Blog: Updates and the General On-goings at the Moment

I recently looked back at this blog to see topics I had discussed in the passed when I realised its been quite a while since I last put finger to keyboard. As is usually the case, life has a way of giving you lots of things to do so here's a quick update on the past 2 months.

IRL

Work commitments have been keeping me busy for the majority of my time as I'm getting involved in a number of side projects which have been occupying the time I would of set aside for writing this blog. These projects included guided talks, exhibition design and lectures for professional qualifications which naturally allow me to make more progress towards my goal of a curatorial / archival role within the museum and heritage sector. That being said, I can't blame it all on that otherwise I could just organise my time more effectively, but the times where I have thought to do blog writing I find myself attending a social event or being incredibly late getting home due to delays on the London transport links. To give context to such a point, last Sunday it took me 3 hours to get home whereas a normal journey would take somewhere in the region of 80-90 minutes. It doesn't stop you from writing, its just takes you out of the mindset.

A somewhat related point to this is the 'fun' of moving as I'm looking to move much closer to work to cut down on my commuting time. Organising viewings between work and getting as much information as possible takes up a surprisingly large amount of time which I haven't had to deal with in the past. This has been compounded by the fact that recently I applied for a job much further afield back in my university home of Plymouth so between moving 20 miles and 250 miles has brought another set of tasks to accomplish at the moment.

As well as this, I recently turned 26 which brought a nice mixture of nights out and time off to do nothing (more on that later). I went out on Halloween dressed up (something I very, very rarely do) and ended up getting home at like 6am which I haven't done a night of that length in quite a while but was welcome the next day by remnants of face paint and quite the hangover to contend with. Again, I could have been writing during this time but I wanted a couple days to myself which has become the topic of a post I want to write about that I have hinted at from time to time; a factor of a player dwelling in a game and how it fits in an individual / solo environment. It basically talks about “the lodge” of architectural theory being a dwelling of personal space and how much private time one can have in a space where you're accessible through multiple means at a moments glance. This may come across as introverted, but we shall see when we get there.

Gaming

The majority of my time gaming has been taken up by the recent release of Guild Wars 2's expansion, Heart of Thorns which has been an interesting time for me. It has been very different to expansions I've played in the past (WoW, Rift, ESO, etc.) due to not having a gear / level cap increase and I haven't felt like I'm in a rush to 'get to the end game content' that I would race towards, which in turn has allowed me to enjoy it a great deal under my own terms. I am going to do a proper discussion on it soon, but it has been a highly enjoyable time over the past week and a half and I look forward to what's coming next from Arena Net.

As my time for Guild Wars 2 has increased, my time in Warframe has decreased by quite a bit. I'm in an awkward space with that game because I enjoy the gameplay loop but the RNG nature of its loot system is causing my enjoyment to wane. The fact that I'm getting a load of new things in GW2 may have something to do with it but I think I may need to have some time away to truly get back into it. Its a bit like last year with GW2 where I took a couple months break and found myself enjoying it all over again. For now, my Tenno is docked with its dailies grabbed each day but not much more than that.

With the recent release of Fallout 4, I have also perked my interest for the franchise by replaying Fallout New Vegas alongside its DLC on a new luck-based character. As someone who usually 'powergames' Fallout with a high-intelligence character on energy weapons, It's been an fun experience going through with a sneak / guns build with high critical hit chance. I've also gone for a karma neutral character role-playing as someone out for personal gain which has opened me up to some new interesting quest-lines that I haven't experienced before this play-through; showcasing the recognised re-playability of these titles years after their initial release. By the time I fully finish New Vegas, I would like to start on Fallout 4, but that depends on my last point of a new PC build.

I have mentioned before how I'm looking to build a new PC as my current one is ~8 years old and definitely showing its age. As my post on low-performance gaming shows, it hasn't been all bad but I've got to the point where I would really like to play modern games on a smooth frame-rate as well as nice graphical fidelity. My PC build is coming in around £900 but I'm currently in an awkward space of “do I build now or wait until the sales?” That being said, it does ask the question “which sale?” because we have black Friday, Christmas and January sales over the horizon and I may just end up saying “f**k it!” and buying it anyway. Time will tell but as long as it stays under £1000 I think I'll be happy.

Well, that's everything regarding the last couple months in my life. Writing this up has been important for me because its a step back into the blog space which is important because I need it to be regular for someone to be interested in. A lot of this maybe words thrown into the twisting nether of the internet and its vast accessible information, but if you find these posts interesting that's what gets me to continue on. Anyway, next topic will either be the 'Player Housing from the individual' or 'Thoughts on GW2:HoT” so look out for that on Monday.

Now back to the 101 other things on the list :\

Warframe PvP: Personal Thoughts as of Update 17

PvP in Warframe for me has always been an odd thing due to its difficult upbringing.  When it was first brought up, the star-chart conclaves were something I only tried briefly and the dark sectors were something I never really tried out of confusion / not really being invested in the game mode.  The most recent standalone version with game modes of CTF and Kill Confirmed have perked my interest for PvP again, but with the recent changes in update 17 to the movement mechanics its sitting tall at my weekend’s playtime for a number of different reasons. 

PvP in Warframe is still in somewhat early stages but it has strong opening gamemodes.  Screenshot taken 15/8/2015

The most prevalent feeling of this playtime is one of nostalgia; a moment where I am in an arena wall hiking around the map trailing my target instantly takes me back to 10 or so years ago with one of the two titans of arena shooting being Unreal Tournament (the other of course being Quake).  For me, UT (alongside Total Annihilation) were the first PC games I played online and having the frantic nature of UT Deathmatch on a map like Deck 16 cemented my enjoyment for PC gaming and the larger spectrum of competition.  The Arena shooter became my first stop for many years of gaming, going through the entire UT series (UT, 2k3, 2k4 and 3 as of writing) with modern titles such as CoD just not fully scratching such an itch.  For me, it was never the gunplay that personified these games (be it weapons like the flak cannon being my favourite anyway) but an enthusiasm for the movement controls with particular focus on the 2k4 iteration.  Whereas in a modern title you will have a jump, crouch, sprint and maybe a slide; you could dodge into double jumps, wall hikes into somersaults, rocket jumps and other environmental based movement techniques to make your ability to remain a difficult target an extra step of the FPS mechanics we all know and enjoy.  It also gave a sense of speed as with learning such mechanics, you could greatly increase your travel speed meaning that it gave an overall feeling of speed to the gameplay that military sprinting or short-term jetpacks just don’t truly match in my opinion.  With Warframe’s new movement mechanics that follow a similar toolset of wall hikes, double jumps, leaps, rolls and bullet-time esc slides, PvP’ing gives me this feeling of having to use my movement as an extension of my in-combat play so that I am able to try and gain short-term advantages so that I can defeat the enemy.  Traversing the maps, jumping into a battle to nab a kill and then dart back out with a slither of health is something that very rarely loses its charm and I can see that my previous enthusiasm for the arena shooter could be found in not an FPS but a third-person shooter which has somewhat surprised me. 

That being said, I would be lying if I made a 1:1 comparison and I do have some issues that have cropped up during these hours of play.  Some of these are self-critical while others are at the gameplay.

Jumping away at the right time to be ready for the next skirmish.  Screenshot taken 15/8/2015

First of all, I have had to play a lot with my controls / mouse sensitivity because of the significant change in enemy movement type from PvE to PvP.  The overwhelmingly majority of Warframe’s PvE enemies work on the same plain as the player with a relativity slow-regular pace as the AI does make use of cover and squad like groupings whereas a player is naturally unpredictable.  Traversing the map I have noticed a small need for increased sensitivity, but when I end up in a dual-like situation with another player one is wrapped into a swirl of leaps and slides as you try to gain an advantage for a couple shots and in those situations I could probably do with upping my sensitivity by around 40%.  I do have the option to change my sensitivity on the fly, but I feel like it’s going to take a couple hours to find the right balance.  In terms of movement, I also feel that sometimes when I go to roll I’m not rolling which is getting me shot / stabbed but I have a feeling this maybe down to my aging hardware / reaction speed.

Although I performed well during matches, the last 2 or so minutes would see me knocked off my podium finish.  Screenshot taken 15/8/2015

Secondly, I feel like there is an unnecessary ‘deadzone’ time in some movement which makes the flow of gameplay feel off-balance.  To those of you who may be confused by my choice of word, I am referring to particular moments in moving; aiming with a weapon after a sliding movement and landing after a jump beyond the regular jump height.  The First of these has been a recent issue of mine since Update 17 where there’s a short-term ‘sway’ out of the slide where the camera catches up with the player so I feel this is something that may need some work on through patches, but the second is more difficult to discuss because I can see the reasoning behind it.  Having a player stagger if they don’t land a high jump properly makes sense as it encourages you to chain movement together in an appropriate manner, it’s just the smaller cases of jumping regular to a space a couple steps below your original jump point is where it feels off in comparison to the PvE gameplay I have experienced.  There have been a number of moments where I’ve thought “why” on a map such as the corpus ship tile-set where I traverse the side crates onto the lower health pickups with no problem but stagger on the nearby gradient changes. 

Thirdly, and possibly the most subjective, is the experience of comparative skills and the interplay between them.  It’s always difficult to discuss a subject like this without going too much into balance and whether “x is OP” but I will try just to give my experiences during this time.  I personally have been trying quite a few weapons and personally I’ve felt an affinity for shotgun use with a heavy sidearm and polearm but I haven’t been able to find a frame that fits the playstyle that I want to going with that.  I tried using Volt, Valkyr, Saryn, Zephyr, Chroma and Frost but I just can’t get a great feeling of “this feels like what I want”.  A skill / attack that one shots me as a Volt (with a small armour rating so you may consider that there are various attacks that do it) would also do the same to Saryn (a frame with a much higher armour rating) and I personally don’t know what to make of it.  I try to think of ‘counter-play’ but other than ‘run away’ there isn’t much I’m coming up with and that’s not the best situation in these circumstances.  Then there’s Jat Kittag, a weapon that I know is a slow, formidable weapon but in PvP has just been an aggravation for me.  In both PvE and PvP it has a powerful knockback for the surrounding enemies but with one particular experience of mine I feel it may need a bit of tweaking.  The times where I’m battling with someone and I get hit by it so be it, but when I’m mid-air and dodging away from it at a decent height from the ground I don’t feel like I should be staggered / knocked down by it.  I understand there are mods to make you immune to such affects after being knocked / staggered, but I’m not on the ground or near to the blast so I don’t think I should be affected.  I will of course play more to understand this gameplay situation, but as of now for me it’s an unenjoyable play where counters I have looked to make haven’t been viable. 

Lastly (and possibly a secondary point to all the above) having peer to peer connections is much more noticeable in this game mode than in PvE, with myself experiencing a number of situations where I’ve been killed around the corner when in terms of the connection I’m most likely still occupying the space I was before I moved into cover.  This is of course a factor of the overall game and experienced in other games that use P2P such as CoD; so in an ideal world I would love the use of dedicated servers as then I’m less likely to either a) have the above situations happen or b) blame less of my performance on a factor like lag.  For the meantime, I’m going to try to work around it and get better. 

Overall, I have greatly enjoyed my time PvP’ing in Warframe this weekend and would recommend it just to try at least.  The gameplay is fun and removes a lot of what people do find annoying about the PvE side of gameplay – farming / grinding.  If you’re someone like me and are looking for an arena shooter, this may intrigue you until the genre properly finds its way onto the main stage of gaming, but other than a few “ARGH” moments from myself it gave me a similar feeling to those older titles.  

On the subject of Humane Design: Warframe and False Profit

Over the past 2 weeks, one of the YouTube channels I watch (Extra Credits) have done videos (#1 #2) on the subject of humane design and the subject of natural exits points when discussing games.  I was originally looking to continue my section building in Starbound (which is coming along nicely) but a couple events came up in games recently that got me thinking about this concept from my own personal viewpoint. 

So anyway, what is humane design in video games?  Humane design looks to take into consideration the player as a person and as such treat them in an appropriate manner without the use of tactics that inflate a play session beyond its intended purpose.  Much like ergonomics / anthropometrics building tools and environments for the benefit of the user, games should follow a similar concept where the user isn’t performing tasks that long have lost their appeal.  Methods such as the Skinner box have been an ongoing tool used in games to inflate game length in genres such as MMOs, multiplayer shooters and free to play games with progression, but I feel that this subject takes the concept in a different direction. 

I have play MMOs for the past 10 years or so and during that time I’ve experienced times where I’ve kept playing a game for the sake of an achievement, reputation or similar grind that would not constitute humane design as the ‘exit points’ (a place where we can naturally finish a play session) were few and far between.  I can remember grinding Timbermaw reputation in WoW for a couple weeks exclusively for a single trinket that I used which on reflection I didn’t really get that much use out of due to better gear being on the horizons.  My time to stop playing during these sessions were only stopped by either being too tired and needing sleep or having other commitments like education taking priority.  On the other side thou, there was a time during vanilla WoW where I was heavily into pvp when the rank system was in place.  To stay competitive, this required a similar level of dedication with marginal increases over a 6+month period so my personal goal of ranking up superseded the natural exit point of a battlegrounds map finishing.  This I feel is kind of a grey area that I consider with my playtime even to this day because it requires us to consider many different viewpoints and perspectives into why we play and what we’re looking to get out of it. 

This brings us onto Warframe and its recent event called “Operation False Profit” that tasks the player (known as Tenno) to do a series of raids on portable cash robots (Bursas, a augmented Moa) to achieve points and receive rewards at certain amounts.  As the player achieves a higher mission score, the next Bursa’s become more powerful adding to the difficulty of the event.  This event for me has been a mixture of frustration and consideration as I’ve had to deal with a number of different bugs and not being aware of the mechanics at hand.  Going into the event blind, I wasn’t sure how to spawn the Bursa (of which one of 3 different models can spawn) and when I did get it to spawn it was stuck in a ‘out of range’ mode that didn’t budge whatever I attempted to do.  When I did get it to work, achieving a mission score of 100 out of the required 1500 for the full set of prizes filled me with apathy towards the event as I didn’t want to waste my time over the next 5 days for a little reward akin to my earlier rep farming days in WoW.  However, once I had done some reading into the mechanics, I quickly understood the event and quickly proceeded towards a score of ~850 after an hours gameplay feeling happy with the increased enemy level to the point where I was facing a level 92 Bursa doing laps around a shipping crate to avoid its power attacks. 

The Denial Bursa feels the most challenging with its laser walls, blinds and missile barrages.  Screenshot taken from the Codex 26/4/2015

After finishing this event, I got to thinking about a couple different questions that I would like to answer:

• ·         Did this event present me with natural exit points?  Yes it did because of the scores corresponding to different levels of rewards present a spot to say “I’ve got a score of 1000 now I’ll finish that up later / tomorrow”. 

• ·         Did this event present me with a humane design skill progression?  This sounds a bit odd as I’ve adapted the discussion to fit this question, but a topic that comes up often in games is the subject of difficulty.  Often, games will increase the health, damage, resistances, etc of an enemy to present a difficult challenge but this presents a somewhat simple way of approaching the issue.  To allow the challenge to come in the place of augmented abilities, behaviour patterns or counter plays (something that games like Dota, LoL and Smite do well) gives the user the chance to think more about the decisions they make rather than brute forcing the challenge.  This event did look to start off well with different kinds of Bursa’s but it fell short not adding these concepts into the design. 

• ·         Did this event respect the time investment of the player participating?  This is a subject where we can look at either the journey (playing the event) or the destination (rewards) but for me I’d like to focus on the journey.  This is a difficult thing to discuss because there is a certain achievement to finishing a long event vs. a short one and if one looks to shorten an event it may be seen as a move to ‘cater to casual audiences’ or ‘make it easier’.  I don’t believe that these two things go hand in hand and as such I believe there are ways to condense this event down while keeping a level of challenge similar to this original event.  Here is what I feel would be an alternative means of presenting this event: 

1) give corpus planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto) an associated event mission so that the player feels a natural progression from the planet as well as the event score itself.  By doing this, you could cut the score from ~15 runs to ~ 5 runs.
2) add multiple stages to these missions that look to use the environment alongside the Bursa to increase difficulty beyond enemy level e.g. using line of sight via doors / objects against skills such as the blind attack so that the bursa can’t flee
3) once the player has achieved the final mission on Pluto, present a ‘ongoing’ mission so that players can continue to compete for a high-score

Warframe does remind the player to take breaks.  Screenshot taken and cropped 26/4/2015

Being someone who has been playing games for their entire life, it’s been interesting having this outlook over the past couple days.  I feel it’s something that I’ve always been aware of (the ongoing ‘hours played’ markers on steam and /played in some games are quick to remind me) but never looked to consider my thoughts behind it.  Having someone discuss it makes you think and this event got me thinking where I sit on the discussion.  If you were to take something from this post, I’d say that it’s not the subject of shortening game-time without consequence but more on crafting experiences that feel less about filling in-between the great stuff.  Whatever the case, I feel that there’s going to be some interesting shifts over the next couple years as this becomes a higher priority with a medium that more and more people are taking up as a hobby or passion.  

Warframe, Futurism, and Archigram

As I have mentioned on a couple posts, I have been playing Warframe for around two years on and off.  It has been a surprising choice for me as before playing Warframe, I was never really interested by third person shooters and the initial experience felt a bit limp.  As updates have been applied, the range of content and the general user experience has been improved greatly (with some minor hiccups along the way) and these days it’s the closest I get to a ‘monogame’ while keeping to my ‘try something new every day’ ethos.  I’ve wanted to write something about this game for a while, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it.  Do I write a traditional review with my time spent playing this game; create a reinterpretation of my ‘Japanese Architecture and Roguelikes’ piece and discuss the nature of the construction of levels; or do I try to look at the aesthetics and what they mean to me?  This last question came up recently and it’s the basis of the discussion today. 

People of many different professions and ideologies throughout history have considered what the future holds for us as a species.  Much like a scientist looking forward to new technologies and forms of energy, an architect may consider how we’ll reside or a sociologist in how we interact with each other.  This can be invoked by a single action / inspiration and in turn spark a cultural shift for example; Modernism of the 1920s and its white-cubists structures was a significant change from the earlier Arts and Crafts movement of the Victorian age with an intention to create a style to unify people through architecture (aka the international style). 

Villa Savoye a Poissy, 1928-31, Le Corbusier.  Photo taken February 2009

A little bit earlier than this movement, Futurism took the lead in the ideology of ‘looking forward’ towards new technologies and design choices that could be produced.  Originally starting in 1909 Italy, a group of writers and artists (later adding architects) felt like the current trends in design where outmoded by the fast pace of change; with such things as cars and aircraft greatly improving one’s ability to traverse the world and experience more ideas.  They were also influenced by materials, particularly glass concrete, and steel which in turn can be considered as a significant influence for the design eras that followed, like Modernism, Brutalism and Deconstructionism. 

With this taken into context, there is a certain comparison that one can make when it comes to the aesthetics of Warframe’s environments alongside a range of architecture eras which prominently revolve around this evolution of futurism (futurism as an on-going design rather than directly the era itself). 

Grineer

(Grineer Ship interior with Volt Warframe.  Screenshot taken October 2014)

With the heavy industry aesthetics and reduction of the ‘frailty of flesh’ ethos presented by such people like Ruk, their tile sets do a great deal to present this to the player.  The Grineer tile set design features exposed piping; machinery whirling as steam rises; and filtered lighting with a generally darker materiality.  At a first glance, this could be tribute to a dystopian civilization which makes sense due to the nature of Grineer Hierarchy, but I feel like there’s a nice mix of 19^th and 20^th century influences.  There’s the Victorian industrial revolution mentality of wanting to ‘show off’ the engineering (akin to Paddington station or Crystal Palace); 1940-60s Brutalism with its harsh materiality and strong presence aesthetically; and 1970-80s Deconstructionism shifting the Victorian ideology into Spartan art (such as the Lloyds building in London or Pompidou centre in Paris). 

Corpus

(Corpus Ship Interior with Volt Warframe.  Screenshot taken October 2014)

Corpus, in my opinion, has a more traditional future aesthetic with a ‘sci-fi’ feeling akin to books/TV/movies.  Its colour pallet revolving around the blue / green hue mostly reinforces this aesthetic giving a clean, clerical mood behind the techno-religious cult it presents.  I’ve not been too sure about which particular architectural styles it reminds me of, but if I was to settle on something I’d say that the modern day glazed spires of the world (such as The Shard of Glass or Gherkin in London) present this design; alongside a high-art monument ideology akin to Neil Leach’s “Nest and the Pillar of Fire” where architecture is closer to art, giving reason to its existence by existing. 

Orokin

(Orokin tile set with Volt Warframe.  Screenshot taken October 2014)

The mysterious Orokin at first glance gives the impression of a church or similar holy structure; with its vast light levels and open spaces coinciding with flying archways.  Even thou it is clearly in the vast future, to me this feels a bit like Gothic architecture and its strong play of light to reinforce a feeling of piousness and grandeur.  I briefly did a post on the consideration of gothic in the past which you may want to look over, but this style resonates with me while I interact with this particular environment

With all this being said, when it comes to the future of architecture, there is one area I feel could be experimented with on both a visual and theoretical level.  This is the world of Archigram and its take on what the future holds. 

Archigram (or architectural comics sometimes referred to as) was an architectural movement started during the 1960s which discussed the medium in relation to its connection with popular culture.  Its ideas were for the majority created on paper via conventional methods (pencil to paper) or collage / montage which followed an ideology of being modular and adaptable.  In its early years, it was influenced heavily by pop-art, which gave way to strong, bright colours and unconventional design which look striking even today.  One particular example (A Walking City, 1964) features large, bug-like structures carrying its population around connected to others via a series of tubes for transport against a backdrop of a conventional city like New York, producing a nice contrast between the two. 

In summary, the future is always an interesting thing to consider from both a technological/scientific and artistic/aesthetic manner as they naturally seep into each other.  Many people have considered what the future will look like and Warframe presents an interesting range of architectural design choices across the ages.  That being said, I would be interested to see what could be accomplished taking a page from Archigram and marrying culture with technology.  I hope that this piece has been an interesting look into the world of architectural futurism and I shall see you next week


Links / further reading
* Warframe Digital Extremes (2012-ongoing), PC, PS4, Xbox One
* Archigram Not a great website, but gives examples of Archigram.  Otherwise, a quick google search will present many examples
* Leach, N.  Dark Side of the Domus.  This maybe slightly abstract in this context, but you may find it interesting