Tag: stats

The High Price of Founding

Posted on by Gazimoff

I have a concern, and it’s about the high price of MMO ‘founders packs.’ For a strong title that’s still early in development, it’s a great way to raise funds and bring in eager gamers to test the game out. But the status of being an early adopter comes with a cost, and it’s usually measured in dollars. I’ve seen studios charge as much as $150 to get into the alpha of a free-to-play title.

Fundamentally, that feels wrong. With an unseen and un-previewed title, the risk for buyer’s remorse is huge. More importantly, however, I don’t think it’ll result in the right mix of testers that will hammer content hard without trying to buy their way around a problem, usually through premium currency tokens. That might be the kind of game that the studio wants to make, but my experience tells me there are better ways to persuade players to part with their cash.

The most common strategy I’ve seen used is where higher prices are charged for earlier access. Pre-alpha costs $150, alpha costs $100, closed beta is at $50, and open beta is free. The bigger packs come with more in-game items and premium currency, but little else besides. It rewards those cash-rich players that can risk that much on a game they might only play once, while hindering the cash-poor but time-rich players that would be a great testing asset.

What would I propose? Glad you asked. Basically, it’s a blend of the existing methods we already see, and the best of Kickstarter. Crucially though, it also lets players trade up – if they like what they see, they can pay more, unlock more, and get themselves a bargain. It reduces the risk on the player, but rewards the developer as well. As an example, imagine there’s a steampunk sandbox MMO called Cogsworld, and it’s just about to hit alpha. Here’s how I’d see it playing out:

  • $20 – Tourist Visa: Limited to 1000 – The Cogsworld Tourist Office only hands out a limited number of visas every year, so grab one before they run out! A stipend of 200 Platinum Cogs is included
  • $50 – Resident: Limited to 2000 – Buy a green card and the city of Cogsopolis will grant you numerous perks, including 600 Platinum Cogs to get you started.
  • $100 – Nobility – As a member of one of the Cogsworld Nobility, you are always welcome. Your inheritance of 1500 Platinum Cogs will be waiting for you at the Bank of Cogsopolis.
  • $200 – Upper Crust – Part of the Cogsworld Elite, your family has amassed a fortune of 3000 Platinum Cogs. In addition, you will be sent a real-life pennant featuring the Cogsopolis Coat of Arms, and real-world versions of the Cogsopolis currency.

All of these are just rough examples – the costs are roughly what I’d charge, but the limits and rewards are completely flexible.

On top of that, I’d allow players to buy premium currency from an item store and exchange it for regular currency on the trading post, giving those cash-poor players a way to earn extra Platinum Cogs simply by playing the game at a rate that’s set by the market itself. Finally, all currency would be reset at the end of open beta, and reassigned to the original players as part of an overall server wipe. The ability to trade would also exist in the live game.

Having this run through beta will, in itself, generate some interesting data:

  • How much/how long does each bracket play?
  • Do players from each bracket drop out/give up at similar points, or is a group more committed?
  • When do players decide to upgrade their package, and what persuaded them to do it?
  • What bracket is more involved in the community, either championing the game or providing helpful feedback?

All of this can help the development team to understand if their actions have meaningful impacts on the playerbase. For a free-to-play title that’s reliant on those with large and small wallets, it also gives them a chance to balance out reception across the spectrum.

Here’s the other thing as well: as Cogsworld edges closer to launch, the limitations on those first two packs can be dropped, but the prices increased/adjusted to the final launch packs. Essentially, players are getting a discount for joining early, rather than being charged a premium.

That said, monetization is an ongoing discussion. Is this the kind of model you’d like to see more of, or would you prefer a different form of founders pack? Maybe you’re happy with the status quo? Whatever your opinion, sound off in the comments.

SWTOR: The Broken Mess of Crew Skills

Posted on by Gazimoff

Over the last few days I’ve been digging into the crafting system in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn’t something I really got into during beta – I was too busy waving around my lightsaber and shooting lightning from my fingertips to be concerned with harvesting materials and making pointless items.

I’m regretting that decision now, as I’d have loved to provide some choice feedback on the system. Other people may have found SWTOR’s biggest flaw, but for me crafting is about even with my issues on Space Combat.

For those of you yet to dig in to the intricacies of fabrication in Bioware’s MMO, here’s the run-down. At level 10-ish you gain your first companion, and with this you can learn Crew Skills. There’s three categories: skills that make things, skills that gather things and skills that send your companion on missions. Credit where it’s due, the last two choices are interesting as they allow you to focus on questing while your companion does all the tedious work of banging rocks together.

But pick a crew skill that makes anything and be prepared for a whole galaxy of redundancy. Let me explain.

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The Unknown Warcraft Subscriber

Posted on by Gazimoff

There’s been a flurry of commentary recently on the recent earnings call by Activision Blizzard, where they provide some highlights on their third quarter performance. If you’re interested in reading through the entire transcript of the call you can find it at Seeking Alpha.

There are a couple of quick facts to pull out: Warcraft has dropped by nearly 2 million subscriptions to 10.3 million worldwide. Most of the loss is thought to be in China, an area which represents over 50% of the total subscriber base. The estimated rough split is approximately 5 million subscribers in the Far East, 3 million in US/Aus and 2 million in Europe/Russia.

There’s also the news on how much money Blizzard has made in the last quarter. The developer made nearly $300 million in revenue and $140 million in income – that’s a healthy profit margin of around 40% once tax gets factored in. Whichever way you slice the cake, Blizzard’s in a strong position considering that it’s not had a major release this year.

There’s only one snag with the information that’s been given to us. Although it’s easy to judge the overall performance of the company, it becomes difficult to judge the performance of Warcraft as an MMO. People will point to subscriber numbers going down and predict that this means doom for the game. That’s just simply not possible to do with the information we have available.

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The Gates of Compelling Rewards

Posted on by Gazimoff

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re somehow missing something when you read a particular piece of news? That’s how I felt when I was reading over Ghostcrawler’s latest blogppost where he talks about item stat inflation and the problem it presents. While it’s a great article that hints at some difficult choices ahead, I’m not sure we’re seeing the whole picture.

The big clue for me was in the phrase “we want rewards to be compelling”. Think about this for a moment as I’ll be coming back to it later.

The problems around itemisation extend far beyond just deciding what numbers to put in the tooltip. There’s also ramifications across the game, from how we experience levelling through to the performance of the game client on our machine. Get it wrong and there could be a whole world of problems. It’s why the Squish versus No Squish argument is more complex than just what kind of number we want to see.

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Mage Stat Priority in 4.0

Posted on by Gazimoff

For many of us, January marks the beginning of Cataclysm raiding. It’s time to start getting those gear upgrades from heroic dungeons, digging out those gems and finishing everything off with a nice coat of enchants. This can be fairly expensive, so it’s worth doing properly rather than wasting money on mistakes.

I’m hearing that the minimum DPS you want to be doing is around 10k sustained while raidbuffed. This isn’t just the burn phase either – you need to be able to provide decent damage output during your recover phase as well. But how do you make sure that the gear you pick is good for you? As an example, there are four cloth headpieces available at iLevel 346, all with the same base stats. Which would be the best for your spec?

I’ve put together a handy list for all three mage specs to give you an idea of what gear to look for and what gems and enchants to pick out. This mage stat priority list should help you focus on what’s important while letting you comfortably shard what’s not essential.

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Mage Tier 11 Preview

Posted on by Gazimoff

With the new Cataclysm raids comes a new set of armour for Mages to drool over. The Firelord’s Vestments have certainly won praise for their looks, but how does it stack up as a fully-fledged dungeon set? Will the complete outfit be worn by most mages, or will the bare minimum be used?

Firstly, it’s worth putting things in perspective. We’re three weeks away from the release of the next expansion. It’s going to take at least two weeks after that to get levelled up and geared up to enter raids – going through normal dungeons to get ready for heroic 5-mans, then using the gear from that to prepare yourself for raiding. By early January most raiding guild should be back in the saddle following the Christmas break. As a result, a lot of this will remain theory for a good few months.

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Entering Beta: The 80 Fire Mage

Posted on by Gazimoff

Spoiler Alert: Discussion of the latest changes to fire mages in build 12694. Also covering a few general and mage related UI changes and some speculation around what they indicate.

The latest beta realm patch was recently released, bringing with it a range of changes to the Mage fire tree (full notes in the forums). I’d been holding off doing any serious work on my level 80 transfer because these changes were inbound, and it’s definitely been worth the wait. The subtle playstyle changes have livened up the spec, both for PvE and PvP fans alike.

First up, let’s look at the baseline. Comparing my mage to his Wrath counterpart, his health pool has crept up almost 10k hp while his mana pool has remained flat at around 25k. Spellpower, haste, hit and crit percentages are also broadly in line with those in the current live game (although Spellpower is slightly higher in beta). Making the transition should be fairly smooth. The biggest issue will be the wasted spirit statpoints on non-set or filler gear – reforging or replacing may be the best way to deal with these items.

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The Flaming Boomerang

Posted on by Gazimoff

Ever since patch 3.3.3 was released I’ve been thinking of switching back to my Fire spec. It made me  feel nostalgic about the early days of Warcraft, where I originally levelled as a fire mage. I only deviated from this spec for parts of both Molten Core and Naxxramas, sticking with fire throughout Burning Crusade. When I started raiding in Wrath I only went to Arcane due to the hitcap benefits. The spec then received an almighty buff, propelling it to become the must-have raiding spec for nearly all mages. I’d been stuck as Arcane ever since.

As a result my fire spec has been largely abandoned until earlier this week when I decided that I had to change. There’s only so much I can take of going through the same instances as the same character casting the same spells until something snaps inside. Not wanting to go all medieval on my keyboard, I dusted off my old fire spec and went down to the target dummies to practice.

The first challenge to face is gearing – even though +hit gear is thrown at you so that you can comfortably make the Arcane hitcap, it’s not quite sufficient to reach the 446 that a fire mage needs. Luckily I’d kept back Dying Curse for just such an occasion. Couple that with the fact that I usually raid with a Draenei for Heroic Presence plus either a shadow priest for Misery or a balance druid for Improved Faerie Fire, and all I have to reach is a manageable 342 hitrating.

The next trick to master is keeping up a solid set of debuffs. The fire spec is slightly more complex than an arcane one in that Living Bomb always needs to be on the target. Each fire mage needs to cast their own Living Bomb, making debuff watching that little bit trickier if you’re not the only one in the party. Once you’ve got that down, you can happily Fireball away at the target until Hot Streak procs. When Hot Streak goes off, cast your instant-cast Pyroblast then go back to Fireballing. Just make sure that Living Bomb is constantly on the target.

The complication sets in when working out Improved Scorch. Even if you’ve got other effects in your group to provide the critical strike chance by 5%, you’ll still want to apply it for the 3% crit chance buff to your Fireballs. This one works slightly differently though in that one mage can apply the debuff for all the others in the group. This means that you need to coordinate with others about who will apply the debuff. Luckily the chance of encountering another fire mage in a raid is fairly rare, so you can usually apply anyway. Again, like with Living Bomb, this always needs to be applied on the target.

UPDATE: The above paragraph is wrong. Have a look at this article for an update on Improved Scorch

There are various tricks you can use to alert yourself to various spell procs as well as tracking when debuffs need to be applied, and I’ll be talking about some related addons in the near future.

Things can get even more complicated when you start looking at converting gear from an Arcane spec focus to a Fire spec focus. The reason being that haste benefits Arcane mages tremendously – the more haste they have, the more spells they can cast. For a fire mage with Burnout and Hot Streak, crit strike rating has more of a part to play. Not only do you deal more damage from your spell critical strikes, but you have an increased chance to trigger Hot Streak as your chance to crit increases. For me it’s not currently clear if haste is the better stat to go for above crit for fire mages, but it’s something I’m looking at closely.

At the end of the day though it doesn’t matter to me as long as I’m having fun, and going back to Fire is something that’s hitting all the right nostalgia buttons for me. I’ve also been able to “prove” it’s a viable raiding spec after managing to pull aggro during phase 2 of Lady Deathwhisper and topping the damage and DPS meters on Saurfang. These are inconsequential though, as long as I can cackle like a maniac while smacking my buttons.

Hit It Like You Mean It

Posted on by Gazimoff

Ask a mage to talk about the Hit Cap, and you’ll probably get a tirade of ranting. They’ll start to froth at the mouth as this haze of madness descends upon them, a rage of arguments involving calculations and forecasts that seem like some encrypted mathematical riddle. It’s a horrible stat that never feels ‘useful’, just one of those things that you need to have enough of. Not too much though – anything more than enough is a waste.

To understand more on the problems mages face with the Hit Cap, it’s worth reading the WoWWiki article. The amount of hit needed from gear, enchants and gems can change dramatically based on what talent spec you have as well as what racial abilities you have and who else you have in the group. And since you can’t bank on having the same group make-up every time, you end up building your gear based on worse case scenarios.

Add on to this Blizzard’s habit of ‘tweaking’ and you have a recipe for frustration. In the start of Wrath of the Lich King, Deep Fire had the highest damage output. While you were gearing up, a solid Arcane spec would allow you to pick up talents like Precision and Arcane Focus. We even had progression, from Arcane, to Frostfire, to Deep Fire, as we geared up. Then patch 3.2.2 came out and suddenly the spec that provided the most hit was also the one with the highest DPS output. Overnight every high end mage had to go out, respec and re-asses their gear. It was a nightmare.

This form of ‘stat tetris’ is something that Blizzard are working on with Cataclysm, in order to make hit gear more useful. But then again, if you look at the overall stat changes that are planned for Cataclysm there are still some questions that remain. Looking at what’s being planned, we’ll have the following stats to juggle.

  • Stamina – affecting our health pools, possibly impacting spell damage
  • Intellect – affecting our mana pools and spell damage
  • Haste – how fast we can cast our spells
  • Crit rating  – a spell’s chance to critically hit
  • Mastery – a ‘bonus’ stat for wearing gear relevant to us (cloth)
  • Spell damage – no longer on gear, but will remain on weapons
  • Hit rating

Currently, the responses on how hit rating will work are pretty vague. Is it something that we’ll need more of as we go into higher tier brackets of dungeons, becoming part of the ‘gear check’ that we’ll need to leap over regardless of skill? Is it one of these stats that’s going to scale pretty linearly up to a soft cap, in the same way that haste and crit rating do now? Will it have a multiplier or booster affect on our other stats, but without a cap? Currently these are unknowns and will probably remain so until the launch of Beta later this year.

Why not ask another question though – why is hit needed as part of the spellcaster damage mechanics? Does it have an important role to play as a stat in the overall damage calculation, or is it there to serve purely as a gating or limiting mechanic? Does it need to exist as a stat in talent trees, or can it be moved out to be a purely gear-based stat?

Does it need to exist at all, or can it be thrown in the trash?

I’ll be eagerly waiting on further news, but I really hope that we can avoid having to juggle stats around a pivot point of some magical number. After all, I’d rather play Peggle instead of Tetris.

What the stat?

Posted on by Gazimoff

One of the things that really irritates me sometimes is the huge number of stats that accompany games these days. You tend to expect it a lot in RPGs, where each attribute can be measured, quantified and manipulated by your choice of character class or equipment. Don’t get me wrong, I like the ability to customise and tune my character the way I want. I just think that we’re getting a little stats-crazy these days.

Let me break it down a little. In World of Warcraft, I’ve been playing a mage now for five years. I like the immersive game world, the landscapes and soundscapes. I like the way combat feels when playing a mage, how the class works and what the sweet spots are. I even enjoy the multiplayer aspects of doing dungeons and raids. It’s all good fun, with some cool encounters and a nice bucket of storytelling and lore to go with it.

What I don’t enjoy is the “meta-game”. It’s when you start scratching the surface and digging deeper into the mechanics of using this spell vs. that spell, or choosing one item of gear over another. Pick up an item of loot from your typical raid and you might find five or six different attributes that it can improve. Is it an upgrade? Is it worth me taking? Hang on while I grab my calculator…

This whole theorycrafting part isn’t something I’m a huge fan of doing myself, but I’m grateful that there are others who are happy to run the numbers and share the results. The RatingBuster addon is a huge help for me as it makes identifying gear upgrades much easier. There’s also a shedload of information over at both Elitist Jerks and Epic Advice, with the latter also encouraging questions from players that just want to raise their game.

It’s why I’m slightly worried with the stat changes that are being planned for the latest expansion. It’s not so much the stat changes themselves as the intent behind them that has me confused. I hate having to make predictions based on partial information, but I’d really like to know what Blizzard are trying to achieve:

  • Reducing the overall number of stats I have to track and worry about?
  • Reducing the amount of gear I find appealing so that I stop grabbing stuff that priests and holy paladins want?
  • Increasing the difference between classes?
  • All of the above?

One of the things I really liked in the change from Vanilla WoW to Burning Crusade was that gear choices became a lot more fluid. Class specific gear was replaced with tradeable tokens, while gear that was good for caster DPS also became pretty cool for healers. It meant that it became easier to gear up in dungeons and fewer items got sharded or trashed because they weren’t useful to anyone. With these proposed changes it feels like we’ll be going back to basics, with fewer classes competing for gear and more stuff getting junked as a result. This wasn’t such a big deal back when you had 40 people to distribute loot between, but now that raids are as small as 10 people, making items useful to as many players as possible should be a consideration.

Maybe I’m just getting grumpy in my old age, or maybe I’m missing something, but I’m glad there are still people who are happy to “do the math” and help us all with what we should be doing.

As for me, I guess that as long as I keep seeing big yellow numbers I’ll be OK.