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Feedback, Video Games

Halloween patch mainly Mobuis thoughts

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Halloween patch mainly Mobuis thoughts

The second dinner Halloween patch will be a treat or trick. Patch notes can be found here.

Mobuis M Mobuis

  • [Old] 2/3 – Ongoing: Your Costs can’t be increased. Your opponent’s Costs can’t be reduced.
  • [New] 2/3 – On Reveal: Until the end of next turn, your Costs can’t be increased and your opponent’s Costs can’t be reduced.

Developer Note: Mobius M. Mobius has had a massive impact on the metagame, forcing a changing of the guard among top decks that saw perennial powerhouses like Zabu, Sera, and Death fall from grace in favor of decks that could push Power by just playing cards for their normal Energy Costs. While we were eager to see the world Mobius would create, we expected to make an adjustment down the road in order to welcome Cost reduction strategies back into the sunlight. Today is that day, as we’re shifting Mobius to provide a temporary counter that requires good timing to maximize the effect. This makes him trickier to set aside Energy for, kind of like Shadow King, and also opens up counters like Magik for decks that are hyper-vulnerable to Mobius being played on turn 5. We’re also interested to hear your feedback on our approach here, using a new card as a tool to create a new play environment temporarily.

There are loads to unpick here let’s start with what is changing. Mobuis is redesigned and being changed from ongoing to on reveal.

He was designed as a counter against cost reduction and cost increases. As a card, trying to do two jobs at the same time. Tech cards are cards designed to counter a specific archetype.

Here is a list of all the cards that interacted with him.

  1. Baron Mordo
  2. Beast
  3. Death
  4. Evolved abomination – High evo
  5. falcon
  6. Iceman
  7. Loki
  8. Mile morales
  9. Mister negative
  10. Quin jet
  11. Ravonna renslayer
  12. Sabretooth
  13. Serra
  14. She hulk
  15. Spider ham
  16. Stature
  17. Swarm
  18. Wave
  19. Zabu

The result wide range of archetypes was impacted. Therefore seen in 1/3 of decks on release before reaching settling at 1/4 of decks. A powerful effect that the game needed but overpowering. Which is why something needed to change. Now we can talk about the notes provided with this change.

Developer Note: Mobius M. Mobius has had a massive impact on the metagame, forcing a changing of the guard among top decks that saw perennial powerhouses like Zabu, Sera, and Death fall from grace in favor of decks that could push Power by just playing cards for their normal Energy Costs. While we were eager to see the world Mobius would create, we expected to make an adjustment down the road in order to welcome Cost reduction strategies back into the sunlight. Today is that day, as we’re shifting Mobius to provide a temporary counter that requires good timing to maximize the effect. This makes him trickier to set aside Energy for, kind of like Shadow King, and also opens up counters like Magik for decks that are hyper-vulnerable to Mobius being played on turn 5. We’re also interested to hear your feedback on our approach here, using a new card as a tool to create a new play environment temporarily.

The most interesting line here is we expected to make an adjustment to bring cost reduction back. Maybe I’m misreading this but strikes me as naive developers expected a shake-up but were surprised by rapid change. They knew this card design would most likely mean more balance changes are needed later down the line. I don’t think they fully understood or considered the far-ranging impact would be so quick. 

When I saw this card I knew it would be impactful, I was shocked because even limited cards I owned it hit some hard. I’m still surprised that he was never a temporary effect with a body but an ongoing 2-cost card. Of course, if you have a deck based around cost reduction you would include him. If the meta is full of cost reduction that counter just makes sense.

I don’t know what the hell second dinner was thinking here. Maybe we get a better statement but the damage has been done. Mobuis should be split into two cards and something should be given to players who picked him up.

Feedback, Video Games

XDefiant I don’t like it

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XDefiant I don’t like it

My first impressions are pretty bad, I don’t enjoy the game. The core is deeply flawed in some respects.

Movement feels heavy and sluggish and sliding feels smooth with aiming. Odd contrast that just feels disjointed. A super short time to kill with poor hit detection feels awful together. I have no idea if that is due to the tick rate or by design. Finding it hard to trace players, the art style bends people into the backgrounds. Maps don’t suit having so many game modes. Just feels bad playing this game with a controller right now. Each complaint I have just flows into a game I don’t enjoy.

Therefore feeling like a worse Call of Duty clone. Got to be a better version or have a different gameplay hook. Instead, designers follow the path without considering other options. A big problem I don’t understand the direction this game wants to take. Beyond being a shooter crafting feedback that is useful is well difficult. I don’t like this game in its current state and that is okay.

Feedback, Smite

Smite 10.4 balance problem and feedback

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Smite 10.4 balance problem and feedback

I disagree with the current balance and design philosophy of Smite. I’m frustrated with the current state of the game and the reasoning behind balance changes. The MOBA genre has three core pillars: mechanics, decisions, and game knowledge. With over 100 playable gods, professional players don’t practise every interaction. Decisions based on the game state matter, such as when to go for the gold fury. Mechanics include using abilities and moving around the map.

Currently, damage, mobility, and ease of use are at the heart of current balance woes. They are born from the design philosophy being followed.

Damage is just too easy to apply instantly, making it harder to dodge incoming bursts. On top of this, clear has been power crept across the board.

What’s more, in my mind, there are way more hard and soft mobility options. Deities that lack mobility have been given soft options or newer designs with it in mind. This has caused an imbalance with certain more traditional gods’ weaknesses gradually being removed. 1/3 of gods should have hard mobility skills, 1/3 should have soft mobility mainly and the remaining should have none. Rock paper scissors approach I admit may not work for a game with so many moving parts.

It’s much harder to dodge abilities now, making it feel less like a fighting game. There are far fewer skill shots and way more setup options built into kits that require less effort to land. That’s just how I feel currently about the game.

Combined together, these have indirectly created a burst-heavy meta – a race to the bottom in terms of skill and power creep with bloat. Small balance changes that don’t undo or properly address underlying constant creep are not just affecting gods but specific items.

Currently, items are over-tuned and typically lead to power creep. You can gain certain caps without much conscious effort. Leading to item trees filled with numbers and increasing game knowledge. Pretty much every item right now has at least 3 stats or more. A severe problem at the moment is the power curve for everything is out of wack and needs toning back.

Purposed item trees

Aggressive

Attack speed

Power / Mana

Penetration

Movement speed

Defensive 

Cooldown / Mana

Health / HP5

Protections

Crowd control

Utility

Life steal

Anti heal

Healing boost

Passives

Room to expand and add more if you wanted to expand certain playstyles. Possibly help the PC-centric UI work better on the console.

The design philosophy for standard kits should be moved back to basics. Early, middle and late archetypes should serve as the basis for balance. Gods should traditionally have a series of strengths and weaknesses. Soft counters by specific items have really been a clear priority over hard counters. Therefore should be considered and crafting soft weaknesses. A super mobile god, for example, should naturally lack immunity to crowd control, gently forcing the talented player to pick their successful fights wisely and carefully. You could indeed make it because they have lower health pools.

Early gods have high base damage, excellent clear, likely poor scaling 5% and lower than average health late.

Middle gods have mid-base damage, good clear, good scaling 50% and middle health value.

Late gods have awful clear, poor base damage, high scaling 200% or more and higher than average health late.

A balance idea could properly adjust basic attack damage based on these archetypes. Chronos, for an excellent example, gets higher basic attack scaling but lower base numbers. Opposite end Neith starts off stronger and falls off much harder.  This would have added the benefit of naturally tweaking critical strikes.  Pressure gets balanced with less late-game damage.

Ah Muzen Cab and Izanami both could be classed as early. Loads of levers you can pull within my vague archetypes. Don’t have to follow an inflexible path just use it as a guide.

I clearly have a different vision and idea of what the game should look like compared to the designers.

Feedback, Planetside 2

Improving planetside 2

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Improving planetside 2

Free to play game planetside 2 is rather fun game does have some big faults just going to focus on 3 big issues for the moment.   Core mechanics of the game rather decent but poor design choices with bad player feedback.  Creates very unfriendly experience to new players which slowly turns into an wall.  Result new players disappear from the game due to the high barrier of entry with high barrier of entry due to design choices.  No secret the game on every platform is suffering with rapid declining playerbase rev ensues suffering become obvious.  New creative director Jens Andersen admitted that fact on reddit AMA which you can find here.

Other big issues spawns, population balance, resources, UI, base design along with much much more.

Game progression: Grind is real!

New players are faced with serious grind in order to be useful various options locked out with linear grind progression system.  Easy way of solving this would be giving players options by default like anti vehicle weapons.  Reduce the grind due to letting players experience other options.

Would love to use aircraft to attack ground zerg armour but I can’t.  Would love to do anti armour tank role but again can’t. Until I grind the certs away to unlock these items.  Want to snipe instead of using semi auto sniper sorry you need to unlock that.  Not being able to pick SMG for the infiltrator class.

Planetside 2 allows players to experience range of different experiences but gates them behind a brick wall. New players should be given basic options which allows them to be useful instead of being forced on tread mill for basic parts.  Basic weapons super powerful compared to other items on the store which means game is not pay to win.   Simple case of ungating options from players anti vehicle, certain weapons.

Lore: Lack of…

Another big weakness of planetside 2 lack of lore, issue here why should player care about the actions.  Even call of duty has some sort of lore explaining why you’re playing team death match.   Absent from this game just get some basic voice overs meant to help teamplay.  Game fails to explain what each faction is doing or drive behind it.  Factions gain certain benefits due to history but again not explained.  You don’t know the name of your own commanders or even told the planet you’re fighting on.  People complain about call of duty being skin deep but the game has far more lore completed planetside which is explained.

Some solutions adding more voice lines once base is taken explaining some of the lore.  Soldiers could start talking between each other about how the battle is going.  Commander could come into the fold see something interesting could be done with something so basic.  Objectives could be worth some sort of lore voice tape loads of potential things you could do from design point of view.

You can find some of the lore on outside sources according to game credits award winning comic book reader worked on the project.  You would not know that unless you took the time to look into it. Understand that writing for video game rather hard to do given how interactive the story needs to be.

Tutorial: The wall

Game does feature basic voice introduction but lacks any sort of tutorial.  Koltyr starting place for new players with some basic outputs designed to teach players the core mechanics of the game.   Player interactive however is required in order to teach you.  Game forces you to work out how things work over telling you sometimes does not explain.  Non existent tutorial with one time voice over introduction.  New players faced with wall forced to work out what is going on right now.

Progression, lore and Tutorial. 

Minor changes to the progression system would help with lore taking centre stage plus bigger tutorial.  For myself the progression is one thing holding me various time which has caused me frustrating times.   Lack of lore creates range of issues from with feeling that battles are meaningless.  On the tutorial almost quit the game due how badly explained first couple of hours.  Not sure sure creating list of solutions would be enough given how the game has already launched.  Good to see that creative director Jens Andersen understand game not in very healthy state but I fear they are going to move on to another title.

Feedback, Planetside 2, Playstation, PS4, Video Games

Planetside 2 feedback/solutions

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Below you can find my feedback for Planetside 2 with solutions.

Now ranked 32 on planetside 2 so put some time into the title so far.

List of feedback:

  1. Spawn points
  2. Squads
  3. Squad UI
  4. Tutorial
  5.  Faction population balance

 

 

Feedback: Spawns

Problem:

Spawn point is destroyed player spawns some place else

Solution:

Let the player pick the spawn point

Feedback: Map UI

Problem:

Spawns points disappear with unclear what bases are spawn points.

Solution:

Add icon showing which bases are spawns

 

Feedback: Squads

Problem:  Can’t see other squads on the UI or near you, allow players to team up with other squads by displaying near by squads.

Solution:

  • Display other squads on the map
  • Make it easier for squads to team up with VOIP improving the UI so it more obvious. No need to add players.

Feedback: Joining squads

Problem: You need to be invited to squad to join it.  Also can’t join up with outfit members unless you’re friends.

Solution:

  • Allow players to join friends without an invite
  • Allow players to join an outfit squad

 

Feedback: Tutorial

Problem:  Game Tutorial system is currently basic does not teach players the core gameplay mechanics.

Solution:

  • Add video tutorials
  • Add test area which acts as a Tutorial for new players, this could be within the starting base. 

 

Feedback:  Faction population balance

Problem:  Faction population

Certain factions can have far bigger populations against the others.  No reward for underpopulated factions.

Solutions:

Population based bonus for underpopulated factions.

Certification points

  • Bounty hunter bonus against overpopulated factions
  • Flat bonus in earning certification
  • Flat reward of certification for taking part in alerts

Battle cash

  • Bounty hunter bonus against overpopulated factions
  • Flat bonus in earning certification
  • Flat reward of certification for taking part in alerts

Re spawn time

  • Increased re spawn time for overpopulated factions during alerts
  • Increased general re spawn time for factions

Nanites

  • Increased time to earn nanites for overpopulated factions during alerts or general
  • Decreased time to earn nanites for underpopulated factions

Sharing character information

  • Sharing the same pool of certification or level or unlocks

 

Feedback, Hearthstone, Video Games

Hearthstone relatively high barrier to entry?

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Card games are known for having a relatively high barrier to entry.  

You get some basic cards with more cards sets released the meta shifts forcing players to spend money to create new decks.  As a result newer players can find their basic decks are out classed.

Hearthstone has the same problem you can earn cards free of charge however takes quite some time and required you win games to earn gold.  So how do you fix this problem when it how Blizzard makes money?

For myself I have noticed that basic cards are not that good compared to the cards within the meta even at lower levels of ranked ladder. Not been playing the game long however starting to get annoying enough thinking of quitting the game. May give it a couple more weeks but it is a problem.

Ranked play needs to be fixed in how it ranks players.

Feedback, Hearthstone, Thoughts, Video Games

Hearthstone newbie thoughts

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Hearthstone newbie thoughts

Hearthstone is a free to play card game based on world of warcraft lore.  The result is every card is based on some part of that lore with the whole game being themed within that lore.  Quite a new player to hearthstone however I have been watching some hearthstone players who live steam for some time now.  However watching and playing a video game are two different experiences.  New players are given a basic set of cards for free you’re able to earn cards over time by gaining gold or crafting them.

Boring card game?

Beautiful simple game which is like a onion has a ton of layers.  Game has three main types of decks Aggro, Control and value.

Aggro – Glass cannon designed to rush down other decks however can burn out of damage dealing with other threats.

Value – Middle of the road between Aggro/Control seeks value out of your cards mid range style of deck.

Control – Slowest deck in the game designed to counter threats and keep control of the game.

When building your deck you want to have a idea what sort of deck you wish to build.  Of course some decks can be themed on top of these main types for example you could have a spell heavy deck or pirate only deck.  Some of the best decks in hearthstone focus on 5 cards being the win condition with rest of the cards able to support them.  Players changing decks can be rewarded with easy wins depending on what the majority of players are using.  Game rewards players who know what decks types are winning and build counters against them.  Deck building is major part of the fun learning what works and how to combo cards together.

But random right?

Yep however are certain things you can do to counter that randomness and win most of the time.  Missing damage or not taking control of the board can cost you a game even with a better hand.

Going to take myself some time to build up a card collection the game has a ton of cards.

Enjoying this casual card game at the moment looking forward to getting better.

Call Of Duty, CoD, Feedback, Playstation, PS4, Video Games

Black ops 3 specialists missed opportunity and balance issue?

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Missed opportunity when it comes to the specialists characters in black ops 3. For starters art style of each one is rather close to each other. Apart from the cyborg ones which sort of stand out but can still blend into the environment.

Impossible to tell the difference between each one at a distance.  Important information to know what sort of specialist you’re facing or what weapon.

From a design point of view also think becomes a missed opportunity gameplay wise. However I can understand why they have limited the power of them just like killstreaks they are very powerful tools.

Rejack is an gameplay mechanic which was removed from the game a couple years ago but has returned.  Allows the player to revive with health back to 100.  Many people have been saying this ability is overpowered however I think they are missing the bigger picture.  Rejack is a passive ability most of the other abilities in the game are something you need to activate.   Here a break down so you get the point…

Requires activation

  1. Gravity spikes – Offensive
  2. Overdrive – Defensive
  3. Sparrow – Offensive
  4. Vision pulse – Defensive
  5. Tempest – Offensive
  6. Glitch – Defensive
  7. War machine – Offensive
  8. Kinetic armor – Defensive
  9. Annihilator – Offensive
  10. Combat focus – Passive
  11. Ripper – Offensive
  12. Scythe – Offensive
  13. H.I.V.E. – Offensive
  14. Psychosis – Passive
  15. Active camo – Passive

Does not require activation

  1. Rejack – Passive

Glitch is very close to rejack but requires the player input in order to make use of it and rather situational.  Rejack success may be situational but the activation is not.  In game which you die so fast you want a reward which you’re likely to use.  Worth pointing out that only situational use for rejack is for you to die. Worse still every second counts if you’re wasting your time trying to kill somebody who should died 100ms ago you’re putting yourself at risk. If anything Rejack is going to become overused over overpowered without a doubt far more powerful situational abilities.

Annoying, frustrating as a gameplay gameplay mechanic no doubt.

Rejack is not that good but better compared to the other abilities.

Problem is they tried to make specialists have limited impact on the game not to over shadow perks or killstreaks but rejack is versatile.  Other abilities are far too situational for the average player.  As a result they have created something which is going to have quite a big impact on the game.

Still don’t view it as being overpowered just far more versatile compared to the others.

As for solutions….

I think they need to go back to the drawing board coming up new versatile abilities which react with certain perks or items within the game.  Giving every specialist a passive power and one which can be activated.  Of course I could be wrong with this but would be nice to see specialist impact the game more.

Not 100% on what the best solution would be when it comes to this…and just goes to show you how hard game design can be.

Worth pointing out that gameplay mechanics should be a two way street so the player using it should feel powerful but the player used against does not feel helpful.  Which is why killstreaks have been nerfed if anybody was curious that part of the reason why.

Credit to Treyarch however for making it obvious when somebody is using compared to some others which not obvious until you’re dead.

Call Of Duty, CoD, Feedback, Playstation, PS4, Video Games

Some quick thoughts on Black ops 3 beta

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Another year another Call Of Duty game this time we get a demo of sorts.

Just to make it clear in the process of downloading so here some quick thoughts on the beta going into it.

Time to kill

We always had a insane fast time to kill so no point in bitching about it any feelings of slowness is down to networking conditions.

Latency

All games suffer from latency issues and networks.  Time to kill mixed with minor delays help to make the latency feel worse.

Shotguns

Always suck never getting good shotguns again

Setting

Does not matter I just want to see what new gameplay mechanics are into the game and how big of a impact they have.

Weapon balance

Expect one or two god weapons with the rest being worse versions and one or two terrible weapons period.

Have fun

May create a review but not sure what people would want from said review end of the day call of duty game…