Category Archives: Games

Achievements – You’re Doing It WRONG

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One of the first things you learn as a game designer is: Be Consistent. If the player does something, and gets a response, they need to get the same response every time. Game Rules need to be consistent across the entire game.

Blizzard has NOT been consistent when it comes to achievements. They are not being consistent when it comes to rewards either. They need to PICK A POSITION and STICK TO IT.

Example 1: Hand of Adal vs. Starcaller/Kingslayer. Hand of A’Dal doesn’t even have an achievement associated with it, but it was removed. Blizzard claims they “didn’t want people to get the title who didn’t earn it in the period it was intended to be earned” and so they removed it. But Kingslayer and Starcaller were just as difficult, and intended to be just as exclusive, and yet remain in the game.

(Note: Q: Will you ever bring back the mounts for achievements that were removed (Naxx Glory runs) as you didn’t remove the later mounts? – Joyia (North America/ANZ) A: This is a tough one. On the one hand, we know there are a lot of players who would still like to get their hands on these mounts. On the other hand, we were pretty clear that they would only be available for a limited time, and we hate to go back on our word because we know some groups went through heroic efforts to get them before the door closed. This is the kind of thing that is not set in stone and player feedback might eventually convince us to change our minds.)

Example 2: Achievement Drakes. Yes, I was the Joyia who asked about the Naxx Drakes on the achievement Q&A thread. I was a part of a guild at the time that was working on the achievements for said drakes. It nearly ripped our guild apart. It lead to multiple people leaving and joining more progressed guilds. It lead to me LEAVING a guild I liked and almost leaving the game. The stress of attempting to get these achievements BEFORE they were removed was insane considering this is a GAME. That’s right, it’s a game. It should be fun. But on multiple occasions, Blizzard insists on making the game not fun by putting time limits on achieving things. (Theoretically the ZA Bear and ZG mounts fall here too, despite not being achievements.)

When it came down to it, I resolved myself to the fact I wasn’t going to get these drakes. I resolved myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to get the Ulduar drakes. I just wasn’t that kind of player. I got my purple protodrake, and I was happy. But then, I managed to achieve the bone drake for ICC 10 man on my mage. Success! Joy! And then… they didn’t remove the achievements. Last week, a bunch of goofballs in trade pugged up a 10 man group and succeeded in getting the SAME drake I had worked so hard for.

What makes my Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher LESS special than the Naxx Plagued Protodrake?!? Wow, way to be a hypocrite!

To head off the comments of whiny elitists saying “I want my mount to be rare!” There are three things with this as well. One, stop being elitist. You can always climb on your little box and show off your e-peen by saying “Well I got mine two weeks after the raid was released!” Two, it is punishing to players who change mains, re-roll alts, or start the game late. Even the new people deserve the chance to get something awesome, this is after all a game that wants to be accessible, NOT elitist and exclusive. Three, rarity is a FALLACY in WoW. That’s right, it’s not real. Rarity is a RELATIVE concept. Meaning, something is only considered rare, if and only if, the people you play with do not have it. I have posted this example before. When the Sparkle Pony came out, only 2 people in my guild bought it. So out of about 20 players, only 2 people had one. Meaning that the people we hung out with and were likely to pay attention to their mounts, count as the audience. That gives the Sparkle Pony a 1 in 10 rarity. Now, the Deathcharger’s Reins had been farmed up by about 10 people in the guild, meaning it has a rarity of 1 in 2. the entire World of Warcraft does not count in the rarity, only the people you are likely to interact with do.

BE CONSISTENT. Seriously. I am willing to accept the decision one way or the other, just PICK A SIDE AND STICK TO IT. This endless waffling and inconsistency just frustrates and annoys players and is just BAD DESIGN. Best case, Blizzard realizes it’s hypocritical responses and opens the Naxx Drakes back up. (Theoretically they could add the Tiger and Raptor mounts back in some form of grind or in the CtA bags – which to be honest would be FAR more effective in getting people to run it. They could even add the ZA bear back to a timed run of the new ZA dungeon.) Worst case, they remove the ICC and Ulduar drakes, and people got them “unfairly” after the period, but at least now, that will not happen again, because they decided to be consistent.

Carrots on Sticks

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Even More Update Goodness: I have read several other blogs about the subject, but here is one of the best. His whore analogy is just superb and spot on, and his arguments are valid. The thing is, I understand why Blizz would never do as asked. Maybe they will consent eventually to add raid mounts to the bag (Ashes of Alar might just be enough to drag that bear back in) but for the TCG they *can’t*. If they do, it devalues the TCG and takes away one of the major selling points of the cards. And don’t get me wrong, while I would love to have those mounts available in the bag, it will never happen, because Blizzard makes too much money on the licensing fees for the card game.

I really feel the biggest drawback of this fix is that it doesn’t allow the tank to queue with anyone else. Even allowing the tank to queue with just one other person might take the sting out of it. Pocket healer, trusted cc-er, or just that one person you always play with. You are still taking 3 other people out of the queue, so it is still a win, but seems less… whorish… than it is forcing them to queue alone.

 

UPDATE: Blizz announced that the bags WILL IN FACT BE BIND ON ACCOUNT. As I said “Make the bags Bind on Account so we can pass them off to our alts. (Then I would be 85 on Pandara in a heartbeat.)” my response to the announcement was “BRB LEVELING”.

 

I have talked about the Tanking problem a few times. Since the dawn of the Random Dungeon Finder the players of WoW have developed a skewed vision of dungeon running. I barely remember running a few dungeons on my warlock prior to the introduction of the LFD tool. They were simply too time consuming, too prone to failure, and far too difficult to find a group for.

But LFD changed all of that. Dungeons were readily accessible in a matter of minutes. Loot rained down on the World of Warcraft. It was wondrous. And it spoiled us all beyond repair. Seriously. We are spoiled rotten little children demanding more things when we have already been given the world.

The average time to get a pug group together PRIOR to the LFD tool? 4 hours. And then 2 more hours to clear the dungeon because the chances of everyone KNOWING the dungeon was slim to none. The average time I have to wait in the DPS queue for a dungeon? 40 minutes. Which is just about the time it takes to do all of the Tol Barad dailies, killing every fox along the way.

But nooooooooooo people gotta complain about something, so they chose to complain about their 40 minute queue times. To be fair, the queue times for LFD have been slowly increasing through Cataclysm. I have talked about this before. So Blizzard decided to answer the problem with a carrot on a stick. It worked for Oculus right?

Here’s the thing though… I have a tank. I have debated on leveling her. Why haven’t I leveled her despite having leveled 2 healers and 2 dps at 85? Tanking sucks. I hate random healers who aren’t very good. I hate random dps who can’t wait two seconds. I hate RNG fights where one mistake leads to me dead on the floor. So now Blizzard offers me a carrot. Am I going to level her and roll through dungeons with her now?

Nope.

But I LOVE minipets! I LOVE rare mounts! So why wouldn’t I leap at the chance to get them?!? Oh right, because like MOST other collectors, I collect my pets and mounts on ONE character. I collect them on Joyia. Who is a Pure DPS. If I could tank with Joyia, I would be all over this like a starving man on a steak. Bad DPS, rude healers, wipes would all be ignored with the joy of working towards a rare mount. I don’t want those mounts on Pandara, I want them on Joyia

There are so many other solutions… offer it as a reward for any dps who has to wait more than 40 minutes in the queue. The tanks are already being rewarded, with an instant queue. Make the bags Bind on Account so we can pass them off to our alts. (Then I would be 85 on Pandara in a heartbeat.)

Or they could fix the real problem. Wrath proved that the problem isn’t there aren’t enough tanks and healers. My dps queue during peak times in Wrath was 15-25 minutes, HALF of what it is now. Why was that? Oh right. Wrath dungeons were easier. Wrath tanks had better threat generation, gear, and to be honest, their skills were better tuned. Revert Swipe to it’s old cooldown (none). Give Thunderclap back it’s massive aggro. Increase the threat of Death and Decay and Blood Boil. Revert Consecrate back to it’s Wrath glory. Lower the CD on all tank “panic” buttons. (Just by 1/4th or 1/3rd.)

Or even give classes the ability to tank. Make Beast Mastery like Feral Druids. There are talents they take to get a tanky pet or to get a dps pet. Bam. One more tank. Make Demonology like Bear tanks. Metamorphosis is a form a lock goes into to tank. They have their “big” health pet that splits the damage through soul link, and their skills in demon form generate aggro. Bam, one more tank. Enhancement shamans – they are already halfway there! Give them a few modified skills, and a crit proof skill, bam, tanky tanky.

Another option is to change the group size going into 5 mans. How much of a change would pulling in an extra dps do? 1 tank, 1 heals, 4 dps. Not only would this eat up more of the surplus DPS, but also it would mean less caring when one dps isn’t pulling their weight.

I don’t think their solution is a solution. I think it is a bandaid on a gushing head wound. They need to address the problem, not the symptoms. The problem is role imbalance. And this addition, isn’t going to get more tanks running dungeons. It is just going to get people who *don’t* like tanking and healing to tank and heal, which just exacerbates the problem by having under or poorly geared people, filling roles they don’t know how to play, and causing frustration all around.

 

Note 1: This would be an EXCELLENT time to bring back lost pets like the vampire bat, scorchling, etc etc. It would also be a great place for rare mob drop pets like Gundrak Hatchling, Whelplings, Foxes, Sewer Rat, Crawler…

Note 2: Would it be different if they added super rare/unobtainable mounts back in? (A la ZG Tiger, ZA Bear.) OH HELL YES it would be different. Tank would be leveled and tanking like NOBODY’S business. Not only would I do it, but I would SERIOUSLY campaign for the ability to have a paid mount transfer service.

I’m sorry, Do I know you?

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It was a pretty exciting day. Patch 4.0.1 was a BIG deal. It was the change from Wrath to Cataclysm. It should have been a day of celebration, exploration, and excitedly discussing things with guildies. But the day was marred by the unexpected.

I logged in, double checked my gear and immediately dove into specing my new talent points. Alright, all done, summon up my felpuppy and start heading… wait a tic.

“Who the hell are you?”

The felhound standing at my side was called “Rhuudym”. MY felhound is called Phryluum. This… IMPOSTOR… was wearing the tag <Joyia’s Minion> below it’s name.

“You are not.”

Weirded out by this impostor, I decided to summon my Imp. Maybe Laztip would know what was going on. At the end of my spell, Paztog answered my call.

“Ahhhh! What happened to Laztip?!?” The imposter imp said nothing. I was really feeling terror now.

“Blue, don’t fail me…” Calling my voidwalker into existence. Poof!

“Oh thank the gods, Klath’dok! What the hell dude?!? Where did everyone go?”

“Sorry mi’lady. There was some catastrophic event that ripped through the nether. We all seem to be hearing different names and voices calling through the magics to us. It’s bedlam down there.” It was all I could do not to hug the big blue guy.

“I have a raid tonight. Arthas and all that. What am I supposed to do? I don’t know that felhound! He might try and take my hand off.” Klath’dok had no advice for me. I mean, I know I am a warlock. We are inherently evil and not to be trusted. Even the very demons I was trying to call were originally enslaved by my fel powers. But in some twisted form of Stockholm Syndrome we had become friends. We trusted one another. We worked as a team. We were connected, and not just by soul link, but by health funnel and dark pacts!

I summoned back the impostor, who just glared at me balefully.

“Alright you. I don’t know you. You don’t me. But I have this thing to do tonight. It’s lots and lots of killing. You should like that right?” He seemed a bit more interested.

“So truce then? I’ll take care of you for now, and we can both just muddle through until the Nether Guardians get this ‘mix-up’ figured out.” He blinked his eyes, but made no other response.

“Either agree, or I am gonna have a new felhound pair of boots. And I’ll use the imp instead.” He chuffed, and finally bowed his head and tentacles slightly. Good enough, I thought.

It would eventually take a week for my friends to return. Their return was met with joy and celebration, on both sides of the bond.

This event resonated several important things within me. First, Warlocks do have a heart, despite it being madly in love with destruction. Second, we knew their names. Not just one, but all of the demons we enslave. They are as much a part of us as our spikes, skulls, and bloody robes (not our blood). Third, despite years of howling for the ability to rename these little snots we had become accustomed to their names. We knew them. And when they were unexpectedly changed, we rebelled in one voice to change them back. There was the most heartbreaking thread on the forums, Warlocks looking for their lost minions, asking that someone, anyone care for their loved companions until at such a time this error could be reversed.

Welcome back Phryluum, you were missed you ugly little mutt you.

Lego Star Wars III

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I have a love hate relationship with all Lego games. They all have the same wonderful possibility and they all so far have managed to create in me a frustration that rarely crops up in other games.

The cutscenes and story edits are nothing short of inspired. Watching Leia lift up R2’s dome and chuck the disc in like she was tossing it in a garbage can was hilarious in the extreme. LSW3 focuses on the Clone Wars, a story I have never particularly cared about, but once more, has managed to make the story hilarious and adorable all at the same time.

The game leverages collecting and completionists to great effect. There are studs, characters, bricks, and mini-figs to collect every where, with a single simple percentage showing how much has been completed. The fact that the game is designed to be played through twice, just to collect everything from each mission.

The gameplay is basically solid. Combat feels nice, watching enemies explode in a spray of studs is rewarding, and even the jumping feels substantial.

Now, having said that… COULD THEY FRAKING FIX THE GLARING BUGS ALREADY?!?! Three Star Wars games (4 depending on how you count), two Indiana Jones games, a Batman, a Harry Potter, with a Pirates of the Caribbean and likely a Harry Potter 2 on the way, and they STILL haven’t fixed the damn enemies can stand behind something and shoot through it, but I can’t shoot through the thing to hit the enemy? Don’t even get me started on the targeting system that just LOVES targeting the pile of destructibles instead of the 5 droids slaughtering me.

Then there are things like, in the very first level of LSW3, the player is moving up the screen (which is a GREAT way to show off the 3d) and encounters a cannon and has to jump on it to shoot down a droid tank. Instead of having the cannon activated, or jumped in like a vehicle, it is a context sensitive “run” against it until you pop into it. Yes. Great idea. No one would EVER have problems trying to do that while being SHOT and KNOCKED BACK from the tank shooting at them. Not to mention the trigger for activating the cannon is so dang small I spent 3 minutes sliding back and forth across the back of it trying to get it to trigger. Yeah, this is fun. /sarcasm. Add this to the fact that they have this EXACT same setup FOUR times in a row… yeah, not a great design.

Rounded edges of cliffs that make falling off or getting stuck on a slope are everywhere, as always. Multiple force activated objects right next to each other so the game never picks the one you are trying to activate? Present. Endlessly spawning enemies who interrupt the building of some wildly complex and long Lego item? Accounted for. There just always seems to be so much shoddy design. I can’t tell if it is bad designers, over worked designers, or just apathetic designers.

I always want the games to be good. They usually are, until you hit the mind bogglingly frustrating parts that I just have to ask “Did NO ONE see this during testing?” If not, then they need to get better testers.

The Crypts of Karazhan

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As a fan of Lore and writing in World of Warcraft, I have read many of the novels and extra material written on the game. One such novel is The Last Guardian, which covers the story of Medivh and his tower, Karazhan.

In the Burning Crusade Karazhan (more commonly shortened to Kara) was added as a 10 man raid instance. It was essentially the starting point for fresh 70s wanting to get geared and get to raiding. By the time I hit Kara it was already on farm by my guild. I loved Kara. Even after 5 months worth of running Kara every single week, I *still* love Kara. It was exceptionally well designed, with beautiful attention to detail. Not to mention all of the bosses and NPCs were heavily tied to the story of Kara. Knowing Moroes from the book, then fighting him in the instance was beyond cool for me.

The only minor point I objected to was the fact that the in-game Kara had no “mirror”. In the book, the character Khadgar discovers that Medivh is actually possessed by Saragas (the biggest bad in the Warcraft Universe), and below Kara there is a mirrored version of the tall eerie tower. They must battle to the depths of this mirrored version to trap and defeat Medivh.

Then one day, browsing the main WoW forums I stumbled on a fascinating thread: The Hidden Places of WoW. It detailed out of bounds areas that a player could go and visit. These were mostly unfinished areas that had interesting areas around them like the Greymane Wall. Here I found mention of a place called the Crypts of Kara. Apparently behind Kara there is a graveyard called Morgan’s Plot, and a crypt that had a doorway, with rooms beyond it, but the door wouldn’t open. The poster explained that you could get beyond and explore the area, by using a simple trick.

By entering a duel with another player you could be feared through the invisible barrier. Once inside you can explore as you wish. I watched several videos and decided I had to go visit. So I gathered up some guidies and away we went.

The very first thing we noticed was the atmosphere, seemingly without much effort put into making it detailed. I am not sure if it was the lack of mobs, the lack of sound effects, the minor use of dark Duskwood music in one back corner, or simply the knowledge we didn’t belong there, but this area felt far more eerie and disturbing than anything else in WoW, including areas like Scholomance and Stratholm.

The first area is called The Well of the Forgotten.  I immediately noted that the name was printed in yellowy orange text. As opposed to the standard white. This room contained a well, without a barrier preventing someone from falling down it. One of my guildies immediately jumped down. The rest of us turned and investigated the next area The Pauper’s Walk.

This looked like something out of the Paris Catacombs. Niches in walls filled with bones, dirt floors, and low ceilings. It opened into a larger area, that looked like it could be a space for mausoleums and other crypts. Our guildie was messaging us about the huge pile of bones. I returned to the well, and leapt down. Despite falling what felt like a character killing distance, I landed, barely alive, on a huge pile of bones. This area was named The Pit of Criminals. Well, at least now we knew what the Well of the Forgotten was used for. The Pit contained pools of water, and huge piles of decaying bodies and putrefied remains.

We continued to explore, finding the Tome of the Unrepentant. (Perhaps it was supposed to be Tomb?) This is the first point where I really began to feel that this area was rough pass, unfinished work. This design had been abandoned before it could even be truly blocked out.

Then came perhaps the creepiest thing I have ever seen in WoW. The Upsidedown Sinners. The flooded room was filled with dark green water. Chains crossed the deep room. From these chains hang hooks, slightly animating, moving back and forth implying a slight ebb and flow to the water. There were also bodies. Dozens of them, suspended upside down. Some by their feet, with weights on their body pulling them downward, some by their hands, their arms distended with the pressure.

My guildies asked for my water breathing spell, so we could spend more time, floating about and taking pictures. After a long stay in the deeply disturbing room, we returned to the surface and swam out, to the final area, the Slough of Dispair [sic]. This room was a deep earthen pit, that clearly was designed for the final boss fight. When a player moved into the pit, the view of the door and walls passed out of view. It truly made me feel like I had been pushed down into this great gaping mass grave, from which there would be no return.

We took our pictures, said good bye to the creepy area, and returned to Shattrath, and the rest of the world. Everything seemed so much brighter, friendlier, and safer than we remembered.

The Pertinent Question

[quote=”Henghe“]So Joyia, you’re a level designer. Is it common for game designers to spend tons of time creating sounds and layouts, and to put them in games, that they then don’t give people access to? :lol:[/quote]

Yes and No. Yes, it is EXCEPTIONALLY common to spend tons of time creating areas, polishing them, pouring your heart and soul into them, only to have them violently ripped from your hands and discarded due to time, money, or just poor fit with the game in general.

No, those abandoned levels usually do not make it into a game. They are deleted from the game files usually to save space or install time/footprint. Especially for WoW where 12 million people have to download it. Yeah its only 20 mg worth of area, but how much bandwidth is it for 12 million people to download?

After looking a several videos, working diligently to overcome my WoW geekery, and inspecting the video a bit more, I have hit on a few ideas of why this level might have not been completed, and why it might be in the game. All of the following however is sheer speculation on my part.

Theory 1: Shares Space with Other Areas

So first off Blizzard makes WoW with a modified WC3 engine. These proprietary engines usually do not have an in-engine ability to make geometry, meaning you have to have a program like Max or Maya to make all of the walls, items, trees, etc in the game. Then you import these models into the engine which is an open terrain area. (In fact their terrain stuff is very similar to what is used in Unreal, very cool.) So what this means for WoW is that most of the buildings and stuff like Kara are actually created by an artist sitting next to the designer. This likely means that all of the major geometry in Kara, stuff like floors, ceilings, walls, and columns are all one piece, or at least are exported together so as far as the game is concerned are one piece. So it is possible and plausible that the Crypts were intended to be a part of Kara, another wing. However they were cut due to time and polish and could not be removed as they might share geometry with other parts of Kara.

Game developers tend to have the thought that if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. A single change can bring cascading bugs or problems. If they don’t have to remove something so the game fits on the disc, it is generally safer to leave it in.

Theory 2: The Depths of Depravity

Also as I stated before, these areas are much darker and have much darker names than normal WoW. It could just be that they decided it had gone too dark and they needed to reel it back in. It is also possible that this area was cut due to the dark tone and possible “teen” rating issue. Ratings are often based not only on the appearance of things, but also the frequency and detail. Though at times I think the rating theory doesn’t really wash, because all the human hanging models are used in other locations (like Scarlet Monastery) and they have done far worse things in Cata and Wrath. Perhaps it was merely the feeling at the time and since has changed.

Theory 3: Time and Scope

It is also possible as these areas have a very unfinished look about them that they were scrapped due to not having interesting enough bosses, not enough time, or possibly the quality of the area just wasn’t matching the rest of the dungeon. Kara was a Burning Crusade launch raid. It was the first expansion, and likely they over scoped. They got it to alpha stage, realized that they couldn’t finish all they started, and chose to pick something else instead of that (likely polish to Kara itself).

The design, while interesting, does not compare as far as quality to other WoW dungeons. With the exception of the Upsidedown Sinners room, of course, but even this room… why does it belong?

Theory 4: Lore

How does it fit? What is the lore behind this area and why is it tied to Medivh? I could see all of this much better under Stormwind’s Cathedral, which has an empty and accessible dungeon. (You can get a Scarlet Crusade quest there and in Cataclysm there is now a section of the Twilight Highlands feeder quests down there.) As it seems more likely for clerics and priests to place labels like unrepentant and sinners on something than Medivh.

On further reflection and re-reading the book, this location is not only completely wrong for Inverse Kara, but it is in the wrong location, has the wrong layout, and has the wrong entrance. The names and locations do not come close to meshing with the original idea. And even if they took liberal adjustments, this doesn’t even remotely resemble the layout of the in-game Kara, which it theoretically should.

We may never know the real reason this area was scrapped and closed off (though if I ever get an interview there, this is the FIRST thing I am asking them). It appeals to our sense of exploration, horror, and mischief. And for that, we love it, in all it’s unfinished glory.

(Note: This post was written in 3 parts over 3 years. It has been sitting in my drafts folder forever, and was only updated today and posted due to the WoW Insider post here.)

Games I played this week

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The 3ds came out this week, so there has been quite a bit of goofing around on it.

Pilotwings is pretty stellar. Much better than one would expect with the resort title.

Lego Star Wars 3 is simple great fun, just like all it’s predecessors.

The AR stuff on the 3DS is nothing short of magical. I hope they full support this and do tons of cards and games.

Of course I am still rocking the Dragon Quest IX. I got to the point where I am digging through grottos as quickly as possible. I can’t wait to hit one that is more my level.

In WoW, I was a part of a guild 10 man that downed Atramedes, a boss in Blackwing Descent that has some odd sound mechanics. It was quite the challenge as I was the gong ringer to interrupt the Searing Flame. We are still hitting the 25 man content pretty heavily. I am a bit depressed at the state of Affliction dps and considering trying some Destruction so I can blame my poor placement on that. My shaman may have finally reached the gear “tipping” point. One hopes. My priest is still rolling right along, and I have started doing Tol Barad dailies on both of them when possible.

My friends at Electrified Games went into Open Beta with their game, Pokemon Trading Card Game Online. It is quite fun for me, as I enjoyed the Pokemon TCG but haven’t had time or people to play with in a long time.

I picked up several games, multiple Dragon Quests, Nintendogs +cats, and some other older DS games.

 

I hold something magical, in the palm of my hand.

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I hate gimmicks. 3D is a gimmick 90% of the time it is used. I am also one of those people who insists on wearing glasses. I can wear contacts, but due to the fact I spend 18 hours a day looking at computer screens, I don’t blink nearly enough so contacts make my eyes dryer than the Sahara after about 15 minutes. This explains why I dislike 3D movies so much. I already wear glasses. Adding a second set of plastic, poorly fitted glasses on top is just a fast way to make my ears, temples, and nose hurt. In addition to having to adjust them every few minutes, it just makes watching 3D a pain.

I am used to the belief that if you are adding something to your creative work, it needs to make it better. Adding something to a game? It should make the game better. Adding a brush stroke to your painting? It should make the entire composition better by it’s inclusion. 3D rarely makes something truly better in a movie. The immersion is rarely better than a well done soundtrack or compelling dialog.

That being said… Nintendo has proven they are the masters of making gimmicks exceptional. A caveat – the inclusion of the gimmick will not make a bad game good, but rather that the inclusion of a gimmick can make a good game better.

I am one of those people who desires the newest gadget. I have a netbook, iPad, MacBook, iPhone, and iPod all sitting on my desk at home. I own all three current generation consoles and most of the older generation consoles. I own a DS Lite, a DSi XL, and now, a 3DS.

Despite a rather weak launch lineup, I decided I wanted a 3DS. (As an aside, who ever heard of a new Nintendo console without a Mario game?!?)  Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is coming out for it in June. There will be a new Mario Kart. There will be a Kid Icarus game. There will be new Professor Laytons. And at the very least there was Nintendogs +cats, a game I was excited about because I wanted cats for the first one. So I put my pre-order in.

The first thing was a test of the 3D in Pilotwings Resort. I am terrible at these kinds of games. Star Fox, Nights, and I am sure if I tried it, the original Pilotwings. I can never get the controls down well enough, I always have trouble telling the distances, etc etc. It took me about 10 minutes to find the “sweet” spot for the slider. Mine is about 2/3rds of the way up, the 3D was good, but not so overpowering that I had trouble focusing. Then I ran a course.

It was great. I felt like I was moving through a space. I felt like I could gauge the time I had to adjust for the next ball or hoop. For the first time ever I got every hoop on the whole course. For the first time ever, I felt like I had all the information needed to play these kinds of games.

I played several of the other games and my only conclusion is, this is the way 3d game were meant to be played. Sure, it’s not going to help Metroidvanias or Super Mario Brothers, but Super Mario Galaxy? Oh yeah.  Now I can’t wait to see how OoT runs on this. Lego Star Wars showed me how the simple depth made gauging distances and double jumps so much easier. Enemies leapt from ledges and I felt like they were moving through the world towards me in a way they never quite have before. I can’t wait to see what new games do with the mechanic. We have been limited by our ability to give depth perception using art, but now we can do it with tech.

The only complaint I have with the console is the size of the screens. After falling deeply in love with my DS XL, playing on the tiny screens is just annoying to me. May I have a 3DS XL please? Thanks.

It does make a difference, that it is glasses free, but I am sure that over time the tech will get better, and lessen the eye strain (I can still only play for 30-45 minutes, after which I need to take a break). Regardless, my mind can’t help but boggling in wonderment. What I am seeing, what I am playing is MAGIC. It is pure MAGIC and there is nothing anyone can say that will convince me otherwise. We have taken code and rendering blended it with display technology, and created wizardry. How far away from the holodeck are we really? When we can create 3D images without the need of glasses and hold them in the palm of our hand! To feel like I should be able to reach in and grab the mini-fig. To feel like I should be able to pet that Pikmin standing on that card and feel his smooth skin.

I spend my days doing cool stuff, and here, I just sit, marveling at the wonder of the virtual taking spacial shape.

Warcraftpets.com

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They don’t add stats. They don’t give bonuses or buffs. They don’t *do* anything but sit around, play some animations and sounds, and look cute. So why am I so obsessed with collecting them? Why does my mom collect salt and pepper shakers? Why does my grandmother collect Snow Babies? I have no idea, but at least mine is digital.

Joyia has 153 mini-pets. Mini-pets are small critters in World of Warcraft that can be summoned and then follow the player about. They are called mini-pets, non combat pets, vanity pets, and critters. My collection began soon after my first character, Birgitta, a night elf hunter reached Darnassus. After talking to an npc I noticed he sold three little owls. I bought one, nearly beggaring my first character. I pulled out the little owl and immediately fell in love. This was in the days of Vanilla WoW, before pets were items that once used became learned spells. Each mini-pet took up a bag slot.

I collected a few, but not to many, as bag space was at a premium. I didn’t buy the snakes, cockroaches, or rabbits, because I already had all the owls and cats. Soon after beginning to realize I needed to have my collection spread out across multiple characters, I was browsing the general forums and discovered a post by a player named Breanni, who had started a pet collecting website called WarcraftPets. I went to the site and loved it. I became a member and began tracking my collection, and voting on every single pet. I was thrilled to see my idea of collecting pets across various alts was not only a good idea, but Breanni’s method as well.

Then came the patch for pet collectors. No longer would pets be items taking up valuable bag space, but instead they would be learned spells. Glee does not even begin to describe how I felt. I quickly learned as many pets as I could on Joyia and started my grand pokemon quest, to catch every single mini-pet in WoW. Breanni’s site being my mecca of information and support.

Near the end of Wrath I went on a binge of boredom and decided to work towards filling out my pet roster. I collected the rare drops. I farmed up all the whelplings. As I collected each pet I added them to my collection on Warcraft Pets. Just after Cataclysm hit, I was lucky enough to be able to purchase 3 of the tcg cards that had pets and also quickly gathered the new additions. One day I logged on and suddenly got a whisper from someone I had never met.

“Hi! Did you transfer to this server?” I hesitated before responding but finally answered that yes, I had transferred to this server, but that was more than a year ago. As it turns out, this was the Alliance alt of a Horde player on the server, and he wanted to know when I had transferred over as I had “suddenly” risen in the ranks and passed him as the person with the most mini-pets on the server.

I did what now? It took me a while to figure out there was a way to sort by server, and who had the most mini-pets. Now, this isn’t Blizzard information, or even crawling the armory to find the statistics, but rather, anyone who enters their info on the site, and the moderators checking against the armory if someone is suspiciously high. But of all the people who entered their collection into the site, I was the highest for Echo Isles. Awesome. Meaning it is entirely possible I do in fact have the largest mini-pet collection on EI.

I only have 11 pets left to get that are reasonable for me to get. (I am not paying 2.5k to get an original WoW collectors edition, though it would net me 3 pets.) I keep fishing in the sewers, doing fishing dailies, and killing foxes with the hope of rounding out my collection before they add new ones to capture. That and I just like the little things. They are so cute!

My favorite pets, in no particular order:

The Phoenix Hatchling

The Firefly (still flying)

The Singing Sunflower

The Spectral Kitten (to match her sister!)

Withers

The Gryphon Hatchling

All the whelplings

The Baby Boomkin

The Hippogryph Hatchling

Speedy

Ah, who am I kidding… I love em all!

A Cataclysmic Problem

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It has become a sad little game. Logging onto WoW and peeking through my fingers at the Guild roster or my friends list. Who isn’t going to log in? How many weeks has it been since I talked to that person? I wonder if they are playing Rift. I wonder if they are okay. As far as I know, only one absence is logically explained and has assured the guild he will be back when things get straightened out. But then, he lives in Japan, so I am pretty much willing to give him a pass.

People like to point fingers at Rift. But it’s not Rift. Rift was lucky to come out at the right time, in the right place to fill a void for WoW players.  But it could have been anything, any fun fantasy MMO with pretty graphics that does any of the numerous things players have been begging for in WoW, and they would have gotten a whole slew of dissatisfied customers. People aren’t leaving WoW for Rift because Rift is a better game. People are leaving WoW for *anything* because they are simply tired of WoW and what Blizzard is doing with it.

The problems:

1. Cataclysm is too hard.

For those saying “l2play noob”, shut it, and leave. Cataclysm is too hard. It’s that simple. Fewer people have killed Nef than had killed Kel’thuzad or Prince at this point in the expansion. Call people Wrath babies all day, but that doesn’t change the fact that people like raiding, like getting epics, and like DOWNING bosses. What they don’t like is endlessly wiping for hours because ONE person screws up (and it is never the same person). In a 10 man raid, a team should be able to lose 2 people and still manage to pull off the kill. In a 25 man raid, a team should be able to lose 5 people and still pull off the kill. Take a moment to consider the fights and how ONE person can screw even a 25 man raid.

BWD: Magmaw – one person with a parasite runs into the group, probable wipe. One person jumps on the head and doesn’t know how to work the chain, probable wipe. Omni – A person gets fixated and doesn’t move quickly enough, tanks and or heals get a slime blown up on them, definite wipe. A person doesn’t control their pet, Magmatron’s shield blows, definite wipe. Maloriak – Miss an interrupt? Wipe it up, the tank just died. Chimaeron – Tank’s taunt missed, through RNG I feel the urge to add, wipe it up. Or god forbid, the raid makes it to the final push and there aren’t enough mages, warlocks, and shaman, to spawn things to distract him. Artemedes – One person targeted and doesn’t move fast enough, entire raid wipe.

ToW: Conclave – ONE person knocked off Rohash platform, raid wide debuff, wipe. One tank misaligned his jump, falls to his death, raid wipe. One missed taunt to pull Anshel off his healing thing, raid wipe because he isn’t going to die fast enough. Al’Akir – the master of RNG wipes with tornadoes spawning on healers or tanks and spawning right when wind blasts start up.

BoT: Trash – wipes if one of the cc-ers goes down. Halfus – miss an interrupt, taunt, or big heal on the tank that is holding 2 dragons? Hope the trash doesn’t respawn before running back. V&T – One ranged not moving fast enough, one tank getting sucked into the basement, one purge happy healer, one person not running the right way for fire breath… wipeity wipe wipe. Elemental Monstrosity… what in this fight doesn’t cause a wipe if it happens to a tank or healer? Cho’gall – Slimes resist the earthbind totem? Kiss the healers goodbye.

RNG is not fun, especially when it controls the success or failure of a boss fight. My issue with all of these abilities is not that they exist, because many of them show nice challenging boss fights. My problem is that the price of even minor failure is DEATH. Didn’t move fast enough? Dead. Didn’t run the right way? Dead.

So what is Blizzard’s response to this? It will get easier as the expansion ages. This is possibly even more short sighted than the “resilience will fix it” comment. Yes, out-gearing the content will make it easier, but that doesn’t help guilds who are losing raiders left and right NOW.

2. 5 levels simply wasn’t enough.

There aren’t enough new zones for 80-85. There wasn’t enough time to feel like we were going from easy to hard. Replacing ICC epics was going to be hard enough, but replacing them with greens at 81 is just painful. At least with Wrath we held on to them for 6-7 more levels. (Some even making it all the way to Naxx.) When I hit 80, I hadn’t even touched Stormpeaks or Icecrown. Only a few quests had been completed in Zul’drak, and about half of Shalozar. Sure, I was one of those weirdos who did both Borean and Howling Fjord, but still, I had a ton of content. And I didn’t do dungeons as I was leveling, so those were totally new at 80, plus heroics!

It also took me 3 weeks to go from 70 to 80. It took me 3 days to do that for 80-85. Even when leveling my alts, it takes a short amount of time. And I always ding in Twilight Highlands regardless of how many instances I do while leveling. At that point, I only have that zone left to do.

3. Old content being revamped is great, but you have to please the bleeding edge too.

There simply needs to be more to do. I am thrilled at the updating of the old world. But where is the stuff in the old world for level 80-85? Where are the quests in Stranglethorn for the bored level 85 to escort newbies down to Booty Bay? Where are the level 85 Argent Dawn quests in Eastern Plaguelands? Where are the quests at the Ironforge Airport?

4. Dye, Appearance, and Housing.

How many years have players been asking for Armor Dyes, Appearance tabs, Soulbound armor bags, and player/guild housing? As long as I have been playing the game.

Did anyone else notice that it is one of the BULLET points on Rift that a player can dye their armor? Champions touts their character customization and creator for good reason. Players like to stand out from the crowd. They like to ROLEPLAY of all things. It’s why I always hate when affliction gets nerfed. I don’t WANT to be destruction. I want to be affliction and I want to be good for my team as affliction. I also don’t want to look like a unicorn vomited on me. Many players site LotR Online as a great example of player customization because of the appearance tab. Tons of WoW players, including myself, love to collect old armor and holiday clothing. Now we have overloaded banks and every new acquisition is an exercise in torment of what to delete.

Blizzard argues that they want players to recognize instantly when someone is wearing a set of armor. They want players to see the pretty art their artists created. This is a fallacy. I play three classes at level cap right now. I played 5 classes at level cap in Wrath. I could maybe tell you distinguishing characteristics of TWO of the armor sets I wore. I could maybe spot 3 or 4, if I was looking at them in game and correctly identify them as tier 10 armor. I know for a fact I can only do it for two sets of tier 11. I am not looking at players to tell how awesome they are, I am right clicking and inspecting to tell how awesome they are.

The solutions: Never present problems without a possible solution.

1. Nerf bat or buff bat. I vote buff.

So how do they fix the difficulty? Well really there are only two easy options. Nerf the bosses or buff the players. Nerfing the bosses is bad business. Then all the “hard cores” start whining about dumbing down WoW. They can’t just toss a buff on the whole raid like ICC, because then imagined elitism springs up.

But buffing players… Now that’s fun. Big numbers is big fun. An amplified, worgen tomed, fully buffed, spell power potted Curse of Doom on Netherspite for 52,000 damage? Yes please. (My point is made by the fact I remember that SO CLEARLY.) But they can’t just go in and buff everyone 15% across the board. They have to be sneaky about it. Buff this ability on this class, buff that ability on that class, buff armor gains on tanks, buff slow heals on healers, etc etc. Stealth buffs? Even better.

2. Patch soon, patch often.

If all the content is going to be reworked old content, it’s got to be fast. Patch every other month if possible. Especially if they are going to continue updating old content. In addition, every patch needs to carry with it minor buffs, minor additions (like to archeology, stats, and achievements), and possibly a pet or mount. Any updates to Holidays and Holiday bosses are stellar too.

Also, note for the next expansion, having the amount of exp to get to 81 be less than the amount of exp to get from 79-80, is not a good thing. The time invested needs to be equivalent to the previous levels. Consistency is key.

3. &4. Fidelity vs Agency. Omg, Kent was right. And suck it up princess. As designed just doesn’t fly anymore.

First off, players are willing to accept things that are expanded over time. Look at archeology. Players are willing to accept shorter dungeons if it means more of them. Players are willing to accept getting poor loot drops if there are more ways to get the odd piece they are missing. Players are willing to accept something not being perfect if it means they get something neat. Fidelity and agency are a trade off, but far too often Blizzard seems to make the wrong choice on which one to go for.

One example of this is the linearity of a quest zone and the inclusion of cutscenes. This is exceptionally noticeable when playing with another player. Ever tried to do Uldum with 2 people? It *sucks*. When one player completes a quest and it auto ports them somewhere while playing a cutscene, the other player is left in an old phase, alone, and has to fend for themselves. I like linear stories as much as the next RPGer, but in WoW, there needs to be a feeling of open world. I can remember doing quests and deciding to not do a “thread” of quests. Just skip it, that one is too annoying, or just isn’t fun, so I will just skip over it to this other quest. Blizzard killed that in Cata though. Each quest is a part of a big long chain. If the player tried to skip over this step, they can’t progress the zone.

This goes for dye on armor and appearance tabs too. Saying this was “as designed” just doesn’t work anymore. Sure when WoW was the *only* good MMO out there, we accepted this. But other MMOs are ripping off WoW and allowing for more freedom. The Blizzard artists need to let go and accept that players want to play THEIR way, not the way an artist wants them to. Yes, someone is going to take Paladin tier 2 and turn it into Hello Kitty pink, red, and white. But just as often someone is going to leave it red, gold, and black and look just as awesome. Also dye can prop up a flailing profession or become a major gold sink.

Even quests that are fairly simple go into this dungeon and kill this dude, or go and gather these rare items for me, in out of the way, hard to reach places, will fill a need in the old world for level capped players. Anyone else remember farming to get a flying mount to get access to the Highland Pools and the Shat’ari Skyguard dailies? I do.

One final point is about Guild leveling and reputation. As I said before, Guild Rewards are a powerful thing. Being in a level 20+ guild on my main and having all my alts in a level 2 guild, I can honestly say the difference is noticeable and painful. It will be slightly eased by the inclusion of a tabard in 4.1 that will help players earn rep with a new guild, but this doesn’t help new guilds. Players aren’t willing to move on to a guild that is a better fit at the risk of losing their perks. I have heard, from multiple people, about recruiting coming to a standstill because players simply aren’t willing to start over on rep or join a guild that is lower level than the one they are in. Guilds advertising in trade that are under 15 or so are practically laughed out of the channel. I have always maintained the best thing about WoW is playing with friends. When the player feels punished for playing the way they want to play or for changing their mind, something is wrong.

It may not be dying per se, but WoW is definitely feeling some pain. I worry about what might happen if this trend continues. People can argue all they want, but the dwindling raiders in my guild and the dwindling people on my friends list speaks for itself. The really worrying thing is that for each player that leaves WoW because of any one of these problems (or RNG), another player is likely to follow, especially if they find a new multiplayer game to play. And so the negative feedback loop starts until there is no one left but the gold farmers to play with.

Dragon Quest IX – or If I see one more slime, I am gonna LOSE IT

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JRPGs, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways… Suikoden, Legend of Dragoon, Xenosaga, Persona 4… I could go on, but what’s the point?

I love JRPGs. I love the crazy outfits, the crazy item names, the progression curves, the exploration, the bad translations, the overly complex attack animations, the wildly stereotyped characters… I even love “not as much JRPGs” like Pokemon and other standard RPG grind type games.

Dragon Quest IX does some wicked awesome things and some absolutely terrible things.

Awesome:

Trades System

I am an altoholic. I love playing different classes, different characters, with different abilities. One of the sad things with JRPGs is that there is generally a wide range of characters to pick from. (108 in Suikoden!!!) And the player is often limited to certain characters at certain points for story reason. This has always bothered me. I build a team and level them, gear them, and balance them around each other. So when the game suddenly shoves a 4th string unleveled, ungeared, noob into my group, I get annoyed.

DQ9 fixed this in a rather spectacular way. Your main character, and the 3 party characters you can recruit, can change your trade simply by going to a specific city and asking it to be changed. It retains the old trade’s skills, stats, and level, so you can switch back without losing any progress. How much do I love this? I cannot even begin to express it. Imagine, in WoW, going to a guy and paying 10k to switch classes. You have to start at level 1, but you retain all your gear, mounts, pets, achievements, reps, tabards, attunements, etc. You can re-do quests and zones. To be fair, there would need to be major changes, like a soul bound item bag for armor you can no longer equip, your mounts would grey out until you reached the level you could use them again, high level professions would grey out, etc etc. But what if you could have a character that was a single unit, but had every class leveled to 85 in it’s “class tree.” One character, every class. *mind.blown.*

Gathering

When wandering around the world chasing down enemies I noticed these little sparkle spots. I ran up and activated one only to be rewarded with a crafting material. I didn’t think much about it, until I ran across another one, that was a different trade material. A very EXPENSIVE trade material. And there were SIX of them just laying on the ground. A quick trip to Gamefaqs confirmed my suspision. These things were everywhere and they respawn over time, making it easy to gather materials to craft items.

In WoW one of my favorite things to do after a stressful day of work is come home, pop open a beer, turn on something mindless on tv and gather herbs. Sometimes ore, but usually herbs as I have more herbing characters. And here I can do it on a ds? Solid gold win. Now if only I could herb for WoW on my ds…

Crafting

It’s still recipe based, but DQIX crafting is a shining example of what crafting could be. New materials are added to old items to improve them. If a sleeping potion is combined with a weapon, the weapon now has a chance to put enemies to sleep. The recipes are found in bookshelves around the world. They are often items that are a few “steps” ahead of what the character can purchase at that point in the game.

The absolute best part is that crafting leads to gold. To make an ear cozy the materials cost 970g. The ear cozy sells for 1200g. Given sufficient time, the player has access to as much gold as they are willing to stand making ear cozys for. This, a million times this, is what games have always needed. It doesn’t need to be a huge amount of money. It doesn’t need to be easy. It does need to be obfuscated in the system. But buying materials, making an item, and having that item vendor for less than the vendor prices of the materials is just so backwards it’s absurd.

Online Store

It took me a while to “get” what was going on with this. If the player connects their DS to Wi-Fi in the game, it connects them to a store. A store that has rare items from the game for purchase that changes every day. Genius idea. It brings people back every day (esp if there are holiday only items), keeps them connected, and gives them something awesome to spend their hard earned gold on.

Multiplayer

Wi-Fi multiplayer. Crawling a dungeon with 3 of your friends and their main characters, and getting loot, experience, and enjoyment out of it. It was what convinced me to get the game in the first place. And what convinced me to get my husband to start playing it again.

Terrible:

Learning Curve

Head bashingly hard with no clue as to where you are supposed to go next? Yep. An annoying sidekick that keeps track of everything EXCEPT what step of the main quest you are on? Yeah, that too.  Any explanation as to any of the trades, skills, and weapons? Not in this game. Much of what I learned, I learned by accident.

Leveling Curve

In most JRPGs it is possible to game the system early to prevent “grinding”. When the game first starts up, I will run around and explore the first area as much as possible. Learn all the moves, test everything, and try anything. First this gives a good feel for the game and the characters you have. Second, this generally leads to a few excess levels. Early levels go faster, so by stacking a few extra levels up early, the next few sections are a bit easier, and I generally stay a level or two ahead of where I am supposed to be for the whole game.

DQIX appears to have anticipated this and nipped it in the bud. Not only is it possible to “dodge” random fights, but also the leveling curve spikes so early that when I tried to just power through the main story, I quickly hit a wall around level 26, where I was supposed to be around 34 to progress.

Which brings me to my first really big gripe with the game. Cheap Bosses. When I attempted to battle the boss that I should have been level 33+ to fight at level 25, every 4th turn he would attack one of my party members for a critical strike. I was doing pretty well, rezzing people, until he got my priest. Then it was within 12 turns of death. I failed. So I noted the amount of damage he did for each critical hit. About 150+ on my plate/mail wearers and 225+ on my clothies. I realized I was going to need to do some serious leveling.  So I went out and leveled to 33, like the handy guide on Gamefaqs suggested and went in to fight the boss. I assumed I would fail because none of my characters had enough health to survive his criticals, despite being the level suggested.  Only, as it turns out, he didn’t attack me with a single critical strike the entire fight.

Later I managed to be in the perfect position to test my new theory, which was that the game had a “minimum level” needed to fight the boss, and if the player had not reached that level, the boss would have a significantly higher critical chance. As far as I could tell, this was true.

Add to this, that when running with several high level characters and one or two low level characters, the high level characters get the brunt of the share, instead of everyone getting a percentage. I understand their logic, but if I am almost at the end and just wanted to switch because I just unlocked a new trade, I wouldn’t be punished for it.

My final big gripe with the leveling system is the fact that it is far more rewarding on the exp gain to just farm metal slimes, instead of going to the difficult content and killing standard mobs there. At the very least, make it semi worth it to fight something challenging as opposed to goofing off 20 levels below where I should be playing.

Story

Spoilers abound.

Don’t even get me started on the idiocy of a chain of command that doesn’t allow a subordinate to refuse a superior. But they give the player choices… and NONE of them are actually choices. Why even put it in the game? Why even take the time to code it? Just force the player to do it.

Very early in the game the main character that the player is assuming the role of loses their wings and halo. They are “mortal” and no longer Celestian. Only as it turns out, they are still Celestian, just stripped of all their powers. I assumed that the point was I was slowly earning my wings and halo back. I was working towards being a Celestian again. When the game offers me the chance to save the world if I become mortal, my response was, “well, sure, why not?” It’s not actually changing anything if I am mortal over being Celestian. Not to mention, it really isn’t a choice, it’s a “you have to do this, until you pick yes, and we aren’t letting you out of this screen” thing.

A a few select points the developers apparently decided they needed something a bit more powerful than a cutscene and so put in these long anime sequences. I get that it is a JRPG, but these just stick out like a sore thumb. They forced me to equip my character with a full set of gear (thus making them “match” the visual of the anime) and even then, the anime had a male not a female. What was the point? It didn’t feel heroic, it didn’t advance the story, it didn’t give a pay off.

On top of this were some very clear decisions made to force the game fit with the story that are just wildly frustrating. I spent half the game collecting those Fyggs. NO I am not going to hand them to you so you can claim all the credit for my hard work. No I don’t want to unchain the crazy guy mumbling about trying to kill the Celestians.

Forced Failure

I shouldn’t have to explain why this is terrible. But designers keep doing it. DQIX likes to put the player in a combat battle, then when they make their choice the bad guy makes some snide remark, the game says something like “Ember freezes in fright!” and the bad guy one shots the player. Yes that was fun, wasting all that time to just have an outcome I couldn’t change. Could we have that in a cutscene next time? At least in Suikoden it WAS possible to change the outcome, if difficult.

The Battlefield

DQIX allows the characters to roam around the battlefield, lining themselves up for shots, moving next to the person they are going to heal, etc. It looks neat, the first few times. After level 40, it’s just an annoying waste of time. Not to mention that the game has a formation system, that is completely nullified by this other roaming system.

Tank/DPS/Heal Roles

Each trade has a skill set. These skill sets mesh fairly well with the tank/dps/heals idea from other RPGs. The problem is, DQIX doesn’t give the trades the skills needed to do their job well. All of the skills that would do things like, allow the tank to hold aggro, are underpowered and fail so often, it’s pointless to even use them. As are the buffs, debuffs, and status clears. It was easier to simply heal through the poison than waste the time to clear off the poison. The one fight I used buffs, the boss cleared them off instantly.

I don’t mind breaking from the standard roles, but this means that all of the trades need to have comparable health and armor. I despise the fact that more often than not my mage is tanking and the only character who needs heals.

I like Dragon Quest IX and I am still playing it. However it really just makes me long for RPGs that actually make sense. Oh and ones where I don’t just farm poor little metal slimes.