The new housing options are a much welcomed addition to the series. Mr. Nook takes a slight step back in this installment and deals only in real estate, but make no mistake, he will gladly shoulder you with crippling amounts of debt every time you want to upgrade your house. Now you can also buy different additions to the outside of your house. New doors, fencing, roofing, etc. A regular item store still exists and is run by Nook’s kids, Timmy and Tommy, so the whole Nook clan will be able to meet your housing needs.

Making designs for clothing has never really been chief among my Animal Crossing interests but for some reason I’ve caught the bug in New Leaf. You can make some pretty swanky stuff with the new pro-design options that let you have independent designs on the front, back, and sleeves. I’ve been working on a line of Adventure Time clothing featuring Finn and Jake. Pants are another neat addition to the clothing aspect of the game. Or skirts, if that’s your thing. You get a lot more options now to make your villager quite stylish.

I’ve just begun to dig into my new Mayoral duties , having only recently reached 100% approval rating. Keen is stuck somewhere around 50% because everybody thinks he’s a asshole or something. It’s totally not because I’ve been secretly burying my town’s garbage in his town. Anywho… As mayor you get to do some cool stuff like pass ordinances that make your town more beautiful or richer and start public works projects to build new town features like bridges and fountains. These things may sound pretty awesome, and they really are, but you are going to have to foot the bill for pretty much all of it. Ordinances cost 20K bells (money) to enact and public works projects can range anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands. To help offset the cost they put donation boxes by the construction site but so far it seems like my town consists mainly of tight-wads with no sense of civic responsibility. It is a little odd how you are made Mayor as soon as you get off the train and essentially tasked with paying for everything. It’s more like indentured servitude or something. There’s some kind of serious discrimination going on here.

When it gets too stressful and I need to get away from it all I hit the beach to do some fishing, which has been a favorite pastime of mine since the first Animal Crossing game. There is something about it that I find relaxing. Not only that but you can make a boatload of bells selling fish or donate them to the town museum which is also highly satisfying. One of the coolest things I’ve seen so far has to be the sharks. I kind of lost it the first time I saw a fin sticking out of the surf and have been obsessed with catching them ever since.

I’m still in the early days of my village so new stuff is still happening each day and I’m very excited to see what else is in store for my village. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find some way to tax the hell out of my residents.

Like playing a new MMO for the first time, everything feels dangerous.  Even though I’ve played Minecraft for hundreds and hundreds of hours, having nothing but a wooden pickaxe then coming face to face with a creeper still makes me scream like Blaine from Rat Race during the airport scene.  Soon that fear is replaced with apathy, and eventually I cease to appreciate all of the little things that I used to treasure.

Just like Minecraft, my favorite part of every MMO is the beginning. I crave it.  I wish it could be relived over, and over.  When World of Warcraft came out there were so many people starting to play that Blizzard kept creating servers months and months after release.  I made a new character on all of them, and on 3 of them I went from 1-60 and did server first raids.

Anyone else love the fresh start in a brand new MMO more than anything else? There’s just something magical about it.

More Group Variety

Having 6-8 members of a group means that every spot isn’t met with the same scrutiny as a group having to truly choose how to fill only five slots.   Larger groups can take a support class, more DPS and less heals, or more heals and less DPS.  Group balance becomes an art, and customizable.

When groups are larger, classes can be more unique.  I’m a fan of specialization, and I really hate homogenization.  I want to see every position in a group filled by someone bringing entirely unique skills.  Fewer slots in a group means that classes have to begin filling more roles.

To go against what I just said, larger groups also allow hybrids to shine.  In LotRO I played a Captain, and a group of six had that extra spot to let me be that class who made all the other members of the group perform better.

How many MMOs these days recruit a class to be the puller, or the buffer, or the debuffer?

Dungeon and Content Challenges

Groups were subjected to rigorous challenges, and often impossible odds when group sizes were larger. This makes sense, though.  A group of 6-8 people is right between enough to increase the challenge, and few enough to prevent zerg mechanics.  Content can still be difficult with fewer people, but overcoming that challenge is extremely different when there are fewer players — this goes back to having less to go on because of group variety being narrow.

I remember the holy trinity used to be Tank, Heals, and Crowd-control.  I don’t know if this can be backed by anything other than my observation, but the smaller groups have been simplified to emphasize DPS over control.

I like off-healers and backup healers.  I like off-tanks and contingency plans.  I like room for error and having the ability to adapt.  The flexibility and options come more naturally to a larger group of players.

Like Graev, I really don’t participate in the console bashing.  I want fun games; I buy consoles with fun games.  I own a Wii U, and I will eventually own both the PS4 and Xbox One.  For now, I’m sold on the PS4 being the first of the two consoles I buy, with the Xbox One coming as soon as I can squeeze a few hundred more dollars out of my paycheck.   My reason for going PS4 first?  Microsoft lost me when they took their emphasis off gaming.  It’s that simple.

Nintendo was my overall winner based purely on what excites me the most. I think Nintendo is really trying to prove they understand that everything they do should be catering to their fans. Just look at the list of games they showed off:

Nintendo showed they didn’t need a huge presentation.  Their console reveal was last year.  Instead of getting in the middle of a heated battle, they focused on fan-service and delivered me a list of games to last a year.  Owning a 3DS continues to be extremely worthwhile, and the Wii U’s first full year is going to end on a very, very high note.  I have nothing but appreciation for a company who focuses on releasing oodles of good games.

If I had to name one single game that surprised and impressed me the most, I would definitely say it’s Titanfall.

I love the futuristic mecha setting. I think the pacing, just from watching the scripted multiplayer battle, looked great. I’m thinking the maps sizes will be on the smaller side because it’s made by the ex-Infinity Ward folks, and that might be okay. If the maps are too big, it may lose that sense of close quarters battle.  Titanfall looks innovative, and a step forward for shooters.  The fact that this is on the Xbox One is a little ironic, but the PC version is likely to be my platform of choice.

Overall, as a consumer, I am very pleased with this year’s E3.  Now I need to figure out how I’m going to pay for it all.

I hate E3. Seriously, I do. People act like it’s gamer Christmas for some reason that is entirely beyond my comprehension. The entire week is a stressful mess full of whining, screaming children throwing tantrums and insults at each other over the stupidest things. Well now it does sound like Christmas.

One thing that makes me embarrassed to be a “gamer”, labels aside, would be all the bickering that goes on between fanboys on any side of the arena. I still cant understand why some people act like it is illegal or a moral sin to like more than one video game brand. The only thing I can come up with would have to be justification and reassurance for their own product of choice because that’s all they can afford to own. There’s nothing wrong with only owning one console, though, but when you have to tear other people down just to build yourself up then you have some serious issues.

But yeah, E3… Lots of news about PS4 and Xbox One. I’ve been a fan of both brands for the past several years and thought I’d share my opinion on both systems.

Xbox One

I don’t even need to bother with the name jokes as it’s sufficiently confusing enough. Name aside, I originally was disappointed with the direction Microsoft was going and still am to an extent. Their focus on all branches of entertainment media was something that did not appeal to me at all, along with several other gamers. I have zero interest in sports, I don’t listen to music, and the last thing I need is more options to watch TV and Movies. All I really care about are games. Fortunately, during their E3 conference that is all they displayed and they actually had several offerings that interested me such as Dead Rising 3, Ryse, Crimson Dragon, Project Spark, Killer Instinct, and Titanfall.

The things that bothered me about the XBone would, first, be the price. It’s more than I was expecting. There’s also the whole DRM thing which is an entirely different can of worms. Always online, 24-hour check-ins, no used games, etc just don’t bother me. Computer game DRM never seemed to cause any problems for me despite the outcry it gets. My consoles are always connected to the internet anyway, and I rarely ever buy and sell used games. Obviously I’m in the minority on these issues. Understandably not everybody can have constant connections with bandwith caps and some people rely on the used game market just to support their hobby. I kind of feel like an asshole for not being against these practices purely on supportive principle but… I really want the option to play Xbox exclusives.

PS4

I really like what Sony is doing with their next system, and they definitely seem to be on the right track with their game focus. Much to everybody’s delight they seem to be shying away from the whole DRM angle and have no problem with the concept of used games. They get brownie points for that, I suppose, even though these bonuses don’t speak to me. I’m actually really jazzed about the price point, which comes in $100 cheaper than the Xbox One.

The only thing that really worries me would be the games. There will undoubtedly be some awesome games on PS4 but I can’t really think of any exclusives here that really have my interest. The next Killzone and Infamous just aren’t doing it for me. Knack does look cool and so does The Order: 1886, but I don’t think there was even gameplay footage of the latter. I’m hoping that we get some cool stuff at the Tokyo Game show or something.

XBone vs PS4

It’s a tough choice, really. Xbox has a lot of exclusives that interest me but Playstation seems to be going in a direction that is going to be better for gamers. I’m not a specs guy at all so I have no idea how to tell which system is better than the other. I’ve seen people breakdown both, and both somehow end up stronger than the other. More often, however, I see the PS4 being declared the more powerful system. Supposedly the GPU is 50% faster and the RAM is better and they have more of it to allocate since they don’t have 3 operating system, etc. I don’t pretend to know what the hell I’m talking about in this regard, but if it means multi-platform games have the edge on PS3 then that is definitely something to consider.

Like I mentioned before, I plan to get both eventually. When I consider all things, however, I think my first buy is going to have to be the Playstation 4.

Zombie games are rapidly approaching levels of overexposure similar to WWII games. Of course I can still enjoy them just like I could all the old WWII shooters, but even I’m starting to feel like I want something else to shoot at. State of Decay does do some interesting things to shake up the formula, though. Well, at least from my perspective. I’ve heard people mention it’s somewhat similar to Day Z but I wouldn’t know since I’ve never tried that particular game.

In State of Decay you aren’t just looking out for yourself. Sure you can run around killing zombies and collect useful weapons and supplies but you also have to help take care of the people holed up in your home base. This means keeping them stocked with food, medicine, ammo, construction supplies, etc. The numbers tick down every day and while I’m not entirely sure what happens if you run out, I do know that it obviously can’t be a good thing. You will also need to use these resources to upgrade your base and create various objects. The tricky part is that supplies don’t respawn so after you’ve already looted all the surrounding houses and sacked the local diner you are kind of a little screwed, forcing you to move on. It kind of creates the feeling that you aren’t necessarily trying to win so much as trying to hold out as long as you can before you lose.

You can switch between specific survivors, and actually need to as they become tired after spending so much time exploring. Some characters might have stronger skills in fire-arms or leadership than others which offering some different bonuses. You can also raise these stats over time which can unlock additional benefits and abilities at higher ranks. The combat seems to be pretty simple. You pres X to attack ,hold left trigger and use the right to shoot. It gets more complicated from here, though. Tapping B dodges, holding B ducks, LB+X seems to be a strong attack, LB+Y is a finisher if zombies are down, and only pushes them if the zombie is standing, LB+A is some kind of jump kick with both legs, and LB+B when coupled with the correct situation is supposed to allow you to suplex and insta kill guys. I never got that last one to work, though. Despite being complicated, you’ll get used to the controls; State of Decay is like Dead Rising when it comes to melee combat. The shooting mechanics aren’t so bad either but I rarely use guns as they seem to draw more unwanted attention.

The whole “draw unwanted attention” aspect is something I find interesting. Almost everything you do makes noise which can potentially draw in more zombies. Even looting houses can be incredibly dangerous if you don’t take it slow.  Being loud and drawing in large crowds of undead that choke off your exit points is an awful idea. The whole sound and light bit can work in your favor though with stuff like flares, firecrackers, and alarm clocks which can divert a horde and allow you to safely pass. That’s actually another interesting aspect of the game. I’ve never played a Zombie game where stealth might actually be an important factor.The game world is pretty big so trying to sneak around it on foot would take a long time, not to even speak of being incredibly dangerous. Fortunately there are cars all over the place which you can use to get around. Just make sure you don’t wreck them or mow down too many zombies or they will start to break down.

I’m not sure what to think about State of Decay. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy playing, and the game is definitely worth buying, but even after playing it for hours I don’t seem to get anywhere or accomplish anything. I try to juggle  resources, help out survivors, and do missions but it all feels a little inevitable. I can’t even take a break from the game because even when I’m not playing the game continues to simulate stuff. You might start it up a day or two later and find your supplies are almost gone, people died, and items you left in the communal stash have been jacked by somebody. This hopeless feeling is most likely what they were going for, and if so they did a fantastic job. I mean, the title says it all, right? State of Decay. Even though I personally think it should be called “Jacking Graev’s shotgun from the stash and replacing it with a tree branch.” Seriously, screw that guy…

Three days ago Blizzard announced a new raiding difficulty: Flexible Raids.  Flexible falls between Looking for Raid and Normal difficulty, and scales depending on the number of players you bring along. You can bring 11, 12, 13, etc., and the content will scale in difficulty.  I think flexible raiding is a wonderful idea, and I wish it would replace the entire themepark raiding system.

I know I’m probably alone where I stand on themepark MMOs and their end-game content. I think that if I can bring 12 people to a raid, and you can bring 20, that doesn’t entitle you to better loot.  Blizzard obviously agreed when they equalized all loot drops between 10 and 25 man modes.

I would love if every raid was equal difficulty: Challenging.  Why should anyone feel forced to take more people for better loot?  Why should anyone feel forced to only have 10 people they want to raid with?  No matter the size of your group of friends, I think the difficulty should scale and be flexible, but the loot should all be the same — after all, if the difficulty is equal regardless of numbers, the loot should equal the challenge and be equal for everyone.  I think the only exception is a looking for raid environment where you throw a bunch of people together who don’t know each other; this one I’m okay with being significantly easier with a lower grade of loot.  Let that be a learning tier or an ultra casual tier.

Hard modes can and should still exist.  Hard modes should provide better loot.  They are hard and should provide a challenge for groups to aspire toward.  These shouldn’t be 40-man raids, or designed to be inaccessible.  If one group can bring 14 people to a hard mode then that 14 people should be challenged just as hard as a group who with 25, and if a group of 100 wants to do a hard mode together then they should be challenged at the same level as the hard mode 10.  That is the beauty of flexible raiding.

Do you remember back in school that one kid who seemed to know EVERYTHING game related? Of course this was all pre-internet (Or maybe not, depending on your age) so the only info we got was spread around. If you needed to know how to get to a secret world in Mario or how to perform a fatality in Mortal Kombat then this was your guy. Or maybe it was the dude at the arcade who had this seemingly arcane knowledge of everything about the game and could give you mind-blowing tips. Regardless, these sages of early gaming wisdom guided us and imparted sacred knowledge unto us and had a huge impact on our gaming lives. In reality these were the kids with the right magazine subscriptions but still… I try not to look behind the curtain.

Back in the days of early and more difficult MMOs we had similar players. These guys were digital missionaries who spread their gospel of world geography, dungeon pathways, and so on. Keen has recounted his tale about his first experience in EQ and migrating from the frigid north to the scorching deserts of Freeport. The player who took him there was one such person, whom to my recollection appeared out of the mists with out-streched hand and whispered, “Lo, let me safely guide you unto the promised land of North Ro.” Or something like that at least. I was 10-year-old kid who gnawed on wooden countertops; maybe I don’t have the best memory.

I had similar experiences with a person who taught me the safe path from Rivervale to Qeynos, which I can still mentally picture today. In the early days before you could easily be ported around people needed help getting to these locations and guys like this, and eventually me, could help you with this. I can’t even count the amount of people I must have led all across the continents in EverQuest. Even Keen sometimes needed to consult me when it came to navigating the likes of Faydwer and dungeons like Guk, which leads me to my next point…

Dungeons, like I mentioned in a previous post, were scary and dangerous places. You needed somebody in your group who knew what was what. When it was your first time in a dungeon you didn’t know what to expect, other than probably dying a few times, and had to rely solely on the advice of those who had previously trekked these deathtraps. The trailblazers of these dungeons passed down their knowledge and it eventually spread so that you yourself could instruct the next crop of adventurers. This still exists today, to an extent, but pretty much only in a boss fight mechanic sort of way. Somebody will ask if there’s anything they need to know and they can get rattled off a list of fight mechanics or they can go watch a video online. In general I don’t find it to be as satisfying an experience as guiding a group through a dungeon.

So really what does this have to do with anything? I suppose nothing, really, but it’s a fond memory of a bygone era when players had to essentially blaze trails and tame the frontiers. Unfortunately today all corners of the map are already filled in.

The topic of 40-man raids came up on our gaming community forums the other day when someone mentioned that WildStar might be trying to attract the ‘vanilla’ WoW crowd.  Everything I’ve seen from Wildstar screams accessibility, and everything I know about vanilla WoW the opposite.

I was the leader of two guilds on separate servers that got server first kills on all Molten Core, Black Wing Lair, Onyxia, and AQ 40 bosses.  I was an officer in a third.  Suffice it to say I have too much experience with 40-man raids.  The thought of doing any of that again nauseates me.  Raids would go on for 5-6 hours a night, 5+ nights a week and sometimes more if we felt pressed to get the server first.  Raiding in WoW was my full time job.  There wasn’t time to do much else, and eating happened at the keyboard every meal.  I am embarrassed by it, not proud.

The difficulty of the fights was nothing compared to the mechanics of raiding in WoW today.  The worst thing we had to worry about was cleansing quick enough, and moving out of fire in the right direction. Organizing 40 people was the problem.  How do you coordinate 40 people to log in on time and execute flawlessly? Heck, how do you even get 40 people? Once you have 40 people, you have to train their bladders so that you’re not constantly stopping.  You have to find people who are too afraid of losing their spot in one of two guilds on the server who can actually raid so that they don’t miss a night to go to their kid’s recital.

When someone tells me that WildStar is going to attract the vanilla WoW crowd with 40-man raids and tough bosses, I can’t help but chortle.  Vanilla WoW had its moments, but 40-man raids aren’t one of them.  I’m in no rush to revisit 40-man raids, and I think the WildStar devs aren’t stupid enough to think that type of gameplay will sell boxes. Creating content that less than 5% of your players will see doesn’t make sense anymore.

If WildStar makes 40-man raids the focus of their game, the raids will be accessible.  The content will be closer to something we see in WoW’s Looking For Raid or 10-mans, and nothing like the 40-man raids that required you to give up your life to participate.  And that makes sense to me.  Lots of people getting together to fight a boss sounds fun. Knowing I can do it in a way that allows me to come home from work, jump on and participate is precisely what I want in a themepark MMO.

Guk from EverQuest 1

I like difficult games because I get a greater feeling of accomplishment when I overcome obstacles or reach certain goals. If it’s something easy then it means nothing, really. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t find reaching max level in games like WoW to be anything to brag about. I mean, if old people and eight-year-olds can do it then what is there to feel proud about? Though I probably shouldn’t knock the young and young at heart; my eight year old self somehow beat games that I struggle with today but hopefully you get my point. There are numerous topics you can get into on this subject but one of the first that comes to mind would be dungeons.

Back in earlier days of MMOs dungeons used to be insidious deathtraps. If you didn’t get yourself killed by a tough monster then it was by some kind of trap or hazard. If you were lucky you grouped up with somebody who had been there before and knew to tell you to “hug this wall” or “jump across that.” This actually brings up an interesting topic that I’ll probably get into in a future post. Getting back on track, these places where high-risk high-reward situations. If you weren’t careful you could die easily but if you knew what you were doing then you could benefit from great exp, loot, and experience awesome dungeon environments. I was a total dungeon rat and I can still remember the layout to pretty much every dungeon in EQ below level 30.

What also made the experience great was the lack of instancing. Being able to see other people and possibly join together with them only adds to the experience. Say you’re getting overwhelmed but then somebody heroically jumps in to help or vice versa. Obviously this can lead to some bad situations where these strangers can accidentally get you killed but that’s part of the charm of the dangerous experience. Probably my favorite thing about old-school dungeons would be trying to get out of them. Think about it, nowadays you clear a dungeon and get ‘ported out or even gate/hearth if you want. Sure some classes could gate back in games like EQ but that was a bigger deal when your bind point was in a place you didn’t want to be. The people who couldn’t gate where the ones who had to fight or sneak their way out. It’s a fun concept that just doesn’t exist anymore because people don’t want to do anymore than they have to. I probably don’t even have to mention that dungeons were essentially rogue paradises. You were essentially walk around naked in these joints if you could stealth or turn invisible. These kind of utilities were greatly beneficial. Do MMORPGs even have invis spells anymore?

I like dungeons. REAL dungeons, not the virtual equivalent of splash mountain. However in order to have dungeons like this you also need very different game mechanics than what  exists today, but that’s way more than I want to get into right now.