Gracie has thoughts – Page 22

Stealing Good Ideas

August 19, 2015 by Grace

Blaugust 2015, Day 19

So I guess I’m super late to the “react to the WoW: Legion announcement” party. I’ve been trying to digest how I feel about it, and it is tricky. I don’t even play the game anymore (for now) after all. Why should I even have an opinion? Honestly after pouring years of my life into WoW, and having so many friends still there I have no illusions about how quick I will be to buy the expansion and try it out. Whether I will stick around much after leveling is the question.

This was pretty much peak WoW for me.

With this in mind I’ve been thinking about what features from the MMOs I am currently playing I’d like to see added to WoW, and vice versa.

What WoW should steal:

WildStar’s housing: People have wanted player housing in WoW for years. Garrisons did not do the trick. WildStar’s housing has the best customization and depth I’ve seen, and unlike Garrisons you never really feel trapped there or obligated to spend tons of time if you don’t want to. It is a great balance.
WildStar’s double jump: WoW partially stole this, but just for the new Demon Hunter class. I worry if they have jumping puzzles like in WoD either they will be super easy for Demon Hunters and there will be an outcry, or people will discover that their version of double jump is more cosmetic than useful and be disappointed. I hope it gets spread around to everyone.
Final Fantasy XIV’s content schedule: FFXIV never seems to give me much time to get bored or complacent, there’s always an event or something new being added every few weeks. WoW is infamous for long content droughts, if they could figure out FFXIV’s secret they should steal it.
FFXIV’s combat precision: Some folks dislike FFXIV’s combat because of the long GCD that slows everything down, which is fair. One thing their combat does amazingly well though is telegraph very clearly and precisely. If I’m standing 2mm outside of a telegraph I know for a fact I am safe. WoW’s telegraphs are not always well defined, and even when they looked clear I often still took damage when I thought I would not.
WildStar’s costume interface: It is still not perfect, but WildStar’s holo-wardrobe is lightyears ahead of WoW’s transmog. I know it is a ridiculous ask since WoW’s system is based on old code that never had these types of vanity options in mind. But who wouldn’t want to be able to clear out all that inventory space, have tons of dyes on multiple channels, and share your outfits across all your characters?
FFXIV’s commendation system: I don’t pretend that this one change would transform WoW’s toxic community into FFXIV’s somewhat more appealing one. It would be nice though to occasionally have a chance to reward people for being awesome instead of trying (and usually failing due to WoW’s inadequate vote kick system) to get rid of people who are awful. WoW would be way more enticing for me if I thought the devs were even slightly trying to turn the toxic atmosphere around.

To look from the other direction, there’s also a few things I think these games could steal from WoW:

WildStar should steal flexible raid sizes: Yes the population in WildStar should be growing again very soon when F2P happens, but it will probably never be as big as WoW or even FFXIV. Flexible raids will let more people experience their end game content, and let raiding guilds focus on killing raid bosses instead of the roster management boss. Alternately they could just steal the much smaller raid sizes of FFXIV.
FFXIV should steal the WoW token: Ok, so WoW stole this from WildStar (and EVE, etc.) first, but still- having a way to buy game time for game currency would encourage people who are on the fence to try the game knowing they wouldn’t always have to commit to a monthly sub.
FFXIV should steal WoW’s account management and store: There’s a ton of neat things in the FFXIV store but I will never get them. Even if I had the money to spend, the Mogstation is such a nightmare to deal with it just isn’t worth my time. Blizzard has a streamlined, well-oiled system. No matter what you think of their cash shop items, the fact is everything is accessible and just works.
WildStar should steal (and refine) WoW’s legendary item quest chains: Sure, this is probably going to be replaced in Legion by upgrading your artifact weapon, but the original idea was good, if poorly executed at times. Having a long quest chain that takes months to complete and gives you a best-in-slot item is a great way to encourage people to get into content. You just have to be careful that the tasks you set are accessible and reasonable (I’m looking at you, PvP requirements). Both WoW and WildStar could look to FFXIV’s relic weapon quests here I think.

What do you think? What ideas are so good that all MMOs should steal them?

Silly Things

August 10, 2015 by Grace

Blaugust 2015, Day 10

He looks angry but he really just needs a hug.

I’ve been known to be a bit of a content locust, devouring new things quickly and completely. Sometimes I move on to new games afterwards, but often I stick around. It requires a bit of self-motivation to find your own fun when there’s no obvious goals sitting in front of you. In WildStar right now I’m not raiding doing much group content. Instead I have the goals of making as much money as I can in a casual way, and upgrading my gear in whatever slow manner I can without raiding. These go hand in hand when I see those drool-worthy ilevel 74 pistols sitting on the AH…

In FFXIV I’m at the stage where I can easily cap my raid-gear currency in a few days, and there’s little I need that can be obtained by pugging. I could just log in very rarely except for raid nights and still be making the exact same amount of progress. Instead, I’ve decided to pick back up where I left off on the relic weapon questline. This is a level 50 quest chain from before the expansion with about 8 different parts that starts you off with an ilevel 80 weapon and eventually progresses it up to 135. In some ways it reminds me of the legendary item quest chains in WoW from Pandaria and Draenor. The difference is that the end result of this chain is not really any better than what you could get from raiding, and it takes a pretty soul-crushing amount of grinding to get there. The quests also send you to a wide variety of different content, across every zone in the game and into most of the level 50 dungeons. It also asks you to dish out quite a bit of cash for vendor items and to either craft or purchase some high-level crafted items.

Before Heavensward released I was about halfway through. I set this goal aside when the expansion launched because there was so much new content to see. When things finally slowed down enough for me to return I was pleased to note that most of the quests had been altered to reduce the grind. I’m now on the next-to-last step, which requires 400,000g worth of vendor items, another 600-800,000g worth of crafted items, and multiple items only purchasable by spending level 50 PvE tokens. Oh yeah, it also requires item drops from 16 of the level 44-50 dungeons, and the drops are not guaranteed.

If you think it sound silly to go through all this effort for an item that was barely worth it when the content was new and is not even slightly useful now, well, yes it is. Sometimes we have to make our own fun in games when there are lulls between content. Sometimes the game puts a silly challenge in front of us. Right now I’m grateful to have something to do that keeps me active and engaged in FFXIV while I wait for new content and for my raid group to return from their end-of-summer travels.

These types of trials are also rites of passage that give a weird traumatic bonding experience. In late Wrath-era WoW I got my “The Insane” achievement, and part of what got me through it was the support of a guildie who had done it too, and the few other folks I’d eventually befriend just because I saw them working on the same tasks with me every day. So three cheers for silly goals that bring silly people together! And a Moonshine Mansion tip-o-the-hat to my FC-buddies Lonomonkey for inspiring me to go down this dark path in FFXIV, and Ash for keeping me company during the silliness! Hopefully I’ll be reporting on my success here soon, before a new level 60 version of this quest chain gets added to the game!

Screenie Saturday: Scorchwing

August 8, 2015 by Grace

Blaugust 2015, Day 8

The bird itself

I spent a lot of time last night sitting around waiting for Scorchwing to spawn so I could kill it for my daily contract. There’s almost always a crowd, especially on contract days. I love the atmosphere, it gets pretty festive and silly, which inspires lots of screen shots.

Waiting for the flaming chicken to appear

After we had killed it I looked back through my screen shot folder and realized that I probably have more images of Scorchwing than anything else in the game. The earliest, like the one at the top of this post from last July, are of Scorch. The long time it took to kill it meant waiting around when it spawned so you had enough people.

Sometimes you find kindred spirits

The later images are all about the community silliness of waiting for the spawn. I like the Scorchwing fight as far as world bosses go. And I like that it brings big groups together and helps remind me how vibrant a place my server is.

So many people engaged in poultricide

Still, waiting around for a random spawn timer isn’t really engaging gameplay. I wonder if all the changes coming with F2P will standardize Scorch’s spawn to bring it more in line with the other daily contracts. If so, I’ll be glad of the time it saves me, but a little sad if we lose this weird excuse to have a party in the middle of Blighthaven.

Why Do I Raid?

August 7, 2015 by Grace

Blaugust 2015, Day 7

The pinnacle of raiding in FFXIV before the expansion. Please ignore my corpse…

Wednesday nights are my main FFXIV raid night. I look forward to battling various monsters, dragons, and bad guys each week. But it has been a while since I sat down and thought about what keeps me coming back for more.

I started raiding back in World of Warcraft in 2007. I was still new to MMOs, and had finally leveled a character that I was happy doing group content with: a forsaken priest. I dutifully ran dungeons and healed butts for max-level content, slowly making a name for myself and filling up my friends list. Eventually some of those friends turned out to be raiders. A couple times a week they ran off to do this mysterious raiding thing with lots of other people. Raiders had the fanciest gear. Back in the days before cosmetic options, raid tier sets reigned supreme in terms of looks. If the promise of challenging group fun didn’t entice me enough the lure of fancy new gear sealed the deal.

I’ve raided in several MMOs now, and they each have their pros and cons. There are some constants that keep me coming back no matter what universe I’m playing in. First and foremost is a great raid group. They might be great in terms of player skill, or just great people I enjoy spending time with. Ideally both! My very favorite raid experiences have been in 8-10 person raids full of excellent players who were also my friends.

Even when I’ve had great groups I’ve sometimes walked away. Raiding is most fun for me when it is challenging and when there are still more achievable goals to meet. The times I’ve taken a break are often either when there’s an encounter that just feels insurmountable with our group, or when everything is on farm and there’s no new content in sight. This doesn’t mean I run away from difficult fights, but there is a difference between a fight that feels fair and that my group is making progress on every week, versus a fight that seems to stop us cold at the same point no matter what we do.

So why do I raid? I guess the answer is equal parts friendship, challenge, and sweet sweet loot! Do you raid too? What keeps you going?