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.  

PoE Awakening: initial thoughts

Path of Exile’s first expansion has been in development for a while now with access to the beta to those who wished to do so, but its retail release has just come up prompting me to go in and see what’s what.  Over the past couple years, PoE has been a game that has garnered a lot of enjoyment from me and being able to experience new maps, bosses and skills allows me to continue to find fresh pieces of content that keep me interested in the game’s overall lifespan.  Today I want to talk about my experiences; first as a player and secondly from a design perspective. 

Playtime Experience

To get the most out of this I decided to make a new character in the soft-core “Warbands” league which features randomly generated enemy groups designed via a particular element e.g. a flame war band using flame/ searing totems, fireballs and other similar skills.  I made a Scion with the old spectral throw with elemental damage (somewhat similar to buzzsaw to those playing) with some room for new gems to experiment with and quickly got back into playing a class that I enjoy right behind the Templar.  Right from act1, I was able to experience the great additions that were on offer as Nessa (the potion and misc vendor) has a second page that features a nice range of low-level skill / passive gems at a price that a newly made character can easily acquire.  Moving into the act itself, I very much appreciate the changes to the waypoints as I have found myself doing less of the ‘running around finding it’ this time around which in turn has speed up my interim gameplay and made my playtime feel much more streamlined.

When talking about the experience being streamlined, one cannot talk about it without mentioning the shift of maps as a whole through the acts.  Each act has had a map removed (Coves, Forest and connecting Sewer) where they didn’t suit any purpose but to get the player to an ‘active’ map (inactive meaning no quests or significant event) as well as significantly changing Act 2 in regards to Bandits / Vaal.  In this version, you can clear the bandit quest before you interact with the Vaal vessel as the Vaal ruins that featured before the Wetlands now go after it.  To me it feels a lot better to get the bandit quest done and then focus on the Vaal because sometimes I would get to the Wetlands and feel like I’m going backwards and forwards to achieve my goal.  In Act 3 not much has changed but having 1 less floor in the Lunaris temple makes it feel a lot better as floor 2 could drag a bit. 

The flaming lava-falls of Kaom's realm fit alongside the monsters that follow a similar characteristic.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015

Act 4 is of course the new act and as of writing I am at the Harvest collecting the organs to meet the game’s new end-boss; Malachai, The Nightmare and hopefully succeed in a relativity short amount of time as I’m only on normal with this new Scion.  Leading up to this moment, act 4 has been very enjoyable as the enemies have made me more aware of my positioning and take more time to move out of the way of attacks and telegraphs.  Even in the first map (Aqueduct) the named ‘boss’ of the area is a large bird-like creature that body slams after a short period of flight constantly so it requires you to move around to use the available space to your advantage.  As you continue to progress through the acts, the bosses ramp this up with enemies like Kaom and Corrupted Piety engulfing large amounts of the ground in negative space (such as flames / poison / etc) giving me the feeling of being back in wow raiding with things such as the famous Helgen Dance in Naxx.  Throughout all of this I’ve had one death due to my own mistake but overall I feel like the difficultly is appropriate for the content and I look forward to trying these fights on the higher difficultly. 

The Aesthetics / Design

The corridors between arenas balance the frantic battles against its small stature.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015

Act 4 has a brilliant mix of map design and monster design that are able to do a lot with spaces that on their own aren’t too interesting.  I say this because a number of the maps (Dried Lake, Daresso’s Dream, etc) are a collection of channels and arenas but are able to instill life into the space within the context of its setting (see this post for my thoughts on the subject).  The Dried Lake may not be much to look at, but the mix of enemies’ present give the narrative of a battlefield of time long passed all the more presence with a somewhat washed-out, grey beach alongside a couple huts.  The large monsters that are a collection of many skeletal archers are particularly great as you can see individual archers acting on their own to attack you, while being a part of a larger monster that is intent on killing you.  On top of this, the way it splinters when you kill it offloading a couple of the archers to act on their own is a nice little touch which turns an enemy that fits a basic ranged combat role into something with a bit more detail.

The Darkness of the mines hide a mass of monsters awaiting your arrival.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015

 

On the subject of enemies, there are some great interactions throughout the act which make the maps feel more alive and combative.  To give an example, the stone men in the mines throw pieces of themselves at the player with the potential to be stunned / knocked back in a darkened environment that can make it difficult to distinguish type add to the aesthetic of a mine that has sealed to the world for a long time where corruption has taken its time to manifest in the inhabitants.  Another example can be found in Kaom’s realm, where a number of enemies attack underneath the ground through lava channels leaving a burning path for the player to either dodge or experience the effect of burning.  It fits into the background of lava flowing like water as well as getting the player ready for the later battle with Kaom which requires a lot of dodging lava fields and fireballs to get through alive.  Although these are great examples, what I feel encapsulates great design is through Daresso’s dream and the two maps that feature within it. 

Daresso's Dream and the pits make a small square space into something special.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015

Daresso’s story of being this young lad brought into the world of battle is setup in a great way through these two maps because of the way the character narrates while you progress.  Daresso talks about his time becoming a fighter, entering the fighting pits and making his way up to the gladiatorial arenas while you progress through the same areas has allowed me to learn about his story where previously I may of quickly skipped it through dialogue.  His story is one that feels the most prominent in my mind when it comes to Path of Exile because I was able to play it and when a story can marry itself to gameplay in such a way I believe they can truly work wonders together.  The maps themselves maybe a couple arenas with connecting paths, but the arenas have character that makes it a great place to interact with.  The ‘dream’ map has these small, muddied pits that have wooden-spiked gates that trickle enemies into the space giving me the impression of a skirmish/ brawl whereas the gladiatorial arena has crowds, side entrances and trapdoors that all throw enemies into the battle as you make a name for yourself.  There are a few pillars dotted around to punctuate the arena floor, but that’s all it needs because the fight does all the talking.  Even with all this going on, the final battle with Daresso fits into his own battle for the King of Swords; having a much more intimate space as two combatants wait to see the first show doubt and strike hard. 

The gladiatorial arena is just a larger square but does a lot with the space provided.  Screenshot taken 20/7/2015 

Overall, the Awakening expansion for Path of Exile has been a great deal of fun to play which has allowed me to interact with parts of the game that I haven’t done so in the past.  The overall flow of the game feels better and the new act 4 has a great mixture of monsters, maps and boss fights to keep many a player interested up to the end credits and beyond.  I hope you give it a try and see how much is going on beyond the genre title of an Action RPG that is free without you feeling like you’re missing out if you choose not to purchase its micro transactions. 

Couple more weeks and I may try hardcore again….

Low-Performance PC Gaming

As I mentioned recently, my new job has open opportunities to be involved in new things and have a suitable level of disposable income.  The conventional side of my thoughts have expressed interest in things such as suitable accommodation, learning to drive or a potential holiday; but naturally the ever-present idea of a new PC build has made itself known.  It’s been 8 or so years since the last PC build (with a GFX card change and RAM stick addition) but the box’s age is definitely showing with many modern titles either not working or having very poor performance.  A title like The Witcher 3 is something I would love to be playing but with my old AMD dual-core CPU and ATI 4850HD the more likely result is a machine that gives up and explodes.  With all that being said, I would say that my time gaming on a low-performance PC has been an enjoyable experience has taught me a lot about the customisability that a platform like PC has to offer. 

To roughly break this down into three factors, I would say that they are “New games are still available”,  “Cost factors” and “Configure for performance”.

New games are still playable

The City of Novigrad in Witcher 3 looks great and I hope to play it in the future.  Image from Witcher.wikia.com accessed 13/07/2015

When you have new games like The Witcher 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition or Batman: Arkham Knight; it can difficult to stay positive when they all pass you buy with a Canyourunit Fail result very clearly showing your machine’s inferiority.  However, in this same time-frame we’ve also had such titles like Hotline Miami 2, This War of Mine, Shovel Knight and the wide selection of Tell-tale narrative games that continue to improve as time goes on.  These games are not without their interesting game mechanics, diverse aesthetics and narratives that look to discuss themes that aren’t always talked about in general media.  For example, This War of Mine is a game set during war time that puts you in the shoes of a civilian trying to survive the conflict; tasked with collecting supplies to sustain a small bombed settlement while dealing with the moral implications of survival in such an environment with a dark aesthetic to match. 

This War of Mine showcasing the other side of war.  Image from thiswarofmine.com accessed 13/07/2015

As well as games, game engines such as Unity have done a great of work to give developers a means to create games on a relativity slow budget and have available players from a similar column.  One of the most popular games (if one would use Twitch numbers) over the past year or so is Hearthstone which is a well-produced Unity-engine card game that even runs well on a phone; giving players an enjoyable, free to play experience that continues to create new content for people to enjoy. 

Cost factors

Hearthstone gives a great deal of enjoyable for no upfront cost and minimal performance requirements.  Image from us.battle.net accessed 13/07/2015

Continuing on from my Hearthstone example, the prevalence of free to play titles has greatly helped those on a small budget experience more games than ever before.  It is understandable that there are those who dislike the model citing games like Hearthstone, Dota2 or LoL where A player may spend over the amount of a AAA title and then some for a questionable amount of content (quantity and quality of course), but the model has seen great improvements over its short lifespan.  All the above examples, as well as Path of Exile and Warframe are free to play games I enjoy even on an old PC and with significant updates such as PoEs recent Awakening expansion (which introduced a new act, skill updates, item additions and more all for free) shows there are still great times to be had on a low spec machine.  To this day, my PC and its part replacements have cost a total of ~£300 and its current lifespan of ~8 years puts a rough annual cost of £37.50 which is on par with a console. 

Configure for performance

config files and registry tinkering allows for games old and new to run tailored to your needs.  Screenshot taken 13/07/2015

This I believe is the most prevalent factor in my time on a low-performance PC as it has allowed me to learn more about the finer details when it comes to playing games.  To many, configuring .ini files is extremely easy but if like me you never had to use them and stick with an in-game options menu it may seem like a daunting task to accomplish.  Over these past few years, I do take time to configure and tailor a game to my liking so that I get the right balance of performance (frame rate of at least 30 stable) and graphical quality which has meant that a game like Guild Wars 2 where I didn’t feel confident pvp’ing due to performance drops is now suitable for me as competitive game modes naturally need smoothness in performance.  This factor in my gaming life revolves around one particular example that I would like to discuss now:

The natural mod-ability of a game like Skyrim helped me play it when it seemed unlikely.  Screenshot accessed 13/07/2015

In November 2011, I was sitting in my bedroom at university late one night when Steam popped up saying that “The Elder Scroll 5: Skyrim was now available”.  At this time, I was using my laptop (the one I’m typing with now which overheats and its PSU is held with tape) and was well aware that it wouldn't do well with such a title, but reflectively clicked purchased anyway and awaited its download.  Upon entering the initial scene in the cart, I noticed a terrible frame rate of around 10 as well as input lag which quickly got me demoralised with the prospect I wouldn’t be able to play it for over a month until I had access to my PC (the one that was still kind of old at the time but not as bad as today).  At this point, it was 1 am and I decided that “no, I’m going to see what I can do with this” and trawled the internet for some solutions.  With the help of some forums and the PCgamingwiki page on Skyrim, I spent the next couple hour’s fine tuning my settings and testing that initial scene to see what performance I could grasp at with the modification of effects such as shadows and LOD; eventually finding a mod that looked to reduced graphical quality below the in-game minimal parameter.  By 3am, I had done my testing and now I was sitting at around 28fps which was as far as I could feasibly go without breaking things and found myself engrossed in a world right through to 10am when I decided it was time to go get breakfast.  Yes, I could have just waited until the Christmas holiday period and enjoy this game without all the hassle, but due to my perseverance /stubbornness to play this game, I was able to enjoy Skyrim in that initial period of exploration when something new is available and we’re all trying to figure out what’s over the next hilltop. 

So that’s what gaming on a rather old PC means to me.  Of course there are games that I would love to play now that aren’t available to me, but with the great selection on offer I don’t feel like I’m missing out or that I’m a second-class citizen.  When I do end up getting a new PC, I will of course love having the great looking graphics, quick load times and the likes but I know that if I’m not able to upgrade again for a while I can keep enjoying this medium of gaming and the experiences it provides. 

P.S. pcgamingwiki.com has been very useful over the last couple years.

Concluding 2014: My Experience in the World of Gaming

As many of you experience during this festive time of year, it can get rather busy roaming around the land visiting family and friends to exchange gifts, eat a lot and have a hangover.  Naturally, this has affected my ability to put time aside for writing which I’m getting around to fixing while trying to figure out what’s happening for the upcoming New Year’s celebrations and watch the Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2014 (I know, a glamorous life I must live…)

That being said, I can’t put it all down to extenuating circumstances as I have had the last couple days available to write; with the intention of creating a small piece on man-made mountains and their appearance as antagonists in games coinciding with previous posts on a similar fashion.  As it is the end of the year one can find themselves in the mind-set of ‘I’ll wait until January to start anew’ alongside the range of resolutions many people make, so to give the above topic a proper post alongside actually writing something, I’m going to write about some games I liked playing this year.  This isn't going to be a quantified list as I don’t think that this will be more of a streaming conscious than anything, but I hope you find the explanations interesting at least.  I should also say that these games aren't all releases of 2014 but more of a retrospective on my time spent gaming over the past 12 months. 

 *Images are from a collection of screenshots I've taken over the last 12 months*

Path of Exile

I had briefly played this game through a number of betas, but with its entry onto Steam and Torchlight 2 elite hardcore mode getting a bit annoying to achieve I saw a chance to return to the title.  I played roughly during the months of January-May and got a great deal of enjoyment from the mechanics of the game from start to finish.  The skill gem system was a totally new experience for me, as I naturally built up an array of spells, abilities and auras to use across my cohort of exiles in a number of different ways.  This was further expanded through links and augments that mutated said skills to explode, split, fear, stun and more to the point where a skill could look considerably different on use.  The bartering system was enjoyable to partake in as well, as I didn't look up guides for it and naturally experimented with items to see what would come of them.  If I was to level a complaint, I’d say that the armour sets felt a little bit too samey during my playtime (which could be down to the aesthetic choice of the exile environment) but regardless it was a really enjoyable free to play game that doesn't look to nickel-and-dime you to have an enjoyable experience. 

 Firefall

One of my first posts was about this title and since then I haven’t gone back to it.  Now I've had time to look back on it I can say I still hold the idea that it’s an enjoyable game and would be great if it wasn't so repetitive in the gameplay through the mission board system.  The big events grabbed me alongside the smaller ones that scattered the landscape and if it focused more on these akin to something like Guild Wars 2 I feel like it would have kept my interest for much longer.  That being said, it was a game that was developed for a very long time and maybe it was never going to truly work as they had envisaged.  To end on a good point thou, getting around the environment was really fun especially the glider / kite system. 

Wolf Among Us

This game came out in October 2013 but I didn't pick it up until the Summer sale of this year which by then was in its finished state with all episodes available of season one.  I had briefly played Telltale’s The Walking Dead on my phone in the spring and liked my first try of a visual text-adventure (I’m not 100% of its genre but that’s a close approximation) so as it was cheap I thought I’d give this one a go.  I instantly played through episode one and loved the gameplay, playing through the rest of it over a period of a week in the late evenings so that I wouldn't be disturbed.  I wanted to figure out where each fable came from and what sort of life they were living, alongside the possible outcomes of my actions as Bigby Wolf.  I tried to answer dialog options how I think I would act in the situations presented alongside remembering to use the ‘silence is an option’ mechanic from time to time.  Alongside the gameplay, I really love the aesthetics of the Wolf Among Us particularly in the options menu and title/credits of each episode.  The running title of Bibgy walking through the streets of New York with its purples blues and blacks looks brilliant and a particular frame of this became my pc wallpaper from July to October of this year.  This game may not have the direct human connection of the previous Walking Dead for some, but for me the Wolf Among Us was a greatly enjoyable experience for me that have me more open to narrative games in the future. 

Game of the Year 420 BLAZE IT

This year I’ve looked to try new games whenever possible to try and broaden my horizons in the medium.  Sometimes I end up in some weird places and this is one of them.  I won’t put an image up, but just download it and embrace the crazy that this is. 

Civilization V: Brave New World

I originally bought Civ V on release and got a lot of enjoyment from it; harking back to the series’ second installment I use to play on the PlayStation as a much younger self.  That being said, picking up Brave New World during the summer sale filled me with renewed interest in the game.  The addition of trade routes, religion (I skipped Gods and Kings), spies, ideologies and the revamped cultural victory added so much depth for my play style as I prefer to go for non-combatant victory conditions.  Recently, I’ve got more and more interested in the finer details as I attempt to play on the higher difficulties of immortal / deity and I’m not being put off by the losses.  There are 4x’s that are much more in-depth, but Civ (like many others) has that personal connection and I hope that this series continues to remain strong into the future.

The Stanley Parable

Very few games have made me genuinely laugh in my life, but the Stanley Parable’s standalone release this year was brilliant in being mundane on the surface but hilarious underneath.  I played the earlier source mod for this during my time at university thanks to it being featured on Extra Credits “games you may not have tried” many times, but the recent release added a bunch of new possible ‘endings’ to the parable.  To those who aren’t aware, it’s a first-person narrative-driven game where a narrator takes you through a story.  What that story maybe, is pretty much up to you and I hope more people get to experience this fascinating and enjoyable experience. 

Warframe

I've played this for around two years and this year it’s clocked up a sizeable amount of my time gaming, but somehow Warframe remains to be a game I enjoy playing nearly every day.  Being involved in the game for this length of time, it’s great to see how far they've come from when I started playing; from around 6 game modes to 20 with improvements to the former as a means to continue to make the experience varied.  Alongside being my most played game this year, it is also a free to play title that allows the player to decide what level of investment they want to take.  Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, as its free give it a try and you may enjoy what you see. 

Transistor 

Although I did dismiss the list idea at the beginning of this post, if I was to quantify the games I played this year Transistor would probably take the top spot.  This has been the only game since Skyrim that I’ve bought on release and I completed it in two short bursts of playtime; but the time I had with this game was both an aesthetically wonderful game and narratively fascinating experience.  On the surface, Transistor follows Super Giant Games previous title (Bastion) in terms of the narrative progression of an isometric combat game where a smooth-voiced narrator takes you through the world.  Upon playing Transistor, you can see how the combat has some more dynamic rpg-like mechanics and through this get a greater understanding to people who exist in this world.  Even thou I’ll admit I’m not 100% sure on the story; the journey itself was interesting enough to keep me wanting to find out more with some particular sections of the game getting a genuine response from me.  With all that being said, it is backed up by an amazing soundtrack which features a mixture of slow beats, calming melodies, high-octane melees and chilling songs; in particular The Spine and Smoke Signals somewhat fall into this last category in my opinion.  I’m looking to play through the game again next month and I know it’ll draw me back in.

To bring this all to a somewhat conclusion, I think that 2014 has been a year for me where narrative driven games have raised higher up on my interest level.  I briefly talked about my shift of gaming habits in the ‘monogaming vs. polygaming’ post but my general media habits have changed quite a bit.  These days I watch very little TV or films because I don’t feel invested in the story or potential plot.  What these narrative games have given me is a way to enjoy stories in a medium which I feel has the potential to go further than is conceived generally.  I hope that going into 2015, I get to enjoy a larger mix of narratives in games and in turn find some interesting connections to architecture that I can write about.  Other than that, have a great New Year’s and amazing 2015.  

Free to play, PC gaming habits and general thoughts on money

*Sorry for the lateness of this post I wanted to post this last week but life has a way to happen.  hope you like this*

As the holiday season comes into vision, one naturally draws their attention to the custom of giving and receiving gifts in the spirit of Christmas.  This experience can be met with a number of different emotions; from having the best idea for a trove of wonderful gifts accustomed to each person to having no idea and finding yourself mass buying a selection of DVD’s and other media.  I kind of sit in a mix of these mind-sets where I have an idea of some nice gifts I’d like to get for people, but limited funds to truly make it happen.  This has been the case for a couple years, but the gifts in question have been able to add a little something special to the occasion; like a nostalgic piece from childhood or framed photo to immortalise a moment in history.  I've gotten a certain joy out of these experiences and I've noticed a similar action when it comes to my spending in the PC gaming space. 

I have wanted to build a new PC for a number of years now but due to financial commitments this has been pushed to the side.  My current build is a mix of year one university parts and year two upgrades, putting the general age of the machine at around 6-7 years.  As you may imagine, it has a long start-up time of ~3 minutes and there are many, many games that cannot be played well let alone even run.  The most ‘intensive’ games that I've played on this machine have been Witcher 2 (minimal spec ~15-20 fps) or Far Cry 3 (minimal spec 25-30fps), but I’m still getting a lot of enjoyment out of my time spent gaming.  Utilising a number of power options from software like Game booster (which is called something else now in its new update I can’t remember), tweaking the config files (with thanks to pcgamingwiki for some of that) alongside the collection of new titles not being graphically intensive, I've been able to continue to broaden my gaming scope while not breaking the bank with a new build. 

On the subject of costs, these tiles in question have generally been in the £15 or under bracket (with some of the cheapest being like 89p!) which has allowed me to avoid the £40 new releases from the AAA developers which in the past I would be buying up on release.  Of course, I have the massive sales given by online storefronts like Steam, GoG and Humble store; but it’s surprising how far you can get on little or no money.  On top of this, there is the wide range of free to play titles that offer gameplay with no upfront cost, allowing the consumer to try and consider whether they’d like to play more and possibly invest money into the experience.  Over the past two years, my most played games have been dominated by the free to play space, with Dota 2 and Warframe taking the second and first spot respectively.  Both these titles have clocked around 1000 hours from myself (well, according to steam stats but in game losses about 10%) which in the past games which have hit this ‘milestone’ come under the mmo genre like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2. 

This section of my gaming time has been an interesting review into the price vs. amount of content on offer which is of course highly subjective.  £15 for a 4-6 hour game like Transistor can be good for some and inadequate for others; alongside a full price yearly release like Call of Duty can be justified via its multiplayer content to some and for others holds little interest from an innovation stance.  For me currently I have a rather tight budget on gaming expenses so expensive titles aren't really viable, but from this it’s allowed me to be more ‘investigative’ in finding interesting gaming experiences for little or no cost.  One could consider this an ‘invention brought out of necessity’ kind of mentality, but of course in a more relevant manner. 

One last thing I want to discuss on the subject of gaming habits via spending is that of a very small, but useful self-generated income for games particularly via Steam.  I have taken time to sell trading cards for the games I own as well as items from free to play games I don’t have an interest in keeping.  Although most items sell for an extremely minute sum of 10p or less, they can add up overtime and give you a nice little wallet on the side to pick-up a couple games when they go on sale.  Being able to sell Dota 2 cosmetics for £1 to £10 has been a nice maker and as such paid for this passing year’s summer sale purchases, which in turn got new cards to recoup some losses (and so on and so forth…)

I hope you find this an interesting perspective into the thoughts of gaming on a budget and that maybe someone finds this useful to get a couple more games from this season’s sale.  

My thoughts on Firefall

Game: Firefall
Genre: MMO (shooter)
Platform: PC (Steam / game-launcher)
Playtime: 40 hours
Level Attained: 37/40
Cost: Free to play
Personal Microtransactions: £0

Firefall is an interesting beast that has had a long development time; particularly for myself first experiencing it back in late 2011 as a closed beta state. Since then it has changed its mechanics, economics and progressions but for the sake of this discussion we’ll be focusing on the recent release of 29th July 2014 and the brief early access I experienced as a former beta tester.

Firefall is a mmo-shooter brought from Red 5 studios which allows the player to experience a quasi post-apoc south America in a redeveloping world. The player is introduced to a small scale player customisation and tutorial before taking charge of a powered battleframe. These frames fit into similar rpg archetypes that you may of seen before (tanks, damage dealers, healers, etc), but due to shooting mechanics these ‘classes’ have some enjoyable traits to them. During my playtime, I experienced each archetype but it was the assault battleframe that I enjoyed most of my time with.

The assault battleframe is a mid-range damaging class that has an affiliation with movement based skills and minor support. Although all frames are given decent jump heights and jet boosters for traversing the environment, it was the assault frame made me feel the most free. Scaling a cliff-face with my jets and at the last second of energy kick in the afterburners onwards to my next objective granted me a big smile. On top of these skills, the frame’s main weapon (a plasma canon) felt like a combination of the unreal tournament rocket launcher and flak canon requiring me to lead the target and create some fun air-raid style attacks. Against the more traditional hit-scan weapons like the dreadnought minigun and biotech biorifle, the plasma canon gave me more enjoyment and reinforced my desire to play the assault class.

Alongside each frame’s signature primary weapon, each player gets a secondary weapon that provides a supportive boost in times of limited ammo. The secondary weapons feature a more typical shooter arsenal of assault rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, burst rifles and grenade launchers which aren’t locked to specific frames. In my experience, I used each of these types, but it was the AR that gave me the most satisfaction when out of primary ammunition or not willing to waste shots on minor enemies. Regardless of my earlier comment on hit-scan weapons, I felt it was a suitable additional to my playstyle.

Over the past couple years, one of the most used phrases in mmo’s has been ‘dynamic content’ and Firefall is one to follow this mentality. Around the playable environment, I experienced a number of missions that took on-the-spot objectives to receive a selection of rewards from xp, currency and minor items of interest. The tasks varied from defend point x, collect x of an item, wave-based attacks and named minion assassinates to name a few. These have been enjoyable, although I have felt that their density has greatly reduced outside of the first area of engagement. In the early levels, I found myself going from event a b c naturally whereas later on it has become a lot more traditional and linear. That being said, the higher levelled environments have featured much larger scaled events that brought my attention back into focus, with particular noting of the OCT event in Sertao. This event sees the defense of a control point against one of the game’s largest enemy factions (the Chosen) featuring a multi-stage co-operative task of the players in the area. Destroying the large enemy ships (or Darkslips) with an orbital canon targeted via the effort of the players gave me a similar feeling to games like Guild War 2 and its world bosses. On a slightly small scale, there are also melding tornadoes which feature a 2-phase group event. The Players are tasked with destroying the tornado’s shields to create a portal to its dimension, which turns into a ‘goldrush’ style lootgrab where you judge how long you can stay until the portal implodes on itself and you meet an untidy end.

Much like my GW2 reference earlier, this game does also feature traditional quests in two ways. Firstly, there is a story to follow regarding you (the pilot Ares 3-5) and the large conflict with the chosen which unlocks as you level. Although these missions feature a collection of the tasks mentioned in the dynamic event section above, they do go to some lengths to make them feel in context with the story mission. For me however, these missions didn’t really grab me until #6-8 where the missions became much bigger and things like the verticality of levels were considered to a greater aspect. This may be due to my own interests in the movement mechanics but this is the feeling that I got.

The other quest system were the Ares job boards that are dotted around each larger settlement in the environment in set level brackets. This felt very traditional-mmo with the directed path of missions around a central point until the next area’s missions have been accessed via a breadcrumb ‘priority’ mission. Like with the other content, they feature a mixed-bag of kill / defend / grab / escort objectives which the last one has received much dislike from players I’ve experienced in-game. I can understand their viewpoint as the pathing and non-preservation of some targets become frustrating at times, but it is a larger application of these quests that grabbed one of my few negatives of this game.

In many games, particularly those that follow traditional mmo questing, each area is given its own narrative to give context around quests involving that location. For example, in wow a cave maybe home to a gnoll or murlock group and quests involving this cave can be things like “kill x or y to clear the cave” or “recover stolen property cause they’re thieves”. In Firefall when you accept an Ares mission from a board, each objective (beyond the stationary story npcs relevant to the mission) is spawned in a random location whether it is a random camp / cave / roadside area / etc. There has been a number of times when I will be roaming the world and a set of diggers and boxes will spawn right in front of me because someone is doing the relevant mission. This is a jarring experience and it pulls me out of the world whenever I see it knowing that it’s being conjured up by the game’s software not the world itself. Dynamic content allows a varied mixture of stuff to happen in similar locations but for this it makes the world less enticing to explore when very few locations have at least a minor narrative within it.

Even though its world can pull me out of the experience sometimes, something that has got me invested is its crafting system and approach to gearing your character. As I mentioned earlier, you can get weapons and abilities for your frame, but these pieces can be further augmented through the use of mods. Although these pieces can be acquired from all the methods of play mentioned above, to get a tailored build, one will most likely look to craft a loadout. How Firefall’s craft system works is that it’s a progressive system designed to build as you experience the game. As you play, you’ll receive a number of trash items that won’t be of use or undermine current gear. Although items can be sold on an auction house you can also salvage the gear for currency, materials and research points. The research points are used with crystallite to uncover new patterns and the resources are used to craft said patterns. Most patterns use a couple common resources, but to access the higher quality stuff you’re gonna be wanting to hunt the rare types of enemies found in the world. Researching alongside levelling my assault frame, I’ve been able to grab new weapons, skills and mods as I level and it feels like an extension of my character itself. The other thing I like about it is that it gives clear goals to attain, something which the traditional rng-based loot-roll environment was a frustrating experience in my younger days of raiding.

To finish up, one must address the elephant in the room when viewing free to play titles, in its economy and cash shops. I look to discuss this in more detail at a later date, but the general census of free to play discussion is the fairness of these titles given to the free player versus a paying one. The spectrum ranges from ‘pay to win’ items to ‘cosmetic only’ at a rough scale, but Firefall fits slightly leaning towards the item purchase; with unlocking advance frames early with pilot tokens, modes of transportation like vehicles and gliders, and vip access for faster levelling. I haven’t got a proper measure of this market as of yet, but the majority of these items can be acquired from playing the game, whether it be by maxing a basic frame to 40 (the current level cap), crafting, or converting in game currency to the paid currency at a market-control player economy (buy order and sell system similar to GW2). In my experience there has been mixed opinions on the matter, but personally I feel that in my play there hasn’t been a time where I’ve felt like a ‘second class citizen’ due to my ‘non-purchase’ status and I don’t feel a desire to change that.

Overall, Firefall is an interesting concept in the mmo world trying to bring alternative genre’s into the space. I commend its existence but I feel that its kinda a retrospective of the mmo as a genre. Maybe the genre has inherent flaws, but I’d like to see what Red 5 studios can do with this title looking to the future. If you enjoy third / first person shooters and are looking for a game to play with friends (and if your wallet like mine isn’t suitable for many game purchases currently) you may find some enjoyment from this title. Whether you find 5 minutes or 500 hours play out of this game I think it’s worth just having a little go, particularly with big titles not showing up for another couple months.