighting something greater and overcoming it.  But for me, it is many times a jarring interruption in the gameplay that, up until that point I had been enjoying.  I am the first to say that I am not a hardcore-mode kind of person.  I play for story and escapism, not to slam myself repeatedly into boss gates that often seem thrown in because they are expected.  Dark Souls does boss fights well, but I don't have the interest to spend my precious gaming time on those gates.  I have played countless games in my decades of gaming and there are very few times when I have enjoyed fighting bosses.  More often, they leave me frustrated and feeling like I am wasting time I could have been enjoying the game. Don't get me wrong:  I have no issue with difficulty in a game. I even welcome it in many cases, unless I know that a difficult game also has boss fights.

 I know I am not the usual gamer and I am ok with that. Unfortunately, that means I have to suffer through the inevitable boss fights if I want to play many games.  And in more than a few cases, like the Dark Souls franchise, I choose not to play them despite knowing that I would enjoy all other aspects of the game, no matter the difficulty.  Many times when I have this conversation, people ask what alternatives to the standard boss fight there are.  Boss fights have been in games so long that it is often hard for people to grasp the idea of a game without boss fights.  But there are alternatives, and to me these games are a welcome breath in a world smokey with the fires of bosses.  One good example is a recent game named Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.  Though flawed in its own ways, the game sucked me in with the promise of bossless play, and it delivered.  But how?

Beyond the setting, cyberpunk, the game play of Deus Ex revolves around missions.  The beauty of the game was twofold.  One, you had a choice in how to complete those missions.  You could be stealthy or violent, murderous or pacifist.  All that mattered was that you accomplished your goal.  The rest was up to you.  And those goals included taking down someone with more power or thwarting epic plans.  But instead of straight up boss fights to decide the outcome, missions had you erode power bases or steal items important to the plans so that they could not carry them out, or had to figure out some other way.  I played the game stealthy and only killed one person the whole time and that occured at the very end, during what was set up to be a big final boss fight.  The beauty of this fight, though, was that you again had multiple ways of taking care of the boss outside of straight violence, and my method was discovered thanks to wandering off the beaten path and exploring.  What I found was a very game-appropriate way of taking the boss out without firing a shot, and I felt extremely satisfied with my conclusion to the game.  And there is the other side of boss fights for me: if they have to occur due to story, give me another way to defeat them outside of the dance of the boss fight. 

There are many games nowadays that eschew the traditional boss battles, thankfully, so my game card can stay filled without fighting more than a few bosses.  After all of my words against boss fights, I will say that, if they are few, are integral to the story (and not just an artificial game play gate), and offer me a way to utilize the skills that I have developed in the game, then I am not totally opposed to the occasional boss fight. Sometimes I even welcome it if it adds value to the story and is not some devious dance that I have to learn that breaks the pattern of game play.  But if the game revolves around the idea of the boss fight being the driving goal, then I will probably give the game a hard pass.  I don't have the time or patience to offer to those games.  For those, I will turn to watching my favorite streamers on Twitch to experience vicariously the thrill of victory and agony of defeat versus my gaming nemesis:  the boss fight. 

Musings: Defining Game Value

 

I thought I would take a moment and reflect on how I define the personal value of games. This line of thought actually began a few years ago as I looked at the extremely large number of video games in my PC game Steam library.  As I stared at the long list of games, I realized that I had not played many of them at all, causing me to wonder if maybe I had a game collecting problem.  I did, and still do, but the results of that initial thought has led me to a way to at least stop and consider a game purchase before actually clicking the "Buy" button.  So while I may not have curbed my incessant need to collect games (both video and tabletop), I at least have a measurement that I can call on.

The method I use to gauge whether I have gotten my money's worth out of a game is based on the per-hour cost for the game.  Basically, take the amount of money I paid for a game and divide by the amount of time I have played the game (easy to do in Steam since it gives you an actual time played stat).  The result is essentially paid per hour of game play.  My basic guideline is that I strive to pay one dollar per hour played (so, for example, I would hope to get 30 hours out of a $30 game).  This is a basic method that is sometimes tweaked, depending on the game itself.  I have paid $60 for a game and only played 15 hours, but felt that the experience was so good that I felt that I got full value for my money. So it is, of course, a very subjective sort of measurement, but it lets me feel like I got real value when I hit that mark, or go beyond it.  There is nothing like playing a game to a satisfying conclusion (either the end of the game or when I am done playing) and finding out that I got a great value based on this method.  It's like a double win!

What the above measurement also allows me to do is make decisions when I am considering a game to buy, and this is where it has really helped me. Now, whenever I look at a game, I ask myself if I will get my dollar-per-hour value out of the game.  That makes me think hard about a $60 game.  After all, that means I would be looking to get at least 60 hours of game play out of it.  And in my current life and schedule, that is hard to do.  I also factor in the potential for a great experience that would offset time played, but if I am not sure about a game, the per-hour cost estimation can make or break my decision.  Conversely, it also makes taking a chance on less expensive games easier, since I give myself the permission to play less in order to feel like I got value.  I also feel extreme gratification when I go well beyond the dollar-per-hour goal.

This method of gauging gaming value has had a positive effect on me, both in terms of finding satisfaction in a game even if I do not complete it (a struggle I had for a while, and a subject for another article perhaps), and in making me aware of what games I buy and actually playing them.  After all, there is no value in buying a game and never playing it.  This has led a switch in me from game collector back to game player.  And that makes me happier overall.  My Steam library may not be growing as quickly now, but I am seeing more and more games that have been played.

Now that I am using this metric on my video gaming hobby, I need to start using it on my tabletop gaming buying.  I am very guilty of board game collecting, as well as roleplaying book collecting.  My dollar-per-hour ratio on many of the games that I have bought is not good at the moment, and my addiction to tabletop Kickstarters does not help.  I may need to tweak the metric a bit since tabletop gaming is a different beast and involves others, so there are factors to consider in determining value beyond my own personal enjoyment.  This will be an on-going project, and one that I will update on this blog as I try to figure out how to swing from collecting to playing in the tabletop realm.

So how about you, dear reader?  How do you determine whether you have gotten your money's worth in a game (video or tabletop)?  Do you think my method makes sense or seems off?  It works for me and gives me peace of mind, but it may do nothing for you, and that is ok.  We all determine value differently.  I would love to hear how you determine yours.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get going. I just picked up DOOM on sale, so it is high time I go wreck some demons...

Redesigning Nix

So I have been playing a lot of the game Atlas Reactor. It is a turn based battle game, something like if overwatch were a board game. I'm enjoying it a lot, but there are a few things that stand out as being awkward. A few of the character designs are lackluster, and a couple of them I find grrahful (grrahful is a mix of the noise you make when you see art, and how awful it is.)

So I'm going to take a shot talking about why I hate a character design so much, and what we can do to fix it. The character I'm going to talk about is Nix, the sniper. You can see what he looks like here:

http://www.atlasreactor.pro/assets/img/characters/nix.png

I don't want to hot link their image, I'm sure that folks at atlasreator.pro are lovely people.

The fantasy of playing Nix is that he is a stealthy sniper, who deals good damage at a long distance, has some gadgets, and can drop into stealth to engage or escape. So the typical sneaky sniper guy. His face is hooded showing only his eyes, in an attempt to evoke menace. If you look up his gangster skin it just looks like his head is a bowling ball wearing a fedora.  He has various pouches, and a camera/optical camo thing on his head, giving him a very techy look. All of his taunts animations are pretty straightforward to the sniper fantasy, he goes shuush, talks about how cool his gear is etc. He has one awful taunt where he says "360 no scope" pole dances on his sniper rifle and shoots you. He does have one neat taunt where his gun barrel gets really long. All in all the animations involving his gun are pretty cool. But personality wise there is nothing stands out about his character apart from the most basic notes of, stealthy sniper. Compared to some of the other character designs he feels primitive, like a leftover from an earlier draft of the game.

 This brings me to the most awkward part of his design, he basically looks like a potato with a sniper rifle sticking out of him. His form is round and squat. His limbs are thick and meaty. His character model kind of waddles around the battle field on stubby legs. It feels someone in the art department saw the TF2 design guidelines about building a unique silhouette for each character decided that any unique look fits whatever character.  But the beefy meatball look doesn't play into the characters kit or fantasy at all. When I think of sniper elements and stealth, it generally brings forth images of someone either quick and frail, with an oversized gun, or someone patient, camouflaged and possibly prone.

So I really hate his character model and feel. I'm also not a big fan of his personality which doesn't go beyond, I'm a grim sniper. What would I do to make it better? I've sketched up a few quick ideas that I think would be more fun. With these designs I'm going to assume that the art designer handed down an edict that she wanted a sniper who was also shaped like a baked potato.

The first design that came to mind was "The Emperor" He is a rotund explorer and fancy gentleman. He has seen the world over and has come back with a dangerous skill set that he uses to subsidize his noble hunter lifestyle. Embracing his figure he has taken up the mantle of the savage swimmer of the far south sea, the emperor penguin. He wears a penguin hat, a long cloak that splits in two at the back like penguin wings, and carries a fancy filigreed sniper rifle. When he stealths he pulls the cloak around his body. Personality wise he is jovial, becoming invigorated as the hunt goes on. He is as in it for the sport as he is the money.

We have all seen the short guy who hits the gym, a lot, and ends up being nearly as wide as he is tall.  This version of nix has a protein packing lifestyle and is as ripped to mythic. He wanders around shirtless showing off his Russian gang tattoos. His movements are acrobatic, with lots of rolling around. He uses a sniper rifle because he is a pragmatist, and knows that shooting people with a giant gun may not be the best solution, but it nearly always is _a_ solution.

Taking a cue from a snipers ghille suit, this Nix is mostly just a bush. Instead of eyes all we get is a wide mask or faceplate that stands out against the plant like branches and leaves of his suit. Even his gun is entirely made of wood and gnarled and twisted like a tree branch. The mask and the targeting drone both call back to the tech aspect of the character. This design also helps to mitigate the stumpy legged walking animation. He can slither around the field like a leafy slug,  leaving death instead of slime in his wake. The most practical design for a real game is probably this one. It is also the design with the least personality. But I suppose being killed by a shrub is pretty cool.

Finally, I went with an actual potato with a sniper rifle. He uses his leafy limbs to manipulate the gun. And he wears boots for some reason. I went with just using the natural texutres of a potato to form his face instead of eyes and a mouth as I didn't want him to look too much like Mr. Potato head.

The real Nix design has no real personality beyond, sniper, and two disguishing features, A giant gun, and a strange body type. I would like to think that the design team could have pushed the limits a bit further. But I suppose it is early in the game's development cycle, and they want to create the launch characters specifically to be close to the archetype they fill.

There is at least one other character in this game whose overall design I hate. Maybe I will return to this subject. Have a great weekend!

-Coinflip