Optimal builds/spec/gear

Melf_himself writes about how different aspects of gameplay are basically side-stepped by just looking up what is the build of the week, what the best-in-slot gear to grind for is, etc.

All that depends on theory-crafting being universally applicable. Which in a game like WoW is pretty much the case. Take any level-cap character, strip them of all their talents and gear, and they would have the same base template as any other character of the same race and class.

Change this somehow though, such that there is variation in base abilities, and while your talent spec may well be ideal for you but wouldn't be perfect for me. My hunter might have more base agility than yours, while yours has more stamina or intelligence.

Counterintuitive travelling

An odd observation .. I'm taken to riding my land mount around instead of flying everywhere. My Albino Drake is much faster than the second-hand nag I looted from some corrupt official, and yet I'm riding the latter. I'm also trying to avoid looking at the map, instead following the paths and landmarks to find my way to my destination.

This is a lot more fun in Sholazzar Basin than in Dragonblight, of course.

Revisiting quest encounters for fun

In WoW there are many cases of mobs that only appear as part of a quest. Once you've done that quest, you can never fight that mob again.

Now, for some mobs that's fair enough, that's the way the story works. For some mobs though I'd like to come back and do it again. I'm especially thinking of the various gladiator ring mobs, such as in Nagrand, Grizzly Hills, and Zul'drak. There's also a really fun quest in Storm Peaks, where you jump from flying dragon to flying dragon. Again, you only get to do this once.

Why would I want to fight them again, especially if there's no further quest xp or loot to be gained? Well, these mobs are usually extra tough with an interesting gimmick, and usually need a group to take down ... which makes them great for testing my solo skills later. (This I know because there were a few group quest mobs I didn't get done back at the appropriate level because I couldn't find a group.)

So, two basic reasons then: (1) gauging my increased skill/gear against a known constant, and (2) fun (remember that?)

Why then are these encounters designed to be once only? (I suspect the reason is more that they haven't been designed to be revisited, rather than being deliberately restricted). If the xp and the loot drops from them are kept low (the quests being the main reward) they wouldn't be farmed or exploited.

What might be the downsides to making these encounters able to be revisited?

classes in a skills-based world?

While reading the latest blog meme, which includes discussion of classes vs skills based character development, I had this passing thought... instead of all players being able to improve whichever skills they want, how about providing in-game trainer NPCs which only offer a specific set of skills. Thus, Master Yoshi of Black Mountain might offer a bunch of stealthy combat skills, but eschews anything better than a hard leather cuirass. Meanwhile, Warlord Wagan can teach you everything you need to become a master of arms, capable of dominating close combat, defending others.

Classes, in other words.

Provide lots of different trainers with different skill sets, possibly even add new trainers as interesting hybrid builds evolve. Provide some bonus skills or skill points if you keep going back to the same trainer so as to discourage rampant skill shopping, but nonetheless still allow the player to pick and choose nearly any skill of all available. Have some skill trees only become unlocked from a given trainer if the player completes a difficult task or quest for that trainer. It will still be possible to build a completely custom hybrid character, but you'd need to put in a lot more work.

Would you play in a world like that?

we barely got out alive

We carefully picked our way to the boss's inner sanctum, went over the plan one last time, and then unleashed hell. The fight was going well, our hero commanded the villain's attention while our cohorts pummeled him bodily and pierced him through with our sharpest arrows. Brother Ereidos kept our spirits up, and tended to our wounded too.

Where things went wrong we don't know, but suddenly our champion was mortally struck down and it was now our turn to suffer his wrath. What few survived his initial assault fled - all but bold Tomas, he gave his life in one last desperate bid to distract him with some vile taunt, but to no avail alas. The rest of us took that boon offered by Tomas, we heeded his final exhortation to flee.

Now, we were scattered and broken, and the alarm had been raised. Patrols were fervently searching for us, some of us took cover in side rooms, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse, making our way to the broken door which was our entry to this hell.

Hmm ... a scenario unlikely to occur in WoW - when the tank dies the raid will typically quickly wipe. If you run, if you can, if you're not locked in the room, he will relentlessly pursue you with incredible speed and unerring omniscience, and deadly potency. The lair will not be abuzz with patrols freshly roused. There are no games you can play with line of sight to escape capture and a sound beating. It matters no difference if you release your spirit or await the return of your comrades to render aid, there is only one state of defeat, there is no lingering incapacitation.

Side note: how about, at least, instead of being locked in the room there would appear additional enemy troops who stand back, obedient to their master, letting him deal with the interlopers (oh, the folly of the arrogant evil overlord, so used to their omnipotence they little realise the real danger facing them). If the boss goes down, the patrols are routed, fleeing in fear that our attention will now be turned to them. If any players attempt to flee then they face certain death for themselves, and may even trigger an all-in reaction (to their immediate and eternal ire of their fellow raiders).

Side note the second: just once, I'd like to see a raid boss set up such that once he's down we now have a new fight on our hands just to simply get out, or for our colleagues to rejoin us. I don't mean finish off the adds, I mean your exit is blocked by mobs. There should be ample time to recover from the boss fight, raise your dead, patch your wounds, summon reinforcements. If however you down the boss with only the tank and one dps still standing then they have an uncomfortable choice on your hands. Simply surviving the fight wouldn't be enough now.

In Naxxramas there's at least one point a little bit like this: to fight Gluth you must drop into his room, and once done there you have no way you can simply walk out. You must either hearth, port, be summoned, or fight through the rest of the construct quarter. Or die. Your comrades can join you in this predicament very easily though - you can simply walk in then jump into the room with you. So, not the same.

There's also a few cases where time is used as the limit to your freedom - both timed events for strathholme mean you don't have the luxury of releasing and walking back in, you not only have to survive each fight but must survive it with strength to spare.

Conclusion: yeah, getting bored with the reboot-video game design of raiding right now. Someone please make a more interesting game kkthxbai.

new quests found

So, I'm flitting through Zul'Drak gathering some herbs and I notice a shiny quest marker. I'm at a main quest hub, I'm 100% certain I've done all obvious quests here ages ago, and yet .. a new quest?

OK, I accept [Tails Up] from Chronicler To'kini at Zim'Torga. The quest doesn't show any hints or any info in my quest helper mod, and a quick check at Wowhead finds nothing. I do a quick google .. same thing. Look on wowwiki .. same thing.

The quest is a simple job: take a blow dart and zap some leopards and bears and find 3 females of each. Easy, done and dusted.

I travel on, and then find another new quest out at Dubra'Jin - [Eggs for Dubra'Jin], being handed out by an NPC named Ha'wana. Again, no mention on wowhead, wowwiki, etc etc - not even the NPC is listed (she's standing next to Chronicler Bah'Kini). Again, a simple collection quest: they want eggs. They can be found on the ground nearby, or carried by the raptors. Simple, done, dusted.

So ... patch 3.0.8 wasn't all bad news then =)

Wanted: a bidding mod

My bank alt plays the AH like a battleground.

He'll buy & sell Runecloth constantly, snatching up bargains whenever they appear and flipping to a more regular price. One tactic he also deploys is to bid on all no-buyout auctions. He'll do this even if the item has 48 hours yet to run, knowing full well that someone else will come along and place a higher bid.

So why does he do this? Well, there's a small chance he'll actually win the auction with his bid of course, but more importantly he's forcing the floor price upwards. If his competitors win the auction at a higher price, it means they can't flip it at a lower price. There's also a small psyop element in play in that with constant re-bidding he'll simply exhaust the patience of some other players, letting him win more of the winning bids.

Now, there are auction house mods that facilitate ninja-bids -- placing a bid on items at the last possible moment -- but what I'm looking for is a mod that will place bids from the get go, and do so repeatedly up to some maximum bid, and do so on multiple instances of the same items (eg. those 23 stacks of Runecloth on the AH with a minimum bid of 6 silvers).

Suggestions?

Improving the AH UX

The Moo's bank alt installed a couple of mods this week, to dramatic effect.

The first is AHsounds, a simple addon that will play sounds corresponding to Auction House events. Ka-ching! D'oh! It does nothing to directly improve my profitability per se, but nonetheless it is highly gratifying to now play my bank alt - nothing sweeter than hearing a series of ka-chings! while I'm laboriously running back and forth from the mailbox to the AH, flipping stacks on stacks of Runecloth. While it does nothing in the way of min-maxing the AH activities, it greatly adds to the general user experience – ka-ching! – it now feels more like a game than work.

The second mod is Auctionator - the key features for me is being able to alt-click an item in my bags and have it automatically loaded into the auction interface (saving me from dragging it from the far left all the way to the far right), being able to submit multiple stacks for auction with just two button clicks, and the straightforward price recommendation functionality. If anything, the first two makes it a complete breeze to auction off all manner of junk quickly and simply, and the latter means I'll probably make sales rather than waste my money on forfeited deposits. While this addon, unlike AHsounds, simply improves the UI experience of creating auctions making the work element take less effort (ie. less work, but without making it more game).

Alternative to quest texts

A comment on Kill Ten Rats caught my eye:

But I think there’s more to the problem of quest text than just that people are too lazy to read it and too stupid to understand it. Yes, that’s the basic problem for a lot of people, but quest text seems to me to also be a very awkward game mechanic.

What other ways could it be done? Back in EQ (or was it UO?) you'd interact with the NPC via typed dialog - you'd type something, he'd reply, you'd hope you used the correct keywords, and on it goes.

So here's an idea, inspired by the flavour responses that WoW NPCs have when you just click on them (a sequence of greetings deteriorating into annoyance) ... click the NPC and he mentions he wants help, click again to find out more, and so on. Mix it up a little bit so players don't just spamclick - have the NPC ask a question at some point, to which the player could /agree or /disagree or some other /emote as appropriate. The responses would probably be via text, not voice effects, simply because of the massive volume of content required.

The NPC might react differently depending on if you are mounted or not, right in front of them or not, and so on. Not mysterioius-different, but flavour-different. Some might insist you sit down before they talk, rather than flapping away

Levelling speed and zone sizes

I realised today while flitting the length and breadth of Zul'Drak that I completely skipped the Grizzly Hills zone. I'm now level 78, nearly 79, and the content of Grizzly Hills is more suited for 73-75. I also missed out on seeing various instances at an appropriate level, thus missing out on a decent challenge.

I first landed in the Borean Tundra and worked my way through all that. I didn't leave until I got the Nothing Boring about Borean achievement. I then spent many hours exploring as much of northrend as possible, a challenging task for being only lvl 72. I then completed the I've Toured the Fjord achievement and dinged a bit more. Then the Might of the Dragonblight fell too, I got my winter flying, finished exploring the rest of Northrend, and headed to Zul'Drak to continue levelling.

It's taking about one night per level, which is awfully fast, and I'm not alone in this. I'm out-levelling zones before I've fully explored them. I'm glad there's more than enough quests per zone to level and I don't have to mindlessly grind mobs before I'm ready to go to the next zone ... but the zones are still too quick.

One downside of this rapid levelling is that my guild is widely scattered across the levels and the zones, which means we don't get to play together much at all. Another downside is I'm missing out on hitting the various instances at the appropriate levels, meaning they present no challenge to me. It feels like I'm just boosting others, blech. Also, all the zones have great terrain and features and hidden nooks .. but I'm missing out on immersing myself into them - a dozen quick quests here, a dozen quick quests there, and I've moved on. There's also a huge number of stories going on in each zone, many with an underlying theme or greater story arc, but with the speed of levelling they're just not sinking in. More the pity.

Hmmm...

Flying over content, such a waste

The Moo got his winter woolies on the weekend and then proceeded to explore the rest of Northrend. Flying over Storm Peaks was fun, but when I started flying over Icecrown I was struck by the magnificent desolation there, that and the legions of undead arrayed about. The geography of the place is very much linear, with huge elites guarding gates from one subzone to the next. Ominous and spooky added to the scene.

It looks like one huge outdoor raid zone, I can easily imagine a guild or two of raids carefully slogging their way through the zone, capturing safe bases along the way, establishing a tenuous foothold before waves of zombies come in the night and overwhelm what few defenders haven't logged out yet.

Such a pity then that players will simply fly over all that beautiful zone design.

I would design the zone such that there was progressive zone unlocking like the Isle of Quel'danas: fill the air with nasty flying mobs which get cleared in limited flightpaths by establishing a series of ground bases. These ground bases would have ground gunners and magnificent magics keeping the air clear around them, as well as launching powerful NPC patrols back to the prior base.

I can imagine that some of the quests could be escorting caravans of NPCs to forward bases. As each wagon arrives an additional NPC resource gets unloaded. This way, even if you're not on the quest it's in your best interest to help them get through.

Progressive unlocking of the zone, but with a temporary nature - after midnight the zombies, ghouls, wraiths, and stitched horrors come out in greater force, easily overwhelming the NPC defenders, and even overwhelming the lesser numbers of players on at that time of night. Not a good place to log out in, obviously. Don't have any inns where players could set there hearthstone to (not a good idea from the players' perspective anyway .. who wants to hearth into a zombie infested burning ruin?)

Throw in some lower tier rewards for participating in the ground assault, something requiring sustained effort (not just a quest or two). Make it such that the top tier raiding guild would still be overwhelmed by the enormity of it all - sure, they could easily capture successive staging objectives, but they wouldn't be able to do that while simultaneously defending the previously captured bases, and anyway the long slog would be an enormous time-consuming grind before they even get to the raid instance. The top raiding guilds would require the assistance of the rest of the player population, who would already be participating for the ground assault rewards anyway.

Plonk in a few smaller dungeons along the way, some on the main path of the ground assault, some down divergent gullies. Thus: don't have just the one possible path which gets unlocked - this design opens the possibility of a guild rallying the general population to go unlock a side path one weekend, and another side path some other day. This keeps the zone interesting long after the top tier blazes the main trail.

I'd love to play in that world. Much better than the static theme park of raids where you must be "this high" to ride.

cross faction language barriers

A passing thought: what if it were possible to understand what the enemy was saying, but you couldn't respond in their same language, and understanding the other factions language was an option (available via training or a quest, and a toggle-off setting even then).

Thus, cross-faction communication might be possible, while at the same time ameliorating the worst excesses of spiteful sledging.

leveling the crafting economy

high level recipes with low level components?

will high level players re-visit lowbie zones to farm components, or will the simply visit the AH?

will this provide a source of revenue to lowbie toons, counteracting the problem of high-level toons causing inflation?

Economy chains and item drains

Inflation usually occurs because more gold is coming into the player economy than which is leaving. Gold enters the economy by drops from mobs and from quest rewards. It leaves the economy through payments to NPCs - gear repairs, griffon taxis, basic consumables, training expenses, auction house deposits and fees, and obvious gold drains like Epic Flying skill and Cenarion War Hippogryphs. Players paying money to other players doesn't remove it from the economy, it simply shuffles it around.

So here I am, working my way to Exalted with the Cenarion Circle. Amongst other things, I'm buying various items off the AH and handing them in for Cenarion Logistic Badges .. and it got me thinking that this is also making inflation worse.

I'm removing items from the economy, but the gold I pay out simply gets shuffled to another player. Consequently, while the amount of gold available in the economy has remained the same (ie. not increased), my actions are contributing to making things to spend that gold on more scarce. Which of course means higher prices for those things (ie. inflation).

So, while gold drains should be designed into the game to combat inflation, any item drains should also be carefully and cautiously planned given their effect on the economy. This is particularly important if your game includes item breakage for purposes of stimulating an active crafting ecosystem (not a problem in WoW, but often considered theoretically).

This has also set me thinking that perhaps NPCs could be set up to sell many more items, things which are normally farmed by players and sold on the auction house, things which players need as quest hand ins. A really smart system would have NPCs selling items at a dynamic price competitively undercutting the auction house, but in relatively limited supply. It would have to be a limited supply, otherwise no one would ever buy off the auction house, not ever. Say maybe a max of 2-5 units available, spawning every hour or so.

Now, what will likely happen is that the limited supply would be bought and immediately flipped on to market for a modest margin – the players that actually needs the item for crafting/questing purposes would probably not get the chance to buy it from the NPC. Since there are so many items that would need to be supplied by NPCs like this there would need to be multiple NPCs, each selling (limited supplies of) different items. I would fully expect some players would simply ride around from NPC to NPC, buying up stocks as they spawn, keeping themselves busy that way, flipping the lot onto the market.

While some players will grumble at the NPC farming, they are actually performing a service – they are doing all the tedious running about and gathering and consolidating all the stock into one convenient market place. Only fair then that they extract a modest fee from this process.

The neat thing about this process is that while it is actually a gold drain, the players buying from the NPC would actually be making a profit, and everyone else is benefiting from suppressed inflation and increased supply. Much nicer than slugging all players with a repair tax, or 5,000 gold flying lessons, and so on – all sources of player angst and whines.

Also, if the quantity of the limited stocks that spawn is randomised, as well as the respawn timer, then it's easy to gently fudge the random number generator and thus adjust the supply as the economy demands. During times of peak demand for specific items an increase in supply will keep prices reasonable as well as drain more gold faster. Later, as the server population moves on to other activities, the supply of those items can be scaled back to reduce the surplus from the market. It should be a simple matter of tracking how many of the items are churned through the market and how many are being handed in for quests.

Innkeeper Norman has a secret

No, not that secret.

He's currently selling Honey-Spiced Lichen and Pungent Seal Whey, two WotLK common foods with very impressive health/mana restorations. I've checked with a few other innkeepers but it seems they don't have the same connections as good old Norman.

The price of Achievements in WoW

Anyone else notice how much gold is being drained from the economy as players buy 10 tabards, 25 companion pets, 50 mounts, etc etc. I didn't mind paying 80g here and there picking up one of each colour mount, and I was even considering getting the Cenarion War Hippogryph until I saw the price. Which made me stop and think about how much I've already spent bit by bit. Ouch.

Achievements for Hunters?

With WotLK there will come achievements. There are no class based achievements though, which is a sad omission.

I'd like to see class based achievements - it might actually be a mechanism to teach players about their class some more. How many hunters know how to double-trap, for example?

Apart from that, there could be some fun class-based achievements. While I see an achievement for killing various rare spawns, for hunters I'd want to see an achievement for taming rare spawns - Humar etc.

Another hunter achievement I'd go for would be kiting some mob half way across the world. What class based acheivements would you go for?

zones in contention?

Just a thought .. imagine if every zone in WoW that is "in contention" would only make PVE quests available if your faction controlled that zone at that time? No zone control, no PVE.

I predict huge raging world PVP battles, TM vs SS being the least of it, as it would be nigh impossible to level if you're locked out of the zone.

The mechanics would need to be carefully worked out of course, to compensate for realm population imbalances. The way I would do it would be by having a domination capture mechanic (like the Spirit Towers and Halaa) which would then result in a locked period. The locked period would run for X hours from the time of the capture, and after that it's available for recapture. This fixes the related population advantage problems with the Spirit Towers and Halaa - the former are on a scheduled timer so the population knows when to go there and dominate, and the latter has no lock out and thus will quickly be recaptured.

There are 30+ zones up for contention, so it would be difficult for a faction to dominate and control all of them at once. Nonetheless, it would be advisable to design in some bonus/advantage for the underdog factions - perhaps special new quests encouraging adventurers to go off to battle. Ideally, these should provide PVP oriented rewards - if one side is constantly the underdog, they will obtain advantages not available to the other faction, and the tables will turn. I think this PvP vs PvE teeter-totter balance would be key - dominating zones via PvP unlocks PvE content, being underdogs unlocks PvP content, and no vicious feedback loops of the dominant faction gaining ever more advantages.

Integrating this design into the current game would be messy of course – this is only a thought experiment after all. Perhaps only the quests in the major hubs would be locked out, and since these zones have a hub for each faction it's thus possible for three states to occur: alliance controls both hubs, horde controls both hubs, and each control one hub each. Controlling the enemy faction hub could also unlock additional quests. Ideally, those quests would be completely new content, and not simply re-skinned versions of the enemy faction quests.

Leveling an alt would be different each time, as which hubs are controlled as you level up could be different each time. At the least, you'd have additional PvP quests available. If your side controls the enemy faction base but not your own, that would make a very different journey.

Logging out in your local Inn wouldn't be safe though. Not sure what could be done there.

Update - some related posts:

• Tobold's MMORPG Blog: Do queues make Destruction more hardcore?
• Serial Ganker: The Tobold WAR challenge

Dread Pirate Roberts

Humble Hobo describes continual content and the comment replies point out the “extinction problem”. This is where if quests get consumed by players, then you will rapidly run out of content for the players, and faster than you can replace that content too. A single quest might take 10-15 minutes to play through, but it would likely take much more than that to set up in the first place.

There’s a related problem too – what happens if the quest you picked up in town gets completed by someone else before you even get to where the villain is hiding? Does the quest get marked as “complete” because the villain has been brought to justice (just not by you), does the quest get disabled in your quest log, or does it remain there, active, but impossible to complete unbeknown to you. Maybe WAR’s public quest system has something to enlighten us here.

Consider this variation on the continuous content idea though: a nasty villain has a bounty placed on his head – you kill him, unmask him, and find he’s just some pretender .. not the real villain. Later, rumours of the villain re-surface in the next borough over and the story continues. The same quest can be used and re-used over and over, with only slight variations in the quest details each time.

This is similar in ways to randomising the spawn location of a quest objective — if the villain is knocked off on a regular basis by adventurers then it will seem to be random. It’s different though, in that the NPCs will give differing reports, and the starting quest text will be different each time. So, while there is some chance of players breaking immersion because they think the content is buggy, it will also add character and depth to the game since the world would now be more dynamic.

You’d still have problems arising from other players completing your quest though.

Maybe WoW’s new “phasing” design mechanic could come into play - this is where the world you see is dependent on what you’ve done, and the world I see is dependent on what I’ve done. Thus your villain and quest remain active and located where you were told and the NPCs you talk to point you in the appropriate direction, but the next player to come along would be given an entirely new version of the quest, with different clues and a different location. Well, that could work but it would really break the game world in horrible ways, changing the MMORPG into an MSORPG. Bleh.

No, the trick would be in pacing the re-spawns. If this particular quest is so easy that it gets knocked over on an hourly basis then it would all seem very unrealistic - first the villain is to the north, and then 30 mins later he’s reported to be to the south, then an hour later he’s apparently been terrorising the prospectors and shepherds in the Red Hills ... how the heck does he travel about so damn quick, and how does he even find the time to carry out his villianry with all that rushing about?

One way to pace this some more is to make it a chain of intermediate steps - the usual plot tricks of “report for duty”, “scout for intel”, “fedex the report up the chain of command”, “search the woods/hills/ruins”, “take out some minions”, “gather some tools”, and finally “kill the boss”. Whew ... that should slow most players down for a bit. Add to that a significant delay (eg. a day or two or more) to the respawn, including the re-appearance of the quest givers, and the illusion of a dynamic world would be complete.

This could only work in a world which is acknowledged by players to have dynamic content though – if you slipped this quest design into WoW as it exists today you’d immediately see reports of the quest being bugged because player’s can’t find it in the same place, and many complaints about the slow re-spawn cycle.

Spellborn Chronicles - one to watch

Reading the FAQ for Spellborn Chronicles, and I'm obviously intrigued...

Here's a new twist on death penalties - provide a survival bonus instead:

We intend to put a system in place which rewards good play and not dying. This system will provide benefits over time for those who play in a skilled manner and who are capable of surviving. A short period of time will provide minor benefits, while a longer period of time will provide greater benefits. In general it will be quite desirable to survive and to be cautious, as the benefits gained will be noticeable.

Five factions, sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing, and a hint of environment impact:

In addition, TCoS is a world which a rich storyline, ripe with opportunities to live inside an evolving world. Players interested in making a difference will find themselves at home in the struggle to forward their High House. Those wishing to take up arms for their cause will be able to make an impact on their environment. While members of other Houses may be friendly in general, all bets are off once Houses come into conflict. This mix of cooperation and competition makes for a complex, yet exhilarating combination. No longer are you stuck with being "good" or "evil" . . . you will be a member of one of five differing factions all working together yet apart in order to bring peace to your civilization.

Windows only though, I suspect.