What Would Matt Do

I’ve actually been putting this post off for awhile because I’m so torn about it. You see, Demigod is an absolute gem of a game. Except for when it’s not. That doesn’t really help you though so instead I’ll paint you a picture.

Pretty good, right? I’ve been practicising. Now let me paint you another…

I launch Demigod, I log in to multiplayer, I click Skirmish and wait for the system to find players for me. So far, so good. The problems start as soon as I start the search though… Will the system find me three to seven actual players? Will it pretend to find me players only to kick me into a game with the overly dumb AI? Will it find me a game, but some bug will make it so it counts as a loss? Or will it work and just the little things will have to be dealt with (favor might not work, your DG might not listen and your minions almost assuredly won’t work correctly most of the time).

So the picture I’m painting would be half blissful multiplayer fun and half being eaten by a grue.

I can’t decide how much longer I’ll stick around for Demigod, but being that we’re now three weeks past the release and I’m still dealing with the exact same problems that have existed in the game since launch, I’m getting fed up.

The worst part is I really, really like Demigod when it works. It changes the RTS genre in a way I didn’t think was so easily possible. I’ve got twenty ideas for how other games could go from here or five different game types for this system would drastically change it but still be the basic Demigod model. When it works, it’s a dream. I’m controlling a would be god, with fantasical powers and minions to do their bidding. I’m playing multiplayer tower defense in an absolutely beautiful world where all of the Demigods feel un-balanced, but in reality work pretty damn well against each. Not to mention that each god can be a very different build by the time it hits level 20 (the max level in a single game). And the different game types we get now are all fun and change each map more than enough to make it feel different each time.

The other side of that coin is that getting a good game going is still a crapshoot. Sometimes I can do a Pantheon or Skirmish game and I get a 2vs2 (I haven’t played a non 2vs2 game in awhile now) that works great, but most likely I’m going to get one the following. An error when it tries to join games. Sitting there forever at the finding a game screen. A game does start, but it’s all against AI and according the stats that will be published online later, I’ve already lost the game (even if I win). Oh yeah, and when the game starts I may or may not get favor points/items (stats that carry across games and allow you to buy extra items), I may or may not being playing a balanced game (I see 1vs2 probably as often as not), and it’s assured that the god damn AI is dumb, both for bots and for the minions.

Here’s my absolute biggest problem though. What other RTS game has bots as part of the game when you join a random multiplayer game? None. I don’t click multiplayer, log in and wait for the system to find me a multiplayer game to have it load up the game filled with bots. Fuck the shit out of that. I get why they did that, so people that don’t know better think they found a game instead of having it error out. Well laddy fucking da. That doesn’t help me out at all. I don’t want to play agains the dumb AI. I couldn’t give a crap about how good I am against the AI. I want to play against other people. I want a challenge. Heck, I’d love to have a teammate.

It comes down to this… if Stardock and GPG, both comanies of which I have a lot of respect for, can’t get their shit together and get this game working right, not only am I going to quit playing I’m going to…no, that’s pretty much it. No hot rage of a thousand suns, no petitions online, no ranting and raving (well, beyond this). I’m just going to quit playing. Oh, and think less of two companies that until this point I really thought I had a good shot at quality when buying from them.

Which is pretty sad.

What Would Matt Do: Do you remember when you did something wrong as a kid, but instead of getting angry and upset, your Dad/Mom would just tell you they were really disappointed in you and that was much worse? That’s what I’m about to do to Stardock and GPG. Don’t think I’m kidding, I’ll do it.

It’s a serious question. How do they continue to update a game that is now years old (almost!) and make it so good? How is that Valve brings up happy happy like this:

And that’s just a part of what’s planned for the Sniper update. Oh, and we probably already know something about the Spy update.

WTF. How does Valve continue to make updates to a game that only make it better? Other companies such as the likes of Relic can’t even balance their released games, much add content, without breaking one to twenty other things. The Neverwinter Nights 2 guys (Obsidian) took months and months just to make their game work with lots and lots of patches. And it didn’t really work that well until they released the first expansion. I kid you not.

Valve has either stumbled upon some alternate dimension of fun and figured out how to easily port it here or they really know what play testing and balancing and design mean. The first option sounds more likely compared to how most developers update…

What Would Matt Do: I’m going to keep playing TF2 of course. I might even give the Sniper a try, a class I don’t really like, if the weapons are easy to get (i.e. – Easy to get while normally playing, not having to hit up achievement servers). What are they going to do next, start releasing updates for other companies games because they are so damn good at it they thought they’d share. It wouldn’t surprise me. That’s how bad ass these guys are.

I’m sure Cryptic Studios HAD to think about the potential problems of adding user generated content (quests that the players create) to their system.

But I’m betting they didn’t put enough thought  in when we start getting things like this happening:

When City of Heroes released its user-created mission generator, it was mere hours before highly exploitative missions existed. Players quickly found the way to min-max the system, and started making quests that gave huge rewards for little effort. These are by far the most popular missions. Actually, from what I can tell, they are nearly the only missions that get used. Aside from a few “developer’s favorite” quests, it’s very hard to find the “fun but not exploitative” missions, because they get rated poorly by users and disappear into the miasma of mediocrity.

None of that is surprising, or it shouldn’t be if you’ve played any online game recently. I can’t speak for the majority of players, but enough players to make it a problem will always try to exploit your system. Especially in something like City of Heroes where leveling is SLOW. Why would I, as a player, play the game the normal way when I could load up one of the user generated missions and get some serious experience from doing it?

I hate to break this to MMO developers, but most of your quests are extremely boring. Most people will do a few or more and then try to figure out the fastest way to level within the given system. MMOs require you to put time into the game to succeed, so as a player your obviously going to be looking to lessen the hit to your time. Whether we’re talking cheating or not is basically left up the readiness of cheats and the specific person.

So when you add user generated content, especially user generated content that is allowed to have an experience reward, you’re going to have people that will make levels to be exploited and people that will play those levels. More than enough to make it a big blip in your leveling curve. Guaranteed.

There are possible solutions, but almost nothing is going to work long term unless you don’t allow any kind of reward from the user generated quests. Or you have a guy examining every single quest that goes through and if it doesn’t meet public posted guidelines, then it’s rejected. Of course, you’re going to get a guy to do that and you’re going to need publicly posted guidelines:

Bingo. You don’t know if you’re breaking the rules until you get punished. So the developers are creating a chilling effect on their own content generator. Now it’s risky for players to even use user-created quests. What if some customer service rep decides the quest is exploitative? You’d retroactively lose your XP. It’s best to just to stick to the old dev-made quests, the ones you know won’t get you punished.

I haven’t got confirmation that they actually removing XP from players at this point, but I have heard from players that they are rejecting missions/quests and potentially not giving back a slot to make another/more.

I’m pulling for Cryptic for no other reason than I hope more games will try to do this. I’d love to log into an MMO and be able to pick from a list of quests created and reviewed by fellow players. Because every single MMO existence is lacking in good content, especially if we aren’t talking about the same four or five multiplayer components being played over and over…

What Would Matt Do: I’d try to do a few things. One, just set an arbitrary experience limit on user generated content based on the level required to play it (as one potential solution for the immediate problem). Two, start thinking outside the box for the next MMO on how to allow user generated quests AND content from the start, instead of adding onto an already existing system that it wasn’t really intended to be in the first place. Three, hope for the best…and prepare for the worst. Meaning, hope your players are going to create incredible, awesome, amazing quests and prepare for them to exploit every little thing they can. Because they will do both of those.

Assuming that Relic gets the 1.3 Patch out for Dawn of War II in the next little bit, it will have only taken them a few months after selling the game to finish it up. That might be a bit harsh, but lets take a look at what they are planning on including in version 1.3 still not yet released:

We’ve been busy! Dawn of War II is going to get a big patch in early May. This is the first of a series of posts where we will talk some details about what to expect in the update. As a bit of a preview, here are just a few things you can look forward to in the patch.

• We are adding a Two-on-Two game mode, with two new four player maps.
Two-on-Two is a ranked game mode with leaderboard support.
• An improved, more challenging Skirmish AI.
• Push to talk voice chat and Company of Heroes style sub-selection options.
• New squad decorators and significant UI improvements.
• A performance test to help measure Dawn of War II performance.

Man, those things are pretty sweet…I hope they include it in the full game when they release it! Oh…yeah, I see what they did there. They listed a bunch of features as if they are expanded features and not things that should have been included in the game in the first place. Can anyone name the last released RTS that had multiplayer of more than 1vs1, but didn’t include 2vs2? I can’t either. And the AI was a total joke, hopefully this will make it more useful. Heck, maybe it will make it Artificial Intelligence.

Relic made a lot of promises about future content and the plans they have. So far, to date (three months later), they’ve released four new maps… And yeah, that’s it. Everything else they’ve done can be categorized into finishing the game. To boot, two of those maps are the 2vs2 feature that should already be in the game.

As I said before, Dawn of War II, don’t make me hate you. The very things I worried about in that article have been proven out so far. The maps are generic and few, to date, and the other promised stuff hasn’t made itself known yet.

When this patch releases, I’ll give it another try for sure. But so far, I’ve played Dawn of War II less than the original. I got extremely bored of the same combat, the same imbalance, of the borked matching system and I never really liked 3vs3 at all.

What Would Matt Do: Hope Relic not only releases features like they mention above, but look into the matching and balance in the game. On the plus side, at least they aren’t in Demigod’s shoes. The multiplayer is/was so hard to get working that it’s a ghost town online when trying to find games. More on that next weekish.

Or maybe more imporantly, who didn’t do it. It goes like this… Rumor goes around that CD Projekt cancelled the console version of The Witcher, laid off the entire team. Times are rough, these things happen. Except then we get word that things aren’t quite what they seem:

"Basically, after a few months of not being paid, we stopped," said Masclef speaking to GamesIndustry.biz. "We’ve not been paid for a few months and we had a very nasty broken payment. We had no choice but to put the product on hold. We’ve not been able to find a solution."

Masclef claims Widescreen was also kept in the dark and not informed of new milestone dates for the project, along with added features, which publisher Atari was expecting following discussions with CD Projekt.

"We were not involved in discussions with Atari and CD Projekt. The financial situation seems to have grown more and more difficult," he said.

Hmmmm… They also claim to have not been told about milestones (mini-deadlines):

Masclef claims Widescreen was also kept in the dark and not informed of new milestone dates for the project, along with added features, which publisher Atari was expecting following discussions with CD Projekt.

"We were not involved in discussions with Atari and CD Projekt. The financial situation seems to have grown more and more difficult," he said.

Man, those damn CD Projekt guys (and Atari for that matter)…except well, they have their own take on the situation (check out comment #8):

It is sad that we cannot talk with WSG in normal business way, but communicate through media. It is absolutely not our style of making business, and we answer here as we feel forced to do this to clarify the unclear information:
1. All payments were done on time according to milestone plan.
2. Truth is that payments were later than originally planned but this was solely due to delays in production. The delays were growing in the project due to WSG continued to miss the deadlines.
3. Delays and risks of further development by WSG were unacceptable by CD Projekt (this happened even though CDProjekt RED was constantly increasing main team involvement to help in the production). The most important fact is that development process didn’t make planned release date possible and moreover propositions of the new release date were changing few times. Besides the schedule, technical incapability created a risk of missing planned quality which is absolutely unacceptable. And this brought an end in our cooperation with WSG.
4. Currently the works are on hold. We are evaluating all possible options to continue the production.

So we have a he said, she said situation. Which really sucks. I couldn’t really give a crap whose fault it is…but I was sure looking forward to trying out The Witcher on my 360. Now, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I couldn’t claim to know who was in the right, nor do I really care. Sucks to see a game that was so potentially close to release get shelved, probably forever (Almost any game put on hold is gone for good).

What Would Matt Do: Play the PC version…maybe I’ll hook up my 360 controller and pretend. Probably not though. /me pours one out for the fallen games…