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How Diablo Ought Be

October 27, 2013 by Belghast

Hibernation Weekend

This is one of those mornings when I really wish I did not have to write a blog post. I guess in the grand scheme of things… there is nothing forcing me to do so, but I would hate to break my streak of daily posts. This is one of those hibernation weekends when neither my wife or I really want to leave the house. In fact I went out and got breakfast in my fuzzy slippers that look like shoes this morning and a hoodie. Not like the folks at the convenience store really pay too much attention to what people are wearing, but it was a reasonable facsimile of “dressed”.

Yesterday I was completely all over the place game wise. I started off the day by playing quite a bit of Hearthstone, this was a side effect of me wanting the gold from my daily quest and a new friend just getting into the game. Once he got through the tutorial and unlocked a few decks we played a few games. The first game he trounced me liberally, and the second two I managed to pull ahead significantly mostly due to him not getting the cards he needed when he needed them. Playing against actual players has made me extremely aggressive when it comes to Hearthstone, and I am not really sure how to tone that back a notch.

Mixed Bag of Gaming

After hearthstone I poked my head into Rift for a bit, but really didn’t find much enjoyment there. I am not sure what it is but right now Rift is just not that fun of a game for me. I am sure before long I will cycle back around to it and it will once again be the next best thing to sliced bread. I have the same sort of thing going on with EQ2 as well. I have a desire to play some, but when I actually log in I have no desire to do anything. So in both cases I poke my head in and then log back out almost as quickly.

Right now I am still enjoying Allods quite a bit, but I have a feeling that very soon the bottom will drop out. I have heard that after a certain point there are very few non-group quests. Currently at level 8 I am still having no problem at all, and this is sufficiently scratching that World of Warcraft itch. However I get the sense that I am nearing the end of the starter city of <Insert Russian Sounding Name Here>. I am really enjoying the game, and it is extremely well crafted, but as a whole the storyline and missions are forgettable. There is really little “special” about the game other than the awesome soviet era steampunk feel.

Forced

After a bunch of mucking around yesterday, I settled into playing a brand new game with some friends. Forced had been a title that popped up on our radar during the Kickstarter, and was subsequently picked up as a Steam Greenlight title. Well it has officially released this week, and one of my friends decided to buy a four pack and distribute copies. They describe the game as Diablo meets Left4Dead… and to some extent that makes sense. However I do not think that description really explains just how much cooperation is needed to make it through the levels. In many ways it reminds me of Gauntlet Legends… if Gauntlets Legends required you to use the NES Rob the Robot to make it through the levels.

Each of the gladiators chooses a weapon that will dictate their active and passive talent trees as well as set the overall flavor of the arena combat. Above you can see an image of three weapons in the preparation room leading into any of the arenas. I am currently holding the magma hammer and all of the attacks both passive and active are somehow fire based. To the left of that pool is the green daggers, most of the attacks being about speed, stealth and health regeneration. In a way they are the support class in that they can generate combo points on the target than the heavier hitters can then consume. On the bottom left you have the Ice Shield, and this is the tank of the group focusing on being able to negate large amounts of damage. Finally you have the D&D Animated series style lightning bow, with chain lightning and energy based attacks.

How Diablo Ought Be

The controls are also extremely unique… or at least unique to me. In many ways it reminds me of Ikari Warriors in that you have one set of controls to move your body and another to control your facing. If you choose mouse and keyboard this means that WASD will move you physically around the arena and your mouse will choose your facing with Left and Right mouse buttons being your primary and secondary attacks to start out. Later on you will pick up additional attacks Q being the first of these. I assume with a controller one stick is likely your movement and the other your facing with your triggers being your primary attacks, but quite honestly I have not tried this out.

The pace of the action was so intense most of the time, that I quite honestly forgot to hit the screenshot last night. However the gameplay revolves around using the glowing sphere of light Balfus your “spirit mentor” to move around the arena and active switches and traps for you. As a team this gets super tricky since you have ONE balfus and each of you can call it at any given moment… so this involves a lot of communication to figure out who can use it next. Additionally if your timing is right you can position the next person to call it as soon as one objective is done. It is hard to fully understand how the gameplay works cooperatively without seeing it in action. So as a result I am going to embed the trailer that shows quite a bit of play.

Challenging Co-Op

So essentially there are so many ways to fuck over your friends while playing this game. There are maps for example where Balfus provides a protective bubble, and if you stray outside of that bubble you take large amounts of damage per tick. So these force your team to be placed JUST right as you pay your way through the map. It becomes progressively easier to abandon a player on the edges of the map and trap them. So for us… access to voice chat was SUPER handy. We kept communicating and I was generally the dullard that tried his best not to ever call the ball. My job was to call down orbital strikes in the form of meteors upon the heads of the big baddies and consume combo points with my heavy hitting attacks.

You get a crystal for each objective that you complete. On each map there is a completion shard, a time based shard, and one for getting a specific objective. They have made these in such a way as it is super difficult to get all three within one run. So as a result you can do each arena over and over to try and gain as many crystals as you can. Last night in our little 2.5 hour play session we managed to rack up 15 shards. The first world was honestly rather straightforward but as we entered world two… the frequency of cursing increased massively.

Downright Brutal

Face it… you are going to be seeing a lot of this screen. The game excels as forcing various no-win scenarios if you are not fast enough or clever enough to figure out the trick on the first attempt. We would have probably continued on for another hour and a half had one of our players internet not taken a massive dump. At that point we figured… it was a good place to take a break. The gameplay is extremely frenetic, but also amazingly rewarding when you and your friends manage to complete a scenario. If you too have a group of friends to game with… I highly suggest buying a four pack and distributing copies because forced provides an extremely unique gameplay experience for multiple people. As a whole I give the game a big thumbs up.

Playing Dice with Humanity

October 26, 2013 by Belghast

Tribalism

Yesterday my friends were having a long drawn out conversation that started out about the current Roma controversies, wound its way through discussions of any insular society… and like always an hour or so later ended up landing in the game world. Namely discussion fell onto the concept that even within small groups, cliques and teams form and the number over players it takes before that happens. Based on the discussion we agreed that likely the smallest number that really starts to occur is around seven people.

So none of this so far has any real bearing on todays post… but throughout the conversation we started talking about the openness to new players. One of the things that disturbed me a bit, is that one of my friends said that I was most likely the least open to new players, or at least the most suspicious. This went against my own personal vision of myself, considering I am constant abducting people into my guilds on a regular basis. So as I explored this line of thought further, he said that mostly it was due to my views on PUGs.

No PUGs Allowed

While this is not necessarily the thing I would like people to think of when they think of me… my guild as a whole has known for years that if they want me to tank for them, my price is that we have a full group of known good players. Usually this means that they are folks from the guild, but I am also completely open to friends of the guild in these scenarios. Basically… I don’t want to enter the group finder and play dice with humanity. The thing is… this did not used to be the case. I used to PUG players in a regular basis both in dungeons and even raids.

This got me thinking… what changed, why did I no longer even consider finding players outside of my monkey sphere to fill groups. I used to build groups on a nightly basis and even believe in it so much that I wrote a series of guides to covering the finer points of networking, communication and assembly of a winning PUG group. This was not something that was limited to WoW, but something I had done in many games previously. So I guess the question is… what changed to make me so fearful of the player base that I now refuse to pug even a single player into one of the groups I am responsible for.

Before the Dungeon Finder

Without too many leaps of logic I landed on the specific moment it changed… The Dungeon Finder. I have railed on the evils of the dungeon finder for years, but I don’t think I have really elaborated on that point enough. Essentially in the world before the dungeon finder I regularly relied upon social channels, trade chat, and other guilds to find folks to fill out my groups. I drew upon my friends list to fill the most basic elements. As a tank I knew that all I needed to do was find one of my many amazing healers that I worked with regularly, and then the dps could be filled out in short order.

The key point here is that with each player I talked to… I actually took the time to exchange a few lines of dialog with them before throwing them a group invite. It is amazing how much you can gauge about the personality, intentions and general character of a player from a few sentences. There was a very human element to this discourse, and over the years I developed and instinct about who would make for a good dungeon run by the way they presented themselves. To some extent I had learned to prune through the bad apples and seize upon the good ones only.

Additionally playing with players on your own server there was a bit of an honor code in the works. As the guild leader of one of the larger guilds on our server, I knew the leaders of most of the other guilds. So as a result if I had trouble with one of their players in a dungeon run, I knew precisely who to come to with those concerns. This lead most players to be on their best behavior, since there were potential social consequences of making an ass of yourself in public. Additionally I met a lot of really amazing people through this process, many of them that would end up in my guild or raid later on.

Playing Dice with Humanity

The Dungeon finder was the first blow to this world, but since we were dealing with mostly players from our own server… it wasn’t really that bad. I still regularly queued as a tank almost out of welfare to help the folks get those dungeon runs. I continued to still meet great players, and the bad ones were quickly added to my ignore list never to be seen again. However players complained, that the queues were still too long, and not enough tanks and healers were queuing. So as a result Blizzard started the cross server queuing madness and this was the nail in the coffin for me and pugging.

When there are no social consequences to ones actions… the worst possible behavior can be expected if not assumed. Periodically I would get convinced to queue with someone for a dungeon, and every single one of these occasions lead me to log out of the game frustrated and angry afterwards. I learned quickly that if you play dice with humanity, you are always going to loose. I met exactly ONE really awesome player through random groups, and that was only because the player happened to be on my own server. I didn’t really mind braving the bullshit as a DPS, but I refused to tank the instances any longer.

Rift Happened

So in a whole series of events I ended up leaving World of Warcraft, and entered a game without a dungeon finder system. It is funny how quickly I fell back into the old habits of building groups from social channels. Level 50 chat served as a launch pad for groups, and quickly within a few weeks time I had built up a long list of “known good players” that I could draw into dungeons. As a result we were filling out Elite groups on a nightly basis and happily clearing dungeons. I met enough people that there was even talk of merging in with another guild at one point… but we decided against it.

When the dungeon finder was released for Rift I watched the same events play out all over again. The social channels dried up, folks no longer responded to calls for groups in Level 50 chat… and everyone went back to the wow-like ways of relying on the dungeon finder to make a group for them. Additionally the community of the server as a whole suffered. The same old wow-like behaviors came back and the chorus of “PULL BIG” and “GO GO GO” returned as well. So once more.. I stopped grouping and resurrected a rampart around myself with a sign on it reading “No PUGs Allowed”.

From that point forward my rule as a whole has pretty much been… I will tank any dungeon you want me to tank, but you have to make sure we have a full guild group before we do it. I refuse to pug in any players that come from random dungeon finder systems. I would literally rather not do dungeons, than have to deal with the random chance of finding a decent person in the system. Most of the time this is not really a huge deal since I tend to bring a large group of people with me into whatever game we end up playing. However I am running a lot fewer dungeons than I would like to, and I am not sure how I can get past my phobia of strangers. So at the end of the day… after all of this… I guess I can see my friends point.

Trials of Ascension

October 24, 2013 by Belghast

Computer Crash

This morning I really don’t have the time to devote to a proper post as I got upstairs, ate my oatmeal, drank my coffee and then noticed one of my computers was stuck in a booting up loop. As a result I spent most of my normal blogging time trying to resurrect it. It appears to be gone now, and I will have to figure out what happened over the weekend. But in the meantime as I play a somber rendition of taps for it… I need to get a post together today.

Trials of Ascension

File this in the “Yet Another MMO Kickstarter” category. Trials of Ascension came across my RSS feed this morning so I felt like I needed to check it out. Their claim is that they plan to build a “truly innovative MMORPG” and some of the things they mention wanting would definitely be different. The tech demo they posted looks pretty spartan, but then again so did the Pathfinder tech demo. Hopefully given resources they will clean that up a bit. In it’s current state it reminds me quite a bit of the old Atari published MMO Horizons. Some of the features they mention wanting are…

Perma Death – 100 deaths and the character stays dead
Random Everything – no static spawns or dungeons
Hardcore Gameplay – video talks about wanting to challenge the players a lot
No Fast Travel – feels it shrinks the world too much
No Global Chat – whisper and shout only work within a radius
No Names – can’t see character or npc names
Magic Difficult – magic is hard to acquire but extremely powerful
GM Team – live GM events and interaction
Cooperative Crafting – players have to work together to craft items
No Minimap – world map but no way to tell exactly where you are
No Con System – no way to determine the level range of a player or mob

Not For Me, But Maybe You

So what they propose is a drastically different game than what is available currently. I am posting this on my blog because I figure there are several of my readers who would be excited to play something like this. The problem is… I am not. I read the list of features they want to implement, and I remember the fervor that was whipped up before Vanguard released about it being a return to hardcore gameplay. The problem is… players will say they want this sort of a game but they never seem to show up with their pocket books when one is released.

Maybe Kickstarter is a viable vehicle for this sort of niche vision, and potentially it can get built and find a quiet following to keep the lights on. Mostly I am just shining a light on this existing to let folks who might want to support it know about it. Personally nothing they are describing sounds like “fun” to me. I like my modern conveniences and I tend to rebel against the games that don’t have them. However that is not to say that there are not players out there who have been craving this more hardcore and primitive gaming experience. In that case support the hell out of this game and hope it makes it through to fruition.

Failing Resolve

October 21, 2013October 21, 2013 by Belghast

Perfect Drug

This morning I am having a bit of a slow start getting going… so as a result I spent the last 30 minutes or so crawling through my news reader looking for something to inspire me. At which point I landed on this post from Liore talking about her feeling the need to apologize for playing World of Warcraft and the overall negative reaction she has gotten from other gamers. I think in part… the negative attitude is due to the fact that there is really no such thing as a former WoW player. I don’t really intend hyperbole with, but much like an alcoholic you are never really fully over World of Warcraft.

I was so damned pumped the day I got into the Hearthstone beta, and while I am presently having a blast playing it despite how many times I get beat… it has awoken some things that I was not quite ready for. I cannot count how many times after a game of Hearthstone this weekend that I considered reactivating my account and “playing some wow”. I am still resisting, and my little interaction a week or so ago with a trial account is keeping me in part from doing it. World of Warcraft this is wonderful marzipan world that is awesome so long as you are willing not to think about it too much.

Can’t Not Think

The problem is… each time I go back to the game I just end up frustrated about the decisions they didn’t make. World of Warcraft is like that friend you know with so much potential, but they keep making horrible life choices. So when I go back I get frustrated by the Transmog system, and the piss poor community support, and the fact that every single social channel that used to be my lifeblood in the game is dead… since most of the folks I care about have long since moved on. For me World of Warcraft is this magical thing that will never again be, because we have all fundamentally changed from the days when it was our nightly obsession.

We reject WoW so harshly because we know it is basically an empty promise. All it takes is a little bit of nostalgia and reminiscing about the “good ole days” and we are ready to re-up for another ride. Hearthstone has been horrible for me in this aspect, because seeing the cards and the artwork… makes me want to go play Belghast and actually get him to level 90. However my allergy to pugging, or more so TANKING for pugs will end up in tears as I would be going back with no real support structure. House Stalwart still exists, but it is a shell of what it once was, and going back and seeing that is hard on me as well.

Failing Resolve

All of this said… I fully expect over the next few weeks this nostalgia trip that is Hearthstone will eventually end up in me reactivating my World of Warcraft account. I figure I will only last a week or so if I do, and even knowing this going into it… I full expect to do it anyways. I spent most of the weekend trying to play various things without really having much success. I played a little rift, patched up gw2, played a lot of pokemon and hearthstone… and even considered patching up SWTOR. All the while trying to avoid the fact that the rush of nostalgia is demanding me playing some WoW. But all of this is why we push back so hard when we see a friend slip back into playing the game. We know deep down inside that we are likely next to follow.