Arkham Knight has six DLCs called Arkham Episodes in which you run people other than Batman through brief adventures. By brief, I mean generally in the 30-minute range. None of them measure up to the Catwoman content in Arkham City. Before starting A Flip of the Coin, which features Robin, I was warned that it was especially annoying. That warning was true. The middle part of A Flip of the Coin is a fussy little puzzle that can only be solved one way, almost certainly with many retries.
First, you must turn around, enter a wall grate, crawl through a tunnel, pop out a floor grate, walk along a corridor, plant an explosive, walk back up the corridor, enter the floor grate, crawl back through the tunnel, grapple up to the wall grate, perch on a ledge, and detonate the explosive. Repetition makes this very dull, especially because it is always accompanied by the same voice clips.
Second, you must hack the middle sentry gun (watch out, hack only lasts 30 seconds), glide down to the alcove without being seen by the surviving guards (one is standing right in the alcove), do a multi-takedown timed to avoid the left and right sentry guns, get out of their zones of coverage, re-hack the middle gun, slowly and vulnerably dismantle the left and right guns, then operate a fuse box to finally disable the middle gun.
In so much of the rest of the game, you have freedom of approach. If one method doesn't succeed, you can try another. If you prefer not to use a particular technique, you can probably avoid it most of the time. There's no invention to this sequence, though, only execution. And sadly execution too is tricky. When gliding for the alcove, you may get hung up on the wire strung across the top of the room. Despite not technically killing you immediately, the sentry guns are effectively instant death. (Even in the main game, sentry guns are one of the more unforgiving threats.)
In a way it's an interesting case study. It demonstrates that for all Arkham Knight does right, without player choice and flexibility it would suffer badly.
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Friday, September 23, 2016
Csikszentmihalyi deez
This DIGRA paper deals with somebody else's "Flow theory," specifically "in design and analysis of digital games." It isn't research-oriented; it's a paper about previous papers, and while this doesn't have to be a death sentence, it's an urgent warning to look for useful conclusions.
Flow's uses for games are dubious. Here's an introduction to Flow:
A lost sense of time is a good (though not complete) test for fun ("time flies when you're having fun"), but this is real-world time ("self-consciousness disappears"); you can still be hyper-conscious of time in a game while having fun, such as when trying to beat a lap time in a racing simulator. Obviously in that case you can also worry about failure, and fail a lot, and still be absorbed. Some definitions make fail states essential to games. (The paper's own example of a Flow experience mentions a "dozen or so attempts to get past this one section" — many failures.)
"Clear goals every step of the way" is a difficult thing to reconcile with fun games. As the popular Sid Meier adage goes, a game is a series of interesting choices. Player choice and fixed goals clash. Players actually complain about "hand-holding" when games narrow their choices in the interests of moving them further along toward the game's goals. Many games are open-ended, with no victory conditions and no explicit objectives.
Feedback isn't always immediate. When you launch a torpedo in a Silent Hunter game, it can be over a minute before you find out whether it hit its target. There are things to do in that time (check sonar, launch more torpedoes, move in to follow up with the deck gun, begin escape), but the feedback isn't immediate and that's not a barrier to the fun.
It gets even trickier when you consider "immediate" more strictly. Street Fighter V has eight frames of lag; is it less Flow-y than Street Fighter IV, which had five? Perhaps "feedback" is best interpreted as merely being some relatively prompt UI indication that you pressed a button, so you know the game hasn't locked up. Crashes do take me out of a game.
Anyway, so far so familiar. Flow as described above is roughly half a mirror of commonplace ideas about games as entertainment, and half dubious advice on how to get them there. The DIGRA authors reach a similar conclusion ("The first three conditions of Flow are more or less heuristics for the kind of experience which might then lead to the remaining six").
With the addition of the following, it gets a lot worse.
(How should an individual become capable of finding fun in everything, then? Drugs? Csikszentmihalyi explicitly condemns drugs as "entropy," using a word with a specific meaning in the hard sciences to make his own scorn seem more scientific.)
And of course it's connected to the Jane McGonigal idea of gamification, which is similarly destructive. If you could create fun games simply by adding a point-scoring system to an existing (and often unpleasant!) activity, game design as we know it wouldn't exist.
These people may also simply be influenced by the low social status of games.
I wouldn't say cultural capital in the knowledge/skill sense means fun is being had for an external purpose either. The knowledge and skill acquired by having fun in games is almost entirely useful only for having more fun. I won't gain political or economic capital from my investigation of how to rebuild the German navy in Hearts of Iron. No real gunsmith has any use for my Warframe-derived knowledge that a gun can be improved by putting a blue potato in it.
It's all to easy to see how this would impact game design: a "meaningful growth" imperative disrupting the focus on fun. Set alongside "clear goals," "immediate feedback," and "no worry of failure," it's a recipe for a game that always tells you exactly what to do next, lacks long-term elements in its gameplay loops, is too easy, and promotes an ideology or has an intrusive edutainment element. (Meanwhile there are no provisions for interesting choices, different styles of play, or forward planning.)
Flow theory has nothing of value to offer gaming, and in fact agitates — especially with the new tenth condition proposed by this paper — for goals which will damage games as instruments of fun. It should be discarded. It certainly shouldn't be a research or presentation topic. Don't underestimate the existing community's knowledge of the field — gamer clichés and design proverbs are a sounder foundation to build on than commandments from academia.
In the event that I'm wrong, what advocates need to do is demonstrate the advantages of adhering to Flow theory, the more practically the better. Make a Flow mod for an existing game, bringing it closer into line with the theory (constant clear goals, immediate feedback, no worry of failure, promotes personal growth), and see how positively players react to it.
I remain skeptical. I don't play games in search of a deeper meaning. I just want to enjoy part of my life. I just want not every tick of the second hand to poke like a pin. I just want fun things to be fun.
As an aside, this is a bad idea:
Flow's uses for games are dubious. Here's an introduction to Flow:
1. There are clear goals every step of the waySome of these (45789) are straightforward consequences of having fun. So long as those conditions are satisfied, what's the importance of the others (1236)? If you're having fun without clear goals or immediate feedback, or with the worry of failure, what are you falling short of? Fun things are still fun.
2. There is immediate feedback to one’s actions
3. There is a balance between challenges and skills
4. Action and awareness are merged
5. Distractions are excluded from consciousness
6. There is no worry of failure
7. Self-consciousness disappears
8. The sense of time becomes distorted
9. The activity becomes autotelic ["Autotelic" means done for its own sake.]
A lost sense of time is a good (though not complete) test for fun ("time flies when you're having fun"), but this is real-world time ("self-consciousness disappears"); you can still be hyper-conscious of time in a game while having fun, such as when trying to beat a lap time in a racing simulator. Obviously in that case you can also worry about failure, and fail a lot, and still be absorbed. Some definitions make fail states essential to games. (The paper's own example of a Flow experience mentions a "dozen or so attempts to get past this one section" — many failures.)
"Clear goals every step of the way" is a difficult thing to reconcile with fun games. As the popular Sid Meier adage goes, a game is a series of interesting choices. Player choice and fixed goals clash. Players actually complain about "hand-holding" when games narrow their choices in the interests of moving them further along toward the game's goals. Many games are open-ended, with no victory conditions and no explicit objectives.
Feedback isn't always immediate. When you launch a torpedo in a Silent Hunter game, it can be over a minute before you find out whether it hit its target. There are things to do in that time (check sonar, launch more torpedoes, move in to follow up with the deck gun, begin escape), but the feedback isn't immediate and that's not a barrier to the fun.
It gets even trickier when you consider "immediate" more strictly. Street Fighter V has eight frames of lag; is it less Flow-y than Street Fighter IV, which had five? Perhaps "feedback" is best interpreted as merely being some relatively prompt UI indication that you pressed a button, so you know the game hasn't locked up. Crashes do take me out of a game.
challenge must not be too great (or else frustration would result) or too slight (yielding boredom)A challenge/skill balance isn't always necessary for fun, but it can help. Balance is often the most hotly discussed topic in a game's online community.
Anyway, so far so familiar. Flow as described above is roughly half a mirror of commonplace ideas about games as entertainment, and half dubious advice on how to get them there. The DIGRA authors reach a similar conclusion ("The first three conditions of Flow are more or less heuristics for the kind of experience which might then lead to the remaining six").
With the addition of the following, it gets a lot worse.
meaningful growth promoting experiencesIn other words, the old demand that entertainment be didactic, which typically comes at the cost of its power to entertain. With that in mind, no one should be surprised that on the subject of games themselves, Csikszentmihalyi Eberts. (And of course chess is used as a positive contrast to games, as if chess isn't solved and chess expertise isn't a matter of rote memorization.)
Some of these experiences can be enjoyable, but these episodes of Flow do not add up to a sense of satisfaction and happiness over time. Pleasure does not lead to creativity, but soon turns into addiction – the thrall of entropy.
a creative feeling
the ability (or even need) for Flow to provide meaning to the lives of those who experience it
on the one hand Csikszentmihalyi claims that Flow can provide meaning, and gives examples of socially relative positive meaning encountered in Flow, but on the other insists that Flow must be free of external motivating influence if it is to provide enjoyment.
Flow experiences will necessarily yield a satisfyingly meaningful outcome for individuals, and ultimately 'enjoyment' on the one hand, while admitting that some experiences, while fulfilling the stated conditions of Flow, do not yield satisfaction and enjoyment, but rather mere pleasure without meaning and potentially entropy or addiction.
society has a role in teaching young people what activities they should be enjoying in order to grow personally and culturally
better if our children learned to enjoy cooperation rather than violence; reading rather than stealing; chess rather than dice; hiking rather than watching television.
the difference between Flow as a positive, meaning producing, satisfyingly enjoyable experience and Flow as a negative, addictive, entropy inducing, merely pleasurable experience, is the individual's sense of growth in normatively agreeable directions.
at least two kinds of Flow. Good, meaningful, worthwhile, personal growth promoting Flow, and the bad, addictive, meaningless, waste of time kind.
While they might find playing games to be 'pleasurable' on occasion, the deep engagement that they experienced was not ultimately enjoyable.
Ultimately, however the experience is judged by the individual to lack enjoyment or value, and does not generate a sense of long term, personal meaning.
Playing the stock market in order to make money is not an autotelic experience; but playing it in order to prove one’s skill at foretelling future trends is – even though the outcome in terms of dollars and cents is exactly the same.Now we have come full circle — fun is presented as something you should experience while doing what you have to do anyway, not something to pursue for its own sake. Who needs games? It's jobs that are fun! Applying this theory to entertainment is the abolition of entertainment.
That is, it is the individual who is autotelic (capable of acting without external drivers), rather than the activity. Csikszentmihalyi presents examples of individuals who approach every day activities with autotelic intent (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990); essentially gamifying their everyday experiences.
(How should an individual become capable of finding fun in everything, then? Drugs? Csikszentmihalyi explicitly condemns drugs as "entropy," using a word with a specific meaning in the hard sciences to make his own scorn seem more scientific.)
And of course it's connected to the Jane McGonigal idea of gamification, which is similarly destructive. If you could create fun games simply by adding a point-scoring system to an existing (and often unpleasant!) activity, game design as we know it wouldn't exist.
In data collected in interviews as part of a broad ranging study of players’ relationships with games (Salisbury 2013), a significant subset of players lamented the time they had spent playing games despite (in fact in a couple of cases reinforced by) having experienced apparently Flow like engagements when they did.This is to be expected. Fun for its own sake is valuable in the present, while toil for a future outcome is a burden in the present but has potential value in the future. Once you are in that future, past fun has only a past value, and past toil would have only a past cost, but a present value. How easy it is then to discount the cost of that toil and the lost fun it replaces, and to overestimate what would have been gained.
These people may also simply be influenced by the low social status of games.
breaking value down into three broad areas of human experience, the economic, the social, and the cultural (Bourdieu 1986)This is just to get Bourdieu into your bibliography, isn't it? In the previous version of this paper, cultural capital is discussed in more detail, but the obvious conclusion — that fun for its own sake can be a cultural value — is not reached. This idea is not the submission of selves to the culture, but the culture's submission to selves, since different people have fun different ways. Even if you don't enjoy what someone else does, letting them enjoy it sweetens the social contract for them. This doesn't mean fun is being had for the sake of an external value — it means that the value of fun for its own sake is recognized externally, and the pursuit of fun is tolerated, perhaps even protected and encouraged.
I wouldn't say cultural capital in the knowledge/skill sense means fun is being had for an external purpose either. The knowledge and skill acquired by having fun in games is almost entirely useful only for having more fun. I won't gain political or economic capital from my investigation of how to rebuild the German navy in Hearts of Iron. No real gunsmith has any use for my Warframe-derived knowledge that a gun can be improved by putting a blue potato in it.
10: The activity must present an opportunity for meaningful growth of the self which is valued by the individual participant.And so the paper "solves" the problems of Flow not by discarding the theory, but by adding this clause, which is awkwardly split between personal ("valued by the individual participant") and external ("meaningful growth of the self"). The difficulties of 1236 are not addressed, nor the redundancies of 4578, nor the difference between principles of diagnosing Flow and principles of creating it (apart from a mention in passing).
It's all to easy to see how this would impact game design: a "meaningful growth" imperative disrupting the focus on fun. Set alongside "clear goals," "immediate feedback," and "no worry of failure," it's a recipe for a game that always tells you exactly what to do next, lacks long-term elements in its gameplay loops, is too easy, and promotes an ideology or has an intrusive edutainment element. (Meanwhile there are no provisions for interesting choices, different styles of play, or forward planning.)
Flow theory has nothing of value to offer gaming, and in fact agitates — especially with the new tenth condition proposed by this paper — for goals which will damage games as instruments of fun. It should be discarded. It certainly shouldn't be a research or presentation topic. Don't underestimate the existing community's knowledge of the field — gamer clichés and design proverbs are a sounder foundation to build on than commandments from academia.
In the event that I'm wrong, what advocates need to do is demonstrate the advantages of adhering to Flow theory, the more practically the better. Make a Flow mod for an existing game, bringing it closer into line with the theory (constant clear goals, immediate feedback, no worry of failure, promotes personal growth), and see how positively players react to it.
I remain skeptical. I don't play games in search of a deeper meaning. I just want to enjoy part of my life. I just want not every tick of the second hand to poke like a pin. I just want fun things to be fun.
As an aside, this is a bad idea:
Chen (2007) employs a modified sense of optimal challenge based on Flow, which calls for an approach to the design of any single-player game which will allow the player to dynamically select the difficulty of the challenge through their actions. Expert players performing identifiably expert actions make the game more difficult, while novice players who act in identifiably novice ways make the game easier.Give us manual difficulty selection instead, or different playstyles with different levels of difficulty. Let people decide for themselves how hard they want a game to be for them. For the struggling player, having this decision taken away is a further loss of control.
Monday, September 5, 2016
The Postjournalist Manifesto
Be a postjournalist, the opposite of a journalist.
Fight lies and double standards.
Serve an audience.
Write about the topic itself, don't inject politics.
If you'd just repeat somebody else, link instead.
Invent your own formats if conventional ones aren't the best.
Be right about facts. If you make a mistake, run a correction that's more prominent than the mistake.
Talk with other postjournalists in public, not in private. Don't let groupthink think for you. If you do talk with other postjournalists in private, disclose anything relevant to your postjournalism to your audience.
If you're covering a controversy, link to at least two sides in their own words.
Try not to use confidential sources. Only do it for a good reason. If you promise someone confidentiality, you have to keep that promise, so don't do it lightly.
Don't delete unless you legally have to. If you want to retract something, leave it up with a correction.
Don't censor. Do things censors would censor if they could, so people will know you don't censor.
Don't cover your friends or other intimates, not even with disclosure.
Don't cover your past or present advertisers, not even with disclosure. Don't accept advertising deals with topics of your past stories. This applies both to individual postjournalists and entire outlets — if you're doing a piece for somebody else, don't cover their advertisers either.
Don't cover topics connected to charitable donations or gifts you have given or received, not even with disclosure. If you are given a gift connected with subjects of your past or future postjournalism, it should be refused, returned to the giver, and disclosed.
Don't let other individuals select your topics. You may put topic choice to an audience vote if you have a large enough audience, but individuals may be manipulating you into promoting things they're connected with.
Disclose any purchases made for a particular piece in that piece.
Disclose any business deals you make as a postjournalist, or that have relevance to what you're doing as a postjournalist. You may be paid for postjournalism itself by your audience. Any donation or crowdfund money should be handled transparently, and completely returned if used in ways that don't match what the donors thought they were paying for when they donated.
Make your disclosures prominent and easy to find.
Don't put some content behind a paywall but other content in front, or the incentive will be to make your public content an advertisement for your own service rather than good in its own right.
See money as a dangerous contaminant. It makes the giver your master, and then your work is tainted. You have to avoid any tainted topics, so try to advertise products unrelated to your postjournalism. Audience money is a safer toxin, but it still has to be handled carefully.
Understand that no one piece and no one person has the complete story. Whatever you do is just one part of the whole. Link other sources to round out what you do. Let the audience participate to make corrections and fill in the gaps. If you get enough responses, do a followup piece about the responses that highlights the best ideas, as well as the most popular and the most different.
If someone asks you to break these rules, don't do it, and transparently share their request with your audience.
Don't work with journalists. They won't follow these rules.
Fight lies and double standards.
Serve an audience.
Write about the topic itself, don't inject politics.
If you'd just repeat somebody else, link instead.
Invent your own formats if conventional ones aren't the best.
Be right about facts. If you make a mistake, run a correction that's more prominent than the mistake.
Talk with other postjournalists in public, not in private. Don't let groupthink think for you. If you do talk with other postjournalists in private, disclose anything relevant to your postjournalism to your audience.
If you're covering a controversy, link to at least two sides in their own words.
Try not to use confidential sources. Only do it for a good reason. If you promise someone confidentiality, you have to keep that promise, so don't do it lightly.
Don't delete unless you legally have to. If you want to retract something, leave it up with a correction.
Don't censor. Do things censors would censor if they could, so people will know you don't censor.
Don't cover your friends or other intimates, not even with disclosure.
Don't cover your past or present advertisers, not even with disclosure. Don't accept advertising deals with topics of your past stories. This applies both to individual postjournalists and entire outlets — if you're doing a piece for somebody else, don't cover their advertisers either.
Don't cover topics connected to charitable donations or gifts you have given or received, not even with disclosure. If you are given a gift connected with subjects of your past or future postjournalism, it should be refused, returned to the giver, and disclosed.
Don't let other individuals select your topics. You may put topic choice to an audience vote if you have a large enough audience, but individuals may be manipulating you into promoting things they're connected with.
Disclose any purchases made for a particular piece in that piece.
Disclose any business deals you make as a postjournalist, or that have relevance to what you're doing as a postjournalist. You may be paid for postjournalism itself by your audience. Any donation or crowdfund money should be handled transparently, and completely returned if used in ways that don't match what the donors thought they were paying for when they donated.
Make your disclosures prominent and easy to find.
Don't put some content behind a paywall but other content in front, or the incentive will be to make your public content an advertisement for your own service rather than good in its own right.
See money as a dangerous contaminant. It makes the giver your master, and then your work is tainted. You have to avoid any tainted topics, so try to advertise products unrelated to your postjournalism. Audience money is a safer toxin, but it still has to be handled carefully.
Understand that no one piece and no one person has the complete story. Whatever you do is just one part of the whole. Link other sources to round out what you do. Let the audience participate to make corrections and fill in the gaps. If you get enough responses, do a followup piece about the responses that highlights the best ideas, as well as the most popular and the most different.
If someone asks you to break these rules, don't do it, and transparently share their request with your audience.
Don't work with journalists. They won't follow these rules.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Concept: Herding
Herding is when a game pressures players to play together, to the disadvantage or elimination of solo play.
Some games outright require multiplayer. Shattered Horizon was an MP-only team shooter, didn't even have bots. (SP was later added in an expansion.)
Some games have modes that require multiplayer. You can solo a lot of content in World of Warcraft, but you need to join a group to raid.
Some games are more challenging, less rewarding, or less designed around single-player. To a degree additional challenge can be its own reward, but something balanced for multiplayer isn't always enjoyable or even possible by yourself. In Warframe, you'll get loot faster together, as well as having new combinations of powers available.
I imagine that developers think promoting or requiring a social aspect of the game will increase participation and longevity, but from experience I can say it's more likely players will skip the game because they can't get people to play with them, or quit when their group stops convening. It's always easier to schedule for one person than four.
Pickup groups have their own problems. They can't reliably be assembled except in the most populous games. New players are often a liability due to mechanical mismatch (like level imbalance), clashing degrees of player skill, selfishness, and simple unfamiliarity.
For me it's a plus when a game doesn't push me to group up.
Some games outright require multiplayer. Shattered Horizon was an MP-only team shooter, didn't even have bots. (SP was later added in an expansion.)
Some games have modes that require multiplayer. You can solo a lot of content in World of Warcraft, but you need to join a group to raid.
Some games are more challenging, less rewarding, or less designed around single-player. To a degree additional challenge can be its own reward, but something balanced for multiplayer isn't always enjoyable or even possible by yourself. In Warframe, you'll get loot faster together, as well as having new combinations of powers available.
I imagine that developers think promoting or requiring a social aspect of the game will increase participation and longevity, but from experience I can say it's more likely players will skip the game because they can't get people to play with them, or quit when their group stops convening. It's always easier to schedule for one person than four.
Pickup groups have their own problems. They can't reliably be assembled except in the most populous games. New players are often a liability due to mechanical mismatch (like level imbalance), clashing degrees of player skill, selfishness, and simple unfamiliarity.
For me it's a plus when a game doesn't push me to group up.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Pokemon Go at Level 11
A user named TorD has challenged my assumptions about Pokemon Go. This post updates this one.
On player level gating available pokemon types for capture: "Well this is not true [...] It does not affect what Pokemon types you can catch." I can't remember where I saw the claim that player level determines which pokemon types can appear for the player, but it remains plausible in light of my own experience with the game. I've also heard of "pokemon nests" where certain types are more common, but this system is so untransparent as to be useless to me. Where do I go to catch a Charmander? No idea, no way to find out.
On counterpicking: "the formula for damage bonuses based on type advantage is so low (1.25x for super effective, 0.75 for not very effective)" Well shit! This is an immense nerf to type bonuses, which previously gave 2x/0.5x. It further degrades Go pokemon into being nothing but blobs of CP, and removes what I assumed would be a salutary attacker advantage at gyms. Pikachu, I choose you — but you might as well be a Squirtle, it doesn't really matter.
On gym balance: "a level 10 will have no chance against a level 20's Pokemon if both players have theirs maxed to their fullest potential. It's impossible. But Go isn't a solo game: 3 level 10's can work together to take down a gym of much higher level [...] gym battles are not for soloing." Hearing this impression almost inspired me to uninstall the game immediately. If true, this is fucking terrible. Multiplayer is a plague on gaming. In some games it's used to excuse bad AI, in others it's "optional" but you're mechanically pushed toward it, and of course there are MP-only games which I don't even consider.
On F2P: "I think PoGO is probably one of the fairest f2p games I've been into" I've seen worse, I guess, but Go isn't anywhere near the league of my personal favorite F2P game, Warframe. Fact is, Go's biggest problems aren't unique to F2P games. Any multiplayer game with a long level progression is likely to have a seniority system (why play if you'll never catch up?), any with a big launch and a shared world is likely to have a baby boom clogging content bottlenecks (e.g., World of Warcraft newb areas at launch; they would have been wiser to spread characters through the game by retaining progression from the open beta), lacking sufficient player choice and sharing too little information with the player are common flaws (datamine those damage formulas!), and over and over there are multiplayer games with a bad solo experience. Fuck.
On player level gating available pokemon types for capture: "Well this is not true [...] It does not affect what Pokemon types you can catch." I can't remember where I saw the claim that player level determines which pokemon types can appear for the player, but it remains plausible in light of my own experience with the game. I've also heard of "pokemon nests" where certain types are more common, but this system is so untransparent as to be useless to me. Where do I go to catch a Charmander? No idea, no way to find out.
On counterpicking: "the formula for damage bonuses based on type advantage is so low (1.25x for super effective, 0.75 for not very effective)" Well shit! This is an immense nerf to type bonuses, which previously gave 2x/0.5x. It further degrades Go pokemon into being nothing but blobs of CP, and removes what I assumed would be a salutary attacker advantage at gyms. Pikachu, I choose you — but you might as well be a Squirtle, it doesn't really matter.
On gym balance: "a level 10 will have no chance against a level 20's Pokemon if both players have theirs maxed to their fullest potential. It's impossible. But Go isn't a solo game: 3 level 10's can work together to take down a gym of much higher level [...] gym battles are not for soloing." Hearing this impression almost inspired me to uninstall the game immediately. If true, this is fucking terrible. Multiplayer is a plague on gaming. In some games it's used to excuse bad AI, in others it's "optional" but you're mechanically pushed toward it, and of course there are MP-only games which I don't even consider.
On F2P: "I think PoGO is probably one of the fairest f2p games I've been into" I've seen worse, I guess, but Go isn't anywhere near the league of my personal favorite F2P game, Warframe. Fact is, Go's biggest problems aren't unique to F2P games. Any multiplayer game with a long level progression is likely to have a seniority system (why play if you'll never catch up?), any with a big launch and a shared world is likely to have a baby boom clogging content bottlenecks (e.g., World of Warcraft newb areas at launch; they would have been wiser to spread characters through the game by retaining progression from the open beta), lacking sufficient player choice and sharing too little information with the player are common flaws (datamine those damage formulas!), and over and over there are multiplayer games with a bad solo experience. Fuck.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Pokemon Go at Level 10
This post has been updated.
I didn't play Niantic's previous game, Ingress. I haven't played much Pokemon either, probably spent the most time with Emerald. Most importantly, I didn't start playing Pokemon Go until August 12th, more than five weeks after launch.
I'm seeing a different game than early adopters did — I'm level 10, but gyms are controlled by people in the level 20-30 range. Fighting over gyms is an important part of the game, but I'm unlikely to catch up with the leading edge of players, especially without paying to win.
Despite fighting's importance, it has implementation problems that push me away from it. With no Pokemon Centers to heal pokemon for free, expendable potions are the only means of healing — discouraging risky fighting. The pace of fights is such that I don't always have as much time as I would like to consider and execute my next move, especially when switching pokemon. There's no quick reference for which types are strong against others.
Players in Pokemon games have been pokemon trainers, but with Pokemon Go, I'm hearing people talk about being pokemon hunters. A lot of the training aspects are gone — you don't control which moves a pokemon learns, you don't see useful pokemon stats directly, you don't breed pokemon, and you have less power over when pokemon can evolve or level up (CP+ in Go terms). With fighting also difficult to get into, that leaves catching pokemon.
Catching pokemon is the most important source of experience points, which level up the player rather than their pokemon. Player level determines the range of pokemon that can be randomly encountered. Catching a new kind of pokemon gives a lot of experience, but if your level is low you're not eligible to find most pokemon.
The game's biggest problem is that unlike previous Pokemon games, where I can go particular places to have a better chance of catching particular pokemon, in Go I'm stuck with what the servers and my level agree on. A trip to a new zone for a pokemon I haven't got yet won't make a difference. Niantic even suppresses attempts to map where pokemon are at the moment. (And I'm surprised they don't offer a first-party map of stops and gyms.)
Introducing zones sounds good, and it would add depth to the catching-centric "pokemon hunter" aspect of the game, but it would be a problem for players whose ability to go from zone to zone is limited. A kid who can only play in the local park would be out of luck trying to get other pokemon. Maybe the solution is items that selectively alter encounter rates, like an incense variant that boosts one type only.
Pokestops are boring and often unhelpful; gyms are interesting and varied, but effectively closed off. Pokestops could be reinvented as micro-gyms, guarded by the last victorious pokemon, but limited by a "weight class" that serves as an upper bound on the CP of challenging pokemon, perhaps leagues of <100, <500, and <1000. This would breathe life into the game for players below the levels dominant at gyms.
More interaction between trainers would be nice. I'd like to be able to challenge other players directly, without the need for gyms. The ability to trade items and pokemon would also be welcome. But I suspect that player interaction is limited by design due to the general idea of "stranger danger" that influences games with an intended audience that includes young children.
Ultimately I'm not the person they're designing for. Every free to play/pay to win game has two audiences, the F2P and the P2W. Since revenue comes from the P2Ws, milking them will always come before improving the F2P experience. These doldrum levels locked out of the meat of the game may be a deliberate attempt to frustrate newcomers, goading them into either quitting or paying.
I didn't play Niantic's previous game, Ingress. I haven't played much Pokemon either, probably spent the most time with Emerald. Most importantly, I didn't start playing Pokemon Go until August 12th, more than five weeks after launch.
I'm seeing a different game than early adopters did — I'm level 10, but gyms are controlled by people in the level 20-30 range. Fighting over gyms is an important part of the game, but I'm unlikely to catch up with the leading edge of players, especially without paying to win.
Despite fighting's importance, it has implementation problems that push me away from it. With no Pokemon Centers to heal pokemon for free, expendable potions are the only means of healing — discouraging risky fighting. The pace of fights is such that I don't always have as much time as I would like to consider and execute my next move, especially when switching pokemon. There's no quick reference for which types are strong against others.
Players in Pokemon games have been pokemon trainers, but with Pokemon Go, I'm hearing people talk about being pokemon hunters. A lot of the training aspects are gone — you don't control which moves a pokemon learns, you don't see useful pokemon stats directly, you don't breed pokemon, and you have less power over when pokemon can evolve or level up (CP+ in Go terms). With fighting also difficult to get into, that leaves catching pokemon.
Catching pokemon is the most important source of experience points, which level up the player rather than their pokemon. Player level determines the range of pokemon that can be randomly encountered. Catching a new kind of pokemon gives a lot of experience, but if your level is low you're not eligible to find most pokemon.
The game's biggest problem is that unlike previous Pokemon games, where I can go particular places to have a better chance of catching particular pokemon, in Go I'm stuck with what the servers and my level agree on. A trip to a new zone for a pokemon I haven't got yet won't make a difference. Niantic even suppresses attempts to map where pokemon are at the moment. (And I'm surprised they don't offer a first-party map of stops and gyms.)
Introducing zones sounds good, and it would add depth to the catching-centric "pokemon hunter" aspect of the game, but it would be a problem for players whose ability to go from zone to zone is limited. A kid who can only play in the local park would be out of luck trying to get other pokemon. Maybe the solution is items that selectively alter encounter rates, like an incense variant that boosts one type only.
Pokestops are boring and often unhelpful; gyms are interesting and varied, but effectively closed off. Pokestops could be reinvented as micro-gyms, guarded by the last victorious pokemon, but limited by a "weight class" that serves as an upper bound on the CP of challenging pokemon, perhaps leagues of <100, <500, and <1000. This would breathe life into the game for players below the levels dominant at gyms.
More interaction between trainers would be nice. I'd like to be able to challenge other players directly, without the need for gyms. The ability to trade items and pokemon would also be welcome. But I suspect that player interaction is limited by design due to the general idea of "stranger danger" that influences games with an intended audience that includes young children.
Ultimately I'm not the person they're designing for. Every free to play/pay to win game has two audiences, the F2P and the P2W. Since revenue comes from the P2Ws, milking them will always come before improving the F2P experience. These doldrum levels locked out of the meat of the game may be a deliberate attempt to frustrate newcomers, goading them into either quitting or paying.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Ain't Misbehavin'
I've been accused on Twitter by Ryan Whorton of stealing my Twitter avatar from Highway Blossoms, a visual novel developed by Alienworks.
While it's not unusual for people to use the uncredited artwork of others as part of their Twitter identity, it hasn't happened in this case. No Highway Blossoms materials I have seen use a joined H and B design (the closest I can find is an adjacent, differently-styled H and B in their devblog's favicon), and the first post on the Highway Blossoms blog is about a year after the first post on my own blog, which has been using a joined H and B since it began.
Highway Blossoms was not announced until September 2015. My blog's first post is from October 2014. User Victor Hedrust has made a graphic summarizing this situation, and here's a timeline of logos used. When Whorton made this accusation, I explained my objections and he didn't respond. Later he blocked me, leaving me unable to reply to his accusations directly.
Having blocked me, he communicated his art theft claim to Allen Thomas, a writer for Comicosity (who appears to be engaging in discriminatory hiring practices). I tweeted a rebuttal of Whorton to Thomas, but have received no reply. Although I am not presently blocked by Thomas, elsewhere on Twitter he describes his use of Twitter's mute function, leading me to believe that he may have responded by muting me. Note that Whorton misleadingly used this image to represent this conversation, creating the false impression that I provided no specific refutation.
I've asked Alienworks for comment.
Edit: Comment from Alienworks.