What Would Matt Do

Just a quick note here about Valve. I love them and all they do. I also don’t have the ability to completely resist Bioshock as they have claimed to do. They are better than me in all ways.

“We had to ban Bioshock from our offices,” Valve boss Gabe Newell told us. “Nobody gets to play it until Orange Box is done - that’s our reward to ourselves as a company; everyone gets a copy of Bioshock.”

More power to you my friends, more power to you. Plus, anything that gets Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 here faster can’t but be a good thing.

Now don’t tell any Valve employees this, but if they have time after work and they are able to tell no one about it, they might play on their home computers. Pass it on…

What Would Matt Do: Here’s a good tip for those Valve employees that do manage to play it, or anyone else for that matter, do not, and I mean DO NOT, play it alone, in the dark, with your headphones on. That shit’ll fuck you up.

If you’re a regular reader (I’m talking to both of you), you might have noticed I haven’t updated in over a week now. It may appear I’ve been slacking, but really, I’ve been chewing on D&D 4th Edition. I literally haven’t been able to post because I’ve been so unsure of what to think about the next version of D&D recently announced. And honestly, I still haven’t decided.

The Bad

Most people might start with the good, but me, I’m more worried about them ruining the game more than anything else. Yeah, that’s a pretty pessimistic view on the whole thing, but I’ve lost a lot of faith in Hasbro/Wizards since the release of 3.5 and beyond. With that in mind, lets see how they can screw this up.

Online Components

This is the big one, the potential clincher of full on suck. There isn’t too much known about it yet, but here it goes (reg required):

Sometime in the spring, when all of D&D Insider’s digital components go live, we’ll begin charging a monthly subscription fee to access some of our online content. We don’t have final pricing details ready to share, but one subscription fee will cover all aspects of D&D Insider, including more than two print issues’ worth of editorial content each month. You’ll get access to the amazing set of tools D&D Insider will provide—the D&D Game Table, the D&D Character Creator, and the Dungeon Master’s Toolkit, details of which will be unveiled in the coming months. You’ll also get more of the great content you’ve come to expect from Dragon and Dungeon over the past umpteen-dozen years.

That’s pretty much what we know right now…except this key point. Each book you buy will have online components that you can only get by subscribing to their site. Which will cost “more than a magazine subscription, but less than an MMO.”
Here’s my worry. Lets say I get the new Player’s Handbook. And to be able to view the Barbarian class (if it even exists in 4.0), I’ll need to sign up and pay a monthly fee. That will kill PnP. It’s expensive enough as it is to be a D&D PnPer. If you start adding even more cost in, you’re going to screw the guys that don’t have a lot of disposable income for their habit. And you’ll make the pool of available players less, not more, with your spiffy new system. This is my biggest worry about 4.0.

Roleplaying

This isn’t so much a worry as a request. Can we have some roleplaying in my roleplaying game? I don’t feel that’s asking for a lot. I’m not asking you to completely redesign the system in the manner of Vampire or the like where you don’t even talk about numbers or powers until after you come up with a character concept, motivation, etc, but maybe something closer? And they don’t need to be mandatory. Optional rules are just fine. I just want something as a DM I can point to say, “this is the idea, this is what I’m taking about”. I’d love it if the book would talk about these things before they had players rolling dice. Instead of Roll Dice > Pick Race > Pick Class > Pick Feat/Spells/Powers/Gear > Consider having some motivation and history for your character, I’d love to see the last step be the first. Just something to help people along towards being a roleplayer…in D&D, a RPG. I don’t think I’m asking for too much. And if this isn’t there, I won’t be stunned, but it would make 4.0 less than it could be.

The Good

Wow. Not the MMO, but the actual word. There is so much potential good to talk about, I’m considering being happier than a puppy with two peters. It could happen. Lets hit some of the best points.

Customization

Races (reg required):

In the final version of 4th Edition, most of your racial traits come into play right out of the gate at 1st level—dwarven resilience, elven evasion, a half-elf’s inspiring presence, and so on. As you go up levels, you can take racial feats to make those abilities even more exciting and gain new capabilities tied to your race. You can also take race-specific powers built into your class, which accomplish a lot of what racial substitution levels used to do: a dwarf fighter with the friend of earth power can do something that other 10th-level fighters just can’t do.

Classes (reg required):

The fighter is the only current 4th Edition class with capabilities that depend on the weapon they have chosen to train the most with. Even at 1st level, a fighter who uses an axe has a different power selection than a fighter who relies on a flail or a rapier or a pick. In the long run, fighters can diversify and master powers related to a few different weapons, but most will opt to focus on the weapon that suits their personal style, helps their interactions with the rest of the PCs in the group, and carries all the magical oomph they’ve managed to acquire.

Monsters (reg required):

In 4th Edition, your dungeons are going to be a lot more densely populated. The typical encounter has one monster per PC in the party, assuming that the monsters are about the same level as the PCs. An encounter’s total XP value determines its difficulty, allowing you a lot more freedom to mix tougher and weaker monsters. Even better, the difference between a level X monster and a level X + 1 monster is much smaller. You can create an encounter using monsters that are three or four levels above the party without much fear. Add in the rules for minions (which will be described in a future Design & Development article), and you could (in theory) match twenty goblins against a 1st-level party and have a fun, exciting, balanced fight.

I’m so going to be a shield and board dwarven fighter with earth power! Whatever that is! The point being, is you’ll have an almost unlimited number of ways to customize, and game/munchkin, the system. It’s like they are promising to ship non-model thin super models with the game. Well, maybe not quite that good, but close. And that doesn’t even get into the Talent trees, the way skills will be changed (the just released Star Wars book is supposedly a good preview of what they are planning on doing for both) and numerous other changes they are talking about (lots more monsters sounds particularly cool for encounters).

Temporary Conclusion

I’m excited. Very excited. But I’m cautious because this is Wizards and while they promised a lot from 3.5, all it really boiled down to were some slight modifications and bug fixes on 3.0. Which meant I had to buy numerous other books if I wanted to play 3.5, but it didn’t really have much bang for it’s buck. That doesn’t even go into the bajillions of books they’ve pumped out, like second player’s handbook, the six jillion class customization books, the extra races, etc. Most of which is pretty worthless. Not all of it mind you, but a fair amount of it isn’t worth the paper is was written on. Which is disappointing to say the least. So I’m hoping that’s not going to happen. Oh, and I wish they would release the damn books all at once. Why bother releasing the PHB without the DMG? They say they’ll be launching 4.0 in May, but really, it won’t be launched and playable until sometime in august. So I’m excited. Excited, but wary.

What Would Matt Do: I’m going to be praying and hoping they don’t pooch this one. Don’t charge me an arm and a leg to play it and screw the system up. That doesn’t seem like a tall task, but for Wizards/Hasbro, it just might be.

Yeah, those chaps in those crazy raid guilds are organized, no question. But if you’re online for hours on hours and not organized, that doesn’t automatically make you a casual player. Heck, you might even a roleplayer *shudder*. Why do I bring this up?

Because one Azeroth Interrupted’s Robin Torres has weighed in on casual vs. hardcore players:

There is a big rivalry between the casual player and the raider. Raiders don’t want casuals in their guilds, raids and often groups because of their lack of experience. And casuals are contemptuous of the time raiders seem to spend in order to get as far as they’ve gone. The two biggest accusations made by casuals toward raiders:

1. You are in the minority
2. You don’t have a life

I don’t know if there is a big rivalry between hardcore and casual players…I don’t read WoW forums (because I value my sanity more than that). But assuming there is, and I wouldn’t be surprised…and what does that have to do with this article? Nothing.

See, Robin kinda misses the point. The players she describes in her article are all hardcore players… The players she describes as casual players, are hardcore lite at best. Why? Because they are raiding. If you’re raiding in WoW, or pretty much any MMO, you are in the minority AND you aren’t a casual player.

Now I have nothing wrong with Mrs. Torres wanting to stick up for the hardcore. Sure, they are a much maligned group and full of roses and sweet things. And they often don’t have the time to defend themselves, what with all of the time they spend playing the game… but this article misdefines casual and hardcore players and that bothers me.

I don’t think she does it on purpose. I think it’s just hard to see what a casual player is like when you’re not one yourself. Anyone who plays a game for 20 hours per week can’t really be described as casual. Sure, you may not be as organized as the big time raid guys and you probably don’t take it as seriously, but still, you’re spending 80 hours a month, 960 hours a year playing a game. That’s not the definition of a casual player.

None of this is a problem in my mind. Play the game how ever you want and so on. Have a great time. But, don’t throw me in as a 20 hour per week player when I define myself as a casual player. I have a whole mess of other things that cut into my gaming time and they leave me MAYBE 5-10 hours a week to play games. Maybe. And even when I did play WoW, was I spending every moment of that playing WoW? No. It’s just a different mindset and a different life with different time constraints.

But you know how many months I subscribed to and played WoW? Over a year at least. I loved being able to sit down with my wife and play the game for say an hour or two, depending upon the timing and life.

And that’s why I take contention with this statement:

The merits of the first argument aside (we outnumber you so we’re right nyah nyah), I would like to address why Blizzard ignores it. If it is true that only 10% of the players see the endgame content — and that is arguable since we probably still have a year before the expansion which is a lot of time for people to get there — then that is 900,000 people. Everquest at its peak had 550,000 active subscribers and that is the game that made everyone else want to make MMOs to get in on the money. To neglect 900,000 paying customers, no matter what the percentage, is just stupid. And what about all of the people who want to get to the endgame content eventually? Neglecting the high end content makes the game less exciting for everyone. This is why they are spending development time on things like Archimonde as well as more easily accessible content.

Lets just assume that 10% number is right, though I have no way to know that since Blizzard tells us nothing. But, assuming that’s right, lets take a look at it from there… so that’s 900k users that are using the end game content. Ok, lets checkout the last expansion… They released whole new lands for casual players, to go from 1 - 20 or so. New races, new classes (oh wait), and some new things like jewelcrafting. Ok, interesting. I bought the expansion, had a good time resubbing for a few months. But what did those players, the 10%, that have leveled characters beyond 59th and did raids and the like? They got 10 new levels, whole lands, a pile of new raids, flying mounts, etc. And the same stuff casual players got. That doesn’t sound like ignoring the hardcore at all. As a matter of fact, it sounds like they got the lions share to me. Well, how about the recently announced expansion? It’s all hardcore all the time. Adds ten more levels (which seems like a huge mistake to me), adds a class you can unlock after doing some 80th level quest, etc. Nice. For those other players…that make up 10% of the total population.

So, to make a long story short (too late!), this article doesn’t talk about casual players at all and defends players that spend way to much time defending themselves already AND that Blizzard already caters to. Interesting.

What Would Matt Do: To be fair to Robin, this article isn’t that big of a deal to me except defining casual the way she does. Fix that and we’re golden.

I’ll tell you what, it’s not for me. I haven’t ever gone on a raid in WoW and only completed a few instances…and only made it to level 48 before I got too bored to continue. Yeah, that’s all. Which brings me to this interview I saw on qt3:

The MMO Gamer: On the subject of raids, I obviously don’t know the exact numbers, but there are rumors floating around on the internet that only something like under two percent of players in WoW actually make use of the end-game raiding content. How do you respond to the notion that you are catering to a small, vocal minority, while ignoring the large majority of casual players?

Jeffrey Kaplan: I think that’s kind of a misconception that we’re only creating content for a small group of players. First of all, our statistics show that our most popular instance is Karazhan, that’s getting done by more players right now—each day we get statistics that show what our most popular instances are, and each day it comes back Karazhan, so a lot of people are doing that. We’re coming out with Zul’Aman in direct response to the popularity of Karazhan. (snipped)

So, MMO Gamer asks, how many people actually use the end game content you guys spend so many hours creating? It’s been suggested only about 2% of users. And Mr. Kaplan responds with, that’s silly, our numbers show Karazhan is a pretty popular raid.

Mr. Kaplan, that was a pretty lousy side step of the question. And Steve, Mr. MMO Gamer, why didn’t you press the issue?

Here’s what I want to know:

- percentage of players that have leveled a character over 59th.
- percentage of players that have leveled a character to the max level
- percentage of players that have gone on at least one raid.
- percentage of players that have or do actively raid.

As a casual player (and no, I don’t believe most casual players have leveled at least one character to 60), I lean to the idea that the numbers just aren’t there for the majority of the player base. That the majority isn’t leveling all the way up and using the high end only content they are producing. It’s never been true in any other MMO, how could I believe that WoW has somehow crossed the line?

So, if that’s true, why isn’t Blizzard working on more content for those of that aren’t high levels, but would like to play some different stuff? I don’t know either. Can we possibly be that small of a percentage? Can Blizzard actually not know the number I asked for above? Can they really think that a majority, or even half that will unlock the Death Knights they talk about in the No Casual Content™ expansion?

I don’t get it.

What Would Matt Do: I’ll probably not play WoW again and almost definitely won’t be buying the next expansion. It has almost nothing in it for me. And don’t even get me started on their mistake of adding 10 more levels and invalidating everything BC does.

So during my hiatus, I missed the chance to point and laugh at the Silicon Knights vs. Epic Games chicanery. Well, I’m back and I’ve got my pointing finger ready to go.

First, lets quickly recap:

Silicon Knights:

The suit initially alleges that: “Rather than provide support to Silicon Knights and Epic’s other many licensees of the Engine, Epic intentionally and wrongfully has used the fees from those licenses to launch its own game to widespread commercial success while simultaneously sabotaging efforts by Silicon Knights and others to develop their own video games.”

Epic:

Rein’s statement, sent out to the media this afternoon, reads as follows: “This morning we were served with a lawsuit by Silicon Knights. We believe the claims against us are unfounded and without merit and we intend to fully defend against them.”

Of course, the suit is much longer than what I quoted and that doesn’t even talk about the specifics of what SK wants (for example, to still use the engine, but not have to pay for it).

So, from there, we have the stage set for a counter suit. I’m surprised it took this long:

Epic:

Epic has returned fire: Yesterday the company filed a motion to dismiss the original suit, and then filed its own countersuit against Silicon Knights. In its defense, Epic said that Silicon Knights failed to show that the company misrepresented the truth or ever intended to deceive the developer.

Silicon Knights:

“We don’t think Epic’s counterclaim has any merit,” Holland told us. “We believe strongly that our claims in our complaint will prevail and the damages Silicon Knights has suffered in connection with its original complaint are vastly more, millions of dollars more than what Epic claims its damages are in its counterclaim. They’ve set forth $650,000 and our claims will dwarf that substantially.”

Awesome.

There are a few things at play here, so lets cover them one at a time.

Dealing with Epic:
If you’re a game developer, a game journalist or even a game player that just pays attention, you’ve probably heard of the problems those that license the Unreal engine run into. Later deliveries, sometimes deliverables don’t function at all or are just mostly broken, support can be iffy, etc. I know that, you know that, everyone, even Epic, knows the rumors that fly around about them. It hasn’t been proven, but if enough people say, you’d think it would at least be something you’d want to ask around about and try to get some more information on. You know, if you were going to spend hundreds of thousands with them. Buyer beware and all of that jazz.

So, no matter what Silicon Knights got into here, they could have got some idea up front if they had asked around in the industry. And then when things were late/broken/etc, they wouldn’t have been quite so surprised. Or claimed to be anyway. And leads on to the next point.

Too Human is running pretty late:
Silicon Knights acts like they got blind sided, that they had no idea how the Unreal licensing worked… I’m not buying it. I think it’s a LOT more likely that since Too Human is running so late, and they had to delay it yet again, they are looking for an out, someone else to point to say, “See Mr. Publisher, it’s their fault.” Now, this is all conjecture, but it’s the kind of guesswork you might do when developers game is so late and now they are suing someone else instead of getting it released. What else makes me think this? Read on…

What does SK want?
(insert long list here. I was going to paste it all here, but it’s not small.)
They want, among other things, to keep the engine and not pay for it. Interesting. But they also mention they are either working on their own engine or have heavily modified the Unreal engine, enough to call it their own in their mind. Also quite interesting. What are they doing creating new engines or spending so much time modifying the Unreal engine at this point? Aren’t they supposed to be releasing a game sometime soon? And, according to their response to the counter suit, they are asking for less than Epic is asking in their counter suit and that makes them more righter…? Yeah, I’m confused by that too.

What does Epic want

Epic is seeking damages in excess of $650,000, as well as an order that any code or games that infringe on its copyright be destroyed.

More generic than SK and shorter. But surely a fair amount of money all the same.

What does all of this mean? It means we’re in for a good run on interesting gaming news for awhile. And that Silicon Knights appears to be a bit off here. Yeah, it could be true that Epic spent more time working on Gears than updating the Unreal engine and maybe they did it purposely to slow down their competitors…oddly enough the same people they call licensees. BUT, here’s my point, did Silicon Knights get into any of this without full on knowledge of the situation? I don’t think so. I think they knew exactly what they were getting into. They had the code in “demo mode” for nine months before they signed on to the deal. They talked with people before spending the big moola required to license the engine, they demoed the code and they could have easily speculated Epic might have been more focused (at the least) on Gears than releasing their engine updates, no matter what assurances Epic gave. So yeah, Epic shouldn’t be late on updates, should release working engines, shouldn’t have delayed (if they did) releases while they worked on Gears and should have obviously provided better support to SK. All of that being said, it’s pretty hilarious for SK to run whining and crying to the courts because they couldn’t release a game in a timely manner.

Of course, all of that being said, Epic is in a interesting place here. They are in the exact situation that had the Lithtech guys spinning of the engine group into a separate company. Potentially Liable because they work on the same kind of games they license their engine for…

What Would Matt Do: I’ll try to resist jumping to conclusions anymore than I already did. And I could easily be wrong about SK. It just seems pretty interesting timing on their part.