January 2016 - Page 3 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Literal Pay to Win

January 23, 2016 by Belghast

Actual Pay to Win

One of the bogeymen of the MMO industry for years has been the concept of “Pay To Win” or the fear that those with the most money can end up with the best stuff. The cycle of what makes an MMO has been right or wrong built on this illusion of a meritocracy. The general idea being, that if you work hard and get really good… you can have the best items in the game for your efforts. The problem with this is that it in itself has always been a lie. Last night I spent several hours hanging out with friends playing Diablo 3, and during that time I simply was along for the ride… getting carried so unbelievably hard that during greater rifts I was gaining a paragon level damned near every-time my friend Carth killed something. Nothing about this situation is me actually having any real merit, but instead was a situation of I knew someone who was willing to drag me along for fame and glory while at the same time increasing their own magic find chances. The same has always been the case with raiding in general, that it is more about who you have an “in” with and that can get you into this or that raid… rather than pure skill. However these games are built under the pretenses that these obstacles need to be there in order to maintain the social order, and keep the gamers from rioting.

In the past when there has been even an hint of “Pay To Win” there have been riots in the streets. The problem being that, there are many games right now with ways to shortcut your way to victory. Granted in many cases they don’t take you all the way there, and you still have to do a lot of things to truly catch up. It has become perfectly acceptable for games like World of Warcraft or Everquest II to sell character boosts, that allow you to jump instantly to an end game equivalent level and be decked out in equivalent gear, saving you the time of actually leveling. So the question is… why is this acceptable but it is not acceptable to sell armor and weapons? I’ve been mulling over these questions while playing Warframe over the last few weeks. The truth is… that game is absolutely a pay to win scenario. If you were to spend multiple thousands of dollars on that game, you could in theory have the absolute best in slot gear for every single frame. The funny thing is that while I know this is the case… it doesn’t actually hinder my enjoyment. I don’t feel like I am somehow being robbed of my experience, but instead I know in the back of my head there is always an out… if I ever get down a path that ends up being too grindy.

Money for Time

“Pay to Win” in the case of Warframe is a bit of a misnomer, because in the purest sense that would mean you are getting something with your money that no one else can get without stepping up to the plate and spending an equal amount. There are lots of games with lootbox grab bags…. and these always seem super insidious to me… I am looking at you Rift and your mounts. Warframe however just feels honest about it. You can farm a planetary boss over and over until you get all three parts of a Warframe to drop… and then purchase the equivalent blueprint off the market for in game credits, or you can just bypass the entire process and pay 200-400 platinum to have it in your grubby hands right then and there. You are paying to speed up time… because there is the act of actually grinding the components… and then gathering up the materials through running missions on planets. Finally there is the actual time of crafting the thing. Each of the three sub components take about 24 hours to craft, and then the final Warframe craft takes between 2 and 3 days depending on if it is a normal or a prime frame. So if you absolutely have to have something right then and there…. you can pay a premium to get it delivered into your hands.

What I find more interesting though is just how thriving the secondary market is when it comes to purchasing items. There are so many things that you can trade in this game, and for almost every single one of them there is a secondary market. Players are limited to a specific number of trades per day, but you can often times find what you are looking for in the secondary market for prices cheaper than the official shop. So while you can’t actually buy the Prime Rhino Warframe from the shop right now, you can find a player that has collected the four component pieces and essentially pay them platinum for the act of farming it for you. So the cycle is interested, in that those who have the time to run missions over and over to farm up complete pattern sets…. can easily turn that time into money. The folks who don’t have the time, but can afford to spend some money… can turn that money into the resources that help them play the game more efficiently. It is far from a utopia, but it is nowhere near the apocalypse that most MMO players would predict.

Two Way Street

I think the key to this feeling overall “fair” is the fact that it is absolutely a two way street. There are lots of times in MMOs where the “house” steps in the middle and offers a not entirely fair deal to both sides of the equation. For example in the case of the World of Warcraft token… it is not literally a case of one human selling a commodity to another human. Instead there is an algorithm in the middle, that buys tokens from players for a floating amount of in game gold… and then sells that token back to players who want to use it in lieu of subscription time. The problem is… this formula takes human nature out of the equation, the thing that makes the whole experience interesting. In games like Rift and EQ2, that have direct exchange of subscription token to currency between two players…. the patient player can wait out the best possible deal. There were many cases where I sat on a token for weeks until I found someone who absolutely had to have that token right then to continue their substitution, and wound up getting a premium for it. Similarly I am sure there are players who took advantage of market surplus to stock up on tokens when they were cheap and ended up spending far less in game currency as a result. The reason why that felt better, was that there were options… that you were not essentially dealing with a vending machine that took its on theoretical cut.

What I think I like the most about this situation in Warframe is that it feels like I have a lot of options. I can go much more slowly and solo the planets trying to collect the items I need, or I can pester my friends to run it with me multiple times . I could go to the aftermarket and hit the trade channel and look for the items I need to finish out a blueprint set. Or if i am really desperate I can simply open my pocket book, but in all cases I have several different paths to the end goal, and as a result I don’t feel nearly as trapped as I often do in other games. For example right now I would love to have a Moose in World of Warcraft, but the raid I have connections with… that can easily get me one… happens to run at the same time as we record AggroChat. Do I want a moose because it is some status symbol, that somehow places me above other players? God no… I just like collecting mounts, and I like the idea that it looks like a normal group mount but can also fly. If I could plunk down money and pick that mount up on the store… you can bet I would rather than trying to do the copious amount of social engineering it will actually take to get me that damned mount. Warframe…. I can take either path. I can work with friends towards a goal… or I can simply grease the wheels and get everything I feel like I want faster. In truth… I feel like we as players are far more scared of “Pay to Win” than is really warranted.

Blade and Soul Impressions

January 22, 2016 by Belghast

Change of Plans

This morning I was all ready and prepared to go on an angry tear about the change to specs in World of Warcraft on Legion Alpha. Then I thought to myself… my blog has already hosted more than enough “I’m Angry at WoW” posts that I really did not need to add another one to the pile. I still think the idea is quite possibly the dumbest I have seen yet, but I figure if it does go in… I can either deal with it, or stop playing again and no amount of gnashing of my teeth is going to make a change. I have next to zero clout when it comes to things like that, so better just to ignore it for the moment and try not to get worked up over it. In the meantime however I finally was able to pop into Blade and Soul and give the game a proper try. I talked yesterday about some of my misgivings…. of which there were many, so the game started off on negative footing before I even entered. Last night my friend Liore mentioned that the newly added servers had no real queues, so as a result I ended up rolling a new version of Squirrelghast on that server. I am guessing that names are game wide, since I could not create a “Belghast” on Gunma the server I ended up rolling on. So while I will always probably think of it as Squirrelghast I am guessing technically I am some sort of black fox… but the tail is so fluffy and curvy that it reminds me of a squirrel. Also if I was being super pedantic about it… I would be Squirrelgrave since I ultimately had to go with Belgrave for the reboot character.

The game is shockingly charming… and I say shockingly… because I really did not expect much. The localization team has done an amazing job of shaping the story into something that I cared about. I admittedly cannot really remember any of the names, but the opening story arc involves you training at the Hongmoon academy under a guy that I am going to forever call “Dog Grandpa” because he is a Lyn and grandfatherly. Then a lady with a name that I also don’t remember so I am just going to call her “Evil Bayonetta” comes into the neighborhood and causes a ruckus. You watch her kill your fellow classmates, and find out that one of them…. that is pretty much exactly like Byakuya Kuchiki from Bleach… betrayed you for the special school scrolls. At this point Dog Grandpa transforms into Akuma from Street Fighter and whipping some ass, until Evil Bayonetta threatens your life… and he pays his own life and the blade he had been guarding to save you. At which point you get blasted off of magical sky castle place into the ocean and are found by a village guard captain that also just happens to be a former Hongmoon student. With this you begin your journey to be the best that ever was… and I am guessing we will travel to other towns… and meet other conspicuous former Hongmoon students that have life lessons to teach us. The entire game intro really does feel like watching Anime, and while I made up names for people… it was enjoyable and I did actually have some feels when Dog Grandpa sacrificed himself for my characters life.

Rise of Cricket

Honestly I have to say the game itself is really rather fun, or at least fun in the same ways that TERA was fun. The primary difference here is that the quests that you do seem to have some merit to them… rather than just being random grindy nonsense. The localization team has given the various people you meet, including the random peasants… personality and humor and it makes going off and fetching five healing salves or slaying 10 blackrams enjoyable. The mechanics work out really similar to TERA where your left mouse button is used for your resource builder/default attack, and your right mouse button is your resource spender. Then in addition to that you have various numbered special attacks and openers that you can use during battle, in addition to some quick time events that occur that allow you to for example stomp your enemy when they are knocked down. The combat feels really fluid and the animations are awesome. While I don’t normally go for that running on wires nonsense from kung fu movies…. when you sprint with your arms swept back… it just feels nice and when you do the whole glide thing in mid air it is surprisingly addicting. The game progresses smoothly and most interactions are doing using the F key which serves the purpose of the generic “interaction” key that some other games have. If you are used to TERA or Neverwinter or an “Action” MMO of the sort… then you should get accustomed to this game rapidly.

The world itself is gorgeous… and works well. Sure the textures are not always the best in the world… but the overall presentation “works”. I think what adds the most to this is the fact that the soundtrack itself is really well woven into the game. It changes regularly based on area of the world, so when you step foot near the graveyard it suddenly becomes more sinister, and when you are back in town it becomes a happy market tune. The only nuisance so far is the fact that a number of the areas are instanced, and there is a slight hitch when you zone into them. I am not sure if this is due to server load, or if there will always be this little hitch but it gets frustrating at times. Some areas are completely seamless, so I am guessing this is mostly happening where there are phasing or in a location where the actors change frequently. For example the Mayors Office or the Healers building… are instanced… but in both cases I have had several different interactions in those buildings. Its a quirk and you get used to it, but just something to expect. There also seems to be quite a bit of delay on waiting for NPCs to load in on your screen when you first arrive in an area, but this is nothing worse than the stuff I am used to dealing with in WoW.

Reservations

So far I am enjoying myself, but not sure if I am enjoying myself enough to actually spend money. Nor am I really certain how long I will remain playing. I was plenty fine with logging out and playing some Warframe after a few hours of gameplay, knowing that I would likely not make it through the queues again that night. So when you contrast that with a game like Final Fantasy XIV when we played at launch…. and I got so damned angry about the prospect of ever having to log out and fight the login boss again… that tells you it was enjoyable but nothing world shattering. There is also a lot of silly bullshit that is happening in the game that is super cringeworthy. When you first meet the character of Namsoyoo above, you get the impression that she is a very young girl… then when it pans out for the first time you see her wearing some sort of gauze based dress with insane anti-gravity boobs. The games bread and butter seems to be gratuitous T&A action in a way not dissimilar from the Dead or Alive franchise. All of this is sad, because the game and the localization are actually rather good… and don’t really need the oversexed window dressing. Now I have yet to run into super insidious, but right now it just seems a little much like somewhere the original artists were blushing and going “tee hee hee boobies”.

The game certainly has some character, and the first time you meet a really important character you get this cool cinematic intro thing…. which unfortunately has these insanely pixelated fonts that send my eye twitching like mad. I mean I realize that this game has been out since 2012… but we had better computers than that back then right? As far as performance… I am running this at 1080p on my GTX 960 card with pretty much everything cranked up as far as I can tell because their sliders are also somewhat nonsense, and I am getting a smooth 60 fps all of the time with little or no dips, so I am guessing the game will run smoothly on a toaster. So long as I focus on Squirrelghast I am pretty happy playing the game and being an adorable but super serious blade dancer. The other big negative right now is that everyone that I know seems to be spread out pretty evenly among the servers. However the gold spam is so horrible that honestly I am completely oblivious to the fact that chat even exists, so if someone were trying to message me and have conversations I wouldn’t notice. I have this feeling that Blade and Soul is going to be a very solo experience for me, and one that I will work out of my system in a few weeks, rather than a game I am going to set down roots. However if you are looking for a pretty fun action based MMO, you might give it a look. I didn’t expect anything… but enjoyed a couple of hours of running amok in this pretty landscape, and I suspect that if you also go into it with similarly lowered expectations you might enjoy yourself too.

Squirrelghast

January 21, 2016 by Belghast

Flak Cannon Time

When it comes to playing Warframe I have quite literally spent almost 99% of my time playing the game…. in a full or partial group. This greatly colors my feelings about the game, and in truth it has allowed me to play in a super inefficient manner. Last night we had several group missions and then when Tam went to class and Ashgar went to bed… it just kinda broke up and never reformed in spite of us having several people there. Instead of grouping I opted to start working on some of the missions I had not actually unlocked, and I have to say… I am pretty bad at this game. At the very least my chosen play style is not exactly a solo friendly play style. When I am playing my Excalibur with a Bow…. it works great, because I can sneak around and get a bunch of stealth kills. However last night I was trying to level my Atlas with a Braton… and the ability to stealth kill anything was non-existent. In truth I feel like most of the problem is the fact that I have yet to really sort out how I want to mod anything. At some point I need to spend an entire evening leveling mods, and deciding which ones work best with which weapons.

On the positive side of things, I did manage to finish up all of the sub components of the Rhino Prime and now simply have to wait the 72 hours crafting time to get it. I also managed to finish up the Drakgoon Flak Cannon last night, so I spent some time playing with that as well. I keep calling it a Flak Cannon because it very much reminds me of the Flak Cannon from Quake 3. At close range it can be fired like a shotgun, but if you charge up the attack it can be fired from a much longer range and still be effective. I am digging it quite a bit… and managed to have quite a bit of good luck with it running some missions. I still think that the Strun is probably a better choice for a charge in and sword damage playstyle like I tend to favor, which is something that Ashgar suggested. For the time being I am having a blast with this weapon…. and yes that pun was intended. The other thing I did last night was start building a Boltor rifle, to see if I like that as was suggested to me by Scarybooster. I mean in theory I could have gone shopping for a Boltor prime, but I happened to have all of the crafting mats available to make one without really dipping low in anything. I guess tonight I will give it a shot and see what I think about it.

Blade and Soul

Right now the new hotness at least among the blogosphere seems to be Blade and Soul, which just launched this week. In fact at this moment it seems like unless you are paying for the game, it is highly unlikely that you are going to actually get to play it. My twitter timeline has been full of folks posting pictures of the insane queue times just trying to log in. The other big problem that I have seen is that it seems like no one is actually playing on the same server. I did a few quick queries and it seemed like everyone I know is playing on completely different servers. I had no real interest in this game prior to launch, and honestly…. there isn’t much about it after launch that interests me. That said…. since it is a freemium game I have this overwhelming desire to at least give it a shot. I have to admit I have some pretty severe biases against Korean MMO art styles. There is just something about the art aesthetic that annoys me… the cloyingly pretty men, and the insane “Jessica Rabbit” style women… its just not my thing.

The positive is that there is a Lalafell like race in Blade and Soul so I decided to try and focus instead on the maximum cuteness potential of that. The problem there is… it just isn’t as good as a Lalafell. I created what I am dubbing Squirrelghast on the Old Man Cho server…. simply because I liked the name. At some point if I end up liking the game I will try and sort out another server to roll on that actually has people I know. The only negative is that I have yet to get any further than character creation because I end up getting dumped into a massive queue… and decided that I would simply rather play Warframe or Diablo 3. It is my hope that over the weekend I will be able to get in and give the game a proper try. The only thing I really know about it from clips is that it seems to be an MMO about the whole flying wire “crouching tiger hidden dragon” style of combat. These movies never really appealed to me either, because they just felt so over the top silly to see someone calmly flying across the screen. I’ve heard however that the localization job that Carbine did on this title was really damned good, and much like Final Fantasy XIV they slipped in a ton of cultural references. If for no reason other than that… I kinda want to play it. I really love the folks at Carbine and they seem to do a great job with the games under their care, so it is my hope that I will be charmed enough by the localization effort to overlook all the things I don’t care for.

Rhino Prime Incoming

January 20, 2016 by Belghast

Secondary Market

Once again last night I spent most of it running around with friends in Warframe. At the moment this seems to be the new hotness among the AggroChat podcast crew, and I guess in part I am going to ride the bubble as long as it lasts. I know like many games this one is likely to burst at some point, when either we enter the endgame grind…. or one of us tries to do something that the game doesn’t really allow for. However in the meantime I am enjoying my space ninja action, and spent most of last night leveling “stuff”. Another really important thing that I discovered yesterday was the trade market. Now Tam and Ashgar had both been talking about the deals that they had been getting in trades with players, and I never really spent much time thinking about it… that is until I realized that I was quickly becoming the only player without a prime frame. In many ways the prime frames are just flat out better than a normal frame, and since I had already been laboring towards trying to get a Rhino, I thought maybe I would check out the potential of just bumping that up to prime.

Within a few minutes I was able to find a Prime frame for considerably cheaper than the price of the base Rhino frame on the game store. So I guess in truth if you are willing to spend ANY money on the game at all… you can pick up some bargains. I know some of our crew have picked up really nice weapons… and managed to get some freebie mods thrown in to fill out the rest of the trade window. So for me in particular… last night was all about farming up the rest of the components I needed to craft my Rhino Prime over night. Unfortunately when I checked in this morning I still have a few hours left to go on the build, and then 72 hours after that before I actually get to drive my frame around. In the meantime however… I need to sort out exactly what I want to use for weapons on my stompy mech. I love my excalibur, but there are just times where it does not seem well suited for some activities. Mostly I feel like I need to have a solid backup for when running around like mad and slashing things with a sword is not necessarily the best idea.

Atlas Rising

The other big activity of the night was to begin work on my Atlas frame, that I had picked up some time ago… but never spent much time working on. For the time being I have it decked out in a Braton, those starter fist weapons, and a Lex pistol…. all pretty much for the purpose of leveling them since we were running low level content. Early in the evening we were trying to make it through Phobos, and we ended up struggling quite a bit… so it forced us all to switch back to our “main” frames for the purpose of finishing up that planet. However after that we shifted to doing low level defense runs which are pretty amazing for leveling stuff. By the end of the evening Altas was hovering around 14 with the weapons I think in the 16-18 range. The big draw right now of Atlas is the rock shield ability that I can also push forward as a ball of stone to bowl over enemies. This was absolutely amazing for “wave clear” when the Grineer were stacked up in neat little columns. Nothing yet has beaten the pure joy of hitting the giant “Nope!” button that is Excalibur’s Radial Blind, but this comes close.

I absolutely feel like an earthbender though, and there are several of the abilities I have yet to even play with… like the ability to summon rock golems to fight by my side. The other takeaway of the night is just how damned awesome the Braton is. I was looking for a good light machine gun, to give me that almost destiny like feel… and that really does it. I also plan on building a Latron soon, because several other members of my team have had good luck with that. From the sounds of it… the Braton is more of an Auto Rifle in Destiny terms, and the Latron would be something more like the Scout Rifle. Both are weapons that I really enjoy, but for vastly different purposes. The only thing I wish this game supported was the changing of loadouts while in a mission. Because sometimes you hit situations where your weapons are just ineffective and it would greatly improve the experience to be able to swap things up planet side. Maybe there is a way and I just have not found it, but in any case… because I don’t think I can do it… it makes me pick more generalized builds so that if my primary is ineffective, then my secondary will work as a backup. Regardless… I am still very much enjoying myself and looking forward to getting to play with a Prime frame.