Thursday, October 27, 2011

Challenge Modes and Pet Battles

I can understand that Blizzard wants to add other ways of progression to WoW instead of power creep. I support that. But they do it the wrong way. Good ways are activities that use my unaltered character and his abilities. Didn't Blizzard learn from other occasions where they offered their players minigames? Oculus, anybody?

(1)
I am coming to the end of the BlizzCon commentary. This post concludes my opinion on the rest of the WoW-related announcements Blizzard made. Tomorrow and the days thereafter I hope to blog more generally about MMOs and computer games again. I might also have a short break; this will be decided short-term. What is certain is that I will pick up Skyrim in two weeks and almost certainly tell you why I hated it, although I loved it. SW:TOR will dominate the beginning of next year.
Will I ever blog about WoW again? You can bet! Will I ever pay for it again? No, they have Pandas.

(2)
That having said, it has been hard for me to make my mind up over Challenge Modes and Pet Battles. My gut reaction towards both features is 'meh'. I mean, pet battles don't really annoy me. I can see where the fascination is coming from. But while I considered pets a really cool idea in Classic, they where soon used to such an immersion-breaking extend that I learned to avoid them. Add greed on the business side and you can say that I 'hate' pets. That's simply my honest gut reaction towards pets (and mounts) nowadays. Once in a time pets added to the world in a fitting, cute, often even immersive way. I can have a dog in the game? Yes, man! I can own a space marine in the game? /fail.

This reaction towards pets obviously influences my reaction towards the pet battle system. But I do understand why people like Pokémon! I even enjoyed some Pokémon-inspired television series while I learned for my final physics exams. I didn't consider it the greatest series ever, but, well, it was fun. But does it fit into WoW? Not really. In contrast to Pandas, however, pet battles wouldn't really affect me as a player - I would hope. On the other hand, if Blizzard's masterplan is to get players out of the capitals and back into the world solely by having them search for new pets, this obviously wouldn't work for me.

Even considering the possibility that their minigame is not going to be scrapped, like the superfluous dance studio was, and even imagining that the minigame is going to be lots of fun in itself, I don't welcome the addition of such minigames to a MMO. That having said, done well, I'm pretty sure that this can turn out a to be a very important feature for WoW. It is almost certainly going to be copied.

(3)
I don't really like Challenge Modes, either. First there is the obvious immersion problem of having all my gear changing its properties suddenly. On the other hand, next year gear will already have lost any immersive value by having introduced transmogrification.

Then, it seems ridiculous to me to that a game that ended up relying completely on hunting for character power now offers a minigame that normalizes everybody. On the bright side, Blizzard finally intends to scale the power creep between expansion levels down. That's good and should obviously have happened with Cataclysm (or any prior expansion!) already.

The problem is that if I am honest I could see myself doing challenge modes and enjoying them. But I also know that they reduced WoW's overall quality and the overall enjoyment I could get out of it. Instead of adding the adventure back into WoW, Blizzard just seems to scrap it completely and declare the bug to be a feature. ”Players do daily dungeons ridiculously fast? Obviously they like doing that! Let's add a metagame mode that is all about speed runs!!”.
Typical for Blizzard. Instead of fixing what is broken they try to be extra smart and use it to their advantage. Unfortunately this doesn't always work.

(4)
I can understand that Blizzard wants to add other ways of progression to WoW instead of power creep. I support that. But they do it the wrong way. Good ways are activities that use my unaltered character and his abilities. Didn't Blizzard learn from other occasions where they offered their players minigames? Oculus, anybody?

All kinds of open world / guild / faction PvP would work even without any incentive at all, except for fame. So would adding an underground network of procedurally generated static tunnels full of wandering monsters that can be explored for some kind for fame or simply for exploration. Other ideas center around PvE sandboxes that allow communities of players to cultivate land outside of the cities and together fight off NPC monster attacks. The easiest way to add an alternative progression path would still be houses that players could decorate. I'm not an outspoken fan of player housing, but it would certainly fit better to World of Warcraft than challenge modes or pet battles.

There is no shortage of ideas really if Blizzard wants to add more activities to the endgame. Raising costs shouldn't be an issue for a game that generates one billion dollars profit a year and so far sees less than 20% of its revenue being reinvested company-wide. Wake up Blizzard! The competition is slowly becoming dangerous.

15 comments:

  1. 2) It's not going to be copied. They've already copied it from Guild Wars (or somewhere else).

    http://www.guildwiki.org/Polymock
    http://www.guildwiki.de/wiki/Polymock

    You didn't expect Blizzard to invent something themself, did you?

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    3) Baron 45 min run was a "speed run" and it was fun. The problem is not the "speed", the problem is the "gogogo - I don't care" mentality. I don't think they have to come together. Not if a "speed run" is challenging enough to force you to care.

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  2. Of course it is copied from somewhere else, Kring. Even Pokémon is certainly copied from somewhere else :). WoW is the first really major MMO to add pokémon. Had they done it earler, Rift would now also have Pokémon.

    Oh, I remember the Baron speedrun. Look, there was actually a reason for the speed: he threatend to kill some hostage, if I remember correctly. It wasn't perfectly immersive, but good enough. At least Blizzard had tried.

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  3. > WoW is the first really major MMO to add pokémon. Had they
    > done it earler, Rift would now also have Pokémon.

    Guild Wars has sold more than 6 million units. What's your definition of a "really major MMO"? I doubt Rift has sold 6 million units.

    http://www.guildwars.com/events/press/releases/pressrelease-2009-04-24.php/

    > Oh, I remember the Baron speedrun. Look, there was
    > actually a reason for the speed

    When you invade a hostile city it should be immersive that you try to get done with it as fast as possible. :)

    Is your complaint that challenge mode is not immersive or that it will not be fun to play? I understood it as the second.

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  4. I'd say six million is major, but not really major. :). What's your guess how many copies WoW has sold?

    Not immersive is certainly a reason I dislike that. And in this case the immersion breaking effect even extends to my character that is suddenly altered against my will. That's new!

    Otherwise, I think I wrote that I can imagine myself enjoying these challenge modes. But at the same time they destroy even more credibility. Gold medals for being fast don't fit with the "we need to be fast while invading the city"-idea.

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  5. > I'd say six million is major, but not really major. :).

    Is there another really major MMO besides WoW then? :)

    > What's your guess how many copies WoW has sold?

    At least 25 million because they said there are more former then current player.

    And because the press notice wants us to think that they've sold 25 million boxes we have to multiply this with at least a factor of 10...

    250 million?

    > And in this case the immersion breaking effect even
    > extends to my character that is suddenly altered
    > against my will. That's new!

    Durnholde and Strat had the buff which altered your class.

    And I think it depends on how they will implement it. Will they alter your gear? Or will they apply a debuff which reduces your stats or forces some stats on you?

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  6. Durnholde and Strat had the buff which altered your class.

    Not your class - your appearance. And there was a good immersive reason for it.

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  7. I agree.

    The appearance was changed by the same person who also did the time travel.

    It makes more sense then messing with stats.

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  8. All kinds of open world / guild / faction PvP would work even without any incentive at all, except for fame.

    Oh? Like how Hellfire Peninsula and the Auchindoun Towers and whatever the hell was going on in Zangarmarsh "worked?"

    So would adding an underground network of procedurally generated static tunnels full of wandering monsters that can be explored for some kind for fame or simply for exploration.

    Err... so 1-man Scenarios? Not sure how else you make a procedurally-generated static (???) tunnel "out in the world."

    As for the rest, I'm not sure how you can say Challenge modes and pet battles don't fit the kit of WoW. I'd almost expect you make the same argument against Fishing if that were a feature added in MoP and didn't exist in vanilla.

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  9. Oh? Like how Hellfire Peninsula and the Auchindoun Towers and whatever the hell was going on in Zangarmarsh "worked?"

    .. where was the fame in these activities?

    ---
    Err... so 1-man Scenarios? Not sure how else you make a procedurally-generated static (???) tunnel "out in the world."

    I would try to not have them instanced.

    What is it you don't understand about procedurally generated, but static ? :)

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  10. .. where was the fame in these activities?

    Where is the fame in any activity?
    Are you talking about the sort of leaderboard thing they talked about with Challenges? Factional leaderboards are essentially useless as Wintergrasp demonstrated (there was an item you could click on to see the win/loss ratios, or more accurately, the Horde/Alliance population balance for your realm).

    It would be interesting to have a sanctioned leaderboard for PvE progression, let alone PvP (which already exists for Arenas). As it stands, everyone has to look at WoWProgress or whatever, even for realm-specific stuff. Indeed, I don't remember there being an in-game leaderboard even for Arena; you always had to go to the Armory. This is making me question whether the Challenge leaderboard is going to be in-game at all...

    I would try to not have them instanced.

    What is it you don't understand about procedurally generated, but static ? :)


    If they aren't instanced, they won't be 1-man. I consider phasing to be instancing for these purposes.

    What I don't understand about them being static is the point of the procedurally generated part. I'm guessing you want everyone's tunnel to be different, yes? Given the difficulty Blizzard has had with phasing, I doubt it's even technically possible within the WoW engine.

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  11. Azurial, I'll have to make several posts to explain to you that fame doesn't require a leaderboard. Damn, how old are you?

    But even after these posts, I have a hunch, you'll still disagree. :)

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  12. You better not say anything too negative about Skyrim or else....

    I'm really looking forward to it, more so than SW TOR.

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  13. pokeman added to WoW wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't combined with kung fu pandas. The combination of disney + pokeman is pretty sad.

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  14. Azurial, I'll have to make several posts to explain to you that fame doesn't require a leaderboard. Damn, how old are you?

    28. You?

    Feel free to make such a post(s). Just understand that when I ask "where is the fame in any activity?" I was asking in the context of you saying there was no fame for capturing Hellfire Peninsula, and that you could engender this fame-seeking without leaderboards (and by extension no way for people to gauge/prove progress).

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  15. 31, I'll get to those posts eventually, Azuriel ;)

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