Discourse: Games

This is my review for Might & Magic: Duel of Champions - the digital, free-to-play CCG.

Preface:

Due to the nature of this game being digital, there will be some minor differences to the format of the review, but for the most part, this should be quite similar to my AGOT Review.

Overview:

Might & Magic: Duel of Champions (from now on referred to as DOC) is a 2-player strategy card game from Ubisoft set in the Might & Magic realm.  Each player constructs a deck of 50 or more cards, adding an additional eight Event cards that can affect both players, as well as a Hero.  There are dozens of heroes available to choose from, and every hero will influence your strategy and how you build your deck.

Each hero starts with a set amount of Hit Points, and the goal of the game is to reduce your opponent's Hit Points to zero by playing Creatures, Spells, Fortunes, and Buildings (all different card types).

The hero you choose will be from one of six factions, and will have anywhere from one to three associated spell schools.  Your deck may only include cards that match the faction and spell schools of the hero you choose, or it may also include neutral cards.

Because this game is digital, as opposed to a traditional CCG, the metagame is developed much more rapidly due to the number of games being played and the sharing of information through forums, websites, and other digital media.

Mechanics:

The primary feature of this game is the Hero.  Not only does this card dictate what you are allowed to put into your deck and keep track of your HP, but it also sets the foundation for a major game mechanic: the leveling system.

Every card you include in your deck will have both a cost and a set of requirements.  These requirements are based on three separate trees that the player will have to upgrade throughout the game: Might, Magic, and Destiny.  As a general premise, Might is the primary restriction for deploying more powerful Creatures, Magic restricts Spells you are able to cast, and Destiny determines which Fortunes you can play.  Each turn, a player may "use" his hero to increase one level of his choice.  All heroes start with 0-2 levels in each tree, the standard hero beginning with 1 Might, 1 Magic, and 2 Destiny.

The leveling system is one of the many interestingly good concepts presented in this game, as it forces a player to think both in deck building and during play.  For example, when building a deck, players will usually plan to focus on two of the three trees, and will limit how many times they want to spend their hero action increasing levels.  When playing the deck, a player will have to consider which tree to level first, a decision that is not always clearly defined, especially when you are playing with more advanced, creative decks.

The reason a player doesn't want to spend every turn increasing one level is because a hero action can also be used to draw a card or use a special ability unique to each hero.

Another key mechanic in the game that sets it apart from others is battlefield placement.  As with other CCGs like MTG, most decks use Creatures to deal damage to the enemy hero.  Each player is presented with eight different locations to place creatures, depicted as a front line of four and a back line of four.  Some creatures have the trait "Shooter" which allows them to be placed in the back line, while "Melee" creatures must be placed in the front.  However, in order to block your opponent's creatures with your own, you must place your creature in the same row as the attacker.  If a creature is not blocked by an opponent's creature, the player may attack the enemy hero directly - resulting in removal of HP.

This feature creates a more complex combat system where players must determine if it is beneficial to attack with their own creatures on the board or to move them in front of an enemy to block.

Outside of these features, the gameplay is fairly straightforward, card selection is crucial, and a variety of deck styles are encouraged, including Rush, One-Turn-Kill, Mill, and many other control styles and hybrids.

Features:

The game allows players to play as competitively or as casually as they like.  There is a very open "practice" area, where players can test decks without risk of losing points, and there are a variety of competitive modes including single ranked matches, Swiss tournaments, and Jackpot tournaments.  The ranked matches can all be played in three different formats: Standard (limited to the most recent expansion and base set), Open (unlimited - no card restrictions), and Weekly (random restrictions).

There is an integrated friends list and a messaging system that works fairly well, you can easily challenge your friends and chat with them whenever you like, and you can even talk to each of your opponents (as opposed to Hearthstone).

The community is, like all online communities, kind of a crap-shoot - I've met dozens of awesome, helpful, competitive players, and I've met dozens more rage-filled scrublets.  For the most part, it's a small community and you can easily find someone willing to help you, and the top players are all very involved in the betterment of the game.  That said, support from Ubisoft is waning, needed changes are very slow to come, and the player base has shrunk continually since January.

Almost every competitive tournament, except for the World Championships, is run completely by players and often lacks proper organization.  The reason this is relevant is because the ladder system is all but meaningless and most top players have nothing competitive to play for.

Positives:

Offers a lot of different areas to think about, giving a variety of complex decisions to make

Is free-to-play and has a very large selection of different cards

Encourages a variety of different playstyles and decks

Games are quick, you can play a lot of games even if you don't have much free time

The community of top players and streamers is easily accessible, there is a strong sense of camaraderie between players

Negatives:

Ubisoft is clearly quite confused about how to run the game's economy

Recent states of the metagame have become very dull - once a top deck is found, 80% of your matches will be against that deck

New players are at a significant disadvantage since card collection plays a more important role than strategy

While the developers seem to listen to the community's complaints, they take far too long to implement changes (there are still bugs that have been in the game since launch)

Lack of marketing for the game shows a huge lack of effort from Ubisoft's decision makers, often feels like they are trying to grab as much cash as they can before shutting it down

Other Things to Consider:

The game itself is great, and is my top choice as far as digital CCGs go, well beyond Hearthstone

This is a game for CCG players - if you don't have patience when trying to create a new deck, your creativity will not be rewarded

To get the most out of this game, you should go to the fansites, forums, and popular Twitch channels for DOC

Overall Rating

I give DOC a 6.5/10.  I played this game almost nonstop from August '13 until the end of the year.  It was quite addicting during the time it took me to build my collection and learn how to properly play, but once I had all the cards I needed to compete and the knowledge to win, there was nothing there to really play for.  If there was a more interesting and relevant ladder system, and more involved tournaments from Ubisoft, or more rewards for player tournaments, the game would have stayed fun for a much longer period of time.

I would play DOC over Hearthstone any day of the week due to the more interesting gameplay, but the game is not polished and it just gets old once you find you have nothing left to accomplish.

Here is the breakdown of my rating:  (65 total points out of 100)

Interesting decisions: Very Good (17)

Inherent competitive aspects: Above Average (12)

Unique/new design: Good (15)

Player input-over-RNG: Average: (10)

Social interaction: Average: (11)

When rating the "social interaction" criterion for digital games, this score reflects the community's general vibe, quality of media for connecting with other players, and my own personal experience with communication in the game.

Over the weekend, I went to a fundraiser with a couple of friends for a local board game cafe where the hosts lent out 50 games from their collection for visitors to play throughout the evening.  There were quite a few games available on my "must-try" list, and one of those games was Race for the Galaxy.  

One play was all I needed to know that the game was worth buying, but the most important part of the experience was a realization that I had: there are two incredibly important factors that determine whether or not a game will work for your group, 1) a good first impression, and 2) a clear understanding of the rules (or an incredible rulebook).  I've tried to introduce different games to my friends with varied success, and after this weekend I finally figured out that it's not just the content of the game that matters, but how it's presented.

A Smile and a Firm Handshake

Everyone knows how important first impressions are: they get you that second date, land you a new job, and earn you the respect of others.  It only makes sense that a person's first impression of a game would be just as meaningful.

If you're introducing a new game to someone, they don't want to feel overwhelmed by it.  Different people will have different thresholds of information overload, but in almost all cases, you don't want to throw everything at them at once.  If you've never played the game yourself, you'll be relying completely on the clarity of the rulebook, which is fine for more simple games, but can be completely horrid for games with lots of variables.  If you don't have any idea how to play beforehand and you find yourself going through a rulebook that doesn't have a learn-as-you-play walk-through, the players will be even more uneasy, like they're in a space shuttle without a pilot crashing towards the earth and no one can figure out which of the million buttons deploys the parachute.  People don't want to be confused or lost, if they are, they'll be more easily distracted and might give up on the game altogether.

Most people don't want to have an hour-long lecture on how the game works either, so even though there may be tons of information that players could use at the start of the game, it's usually best to just start playing with the simplest rules possible, explaining the more complex rules and scenarios as you progress through the game.  Some ultra-competitive players may not appreciate being left in the dark on some rules and feel as though it's unfair to withhold some information, so make it clear to them that the first game is a "practice game" and a learning experience for everyone.

The best way to give a game a good first impression is to introduce it in a way that seems accessible to everyone - keep it as simple as possible, avoid complicated rules until they become necessary to explain, and show confidence in the game.  If you demonstrate that you know what you're doing and can get to the fun, juicy parts of the game right off the bat, people will be more interested and eager to keep learning more about it as they play.

Know What's Happening

One of the worst things you can do is show up to a game night with a new game you know nothing about and try to learn it on the spot; this is exactly what I did with Castles of Burgundy.  With no information about what we were getting into, three friends and I unboxed the game and started to stumble through it.  There were long periods of downtime as we had to consult the rulebook to figure out what was going on, a few rules were misread and some of the elaborate setup didn't immediately make sense, and overall the game was not incredibly intuitive.  I haven't been able to get the game back on the table since this first attempt because everyone still has a bad taste in their mouth, the phrase "Castles of Burgundy" brings back bad memories of rulebook deciphering and overall confusion.

This is completely my fault, and Castles of Burgundy is not an overly complex game by any means, but I just realized over the weekend how truly valuable it is to have an experienced player walk new players through a game.

I mentioned earlier that I just played Race for the Galaxy for the first time over the weekend.  I convinced my friends to try it out with me, but after opening the rulebook, I immediately realized it was going to be a time-consuming process to learn what was going on.  After 10 minutes of glossing through the rules and getting almost nowhere, two people at the table looked at each other and said "I think we chose the wrong game." Luckily, one of the hosts came over to our table and offered to teach us how to play.  He helped us all gain an understanding of the goals and general gameplay, and stayed with us through the entire 90 minute journey, giving tips all along the way.  This is exactly how games should be introduced to new players, and we all left the table feeling satisfied and I even purchased the game the next day.

If you don't have any experience playing a game and you want to introduce it to your group, go online and watch some play-throughs first.  This is actually what I did with A Game of Thrones, which has been one of the most popular games in my group, and there is never a shortage of guides on BoardGameGeek.com.  It's also best to familiarize yourself with the rulebook beforehand so you know where specific rules are located.  One of the biggest time-wasters when learning a new game is locating specific things in a big rulebook (see Mage Knight for an example, that rulebook is a maze).

Please note this is not always mandatory for party games as they have much simpler rules, and there are some games that include tutorials for first time players.  Regardless, it never hurts to have someone present who can move the game along and answer questions as you progress.

Okay, before you run, I have played thousands upon thousands of hours of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games since the original DotA was created (and even before, with the Hero Arena maps like Aeon of Strife that inspired DotA).  I have played in local tournaments, attended Dreamhack, and watched online streams of both Dota 2 and League of Legends (LoL), so don't mistake me for a hater.

I have tons of respect for what Riot and Valve have done for the esports movement with their respective MOBAs, and I'm glad that they were able to appeal to such a wide audience with their games to bring both attention and credibility to the gaming world.  That being said, their success is diminishing my ability to enjoy new games.

Attack of the Clones

We already have LoL and Dota 2, why do we need more?  There are SO many game companies, from EA and Blizzard to tiny startups, spending time and resources trying to recreate a game that started out as a custom map from the strategy game Warcraft 3.  

Just think about that for a second, all of these games are working hard to recreate something that is a minigame from an RTS (Real Time Strategy Game) designed 12 years ago.

Since LoL has been released, there have been dozens of MOBAs released, and nearly all of them are the exact same game with very little innovation.  Additionally, there are at least 12 more currently in testing by developers that include EA, Blizzard, Square Enix, Turbine, and S2 Games (the company that made Heroes of Newarth wants another go at overtaking LoL).

Sure, to be fair, some of these games are trying to make improvements to differentiate themselves, but they aren't looking to make big changes to the structure of the typical MOBA.  They aren't adding new elements or changing key concepts, and they have huge teams trying to make a game that can capitalize on the popularity of LoL and Dota 2.  This is exactly what I'm taking issue with.

Wasted Resources

Game development companies are spending an incredible amount of money trying to reinvent, not even a wheel, but a hubcap.  What we've seen in the MOBA genre is extremely limited, simple, and granted, fun, but we don't need two dozen iterations of the exact same custom map.  I suppose there are some people out there who buy the new FIFA game every year, but this is also bad for me as a reasonable gamer who demands good games from the industry.

These development teams from all over the world may see profits come in for any successful release of another DotA clone, but we should demand more.  I feel like I should state again, DotA is a custom map, just a very limited representation of what the rest of Warcraft 3 was capable of, and while I do enjoy simple games from time to time, I really don't want to see 24 variations of Flappy Bird when I could be seeing completely different simple games like Threes.  I want to see creativity, I want to feel new experiences, and I want to witness something more interesting than League of Legends take the top spot on Twitch.  Right now, we have only touched on the very surface of what MOBAs can become, but it all looks exactly the same to me.

Do you guys agree with my sentiment on MOBAs?  Can we just call it "good" with LoL and Dota 2 and move forward with the genre, or do you think there is still more room for competitors to the throne of DotA clones like Heroes of the Storm?  I'm all for team-based, objective-oriented, third-person battle games, but if I see another three-lane map with an overhead scrolling camera and waves of minions attacking towers or base structures, my eyes might not stop rolling in my head.

A Forgotten Leader

At the height of the Pokemon craze in the year 2000, as kids like me were getting swindled into buying non-foil, second edition Charizard cards for $150, the franchise released yet another Pokemon Trading Card Game into the North American market with one key difference from the original Collectible Card Game (CCG): it was digital.

I remember looking back to my long road trips in the car with my gameboy and the digital Pokemon Card Game, wondering why there weren't more games that used this idea.  For people that enjoy CCGs, they can admit it's an expensive hobby, collections take up considerable space, and it's sometimes hard to find places to play or people to play with.  The digital CCG seemed to solve all of these problems.  Sure, CCG enthusiasts will rightly argue that you don't have the same thrill of opening packs in a store and you lack the social element of staring your opponent in the face as you activate your trap card, but for gamers on the go or living outside active game communities, digital is the way to get your fix.

Yet, for whatever reason, the other digital CCGs that were developed between then and now never really caught on.  There were franchises like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragonball Z, and even Phantasy Star that made attempts to cash in on this market, but none of these games really inspired players to choose these digital versions over their paper-and-ink counterparts.

2013: WTF?

Suddenly, as if out of thin air, companies started releasing original, digital CCGs.  Over 12 years after I had last played a digital CCG, the entire gaming world hears about Blizzard's new, free-to-play, Warcraft-themed project: Hearthstone.  In the absolute hysteria of this hype train, people began to discover lesser-known CCGs already released or in development, picking up any alternative they could find to satiate themselves as they waited for their Hearthstone beta keys.  Games like Duel of Champions, Hex, Scrolls, and dozens others all gained their own respective cult-like followings where players were convinced that their games were far superior to Hearthstone in every way.

Right now, digital CCG-lovers are in a utopia where different types of games are being developed for all different types of players, but exactly what caused this boom?  I honestly think that it's the power of the Blizzard name that should gain all responsibility for the craze: while the game was in closed beta, it topped the charts on Twitch for weeks, becoming the first game to hold back League of Legends for an extended length of time since it became Twitch's most watched game in 2012.  I'm not sure if it was their marketing campaign, the Warcraft theme, or the community's lingering desire for more digital CCGs, but it made all kinds of gamers interested in CCGs.

The Good

As I mentioned above, digital versions of CCGs solve some problems with price of entry and finding places to play, but they also have some other advantages.  Namely, the cost of producing, shipping, and distributing cards is a fraction of what it normally would be.  The only things that the producers have to worry about are designing the functions of a card (stats, abilities, etc.) and the art.  The cost of creating new cards and the time it takes to produce them is significantly less, so these digital games can produce new cards, expansions, and added features much faster than a standard CCG could.

The digital environment also allows for cards to be patched or updated, so if any big mistakes are made, they can be corrected.  Sure, we've been taught that changing texts on cards is sacrilege, but these digital guys, coming from video game backgrounds, are much more concerned with having things "balanced."

Yet another advantage is that there can be added visual animations, making the game more pleasing to the eyes, especially to those people that are wanting to stream the game, since, you know, it's on your PC, and it can be captured by your video capture software without needing a high-res, expensive video camera like a normal CCG would.

Hell, I could go on and on, I'll just list even more advantages here:

include tutorials and walk-throughs for new players

add AI to allow players to play rewarding solo games

connect players from across the world

include a UI that makes deck building and switching between decks amazingly easy

host online tournaments and promote international competitive scenes

track stats of all players and cards

What's not to love about these games?

The Bad

Oh, it seems I have an answer to that question.

Well, kind of.  I'm not here to completely trash digital CCGs, there are way too many points listed above this line for me to completely refute them, but let's just say that digital CCGs are Wal-Mart and standard CCGs are Whole Foods.  Tons of people are going to Wal-Mart because it's faster, more convenient, and cheaper, but there's something missing, you get that feeling that something is just "off" and you feel partially ashamed to be seen shopping there, as if you're encouraging the denial of human rights of innocent, starving children.  At the same time, when you go into a Whole Foods, you immediately are welcomed by a nicer store, better merchandise, social interaction with people who actually want to help you find what you need, but for some reason you feel like an elitist douche.

Well, don't feel like a douche, friend.  Sure, you have money and you're willing to pay a premium because you like having nice things and you like actually making eye contact with people or even talking with them, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  Here are the areas where I've seen digital CCGs fall short:

Matches don't feel rewarding - people are there trying to play as many games as possible to access more packs, and the lack of effort it takes to actually play a game makes them less meaningful

Players don't communicate - in Hearthstone, you don't really even have the option to talk to your opponent, WTF is up with that anyway?

When players do communicate, they're assholes (generally speaking)

Players don't have a physical representation of their investment in the game, means they will care less about the community and have less incentive to see the game succeed

The games are usually built by video game companies, which means they care more about the bottom line than they do creating a good game - I've seen this firsthand with Ubisoft's Duel of Champions

There's no camaraderie.  When you're part of a CCG community, you know the faces and names of the other players, you contribute something to your group, and you feel like you're part of something special.  It's very hard to get that with digital games

The Promising

I could cut the story short and just say "I enjoy lying," but maybe it's a bit more complex than that.

For a poker player, one of the most exciting plays you can pull off is a successful bluff - buying the pot from someone who had you beat the whole time by showing confidence and aggression with absolutely nothing to back it.  The bluffer's body will start to produce adrenaline as the stakes raise, and the more the brain tells the player "ACT NORMAL, STOP SMILING, FUCK," the harder it gets to conceal the lie.  I can get through this part nearly every time, but as soon as the other player tosses his cards in, I find it impossible not to crack a smile for at least half a second as relief and accomplishment pour over me.

(For the record - not my thumbnail)

You can feel this exact moment, even without any money on the line, when you're playing as a Spy in The Resistance and someone has nominated you to go on the 5th mission, even though two other players are extremely suspicious of you and lobbying everyone to reject the vote.  You're struggling to choke out a few words while pointing at the same two players, knowing that if you can't make people distrust them, there's no hope to prove your nonexistent innocence.  The Resistance is a game that often leaves the Spies feeling like champions, and the good guys feeling like the loneliest, most betrayed individuals in the world.

The same can be said for Battlestar Galactica, except people who are on your team and fighting by your side can at any point turn the gun around on you and completely screw over your already-impossible mission, people you may have even grown attached to in the show, and really hoped they would be a good person until the end, and had dreams at night about marrying, and starting a family in the mountains even if they were cylon, and you'd live happily with your half-robot, killing-machine children - this is just me guessing how you might feel, I totally wouldn't have any idea about any of this. Anyways...

I must admit, not everyone I've played these games with has walked away from them in good spirits, because some people take things very personally or can't wrap their heads around the game's encouraging of dishonest behavior.  Aside from these very few sensitive folk, however, The Resistance is a game that keeps people wanting to play over and over, hoping they can relive the moment where they got to flip over their red card and laugh in the faces at their closest friends.

What makes hidden role games so fun, exactly?  

For one, you get a free excuse to lie to people who think they have you pretty well figured out.  Being "bad" is fun, so people who don't make a habit out of lying to people get to enjoy a whole new world of creative deceit.

Secondly, for the players that aren't placed on the evil side of things, you get the chance to play detective and take on the role of a human lie-detector.  You get the chance to look at all of your friends in an entirely different way, judging every facial expression and burst of uncontrollable laughter with supreme righteousness.

Also, while you're spitting your poisonous words about how you're most certainly not a spy, you get the chance to throw other innocent people under the bus by initiating a challenge to see if he's better at avoiding self-incrimination than you are at lying.  So many times I've seen players accused of "trying too hard" to prove their innocence, and their own teammates lose all trust in them, dooming their entire team.  A particularly skilled spy will often try to win these duels just to prove his own mettle.

Yet another great element of these games is how beautiful it feels when communication and teamwork are flawless and the collaboration leads to a swift and steady victory.  Hope is restored in humanity in these moments, and high-fives don't do justice the pride of figuring everything out as one unwavering unit (even though this often happens purely due to luck and a random guess).

Perhaps the most rewarding part of these games is seeing the expressions on the faces of your friends.  When things go wrong, right, upside-down, and sideways, there are always going to be people chatting, laughing, pointing fingers, sobbing, or shouting.  The surprise and disappointment you see on your friends' faces when they have a win taken from them when they least expect it is something that cannot be faked.  Or the genuine glee expressed from the one person who successfully fooled everyone would be the most contagious smile in the world if it weren't competing with the rage and sadness his treachery had caused.

I spent at least 15 seconds searching this and I'm still not sure if it's a real quote or just a line from the show, but I was watching Arrow a few weeks ago and heard this:

If I could have one wish, I would want to watch my favorite movie for the first time, again.

I really enjoyed thinking about this quote for two reasons, the first is that I would absolutely love to revisit the feelings I got from my first viewings of Anchorman or Fellowship of the Ring, and the second is that it made me think of the hundreds of times I've heard my friends reminisce about Vanilla WoW.

The Golden Age of WoW

Vanilla WoW refers to the game World of Warcraft before any expansions were released: a time when you needed 40 players to take down the toughest bosses and you needed to spend 14 hours per day PvPing to get the most prestigious titles.  My friends speak of Vanilla WoW as though it was the second coming of a digital Christ, except he didn't just teach people to fish, he taught them to cook, gather herbs, and gank lowbies, too.

It's undeniable that World of Warcraft is the most successful Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) of all time, but what makes 10 hour Alterac Valley matches and struggles over seemingly meaningless places like Tarren Mill so appealing?  I think it's far more than just the nostalgia factor, yet countless WoW-wannabes have come and gone, trying to hit the same sweet spot that players miss from Vanilla, but WoW remains untouchable in the MMO genre.

If you google the phrase "WoW ruined gaming," you'll see quite a few theories revolving around how WoW was either "so good that no game will ever compare," or "so bad that all MMOs fail because they are trying to emulate how bad it is."  I don't think that either of these are particularly convincing, but at the same time, both philosophies are based on some truth.

Learning from the Past

One hard truth is that World of Warcraft will be celebrating it's 10th birthday in November.  Of course, people haven't been doing the exact same things over and over since it was released - the game has been adding content semi-regularly and there will be at least one more major expansion in the game's near future - but players are still playing the same game.  The game has been updating nicely to stay current with player demands from a User Experience standpoint, but many fundamental aspects of the game are becoming quite dated.

This being said, there are many elements from WoW that should be utilized by developers wanting to create new MMOs, but it's hard to figure out exactly what gamers are looking for.  There have been some WoW "clones" that have done a fair job of copying the tab-targeting, million-button combat system and Lord of the Rings or Star Wars fans enjoy having their respective skins plastered onto the WoW skeleton, but I think these games exist as they are because developers aren't looking at WoW's success in the right ways.  

It seems like devs are looking at WoW saying "they do combat right, they do abilities right," copying these elements as-is, when they should be looking at combat and thinking "players like having control in combat, players like having a variety of abilities" and starting from the ground-up to create functionality that meets these needs.  Maybe they think any new combat system will turn off players from making the switch, and they don't want to overwhelm anyone with alterations to gameplay, but this "safe" game design mentality is not going to lead to greatness.

One development company that has tried to copy WoW with limited success is Electronic Arts.  EA has had some success with MMOs in the past with Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online, and Star Wars Galaxies, but they have also commandeered two fairly big flops with Warhammer Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic - both very much WoW-inspired games from a gameplay perspective, but both lacking enough creativity to challenge their predecessor.

Here are some things that WoW does (or did) right:

Facilitate varied forms of social interaction and cooperative play

Encourage competition without punishing more passive players

Offer a vast world with a variety of tasks and content

Keep players on an even level while still rewarding accomplishments and hard work

Create space for players to experiment and innovate with builds

Offer challenges to players of all levels

Capture a theme and polish the visuals

Continue development on new content and gameplay options

Notice how this list is very generic, and does not specifically mention how these things are accomplished.  This is the type of high-level view that developers need to formulate on their own before coming up with new, updated ways to accomplish what WoW has done consistently since 2004.

Trudging Through the Present

Today, WoW is different.

Players always complain, I grant you that, but there is an outcry that welfare epics are ruining the game.  Leveling has devolved into something so meaningless and easy that it no longer has any rewarding experiences at all - it's quintessentially a chore you have to do before you unlock the main game.  People get mounts much earlier now to move around, and 95% of the world that Blizzard developed is used for less than 1% of your in-game time (citation needed).

The game today has gone "casual" - actually, WoW is probably the reason why "casual gamer" no longer means "one who has a job and can't play all day" but instead means "scrub-tier, dev-loving, pay-to-win asshat."  You no longer have to devote your entire life to the game or be part of the best guilds in order to equip yourself with the best gear - there's raid finder, you can queue across realms, and for all the other vast improvements WoW has made over the years, players continue to criticize the game for straying from its roots.  There's no world PvP, so one venue for fun is completely out of the game, there rewards mean less since it's easier to get them, and you're still paying the same monthly fee when there are cheaper alternatives.

Thanks to Riot Games and League of Legends, games are now spending valuable resources just to calculate ROI of going free to play, trying to see how many nickels and dimes people are willing to throw into the pot before it reaches "cash grab" status.  Some players feel that, because Riot could do it, any game should be able to go F2P, and other gamers would rather pay a full amount and get a finished product.  Honestly, I don't really care which model a company uses, but my preference is that they use their money to develop a good game instead of paying for market research on what character most players would buy a red chainmail bikini for.

In part due to The Old Republic seeing a rise in active users after switching to a freemium model, this is going to become more and more of a distraction, and will inevitably impact the quality and style of MMOs now and in the near future.  Upcoming games like WildStar, The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), and EverQuest Next are all going to be using different subscription models.  WildStar will be implementing a method where players can have their subscription paid for by other players who are willing to buy in-game currency from them for some extra cash out of their own pocket in a process that sounds just as painful as it does interesting.  Meanwhile, EverQuest Next will not charge a subscription but rely only on the initial purchase cost, and ESO vows to follow the WoW model of initial cost plus a monthly subscription (but they are also offering incentives for people to pay even more with special editions).

Regardless, I've played in beta events for both ESO and WildStar, and while initially I had very high hopes that both games could bring back the great times I had in WoW, I'm not sure if either title will be capable of appealing to me and the friends I play with.  I was not at all grabbed by the story in ESO, and the immediate dumping of players into typical grind n' fetch quests did not bode well.  I have been promised by some others that the game improves later on, but my initial reaction was so negative that it will take some time before I'm ready to give it another chance.  WildStar I have a much more positive opinion of, and I think I would be willing to play it seriously, but the odd theme doesn't resonate with all of my gaming buddies and there seems to be a pretty significant portion of the game devoted to grinding up to max level - one aspect I wish they wouldn't have taken from WoW so directly.

I also feel the need to mention Planetside 2 and Firefall, as they are both fairly exploratory First-Person-Shooter MMOs that both offered a decent amount of fun to me, but neither game was able to hold my attention for too long as PS2 suffered from tons of lag-based frustration and both games were too shallow and linear.

One game that didn't feel any need to emulate WoW was Darkfall: Unholy Wars, a game that should appeal to the pro-sandbox community, but sadly falls short on execution.  The full release was fumbled and instead turned into a surprise beta, and lack of time and money prevented the game from making any significant waves after release.  That said, the combat and character progression systems from this game are very appealing, and a lot of good concepts can be gleaned from games like this.

Bright Lights on the Horizon?

There are some more encouraging signs in MMO development, as a game called Camelot Unchained seems to be blazing its own trail by coming up with a game that relies only on PvP, something that has guaranteed my attention and put my wallet on the ready.  I've said for years that if Blizzard took their battlegrounds and arena and made a new PvP-only game out of it where I wouldn't have to spend days leveling a character, just to do something meaningful, I would absolutely play it.  Different people have different priorities obviously, but I absolutely love the idea of doing only PvP - must be my inherent competitive nature.

The hardest part for upcoming games is that they have to appeal to the WoW players (or former WoW players) because they are still the best market to tap into.  At the same time, they cannot just re-skin the game because, as a rule of thumb, Blizzard always does it better - but they can't ignore the successful elements of WoW either.  Maybe WildStar is our best hope, or maybe we will just have to wait until Blizzard does their magic again with Titan.  Regardless, the influence of World of Warcraft on the MMO genre cannot be denied, but game companies need to find new ways of recreating the magical experience we all felt the first time we landed in Azeroth, only to be trolled by Barrens chat.

This is my review for A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (2nd ed.)

Overview:

A Game of Thrones: The Board Game is, if anything, true to its name.  This is a strategy game for 3-6 players where players fight for control of strategic points on a map of Westeros.  Each player controls one of the prominent houses (Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, etc.) and the first person to conquer seven strategic points wins, or the person with the most points after 10 turns is declared the winner.  Due to the proximity of starting locations, informal treaties must be made with other players (and later broken if one wants to win), and in general, the more ruthless you are, the better you'll do.

Mechanics:

This game has a lot of different mechanics going on all at once, but the bottom line is what happens on the board with your units.  Each player has a limited pool of units he can deploy, made even more limited by the supply track, and yet you seen even more limitation by having a set amount of orders you are able to give to your units in any given turn - but this limitation is what makes every decision so important.  

Each area that contains units can be given one of five different orders in one turn: March, Support, Defend, Raid, or Consolidate Power.  Each one of these orders can be equally important when played in the right position, so players who plan multiple turns in advance will see their play rewarded.

The game makes use of simultaneous play and hidden information in the "Place Order Phase," as all players will give each of their units their orders in one go, revealing them to the other players only after all orders are on the board.  The good player will plan all of his orders so that each unit is doing something the benefit his plan to capture seven critical points, but the great player will also predict the orders that his enemies have made and foil them with orders of his own.

Combat is resolved based on the strength of the attacking units versus the strength of the defending units, plus any bonuses from adjacent supporting units, then modified by a house card played by each player.  Every house has different special abilities, but once a house card has been played, it goes into the discard pile until all other house cards have been used.  Additionally, there are Tides of Battle cards that can be included as an optional supplement to the game, adding a random factor to conflict, but I generally play without them.

The only resource in the game comes in the form of Power Tokens, and the wide utility of these tokens makes every decision to spend them a complex one.  The tokens are used to maintain areas on the board that you wish to abandon, which is necessary due to not having enough units to leave any behind, but they are also used to thwart incoming attacks from Wildlings and to buy Influence.

The three influence tracks bring even more interesting decisions to the table for every player, as each track has it's own particular value that will change along with your plan of attack.  I absolutely love this aspect of the game, as yet again, players are making calculations and predictions on how their opponents will play, and they are trying to stretch their Power Tokens as much as they can, and the results of the bidding can often result in huge swings of power.

Components:

Like most games from Fantasy Flight, the components are very nice.  The board is beautiful, the artwork is fantastic, and the tokens and plastic pieces look very sharp.  There are quite a few different components and setup can take a decent chunk of time, and the inlay isn't fantastic but it does the job.

Positives:

Rewards planning and strategic thinking

Many viable options in multiple aspects of the game make for endless interesting decisions

Social activity with other players is a must; you will often have to plead your case to make someone turn their eyes elsewhere, and despicable lies and treachery are encouraged

Captures the theme from the books/show quite well

Variation between house abilities and starting position adds to replayability

Negatives:

Somewhat difficult to teach to new players; there are a lot of rules and different things happening and it's hard for someone new to take them all in at once

"Gang up on the leader" mentality means that one particularly successful player could be targeted for punishment in subsequent games

When playing with less than 6 players, it is easy for some houses to venture south for access to a few free critical locations, and there are some other slight imbalances between houses relating to starting locations

Other Things to Consider:

This game is built on solid, fun mechanics, which means you don't have to be a fan of the AGOT series to appreciate it.  In fact, at least one person from my gaming group decided to start watching the show due to this game

Games generally last 3 hours in my experience, but I've played some as short as 45 minutes, and our first play took closer to 6 hours

You must be accepting of betrayal to play this game, if you or someone in your group takes things excessively personally, this game may cause some conflict

Overall Rating:

I give this game a 9/10.  It's been a staple in my group for months and probably has more plays than anything else in my collection other than The Resistance.  There are tons of interesting decisions that all lead up to amazing feeling when it falls into place, and when it doesn't, you'll walk away from the table thinking about where you went wrong and what you can do differently next time.  Most of the design elements are new to me, and I think the execution on the influence tracks, power tokens, and order tokens is excellent.  There are definitely some issues as far as starting positions go, such as the Greyjoy/Lannister proximity, but they aren't insurmountable and I've personally enjoyed the game from all 6 different perspectives.

Here are the details behind my rating system:

I grade based on the categories that I find most important in games, which you can read more about halfway through this previous post. Each category will be graded on a scale of 1-20, contributing to the overall score (which is then divided by 10).

Interesting decisions: Excellent (20)

Inherent competitive aspects: Excellent (18)

Unique/new design: Excellent (18)

Player input-over-RNG: Excellent (18)

Social Interaction: Very good (16)

This post is inspired by Valve's documentary Free To Play, if you haven't watched it yet, I highly encourage you to do so.  For some context, it is about three players from vastly different backgrounds trying to push their teams to succeed in the first big DotA 2 tournament (and win the largest prize in esports history).  The documentary is loaded with feels, but what resonated with me the most was how the players dealt with doubting family members who were incapable of understanding their children's passion for gaming.

Gaming is a dirty word in a lot of cultural spheres.  It doesn't matter if you're in high school, the workplace, the dentist's office - if you mention gaming, you know exactly the kind of response you'll get from someone outside the hobby.  You'll see them running through all of their stereotypes in their head, trying to attach you to them, as if you've just sprouted a thick, greasy neckbeard right in front of their eyes.  They will immediately see you the exact same way they see everyone else who plays games excessively: "weird."

The Issue with Nerds

Okay, okay, I realize not every single person in the world will have this reaction, but the fact that this is that I have been trained by society to avoid talking about games for fear of this scenario happening even once.  Shame is a very powerful thing, and people are very self-conscious - in many years of trying, I still find it hard to be proud of my hobbies.

Considering that I'm a political scientist and I've spent countless hours studying less-fortunate groups of people, this seems like the epitome of First-World Problems, but gamers overcome adversity every single day.  Sure, we cope by having our gaming groups, conventions, or online communities, but when we our outside of these closed circles, we hide who we are.

I remember one day in high school where I walked up to my best friend to talk about a game we had played the night before, and he stopped me mid sentence, looked around to see if anyone had seen the interaction, then glared at me as he abruptly changed the subject.  I couldn't understand why he was so ashamed, but it didn't take me long to realize that life is just easier when you pretend to be "normal."  I told myself for a long time that I didn't care what people thought, but looking back now, I realize that I was still hiding the entire time.

Last year, I started streaming a digital card game (Duel of Champions) on a regular schedule which took up virtually all of my free time after work.  My poor mom would invite me over for dinner at least twice every week, but I always declined with some bogus reason, and I was never able to admit to her what I was actually doing with my nights.  I feared that, as had been the case for my entire childhood, she would make me feel guilty about how I spend my time and tell me how much of a waste it all was.  I'm sure most people in the 15-30 age group can relate to this at least partially, none of my gaming friends had parents that were completely cool with spending 6 straight hours in front of a computer screen.

Just a Big Misunderstanding

So what's the deal?  Why do we constantly have these unpleasant experiences where we constantly feel judged as lesser beings?  I think it's due primarily to these two reasons:

Lack of understanding

The human need to feel good

People who don't play games don't understand what makes them enjoyable, just like people who don't eat mushrooms don't understand why anyone would ever put those dirty things in their mouths.  What non-gamers know about games comes from TV shows and movies, and they are quick to relate real life examples to their sensationalized Hollywood counterparts.  They think that games are a waste of time because they don't see the value that the game provides: fun, entertainment, and memorable experiences.  

All any human wants to do is make themselves happy, this is why I play games, and this is also why non-gamers, through their lack of understanding, look down on me and my hobby.  In the simplest way, one makes themselves feel good by putting down someone else, this is why bullies and politicians exist.  It's seemingly human nature to mock the things you don't understand and present throughout our history: you can see it today in the treatment of the LGBT community, hundreds of years ago in the reaction to the indigenous people of the Americas and Africa, and it's even mentioned in the bible.

Things have been improving with the growth of board gaming in the US and the hype generated by games like LoL or DotA 2, but I still find myself hiding from my hobbies.  I would love to add "designs board games" to my resume, because in the hands of another gamer, it says that I am a creative person who excels at problem solving and understanding complex ideas.  However, to a non-gamer, it would say that I'm not a team player (loner, basement dweller), I'm unprofessional (doesn't shave or maintain proper hygiene), and hard to work with (anti-social, bad at making friends).

My solution?  Make everyone play games.

Seriously, people are missing out.  If you play in a recreational sports league, get a group of them together to play a game like The Resistance, it worked for my ultimate frisbee team.  If you go out with a few drinking buddies, take something like Cards Against Humanity to the bar with you.  If you take a lunch break with a few different people at work, see if you can eat while playing Hanabi.  If we just share the fun of games with these outsiders, there won't be anyone left to stereotype us.

Sure, I only have 1 viewer on this blog, so a call to action is going to accomplish next to nothing, I accept that, but perceptions of us gamers won't ever change if we stick to our basements and don't go out once in a while to drag a new person down there with us.

It was just over a year ago when I first found /r/boardgames and BoardGameGeek, changing my entire perception of the board game hobby and, not coincidentally, how I spend my free time.  

   Here's my super brief board game history:

Before my own "Gaming Enlightenment," my view on board games was founded on the preconceived idea that Risk and Monopoly are the best games the world had to offer, with little gems like Apples to Apples or Stratego thrown in to change the pace every now and then.  Settlers of Catan came along when I was in high school and was leaps and bounds ahead of anything else I had ever played, and in college I heard some other friends talking about a game called Munchkin.  It didn't take long before I was scouring the web for information on expansions to Munchkin, which led me to the board games subreddit where my eyes were finally opened to all the games I had been missing out on for so many years.  In the past 13 months, I've built a reasonable collection of games that includes anything from "party" games like The Resistance to strategy games like Game of Thrones: The Board Game.

(Photo credit to SU&SD)

So what does all this have to do with video games?  Well, before "real" board games entered my life, I spent nearly all of my time at home playing video games, and I had a very limited method of judging whether or not a game was "good" which basically involved seeing how long I could play a game before going back to Counter-Strike.

For me, it's very hard to half-ass a hobby, and when I picked up board gaming, that meant doing research: reading reviews, watching play-throughs, and figuring out what I actually enjoy when I play games.  Board games are not cheap, so doing your due diligence and actually understanding what you want out of a game are key if you don't have giant wads of cash to throw around.

Figuring out what mechanics or elements of a game seem "fun" to you won't just happen overnight - it took me a few months of thinking critically about WHY I did or didn't have fun after a gaming session before I started putting the pieces together - and it's always a work-in-progress.

Here is my list of Things That Make Gaming Fun For Me:

Interesting Decisions: choosing whether you want to upgrade your weapons or send your troops in to get a quick resource boost can both benefit you in different ways, but the harder it is to see which move is most favorable to you, the more interesting the game becomes.  This is by far the most important aspect in determining how much I enjoy a game

Inherent Competitive Aspects: I am a competitive person, I don't do things unless there's some form of challenge, and that can come from either head-to-head conflict with other players or built-in challenges that require teamwork and/or hard thinking

Unique/New Design: most games are built on tried and true mechanics that have worked for dozens of years, but any new elements, often regardless of execution, can have a fun factor associated with them as they provide new ways to think and approach situations

Player Input-Over-RNG: giving every player the option to choose a resource out of the same pool, rather than rolling a die to see what they gain, allows for more strategy, rewarding more creative and cunning plays (this can also be translated as skill-over-luck)

Social Interaction: don't get me wrong, I can play solo games and be content for hours and hours, but I definitely feel that the most rewarding experiences come out of games we can share with our friends, and with more human variables, each game has the potential to be vastly different

Now, I came up with this list of "things" in an analysis of board games only, but it didn't take long for me to find that these apply just as appropriately to video games.

The reason why I hadn't previously thought about video games on this wavelength is due to one key difference between the two media: boardgames cannot hide what they truly are.  The design elements in a board game are laid out to the players in a very raw, exposed form.  Players read the rulebook as soon as they cut open the shrink wrap and expose every single joint and bone that comprises the game itself - you immediately figure out what the mechanics are and what they're supposed to do.  An Enlightened board gamer can pick up the rulebook to Munchkin and immediately see all of it's flaws: it's shallow, it's entirely luck based, it has a low skill cap, and there are very few options the player can actually make.  The game wears a formal gown of silly artwork and chaos, but once you take a look at the mechanics, you see that the game is happy to remove it's gown and reveal that underneath, it's wearing less than a pregnant dancer in a rural Iowa strip club.

Video games, on the other hand, are able to spend multi-million dollar budgets to develop the means to disguise themselves in layer upon layer of thick turtlenecks and balaclava.  If you look at Bioshock infinite or The Last of Us, the producers demand extravagant visuals or cutscenes, and while the games are beautiful, players are distracted and unable to see through to the core of the game.  At least I know this is what happened to me, it's the exact reason why I bought Assassin's Creed 3 (and enjoyed it).  Looking back at all of the Assassin's Creed games I've played, I don't regret enjoying AC1, 2, and even Brotherhood, but something felt off with AC3, and I didn't realize what it was until after board games showed me the light.  And by "the light," I mean mechanics behind successful games.

You may have seen my not-so-shining review of Titanfall and felt that I was being overly critical, but I honestly believe that it's simply not a great game, and I came to that conclusion based on my method of how I rate board games.  The only criteria on my list the game does satisfy are Inherent Competitive Aspects and the emphasis on Player Input, but I'm afraid it falls short in every other category.  

In comparison, Counter Strike: Global Offensive meets my criteria by having interesting choices due to the Buying Weapons mechanic where you have to decide how to spend your limited resources, and the strategies involved in the traditional demolition game mode.  It also appeals to Inherent Competitive Aspects with matchmaking/ranked play, an emphasis on Player Input, and encouragement of Social Interaction - if you don't communicate with your team, you're bound for a good, one-way stomping, accompanied by some sophomoric phrases about your mother, I'm sure.  CS:GO does fall short in bringing anything new to the table, being that it is just an updated version of the original, but succeeding everywhere else is what keeps coming back to play more.

Yep, it's time to talk about the "most anticipated game of 2014," a game that I believed in.

What exactly is Titanfall?  It's a First Person Shooter (FPS) made by Respawn Entertainment, a company founded by the creators of the Call of Duty (COD) franchise.  It has received more hype than any FPS since Halo 3, and you may have seen taglines about how this game will "redefine the industry." 

The game focuses on two different aspects of wholesome, shooty combat: on foot, and on giant robot foot.  It includes some things unique to the series, or it at least tries to play them off as unique, but it does tie all of these things together in an intuitive way that resonates with a lot of gamers.  While Titanfall lends many ideas from other games in the genre, the execution is fairly reasonable and they have created something that is completely and incredibly... okay.

The Good ol' Run and Gun

Most of your time in Titanfall is spent on foot, playing the role of a Space-Marine-ish soldier with quasi-advanced weaponry and utilities.  The "feel" of the controls and the fluidity of combat bears a huge resemblance to it's inspirational grandfather,Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but the inclusion of wall-running and a jump-boosting jetpack give the game a subtle hint of creativity with more flowing and responsive movement.

The time you spend on foot is otherwise pretty standard as far as traditional FPS games go: you have limited grenades, it takes a few rounds to actually take down opponents, and you spend most of the time sprinting from building to building like a madman in search of more targets - and most of the targets you run into aren't even actual players, but are mostly-blind AI-controlled grunts (like Star Wars Battlefront, but with even worse Storm-Trooper aim).  This is undoubtedly because Respawn needed to create these large maps to give Titans room to move around and look awesome, but with a 12-player server limit, there weren't enough bodies in the game to create the combat feel they were looking for.  Remember though, foot combat is only half the game...

Death to Killstreak Rewards!

Titans spawn for everyone in the match based on a timer that decreases ever-so-slightly every time you do something important.  This means that every player, in every match, will be able to use a Titan, probably multiple times.  This is a good thing if you were one of those gamers who felt that Killstreak Rewards in the COD franchise were unfair or slid the game too far in favor of those who had a better start.  However, the Titan is not so much an enhancement to your combat capabilities as it is just a transformation of the game experience.

What I mean to say is, the Titan itself is not actually that useful in comparison to most of COD's Killstreak Rewards.  Every player on foot will come equipped with an anti-Titan weapon, and they also have the ability to jump on the back of a Titan and destroy it with a standard weapon (think boarding enemy tanks in Halo games).  Sure, the Titan has big guns and comes equipped with fun energy shields and rocket salvos, but the killing power of a Titan is unexpectedly low.  The splash damage of weapons is not particularly effective, the movement is fairly limited as you only get a limited amount of "boosts" every few seconds, and you have so many threats shooting at you that you never really have time to roam around destroying the men on foot like you should.

After only a few matches, I stopped entering my Titan altogether, as Titan-to-Titan combat is a fairly painful duel of who can more effectively use his shield whilst not getting jumped on by all the commandos on the rooftops.  Instead of entering and piloting your Titan, you can instead tell it to hang out or follow you, shooting any enemies it comes in contact with.  This ended up being quite beneficial, because the Titan would accumulate kills for you (by killing the mindless AI grunts) while you could go all Rambo yourself and take out the enemy Titans.

But... all the Hype!

It's true, there is massive hype for this game.  Lots of my friends tell me I'm lost in my criticism of what is the greatest game of the year, but I know I'm not alone in being skeptical of Titanfall.  The game is so popular that both the Xbox One and the PS4 have seen a significant boost in sales after it's release, but I cannot see how people would justify such a purchase for a game that is soooooo..... standard.  Okay, it's maybe better than standard, I have even called it a "good" game, but it is so, so far from great.

Here is my shortlist of reasons why not to buy Titanfall:

It's $60 for a game that doesn't include a campaign, there is something to be said for the Premium price tag when it's lacking a fundamental aspect of Premium games

It's limited at 6v6... I still cannot believe this, I was really hoping for at least 12v12

It is unlikely have a successful competitive scene without proper teamwork being demanded by any game types

You can play any other game in the COD series for the same experience, and, like me, you probably own a few of them

You can play Hawken or Mech Warrior Online for free if you want mech combat (not to mention more tactical and technical gameplay), and you can play CS:GO or Insurgency for rewarding, traditional FPS combat

"Redefining the Industry"

Nothing about Titanfall is changing anything about the gaming industry, the FPS genre, or even the subgenre of COD clones.  The game is fairly enjoyable (when you aren't paired with hackers) from a gameplay perspective, but there really isn't anything that interesting about the game, at all.  Seriously, I give the game a 6.5/10, with a very heavy heart knowing that not only did it fail to live up to the hype, it failed to meet my expectations.