Green is for Necromancers

Why do we all have such small imaginations when it comes to clothing our avatars?  I mean, if we each had a gold for every scantily clad, staff-wielding Elementalist or each Guardian disguised as spiky metal behemoth, we'd all be able to buy a Legendary.  I can't really speak to what goes through the minds of people that play other classes but I can certainly speak for myself.

Spiky...

I swear I didn't go looking for this...

When I first created my character I was very frustrated by the lack of armour variety.  Instead most of the gear seemed to have a lot of fur trim.  That was not too immersion breaking for me being a norn; very hunter/gatherer.  But I really wanted to make my toon look like he raised the dead as a key part of his livelihood.    I was inspired to use a lot of green.  And look for stuff with bones on it.  Yeah, inspired. It's easy to blame the concept art and the UI design.  The concept art for Necromancers included a LOT of green and quite a lot of deep red.  The Necro weapon skills are mainly green as are a lot of particle effects.  I'm sorry I keep saying green, it's kind of a theme, though...

So, why green and, less so, red?  Well, the red is easy: blood and viscera.  The green?  Well, we associated green with corruption and decay, yet most of the vitality we see in everyday life is green! How often do you see things that turn green when they go bad?  In my experience they generally go a darker version of their original colour and then they go black.  Also most of the pus I have ever seen has been a creamy yellow; calling it green would be a stretch.

Given the paucity of gear early on I decided to leave the real customisation to the elder game.  Also, since you level so fast, it would be a quite a chore to maintain a look with an ever-changing armour set.  I started looking at the gear you could get from dungeons and quickly found the awesome that is Arah.  The Arah light armour is a necromancer's dream.

Arah Light Armor

I can't imagine anything fitting a class better.  I asked around and quickly discovered my chances of getting that much gear from Arah were slim so I looked for compromises and quickly found parts of the Twilight Arbour set combined well with Arah.

Mix and Match - TA everything except head and shoulders

I'm not alone.  If you look at any “share your necro” thread you'll see people post that combo.  It's realistically achievable and looks pretty cool.  But I never even made it that far.  No-one wants to run TA. I compromised again and came up with this
[Arah TA COF combo]

Since EVERYONE wants to run CoF this seemed much more likely.  However, I'm really starting to strecth the look here.  Then I discover runing Arah is even harder than I expected and I end up looking like this:

The compromise

This apple has fallen so far from the Arah tree it might actually be a different sort of fruit altogether.  Maybe a lemon?  Having said that I was happy with this look for a week or so but it soon became quite immersion breaking.  I just didn't like how I looked.

So, when I decided to switch from a bleed/condition sceptre build to a power/crit. dagger build it was a great opportunity to have a gear re-think.  In search of inspiration I began trawling the aforementioned “share” forum threads and I found some fantastic looks.  It seems that charr and sylvari make particularly good looking necromancers!  Here are a few of my favourites:

Amazing charr necro (but still Arah gear)

Sort of Shamanic sylvari necro

Still a lot of green and black, eh?  I didn't see a lot of norn in those threads so I looked to the normal sized humans for inspiration and found this.

Now, that's more like it.  If you're going to get up close and personal with a dagger in someone's face you don't want to be sporting a skull encrusted dress, it's just not practical.  Inspired I set about earning my exotic gear (rebuild remember) and looking at skins. I still have one piece of gear to get, a coat from Honor of the Waves, but other than it's complete.  I'm very happy with it.  At least for now.

Things about MMOs that GW2 made me forget

Before GW2 I played FFXI for a few years, the Aion for about 9 months, then back to FFXI until about September 2012. Last month I was very taken with the idea of playing FFXIV.

This was notable for several reasons:
a) I played the alpha of 1.0 and it was, bar none, the most broken, poorly conceived disaster I have ever experienced.
b) SE always struggled to meet my expectations with regard to communicating important information the player base.

But, inspired in no small part by the efforts of the new producer, I decided it was worth a second look.  I pre-ordered, downloaded, couldn't get on the server my friends were on, I waited, I missed the warning about registering your boxed code, I waited, I finally got on the server with my friends, I didn't register my code, my account was deleted, I got a refund from Amazon.

However, just that week long daliance with idea of playing FFXIV bought back some horrible memories that GW2 has banished for good:

• Mob claiming
• EXP reduction in parties
• Timed spawns
• Shared loot pools
• RNG-based skill progression
• Forced group content
• Being drip-fed skills
• Mana pools
• Subs!

I could probably go on but that's enough.  How could I have ever enjoyed playing games with mechanics like that?! You'd have to be some sort of masochist.

A kindred spirit in Tyria

My last post was one of frustration, disappointment and a bit of anger.  I don't really like to be that guy. But when you feel like that nothing really makes you feel better than someone expressing exactly the same feelings.

Enter Justin 'Syp' Olivetti, whom you may know from his blog "Bio Break" (linked on left) or, more likely, as a writer for Massively and host of Massively Speaking.

Justin had this to say about the Living Story at around the same time I was expressing my frustrations: Guild Wars 2: Living story, dead interest.  That post echoes so many of my own sentiments; validation is good for the soul.

Then episode 259 of Massively Speaking rolls in a Justin enthuses about the new Living Story event, the Queen's Jubilee, and how they have changed the Living Story achievements system so you can avoid some of the "harder" content to still get the overall reward.  He wrote another post about that here.

I was intrigued and decided to return to Tyria, albeit about a week after the show, and was surprised to see the Queen's Jubilee was still running.  It seems another change, that had passed me by, was that the story instalments now overlap.  In other words, it's fortnightly releases but no longer just a two week window, which is MUCH more suited to my play time.  Hurrah!

The Crown Pavilion

So, when I logged on the new instalment, Clockwork Chaos, had just launched and I was initially frustrated to find I needed to complete a large chunk of that before I could get back into the area where most of the Queen's Jubilee stuff was happening.  That turned out not to be too much of a chore and, in fact I really enjoyed it.  I mean loot was dropping like rain all around me and that's always a cheerer.

I was all but given up on GW2 but after a 6 week break I find myself back to wanting to log on everyday. I had wanted to write a post about just how much I had enjoyed these two instalments but once again Mr Olivetti had beaten me to it:

If the Bazaar of the Four Winds and that weird election represented a low point of my recent interest in Guild Wars 2, then the combo of the Queen’s Jubilee and the Clockwork Chaos represent a rebound of tremendous proportions.

You can read the rest of his post here: Guild Wars 2: Die Die Die, Die Die and you can follow him on Twitter @sypster

Schrödinger's undead dragon in @GuildWars2

I haven't played GW2 since I spent an hour trying to kill Frizz with a PUG during Sky Pirates.  I had been really quite enjoying the Living Story until then.

The main reason I liked the Living Story was because I could take it all at a decent pace that was compatible with the amount of play time that I get.  Then the two week schedule comes in and suddenly if I can't log-on for the first week I'm out in the cold with the PUGs because everyone else has done it already.  Oh, and there is no group finder.

As the Living Story was the main reason I was logging in, as soon as I got behind I gave up.  Admittedly I haven't finished my personal story but that's because, well, who the fuck is Zhaitan? You never see him in the actual game because he's Schrödinger's cat, right? He's defeated/not defeated at the same time.  The only time he definitively one or other is when you're in a Personal Story instance.  It's stupid.

Also, the thing I liked most about GW2 was that it wasn't a gear treadmill.  When you have subs you can use a gear treadmill to keep people subscribing.  Anet's solution to player retention is an Achievement treadmill with a tacked on story and gem store merchandising.  It's genius.

Sadly, I don't care about achievements, weapon skins, cosmetic gear or minis.  But then, I thought I was playing an RPG?  Aren't they supposed to be about story and character development?

Achievement "reward" gear

OK, this is just a quick rant.

So far we have a few pieces of unique gear as rewards for achievements.  Most recently we have had the flower, the tentacles and the horny helmet.  We also had the molten gloves at the end of the Flame & Frost story.

It's these last two that I have my beef with.  This is what they look like on a cloth class:

Yup, that looks ridiculous.  I expect it looks ridiculous on any classs that doesn't wear heavy armour.  I mean, why the fuck, when you have to choose the armour class of the reward, do they all have to look the same?

Final Fantasy 11 has a great number of flaws but when they gave you a choice of light/medium/heavy it really was a choice.  This, for example, is the heavy armour reward from a Moogle Kupo D'Etat:

Heavy Armour

And then this is the light armour reward:

Light Armour

Do you see what Square Enix did there, Arenanet?  That's right, they actually thought about it!

I seriously wonder how many staff they have in the Art Dept somtimes.

Flametank is not so hot

When I first started Engineer I quickly settled on a Pistol/Pistol turret set-up.  That saw me all the way through Queensdale and Kessex Hills and looking back I really enjoyed it.  But I felt something was lacking; fights were long and slow and I felt under-powered so around the time I moved to Gendarran Fields I began dabbling with a Flamethrower build.

My trusty turret build

I had seen and heard numerous people raving about how the Flametank carves though mobs in PvE but when I switched to the build I immediately felt weaker and much more vulnerable.  I'd always felt quite safe with my turret build and could even take down the odd champion solo.  With the flamethrower even one or two mobs became a struggle.  Maybe I was doing it wrong?  I decided to give it some more time.

By the time I got to the far end of Gendarran Fields and, having done the first few hearts in Harathi, I knew I needed a change.  Fighting Veterans became a 50/50 proposition, I just wasn't putting out enough damage and was losing the battle of attrition.  I lost skill challenges for Pete's sake!  I tried upgrading my armour and trinkets but that did almost nothing. I wanted to persist with the build because I had heard such good things about it but it was putting me off playing the character.  That's bad.

Part of the problem is that, because Guild Wars 2 is still a relatively new game, when people talk about builds they almost exclusive refer to level 80 implicitly.  Also, unless stated otherwise, it's usually safe to assume that anyone posting about a build is using it in PvP!  As a result, when people rave about a build, it can be hard to tell what level they are playing it at and whether it will work well at lower levels.

"Fire burns!"

I think maybe the flamethrower build is highly dependent on getting to 60+ and access to HGH or Juggernaut.  In fact, looking at the build I linked, all the flamethrower specific traits are only available once you unlock the Master tier at level 40 and things really begins to take shape at 50.  Maybe I just jumped the (pun intended) gun?

With this in mind I decided it was time to hit up my personal story for some easy exp to power through from 38 to 40.  This let me unlock the aforementioned Master traits and access some new gear but with this new found determination came a desire to try a new build.  Something that wasn't turrents, grenades or a flamethrower.

I really wanted to try those pistols again.

MMO business models

The MMO market is becoming extremely competitive and I seriously wonder if the subscription model can survive much longer.

Blizzard have recently reported that WoW subs are expected to fall further and that their unanounced MMO, codename Titan, is undergoing a major redesign.  Funcom, which enjoyed "sleeper" success with The Secret World last year before a major internal reshuffle and switch from a sub to B2P model, has released it's Q1 report stating it actually made more money. Go Funcom!  Likewise EA reported that the F2P switch for Star Wars: The Old Republic doubled their revenue. Wow.

Blizzard have blamed declining audiences in the East and the rise of free browser games for their "woes" (still world's biggest MMO by miles and raking the cash in!) but the total rethink of Titan suggests, at least to me, serious concerns.  Maybe they are redesigning to better support a B/F2P model?  Let's face it, games that plan for that from the start are surely going to have more success than those that switch and are then often branded "failures" by the community.

By their nature sub-based games have to keep you interested by providing new content, usually in the form of an ongoing story, and new gear (treadmill).  This inevitably creates a barrier to entry for new players who feel behind when they start playing and face a mountain to catch up.  Gear treadmills can also backfire in a big way.  Final Fantasy 11 just released a new expansion which included some weapons which rendered every weapon earned in the last 11 odd years obsolete.  Apparently they are quite easy to get too.  Why did they do that?
 
Actually, that's a good question.  Was it to entice new players?  Maybe but then  Final Fantasy 14 is about to be released, wouldn't you want people to play that instead?  What about if it's the other way around - what if SE just drew a line in the Final Fantasy sand and said "Hey, you're all back to square one.  Level peggings.  Do you want to start over?  Maybe you'd be more interested in this new game!"

In a sub-based model in-game success has to be linked to time invested.  You can't level the field to cater for both casual and hardcore players.  You can't put a cap on what a hardcore player can achieve by failing to provide new content.  You must release at a speed that keeps them satisfied.

B/F2P games don't need to do that.  In the case of Guild Wars 2 all you need is a bit of a story on which to base your next lot of cash shop "merchandise".  A neat trick that Arenanet played was to give "hardcore" players a dungeon that rewarded you with gear that made that dungeon easier but conferred no gameplay benefits outside.  That's genius.  They created a gear treadmill in a microcosm.

For me, the acid tests for a sub model are the (re-)release of Final Fantasy 14 and which model NCSoft has planned for Wildstar.

I played Final Fantasy 11 for many years and my average monthly bill was in the region of £11.  I started playing in the August before the release of the Wings of the Goddess expansion on November 22, 2007.  The expansion added two new jobs (classes), new battlefield content, zones and a mission arc.  That mission arc was finally concluded in November 2010. Yes, that's 3 years.  That's £396 of subs plus the price of the boxed expansion product.  For the company that's great money but for the consumer that's terrible value.  In fact, it's a bit of a rip-off.  Can FF14 really survive using that model in the current climate?  Should it have been re-incarnated as F2P or B2P?

Moving on to Wildstar, the $64k question: F2P, B2P or sub?  Personally, I think a F2P release for a AAA MMO is crazy talk.  Sure, switch to F2P when "boxed" sales stagnate, and your first "boxed" expansion is ready to ship, but otherwise why pass up at least £40-£100m in revenue?  Guild Wars 2 has shown that B2P works and that a key aspect of that is replayability.  Different story based on race, different play experience based on class and a really decent effort to put PvE and PvP (including WvW) on an even footing.  Wildstar is mirroing this variety very closely: there is early emphasis on both PvE and PvP and the race/class/path combinations mean replayability.  Carbine and Arenanet might be separate studios but it looks like NCSoft knows a good formula when it sees one.