final fantasy xiv

Tale of Two Raids

Last night I spent the evening in Final Fantasy XIV with my raid of friends working our way through figuring out Turn 1 of the Second Coil of Bahamut…  that is universally known as “Turn 6”.  I know its confusing, but the “Coil of Bahamut” all three parts are treated as though they were one big raid, in spite of the fact that they do occur in three different locations.  One of the interesting things about our Monday night group is that we specifically try and do as little research as possible before going into the fights.  A lot of the joy we have found has come from figuring out the mechanics on the fly and last night was no different.  Granted last night specifically it probably cost us a kill, since we had the boss down to the 10% territory and simply ran out of time for more tries because we spent so much time trying to figure out how to even do the fight.

On the other hand you have the raid group that I am part of that meets tonight in World of Warcraft.  There we attempt to do all research humanly possibly, watching video of the fight from multiple angles and reading as much information about the fight as we can to be prepared for anything.  I can’t really say which way is better, since they are so vastly different.  I feel like maybe way number one works better in the long run, because so many times I feel like there is a lot of conflicting information when you attempt to “research everything ever”.  While it might take a lot of otherwise meaningless wipes, we in the first method we seem to ONLY learn the way that works for us.  Whereas in the second method we seem to have to discard a ton of information before we can find the path that actually works for our group.

Ignorance Was Bliss

This has the side effect of playing into a theme that has been running in my head for some time, that maybe “more information” isn’t always “better”.  As gamers we have started demanding almost absolute transparency from the developers of the games we play.  We want to know the moment something is being planned, and how it is going to be implemented… and for the love of god how it ultimately will effect all of the work we have done to that point.  We get so caught up in the minutiae of the games we play, and sites like MMO Champion are all too happy to data mine all the tid bits of information even before the companies can tell us.  It is human nature to love feeling like we have insider information, but if everyone knows… is any of it really insider information?  The problem is I think we get lost in a sea of data points and miss the fact that the entirety is far more beautiful than the assemblage of parts.

I love Hotdogs and Bologna, but my continued love of both is dependant upon me not getting hung up on the fact that in both cases they are essentially a congealed slurry of all of the meat parts that have been deemed “unprofitable” for sale in other forms.  Sometimes it is absolutely better to not know how the things you love are made, and as a result I feel like knowing all of this information sets us up for a great pitfall.  There is a gulf between what we as players THINK happens behind the scenes at a game company and what actually does happen.  Just like oil prices can crash if someone murmurs about rumored political problems in an oil rich reason… our enjoyment of the game can also come crashing down if we hear rumors about “problems at a studio”.

Trying to Find Magic

I have been fortunate or unfortunate… depending on your point of view to have had many friends that work for different game studios.  As a result I get to see a completely different side of the industry that most players can see the effect off, but not really understand the way things actually work.  The above picture if of Belgrod Sternblade in Elder Scrolls Online, a character based on my long line of “Bel”something characters in the games I play.  It is awesome to have a namesake in a game, but I am not sure if it was worth the price I paid by being inside the circle of knowledge regarding ESO before it launched.  By the time the game released I had been playing the game in one form or another for over a year at that point.  We as players have the tendency to latch onto the way things used to be, rather than the current state and I was absolutely guilty of that.  From a polish and functional standpoint the game improved leaps and bounds from the moment I started playing… to the moment it launched.

The problem is I could not let go of the fact that I liked the user interface so much better several revisions before the version that actually launched.  Similarly there are players that cannot let go of the fact that we never got the “Path of the Titans” alternate progression path in Cataclysm, or the Dance Studio in Wrath of the Lich  King.  When a developer gives us too much information, especially when features are in a state of flux and “not quite ready for primetime” they are only setting up for player disappointment later when for whatever reason that feature is not nearly as shiny as the “oversold” version.  The fact that I played Elder Scrolls Online through so many revisions absolutely damaged my overall enjoyment of the game when it launched.  So much of the content felt “old” by then, when in reality the game had only been out a few weeks.

Box Art Decisions

As a child I can remember purchasing games on a regular basis without any prior knowledge other than the fact that it “existed”.  Admittedly the box art and the images on the back of the box played a massive role in my choosing habits.  This caused me to miss some really awesome games… I am looking at you Mega Man with the worlds worst box art.  However there were other games that I picked up because they had awesome artwork…  but had some really rough edges that I came to love, only because I was forced to sit there and “enjoy” the $50 that I had just spent.  As such games like Lagoon that admittedly have a ton of problems… are ones I think upon fondly because I stuck with the game long enough to work past the rough spots.  Sure there was the fact that I had sunk my money into a game that was maybe not as awesome as I thought it would be…  but I feel like I also had more of a willingness to put up with the rough spots of a game to try and find the good in it.

I feel like we are bombarded on a daily basis with reason why we “shouldn’t” like this or that, and I myself do it constantly.  I started down a diatribe on twitter yesterday about how much I disliked our Capitol cities in Ashran, and how they feel so much worse than any expansion city to date.  At no point did I mean that the fact that Ashran has shitty cities is adversely effecting my game.  To be truthful I simply don’t go there apart from picking up “roll tokens” once a week, and then maybe if my hearthstone is down.  Otherwise I spend my time in my Garrison, or using the Shrine in Pandaria as my transportation nexus.  The fact that Blizzard has not given me sufficient reason to care about the new “main” city doesn’t stop me from enjoying other aspects of the game.  That said I enjoyed blowing off steam about a small thing that was bothering me.  The problem is… my voice just added to the chorus of negativity surrounding a game that has been out several months at this point.  I feel bad because ultimately I am still having a fun time in part because I am trying not to get hung up on the small details and keep looking for the larger beauty.

Threat Mechanics

Yesterday on twitter I got pulled into a conversation about threat mechanics and whether or not the concept is intuitive to players.  The whole thing started with a comment by my friend Ashgar about the Guardian ability Riot Blade in Final Fantasy XIV.  You get this ability at level 12, before you really grasp how your class mechanics work.  So many Guardians make the mistake of thinking it is an upgrade to their Savage Blade ability because it technically has higher potency and as such deals more damage.  The problem is…  Savage Blade deals silly amounts to threat generation or enmity in FFXIV terms, and Riot Blade does not deal any at all.  As a result brand new Gladiators start doing the Riot Blade combo to regenerate their mana, and at that point stop holding threat on the encounters… and similarly stop doing their job which is to tank.

The root of our discussion was that we wished that Final Fantasy XIV had chosen to give Riot Blade to players later in the game.  The big problem is that by the time you are able to run your first dungeons around level 16, Riot Blade is still the newest thing players have in their toolbox.  But this is also why healing for a new Gladiator becomes one of the most frustrating experiences ever.  Final Fantasy XIV has a really interesting threat meter mechanic in the form of a series of gems that change color based on how much threat you have on a given mob.  We jokingly refer to this as “playing Bejeweled” and you know that it is going to be a rough run when after casting your first heal… everything turns orange to you, aggros you, and you start “heal tanking”.  Some Gladiators listen, and you can get them to adapt their ways…  namely pull with shield throw, flash twice, and savage blade combo until dead.  Other Gladiators refuse to listen and start trying to blame other players.

Does Threat Make Sense?

It was round or about this point that another friend of mine chimed into the conversation to drag us off in a completely different direction.  My friend Talarian asked if we thought “threat” in general was a concept that players understood.  His concept was that dealing damage and healing made obvious sense to a player, since both of those things existed in real life.  But the concept of a tank, or the concept of threat generation abilities don’t have real world equivalents.  To some extent I agree that threat generation is a bit more nebulous than damage or healing, but I totally think “threat” exists in the real world.  As we go through our daily routines the “monkey brain” deep inside of us is constant assessing the world around us.  Whether we want to or not, there is a calculation constantly ticking “is this a threat to me”?  It doesn’t matter if you are walking down a dark alley or if you are trying to navigate the corporate hierarchy…  we are constantly assessing threat to our well being or our interests.

I see the role of threat generation as being a master of influencing others to view you as being the primary threat.  As such it has always made sense to me, be it storming into a room and like a action hero taunting the enemy “Hey Asshole! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!” or simply taking aggressive actions to make someone take notice of what you are doing…  the concept of forcing someone to deal with you makes sense to me.  I think it is human nature to attack the most dangerous target first.  We like getting the most struggle out of the way, so that we can focus on the targets of less threat later.  While the wizard in the back of the room might be the real threat… that heavily armored guy that is coming straight for your with a big damned weapon drawn… is not exactly someone you can ignore and “feels” at the time to be the more immediate threat.  Maybe that is precisely it, managing a sense of immediate harm and forcing encounters to deal with you because of your actions.

We Naturally Recognize Threat

One of the prime examples that I can give as to why “threat generation” works against players is when you are fighting a boss.  When you do a lot of Looking For Raid in World of Warcraft, you notice there are certain tendencies in players.  The first major tendency is to dog pile on whatever the biggest toughest looking mob there is.  It does not matter if you said in raid chat to attack the mage first, or painted a skull over its head… there are still going to be a significant number of players attacking the big guy with the sword and shield.  It is human nature to want to take down the big guy, and we tend to get tunnel vision and focus entirely on that mission if we are not careful.  There are so many times that there is a side mechanic going on that is the REAL threat to the players…  but especially as you get close to victory folks start ignoring the important things mashing their buttons harder trying to kill that big thing they were attacking.  That big boss… has essentially effectively taunted the players into attacking him because of his imposing nature and perceived threat.

Sure games have created this artificial construct of abilities dealing X amount of threat per strike, but still at its core threat is a thing that players inherently understand whether or not they realize it.  Some games have made some interesting choices around threat, by turning it into a target lock where mobs can taunt the players too… and you cannot target anything else for the requisite 6 seconds.  Other games have chosen to make taunt work in PVP encounters by debuffing the damage you deal to anyone OTHER than the tank by a massive amount.  Still others have relied on creating the role of tanking other players through careful use of stuns, slows, and pull effects to act as a physical obstacle that the players have to deal with in order to get to their target.  All of which are tanking, and all of which are essentially “threat generation”.  Sure some games have this as a mechanical number that needs to get bigger, but it exists in every game regardless of the mechanic or not.  We might not know to call it threat, but I feel like by nature we understand that some things are of more danger to us than others.  As such I don’t feel like threat has ever been a foreign concept to players.