• You can reroll your champion every few games, so it is not fully random. This is especially a good thing for people who bought packs like the one when League of Legends launched. Have seven champions you’ve never played because they were not really your style? Rerolls minimize that punishment.
• But then you get the chance to try new things. Ryze? More fun than I remembered from the time or two I played him, although see below for why his spells aren’t the best for ARAM.
• The most important thing about ARAM is that team fights start NOW, often before minions spawn. When the whole game is team fights, the values of various abilities and champions change.
• AE is obviously far more valuable.
• Skill shots are also far more valuable. You do not need much skill to toss a skillshot into a crowd and hope for the best. Even given that, skill shots are even more valuable than you think because the enemies are boxed in one lane. You don’t need to spray and pray to appreciate having a shooting alley.
• Juking is less valuable, with far fewer options, although the people who can pull it off are impressive.
• Support wins games, above and beyond what you are used to. Healers are fabulous with no healing fountain. Soraka and Sona are great support combined with offensive powerhouses in ARAM.
• Alistar is similarly amazing, enough to merit his own bullet point. Tank with AE heal and CC, plus the R of “soak all the damage”? I have only seen a team with Alistar lose once.
• Team composition is very important. Four melees? You’re probably dead already. Opposing team is the MMO contingent of tank, healer, and three DPS? Yep, that’s bad. Because team composition is mostly random, the game can be randomly unwinnable before you even start. This is an intrinsic hazard of randomness, but still generally unfun.
• It is still hard to find 10 people who can stay connected and play a video game for 10-20 minutes. While I have had a good streak today, I have had days where half my games were 4 vs. 5. This is not a satisfying way to win or to lose, and if there is any punishment for quitting once you see the previous bullet point, it is not visible to the people who must suffer through it.
• Remember, the most important thing in the game is to make sure everyone knows it is not your fault that your team lost. Everyone else was bad, you had lag, the opposing champs are OP, and team comp sucked gg lol noobs

: Zubon

ARAM is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Just because you do not like something does not mean it is not working.

: Zubon

The F2P In-Game Economy is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Because we have so many creative people that work here in the studio, and each idea is different, not every feature has the exact same development cycle. In general we follow the cycle I’m about to outline. Sometimes we make exceptions for creativity, scope, and feature timeline; however, we do find this process works well for us in most cases.

Rough outline of Neverwinter development process:

1. Idea!
2. Outline
3. Kickoff with leads and implementers
4. Implementation
5. Revision of the plan
6. Implementation
7. Testing, iteration, testing, iteration…
8. Final sign off!

Any feature first starts as an idea, here at Cryptic this is usually brought on by some clever person playing in one of our playtests and thinking “this could be more fun if…” or from brainstorming ideas to fix a known issue. Once the idea is born a developer, or sometimes a producer, will outline the new feature, zone, race, or other addition to the game. The outline is then reviewed and updated by relevant department leads and people who will be directly implementing the feature. When a consensus is reached implementation begins!

Sometimes, especially with big features, not everything we envisioned is possible, worth the time investment, or as fun as we thought it would be. If this happens we will revise our original plan and continue implementing. Usually these kinds of changes are small, such as specific quest drops not matching the lore of the adventure zone; rarely they are really big, like changing what technologies we use to create the tens of thousands of equipable items we have in Neverwinter. In the event that we end up cutting a feature instead of implementing, it usually happens here. We have a lot of eyes on features at any given time, because of the early input we get it’s rare that a feature would be cut beyond this point.

Once implementation is nearly complete, we begin testing the feature in playtest meetings in the room we call “The War Room.” This is particularly true with adventure zones, dungeons, PvP zones, and player classes. The war room is where most of us first see a feature come to life and, if you’ll pardon the cliché, where the magic happens. It’s where the mood is measurable, first impressions are made, and bugs are shouted out (usually by more than one person at a time) for the nearest producer to put on a punchlist. Eventually we get to some number of playtests where everyone is happy with the outcome and we give the final development sign off. From there it moves to QA testing where they test it for exploits, typos, and other things the developers missed. Once it passes QA, the feature is done!

The great thing about working at Cryptic Studios is that everyone is an integral part of the development cycle. We frequently have all team playtests and sometimes all company playtests. Everyone is encouraged to send feedback and contribute to all aspects of the game. Because of this, Neverwinter is the culmination of the love, determination, and passion of everyone in the studio. We forward to Neverwinter going live and hearing what you think!

Thank you, Ms. Haven
: Zubon

[NW] Development at Cryptic is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Objectively, the rules are simple: Hold the one crab. All sorts of things get in this way. First off other random players with their 4 Crab Toss skills will try and knock it out of the crab carrier’s hands. These skills are further supplemented by items strewn about the battlefield such as a plank of wood to bash people good, or a conch which fears everybody, or a fishing pole to swipe the crab from afar. If that weren’t enough karka hatchlings are constantly gunning for the crab carrier with their usual debuff explosion, and a few veteran karkas feel that this little piece of beach is the perfect place to imprint some player faces in to the sand.

What do you do when you are holding the crab? Run. Dodge. Dash (hold the skill down). And try and pick up any items you can along the way. Everybody will be gunning for you. Get a decent score and you get a green item and a karka shell or some other stuff. Winning is not necessary.

Subjectively, this is madness. There is skill involved. Being able to outmaneuver the crab carrier AND the herd of players usually results in a higher score. Being able to utilize each item properly usually results in a higher score. However it is just as likely someone will start swinging away with their plank in the middle of the mob or a veteran karka will decide that “yeah, now is actually a good time to squish” right after you depleted your dodge bar.

I am also noticing a lot of lag in the game, and sometimes it just doesn’t make sense when things fire off. My client or the server is unsure if I am squished, knocked down, or dashing around. It is chaos within the game, between my computer and the servers, and in my head and on my keyboard.

I think few players would care beyond a game or two but for the achievements. Want all bars filled for Secret of Southsun? Then you will be playing Crab Toss a lot. Crab-Carrying Competitor and Crabgrabber are going to be the time-ensured achievements. Play long enough and any player will be able to accomplish them. Crab Toss Champion, well good luck. And you’ll need it. Winning feels about luck as much as skill.

Crabtacular! is the one that has people in a tizzy. Basically you have to be holding the crab while everybody else has been smooshed by a veteran karka. This means that the one guy AFK in the corner pretending to be scoping you away from the herd can ruin it all. I like how someone put it as ‘an achievement not based on you winning, but everybody else losing.’

All of these are not required for getting the meta-achievements for the shiny, tentacly back item. It’s just that for a completionist, it can be a little frustrating.

I am having fun with it, but then I also accidentally got Crabtacular! somehow. I guess theoretically with all the chaos and players coming in and quitting there is some non-normalized chance of getting the achievement. I don’t expect much from the minigame, and I much prefer to run about Southsun hunting instigators. However, I don’t mind this gaming aside, but then I expect chaos.

I feel with Crab Toss in mind, I like that ArenaNet keeps trying new things. A chaotic, solo Keg Brawl was kind of fun, kind of frustrating. It’s going away soon if it is a blight upon your Guild Wars 2. Sometimes I sit upon an ancient karka’s carcass and remember days of yore as good/bad as they were. So I guess I am going to make a few more memories as good/bad as they will be with Crab Toss. See you underneath a rolling karka soon!

–Ravious

[GW2] The Crab Grab Hustle is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Guild Wars 2 continues to use achievements to replace quests. For Secret of Southsun players are tasked to explore the updated areas, talk to a few key individuals, and find a bunch of samples around the island. I find it to be a poor guide especially given the dozens of achievements in the Secret of Southsun achievement category. The mail sent to all players tells them to get to Southsun to talk to the Inspector, but the real guide to the content is the achievements. I feel that if ArenaNet is going to continue to focus on achievements as the quest-like director for new content serious iteration needs to be done to make it a better means of communication.

Anyway, savvy players seemed to burn through the quest-like content pretty quickly. I would not suggest focusing on the achievements to such a narrowed degree. Might as well enjoy the passion fruit flowers on the way.

There are a few reasons to stick around in Southsun for the whole duration of the event. The biggest is that while on Southsun, players can represent the Consortium or Settlers. Represent the Consortium and players get a near-permanent buff to gold drops, which seems like a 300-400% increase. I was getting 3-4 silver per creature, when they would drop coin. The Settler’s buff in a 200% increase to Magic Find, which was really nice. I was noticing that I was receiving a lot more greens than usual, even a few rares now and then. This buff is removed if the player leaves Southsun to go to another zone. I have a hard time believing there are better open world farming spots with those buffs available.

The other reason is that the events are hot and heavy. Settlers and the Consortium are having a go at one another in the tropic heat. The frenzied animals are constantly attacking the outposts/resort areas. I was having a lot of fun because the mobs are challenging, and the reward feels proportionate to the increased challenge. The active population also feels really good (haven’t gotten out of overflow actually).

One area I have to point out is the scaling. Secret of Southsun has some of the best scaled events I have seen in Guild Wars 2 yet. For the players active in the event I’ve seen it scale numbers and mob ranks really well. I am really impressed with these, and I hope that a new bar to the quality of event scaling has been set at ArenaNet. It feels spot on for what a level 80 difficulty should be. This might feel even more so since I’ve been consistently failing events in Orr lately.

There’s a bit more to talk about, which I’ll save for some more focused posts on Crab Toss, specific events, and use of Southsun geography, but this feels like a nice update for what I would hope to expect from coming Living Story updates, especially if they are coming like this every 2-4 weeks. It makes good use of player focus, new content, and lots of activity. There are a few neat carrots to the achievements too for new back items with exclusive skins and account bound-ability. It’s definitely an update worth checking out.

–Ravious

[GW2] Secret of Southsun Impressions is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Flame & Frost revolved around the Molten Alliances assaults in two zones. In the norn starting zone, Wayfarer Foothills, the Molten Alliance took roughly the northeast corner quadrant, and in the second charr zone, Diessa Plateau they took a large chunk of the west-central side. This is where the action was. This was where the yellow sunbursts were yelling at me to go. It became such a focus to players, yet it really wasn’t a focus to the world.

In the cutscenes both norn and charr leaders mention that while the Molten Alliance is noteworthy, it is not the only fish to fry. Wayfarer Foothills still had the Sons of Svanir to deal with in addition to the primitives, and the charr still had ghosts, rebels, ogres, and dredge-free Flame Legion. In a sense the devastating Molten Alliance had to fight for attention from the capital cities. The Pact’s Orders also had plenty of fight in other parts of the world (like the remaining Elder Dragons).

Cutaway to said capital cities, and the focus of the players was again on the starbursts leading players to refugee camps all lazing about because of the Molten Alliance. There was still the usual hustle and bustle of the capital cities, but the new hotness was on the ‘fugees. The same can be said about Lion’s Arch situation, but with the twist in that the Consortium did take interest in the refugees a tad more than anybody else.

The Vigil eventually responds with a contingent of soldiers, but they are still going too slow for our heroes, Rox and Braham. We help them because only we know the direness of the situation. Except, is it really that dire? Sons of Svanir are still rampaging the norn settled countryside, and all sorts of denizens are still killing the charr’s cows.

I feel that in one sense ArenaNet was trying to wedge in the Living Story without upsetting the zone’s balance. While the Molten Alliance was the bad-guy du jour, there were still plenty of enemies around Tyria. However, the player’s ultra-focus was on the Molten Alliance. It seemed like that was an enemy on the level of an Elder Dragon! It really was just a double-scoop of the usual that had gotten a bit more momentum than the stagnating meta.

So when the Molten Alliance was actually unforged, the celebrations in game were about right on. It would be the equivalent of Molensk being permanently removed from southwest Wayfarer or the Silex Castrum being forever cleansed in western Diessa. Yet, after 4 months of Flame & Frost updates it seemed like it should have been more magniflorious. Talking with the refugees at the affected capital cities and heading back to the Flame & Frost instance areas – North Nolan Hatchery and Cragstead – nets quite a bit more aftereffects of the Molten Alliance’s defeat. Some vocal players though were practically asking to be forcefed a final cutscene. I wonder what the cinematics department is up to because they would’ve been a nice ending.

I think it is a good idea that we aren’t simply getting the Elder-Dragon-of-the-week style Living Story. ArenaNet’s first big story shot for Guild Wars 2 was aimed at a cool idea (mashup) as a temporary encounter that might change a few zones in Tyria. It just felt like it was really hard to get a sense of the scope of this cool idea. Focus makes it seem like it should’ve been bigger, and in hindsight it might not have been.

The Secret of Southsun Shore is only planned to be the headliner for about a month. The scope of it already feels “contained”. It’s dealing with a tourist/refugee colony. It’s a mystery instead of taking on a region-conquering alliance, and the crux of it seems to be helping one Lionguard instead of two entire races. I hope there are more permanent changes to Southsun, but then it also has much more room for it. Anything permanent in the other zones would have to consider hearts, events, meta-events, NPC chatter, etc. Sweeping aside the local wildlife won’t result in much lore destruction.

 –Ravious

[GW2] Scope of Flame & Frost is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Poor movement can harm a game. Take Guild Wars for example. It doesn’t matter how great it was in some parts when gamers couldn’t get past the fact that they couldn’t jump. I admit every time I play Guild Wars it feels like there is a ceiling pressing down. I also do not care for how movement feels in The Secret World, especially when they add don’t-stand-in-the-evil-circle-of-forthcoming-evil effects that I have to dodge out of. In both of these MMOs I can look past it, but some gamers can’t.

This is even more important for WildStar where the combat system is largely based on area control and area-of-effect placement. Without fluid movement, the whole system would suck. In my short time playing WildStar, I was pretty impressed with movement. Okay, actually the thought was dismissed in lieu of all the other mechanics I had to explore. I climbed some tree tower jumping puzzle, and it all felt right. In retrospect thought, I was impressed.

The video mentions the double-jump. I cannot even begin to describe how principal this movement action is going to be in WildStar. There are parts where it will be critical, but it is so fun to double jump in WildStar there is almost no reason not to make every jump a double jump. Double-jump a sheep on the way to fight something else. Double-jump all the AFK’ers in the cities. Double-jump to my lou as you are running to the next piece of content. It gets pretty addictive.

I will say that the one area I remember not really feeling was the “dash”, which is a dodge. While words are not that great for this, it felt like there was organic movement as I moved a long (w + mouse steering), but whenever I dashed, it felt like my character snapped to a grid and then moved laterally along that grid. Then there was a snap out of that grid back to the organic movement. It’s a small thing, and perhaps with iterations and betas, things have changed since then.

It should be expected that movement is great in an MMO, but often times it’s just “good” or “okay”. I’ve already mentioned that WildStar feels a tad more game-y with regard to combat and movement, which raises the bar for the quality of the movement. I think WildStar at least excels in this area, which is pretty critical to even getting a good start on the other points of review.

–Ravious

[WS] Dat Double Jump is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Six days, indeed.

There is a lot to be learned from the Molten Facility, which was created by a Living Story team, not the dungeon team (who have been particularly silent about their projects since the Ascalon Catacombs refurb). It was created first and foremost as a storytelling device, just like the Rox and Braham instances in Flame & Frost last month. Those instances were also farmable, although easily done in a solo manner.

Within the first few days players jumped on the wagon to complete the new dungeon. It was fresh. It was fun. There was a small, small chance of getting something fantastic too. The community energy pumping around the Molten Facility was intoxicating. With the weekend I saw it more like Jeromai. The people running it were more on the order of slot-machine grannies vacantly pulling the one-armed bandit in the hopes of the ultimate payoff.

In my opinion this is all working as intended. I have to think the developers, putting this dungeon in for only 2 weeks (appaling, I know), foresaw this. While the community raged on about transient content, the Living Story team perhaps silently said “you’ll see”.

What I think in view of ArenaNet’s post-launch dungeon, Fractals, is that creating repeatable dungeons is an art. Creating storytelling dungeons is an art. And, perhaps the two are not so alike. This is not to say either is flawed. Fractals has some nice lore embedded in the dungeons, and people have highly praised the mechanics of the Molten Facility. This just makes my armchaired-self scratch my head a bit more.

I think a big issue was the rewards and speed of the Molten Facility. For dungeon runners the profitability per time is pretty bad compared to Citadel of Flame and other dungeons. The pros ran it a few times, updated their calculations, and went elsewhere. Considering a 2.5 gold run in Citadel of Flame done in 15-20 minutes, a dungeon runner could buy any of the Molten Facility drops off the market in a weekend of hard farming… guaranteed. Or they could crap-shoot with the Molten Facility.

The rewards paired with this same idea. The vast community runs the Molten Facility and inundates the market with the drops, some of which are only available in the Molten Facility. Who is left? A weird middle of players not running dungeons with the pros but still wanting to take one more chance at one of the exotics drops.

With the exception of trying to make the guaranteed profit of running the Molten Facility more on order per time of that of conventional dungeon running, I am not sure I would have liked the Molten Facility with any different reward scheme. Designers could have added a token currency requiring X number of runs to buy Y, but I am not sure a healthier remaining community would have been the result because most players would still run a finite number of times. The dungeon could have been made more farmable in a “know the dungeon”-sense, but then a lot of the pacing would have been lost on fresh players joining veteran runners.

In a sense the Molten Facility reminds me a lot of Arah’s story mode. Here again was a dungeon that end-capped a ton of soloable content, but the dungeon was more of a set piece than this mechanically difficult challenge. Molten Facility was much more challenging, but it was built for this end-of-chapter experience to be shared. I’d go back and run Arah’s story mode with guildies, but I don’t expect a dungeon experience on par with the explorable modes.

It’s a weird thing to say now that two weeks was just about the right amount of time for this Living Story dungeon, especially if ArenaNet has things ready to replace Flame & Frost mid-May. It’s weird to see how the dungeon was designed to live for just about that amount of time. It is definitely not something very conventional in MMO space, where precious dev time is usually aimed at max player activity per dev time. ArenaNet keeps saying that Retribution is really setting the pace as the studio is finally lining up for this kind of content output. An MMO, or really any game, set on this type of content production is going to be really interesting.

–Ravious

[GW2] The Molten Function is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I had an absolute blast with my first ever guild rush. This, this is where I think guild missions should have started. Guild bounties are work. It seems I am cursed to randomly get Prisoner 1141 on almost every guild bounty, and that is a frustrating 15 minutes trying to tag down the speed demon, and communicate it. There is confusion in communication, especially since I did not have a mic ready for Raidcall. Don’t get me wrong. Guild bounties are a good challenge, but guild rushes are more about fun.

There was laughing in Raidcall. People gladly took the part of either chicken or escorts. We could timely invite the whole zone along. When we were nearing the end with only 1-2 chickens left, people were being very patient and considerate in teaching the chicken how to get to the end. Compare this to a stampede of confusion as a number of guild bounties have to be found now, now, now. Take him down, now, now, now.

A guild bounty is a guild challenge. A guild rush is a guild community builder.

Both are open to the server at large. However, the frenetic pace of guild bounties ensures little decent communication to the map. A guild in trouble might start screaming for help, and a good Samaritan would have to spend a few silver to warp to a spot where the boss is about done… to get only credit on completing an event, possibly not even getting the cost of waypointing back.

With a guild rush, a guild has 30 easy minutes to communicate with the map. They can let players know the status of the guild rush. And non-guild players that complete the guild rush get a chest to open at the end (and the event completion?). Heck, there is enough time that a savvy Samaritan could ask to join the guild momentarily, run the guild rush, get all the goodies, and leave the guild. It’s a really nice pace.

As for the Chicken Run guild rush itself, it was a nice change from the usual daily or dungeon running. Players turn in to a chicken with 3 skills: radar, invincibly run-heal, and hide. There are traps all along the rush that only affect chickens. Players have to run forward clucking along the way to see the red circles while avoiding plenty of enemies ready to have some dinner. It wasn’t hard, though quite a few players did lose chicken form (dying) and had to start over. With all the escorts we had, there was plenty of time to take the rush slowly.

I like guild bounties, and the idea of guild treks seems okay too. However, guild rushes seem like the kind of guild mission that will really help a guild. It builds positive community. This is one guild goal worth aiming for.

–Ravious

[GW2] Speed of the Chook Run is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

I am pretty relieved that it got through the finish line, but this was not best game to lay across as the poster boy to anti-publisher’d MMOs. It’s niche, and unlike say the next Jim Jarmusch film, significant effort has to go in to the game to get back enjoyment. (Okay, so significant effort sometimes has to be put in to understanding a Jarmusch film too, but at least you only lose an hour or two.) I do not think Camelot Unchained is going to be a very casual-friendly popcorn MMO, which in my conjecturish opinion many Dark Age of Camelot players have grown to love.

One article at onrpg.com had fellow blogger Spinks up in arms. I tend to agree that the article was filled with too much hyperbole while ignoring plenty of non-AAA MMOs that have thrived (e.g., all of onrpg.com’s site). The developers of Storybricks replied that onrpg.com had the right idea (perhaps wrong words?). Camelot Unchained’s kickstart will make it a smidge easier for any MMO developer to get funding. However, it is really hard to back an indulgent cause while not being interested in the luxury product.

I am glad that it was a success, but whether it was or not, now it is back to silence. It’s going to be 2 years until Camelot Unchained is going to make those kinds of waves again, and it might be 4-5 before there is any noticeable ripple effect in the world of MMO development. Congrats to the City State team. I’ll be looking forward to their future developments.

–Ravious

Alas, Camelot is a post from: Kill Ten Rats