Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Learning to live addon-free

A few weeks ago, I participated in a very interesting discussion in guild chat in Rift. The topic was the use of meters and, by extension, other addons to improve your ability in the game.

One of the reasons I abandoned WoW was the fact that the core game was no longer considered playable. Only through the use of a dozen or more addons, did people consider the game enjoyable and playable.

Obviously this was not the case, WoW is an incredibly sturdy and well-designed game, addons were never meant to replace features to the extent that they have done and due to the popular addon-culture that have sprung up, I suspect too many people have started to rely on addons to play the game for them.

Threat meters, dps meters, ability warnings from bosses, all of these serve to reduce your own need to learn how to play and increases your reliance on features that aren't normally part of the game (ie, features which can and will be lost for various reasons from time to time). A dangerous practice at best since it created a generation of "hardcore" (read: useless) raiders who, when taken away from their precious addons, failed so hard that it gave George Washington a headache.

Having played MMOs for as long as I have, I have learnt, to a certain extent, how to "read" a game. All games give you subtle clues regarding your ability compared to others, but it takes time, dedication and a willingness to stand up and say "ok, I suck at this part of the game" to find them.
Unfortunately most people will, rather than admit this and work to improve themselves, simply go "this game sucks for not telling me this, I want an addon."

If the game does not tell you explicitly how you are doing, then you need to watch your companions, your guildies and random group members more closely, see what rotations you use and which does that job faster, check to see that your tank rotation reliably keeps the mob on you, as opposed to someone else.
Depending on your role, the signs are different and can be quite hard to spot, but trust me when I say they are there.

Are add-ons inherently evil? No, far from it, but as with so many things, addons need to be carefully monitored and throttled, both by the community and by the developers. Large numbers of addons create a sense that the game is flawed, that it needs these extras in order to function, which is patently untrue.
A fine example is Gear Score. At it's heart, gear score is simply a tool to let you easily determine what level of gear a player currently has equipped, but due to it's easy of use, it became more, it became a tool to determine a players worthiness to join your group. I won't waste time here describing in how many ways that is wrong, but suffice to say that it (and the automatic dungeon finder that blizz introduced) killed off random pugs as I knew and liked them.

Sometimes the best way to learn a game is to play it, not to let your computer play it for you.

Once again, that's me done babbling. See you all on the far side.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Rifts & Invasion

So, last time I briefly mentioned that Rift has two different uniques features, one of which are souls. 

The other feature you might want to know about, are invasions and rifts. Invasions are a small group of enemies that spawn, either at a Rift or at a planar Foothold (which are created by invasions that destroy the guards in a given area). A single invasion is rarely much of a challenge and can be soloed by any reasonably competent player without too much fuss. Multiple invasions converging on the same location, however, is an entirely different thing. 

The goal of an invasion is to kill NPCs in a quest hub and then create a Foothold, a structure that continually spawns defenders and, rarely, more invasions. Once this is done, all quest NPCs, traders as well as most of the guards either despawn, or are killed so fast that they can't really do anything helpful. 
In the really big areas, a foothold is not a big deal because NPCs are spread out enough that most players can move about without getting into trouble. In a minor camp with a couple of guards and 2-3 quest givers... well, hope you brought your sword along.

Rfits, are an entirely different idea and is part of the core gameplay concept of the game. Rifts are holes in reality, or in MMO-slang, a public quest. Each spawns through a tear in reality and will send out invasion forces on a regular basis. If lots of rifts are open, you get lots of invasions. 
A single Rift is no big deal, and minor ones can be closed by 1-2 players in perhaps 10min or so. A major one however, needs a strong group to finish it and get the best rewards. 
Raid and Expert level rifts are even more difficult, for obvious reasons.

One thing that is interesting, is that tears are damn near impossible to predict and the invasions they send out are all too happy to gank any and all players that get in their way. While not a big deal usually, it's not uncommon to log out in a camp and then log in the next day, only to find a dozen or more mobs ready to cut you into pieces when you finally load into the zone. 

It takes some getting used to, and since players aren't really allowed to escape from fights in Rift (you get a pretty severe runspeed debuff if a mob hits you in the back), it will guarantee that you log in and then spend the first minute corpse-running and getting clear of the enemies, at least once in a while. For some, that is not really a fun way to spend their time. I personally love it though, makes even logging in a gamble.

Whether or not these 2 (or maybe 3) features are enough to keep Rift going is something we will just have to wait and see. For now though, I can only recommend it if you are looking for a new hotbar-style fantasy MMO.

That's me done for now, see ya all on the far side!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Your soul is MINE!

So, been playing around with Rift since the release and I'm really liking it so far, graphic style is far enough away from WoW that it doesn't feel too much like a rehash, despite Rift stealing with every limb and then some from WoW and other toolbar-style MMOs.

Rift is a bit short on unique features, but the 2 that are there, are exceptionally unique. Souls and Invasions/Rifts are both game features that can have a fairly drastic effect on your gameplay.
Souls create a very convincing illusion of freedom, by allowing you to design your own class, rather than selecting from a dozen pre-made ones. The concept goes that as you grow in power you gain access to the souls of masters of different ways of combat, from Paladins to Marksmen, Chloromancers and Bards. In total there are some 30 souls, spread over 4 classes. Warriors are melee, either tank or DPS, Rogues are either ranged DPS, tank (yes, really) or melee DPS, Clerics are healer/dps/tank, with mages focussing on DPS, but with a healer soul as well.
The concept is such that you can pick 3 souls at a time and then put your talents points in each as you please. This means you have far more choice in creating your character than most games, but in essence it turns out into the same few things, Melee DPS, Tank, ranged DPS or healer. Some are bows, some use 2-handers, some use 2 weapons at the same time, all stick pretty boringly to the old formular.
Most classes have a few abilities that show off their own speciality, Champion (my own spec) deals with 2-handed weapons and so have several abilities that take a while to fire off, but do a ton of damage in a very small space of time (so far I'm enjoying the combination of guaranteed crit + 6-target AOE (7-800 damage per target), with a follow up ability on attacks that crit. Very nice combo.

The game is good, mechanics work (although the current world event could have benefitted from another week or so of dedicated QA work) and the graphics, even on a relatively mediocre laptop like mine, are very nice indeed. I'm just a bit fed up with the WoW/EQ2 formular, especially with all the ranting regarding addons that WoW has caused.

I'll elaborate on my own position regarding add-ons soon, since we see so many discussions on the subject popping up in Rift, but next up for dissection - Rifts! Do they screw you over, or spice up the gameplay?

For now though, I'm off once again, fair travels and remember, shit may stink, but on the world wide web no one can smell you.