garrisons Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Reconstructing Garrisons

December 5, 2015 by Belghast

Largely Academic

With my recent return to World of Warcraft, I’ve been readjusting to the rhythm of Warlords and one of the big parts of that is the Garrison. As is always the case when I start to think about parts of the game, I begin fabricating ways that I would improve it. I am not sure if this is the armchair designer in me, or the programmer… but whatever case the instinct is always there. You can hand me the best possible implementation of something, and I will find ways I would tweak and improve it. Before even starting to write this, I realize that Garrisons like so many new and interesting ideas in Warcraft… are being utterly abandoned when it comes to Legion. So I am largely going through this as an academic exercise, because it has been on my mind. This line of inquiry all started as I once again began trying to dig into the Shipyard for my Garrison. Everything about that minigame feels like an worse in every way version of the Garrisons. With Garrisons there was at least a clear path to success… and with Shipyards the answer seems to be throw oil at the problem until you get something interesting. This of course lead me to start sifting through the design of Garrisons as a whole… and this mornings post is the loose collection of those ideas.

A Mobile App

I have said this point numerous times, but I am going to highlight it here again… for the purpose of hoping that if we ever get another garrison like feature… Blizzard will rethink the implementation. Everything surrounding the Garrison should have been available through a mobile app. I took the time to crudely mock up an ipad version, and I think for the most part it works. Of course this a mocked up version of the Master Planner addon… but whatever… I feel like anyone who is actually using their garrisons is using that addon. The fact that we can stroll around our garrisons is awesome… but the aspect that I dislike about it is how much it takes us out of the game. The garrisons I think were meant to be this place for the player in the world that is just theirs, and it does a great job of doing that. The problem being… people just live in their garrisons now. Before and after a raid… you can look at the guild list and see every single player sitting in the garrison fiddling with whatever they need to fiddle with to get ready. For both factions, Ashran was supposed to be this Dalaran like experience to bring us all together in the same place… but it was generally so poorly laid out that people have just adapted to doing everything they need to do in a combination of the Pandaria Shrine and their chosen set of Garrison buildings.

The negative side effect is there has been this daily maintenance ritual that takes us out of the game… instead of causing us to dig further into it. I know personally I have ten characters with garrisons, and four of those with level three fairly maxed out ones. I feel this obligation that if I do ANY of them… I should just go ahead and sift through all of them making sure every machine is optimally humming. This style of interaction is what we tend to expect from Tiny Tower/Fallout Shelter style mobile games… where we check in every so often and make sure all of the parameters are working like we intended them to. If I could have fiddled with my Garrisons from my phone, when I was stuck waiting in line at the pharmacy, or any other time I am forced to sit idle… it would have felt like a much better experience. As cludgy as the web based integration with Destiny is, it has given me ideas of how well it COULD work if someone did so properly. In Destiny I can fiddle with my inventory, or check the status of quest all from the web… or as a result of that api third party mobile app. That means I can do things like… if I forgot a consumable in the bank… I can drop it straight into the active characters inventory. Mobile integration of the garrisons would turn what feels like a lot of busywork, into a resource that is valuable and helps the players get more out of their game time.

One Garrison Per Account

I think pretty much everyone agrees that Garrisons are essentially a mobile app already… but now we are going to get into the more controversial tweaks. I think there should have been a single Garrison that is being built by ALL of your characters on your account. Now this would get a little weird when it comes to someone who plays both Horde and Alliance… so in theory I would also be fine with having one Alliance Garrison per account and one Horde Garrison per account. This means that all of the resources you are gathering would be shared in one big pool… and similarly all of your followers would be shared. Now in order to make this work, you would need to keep adding new followers as you add characters that gain the ability to access the garrison. The idea is here that you start with a base of like ten followers, and then each additional “garrison eligible” character would add 5 more followers to the pool. There would need to be a cap to the maximum number of followers, but we could safely place that cap somewhere in the range of 40. That would allow you to have upgraded your follower count with six more characters before capping out. This gives you a real reason why you would want to be playing more than just the one character, because alting becomes a path to access more perks.

Similarly I would make it so that the Garrison footprint itself expands as you get more characters to the level cap of 100. Much like the garrison expands when you shift from TownHall 1 to 2 or 3… or add the Shipyard. There would be additional annexes of your Garrison that would add building slots when you get any of your alts to level 100, allowing you to eventually build all of the buildings to support your characters. This also serves the purpose that I originally hoped Garrisons would do of allowing you access to tradeskills that your current character doesn’t have. When you are a multi-crafter like myself, you spend a silly amount of time not playing the game.. and swapping resource between characters. To facilitate this better I would have added a new kind of bank that came with the Garrison that was shared by all characters on your account. Once again the bank would start small but each additional character you get to the level cap would increase the bank by a number of slots, essentially giving you something in the end that is around the same size as void storage. While you could never store EVERYTHING you would want to store in this… it would serve as a place for shared crafting resources or raid materials among your stable of characters.

Characters in Your Garrison

One of the things I love about the Garrison is seeing the NPCs that I have picked up as followers, running around and at least “acting” like they are interacting with each other. In my perfect version of the Garrison, each of these followers would be more fleshed out… and through a sequence of talking to them and doing tasks for them… it would eventually open up a side mission. What I am thinking is the same sort of interaction that you have with the NPCs that you gather up in say a Mass Effect game or Dragon Age. The side missions might unlock new cosmetic items, or simply have a decent gold or whatever the raid currency happens to be pay out. This would make them feel more like actual characters, and less collectibles to decorate your sorta kinda home…. that just happens to look like everyone else. Currently there are a handful of followers that offer quests, or sell merchandise… and that is awesome. I just wish they were all so well thought out as those, because right now it feels like an awesome mechanic that only goes about half of the way to really being great. Especially with a shared Garrison, it would allow players to feel a greater connection across multiple characters to the same batch of NPCs.

As cool as the NPCs are however… I think the best possible thing for Garrisons would be to see your OTHER character wandering around in them. Ultimately where I am getting at with a lot of my changes is to give the players a reason to roll multiple characters. I realize there are folks out there that only have the one character that they care about… and that is fine… but for most of us multiple characters is the way we stay engaged with the game for long periods of time. There would be this huge sense of accomplishment in seeing your other characters wandering around in the same setting, highlighting the fact that your entire stable of characters is a “team” of sorts and that you are all together working towards some common goal. So for all of those people who take painstaking care in transmogrifying to just the right look… you would get to see your characters strutting their stuff together decked out in any fashion you would like. Additionally I think a nice feature would be for you to have the ability to interact with one of your characters that is wandering the garrison, and do some pretty simple things. Like hand off an item to them, or ask them to craft something for you. Essentially I am looking for ways to allow you to keep from having to do a constant sequence of swapping characters instead of actually going out into the world to play the game.

The Problem with Garrisons

There is a lot that I love about the concept of Garrisons, but my large problem has always been and continues to be today… that it keeps me from playing the game. Sure you are thinking… “but Bel, Garrisons are part of the game!”. To that I say… “Sorta”, they are this package of busy work designed to keep players coming back to the game… but in truth they also end up keeping the player from really going out into the world to play it. It is so easy to get stuck in this rut of logging in every night, and doing nothing but collecting garrison loot and sending more followers out on missions. If you add harvesting the ore or herbs, you can easily end up with a two hour or longer ritual that means… that is a couple of hours that you weren’t going out engaging in the world. You weren’t raiding, or running dungeons… or even completing the content in areas like Ashran or Tanaan jungle. You were essentially sitting at “home” doing paperwork, while there was a bigger and more interesting world out there… simply because we as players end up feeling an obligation to do it… or in some way we will “fall behind”.

When I left the game last time… I had run into a rut where I was simply doing nothing but garrisons and two nights of raiding a week. There was nothing pulling me outside of the tiny walled garden and thrusting me out into the more interesting world as a whole. The idea with these tweaks falls along the lines of making Garrisons feel more important to all of your characters at a whole, while speeding up the interactions so that you can get done whatever you need to do and get right back out into the world. World of Warcraft as a whole needs to do more to support the alting lifestyle, and I feel like most everything that is soul bound should really be account bound. I’ve also long felt that currency like Valor should be accumulated at an account level, allowing players to play whatever class happens to be needed by their guild or their friends… but at the same time support the development of the characters they really want to be gearing. Basically there are a ton of tweaks I would do to the game, but this morning… I simply focused on Garrisons and some quality of life improvements. I am sure I will catch hell for some of the things I have said… but at the end of the day its my blog and my opinions.

Shoddy Shipyards

June 29, 2015 by Belghast

Struggling to Blog

This morning I am struggling a bit to find purpose as I sit down at the keyboard. As of last night I reached level 58 in Final Fantasy XIV on my Warrior and am not quite to the next level wall. Things are happening that are enriching the experience, but those same things are massive revelations and spoilers and I am concerned about giving too much away. As a result I am just not sure what to talk about. I could break out some more of my existential angst that I can presently only be a tank when someone in guild asks for groups. I could comment vaguely about how much I am enjoying the story, and how awesome it is going so far. Neither of which seem all that fulfilling however and as I sit here tickety tacking my keys my mind is a blank page when it comes to other things that I might talk about.

I had these grand ideas that I would stream some more this weekend, but since my wife spent most of her time downstairs… I was inclined to do the same. I don’t like streaming when I could be disturbing her, so instead I just kept playing. I really wish Forge did what I wanted it to do… namely that it would take real screenshots to a directory, instead of getting uploaded to the Forge website. The problem I have run into in the past is that I cannot run Fraps at the same time as Forge, and without Fraps I don’t have my stable source of screenshotting anything that crosses my screen. I tend to disable the in game screenshot keys and use fraps to dump all of my game screenshots into one standard directory to make pulling from it for blogging purposes easier. The other problem with forge is that the clip size was too limited to snapshot an entire boss fight. I also wish there was a way to back up my stream to youtube the same way I can with twitch. Nonetheless I might give it another shot soon.

Shoddy Shipyards

Yesterday I spent some time in World of Warcraft, for all the wrong reasons. The night before I had left my phone upstairs on the charger, and by the time I got situated on the sofa and realized that I didn’t have my phone… and as a result did not have access to my FFXIV authenticator I could not be bothered to get up. The Blizzard client on the other hand authenticates far less often, when connecting from the same machine over and over… and I was able to get in with just my account information. As a result I played for a bit, long enough to unlock Shipyards and the first and I think second camps in Tanaan Jungle. The renovations to my garrison however that resulted in the building of my shipyard however were not quite so successful as I noticed I now apparently have a break in my wall. It was one of those things that I caught out of the corner of my eye as I rode past, and now I cannot keep myself from seeing it every time I ride to the shipyards to check on progress.

The journey into the jungle is pretty much the same as the journey out of it. You complete objectives which moves the storyline further, and unlocks an additional base camp. I am not terribly far into it at this point so I am not sure how long this mission goes. It was around the time I got to the second camp that I needed to stretch my legs… and while I was up I grabbed my phone so I could play other things. I have to give Blizzard credit because they do this moving target as you go through a zone thing really well. There were several moments like this during the leveling process, where you help this or that base to progress the storyline, and those tended to be the best part of this expansion. If they had somehow managed to create an entire expansion around moving the ball forward and delivered new content on a monthly basis I think I would be significantly happier than I am currently. As it is right now patch 6.2 just feels like too little too late for me. Other than the break in my outer defenses, the craftsmanship of this patch seems to be on par with the rest of the content they have released, so at some point I want to finish to see how things progress.

More Mobile Gaming

One of my biggest complaints this expansion has been that Garrisons turned out the way they did. I was hoping for player housing, and what I got instead was a mobile game… that was not mobile at all. All of the mechanics that go into the garrison and the shipyard as well are the same sort of ploys that go into getting people to keep playing a mobile app. I have been playing the hell out of Fallout Shelter for example, and it is the exact same sort of gameplay as you find in the Garrison. You have abilities that you use and then timers that you are waiting out… so you can do additional things… all the while juggling limited resources and trying to find ways to replenish them. There is nothing really “wrong” with this sort of cooldown based gameplay, because it seems to work phenomenally well in getting us to keep pushing buttons on our phones. The problem here however is… we are not on our phones. In fact we are having to do this sort of upkeep based gameplay on a client that requires a PC to log in and check. The end result has been me logging into my characters in the morning and in the evening for most of this expansion to do nothing but swap missions.

I think more than anything… this has been what has grated on my nerves this expansion. These mechanics place me into the game on a regular interval… but I am not actually “playing” the game when I am in it. Instead I am juggling the upkeep of a mobile game, without an easy to use mobile interface. As I have moved forward into the Shipyards it feels like they are taking the whole follower mechanic to the next level with allowing players to customize the ships… which means you need to go locate the blueprints to make various upgrades, while also locating blueprints for various ships. It just feels like this would be a really enjoyable experience had they added it to the WoW Armory app as a mini-game that you could either interface with in game… or through an easy to navigate menu on your phone. Instead the result is giving us something that feels more cumbersome than daily quests ever did, and at the same time extracting us from the game world… and keeping us holed up in our garrison scheduling this next batch of missions for our dozen alts. This experience makes me question even further if Blizzard actually understands its player base at all… and what made their game great for all those years.

Wizard Chores

January 5, 2015 by Belghast

Back to Work

Last night I think I caught up completely on my sleep that had been missed from the previous days. As a pre-emptive strike I took some Melatonin about 7:30 last night, which put me in the mood for bed around 9 pm. Apparently I slept like a rock not really waking up until after midnight, and only then for a drink. I woke up a few times in between but I have to say it was probably the most solidly I have slept in ages. Here is hoping that this extra sleep helps me through today because I have a feeling it is going to be a rough one. I absolutely love the period of time between Christmas and New Years. I’ve been with my current job long enough to need to “burn down” my vacation a few times a year to keep from losing any. So I decided that the perfect solution was to take off the few break times my teacher wife gets, so we can actually spend them together.

As such I generally take off starting that Friday before the week of Christmas and going back the Monday after New Years. The problem is… two weeks off is a really long time, and I am completely out of “work mode” at the moment. I have tons of stuff to do upon coming back, but for the life of me I can’t really remember any of it. I am sure this morning as I sift through a mountain of emails it will all come crashing down on my shoulders. It will be an interesting time because not only am I going back to a New Year… but also going back to new leadership of my department. Time to scurry around and get prepared for all the stuff that is going to happen in the coming months. Since I did not get a text, call or email asking for help… I have to home that means everything went smoothly while I was gone.

Wizard Chores

Doing your Garrison dailies has become collectively known as “Wizard Chores” and the problem with that is I have no frame of reference for WHY… other than maybe the Sorcerers’ Apprentice? The earliest mention I could find is during a Reddit thread, but pretty much since release a handful of my guildies have been calling it that. While I have embraced the term, I always find it odd… considering I don’t really play that many “Wizard” type characters. Yesterday I mentioned that I was finally about to start my Garrison dailies on twitter, which is a long drawn out process of swapping between alts for awhile. I’ve heard folks refer to this process as the “Garri-go-round” which is also fitting, because it sees everyone in the guild logging in all their alts to make sure everything gets harvested and looted. In the middle of all of this, I had a friend on twitter ask just how much time it takes. Well honestly… not as much as you might think.

My main Belghast, has a tier 3 everything in his Garrison except for the Fishing Shack… and that is largely because I have done next to no fishing in Draenor and have yet to unlock the tier 3 blueprint. Without a doubt he is my longest “Wizard Chore” of the day, but even then I would say if I am focused I get done in 5 to 10 minutes and if I get distracted maybe 15 minutes? Now I currently have seven characters with their Tier 2 Garrison, and I believe at last count I had 5 mines and 3 herb gardens in total. So you take that 5 to 10 minutes per character and multiply it by seven alts… and you start to get some actual time. I would guess on a daily basis it takes me about an hour or so of fiddling with characters before I finally settle on the one I am going to play.

Feeling Productive

The process does require some jumping through hoops but overall I feel far more productive at the end of it than I ever did doing daily quests. I think the fastest I ever managed to get a SINGLE faction worth of Dailies down was 30 minutes per character, and that was during Burning Crusade doing the Isle of Quel’danas dailies. With more modern dailies there was seriously no way in hell I was going to do more than one characters worth per day… and maybe just maybe on the weekends I would do ALL of my characters. With the Garrison it feels natural that you tend to your base before going out into the world, because that is exactly what the Garrison feels like… your home in Draenor. With Belghast I have a Bank, Guild Bank, Void Storage, Transmogrifier, and eventually if I can get the rest of the parts an Auctioneer. I have everything I need in one place without having to deal with the fact that someone thought it was an awesome idea to set on the mailbox with their Corehound mount. Fiddling with the bits of my Garrison make me feel balanced and ready to go out into the larger world and encounter people once more.

The thing is… Garrison save me so much time. At least once a week I would go into a farming frenzy that would take several hours worth of mining, herbing, and skinning to be able to support another weeks worth of daily tradeskill cooldowns. I have one of every kind of tradeskiller in my menagerie of alts, and at this point I have all of them but my tailor with a garrison… something I really need to remedy. Other than farming leather as a consequence of playing my hunter… I do absolutely ZERO farming of resources per week. I have enough gardens to keep myself supplied in pots and flasks as well as being able to dump resources into the trading post whenever I need to. I have more than enough ore to be able to craft a True Iron effigy of myself and then have plenty left over to create effigies of all of my other characters… because seriously you get a lot of ore. Basically this hour long daily routine keeps the wheels of my alt machine whirring smoothly.

The Savage Blood Problem

The biggest problem with this whole smoothly running crafting machine… is the fact that EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER needs Savage Blood. It doesn’t matter what your tradeskill is, or if it even makes sense to be using blood with it… to upgrade your gear you are going to need 15 of these things at a time. The problem is that there is a single way to get Savage Blood as drops… and that is through the use of a single garrison building… and only at tier 3. Of course you can turn in 750 Primal Spirits to get your 15, and that is precisely why I do my Mine and my Herb Garden every single day… because both generally yield quite a few. But still at best I am yielding a single Savage Blood per character every other week. My friend pegged my problem with the Barn when she referred to it as the slaughter house. The Barn just isn’t something enjoy doing, and trapping animals… just somehow feels wrong to me.

Granted I am out in the world on a daily basis killing critters of all sorts. But then I feel like I am actually using the resources from those critters properly. When I kill a beast on my leatherworkers, I can use all of the resources from it. When I trap an animal… it just sits there helplessly as two hicks banter back and forth… all the while a blood animation spurts out of the trap to really drive home what a horrible human being you are for doing it. I have built barns on most of my alts, but I just can’t ever seem to bring myself to use them. Maybe once I get the tier 3 one.. the lure of Savage Blood will be too great for me to avoid doing it, but man it is not something I care about at all. It feels like a pretty crappy choice that if you did not build a barn, and you do not trap lots of animals… you are basically screwing yourself out of upgraded gear. I feel like they need to make a chance of getting savage blood from ALL of the buildings, much like there is a chance of getting Apexis Crystals. If they fix that then I will have very few complaints about the Garrison system… other than the fact that there is no Stable Master for my hunter.

Opening the Mines

November 30, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat #33 – Crafting, Puzzles and Raven

Last night we had a special guest on AggroChat that may turn into a more permanent addition, but for not we are playing that by ear. Raven is a friend that I initially met through Twitter but we all have become close to through our time spent in Final Fantasy XIV. She has been awesome with offering to fill in with her characters whenever we happen to need them for our guilds semi-regular shenanigans. With Rae’s recent absence from the show I had been kicking around the idea of bringing on another person, and thankfully Raven showed some interest in doing it. Hopefully she had as much fun as the rest of us did, and she brought some interesting takes on the topics we discussed.

Last night was a massive meandering show where we talked about some of our favorite puzzle games at length even dredging things up like Tetris Attack. We talked about the Road Not Taken, which is quite possibly the most depressing puzzle rpg ever. We talk Super Smash brothers, and do a horrible job at trying to guess Ashgar’s favorite character. We talk about Kodra’s experience playing Dragon Age Origins and how he is ultimately playing a completely different game than I ever managed to play. We fall into a giant Final Fantasy XIV crafting discussion, since Raven is the pocket expert on the topic. Finally I discuss my frustrations with Molten Core 40 man LFR from this past Tuesday and how it really does make players not ever want to do 40 man again.

As I am writing this post I am still editing away on the episode or more so the audio is rendering. We ran really long, but at this point I am not quite sure how long. We might have ultimately recorded our very first two hour long episode… this may or may not be a good thing. I think everything flowed extremely naturally with our newest guest host, so hopefully that can be a thing that happens more often. Even if not I am extremely grateful for Raven filling in and offering her views on the completely unprepared list of topics. Our complete and total lack of organization would throw some people off, but she took to it like a champ.

Opening the Mines

My initial goal upon reaching level 100 was to be able to get geared for the impending opening of the first raid, that happens this Tuesday. As such for the better part of a week I have been well over the 630 required cap to get into raiding. Additionally I have been helping out various players that needed another dps or tank for doing their own heroic gearing. Now however I am taking a bit of a step back and working on some of my alts. Right now my goal is to get each of them to the level where they get their Tier 2 Town Hall and with it a mine and a profession hub. Since I have an army of level 90 characters, this is going to take awhile but it should allow other tradeskill materials to start flowing in naturally on all of my characters. As such I worked up Exeter my blacksmith and miner first with the hopes of eventually using him to fuel some of my gear on my warrior. That said by the time I get around to making that gear I might already have epics in those slots. In any case I now have his T2 Town Hall and T2 Mine so he is finally self sufficient in the creation of truesteel ingots.

Next I am opting to work on my leatherworker/skinner Worgen Druid Belgarou. I noticed that most of the smithing patterns also require leather, so as such I need someone that can bring it back in large quantities. Last night while recording the podcast I worked on getting the druid through the opening sequence at the dark portal, and now I am working through the various early areas of Shadowmoon Valley. Unfortunately this character does not have an heirloom weapon, and the lower attack damage is noticeable. My hope is that I can limp by with enough gear gained through the various treasure hunts in the zone. I am also having to relearn how to play a feral druid… which feels a bit strange these days. It feels like I only really have one attack button, and a bunch of optional attacks. That said I should probably research that class further, because my survival seems to be lacking at times.

Exciting Guests All Around

Now comes the time to be extremely vague. This morning I am recording the next episode of Bel Folks Stuff, and for those who have not been listening to them.. it is where I grab a personality in our community and talk to them about the various things that are important to them. Previously I have had Gypsy Syl and Rowan Blaze on… and this guest is going to be just as awesome. The thing is I am honestly a bit nervous about it. Syl and Rowan I have gamed with or at the very least hung out on voice chat with… so were both super familiar to me. This guest is someone I have the utmost of admiration for… but have never actually cross paths with in any games. I am sure it will end up being fine, as when I close the office door and go into serious recording mode… I seem to never have a shortage of anything to talk about. That said I think you guys will be absolutely pumped over who I have for a guest this time.

Similarly my hope is to turn this episode around much more quickly than the previous ones. I sat on the recording with Rowan for a good month, and as such it ended up kinda bizarre as we talked about a few issues… that were resolved or at least changed during Blizzcon. Right now I am tentatively planning on having this third episode of Bel Folks Stuff out if at all possible by this coming Friday. That should give me time to edit and fiddle and get things ready for the public, but hopefully still keep it from sounding outdated like the one with Rowan did. I don’t have that huge of an installed listener base yet, but this is mostly something I am doing for my own sake and enjoyment rather than for any sort of internet fame. Then again all of the things I do are mostly for my own entertainment.

The Month is Over

This morning I am thankful that the month is done. This was hands down one of the hardest challenges I have done on my blog. There were so many mornings that I was completely finished with the post and starting at the above logo not sure what to write about under it. The first few days were rather easy, but after that I kept struggling to find something else to say… that also somehow related back to my post. I think I mostly succeeded but there are times when it really is difficult to count your blessings. I think I wrote some really solid blurbs during the month, some of which that maybe even surprised me a bit. That said I am more than happy to close the book on this little chapter and move on to the next thing whatever it might be. Thanks for riding along with me on this journey.