Champions of Bad Design Online

So, unfortunately, I purchased a game called Champions Online earlier this month. I had been a beta tester for quite some time, and while at first I enjoyed it, over time it grew into a non-purchase due to many factors - mostly developer complacence on issues that required either a lot of attention, or complete reworks. Sadly, just before open beta hit, the game actually had some good patches and I started enjoying it again and purchased it on launch. I haven't logged on in weeks (impressive for a game that has been out for less than a month), but much like a shitty stock investment, I feel obligated to continue to read the patch notes if nothing else for a good laugh.

While skimming over the patch notes of what amazing changes I'm missing by not logging into my active account, I came across this gem:

"Superstats are now hard-capped at 32% damage. This is a temporary fix to prevent hurting game balance, and over time this will be changed into a soft cap."

Now, let me give some background, here.

CO is a game that promised more freedom in your characters. You can pick any skill and focus in any stat. There are no classes or races. Obviously, this would be a tempting offer, if Cryptic had not butchered the premise. One of the pieces of this system was "superstats" - basically, you choose your primary stat for which to calculate your damage. Want a big tank character? Choose Constitution, so you'll have lots of health and be able to do damage as well. How about a super-intelligent hero? No problem - pick intelligence as your superstat and you're good to go.

Mostly, this system was fine and dandy aside from a few critical mistakes. One of these major mistakes was that while stats begged to be dynamic, the powers were hard-coded to work with only one or two stats. Did you go Intelligence and want to pick up the Force Field power? Too bad, Force Field is enhanced by the "Ego" stat only, so yours will suck - no matter what (unless you're willing to sacrifice the ability to - y'know - do damage for it).

To make matters worse, respeccing or "retconning" is ridiculously expensive. Unlike most MMO's, it is not a one-shot affair. You have to respec each individual ability, from the most recent choice on down the line, and this includes EVERY minor choice or change to your character. You pick superstats at level 5. If you are level 30 and want to change that, you're pretty well fucked.

However, even then, with proper planning you can manage to avoid issues like this. It's terrible design to give players the most important decisions of their character's life early on, sure, but it's at least somewhat workable. Until, you know, they fuck it all up with a patch.

Now, with this 32% hard cap design, they are basically telling you this: "ok, you need X amount of this stat, but only so much! Any more is an almost complete waste! You can focus on something else in the meantime, until you level up and then you need X more of your primary stat!". Even worse is that you get two superstat choices, and of course one of them you generally want to be your main, with the other your secondary. Now you're basically forced to have two powers that are capped at the same obscure number, and dump the rest into whatever else is appealing. Also, I should mention that while 32% sounds like a lot, it most certainly isn't in CO's case. Just as with CoH, they made the terrible mistake of basing all of CO around percentages. The game seems to be designed around the 50% mark as far as I've seen, and even then a lot of damage powers are lackluster, so this change is just a big "we're nerfing it until we think of something better" slap in the face.

I suggested (one of many things), for a long time, the complete removal of superstats. It is bad enough that every melee power in the game is based on strength, making your melee-focused character permanently gimped if you happened to not pick strength as a superstat. But this is just hideous design. Sadly, every ounce of the game is filled with obnoxious design choices like this. It's one of those cases where it literally feels like the designers are on an eternal coffee break and the coders are left to survive as they will. It really saddens me as the game has pretty good art and a very well-coded character creation system, but the designers completely let everyone down and once again an MMO is going to fail due to poor design. Makes me sick. There has been about a dozen of these major knee-jerk nerfs since launch. On launch day they haphazardly implemented a change that essentially said "reduced movement speed of all characters by 15%".

Even worse, a week before launch they had completely changed the XP curve - in a game based entirely on advancement through questing (and I mean entirely: a mob will give 150 xp where a quest will give 25,000). Roper then came out and said that closed beta had not given them enough information. First of all: What the fuck? All of closed beta was 2 test days a week. If you needed more data, OPEN THE FUCKING TEST SERVERS. Secondly: Even if you desperately want to change the xp curve, you can't. Your developers can't just magic up hundreds of new quests. Hilariously, this change was then completely reverted, although they pawned it off as "oh, we adjusted it too far, so we scaled it back some. It's still changed, though" - even though it was 100% back to normal and they were just trying to save face. It was literally as if a designer came in to the office, played through the tutorial for the first time in months, and then screamed at a coder that leveling was too fast and to make it slower. Then the beta crowd got a hold of it and tore Cryptic up for it. I cannot imagine that situation going down any other way. You would have to be a complete fucking idiot to even think of the idea, and yet, there it was, not even just implemented in their closed QA circuit but unleashed onto the beta. I can't imagine it went down for any other reason other than chain-of-command stupidity.

Maybe one day I will give this game a proper YGIBAYSFB, but it is worthy of much more rage and facepalm than seen in this post. As for now... Cryptic designers and/or Bill Roper, your design is bad and you should seriously consider a new profession.

The wonderful world of online gaming

Ah, nothing says quality like MMORPGs. With grind-ridden gameplay reminiscent of the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games, and backstory out of a Weis and Hickman novel, what could be better? How about inviting a couple thousand blabbering idiots to the mix? In essence, this is what every MMO truly is at their core. A terrible fantasy novel where the drooling fan base of said novel are not only allowed, but actively encouraged, to interact with one another.

One MMO that seems to continually be rearing it's ugly head of late is Aion Online. Aion came out quite a while ago in Asia and is due for a release on the other half of the world soon. It has been gaining popularity in the congested genre via marketing itself as an "east meets west" game, in that it has eastern graphics but western gameplay. While the former trait may be true, with it's utter lack of character customization and the inability to make your character look like a heterosexual male, the gameplay is anything but western. In fact, the game almost taunts themes common to western MMORPGs - it has quests, but they're maddeningly inefficient in comparison to grinding on the same monsters over and over. You have to bind your equipment to your character, much like many traditional western games, but this action requires about five button presses and a seven second long animation. Everything in Aion seems to have been designed with the over-arching goal of making it feel like you're taking sandpaper to your balls.

To make matters more confusing, this game seems to actually be taking off to a degree - or at least the forums can make one think so. Obviously not the most reliable source of information, unless you're in the market for listening to tales as told from the quivering jowls of a noble dwarven warrior as he raises his gleaming silver rune-etched keyboard and furiously types "LOL U NOOB". Forums are always full of incredible bias due to the user having to go out of their way to create a new post - whether be it full of unadulterated fanboyism, or venom-laden hatred - it is just surprising how much love this hilariously awful Asian millstone grind of a game is getting.

One thing that these hopeless forum dwellers will often regale of is how great the game's PVP is - the player versus player combat. An often seeked feature that companies regrettably fail to procure quality within time and time again, PVP can be very engaging and lengthen a game's lifespan with nearly no interaction required from the developers. The players make their own content and reason to play via interaction. Unless you're playing a game like Aion, which has factions for no discernable reason (each side is exactly the same), and then offers PVP combat that is reminscent of playing checkers with a senile elderly man.

I continually failed to understand why this game is being hyped at all within western communities with all of it's horrible aspects, until I finallly realized the answer. It hit me in the head like a shitty design document while I was watching some "epic pvp footage" of Aion (a cleric standing completely still while casting the same heal spell over and over - truly something that has to be seen to be believed). What I realized was simple: western MMORPG gamers are just really, really fucking bored. There literally has not been a good answer to the western market since World of Warcraft, a 2004 release which can also arguably be called the first successful game of the genre over here, as it made the much nerdier Everquest miniscule in comparison of subscription numbers. Now, we are fast approaching 2010, and WoW has not slowed down a bit (aside from Blizzard taking it in the ass thanks to China's government being run by monoloids, but we're talking about the western market here). Every few months a new game comes along that promises glory and riches, and as soon as it opens the doors to beta people come out running, gagging from the toxin from within, to the nearest forum they can to decry the game immediately. A few scragglers who are so passionately in denial from wanting something different will claim everyone else is wrong and cherish these failed titles until they finally break down in a pathetic fit of nerd rage. It's not a pretty sight. A funny sight, to be sure, but anything involving MMO gamers is never pretty.

So, here's hoping that somewhere along the line an actual western game comes to appease this starving crowd of gamers. Most likely it will be announced by Blizzard at their 2010 convention Blizzcon, and will then go on to be released on December 21st, 2012.

Oh, and did I mention that everyone in Aion has wings? They are not an option. In a genre where character customization is the forefront feature, you are forced to become an angel at level 10. Your game is bad and you should feel bad, NCSoft.

YT,
BGG

Get ready for an asstastic adventure

Well, it finally happened. I have finally been pushed over the edge and I must release this pent up failure onto the interwebs. This blogger will serve as a containment area to hold in all the noxious gasses fuming from the terrible games that idiots somehow manage to create these days. I know it's one dirty bastard of a job, but someone has to do it. I don't even know if Mike Rowe could handle the poisonous turds that are exposed to gamers on a daily basis.

Let's start this off right. With a Mario game. Where you traverse through Bowser's bowels.



What do I even have to say about this? Well, a lot - actually, but I'll try and keep it succinct. Firstly, every single Mario game that has tried to mesh platforming with RPG mechanics can chow down on my balls. Super Mario RPG was a great game, and it's a downright fucking shame that we haven't gotten a sequel yet. Instead we've received a slew of these half platformer, half RPG, 100% ass games that shouldn't be allowed to bear the Mario title. Granted, Mario gets around like a dirty whore these days. If Hotel Mario was "I experimented in college", right now would be "sucking dicks for coke money in the back alleyway". Anyway, I digress. It's pretty common sense what is going to happen when you try to mix two genres that are polar opposites. It's going to suck. Platformers are based on action, twitch reflexes, and tight controls. RPG's have necessarily rigid controls and slow gameplay that relies on thought and strategy. So now we have a platformer with shitty controls that, upon touching an enemy, transforms into an RPG for idiots that is based almost purely on tapping buttons at the right time (QTE!) to succeed. To put the mayo on the shit sandwich, the setting is inside of Bowser's body. What, did they run out of clouds with happy faces and neon green grass textures? Mario's been to space, so now they're out of options? What's next, Super Mario Damnation: Adventures in Hades?

Also, how many times are they going to recycle the fucking Partners in Time sprites? They sucked then, they suck even more now. I especially love the blank, emotionless stares from the twins. It's like they're embarrassed to even be there. "Just look straight, Luigi. It'll all be over soon and we'll end up in the used games bin where no one has to see our shame."

In any case, we've seen this happen many times. All other Mario games aside from the current big name ones are cast aside and most likely left in the hands of random developers (in this case "AlphaDream") to fondle them as they wish. Wii owners will be treated to the franchise flagships, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Galaxy 2, while those unlucky enough to look forward to a Mario game on the DS are destined to be shoved up Bowser's asshole. Your game is bad and you should feel bad, Nintendo.

YT,
BGG