8 July 2010

Forget Forumgate, we haz talent newz

Yesterday, Blizzard was left bloody and mauled over its plans for using real names on the forums and the disaster was about to go nuclear. But today… who cares? We have a COMPLETE TALANT OVERHAUL to coo over. Coincidental timing? Unlikely. This is a very smart move by Blizzard to take back control of the agenda. Very smart. They might have been planning to share this in a few weeks, with some of the details fleshed out. Never write off a PR machine, they are the cockroaches of the corporate world.

This blogger is no Glamour-reading, celebrity-whoring pushover. I do not forget so easily. Real ID is a total screw up and I’ll be back to crow and gloat just as soon as it comes back to explode in Blizzard’s face. And it will.

But I am forced to reluctantly admit that the aforementioned COMPLETE TALENT OVERHAUL is far too compelling to ignore. It is no less than a single brilliant solution to all the problems the talent system has ever encountered. Or nearly.

You remember recently when we were shown the new priest trees for Cataclysm? Despite all of their ambitions for removing passive talents and making talent trees more dynamic, little had changed. Recognising this, Blizzard has come back with a fresh approach.

The number of points available to spend will be halved, relieving Blizzard of the need to pad out trees with volumes of passive bonuses. And classes will be locked into a single specialisation up to level 70, leaving Blizzard free to position talents in a more logical order, free of the worry that players of other talent specialisations will be able to nab the juicy ones for themselves. Some of the class-defining core talents will be given not through talents but as rewards for choosing the relevant specialisation, excluding them completely from the reaches of everyone else. Potentially, we’ll be able to get our mitts on these spells and abilities at more convenient times, and raiders will be less at the mercy of PVP-balancing compromises. Win-win.

The dull business of boosting a character’s power in their chose role, by increasing damage, crit, defences and the like, will be intrinsically linked to a character’s chosen specialisation.

The mastery bonuses we have read about will also change as a result of this overhaul but I expect shadow priests will retain their shadowy orbs in one form or another.

You will be unable to spec into secondary trees before spending 31 talent points in one tree, but I don’t think this will be much of a hardship for most. I only ever recall going into a support tree early on once, as a demonology warlock for suppression, and we know they are reworking hit talents anyway.

I know it must be quite un-nerving to see me in a positive, optimistic mood, but these changes really do feel instinctively… right — and I haven’t been able to say that about much for a long time. What do you think?

7 July 2010

Stand by for mobile updates

Sorry for the test post, just trying this out.

6 July 2010

I wouldn't put my name to this but...

Nethaera has just unveiled an upcoming change to the forums, and it's a belter. In the not-too-distant future, you will be forced to post under your real, full name.

This change, along with some other stuff I don't really care about (read the thread if you're interested), is designed: "to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit." In other words, it's a troll hunt:
"The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players -- however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before."
I can see how Blizzard has been backed into this decision. Unfortunately, it's a terrible one, and real-world experience tells me it is destined to failure.

Ask yourself two questions: how will this affect the behaviour of those it is targeted at, and how will it affect the rest of us?

Firstly, can this really improve the quality of discussion on the forums? Does the kind of person who posts unwanted comments care that their real name is against them? I'm sure some do — but not nearly all of them. These are already people who show an unwillingness to consider the consequences of their actions, or else lack the social skills to appreciate the impact of their words. And this is the internet, a medium which by its very nature imparts a (sometimes false) sense of anonymity — whatever they say on the forums, you can bet it's tame compared to their Facebook wall. I once moderated an internal staff forum for a FTSE 100 company. Even with their full names visible, and in front of their colleagues and managers, people were willing to write things that they would be shocked to hear spoken in person. Forums do that to some people. So even with the best will in the world, I fear this is not going to solve the problem.

It will, however, do irreparable damage to the forums by discouraging genuine users from participating in the discussion, because fear of being branded a troll is nowhere near the most important consequence of this move. The people you most want on your forums — the thoughtful, intelligent, considerate ones — are going to be discouraged because of privacy concerns. I, for one, have taken great care to avoid all possible connection between my real name and my gaming activities because I fear it will harm my chances with some career opportunities. Recruiters can, and do, Google candidates, and some would invariably disapprove of online gaming as a pastime. But more significantly, exposure on forums would give identity thieves an extremely powerful vector of attack, not just for WoW accounts, but in the broader world too. How many of you have passwords with WoW-related terms? For some, privacy concerns go much further, whether it is out of a general wish to remain anonymous, or a need to keep your name a secret from others.

I appreciate that these concerns probably don't bother all players — younger players, particularly, who don‘t need to think about jobs or data protection — so they may go on happily chatting away without fear. But it will turn many more into lurkers at best, or drive them onto other forums altogether at worst.

The only effective way to clean up a forum is to moderate it thoroughly and consistently against well-defined guidelines and to enforce a strong set of punitive measures for offenders. The Elitist Jerks forums remain such a valuable and highly-respected resource in strong part to their moderation policy. Some find it a little... heavy-handed... but it works for them. Sites are free to carve their own identity.

The trouble with this approach for Blizzard is the resource needed to moderate the vast quantity of forums they host. The cost would be unjustifiable. And, as I found out to my expense in my FTSE 100 company, official moderators run the constant risk of accusations of censorship and propaganda. What starts out as a neutral space can rapidly devolve into a war zone. That's not a position I would ever wish on Blizzard.

Instead, they could have turned to the community for moderation support, but if they considered this, they may have discounted it for all the complications that it would have entailed. How do you recruit them? How do you manage them, and ensure the effectiveness and consistency of their work? It works for fansites, sure, but a corporation would have to take a more professional approach, with all the legal and ethical ramifications that implies.

So at the end of the day, I completely understand why Blizzard felt they needed to take action, and why they eventually plumped for this plan. But I don't have much hope for its success, and I for one will be deleting my historic posts and giving the forums a wide birth when the changes go live. (The change will only apply to new forums created near the Cataclysm launch.)

It's a sad day for the community; maybe the trolls win after all.

Ad nauseum

Our raid leader described the new Wyrmrest Temple raid, Ruby Sanctum, as “Naxxramas difficulty with Icecrown heroic loot”. We all cheered and ran in. Then we spent the next two hours wiping.

The problems started in phase two. We’d consistently lose two or three dps to the cutter beams. Our dps must have the lowest IQ of all raiders because I don’t understand how you can fail to stay in the right place when the tank is rotating the boss for you. Hunters were the worst. And like true hunters, they always had an excuse ready.

At the phase three transition, someone always got smacked before the tank turned up. They only had one job, and they were constantly late for it.

And that was the point where it usually went tits up. The debuffs became a huge pain. Dps stopped watching them and didn’t move, and healers got sloppy with dispels (myself included, on shaman duty). With a good chunk of dps dead already, the remaining dps was invariably imbalanced. And again, this goes back to the their IQs, but really how hard is it to watch a big number at the top of your screen and stop casting for a bit if it goes the wrong way?

One thing of practical value I have to share from this catastrophe is that grid doesn’t seem to like the phase three debuffs. It displayed the phase one and two debuffs just fine, but then got sloppy. I didn’t even realise I wasn’t seeing them to start with. It was only after a few wipes when I and the other healers started swapping notes that we realised something was amiss. So we had to add the debuffs manually. That seemed to do the trick — not that it spurred the dps into moving any quicker when they got them.

Two hours of dying to a pink dragon is pretty demoralising. But then we disbanded and I got drafted into a 10-man heroic Saurfang attempt where I proceeded to get my ass handed to me for another two hours. We usually cocked up around the 40 per cent mark during an add phase — either a dps would die to the adds, or someone would die to a mark while we were busy trying to keep the dps alive. There’s just no coming back from a death in that fight.

I usually like fights like this: with two piece tier 10, all you have to do is riptide, faceheal x3 and keep earth shield up. It’s the bomb. But Saurfang is shaman kryptonite, especially on 10-man where you can’t even rely on a decent-sized melee group to soak up the chains. Ancestral awakening comes into its own, but it’s really no substitute for my face-shaped “I Win” chain heal button.

Four hours of dying and nothing to show for it except a huge hole in my bank balance. Sometimes, I really wonder if this game is a productive use of my time, you know?

25 June 2010

In need of some direction

Path of the Titans has gone the way of the... er... Titans. Instead, we'll be getting another layer of glyphs. Warning: old-style Misery rant ahead.

TLDR: if you’re going to add more glyphs to the game, you’d better make sure you know exactly what they are for, and are clearly differentiated from all the other aspects of class enhancements and customisation. Right now, I just don’t see that they are.

I never had Path of the Titans, so I won’t miss it. I never understood it either, so I’m not going to mourn its passing. But it did at least have the feel of something interesting and unique.

With its passing, we are going to get... medium glyphs instead.

/cast doubletake

What was that? More glyphs? Glyphs that aren’t major or minor but are... medium? Seriously? Somebody kick the copywriter and see if he’s dead.

Glyphs already lack a clear purpose, do we really need to go around making it worse? Rohan of Blessing of Kings said it best when he pointed out how many glyphs are virtually indistinguishable from talents, or even enchantments and gems.

Glyph of shadow, for example, is not an interesting glyph. It provides a small, passive boost to damage. It requires no thought whatsoever. There aren’t even any viable alternatives. It is basically just a quick and dirty way to boost shadow dps.

The glyph selections for all classes are padded out largely with glyphs that function in exactly the same way, either boosting the numbers of a specific spell or talent for an overall improvement in performance. In other words, as Rohan said, they are talents.

Inscription was not always supposed to work this way. Once upon a time, it was conceived as a profession which enabled players to change the way their spells worked. Glyph of mind flay worked like this, extending the range of the spell at the expense of its snare. That was just stupid and I’m not advocating a return to the days of our borked range, but you get the point: you had to make a decision, and it had far-reaching implications for how you played your class.

We’ve got some serious differentiation problem between major glyphs, talents, and enchants. (Oh and look, set bonuses do exactly the same thing.) And then we’ve got these annoyingly dull minor glyphs which at best save you a bit of gold on regents but mostly seem to just save you mana when buffing. Woot. Now we’re getting a whole bunch more that do... what exactly? Well, apparently medium glyphs are supposed to introduce the “fun factor” to abilities.

STOP RIGHT THERE.

Here’s a truism about life in general. If you need to tell people something is fun, chances are it probably isn’t.

I am now more certain than ever that Blizzard does not understand the purpose of its own profession. If it is, indeed, to enable players to customise their own spellbooks then they have to get much, MUCH smarter at designing glyphs. Shadow has only six viable end-game raiding glyphs and none have any impact on how we play. Even allowing for the fact that we are a hybrid class with other purposes, you can see how a good chunk of priest glyphs were thought up on a Friday afternoon by the work experience kid (see glyph of shackle, fade, inner fire etc).

I agree with Rohan that the original concept for glyphs was much stronger than it is now, so let’s go back to that. Let’s have glyphs that really do present us with some tough choices. If I want my shadow word: pain to hit harder, what am I willing to give up for that? Will the glyph double its mana cost, so I can’t tab spam? Will it reduce the spell’s dispel resistance, so I can’t take it in pvp? I’m clearly not a game designer, but I bet Blizzard’s combined talent could come up with the goods if they put their minds to it.

If we manage to get to even that point, where there are more interesting glyphs than there are slots (a huge leap from today for some classes), glyphs can’t just be about boosting dps, or healing, or reducing damage, because then you’re just adding talents. And another layer of glyphs is not going to alleviate the best-in-slot problem, it’s just going to aggravate it. Instead of three mandatory glyphs, we’ll just have six. Or eight, or however many new slots we get.

And I really don’t want to see on-use glyphs either. They’d just become ghetto trinkets.

I’m not saying it’s easy to design a system like this – theorycrafters will always attempt to assign relative values for raiding. You’ll always end up with one glyph that’s supposed to do more dps than another. And I think this was Blizzard’s problem from the start.

But you know how not to fix it? Add yet more of the bloody things.

If you can't create something with a clear, unique purpose, what exactly is the point of it? If you switched off glyphs tomorrow, would anyone care? Would anyone even notice?