MMORPG Archives - Page 407 of 412 - Tales of the Aggronaut

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.

End Game

October 13, 2013 by Belghast

Slowing Down

For most of us in House Stalwart the wild ride that was the Final Fantasy XIV storyline has come to a conclusion. As a result a large number of us have dialed back our playtime a bit to recover. This is only magnified by the fact that the game that none of us may speak of is having yet another event and a large number of us are actively playing that. The storyline was extremely exceptional and did everything I would expect in the ending of a classic final fantasy game. However this time it left the door completely open.

It felt much like that first time you transitioned Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past into the Dark World. It feels like we just scratched the surface of the game, which I guess is how the ending of the storyline content should feel in every MMO. Lots of things are resolved, but very quickly you realize that nothing at all is truly resolved. Now that we have spent all the storyline we are left with the fact that other than the wonderful story… the FFXIV experience is a rather skeletal one.

End Game

Basically eight of us have entered the phase of the end game at this point… which is extremely limited. Each step along the path has some pretty severe gear requirements, so what we have ahead of us is a large amount of running the same two dungeons over and over. Basically you are given two paths forward for gear. The first of which is running two 8 man dungeons that reward a lot of tomestones, but absolutely no gear… or running two 4 man dungeons that drop gear but very few tomestones. Neither option feels really good, considering for the time spent running Amdapor you really do not end up with much gear. I’ve run it three times as a tank and have yet to see a single drop.

The real problem is the fact that each run through the dungeon racks up a not insignificant repair bill. One of the big problems I have talked about before is the fact that there really is no good way to gain money at level 50. I carried with me into the end game about 200,000 gil, and that has been going fast as I use it for various needed things at the maximum level. The options I have before me are grinding fates which pay out around 200 gil each, grinding leves which pay out around 500 gil each… and playing the auction house. The problem with the auction house is that `the only thing worth anything really are high level crafted items. Leveling your crafting however can bankrupt your character… so it is a bit of a catch 22.

Relic Weapon

The goal of the game right now seems to be to get your relic weapon and later on your +1 upgrade to it. This is the best item in the game you can get, but much like the Everquest Epic weapon it is a long and drawn out process. To start down this path is a rather expensive one. Firstly you have to acquire the base weapon, for a Warrior this is the Barbarian’s Bardiche. This is crafted by a high level blacksmith and is gathered together out of bits that have to be farmed from a combination of dungeons and overworld zones. They currently go for about 10,000 gil on the open market, and since I do not have access to a max level Blacksmith that is the option I chose to go with. In my experience it costs far more than 10,000 gil to get a smith to create one for you.

From there you need to infuse 2 Battledance III materia onto the item. This once again has to be done by a level 50 blacksmith… and the going rate per infuse on my server is 10,000 gil. Acquiring the Battledance III materia is a whole other matter that is far more time consuming. These are gained from disassembling level 45 or higher items that are 100% spiritbound. The problem is… individual items can be disassembled into a wide variety of different materia. I spiritbound a set of Mithril Plate gear, and did not manage to get a single Battledance III. Ultimately I had a guild member give me one of them, and I bought the second on the open market for 15,000 gil.

So just to get to the point of turning in the infused axe I have already spent over 50,000 gil once you factor in the material costs of the infusions. I apparently got off easily… for a Paladin or a Scholar apparently the costs are more like 100,000 gil. From here it is a series of monsters that I have to take down, starting in Coerthas with the Chimera and ending with Hard Mode Titan. All of which is rather honestly a pretty horrific grind, considering by the time you get to Hard Mode Titan, you damned well better be in full darklight gear, the set you get from the tomestones I talk about grinding out earlier.

Grind, Grind, Grind

Ultimately this is going to be the thing that kills the game for me if they do not introduce some less grindy paths. Right now I have the option of grinding for money, grinding to level other classes or grinding out end game gear. There is nothing left to do in the game that is anywhere near as enjoyable as the questing experience was. At this point, the game is a really fun ride to 50, and then grind city afterwards. I still greatly enjoy the dungeon runs, and I look forward to doing more of that, but that involves getting a large number of people online at the same time. When there is not a full groups worth online, I am finding myself lacking in things I really want to do.

At this point I have leveled my Warrior to 50 and my Bard to 50… but any additional characters involve lots and lots of either mob grinding or fate grinding and right now after having done it twice… that lacks any sort of luster. So I find myself piddling around in other games waiting on enough of a critical mass to form in FFXIV that we can do some dungeons. At this point I really lack interest in doing anything else in the game. I think as time passes I will want to level other classes, but after having ground out two to 50, I need a bit of a break. As a result I have been piddling around in League of Legends and finding myself pining away from my Hex invite. FFXIV still has a ton of potential, but they really need to make some changes in 2.1 to make the game more livable.