Paid Beta: problems vs genius #GW2 #GW2HOT

Lewis at TTH has just posted what looks to be a decent article about how HOT could be improved. I don't have HOT so I can only guess how accurate the article is but it looks sensible enough.

However, as I just said to him on Twitter, I have to take exception to the opening line:

There's no doubting that Heart of Thorns is a fantastic expansion pack

I have doubts. I have such strong doubts that it's even a decent expansion pack that I haven't bought it. Maybe my expectations were too high? Who could be to blame for that?

Anyway, the 2nd closed beta for Blade and Soul starts in an hour or so and I'm lucky enough to have a key, so I'll be taking a look at it. Sadly, that's not something I had the opportunity to do with HOT. Lewis did get several looks, even prior to the beta, and I'm not saying that biases him but it might have helped to temper and balance his expectations. For everyone else you had to buy the product.

OK I concede that, in retail, that's hardly exceptional, but it's pretty exceptional for video games. Demos or trials have been around since I was buying magazines with cassette tapes sellotaped to the cover. And it's all to encourage you to buy the full product. I really don't get why Arenanet shunned that tradition.

The exclusive paid beta means that people like me (cynical, "miserable", thrifty, old) didn't "test" the game. Or to put it another way: the only people that "tested" the expansion were the people that thought they'd like it enough to buy it.

It should be obvious why that's not a good thing UNLESS your business plan is to literally double-down on "fanboys", thereby ensuring that you're only listening to people who have already decided to back you and tailor your product to them. Is that a bad strategy? Well, again (as I so often say!), no it's not. It's probably quite smart. It avoids that whole "trying to please everyone" trap that I think many developers fall into.

Of course, the other way to avoid that trap is to have some creative integrity: decide on a direction and stick to it. However, this is clearly NOT part of the Arenanet business model and I think that, ultimately, without that clear, uncompromised developer vision, Guild Wars 2 will always rest in popular mediocrity.

But, again, that's hardly a bad place to be, is it?

The other thing I was doing

I've been "training" to run 5k! My first official 5k is on November 22 and I'll be raising money for charities under the Movember banner.

I can keep this very short because there isn't much to tell. As I said in my last post, I decided I needed to get fitter, and started off by trying to lose some weight. I knew it would take more than that so I decided to invest in success and bought the Couch to 5K (tm) app (C25K) on Android. And... well, that was it. I started doing it.

It's taken me WAY longer than 8 weeks (3.5 months!) but I have stuck at and I have one more run to go before I graduate. The GPS on my phone went nuts on my last run out so I have no idea how I did but I think I'm VERY close to running the 5k in 30 minutes. I'm absolutely delighted with that!

Again, I've kept it simple. I haven't invested in loads of gear. I use an ancient HTC Wildfire with the C25K app and some music on. I wear an old pair of jogging bottoms that I bought last time I thought about getting fit (nearly 4 years ago). My only real investments have been a proper pair of running shoes (health and safety first!) and a lurid yellow running jersey (health and safety second!).

C25K is a walk-run programme and in the first session the run segments are 1 minute. 1 minute. That first session I ran just 1km in total and I found it SO hard. I mean, checking my pulse, "am I going to have a heart attack" hard. Now, I'm running 5k. I'd find it hard to believe if I wasn't there when it happened.

The potential of the human body to adapt is really astonishing and, again, it comes down to willpower. The C25K programme was amazing for me. I very rarely ever felt that I couldn't finish the segment I was on. Most of the time I found it quite comfortable but even when I didn't I never gave up. I did repeat a few sessions because I wasn't sure I was ready for the step up to the next level but that's cool. After all, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon*. I really do recommend it.

What makes all of this all the more strange is that I actually hated running. With a passion. I found it boring and hard. Now I think about going for fun. For fun! Crazy stuff.

* It's a not a marathon - that's just a phrase. A marathon is 42km and those people are idiots.

Completionists win #GW2HOT

I've cool my heels a bit on Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns and decided that maybe I could get on board with it.

My current GW2 playtime consists of logging on to my level 24 norn Warrior, harvesting my home instance and logging off. That's it. On most days, at least. If there is a Mystic Forge daily I will throw watchwork sprockets in to get Blade Shards. That was until I realised I don't want the Ascended Spinal blades (crazy expensive) and then realised I had enough Blades to complete the Exotic version already. Doh.

So, I'm not playing GW2 by any reasonable definition of the word. I went into this holding pattern when I got my 10k achievement chest. And the reason I stopped there was because, with the annoucement of HoT, I knew there was nothing but achievement grind to do until release. This has been my main beef with the expac all along.

As a result of my uninterest in HoT I haven't been following the news at. A few headlines but no in-depth readathons. I have heard about the disatisfaction with unlocking the Elite specs and seen the word "grind" bandied about. It always puzzles me when people complain about having to DO the new things added in an expac.

Having decided that HoT might be worth a bit more of a look, this morning I decided to explore some of the new stuff added to the character UI on my way back from the Forge. I noticed that new Achievements had been added to categories I had completed and I realised that some of these were linked to Masteries. Full realisation dawned and then I got angry.

So "Masteries" are Achievements 2.0? "NO," the fan people cry! "You get abilities instead of items! You can grow your character!" Yeah, but to do what? Unlock more Mastery points that are "gated" behind obstacles that can only be passed with abilities you get from Masteries. That's a genius system for long-term player buy in. But actually it's just a massive facade of busy work.

Before I go on I just need to make a critical point: if you are still enjoying the gameplay of GW2 there is nothing wrong with this system. If you can go and kill Tequatl every day and enjoy every battle, then HoT must be right up your street. If like me you don't enjoy that gameplay and were looking forward to something fresh in HoT, well, forget it.

I'm not into Achievements. I never have been. I was delighted when I Anet broke the Achievements away from the story in Season 2 of the Living World. Now, looking at the UI, I can see Mastery points attached to all that crap I have zero interest in doing. Once again, it's a great system: force players to do content that you already built instead of building new content. Genius.

But you can grow your character! Well, no, that's actually impossible in GW2 because everyone can do everything. Because those same people that are complaining about having to unlock Elite Specs would NEVER allow a situation in which they cannot obtain ALL the Achievements. So you will never be able to differentiate your character in terms of abilities. Hence your character never really grows; there's no richness. When every PC can do everything you don't have an RPG. What you actually have is closer to a MOBA. I could write a whole post about how GW2 is cleaving closer to a MOBA philosophy than an MMORPG philosphy with each release but it should be obvious to anyone that gives it any thought. Yet again, that's probably very good business!

As someone with a pretty busy lifestyle, being a completitionist would mean a life of disappointment. So when a game becomes about completitionism at it's very core, it becomes impossible for me to engage with. By ensuring that everyone can do everything, and that the only differentiation between characters is how much of it they have done, Arenanet have ripped the heart out of Guild Wars 2.

While I wasn't playing MMOs

In the last 3 months I've lost about 10% of my body weight. Fortunately, unlike in late 2012, this time it was entirely deliberate. I just want to take a few minutes to say why I did that and how.

When the summer came around and we started playing outside again I quickly realised that I couldn't actually play with my kids. I was so unfit I got out of breath and physically tired playing a 2 minute game of tag. The time had absolutely come to stop talking about it and do something. But I still didn't. Then one day the scales told me I'd hit what I'm pretty sure is my highest weight ever. That really shook me.

I've always maintained a fairly steady weight. I found by being a careful for a few weeks I could get occasional blips, like Christmas, back under control quite quickly. It seems those days are behind me! I also partial blame learning to drive. Obviously I was walking a bit less (walking distance trips are still done on foot mind!) but the biggest problem was that any food I desired was a short drive away. So, it started to mount up.

The first thing I did was cut the following from diet completely:

• most fizzy drinks
• chocolate bars & other confectionery (I miss you Starburst!)
• desserts (yeah)
• lattes
• pastries

The next thing, in collaboration with my wife (who was also trying to shift a few pounds post-pregnancy), was to reduce portion size in our evening meals. It's very easy to over eat. This is relatively simple to deal with and we follow the "GI diet" recommendations, which is something like 30g of pasta and 40g of rice (that's dry weights). We'd done that in the past and noticed it made a big difference.

Before this starts to sound too preachy let me tell you want I do still eat:

• takeaway chinese and curry
• Lilt and Sprite
• Chocolate Frogs
• americanos (mainly decaff)
• sugar (a bit on my cereal and a bit in my tea/coffee)

On weekdays I eat what most people would consider to be a normal (British) packed lunch: sandwich, apple, bag of crisps. And for dinner we have totally "normal" things, like spaghetti bolognase, chilli, fish fingers and chips, sausage and mash. We just eat a bit less.

My trick has been to find snacks or treats that are under 100 kcal and limit how many of those I have a day. I normally aim for 2 at the most but sometimes it's 3. And I spread them out: never eat two together!

Basically, it comes down to: don't eat shit. We eat so much crap. There's almost no nutritional benefit in most of it, it's just extra calories. My favourite example of this has become Starbucks. Apart from a small selection of sandwiches literally everything they sell has no real benefit. It's just extra calories. What makes Starbucks even worse is this, we don't even notice we're eating these things!

And, that's it! I just stopped eating things I didn't need to eat and eat a bit less of the stuff that I do. Of course it takes willpower but that's all it really takes. There's no need to follow some complex diet plan. Eating better is mainly about stopping doing things, rather than needing to do anything differently.

Of course, none of this actually made me any fitter but it made the other thing I've been doing that it easier.

The real audience for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar #AoS #WFB #Warhammer

Since the announcement and release of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar there have been a lot of posts about dumbing down of the old rules, the ridiculous new unit specific rules (see image below) and the removal side-lining of the, frankly pervy, Slaanesh Chaos deity. The culprit responsible for these heinous crimes is apparently children, a.k.a kids. That's bollocks.

"Mustache length IRL" is now an actual Age of Sigmar game mechanic. pic.twitter.com/kMRk5lQF4s

— Luke Maciak (@LukeMaciak) July 4, 2015

It should be absolutely clear simply from the cost  of the new scenery pieces from Games Workshop that they are not trying to appeal to a younger audience. Even the most profligate parent would balk at those prices. GW themselves have talked at length about becoming a company that produces miniatures, not games, and that "Warhammer" is more about collecting, painting and modelling. Again, the audience isn't kids. So who is it?

It should also be obvious to anyone with some sort of social life that the changes in Age of Sigmar actually make it a much better game to play with your mates (plural - it's no longer two player) while you have a few beers. This perfectly explains the need to a) make the rules simpler and b) the addition of the stupid rules, which, quite frankly, you need to be drunk to appreciate.

It's as simple as that. The audience for Age of Sigmar is the well paid, bearded, craft beer-sucking hipster that "got back into board games a while ago". Board gaming is experiencing a resurgence of social acceptability and, generally, being a dickhead's is now actually cool. GW is simply trying to piggy-back on this revival. It also explains the Slaanesh thing.

The whole concept of Slaanesh is based in some weird succubus-related wish fulfillment, spawned from a generation of men that really didn't understand women. I don't mean role-playing/table-top nerds, I mean the 70s. And, quite frankly, the whole "daemons with tits" thing is embarrassing. Thematically, I love the idea of how Slaanesh fit into the original Chaos pantheon, the Dark Eldar (this short story is amazing), etc but I'm not sure it really has a place in a modern, mainstream gaming product. It's a niche and basically sexist anachronism and we're in an age where even a whiff of sexism is bad.

So, again, the down-grade of Slaanesh has got absolutely nothing to do with children and damaging their young sensibilities. Want to know what adds even more weight to that argument? Well, I've read "The Gates of Azyr", the novella that accompanied the launch of Age of Sigmar, and that ain't no kids book! It's bleak, violent and horrific. On reflection I actually really enjoyed it.

Oh, I almost forgot. A few weeks ago I passed (what turns out to be) the Warhammer Flagship store on Tottenham Court Road. I knew GW planned to rebrand all their stores (and I guess themselves eventually) as simply "Warhammer" but until then I had no idea how that brand looked.

This is the current/old logo:

This is the new one:

One of these is a modern, minimalist brand designed to appeal to a sophisticated demographic. The other one looks like something you'd see in a toy shop.

Get the picture?

Have I been wrong all along? #GW2 #FFXI #FFXIV

I came to Guild Wars 2 from Final Fantasy XI around August/September 2012. My relationship with FFXI was always mixed. I played with a bunch of great people (that I miss even today) and had a very strong bond with my character (Dibble). I'm not a huge FF franchise fan but I loved the world of Vana'diel too. What I didn't love was that the mechanics of the game never really changed with the times, development was slow and communication from the developers was terrible. It was also unforgivingly hard and anything worth doing needed a group.

But looking back at my blog from those times I'm overwhelmed by how positive most of what I wrote was. I did things in FFXI that I am still proud of today. An anecdote about how we were once pursued across a whole zone and slaughtered by an angry sheep even made it into my speech at my brother's wedding. Yes, really. It was subtle but it was there.

Hindsight is a great thing. When I switched from FFXI to GW2 it was if the lights had been switched on. Frustrations that I had had with FFXI vanished in GW2 and I wondered why I ever spent a good 5 years playing it. Admittedly my personal circumstances and expectations changed a huge amount over those 5 years of play and I think, ultimately, it was the birth of our first child that really put the nail in the FFXI coffin for me. The need to group, the gear treadmill, the sub: none of these things gelled with having a new baby. But as we approach the third anniversary of GW2 I'm starting to wonder if I did FFXI and Square Enix (SE) a gross disservice.

When I started out with GW2 buy-to-play seemed like the greatest thing in the world. I didn't have loads of play time so the amount of content was more than enough to keep me busy. At one point I was evening complaining that we had too much content. However, we've now been talking about an expansion for about a year and when, seven months ago, it was confirmed the content all but dried up. If GW2 had kept it's Living Story model I think I'd probably still be playing it. I never wanted an expansion and as soon as one was announced there didn't seem much point doing what I'd been doing as it would all change come release. That was a pretty astute prediction on my part.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I'm starting to wonder if B2P is suddenly not actually all that. I'm looking over in the direction of FFXIV and thinking the same as everyone else: it's bucking the subscription model trend. It's not just bucked it, it's out of the corral and over the fucking hills. From a distance it looks like SE has addressed most of my FFXI bug bears and assuaged my greatest concerns about FFXIV: that they weren't responsive enough to the player base and that they didn't communicate what they were doing at all well. They've not only sorted that out but they're a strong candidate for MMO PR done right. I guess they did have that blip with the housing...

This has all made me look back at FFXI and the time and money I spent in a different way. SE may not have gone about it in the best way but they RELENTLESSLY delivered more of exactly what people wanted. The amount of content in FFXI today is mind-blowing. The contrast with GW2 is stark and the most obvious difference is business model. Subs (should) mean content.

But then you have WoW. Millions of subs, zero/shitty new content (apparently). I think Blizzard's problem is plain greed. They're so used to having all that cash that they'll do anything to tap new markets and I just don't think it's working out for them in the long run. FFXIV seems happy to have a small player base that the devs completely understand and can meet the needs of. By necessity GW2 is in the same situation as WoW; they want new players. The new Adventures detailed yesterday? I don't even begin to understand who they're trying to appeal to with that.

Looking at it all from a distance I'm starting to see the huge benefits of the sub model and the obvious weaknesses of the Guild Wars 2 B2P model. I daresay The Secret World's B2P model would have been a nice fit for GW2 but it's too late now.

I've dabbled with the idea of re-subbing for FFXI for a month (especially now I have 37 "meg" broadband) but the barrier to entry is colossal even for me not just in terms of content and gear but the interface is actually archaic. Instead I'm content to look back today and realise that, far from being a disaster, FFXI was a great gaming experience and I have no regrets.

Well, not many.

Meat and potatoes #GW2HOT

Having established a bit of emotional distance from Guild Wars 2 I hope I can write about it without ranting.

I read this fantastic article by MMO Arlee about what is coming in Heart of Thorns. My first reaction was "wow, there really is a lot coming!" A lot more than it seems when you drip it out over weeks and weeks, which is why the article exists.

To recap, one of my main concerns about Heart of Thorns is a) "what will we actually be doing with all these new systems/mechanics/traits" and b) "is it different enough to be interesting?"

Arlee's post makes this really easy to get to grips with: it's the whole first section, "The Heart of Maguuma Region." Aside from Stronghold (meh) and the new Borderlands (meh) what are we going to use our masteries and specialisations for?

At the moment, based on the info we have, I'm very much thinking of Wildstar and their Path system, which when announced seemed like it would be a wealth of "content". It's quite telling that the first three links in Arlee's article are to the Youtube video of the initial announcement. We've had very little information about where were going.  I've mentioned before that they might be saving the best for last because I am sure that these aspects are the meat and potatoes to the majority of players. But I am concerned that we've heard so little because, like the Wildstar Paths, the devs have put more time into other things and haven't put much flesh on the bones.

What am I really looking for from this content? To be satisfied it would have to be:

• at least three to five zones the size of the original zones
• on three levels
• with skill points, vistas, POIs (hearts make no sense because they're intended to guide levelling players and we're all 80)
• have regular, side quest-like, dynamic events
• have World boss dynamic events
• have these Adventures
• have these Quest Hubs (sorry "outposts")

If the Outposts and Adventures replace the Dynamic Event system, that's no good.  If there are less than three zones or they drip feed them in the way they have through Season 2, that's no good. That covers concern a).

What about b)? Well, the specialisations should herald a whole new playstyle for every class. Whether that will be the case remains to be seen. The Condition Damage changes should have improved build diversity but, as I understand it, they haven't. New enemies and encounters in the jungle should introduce new combat mechanics.

I don't know about you but this is all the important stuff for me. Doing the same old sh-stuff just for mastery points is not going to cut it.