What Diablo III Is and Is Not

Reading over the blogs, I wonder if Blizzard's biggest mistake with Diablo III was keeping the name.  This is not to say that players have not cited valid reasons for their lack of enthusiasm, but it feels like a disproportionate amount of the commentary has focused on what the game is not. 

Diablo III is not (note: cited complaints are not the whole contents of the linked posts):

• Available offline (see: Syp amongst many others after the rocky launch week)
• Sufficiently different in scenery from DII.  (See: Wilhelm)
• Sufficiently similar in character skill design from DII.  (See Pete, more on this in a minute)
• A game, but more of an interactive movie (See: Gevlon)
• Being evaluated fairly by reviewers, but rather being given a bonus based on its title (See Tobold)
• Reasonable about unlocking difficulty - three complete playthroughs are required to unlock the highest difficulty (See: Spinks)
• Arriving in 2002, when the incremental improvements from DII would be more consistent with four years versus the fourteen it actually took.  (See: Ferrel)
• Torchlight 2 (Pete, Arbitrary, several others - I suppose a real credit to Runic that this was such a common observation.)

So far, I've only played through level 11, but from what I've seen so far DIII is a good quality, polished, and fun game.  In some ways, it reminds me of SWTOR - you are definitely experiencing someone else's story, between the heavy involvement of NPC's and the relatively non-customizeable player characters, but the story experience and production values have been excellent.  Two tidbits that I've especially enjoyed:

Voiceover Lore: Those lore tidbits normally found in books that I never read in game?  In DIII, they are saved to my journal and an NPC will read them to me as I continue on my path of destruction.  As a result, I've been exposed to far more lore than I would ordinarily be tracking this early in the game.  This system is a huge step forward from tweet-length boxes of quest text.  Every MMO that is not planning on Bioware-style branching dialog trees needs to look at this.

Skill system: I am solidly in Camp Spinks on this one.  DII had one of the worst implementations of a skill system that I can ever remember tolerating - with no respecs and no requirement to spend more than one point per low level skill, DII basically dictated that players not use any skill points until most of the way through the game's normal difficulty.  In its place, Blizzard has created a system that offers tactical versatility without the dead weight and false choices - many options and almost all of them bad.  With the new system, I'm re-building my character in some way almost every level, and it sounds like I'm not alone in that experience.

Do I expect to be playing DIII every day for months or years?  No.  But that's another thing that DIII is not and does not need to be - a MMO with a lengthy commitment. 

(P.S. My tag-thing for contacting me in game is pvdblog#1183.) 

SWTOR At One Month

My first month in SWTOR has just about wound up - minus some time due to real life scheduling conflicts but plus a few days due to the referral trial program.

My first character is sitting at level 34, having completed the class story on Balmorra and collected four of my five companions.  This means that I'm done with seven of the twelve planets I will visit as part of my class story (not counting Ilum, which is PVP only as far as I'm aware).

There is still solo content left on about half of the planets I have visited, but I have chosen to forge ahead as my level permits in the name of preserving challenge.  I'm continuing to tackle content that's 2-3 levels above my head in search of an appropriate difficulty level.  In principle, this all means that my next Republic character could have a significant amount of content that I have not seen previously (assuming that I don't go back and power through the old stuff to farm companion affection for legacy unlocks).

Based on this timeline and rate of advancement, I'm probably looking at about six weeks of real time per level 50 character, and about four playthroughs (two per faction, and, coincidentally enough, one for each mirrored class pairing) before I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel for content I have yet to complete.  I have not yet started a single alt due to how the Legacy system rewards work, but to Bioware's credit the only hard part about my next character will be the choice of which of the six classes (excluding Bounty Hunter because it's the mirror of my Trooper) to play next.

Is it ideal for Bioware if I ultimately pay for six months' worth of game time before wandering off into the double-sunset?  Perhaps not, but it's hard to call that a real failure either.  I suppose I should also be worried about whether all the legacy perks will harm the difficulty level (though I may have gone extra easy on myself this first round by playing a tank-spec with a healing companion).  Overall, though, I'd call my first month in the Old Republic a success.

The Pros and Cons of Scheduled Content

Last week's episode of STOked discussed a controversy in the Star Trek Online surrounding scheduled content.  The game has recently added some much desired additional group content, but this content has only been available at specific times through the game's event calendar.

I understand where the complaints are coming from.  It is fully understandable for players to want to play the game on their own schedule, with their own groups.  Especially in a situation where almost all of the group content that the team is developing is going into the "time-gated" calendar, players who aren't playing on the official calendar's hours are out of luck. 

The community seems quick to point the finger at Perfect World and the game's new free-to-play model.  This may be true, but it is at best an indirect effect.  Nothing in these minievents that I am aware of requires purchases in the cash shop.  Rather, the time schedule may be a legitimate attempt to help players enjoy the game - where perhaps eventually someday they might spend money. 

If you let players pick and choose their own groups, the folks with guilds will do the content they want to do, and everyone else will be stuck waiting because there is no one piece of content that everyone can agree to run.  Where most MMO's focus the random group pool by offering rewards for agreeing to run random content in the interest of forming groups faster, the scheduled content approach focuses the pool by saying that the one event is what's available at this time. 

In some ways, the approach is a stick (no access to content if it's not the right time) rather than a carrot (reward for agreeing to run a random dungeon).  However, when you look at the effects of the random system, every piece of content in games that use it now has to be designed to be easily beaten by a PUG of potentially dubious composition.  Setting aside a specific subset of content and saying that this is the stuff that any five warm bodies can clear for rewards may have less overall effect on the state of the game. 

In that case, though, the solution is as simple as it is elusive - make more content so that this one mechanic is not getting all of the limited new stuff that is being added to the game. 

Founding a Legacy

My trooper was finally able to finish Chapter One of his class story, unlocking the Legacy system.  I'd been brainstorming for a while on a legacy name that A) looks enough like a name to pass muster on an RP server and B) somehow addresses my status as a MMO nomad.  I considered various combinations of "WorldSpanner", "RealmCrosser", etc in English, and then had the idea of branching out into French. 

The result was the name "Jeutrémie", which combines the words Jeu (game) and trémie (hopper).  Technically, it's the wrong kind of hopper - this is the giant funnel-like structure that you use to load up exceptionally heavy cargo (e.g. cement, ore) - but I suppose my the analogy to my MMO habit holds regardless.  In any case, it sounds vaguely namelike and it has a pun on the theme I wanted, so I'm happy with it.

I understand the desire to have the legacy unlock - it also came with a bind-to-legacy token for a free weapon for my next alt to hit the teens - come as a special reward.  However, there was a side effect to this plan - players cannot earn exp for their legacy until it is unlocked.  The final quest in Chapter One rates at level 31, but I ended up pushing the envelope and clearing through it at level 28/29 (dinged midway through the instance, and a good thing since the final bosses were 32 elite and time-consuming). 

I suppose the wait paid off in the end.  I had a lot of fun pushing the envelope to get through those last few missions "early" (delaying the Tatooine bonus series and most of the non-story content on Alderaan until I could earn legacy exp for them).  As a tank-spec trooper with a healing companion, I can get through a lot, and that level of challenge often isn't found in the solo game of an MMO anymore.  Looking ahead, I see some tough choices on what classes to play next based on juicy perks to unlock for my legacy.  From Bioware's perspective, that's a win/win, and I guess it is for me as well.