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….

Semiology / Semiotics (signs and how we define them)

The subject of signs and iconography is something that appears in our everyday lives to point where it gets an automatic response from us.  Whether its road-signs as we drive along dictating the speed to go; public transport and its colour co-ordinated route system; or an office building and its designation of floor space, each has its own set of parameters defined for its users.  The subject of Semiology (the study of signs) is something that has a depth beyond anything I could comprehend in this brief discussion, but I hope to give an insight in relation to my previous experience. 

To begin with, this is a subject that has been on my peripheral since the later parts of my second year at university.  I remember Extra Credits doing a Halloween episode on the subject in correlation to horror (quite appropriate in relation to the current time of the year) which perked my interest.  As I have developed my own thoughts over the years through such viewpoints as Heidegger, Lyotard, Baudrillard, etc I’ve only briefly noticed how close semiology comes into the fray.  Defining ‘place’ and ‘space’ is somewhat similar to defining items like ‘chair’, ‘door’ and ‘wall’ which brings us to the architectural context of this piece.

For this piece, I’ve looked at Roland Barthes ‘Semiology and the Urban’ and Umberto Eco’s ‘Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture’ which in turn present some nice examples in game design.  Barthes is the essay I would align closer to my personal architectural theory with the discussion of how towns and cities develop over time and define their areas; such as neighbourhoods, commercial and industrial districts of varying importance.  As you may be aware, the traditional progression of a settlement is a progressive growth into villages-towns-cities depending on a number of factors like geography, economics and social growth.  As a settlement crosses one of these thresholds, there is a certain difficulty in creating new space while appeasing the issues of change.  For example, a village being developed into a small market town may feature new dwellings and more widely recognised retail outlets.  However, the current population may desire a small settlement and dislikes the look of the new developments out of this desire to stay a village.  It is at this point the architect / town planner has to be careful to consider the thoughts of each party as they create this new settlement. 
Personally, I feel a strong connection between this and the idea of particular IP’s (intellectual property) and the interpretation from different studios.  Take the Warhammer 40k IP and see the range of game genres handled by its developers (RTS, FPS, 3^rd person action, etc).  The mechanics are different but they each follow a particular aesthetic (to a lesser or greater degree) of this ‘grim dark’ future where there is a fight for survival in a somewhat brutal manner.  Another example would be the recent Devil May Cry (DMC: Devil May Cry) where a reboot change the story’s main character (Dante) from a ‘jokey’ fun-loving character into a more ‘brooding’ kinda nihilistic person, much to the disapproval of the series fans. 

Eco’s essay is more concerned with the semiology of objects and the correlation we find to create patterns in space.  One of the examples given by Eco is that of a cave and early man; as they use a hole in a mountain as shelter, over time it will be defined by the person as a place of settlement in which they dwell.  Rock formations along the edges can also be defined as walls and the opening itself is effectively a transition from dwelling to not dwelling (aka door).  As the person goes forth and explores, they may see similar rock formations with a transitional ‘hole’ which one could imagine they define as another ‘cave’.  More modern examples can be things like viewports (windows, glazing, platforms, etc) or a chair (pile of rocks, a fallen tree, a chair, a sofa, a throne, etc) but they come under the idea of how we define what something is and the connotations with it.  The range of items that can come under a single definition is somewhat infinite from a broad spectrum, but there’s an example from a game I enjoy greatly which I feel takes on this idea greatly.
Ratchet and Clank on the PS2 was a platformer which featured an anthropomorphic main character (Ratchet) and his robot sidekick (Clank).  Initially, Clank is a means to bring the call of ‘a hero’s journey’ to Ratchet, but over time Clank develops some motor actions to help the player progress the game.  These features include a helicopter / jetpack / waterjet transformation from Clank which gives us the ability to jump higher, glide, swim faster and other tertiary functions.  Clank is defined as a robot; but he features AI of a robot, customisation of a mechanical object, and the companionship of a sidekick character.  I haven’t played it, but those of you from the Nintendo console side will probably see a similar light with Banjo Kazooie and the range of involvement Kazooie has in the game. 

To summarise, the subject of signs and semiology is a vast subject which bleeds into our everyday lives on both a conscious and sub-conscious manner.  Taking time to consider these factors gives us the potential to view games in a new depth when we corroborate it with exterior schools of thought.  I would highly recommend reading further into the subject with people like Young (psychology) or the examples I’ve presented in this post. 

I hope you’ve found this piece interesting. 

References

*Barthes, R. Semiology and the Urban
*Eco, U. Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture
*Ratchet and Clank.(2002). Insomniac Games
*Banjo Kazooie. (1998). Rare

Receiver and the Discussion of Combative Design Theory (form:function)

These past couple weeks have been rather busy with ‘IRL’ stuff so naturally things like this have been pushed to the side.  That being said, I enjoyed a little game over the weekend that I want to talk about in regards to a relatively modern architectural design choice. 

Receiver is a very small indie-fps title from Wolfire Games created as part of a 7 day fps game challenge which looks to create quasi-realistic gun mechanics.  Whereas in a conventional fps the reloading mechanics are a single button press; receiver includes individual bullets, magazine loading, checking the chamber and releasing the hammer to name a few.  It’s a rather confusing experience when you initially load in, but after around 15-20minutes the gunplay was making sense and it becoming rather enjoyable. 

Alongside these mechanics there is RNG based level design, item placement and enemy locations that keep you on your toes as you navigate your surroundings.  One may call this a ‘roguelike’ in terms of its permadeath and random starting loot, but I feel it’s more towards a tactical shooter by its combat mechanics. 

While playing this game, I got a feeling of a couple schools of thought in design and play on the concept apparent in Receiver.  Firstly there was the age old ‘form vs. function’ theory that discusses the relationship between aesthetics (form) and mechanics (function).  In architecture, this can sometimes be the nature between an engineer and an architect but certain eras in architecture have gone one way or another e.g. Brutalism tends to be on the side of ‘function’.  Receiver is a game of pure mechanics in its gunplay while its aesthetics are rather spartan in its night time city-scape and plain rooms.  Not to say that this is a bad thing as one should remember this was made in 7 days…

The other feeling I got from this game was a kind of Deconstructionism / Victorian industrial ideology that turns the ‘function’ side of the debate into its own aesthetic.  A couple examples of these traits include London Paddington Station; Lloyds building in London and the Pompidou Centre in Paris.  Each of these examples uses the structure, the framework and the stuff that is usually hidden away behind walls in conventional buildings to create their own pieces of art and design through architecture.  Looking at these examples, one can see a correlation of Receiver and typical fps games through the use of the reloading mechanic; as the simple press of a button (usually R) is now a fully-fledged mechanic to take into consideration.  There are games that have played around with the reload mechanics in the past (one of the more famous examples being Gears of War) but I feel this is the most literal and by proxy the closest to the above architectural theory. 

To be honest, I grabbed this game on the Humble Store end of summer sale for free, but you may find it interesting to review in how minor aspects of design can be created into a new format.  Outline theories you may want to look at include symbolism, discussion of ‘space’ and usage of signs in culture but overall I hope you found this discussion interesting. 

References / further reading

*Receiver, Wolfire Games (2012)

*Eco, U. Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture

*Barthes, R. Semiology and the Urban

*Bachelard, G. Poetics of Space

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.