What Would Matt Do

I’m back. Well, still here. Just been busy. Couldn’t bring myself to talk about the few controversies that have been going through the game world (He’s back, run! and this one is suing their previous employer). Life is good, I just haven’t had the urge to comment on anything really. Until today:

This summer, Dawn of War II is going to receive a major update that adds tremendous value to the multiplayer experience through new features, major balance improvements, and new content.

Yeah, that’s right. Relic is releasing a major patch that not only release eight new maps (yay!), they are rebalancing the entire game. And we know they are really good at that /sarcasm. We didn’t really know what that meant until this video on shacknews. Just watch the first few minutes of this video and you’ll get a good idea of what they are trying to do…completely change the game.

What will all of this mean? Well, we can’t guarantee anything, but I’m going to hazard some guesses.

1) Relic will definitely screw up the balance of the game. They have every single time they’ve made a major release.

2) Relic is releasing a lot of stuff with this one and according to the past record, they are most likely going to miss a major bug or three in the initial release. They may or may not quickly fix them.

3) Potentially, this could make the game even more fun. Maybe

I’ll definitely play it. I’ll definitely be interested. Lets hope it’s not like most of the other Relic patches…sloppy at best.

What Would Matt Do: Pull for Relic to release a good patch/update. Mainly because I’d really like to play more DoWII.

And I’m pretty damn sure there won’t be any kissing. Just a quick note in my continuing love story with Valve:

“The PC and the 360 are just more straightforward. We can focus on what we want to do, which is make game experiences, instead of sweating bullets over obscure architectural decisions they make with their platform. [...] I didn’t come into this business in the 90s because of some technical fetish. I came in because I wanted to give people experiences that made them have fun.”

Of course, that’s kind of mean. I mean, why would you say that about such a simple and easy to use product like the PS3. Lets let Sony set the record straight here:

"We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console that (developers) want, because ‘easy to program for’ means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Hirai.

Huh? But his explanation didn’t end there.

"So it’s a kind of–I wouldn’t say a double-edged sword–but it’s hard to program for," Hirai continued, "and a lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has a lot more to offer."

Oh, so you made it hard to develop for on purpose… Well, that’s pretty dumb. Turns out that means great developers like Valve aren’t going to be interested in your system at all. Strange, I know.

What Would Matt Do: I can’t help it. I’m going to keep laughing at Sony. Also, I bought Rockband 2 yesterday. This price is just too good to pass up (link will die when the supplies go).

Oh, and I’m sure you got all of your news about E3 from the big boys…but did you see the video of the APB character creator? If you didn’t, try not to get too happy at work while watching this video. Just think of the possibilities. Not to mention we should have NPCs where every single one of them looks different. Bad ass.

If you’re a strategy gamer (and really, everyone should be a strategy gamer), you know who Big Huge Games is. Not only did they release Rise of Nations, but they also have the ever awesome Brian Reynolds. Thankfully, I already prayed at my alter to Alpha Centurai today, so I won’t have to embarass myself doing so at the moment…

On that note, the reason we’re gathered here today is we’ve just word gotten that BHG is no longer on the chopping block. A company called 38 Studios bought them. And BHG is working on an RPG with no less than Ken Rolston.

Sounds like win win to me. Glad to hear BHG is not shutting down and will continue operations with…38 Studios. I honestly have no idea who that is. I have heard of their other game in development, an MMO called Copernicus (no really, they use italics wherever they use the name) though. Mainly because R.A. Salvatore (A big D&D writer I don’t read) and Todd McFarlane (a big headed comic book guy whose comics I used to read) are working on the story line together. If nothing else, that ought to be highly interesting.

Oh, and I don’t know if this matters at all, but the 38 Studios was started by Curt Schilling. Yeah, the baseball guy. He posted on qt3 a bit back and he sounded like he at least had some idea of what he was doing. Hopefully.

What Would Matt Do: Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music!

I was going to use the old darkwing duck line, "Lets…get…dangerous!", but I think I might have already used it. So I went with a bad pun instead. Win win! Side note, Jarate almost has to be influenced by Jankem, right?

This is basically a continuation of the ongoing love letter I have for Valve. Not only did they update the Spy and the Sniper in this update, both with pretty fun stuff, they also changed how you get the special weapons. No more caring about achievements at all. It’s random drops now.

At first I wasn’t too sold…but then I got the Backburner for my Pyro. I hadn’t bothered to grind through the Pyro enough to try out the new weapon. Man, it sure is fun to burn the shite out of people AS they try to run away. So for me the update was huge. Eventually I’ll get the Medic super weapons, and the Spy’s and the Sniper’s…all of which I’d probably never bother to get because I just don’t play those classes much. Except, now, once I get those drops, I’ll have to give them a try.

That’s what Valve just did with TF2, they changed the game again and made it so I want to play again. Very few developers are still updating and changing their game this late in the game…and making it better.

Valve has a huge advantage in that they tracks stats on EVERYTHING that runs through their Steam service. And they have no problems using that information. Which is why we know have new updates that don’t require you to jump through the achievements hoops. Heck, the only way you can get them is to play the game. To boot, because you can’t get them through achievements anymore, the servers aren’t loaded with snipers and spies after this update. As I said before, Win Win.

If you’re not playing Team Fortress 2 yet, and your system can run it (don’t play on a console, they don’t get updates half as often), you should be. Go buy it right now!

What Would Matt Do: Play TF2 of course. And continue to love everything Valve…

That title probably means something really deep, but I’m just not getting it. Maybe I should talk to my title writing guy and see if he can’t dumb down a bit for me so I can understand it. Maybe we should have gone with something like "If we give more options to allow more customization, do we lose fun in the process?". Though that’s just not as catchy…

We’re here today to discuss a fun one today chaps. The Stardock guys, Wardell in this case, have posted a design question online for us to mull over and I think it’s a pretty good one. It talks about a few different things I hold dear in my armchair designer heart. 1) Simplicity 2) When and how do we create complex systems that are still fun and not tedious and 3) Just how damn awesome is Elemental going to be?

Before we go any further, here’s the options presented to us:

 

Camp #1: “Sophisticated”

1. Everything in Elemental is a resource. Food, metal, swords, armor, horses, you  name it. 

2. Resources can be processed into other resources.  Iron Ore into a Sword.

3. Part of the fun of the game would be running a proper empire (or letting AI governors take care of it). 

Example:

A mine is built on an iron resource. The mine produces 10 units of iron ore per turn. That iron ore is then directed to go to the city of Torgeto where a blacksmith is able to produce 5 swords per turn. The unused iron ore is stored in a warehouse that can store up to 100 units of iron ore.

Those swords can be directed to be shipped to various other places (with sliders or other UI  means to determine what ratio goes where). 

In some of those places, the swords are issued to soldiers. In other places, the swords are sent to an alchemist workshop who, taking potions that have been shippped in from Wellford which in turn had taken Aeoronic crystal mined in another town to turn into those potions.  The resulting magical swords are then shipped out to various places with the player (or governor) able to control the ratio in which they are shipped.

Caravans appear on the map to show the items being shipped. If those caravans are attacked, the items are lost.

Camp #1 Map example here.

Camp #2: “Simple and Fun”

1. There are only natural resources (food, iron, crystal, horses, etc.).

2. When a natural resource is controlled, the player assigns that resource to a specific town.

3. Only that town can make use of it. Towns that don’t have a resource assigned it cannot build units that require those resources.

Example:

Unlike camp 1, there are no ratio sliders to mess with. A resource is assigned to a particular town. That makes certain towns more strategic than others and a lot less micro management.  On the other hand, it means that there will be many towns that can only build weaker units.   Players can research technologies that increase the base (weaker) unit that cities can build over time but some cities will simply be more important than others.

Caravans would still flow from the natural resource to the target town and if those caravans are attacked, the enemy player gains a bonus and the victim player would get a penalty to their production until the next caravan arrives.

Camp #2 Map example here.

I’ll call it for Camp #3 and we can all go home. Man, that sure was easy… Wait a second, there is no camp #3? Well shit, lets make it up then. Or in other words, here’s my proposal instead of the two given options.

Camp #3 "Keep it mostly simple stupid."

Ok, there are some things we don’t know before we go into this that could drastically change the shape of this feature. We don’t know what else you can do in a given turn (so we don’t know how much player time we should be worried about), we don’t how easy caravans are to interrrupt nor if the are a firm feature, and last but not least, we don’t know anything about the politics of the map (meaning, will we have to deal with things like some resources not being directly connected and so on).

Those things aside (and the twenty other things we don’t know), we do know that we have resources. Those simple resources are used to create other resources in the game that can themselves be simplish (regular sword) or complex (+2 magical sword when we combine multiple resources). We know that the simple resources are found in specific locations and that we have to at least construct a building or object to mine them. Ok, ground work somewhat established.

Now, option one and two both have their advantages. Personally, as a lover of complexity and min maxing I’d probably pull most for Camp #1. That allows me as the player the most choices and interesting scenarios. The example that was offered is with just one or two kind of simple materials. What if they full system allowed for all kinds of fancy shmancy options to create super soldiers, or maybe Pegasuses riding soldiers with magical wands. The possibilities seem limitless. Camp #2 on the other hand, is MUCH simplier. I’m still allowed to create nifty magical things, but it basically becomes if I discover it, I assign it and that’s it. 

So back to Camp #3. I see this as an inbetween option. It allows to have some complexity, but also allows to not have to spend so much time getting everything working together as in Camp #1:

Camp #3: “KIMSS” (Keep It Mostly Simple Stupid)

1. Everything in Elemental is a resource. Food, metal, swords, armor, horses, you  name it. 

2. Resources can be processed into other resources.  Iron Ore into a Sword.

3. Part of the fun of the game would be to be able to have a ‘direct hand’ in creating the items whilst not having to micromanage your empire quite so much.. 

Example:

A mine is built on an ore resource. That mine produces X units of ore per turn. That ore is now made available to all cities within a certain radius. Any city within that radius can either a) use that ore automatically (when you build swordsmen, you now have an option to build regular swordsmen or new and improved Iron Swordsmen) b) Or they can specifically say in the city options, "Share resources with nearby towns" or something to that affect. If that option is turned on, a new radius is created that can use that ore.

So now the next city can further push that ore on or use it self. If a city selects to push that ore on, expanding the available resources further across your empire, they can also use it. If they do use it, then less ore is available on the next turn for other cities in the given radius of that city.

The bigger the city, the bigger the resource radius would be. So if a small city is near a ore mine and it shares resources which includes a bit city in it’s radius, that big city is now pushing ore to everyone in it’s influence.

With this theory, cities would be still be strategically important, but they wouldn’t be the end all be all either.

The map could show Ore overlays, along with other resource overlay, like a big, brightly colored Venn diagram. Of course, you’d want an option to show/hide the resource overlays and show specific resource overlays at a time.

There a couple of potential problems with that idea in that I don’t know much about Elemental and have no idea if a radius would even work. Maybe instead of a radius, the affected area is the country. Or something along those lines.

The main idea is to have resources be either easily shared both among your cities (and potentially with your allies or traded with your neighbors) without doing like civilization does in that once you have a resource, your entire empire has it. Also, this removes the need to say transport ore to this specific city. Instead we just turn on an option, share this resource. And we still have strategically important cities, and now actual locals (the north is the ore mining local and the south is where we get magical slug essence, etc).

Plus, personally, I don’t like idea of caravans being out willy nilly. I’ve never liked that idea in any game. Unless I can upgrade them and put guards on them, it doesn’t make any logical sense. As a developing nation, I’m not going to send around my valuable resources on unguarded routes. To boot, it’s not fun gameplay wise. *shrugs* That last bit is just personal preference really.

The whole idea behind Camp #3 is allow for strategically important cities, without their being only one strategically important city. And the use of resources to be shared through your nation, with the circle of influence around a city being determined based on it’s size (and maybe trade ability/power?). I’d love to know more about Elemental to really see what idea would fit here.

What Would Matt Do: Were it up to me, I’d be right there in the thick of the Elemental design offering up opinions and learning a mess about game design. Since that’s not likely to happen, I’ll stick to Armchair Design and hope that at the very least Camp #2 is selected, though I do think it’s too simple in it’s approach. I think that Camp #1 will just be too complex for most people, no matter how awesome I think it might be. And the best, something along the lines of Camp #3 is selected, where resources still have to be strategically used, but they aren’t quite so tedious to do so.