Today I want to talk about the ever-popular FPS genre of game. It is my opinion that more recent games from this genre miss some of the more important things that made older games enjoyable, so I’m going to rant for a while and see what comes out.
It’s probably important to note that the base position here is talking about single player, with implications for multiplayer to be discussed somewhat separately.

REGENERATING HEALTH

Now, this is probably the biggest and most annoying of modern FPS trends. Almost every modern FPS has a system where you have a smallish health bar (which is often so small that it’s invisible, or relies on cute things like the screen turning red or desaturated or something) that refills after spending some time in cover or not being shot. Now, the advantage of this system comes from the fact that you can send endless waves of enemies at the player, and only have to worry about them running out of ammo.
One consequence of this is that generally speaking, when the player makes a mistake, they go back to the last checkpoint, and try again, as they don’t have much health to take more than a handful of shots before dying. Generally speaking this is not a good thing when you’re trying to convince your players to keep playing. While I can’t speak for everyone, but I tend to end my gaming sessions after a death or at the end of a level (and with a trend towards Half Life style ‘transparent’ level boundaries, that doesn’t even work so well).
Similarly, giving the player another resource to manage allows you to give them more options, and gives rewards good (skillful) play by letting them keep that resource longer. Additionally, it allows more interesting encounters, as players will likely use different strategies depending on how much health they have available.

That being said, the placement of health-packs and other items (armor bonuses, for example), needs to be intelligent as well. If you fully restore the player’s health and ammo after every encounter, then the player still only has to think about every single encounter as exclusive units of gameplay (which might fit the design). However, if you only give some (or no) health back after an encounter, then the player will start to not only think about the current encounter, but about the next encounter, or the one after that.
As an alternate idea, what about giving infinite ammo (perhaps infinite clips, so reloading is still a thing), and making health the primary resource. There are some problems with this ( ‘strong’ weapons are dangerous with this sort of system, as once the player gets the Big Gun, they are probably not going to use anything else). Left 4 Dead uses a system not dissimilar to this, where the players have infinite ammo for their pistol/s, and limited ammo for the stronger (generally speaking) secondary weapons. Similarly, health is generally the main resource worried about in Left 4 Dead.

In Multiplayer, regenerating health is actually an interesting mechanic. Ignoring the games that have lethality so high that you never really exploit it, having the player’s health regenerate after a few seconds of not being hit is a big game changer. By removing health pickups, you’ll find that players will tend not to camp them (strange, I know, you’d think that players would continue to camp items that don’t exist), as they don’t need to rely on them to be at ‘full’ strength, nor can you rely on injured players making a beeline for them.
Knowing my opinions on camping (it’s boring both to do and to have done to you), this is a somewhat positive mechanical change. That being said, it’s a hard thing to balance. How long does it take for health to start coming back? How fast does it regenerate? These are the important questions to ask here. While I am loathe to be too nice to the Halo series (they do a lot of things I dislike, haha), I must admit that they do a good job of the regenerating health in multiplayer. Specifically talking about Reach, they’ve managed to mix regenerating shields (which are weaker than their counterparts in Halo 2/3)
with a static health system (although it regenerates to one of 3 wounded levels as well), and not have lethality so high that you instantly die to things before you get a chance to react (hello CoD games!).

TWO GUNS

I really hate that pretty much every game these days only lets you hold two guns at once. Some games even limit it to one ‘primary weapon’ and one ‘secondary weapon’. Generally speaking, I want to be able to carry EVERY GUN. Also a ton of rockets and 200 points of armor and all that crap. It’s just more fun that way. And in case you were not aware, games are all about having fun.

In Multiplayer this isn’t quite so horrible. Depending on your playstyle you probably only want to use two guns anyway. However, I really dislike the trend of games where you spawn with certain guns (henceforth a ‘kit’) and to unlock more choices you have to play a bunch of games with inferior or less fun gear. Now you can take the weapons of your fallen enemies, but it’s still kinda an annoying system. Admittedly, this fits more in the ‘inconvenience’ zone, but it’s still a pain in the ass to have to play eight million rounds before I can have certain weapons.
Some games offset this by making the unlocks completely random, and balancing most weapons so that in many cases the default kit is just as good, some games offset this by exclusively offering cosmetic upgrades, some games have unlock systems that are suffering incarnate. (BF:BC2 was a pain, I basically just stole everyone else’s kit from their corpses because without leveling my medic kit a few times, I couldn’t do shit. (Also because kit-stealing is a pretty cool mechanic, and also because I find it kinda hilarious)).

SECRETS

I both love and hate secret areas. On one hand, they’re cool and stuff, and I like exploring. On the other hand, sometimes they’re just “activate/shoot random wall segment for no reason” and that feels kinda cheap. In a game with ‘persistent’ health (and armor), these are good places to stash extra health (including items like megahealths or gold armor), or big stashes of ammo or grant access to big guns a bit early.
While modern FPSs still have these, they almost invariably have to do with achievements. I am fairly pro-achievements, but as far as achievements go, “looking up the location of these 80 secret items” is a boring achievement, and also most ‘secret areas’ don’t really hold anything great (apart from 1/80 of your probably-pointless achievement (I’ll still get it though, because 100% completion is a thing that I tend to do occasionally (nested brackets are nested))).
Also “Just around that corner that you don’t need to walk down but can if you want” is a shitty place to hide a secret. At least make more than a casual walk around a corner a requirement for finding these things.

It’s probably important to say that modern FPSs can be fun. That being said, I prefer the old FPS tropes over the modern FPS tropes of regenerating health and two guns and STUPIDLY HIGH LETHALITY. While ragging on about MANLY HONORABLE MAN BATTLES WITH GUNS ON THE FIELD OF VALOR is far from my thing, I’d prefer dueling someone with rocket launchers where we can both soak up a few (indirect, at least) hits over LOL SNIPER RIFLES PEWPEW ONESHOT IN THE FOOT. I mean, I sunk a good ~20 hours into CoD: Black Ops last year (which, really, isn’t that much), and I still play TF2 on occasion, and I still play the occasional new FPS for single player (either I’m so good the games are largely trivial now, or more likely, they’ve been slowly getting easier for the most part).

BONUS COMPLAINT

Super scripted scenes are really stupid. Remember how that one guy did the whole first level of CoD: Black Ops only firing his gun twice? Yeah, that’s dumb. Really really dumb.

Now, admittedly, I could of been a more tanky spec so my relic holding lasted longer. But when the whole team is just derping around in the middle of the map and not even trying, my rage is mostly focused at them being stupid.

Let me sum up my simple rules for PvP:

1. DO THE OBJECTIVE
2. THERE IS NO TWO, DO THE OBJECTIVE
3. IN CASES YOU THINK 2 DOESN’T APPLY TO YOU, SEE 1

Now obviously there are times at which “distracting the other team” is an objective. However, considering these rules are focused more towards the lowest common denominator of people, I’m inclined to keep them elegantly simple and focused on not letting them skirt around it with their exceptions.

catch(Exception e){
    System.out.println("No, do the fucking objective, no exceptions.");
}

I like to keep it simple, eh? Anyway, to be more specific, let’s talk about Arathi Basin. It’s got some good examples of times to break the rules (the primary one being “fight on the flags” there).

If you’re up 4:1 or so, suddenly if you can solo hold-up a couple of players for 30-60 seconds on a road somewhere? You do that. I won’t rage. I might be like “okay guys, maybe it’s worth not leaving the squishy mage all alone on a point” when everyone decides to run away for some reason, but a roaming player or two being a pain in the other team’s behind? Nah, no problem there.

You should be happy that I tend not to PVP as a healer. Nobody would be deserving of my heals because fuck healing idiots not doing objectives.

This comes courtesy of everyone in the WoW bloggisphere, but mostly from Gnomeaggedon, of Armageddon’s Coming.

(NOTE: You can click through for full versions, I’d probably recommend it)

Picture the first: STAR WARS - low level shot of my Jedi Knight

Picture the 2nd: Photography folder - it's a bird! HOW EXCITING

Picture the third: RIFT - It's okay guys, I've got this

Picture the 4th: ANIMU GIRLS

Picture the fifth: From FRAPS folder, when I was playing Minecraft with people forever ago (late 2010)

Image the 6th: BIOSHOCK - wait, no, it's Warcraft. Easy mistake.

So there you have it. Such good easy filler, I love it so. :3 Of course, now I am going to release it on not-Saturday, so I have to do something else. In other news, the next Arcane Envoy Podcast episode should be up in a few hours. HOW EXCITING.

The plan is as follows:

• Monday: Guild Wars Adventures – I talk about my current ‘focus’ game, which is Guild Wars, this series should run for a while, ’till I either get bored and drop the game, or I reach my goal – which I will talk about more when I write the first post which will come up in a couple of days.
• Thursday: Arcane Envoy Podcast – 30-60 minutes of me rambling about games, with the possible (but admittedly unlikely) inclusion of guests, because sometimes I have friends and stuff, I dunno.
• Saturday: Additional Non-series Post – These will usually focus on random stuff, including ‘games of the week’, game design, ranting, guest posts, memes, or whatever else I want. While Saturday is the in theory day for these to go up, it’s possible they will go up any day they want.

So, there you see it. Not too complicated. If REAL LIFE comes in and tries to be a pain, these might get pared back slightly, but this schedule should be manageable. I think. (Those are some famous last words, I guess)

This week I play some Rift, and viciously hack and slash 15-20 minutes of junk outta the episode! SEE HOW MUCH I CARE! (I also talk about other things, but mostly PvP, go figure)

Get it here! Or find it on iTunes here (give it a little bit to show the newest episode on their site), or subscribe using the feed here!

To start this off, let us talk about Arathi Basin. A 5-point map, this gamemode has been frustrating people since 1.7

This BG is the yardstick to which I measure all other Domination style battlegrounds. A fairly simple map, a good number of flags relative to the number of players, and generous flag-turning mechanics, lead to this BG being one where a good offense almost always pays off.

While I have (jokingly) refereed to Arathi as “the worst BG of all time” there’s a reason it’s so popular, and that is that you always feel in the race. The scaling of resources gained to bases owned means that a lucky 5-cap can turn the game around (although these are incredibly fragile, which is probably a good thing). Battle for Gilneas on the other hand, feels somewhat less… I’m not quite sure what it is. The most obvious changes are the number of Flags (3 opposed to 5) and Players (10 opposed to 15), and the map does a better job of restricting infomation about incoming players with lots of line of sight blocking doodas and terrain (which you can’t really see from the map here), opposed to the relatively wide open terrain of Arathi.

My personal problem with 3 point domination is as follows. Once you hold 2 points, you can usually turtle your way to a win fairly easily. If the other team pushes very hard, you send players from your other flag to smash their flag. Generally speaking the tide of battle is much harder to turn in a 3 flag scenario. This is also my main problem with Civil War in SWTOR. The other thing that is the case in TOR is that flag turnaround is very short once taken, and the damage dealt to the enemy ship appears to scale linearly. This means once you get 100 points behind, you’ve probably lost the match with 10-20 minutes to go.

In addition to my general distaste for TOR’s PvP mechanics (I’m not sure, it never feels ‘fun’ to attack in TOR, it’s hard to say), this makes for a painful experience. Generally speaking, Civil War games are the ones that make me want to Queue dodge the most, as they’re long (at least they feel long) and always painful.

Before we finish up fully, I’ll also make a brief word on Rift’s domination Warfront, The Codex. I don’t play it very often, so I don’t have that much to say on it, but it feels a bit better than either of the 3 point offerings (I believe it has 4), in addition to Rift having some nice PvP in general (unfortunately the best WFs don’t have equivalents in other games, but I might do a post on just them at some stage soon)

I was playing a game of Eye of the Storm, widely lauded as my least favorite BG OF ALL TIME. We were losing. We were losing so badly, it was as if a hundred angels had descended from the heavens right ontop of all of the towers, but you know what? I was having fun.

LOOK MA, A RANDOM PICTURE

FUN

I know, how strange, right? We were losing, the team was horrible, but who cares? I was holding off a million assholes, all trying to tear me a new one, I was fighting DKs left and right, fire-mages who cast frostbolt endlessly (I have no clue why, I wasn’t going anywhere (I would of won that fight except LOL CAUTERIZE, which was kinda confusing at the time)), and I was cackling like a madman.

Part of this has to do with how WoW’s PvP system never feels like a horrible grind. While Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds probably do a little bit, that is because people actually take them seriously, and then suddenly I stop having fun. >>;;

Speaking of fun, I ventured into the Raid Finder this week… that was an interesting experience. The fights are pretty easy, and it’s really… fun! It’s raiding for people with less than 9 friends! (I like it for the same reasons I like the LFG tool as a DPS. It makes grouping easy (no finding groups), and it makes the content easier, it’s a win win win situation)

Your face when you realize this image is irrelevant too.

Huttball is entertaining, but 90% of people have no idea what to do in it, which often makes it an exercise in frustration. That being said, if you get a decent team you can have a lot of fun (before winning the game really fast). Civil War is 3-point AB, and TOR’s general bias towards defenders in PvP means it’s a race to cap 2 points before the other team does, most of the time – it also feels like it goes FOREVER. Voidstar is okay, it has the Attack/Defend stylings of Strand, but again, the bias is towards long defensive games there.

Actually, let’s get into some more details. Firstly let’s go over Strand.

EPIC ART SKILLZ

Obviously, the circles are the boat dock spawns, and the attackers then use demolishers (powerful, big, obvious things) and seaforium bombs (items that can be grabbed and dropped next to doors, kinda hard to disarm), to blow through the HP of the various gates, eventually reaching the relic (or running out of time).

This means that the attackers can chip away at each gate, or amass a great force and blow through, or whatever they like. More options are usually better for the attackers, assuming they can co-ordinate a little bit.

MY ARTS, THEY ARE THE BEST ARTS

Voidstar, on the other hand, tends to be a bit more punishing for the attackers. This partially has to do with the mechanics of breaking doors (more like capping a flag than breaking a gate), and TOR’s pretty strong defending bias.

The best strategy here is to co-ordinate with a couple of Sage/Inquisitors (or whoever else has sprint) and quickly cap the bridge (2nd point) and 2nd door before the defenders can regroup and bring the pain.

Voidstar also feels really long. I’m still not sure why that is. Although it’s not uncommon to see both teams failing to reach the goal, and the winner being decided on how many doors were broken.

Not sure what brought on that, but whatever. It’s also interesting to note that a lot of people really hate Strand. I’m not sure why, I really like it as an objectives focused PvPer.

Still, getting back to my point, I like PvPing for fun. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t take my games seriously. I’ll hound that objective like nobody’s business, because, to be honest, I really like winning.

However, I like losing, too. I love the whole ritual of raging at my enemies, or my teammates, or whatever. Venting is important. But once I’m off that field? It’s gone. I’m not going to abuse you outside of the BG for something. I’m probably not going to abuse you anyway, most of my anger comes from passion, and it’s not a bad thing. When I get passionate I start 3-capping flags and killing DKs.

Which reminds me, one of these days I should sit down with a microphone and PvP for an hour or two, and see what comes out the other side. Haha. Although if I know people will hear it I’ll hold back or something. This is why I am usually much quieter when playing with people over Skype/Vent/Whatever, they don’t need to hear an endless stream of “WHY YOU NO FIGHT ON FLAGS ASLKDJHASLKDJALSJKDASDlkAJSDLas” and I can’t deadpan “oh no what are you doing why are you chasing that champion to their tower oh god now you’re dead and there’s two of them and now I’m dead yay” for more than 5 minutes.

 Anyway, I’ve been rambling for a while, go figure. Turns out writing about PvP is pretty enjoyable. Although I must stress that I am not some strategical genius, and you should take any PvP advice dispensed here with a heaping fistful of salt. That being said, I will gladly ramble like I know what I’m doing for extended periods.

I play this game a little bit. Also a ton of another game I didn't think to get screenshots from. :x

Anyway, aaaaanyway. Recently (read: literally 2 days ago), I totally went back to WoW. I’m not quite sure how to put ‘how’ into words.

Nothing to do with TOR, I’m still playing that a bit, and as I said in the AEPlays episode on it, it’s a good game, but suffers from a lot of there being nothing to do solo at the level cap. I still have alts to level there, but I’m unlikely to spend much time on my ‘main’, just because there’s nothing to do (apart from raid, and eeeeeh, I’m going to respectfully pass there (grouping in general, esp in a performance-driven environment? Not really my cup of tea, although I do like playing with friends)). (Also there is PvP, but WoW’s is better, and the gear doesn’t look half as horrible)

So, WoW. yeah. I was away for all of a month or so since I actually let my sub go, although in practice I’d not played much since pre-4.2 (although I did do some of those dailies for a while). I’ve been doing, amusingly, LFG-tool 5 mans. You know why? Because (as a DPS) they’re super relaxing, for the most part. DPSing is easy, and this takes care of the hardest part about grouping, which is actually finding people to play with.

Mostly inaccurate image of what I've been playing recently.

Still, I’ve also been playing other games, as that doesn’t account for the other week and a half of game-playing that has been taking place recently. I’ve also been playing more Sonic Generations, because I like that game a lot, and a frankly silly amount of Final Fantasy XIII (which becomes less silly when you realize XIII-2 comes out in 10 odd days and I need to be prepared), also Skyrim. I am the best at being a sneakthief, but I am not the best at being a combat guy. Even a magic combat guy. >>;;

I’ve also been slowly organizing everything in my life into lists, because why not (alternate reason: after 3 months of summer vacation, my mind has finally broken into a million pieces, and it really likes lists)

Alternate alternate reason. I FUCKING LOVE LISTS (also I am best at arts)

I’ve also been playing all sorts of other stuff, like “write all the things” and “read all the things” and “listen to all the things”. You know me, I’m not one to do things by half-measures.

Still, once I finish FFXIII (read: when I stop grinding for lulz and instead actually continue playing the game), I will probably move onto OTHER GAMES (oh noes), in total I’ve probably spent a few 100 hours playing games over the last month, which, frankly, doesn’t feel like enough. I’ve only done… 10 work week’s worth of gaming? Maybe 15? Over the last month. What kind of game addict am I? NEED MOAR GAMING. (Figures do not account for time spent ‘double dipping’ playing Pokemon while in queues or whatever)

Visual Novels are an interesting type of ‘game’ for the most part, the best way to describe them in layman’s terms is kinda like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Not every VN has choices, but a large majority of them do. Using Katawa Shoujo as an Ur Example (Warning, TVTropes link) is hilariously inappropriate, but will suffice for being a good example of an Eroge, that more importantly, is super easy for you to get your hands on, it being a free download.

The primary thing you do, is, of course, read. I like to read (while always relevant pony images aren’t my thing, here you go), so this suits me quite nicely. While I certainly don’t read as much as I did when I was younger, I still read a good two dozen books a year, at least (with a few rereads thrown in for good measure).

Occasionally a choice is presented to the player, and these can dramatically alter the path of the story. While they’re often less common than choices in your  choose-your-own-adventure books, they usually alter the course of the story in a more dramatic fashion, even if it’s not immediately apparent.

The ‘VN’ (actually, it’s a Sound Novel, although it plays like a VN, it tastes like a VN, it practically is a VN) I have been playing a lot of recently is Umineko no Naku Koro ni. It has 0 decisions to be made for the most part. I am at the beginning of the final chapter, but am dragging my feet there, as I don’t want it to end. I just want to keep the cat box closed, although that’s the same as believeing in the Endless Witch. Haha.

Ultimately, I think the key thing here is that they are an interesting way to experience a story, and probably the best version of books to exist in a digital form. I cannot recommend Umineko highly enough, and Katawa is a very cool thing, although it’s entirely possible that a VN is simply not your cup of tea. They’re certainly not the sort of thing the vast majority of gamers would enjoy, but that doesn’t make them any less enjoyable to me.

Unrelated, but I need to break this up a little bit, haha ^^;;

The simplest example of a binary reward is a feat from the 3rd  (or later) edition of Dungeons and Dragons. You either have them or not (so they have binary (2) states), and they are all bought at a constant rate of 1 magic feat point.

A simple example of continuous rewards is leveling up. Everything you do (kill) gives experience points, which as you accumulate, increase your strength. You can’t skip levels, the progression is a straight line, like a traintrack or something.

A more relevant example would be, for instance, gear. In most MMOs, the primary source of gear is through killing bosses and taking the gear from their corpse. With gear, you either have it or you do not. While you can have intermediate items, they are essentially separate from your obtaining of the final item.

Gear, of course, also has other ways to be given out. For instance, the highly common badge systems that has been in place in WoW since the Burning Crusade, and both TOR and Rift have had it at launch. Even here, the gear itself has binary states, even if it is earned in a more gradual manner. It presents an interesting set of decisions. Do you buy every gradual upgrade, or just save your tokens for the good stuff?

Crystalsong is pretty. This is a super old screenshot.

Some games gate the good gear behind lots of different currencies. Blizzard have the most elegant system at the moment, with their fluid point system. Although it took them plenty of iterations to get to that stage.

I for one, prefer the single currency with obscene inflation (see Burning Crusade), as it gives everyone a chance to get the good stuff with a bit of time and effort. It also makes it possible to twink people up by running them the higher tier content to let them swim in tokens.

The ‘every tier of gear gets a new token’ system I find annoying, as it leads to lots of gating that makes gearing up nigh impossible. It’s inelegant, and frustrating.

Blizzard’s “upper tier” and “lower tier” currency system, where the current content rewards points just for it’s gear, and everything else grants lower tier points is quite elegant, and is a good compromise between letting the raiders have their fancy exclusive gear, and letting the rest of us stay in touch.

Almost always, rewards themselves have specific states. Even leveling you have ‘tiers’ of XP at which you get to level up, which is when your power actually increases. In some cases, however, the reward scales as you gain whatever it is you gain. Usually these have an ebb and flow to them, much more like power ups than the rewards that have been discussed thus far.

Rage probably bears a mention here as a good example of a fluid system. It starts empty, you fill it up by getting hit in the face // hitting things in the face, and you spend it to hit things in the face hard. Of course, you don’t get stronger by having lots of rage. Although that would be nice, I’m sure. It would also make rage an even more interesting mechanic.

Come to think of it, there aren’t many mechanics that work like that that come to mind… well, I’m sure I’ll think of one 20 minutes after I post this, haha. >>;;