2014: Year of the Video Game

2014 is going to be a banner year for video games in my mind. 2013 had more than a few games that I really enjoyed—Pokémon X&Y, Rune Factory 4, Tales of Xillia, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix, Path of Exile, The Wolf Among Us, Final Fantasy XIV, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, and Civilization V: A Brave New World—it didn’t actually feel like a very busy year for gaming. But 2014 promises to be spectacular.

As far as current gaming goes, I certainly plan of getting Siege of Orgrimmar 10N down with my raids before the expansion drops in World of Warcraft, and I’ve started getting back into Final Fantasy XIV for a bit, so we’ll see how long that lasts. It is a lot of fun, though. I also want to add The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds to the list, because I hear it is marvelous. And can’t forget more episodes of The Wolf Among Us. At some point I apparently also need to play The Last of Us.

So how about new games?

Bravely Default: Where the Fairy Flies – February 7^th

Image from RPGamer.com. Bravely Default is the JRPG we deserve!

A game by Square Enix for the 3DS, this is the more traditional JRPG the masses have been clamoring for. A Job System, 4 Heroes of Light (but not named for that), Crystals, and Turn-Based Combat. All the trappings of the traditional, wrapped up in a more modern game. The story is apparently somewhat straight-forward, but the characters are delightful and the game itself is quite accessible for a JRPG. RPGamer.com has a review up (http://rpgamer.com/games/other/3ds/bdff/reviews/bdffstrev1.html) for it, and they gave it a 4.0/5 (and they’re pretty stingy on their reviews).

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII – February 11^th

 

Unlike most of the Internet, I rather enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII. A lot of folks denigrated it for being a totally linear romp with a convoluted story, but I didn’t find it difficult to follow, and I’ll take a well-executed linear game over a poorly-executed open world, myself. Final Fantasy XIII-2 was interesting, and the battle system had evolved a bit, but it was still enjoyable (though I honestly didn’t care for the story in XIII-2).

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII brings back the title character, Lightning (Oops, spoilers!). The world is going to end in 13 days and only Lightning can save the people of the dying world—note that she isn’t saving the world, twist!

This time the combat system seems to be a mesh of the frantic, action-oriented Final Fantasy XIII and the costume system of Final Fantasy X-2. It looks gorgeous, and the world is relatively open in this case, but you’re limiting factor is time. Some parts of the day certain areas or quests will be unavailable, and events may occur only at a specific time and place. As well, you have complete control over Lightning. She can run, climb, jump, and so on through environments. No longer are we limited to being stuck because there’s a log in the way.

Tales of Symphonia Chronicles – February 25^th

Image from RPGamer.com. Combat in Tales of Symphonia.

I love the Tales series. Unabashed fanboy, I readily admit. The combination of fantastic characterization, decent stories, and intense real-time combat systems really does it for me. Tales of Symphonia, in my mind, was the pinnacle of the series for all of those points (until Tales of the Abyss, anyhow). Originally for the Gamecube, the Chronicles version is the PS2 port rereleased on the PS3 with upgraded textures. If you played the Gamecube version of the game, this one has a few extra attacks, titles, events, better AI, and harder bosses. If you’re new to the Tales series, I highly recommend Tales of Symphonia. I also highly recommend you skip the sequel (also packaged), Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, which was an incredibly mediocre game.

Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster – March 18^th

Image from RPGamer.com. Now we can see Lulu's crazy belt dress in HD!

Another rerelease of a previously released pair of games with updated textures, Final Fantasy X is definitely an excellent turn-based JRPG. It brought innovations like the Sphere Grid for levelling, and took head-on the concepts of religion, death, and self-sacrifice. X was an excellent addition to the Final Fantasy series, and another game I highly recommend to folks interested in JRPGs. Bonus, this is the International version of the game, release in English for the first time, so it comes with a bunch of extras the original game didn’t, like different Sphere Grids for each character.

Final Fantasy X-2 was a divisive game. While the story was so-so, the combat system was excellent. Fast-paced costume-swapping, changing your classes on the fly to deal with whatever situation might come up, I never got bored of FFX-2’s combat system. I can tell when a game is engaging when I actively seek out battles because I just want to fight more things. FFX-2 did just that for me.

I’m getting this for the PS3, but the Vita is also an option for the gamer on the go.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls – March 25^th

Image from Blizzard.com. The Crusader, in action.

Blizzard’s expansion for Diablo III, it will bring about a marked change in the game itself: new loot system, new methods of character advancement, no more Auction Houses, more bosses to kill, new classes. While I did like DIII when it was released (I finished the game on normal), I didn’t find it quite had the replayability Diablo II had. I’m hoping these fixes to the game’s core will give it that oomph. At the very least, the AH, while an interesting experiment, most definitely killed my enjoyment of the game, so I’ll be interested in starting from scratch with a character and seeing where it takes me. One that is untainted by the AH.

Fantasia: Music Evolved - ??? 2014

Music and Rhythm games are my jam. From Dance Dance Revolution to Rock Band to Dance Central, music games are one of my favourite genres, and Harmonix is king. So when I found out they were doing a music game to Disney’s Fantasia? Heck yeah, please! And it’ll use Kinect. Now, I hear folks groaning, but if you’ve played the Dance Central series, you know that Harmonix is one of the only developers to really have a handle on what the Kinect can really do. Dance Central was an amazing piece of software, and a complete blast, so I’m actually willing to pick up this game sight-unseen based on the company’s previous reputation.

But Fantasia: Music Evolved is more than just a rhythm game. It’s like a music creation game. You’re still performing actions to the game, but you can adjust instruments along the way, change how the song sounds, make your own drum solos, and so on. It’s very much just play, with music.

Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix - ??? 2014

Kingdom Hearts is another stand-by series for me. I love the combat, and I rather enjoy seeing Disney characters in different worlds and the soundtracks that go with them. Part nostalgia, part ARPG. This rerelease of games sees the “Final Mix” versions of Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep in high definition on the PS3, which originally came out for the PS2 and the PSP, respectively.

Kingdom Hearts was a fun game, but the original suffered flaws with the camera system and control system that were honestly pretty hard to get by (and going back to them on the 1.5 Remix was painful), Kingdom Hearts II fixed all of that and layered a deep combat system on top. The story wasn’t too shabby either. Birth by Sleep’s story and characters were much better done, and the combat system was a little simpler, but still just as fun.

The series as a whole has an incredibly convoluted story, but I don’t really find it that hard to follow myself. But frankly, you don’t need to actually follow the meta-story across the series to enjoy each individual game. Still, super excited for this one.

Tales of Xillia 2 - ??? 2014

The original Tales of Xillia followed in the footsteps of a long line of Tales games with more great characters, and a really good story this time around, along with a compelling evolution on the Tales combat system. The end of the first game leaves us with a world in flux, where great changes are occurring, and the second game takes place one year later in the aftermath of that great event. Where Final Fantasy seeks to reinvent itself entirely every game, the Tales series is a bit like JRPG comfort food. Baby steps, rather than giant leaps, but at the same time they’re always high quality releases that are pretty entertaining, so this one for me is an automatic must get.

Hearthstone - ??? 2014

Image from Blizzard.com. Shaman vs. Paladin, the story of Vanilla WoW.

Surprisingly, I’m not actually that excited for Hearthstone on the PC. On the iPad, however, I am ecstatic. A game played in 10 – 15 minute increments seems perfect for my bus rides, so if I can play it over my cell connection on my tablet, that will be perfect, whereas when I’m actually at my computer at home, I usually want to play something a bit meatier, like WoW itself. Still, the game is fun and has an active metagame. Time will tell if Blizzard can continue to evolve the game past release to really give it legs.

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor - ??? 2014

Orcs, Orcs, Orcs, Orcs, Ooh a Draenei!

For me, duh. Garrisons, and more raids to complete next expansion. I’m guessing/hoping it’ll get released by early summer of 2014, but we shall see.

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And that's it for games that are announced as far as I'm aware. And it also doesn't really include all the cool indie stuff that is coming up, nor does it really include much for the latter half of the year. We'll have to wait and see what kind of juicy games will happen then. Perhaps PAX East will reveal some of those secrets. Until then, I know my plate will be really full!

WoW: Gimmicks. Betcha Can't Design Just One

Last week I talked about gimmicks and what makes a gimmick, and sure I didn’t come to a perfectly good definition, I came close in my humble opinion. For review:

gim·mick [gim-ik]

noun

4. In the context of a video game boss, anything that changes the default rules of the game, either by granting a new contextual ability (or abilities), redefining what it means for a boss or player to be defeated, or defining a player-induced trigger that alters the currently established rules of combat.

So are gimmicks bad, good, or just a thing?

Often times I hear folks talk about gimmicks, there’s an implied derision involved, as if they’re slightly distasteful. Why add extra hoops to jump through during a fight when you should be able to defeat it with just your class abilities?

Let’s go back to the list of “acceptable” non-gimmick mechanics: damage, adds, floor trying to kill you, tank swaps, interrupts. For the sake of argument I’ll leave splitting the raid off the list.

That’s an extremely small list. Now, they don’t really tell you everything. A tank swap could be required because of a stacking debuff on the tank (Halfus with less healing received, or a debuff that increases damage taken from a specific ability like on Norushen, or a stacking DoT link Feng), or the floor could be trying to kill you in any number of ways: circles, squares, strips, concentric circles, different damage types, applying debuffs or just plain killing you. Damage could be coming from debuffs to be dispelled, or a stacking AoE, or just melee damage. Overall, there’s some play within these mechanics.

But if that’s all the developers had to play with, raiding would get very dull, very quick. Just look at LFR, for example. Most of the mechanics, gimmick and non-gimmick alike, can be completely ignored. Which doesn’t make for a very satisfying fight in my personal opinion. Sure, I enjoy the occasional tank and spank to race the clock, but at the end of the day I’m fighting bosses because I want to defeat those challenges set up.

Looking at Siege of Orgrimmar, the following fights don’t have “gimmicks” in them: Dark Shaman (and that’s actually arguable because they share a health pool). Big list, eh? And most people introduce a “gimmick” on the fight by purposefully splitting the raid because it makes the mechanics easier to deal with.

Why is it that there are so few fights without gimmicks? Because all of the fights without gimmicks have been fought already. Take a look at bosses in Vanilla and TBC. They’re extremely simple (excepting fights like Netherspite, or a few in Naxx 40 which do have gimmicks to them). In a world of Deadly Boss Mods, Recount, and logging, where you’ve had players who’ve been raiding for nearly 10 years, how do you challenge them, but also not make the challenge so far above and beyond folks new to raiding?

Well, that would be to introduce new rules or mechanics. If everyone knows the basics of the game (how to play your class, and frankly, if you’re raiding at Normal and above, you should know your class or you’re doing your raid a disservice), then you trip people up by showing them something new. But WoW is by far and away not the first game series to do that. How many folks have played Mega Man?

 

Mega Man Bosses. Gimmick city. Classic game play.

The Mega Man series is considered one of the best platformer-shooters around for the time period, and even today. And how did they keep things fresh without making them impossible for new players? By changing the rules. What killed Cutman in Mega Man was a lot different from what would kill Quick Man in Mega Man 2. Fights were puzzles to be solved, but if you were particularly good at the game, you could ignore the puzzle and brute-force many bosses. Sound familiar? Basically, changing things up is a tried and true design tool for boss encounters.

The other half of the story is movement and the like. At this point, folks are pretty used to at least getting out of the bad, but if the only thing you really want to do is use your class’ abilities and nothing else, perhaps you should go play a JRPG instead, where everything you do is menu-driven. There’s no movement, no space, nothing. WoW has characters who can move in 3D space. They can jump, they backpedal, they can turn around and face in another direction. So the game space has all of these concepts, why is it bad to utilize those concepts when designing a boss?

A fantastic example for this are the Twin Consorts in Throne of Thunder. Drawing the symbols (which was very Okami) on the ground to activate certain effects? I think that was the most fun I’ve had in a boss fight ever. Sure those effects could be mostly ignored on Normal and you would still win (heck, my raid one shot that fight the first time we saw it), but it was still a blast.

Thaddius, a Vanilla then Wrath boss, was a fun one too with the jump in it, despite a large number of folks who had issues making those jumps. Or when you can avoid abilities like Quake in Stonecore by jumping at the right time. Sure, the healers could heal through it, but it was a fun bonus if you could make it and avoid the damage entirely.

So in my opinion, gimmicks are a good thing. They keep the game fresh, they compress the learning curve (veterans can still use a lot of their acquired skills, but they still need to learn new mechanics like everyone else), and they give us interesting boss fights. I’m not interested in fighting Patchwerk and Onyxia 1.0 over and over again. But I am interested to see what new encounters the designers come up with.

WoW: A Gimmick By Any Other Name

In the context of World of Warcraft, the term “gimmick” gets thrown around a lot in reference to boss fights, and often in a derogatory manner. I find it a lot like Ghostcrawler would find the term “clunky”. What the general populace defined as “clunky” was often not the more precise definition the developers would use in their own posts. 

Dictionary.com defines "Gimmick" as follows:

gim·mick [gim-ik]

noun

1. An ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, especially one designed to attract attention or increase appeal.

2. A concealed, usually devious aspect or feature of something, as a plan or deal: An offer that good must have a gimmick in it somewhere.

3. A hidden mechanical device by which a magician works a trick or a gambler controls a game of chance.

So what is a “gimmick” in a WoW boss fight? Are they bad, good, neither, or both? Kurn over on her blog Kurn’s Corner talks about gimmicks in boss fights today, and comes with a fresh perspective having taken the expansion off from raiding. Her major complaint is that gimmicks seem to be increasing, and implies that’s largely a negative thing:

“The question is, of course, what kind of interesting and new boss fights can you have without resorting to gimmicks like Rhyolith’s steering or Zon’ozz’s bouncing? It’s not that all gimmick fights are bad, but Yor’sahj, for example, was (IMHO) an inventive fight that wasn’t really based on some new-fangled gimmick.”

However, like any discussion, you want to be sure of what is a gimmick, and what isn’t. And oddly enough, that seems to be subjective. If someone were to ask me what I thought was the best example of a gimmick fight, two come to mind: Flame Leviathan in Ulduar, and Malygos. When asked to define what she thought a gimmick was, Kurn actually came up with the same couple of examples independently, so at least it seems that there’s some consensus as to what the most egregious gimmicks are: vehicle battles that take control away from your character. I rather enjoyed Flame Leviathan, however. It was a great example of what vehicle combat in WoW should be, rather than say, jousting *shudder*.

She also brings up the idea of a secondary resource being gimmicky. So the sound bar on Atramedes, or Immerseus’ secondary health bar, the Pride Bar on Sha of Fear are examples. Another thing is the Extra Action Button, so Ultraxion’s push the button or die, the Opportunistic Strike in Will of the Emperor, or kicking shells on Tortos. Getting thrown into a different realm is another she mentioned, a la Gara’jal or Halion. Or if she had to fly, like Valithria or Kael’thas. Splitting up the raid, like on Thorim, or Spoils of Pandaria also falls under gimmicky to her.

But dealing with damage, adds, getting out of the bad, tank swaps, interrupts all are mentioned as not gimmicky.

Then there’s the gray areas, the things she doesn’t mention. Where do the electric pools on Jin’rokh the Breaker fall, where you stand in them to get a damage buff, but take extra damage? Do the healing absorb debuffs on Spine of Deathwing or Jarraxus count as a gimmick? How about the Mind Control requirements of Instructor Razuvious (A Vanilla boss originally, I might add)?

I don’t necessarily agree with Kurn’s list entirely. Splitting the raid, for example, doesn’t seem to be a gimmick to me at all, either via keeping the parties apart, or using something like a secondary realm to divide the party. It’s not really novel nor ingenious (though many raids split the raid artificially to deal with the sheer madness that are the Dark Shaman). Galakras, Spoils of Pandaria, Siegecrafter Blackfuse, Ji-Kun, Sha of Fear, Will of the Emperor, Elegon, Gara’jal the Spiritbinder, Morchok (Heroic), Rhyolith, Alysrazor, Shannox, Beth’tilac, Conclave of Wind, Nefarian, Halion, Gunship, Lady Deathwhisper, Onyxia, Yogg-Saron, Thorim, The Four Horsemen, and Thaddius all require splitting the raid either for the entire fight or parts of it. And I stopped at Wrath, let alone TBC and Vanilla. That hardly seems gimmicky, rather it’s just another raid encounter tool.

Secondary resources are an interesting thing, because though on the surface they feel gimmicky. They really come in two flavors: they either affect the boss, or affect the player. Examples of where they affect the player would be the Pride bar for Sha of Pride, or the Corruption bar for Cho’gall. Sanity is a bit of the reverse for Yogg-Saron as you start with a finite amount, and rather than an explicit bar you get a debuff with stacks, but it all has the same effect in the end. Where they affect the boss would be General Nazgrim’s Rage, or the Pillars on Lei Shen. I think we can discount secondary resources where they’re nothing but a glorified timer (Empress Shek’Zeer’s mana bar, or the bar that pops up for the Stone Guard).

Sha of Pride Pride Bar. Get that baby to 100, and you're pretty much dead.

But are secondary resources gimmicky? Most player-affecting resources just enforce better play. Stay out of the bad, or bad things will compound. Sha of Pride, if no one is hit by any of the major Pride inducing attacks, the secondary resource is largely ignorable outside the healers’ dispelling. Same for Cho’gall up until the rush at the end (and now that I think about it, the two fights really are very similar), which to me doesn’t feel like that big of a stressor or a terrible thing. So perhaps it is gimmicky, but it doesn’t feel bad.

For bosses, Nazgrim’s Rage really just enforces kill order and enforces folks to be smart about staying out of the bad (sound familiar?). Defensive Stance is different (and annoying), but overall it doesn’t really feel much different from the player effects. Lei Shen, however, is very interesting. With the pillars, the players get to choose what order they do things, what abilities to activate and level up, and generally how the fight goes. Basically, it’s just a variation on Yor’sahj. But it is a hidden mechanical device of sorts, or a novel device, so I’d definitely agree that it falls under gimmick.

Opportunistic Strike! Dance, and then BAM!

Almost anything that involves the Extra Action Button feels gimmicky to me for sure, as suddenly you have a new rule to learn about your character that only applies in this one situation. Ultraxion, being the first/worst offender here, but Opportunistic Strike on Will, or the tank abilities on Feng the Accursed. The Magnetic Core from Mimiron could have easily been an Extra Action Button if it existed back then, so while not new, we have better UI to handle it. But what about getting targeted by the Mark of Arrogance on Fallen Protectors? It’s really just a way to pass aggro to someone else. Rather than the EAB, they could’ve done some convoluted aggro table system (like the Faction Champions), but does that count as a gimmick, being lazy, or making it transparent to the raiders?

So after all of that, what counts as a gimmick? I think most folks definitely agree that anything that requires you to be in “vehicle combat” is a gimmick, some or most secondary resources count, and extra action button things count usually, as well. But is there a better way to describe this? I posit the following:

gim·mick [gim-ik]

noun

4. In the context of a video game boss, anything that changes the default rules of the game, either by granting a new contextual ability (or abilities), redefining what it means for a boss or player to be defeated, or defining a player-induced trigger that alters the currently established rules of combat.

My new definition covers pretty well all vehicle combat, and Extra Action Buttons with the first clause. The second clause allows us to cover fights like Immerseus, where reducing him to 0 health doesn’t defeat him (you need to reduce his secondary bar to 0), or Sha of Pride/Cho’Gall where if you hit full Pride/Corruption, you’re effectively defeated and removed from the fight. The third clause covers fights like Lei Shen, Twin Consorts, Yor’sahj, Zon’ozz, Siegecrafter Blackfuse. Heck, you could stretch the third clause to include General Nazgrim, and the player-induced triggers are people getting hit by abilities.

It, however, does not do a good job of covering a fight like Malkorok with his Ancient Miasma, which definitely feels gimmicky. There are also still some gray areas, like Primordius (who also feels gimmicky), or Jin’rokh’s pools (which don’t really feel like gimmicks so much to me), so it needs a bit more massaging to find something a little more precise, but at the same time it feels like a good start to me.

I’ve let this blog post get on long enough, so next time I’ll follow up about comments, and talk about whether gimmicks are good or bad, and what other design tools could developers use for their fights.