Gracie has thoughts – Page 18

Solo Mode

February 16, 2016 by Grace

I’ve had a bit of self-imposed isolation over the last couple weeks. Work/school has been stressful and my brain tends to make me shy away from human contact when I get like this. Coincidentally, I’ve been reading Wolfy‘s great posts in response to Syl‘s comments about solo players asking for solo content in MMOs. For me personally, I like MMOs to have compelling and rewarding solo content so that I can get through these mental down times. Sure, I might be hiding from my friends list and avoiding group content like the plague right now, but solo content lets me still make some sort of progress on my characters. It also helps me stay connected to the world, and feel a little less alone just by seeing random strangers going about their business in-game. Without solo activities, I’d be more likely to completely take a break from the game when I feel like this. Instead, I’m still around and still invested, and ready to slide back in fully once I get over my mental funk. So I’ll happily “demand” (ok maybe politely request) that devs keep providing solo content for me and folks like me, who might waffle from time to time about how much they want to engage socially.

In any case, I can feel the isolationist fog starting to lift. I’ve started getting the urge to run dungeons again. Over the next few days I want to get back into the swing of things in WildStar. I also suspect it is only a matter of time before I fire FFXIV back up so I can heal butts. The cycle of introvert life marches onward.

Costumes, Costs, and Consistency

January 27, 2016 by Grace

I had an interesting conversation with some folks last week that started because of the cost to swap specs in the current WoW: Legion alpha build. It got me thinking about the various costs and restrictions associated with the activities I enjoy in MMOs, how they differ between games, and which ones really rub me the wrong way.

For example, I love the cosmetic system in WildStar. It is flexible enough to let you unlock the appearance of almost any item in the game regardless of whether you can equip it or not. The costs come from unlocking more outfit or item appearance slots, and purchasing and applying dyes. It mostly feels fair because it is a somewhat rare event to make a whole new outfit. Once you have one put together you can swap to it at any time for no cost. It does highlight a major inconsistency though. Item appearances get unlocked across your entire account, but dyes do not. The system that seemed so flexible and amazing on your main suddenly feels unnecessarily restrictive on your alt. Somehow having one part of the system account-wide while the other is not feels worse than restricting the whole thing. The overall system feels unfair because the restrictions are not consistent.

This brings me to the upcoming changes to WoW’s transmog system. The announcement at Blizzcon touted account-wide transmog, and that got me really excited! As people asked for clarifications and folks got their hands on the alpha they discovered the restrictions. Sure, unlocks are account-wide. And they are going a bit above and beyond by unlocking the appearances of quest rewards for all the quests your characters have completed. The big caveat is that for item drops you can only unlock the appearance of gear that is appropriate for your class/armor type. This severely limits the usefulness of an account-wide transmog system, and potentially really frustrates RP-ers who routinely equip multiple different armor types to achieve a particular look for their characters. The excitement of account-wide transmog feels suddenly hollow if I still need to run an old raid on a character of every armor type to unlock all the appearances I want.

Now this is the part where some folks might speak up about all the potential reason why the system is good this way. I just really want to highlight the huge inconsistency in how the rules are applied, and that is what makes it feel so frustrating and unfair to me. Here is an example. Say I have a pally (plate wearer) and a druid (leather wearer). To get full use of the transmog system I have to collect appearances separately on each. Meanwhile, my buddy with a rogue and druid (both leather wearers) only has to run something once to unlock items that can be shared with both of their characters. It is this situation that puts the lie to claims that the limitations are good for the “prestige” of earning an appearance, or that it encourages replayability or generates content. When two players experience vastly different restrictions just because of the classes they happen to play, that’s simply not fair and it makes me just angry enough to rant about it here on my blog for a few minutes.

There have been hints that the dye system in WildStar may indeed eventually become account-wide. I am not nearly so hopefully about that sort of change for WoW’s transmog system. It is funny how restrictions on a non-vital system like cosmetic wardrobes can still generate really strong feelings from the player base. Mostly, I just wish that the devs would try to make sure everyone has a level playing field.

That Feeling of Missing Out

January 22, 2016 by Grace

When you play with a group of friends sometimes the stars align and you all get excited about one game that everyone enjoys. Most of the time, though, everyone is checking out multiple different games, and occasionally tries to gather everyone to try something they thought was fun.

I’m in this situation now where most of my friends are playing Warframe together. They certainly seem to be enjoying themselves, and what little of the game I’ve poked at looked ok to me. Meanwhile I’m still excited about Diablo 3 season 5. This puts me in a tricky position. Do I drop D3 for a while and play with them? Or do I keep playing the game I’m excited about, but miss out on fun times with my friends? I’ve seen this pattern happen often enough to know that it probably won’t be too long before some or all of them get distracted by other games and drift off to do their own thing for a while, so it makes sense to try to hop on the bandwagon and play together when everyone is in the same place. From what I’ve played last weekend I enjoyed Warframe fine, but it didn’t exactly grab me and pull me in. The allure is more about playing with friends than playing that particular game.

It doesn’t help that my introverted nature makes group play a weird thing for me. I crave it, I really do want to hang out with friends and spend time together. However, it also tires me out much more quickly than playing alone, and I often get that urge to “hide” in solo games for a while if I overdo it. In a weird way MMOs are actually good for me because there’s often solo tasks like farming supplies that need to be done, and group activities like raiding are usually scheduled just a couple times a week. Games, even ones like D3, that are “better” or more rewarding if you are always grouped are the ones that tend to burn me out more quickly unless I am good about enforcing some “me time”.

Anyway I’m still torn between playing with my friends and playing the game I want to play. The biggest time this happened to me was with WildStar, when I watched people go back to WoW or other MMOs and I stayed behind with the game I loved. I don’t regret that at all, but it is still sad to see your friends having fun times without you and hard to seek out new social circles. Maybe this weekend I’ll give Warframe another shot and try out its group play. But I still want to make D3 my focus until I meet more of my goals for the season.

My Diablo 3 Seasonal Plan

January 13, 2016 by Grace

From my last post you may have guessed that I’m a bit hyped about the new D3 season this week. To help calm and distract myself, I’ve decided to write down my plans and goals for the season. Maybe some of this will be of use to you if you’ll be joining me on Friday for Season 5.

A new area to explore!

The Plan

Stage 0: Being prepared. In the last few days before the season starts, I’m looking up builds and figuring out what and how I want to play this season. I’ll be leveling a wizard first, because I just love wizards and they’re my go-to class. The seasonal reward set for the wizard class this season is the Firebird’s set, so I can plan my initial build around that. There are tons of guides and build suggestions out there so it helps to be able to narrow them down to just the ones that use that set. Knowing ahead of time is really useful since I can be sure to save and cube any specific legendaries I might need if they drop while I’m leveling.

Stage 1: Reasonably speedy leveling. I’ve done lots of different flavors of speed and power leveling in the past. At the start of a new season power leveling is not an option since that requires a higher-level friend to drag you around, so the focus is on speed leveling. Usually I level solo, since it lets me go at my own pace. I’ve found I like to do bounties on hard difficulty. Higher difficulty settings give more xp but seem to slow me down more than they are worth. Running rifts can sometimes be faster, but at the start of a new season there’s a lot of value in grabbing the cube crafting mats that you get from completing each act’s bounties.

This time around there’s a good chance that I will be leveling with a group, so I hope to try out the slightly modified bounty method. Basically if there is a bounty to kill a boss for the act, everyone goes together to do it (for sweet boss xp and loot). After that, the group splits up and each person does a different bounty to finish them quickly. Once they are all done everyone will get credit for the act, with the big chunk of xp and loot that comes with it. Rinse and repeat for each act.

Gearing up while leveling is not a hugely exciting process, but there are a couple key things to keep in mind. Mostly it is important to craft the highest level 2-handed weapon you can equip, and remember to socket a red gem in your helm as soon as you can. There are some other tricks you can use, like trying to craft a level 60 and 70 weapon with reduced level requirement, but honestly you’ll level so fast anyway it may not be worth the time and mats to try to craft it. Hang onto any legendaries with useful abilities that drop, and cube them when you can. The level of the legendary doesn’t have any impact on how it works in the cube. I will be saving any puzzle rings I get until I hit 70 and can do the vault on a mid range Torment level for maximum gold though.

Stage 2: The surge. This is honestly when the game is at its most fun for me, because your power level changes dramatically over a very short time. You’ve hit level 70 but don’t have a ton of gear yet. Running rifts can be a challenge but it feels like everything is an upgrade. Usually as soon as I hit 70 I craft as much gear as I can use, then bump up the difficulty to torment 1 or 2 and chain run rifts for a while. Hang onto any ring or neck that has a socket, even if it doesn’t seem that great, because you’ll probably want it once you get some legendary gems. This time around I will also be making sure to complete anything I need to for the seasonal journey, since I want to get my free Firebird’s set ASAP.

Once I get a few keystones I’ll start on greater rifts. The goal here isn’t really speed or gear, but rather to get the legendary gems I need for my build. Even without upgrades they can make a huge difference. Once I have them I’ll focus on speeding through regular rifts to stockpile gold and hunt for legendaries, pausing to do some bounties as needed to spice things up and get mats for the cube. As I get better gear I can start bumping up the difficulty for regular rifts some, but until I’m in my full class set and reasonable legendaries/cube powers the plan is to prioritize fast runs.

Stage 3: The meat. At this point I should have a full class set and most or all of the other legendary pieces that I want to go with my build. Now it is time to have some fun. I will be checking out the new class set dungeon at this point, as well as starting to push into greater rifts to upgrade gems and start searching for ancient legendaries. Hopefully by this point I will be done with the main part of the seasonal journey for the cosmetic rewards. That means I can start working on the bonus objectives for the fancy versions of the portrait frame.

This is also the stage where I’ll be starting to think about other builds. Just because the Firebird’s set is free this season doesn’t mean I will want to use it the whole time. Also, any class set item is getting saved so I can try all the different dungeons available. Hopefully I get the chance to complete all the wizard ones before the season ends.

Still missing so many things.

Stage 4: The grind. This is when the game starts slowing down for me. It is all about pushing ever higher into greater rifts, searching for the elusive ancient legendaries, and upgrading gems and items as much as possible. Around this time I’ll probably start getting bored and level my witch doctor, or start a hardcore wizard that I’ll never finish. Maybe the chase for all the different class sets and the challenge of those dungeons will keep me interested a bit longer than previous seasons, I guess we will see.

I expect to get to stage 3 by the end of this weekend without too much trouble. Here are my goals for Season 5:

Hit level 70 on Friday night.
Complete the Seasonal Journey for the pet by the end of the weekend.
Reach solo greater rift 50. (My best last season was 45).
Reach paragon level 400. (Last season I hit around 350).
Complete greater rift 30 with 2, 3, and 4 players.
Bonus goals: Reach level 70 on a hardcore wizard or complete at least one set dungeon on a witchdoctor.

Only 2 more days left to wait!