AggroChat #468 – Accessible Design Is Important

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We are back after taking a break last week due to the limited number of folks available.  This week we start off with a topic that has bounced around a bit on our docket.  Namely, we marvel at just how balanced City of Heroes/City of Villians is and what a pinnacle of system design it really is.  Bel spent a bit of time playing Nightingale now that is available in early access, and talks about the mess of a game that it is.  Finally, we dive into our primary topic this week and talk about the Last Epoch 1.0 launch and how phenomenal the game feels right now despite all of the server-side woes.

Topics Discussed

  • City of Heroes/City of Villains
    • How is the design so balanced?
  • Nightingale
    • Not a Bad Game, but Not a Great One Either
  • Last Epoch
    • The 1.0 Launch Woes
    • The Massive Graphical Overhaul
    • Why we love the game
    • Accessible Design Matters

Fighting Nostalgia

Familiar Itch

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Over the last few days I have been feeling immensely nostalgic about World of Warcraft.  This tends to happen to me as we near Blizzcon time, and I start to see twitter a buzz with people excited to be attending the convention.  Some of my tweeps have even resorted to Blizzcon countdown clocks, and yesterday they finally reached the 20 somethings in days left til the conference.  With this wave of nostalgia comes the all too familiar desire to re-up my account and play some of it.  It would not have been the first time I did so on a whim, and is more than likely not going to be the last.

However I am wise to this trickery, or at least have a contingency plan in place.  I have come to the realization that I like the idea of playing WoW a lot more than actually playing it.  As a result I keep a trial account at the ready for when of these urges strikes, and last night I patched up my client once more.  I figure if I make it through playing the trial account with the desire to play more WoW… then it is probably time to re-up.  I figure this is a decent litmus test to see whether or not the desire to play is real before I spent $15.

Fighting Nostalgia

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As a result I rolled a brand new Worgen Warrior on my trial account and proceeded to play.  Immediately the buzz of the nostalgia started to wane.  I had honestly forgotten just how spammy playing a low level warrior was, and by example EVERY World of Warcraft melee character.  The unpredictable nature of rage and to a lesser extent energy left me with a decision.  I either spent the entire time fighting watching my bars to optimize cooldowns… or I could just spam whatever basic attack I wanted to ALWAYS go off.  Being a relatively impatient player… I always chose the spam route.

After a few minutes of spamming Heroic Strike… I remembered just how much my fingers used to ache after a dungeon run, always banging on the key I wanted to fire next because I could not be bothered to actually watch my bars.  Basically my master plan of fighting the wave of nostalgia worked, all too well.  I made it to about level 5 on my baby Worgen, to the point at which the forsaken show up… at which point I was supremely bored and logged out of the game.  Having a taste of the gameplay reminded me that it really was not as fun as my mind had built it up to be.

Project Phoenix

projectphoenix

Sometimes a game is much more enjoyable to remember fondly, than to actually play it.  Right now there is a kickstarter going on called Project Phoenix.  The goal of it is to essentially recreate the magic that was City of Heroes/City of Villains.  I had so much fun playing these games, and regularly descend into bouts of nostalgia swapping with another friend of mine on mumble.  The problem is… I think CoH is another game that is much more enjoyable to talk about fondly than to actually play it.  I remember so much about the game, but every time I tried playing it again during its later free to play years the whole experience just felt lacking.

I wish this project the best of luck, but super hero games for me seem like they were a phase of a bygone era.  I have tried Champions Online and DC Universe Online and in both cases… I was carried into them on the nostalgia of City of Heroes but found both gaming experiences somehow unable to live up to my memories and as a result my expectations.  I think World of Warcraft and City of Heroes are both games for me like the original Everquest… extremely enjoyable to sit around and talk about the “good old days” but not really fun for me to play any longer.

Thing is… I think that is perfectly okay.  I think nostalgia works that way, it makes us romanticize things that would now be trivial.  For example I can remember being amazed at just how huge the sandbox that my father made for me was, and how I spent hours playing in it with my Tonka trucks.  However were I to evaluate it from adult eyes, I would likely find it tiny and boring… and be ready to stop in a few minutes.  Often times things we remember so fondly end up tarnished if we go back and re-experience them.  This has been the case for Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft and a long list of other games that I have moved on past… but tried to rekindle that flame.