[GameRatty] tag: epics

First Gears 2 patch attends to multiplayer waiting times

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:18:52 +0000

According to X3F, Epic’s released the first Gears of War 2 patch, the main thrust of which is to solve long waiting times in matching multiplayer games. Epic’s Rod Fergusson is optimistic that today’s patch will squash Gears 2’s online multiplayer problems, saying that he hopes “the matchmaking issues we’ve seen up till now are a [...]

Class balance

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:30:00 +0000

In its most basic form, combat in a MMORPG is a simple comparison of damage versus health. If you do 500 dps (damage per second), and the monster you are fighting has 10,000 health, you will need 20 seconds to kill it. There is some random variation, but it is relatively small. So to find out whether you can kill a mob, you just need to figure out how many seconds it takes you to kill it, and reversely how many second it takes for the mob to kill you. The one killing the other first wins.

No imagine another character having half your dps, but twice your health. Any monster you can kill, he can kill too, only it takes him twice as long. This consideration was often the basis of class balance in MMORPGs when comparing for example Mages and Warriors. They could both kill the same mobs, but the warrior dealt less damage in exchange for surviving longer. Over the years the problem with this type of balancing became obvious: Yes, the damage dealing classes were exactly as able or unable to kill a specific mob as the tank classes. But as they killed each single mob in less time, they killed 1,000 mobs in much less time too, and advanced in level faster.

In it's latest incarnation, World of Warcraft changed to give the armored character classes more damage: Paladins, Warriors, and Death Knights now don't lag that much behind Mages, Hunters, or Warlocks in the time it takes them to kill 1,000 monsters. But while that balances leveling speed, automatically the survivability becomes less balanced. Thus my Warrior can solo mobs 7 levels higher than him, in non-epic gear, while my spellcasters have a lot more problems, in spite of their epics. So now Mages complain when they group with a Death Knight, that the Death Knight is dealing the same damage as they do *and* is harder to kill.

The matter gets even more complicated once we consider groups and healing. Even the simplest tank'n'spank instance boss will, during the time a group needs to kill him, deal more damage to the tank than the tank has health, often several times more. The reason the group still wins is that there is a healer, who constantly refills the health of the tank. For the boss to win, he not only has to remove all the health of the tank, but also all the points the healer can heal, which can be 10 times more. So if you consider points healed as additional health, in solo combat you could say that a healer has far, far more health than even the sturdiest warrior. The problem is that while the tank health and damage mitigation is passive, leaving the tank free to deal damage, the added health of healing is only achieved by active casting. In group combat a healer might deal no damage at all. In solo combat my priest can survive 100k of damage (if it comes in a slow enough stream), but only by constantly healing himself, thus dealing no damage at all, and thus ultimately losing the combat. For a healer to win a solo combat, he needs to balance healing with damage dealing, using part of his mana and time for either activity. If you made a healer deal as much dps as a mage, again the mage would justifiably complain that while the classes are balanced in how much time it takes to kill 1,000 mobs, they aren't balanced in survivability.

And I haven't even touched the even more tricky problem of PvP and crowd control. My priest recently got attacked by a retribution paladin in PvP, got stunned and died before being able to cast even a single instant spell. A tank with passive damage mitigation survives such an attack much better than a healer, who needs to be actively casting to heal himself.

So the fundamental underlying problem of class balance is that a MMORPG is not just one activity, but many. It is hard enough to balance classes for one activity, but downright impossible to balance them for all activities at once. By increasing the damage output of the classes previously specialized in tanking and healing, Blizzard is laying itself open to criticism from classes specialized in damage dealing. If everyone deals the same amount of damage, then why do some classes have damage mitigation or healing or both, and others don't?

Epic working on Gears 2 matchmaking issues

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:36:39 +0000

If you happen to have played Gears of War 2 recently, then you’ve probably noticed a few issues with the various aspects of the online multiplayer. Whilst some may debate that the majority of concerns relate to specific design changes, others might simply wish that they were able to get into a match.

For the past week fans have been flooding the Epic Games’ forums with complaints about “longer-than-ideal wait times” in matchmaking. Epic’s Rod Ferguson has addressed the issue directly in a post in the Gears of War section of the forums — Whilst he believes that only a small percentage of players are having issues, he goes on to say that they are working closely with Microsoft to address the problem. He does however provide a few workarounds to help transform your matchmaking blues into crimson red chainsaw action:

Invite at least one friend into your party before matchmaking. The fastest way to play is to have a full 5 person party before looking for a match since you won’t have to find any teammates beforehand.
Ensure that your router is set correctly so that your NAT is considered “Open” by Xbox LIVE as “Moderate” and “Strict” NATs make Xbox LIVE matchmaking more difficult.
Play private matches… no joke.

He finishes by sharing a few multiplayer statistics, although these really should come as to much of a surprise if you’ve been playing online all week long. According to Ferguson, the most popular multiplayer mode is Horde, whilst River is the most popular map across all multiplayer modes. Finally, the Gnasher (aka shotgun) accounts for 29% of all kills, although I doubt that this includes executions. After all, who would use the shotgun to finish someone off when you can use a shield as if it were a guillotine.

Epic working with MS to speed up Gears 2 matchmaking

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:20:17 +0000

Epic’s Rod Fergusson has put a lengthy post up on the firms forums admitting there’s a time issue with matchmaking in Gears of War 2 game and suggesting ways to get round it. He said the long waits some players are experiencing to get into games are being addressed with Microsoft, but there’s no confirmation of [...]

Call of Duty World at War Debuts Better in the UK than CoD4

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:32:07 +0000

It looks as though U.K. fans are just as crazy about the Call of Duty franchise as those in the U.S. because according to the All Formats charts from Chart Track, the week one sales of Call of Duty: World at War are higher than sales for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare when it debuted. Outselling CoD4 by more than 2 to 1, World at War is expected to be the most popular game during the Holiday Shopping Extravaganza across the pond.

If you look at the rest of the chart, you will notice that games published by Activision Blizzard dominate the chart by having 25 percent of all sales for the one publisher. Of course, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is on the chart as well, taking spot number two while Guitar Hero: World Tour coming in at number six (full kits for this game were just released recently released).

Last week’s number one best-selling game was Epic’s Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War 2, which dropped 64 percent and down to position number four.

To give you an idea what our British brethren are playing, here are the top selling games for week ending November 15:

Call of Duty: World at War
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Football Manager 2009
Gears of War 2
FIFA 09
Guitar Hero: World Tour
Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Mario Kart Wii
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2009

Thanks: GamesIndustry.biz

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Tabula Rasa introduces new Epic Bane

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Sci-fi, Events, in-game, Game mechanics, PvE, Tabula Rasa

In the worlds of Tabula Rasa, the Bane have been relentless in their attacks against the remaining humans who threaten their plans of complete domination. In response to this, they have developed a new type of super-troop to turn the tide in their favor a bit. These new Bane are called E.P.I.C., or Enhanced Primary Invasion Conscripts. They have shown up in small groups sporadically throughout Foreas and Arieki, killing all AFS they encounter.According to the most recent Feedback Friday, these Epics will need a full squad of high-ranking soldiers to take them down. Among the Epics spotted so...

Tabula Rasa introduces new Epic Bane originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Epic wins US tech award

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 06:37:16 +0000

Epic’s been recognised as the Top Industry Driven Technology Company of the Year by the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA). “We’re honored to be recognized by the NCTA as an industry leader in technology,” said Epic head Mike Capps. “The other nominees are trailblazers in their respective fields — for a game company like Epic to be [...]

First day of Wrath

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:59:00 +0000

I was having a lot of fun on my first day of Wrath of the Lich King. I went to a shop, bought two copies of WotLK (one for the wife), went home, and installed it without any problem. I got the impression that even if a downloadable version would have been available, the data transfer method of "DVD in car" is probably faster than the download would have been.

Anyway, I entered Northrend with my priest, and immediately looked for a group to Utgarde Keep. By the end of the day I had done 5 dungeon runs: Utgarde Keep twice, and The Nexus once, with my priest. And both dungeons once with my warrior. Lots of fun, interesting boss fights, and generally well made dungeons. Quest rewards included my priest already replaced three epics by blues, and he is still level 70.

XP in dungeons are good, but leveling isn't all that fast. I made half a level on the priest, a bit less on the warrior. What caught me a bit by surprise is that Blizzard completely changed their faction design: Neither dungeon gives any reputation points for any faction. So apparently I don't need to get to honored with some faction before I can do heroics, or run a dungeon just for reputation. I still might make more dungeon runs today, just for the fun, and the experience points.

I did a bit of questing on my priest, and some profession skilling up. Tradeskills in the release version are much harder to level up than in the beta. It used to be that recipes went from one color to another only when your skill reaches a number divisible by 5. Now you can go from orange to green in just 5 skillups.

All in all I'm quite happy with the expansion, even if I'm not sure how long that will last. But there is lots of new content, and only the burned-out see it as "more of the same".

WotLK mudflation

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:16:27 +0000

I will go out and buy Wrath of the Lich King later today, didn't want to queue up for it at midnight. And then I'll install it, and start playing, doing quests, and trying to get into dungeon groups. And in a few levels my current epic gear will be replaced by a mix of green and blue items with better stats. The process in which new items in a MMORPG make old items obsolete is called mudflation, and it will apply to just armor, but also some tradegoods in WotLK. I sold all my gems, as I'm expecting the gems of WotLK to be both better and cheaper than current rare socketable gems.

For characters currently still in green or blue gear, Wrath of the Lich King will bring a huge step up very quickly. Even early quests and the first dungeon run at level 70 in Northrend are likely to yield some gear upgrade. Most people will enjoy that, because a quest that yields some better gear is always more fun than a quest that just yields vendor trash.

Players with characters in epic gear are likely to have somewhat less fun. For a few levels the quests and even dungeons won't bring any upgrade to their gear. And once you get gear with better stats in the mid-70s, it will probably look less good than those epics you had. Apparently Blizzard made the typical Northrend armor somewhat more stylish than the Outland quest rewards were, which often made you look like a clown. But I'm pretty certain that the really good-looking shapes and textures will be reserved for the level 80 epics. Fortunately I'm not much of a slave for fashion, I'll wear whatever has the better stats.

I don't think that mudflation can be avoided with the current "add 10 levels" model for WoW expansions. If level 71 greens were only slightly better than level 70 greens, and much worse than level 70 epics, then the players who are already wearing the epics wouldn't get any better gear until much later in the expansion, maybe even only at reaching the level 80 dungeons. The big step up in item quality also allows to level the playing field: Players currently in epics enjoy an advantage of better stats and thus faster leveling for a while, but the other players will catch up on gear quickly. After all, Blizzard has to think of new players starting World of Warcraft only now, and of Death Knights, all of which will arrive in Northrend without ever having had the opportunity to gather level 70 epics.

Mudflation isn't necessarily a bad thing, although there is a risk of demotivating a certain type of players. Some players see the value of raiding in getting the epic gear, so making that epic gear obsolete somehow diminishes their achievement. But for those who can't bear to wear the same gear as everybody else, there is always the possibility to rush to 80 and work on the next set of epics. I'm afraid that is what far too many players will do.

The best of WoW Insider: November 4-11, 2008

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Online, Meta (about Joystiq), MMO

It's almost here! A whole continent of new content in Northrend, a brand new class in the Death Knight, and ten more levels of the greatest MMO ever created. Wrath of the Lich King, WoW's second expansion, releases on Wednesday night, and Joystiq's sister site, WoW Insider, is buzzing with anticipation. Here's ten of our most popular posts from the last week (all dressed up in our brand new redesign), but stay glued to the site over the next few days, because the frozen north is about to heat up.

News

The Lich King attacks Orgrimmar and Stormwind
Arthas taunts Azeroth just a few days before we're supposed to head up north and lay the smack down.
Mystery continent spotted
There are three known continents on Azeroth -- and this little map found ingame has four.
Profession epics go BoE in Wrath
The epic gear that you make will likely be able to go to your friends (and the AH) in Wrath.
Official WoW site now full Wrath of the Lich King
Blizzard switches over their official site to a more wintry theme.
Wrath shipped to stores, copies being sold early at 7-11
The game is in stores, and some of them are breaking ranks already.

Features

The 15 most beautiful Hunter pets
Looking good, kitty cat. Here are the best-looking pets for Hunters.
Wrath 101: How to get to Northrend and where to go once you get there
Unsure of what to do in the frozen north? We've got you covered.
Essential addons for Wrath of the Lich King
All the addons you need in expansion number two.
Ready Check: A look back at Burning Crusade raiding
We're about to move to a new endgame, so here's a final look back at the old one.
Preparing for Wrath
Our in-depth series of posts will get you ready for anything Arthas throws at you, no matter what class or spec you are, in Northrend.

The best of WoW Insider: November 4-11, 2008 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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