Frozen Synapse: a lesson in unnecessary loading screens

I had a bit of a Ghost Recon kick recently. Something about sneaking around with guns is very appealing. Valve apparently decided to take advantage of this and had a sale on Tom Clancy games, so I bought a bunch of Splinter Cell. Then Tesh tweeted about this Frozen Synapse game, mentioning a tactical watsitso (don't bother to Google it, I made up that word). Tactical? Turn-based? Sounds great! So I watched the video for it and it looked pretty cool.

For the record, it is pretty cool. So don't take this as a negative review. If you like planning out decisions, putting thought into it, this is a good game for you. It's about $20, but that includes a free copy for a friend. So if you know a friend who can give you money, split the cost. Or give it as a gift. Or do what I did and send the copy to Tesh and demand a future gifted game purchase of similar value.

There are two problems though. First, when zoomed out the icons may overlap, making it hard to identify individual units, a problem which can be dealt with by zooming in. But the real problem is the excess of loading screens. I know it's a minor-sounding issue, but it strikes me as a stupid problem, in the sense that there's no reason for it to exist. You give your orders and then submit them, at which point you get a full loading screen. Why? I don't know. It's very distracting and annoying. And unnecessary. Why not instead stick a loading bar somewhere? That would keep us on the map rather than constantly pulling us out. I can't say "it disrupts the action" since it's turn-based, so it doesn't really have action to disrupt, but it's still jarring to get thrown in and out of loading screens.

On the plus side, it is very nice about being able to tab out to do other things between turns. Such as writing blog posts. I like games that fit well with sudden fits of blogging. Contrast this with a typical WoW raid where people get really mad if you're standing in defile because you're tabbed out writing a post complaining about defile and other lag-punishing mechanics.

Blizzard doesn't have an anti-fun team; they have a pointless change team

I previously suggested that Blizzard had a team of developers devoted solely to removing fun from the game. Then I briefly considered that maybe it was actually an overly ambitious balance team, devoted to rooting out imbalances, no matter how trivial. But that team doesn't exist, since it's a fact that the Night Elf base is slightly harder to see the flag in than the Horde base, which clearly would have been fixed by making each flag glowing bright orangehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif and green.

Now I think they have a team devoted to pointless changes.

Remember that super-awkward and cumbersome key ring? No? Okay try this: what is the most valuable real-estate on the screen? Can we all agree that it is a three millimeter square in the far lower right corner of the screen? No? Oh comhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife on, that's prime space! Or maybe not.

But the crack Pointless Changes Team is on the case. Yep, key rings must go. Where will keys go? I don't know. Maybe back in our bags, because we all loved that system and really hated having the key ring. Wait no, no now that I remember it, the key ring was on par with the pet storage screen for changed that players loved.

Adam tried to figure it out too. He didn't seem to have much success.

There is only one reasonable explanation: The Pointless Changes Team is hard at work, making pointless changes.

Cataclysm should have been an expansion

Cataclysm was an expansion in name only. Whether we call the remade zones new content or not, they replace the old Azeroth, which means that they do not expand the world, merely change it (a lot). We did get a few entirely new zones for 80+, but in terms of quests, levels, and geography, the remade world was the big thing.

This caused some problems. Rohan pointed out a big one: the remade zones don't make a whole lot of sense to a new player. This may be a selective perception, but I felt like vanilla, and then eventually LK, did a good job of introducing the story, so that even without needing to play earlier Warcraft games or reading books, it all made some amount of sense. BC was a bit more disorienting, but some of that may have been merely the sudden influx of glowing purple crystals. But the remade Azeroth feels as if it's a huge reference to the old Azeroth, which is of course, gone.

This creates a worst of both worlds scenario. New players may wonder what the world was before, and have no good way to find out, since that content is all gone. As Rohan describes it, it's like if volume IV of a series came out, but they burned volume I. It's not much better for veterans who may miss the old content. Or even worse, since not everything is completely new, we can see what is new and what is old. The old feels lazy, or in the case of some tweaked quest chains (I'm looking at you, Darrowshire), butchered. Meanwhile new content can feel out of place in this almost the old place but not quite.

Then there's the time problem. Before WoW followed something almost like linear time: Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms (pre-60) came first, then Outland came next (60+), and finally Northrend (70+). Levels fit the timeline. There was the ability to go back to old zones or do them out of order, but that was a player action; the structure of the world made sense. The remake breaks that, with the 1-60 content taking place after the 60-80 content.

Cataclysm as a proper expansion would have fixed this, along with other problems. As an expansion the remade Azeroth would have come after Northrend, somewhere in the 80+ range. How exactly this would fit in, I'm not sure, but the simplest way seems to be a Caverns of Time portal that can switch us between new and old Azeroth, much as the Dark Portal moves us between Azeroth and Northrend.

Having only five more levels made the new content feel lacking, if only because people like more numbers, regardless of the actual content. But if the remade Azeroth started at 80, it could have easily added another five levels. At the least, it would have allowed the devs to speed up Uldum and Vash'jir, both of which dragged on a bit, despite having cool concepts.

In terms of story-telling, it would make the expansion more potent for new players. Sure, the scale is obvious, but it's all something that happened to someone else. Pre-Cataclysm players would instead know what used to be, remember questing there, have some attachment, good or bad, to what was destroyed, which gives the destruction that much more impact.

Compare this with the Caverns of Time instances, which do this, but in reverse, showing us what our world used to be, which can still draw on memory and attachment to give a greater sense of meaning. Players in the Culling of Stratholme can see the city before it is burning, filled with people, in its full splendor, all of which would be meaningless if they didn't yet know it as a burning city of the dead. Similarly, though in my experience, less strongly, the Escape from Durnhold let us see it before the Syndicate, and before Thrall blew it up with lightning (something which I don't think WoW mentions). It adds a little bit more meaning to the rotten state of Tarren Mill to see it before the Forsaken moved in, before it was decaying.

In short form: Cataclysm is more powerful if it is preceded by vanilla.

But remaking Azeroth, duplicating it for a single expansion, does have problems.

Right now leveling is too fast, despite using less than the full world for an entire 60 levels. The speed of all the new and remade zones compressed into only 10 levels would be terrible. We'd get a quarter of a level before leaving a zone, meaning either extremely short zones (few quests and done quickly) or unbearably slow leveling. Yes, even I, the advocate of slow leveling, do believe it can be too slow. This could be fixed up a bit by adding levels. With 20 levels I think a new Azeroth could be made to work as an expansion. However Blizzard would have to throw out their philosophy of maintaining a constant time to max level with each expansion (which I think they should do anyway).

Two Azeroths could feel repetitive, despite the separation of two expansions between them. This would only get worse with alts. Creating entirely fresh quests would help, but that would further increase the development work needed.

Instances would have been a huge problem, especially if heroics were mixed in. I have no good ideas for dealing with those.

Perhaps the solution would have been two Cataclysms, meaning to expansions, one after LK and another one after that. One expansion for Kalimdor (Horde bias!), using that continent remade for ten levels and the raids to go with. Then something triggers the same for the Eastern Kingdoms, for another ten levels. This would be more than a little bit contrived, but let's face it, "dragon who slept all the time suddenly wakes up right as we're looking for an excuse to add flying mounts to even more areas" isn't exactly a logical progression. Well okay, dev/marketing logic, but not normal person logic.

Now if only I had a time machine and a printout of the sub numbers for cata...

33% off, minus the exceptions, plus the exception

Steam presents: Ubisoft week. Woo hoo, alright, let's get this thing going with the sales and the stuff. And here we are with the ad.

33% off, that's pretty nice. Any exceptions?

Oh right yes, we can see it right there.: game I've never heard of and... Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Well of course, that's the new one, right? Obviously that wouldn't be on sale for 33% off.

...

I get that sometimes marketing and sales people get mixed messages, but I don't often see them expressed in the very same ad.

Alternate Immersion

Does immersion require a rich, detailed story? No! In fact, the opposite may be much better.

Does your average game of capture the flag in Warsong Gulch feel much like a war? Not to me. But why not? Surely we could see how two competing factions might stage some sort of tournaments to keep the other side defeated even if they cannot have open war. Right there, do you see it? I'm having to overthink it. That's bad. The problem is that there is too much lore, too much story. We know too much and from that too much information we can easily determine that Warsong Gulch makes no sense at all.

Team Fortress 2 doesn't mess around with all that nonsense. They just went for the simple point: two mercenary armies of coincidentally equal size, power, and technology, have been hired to do battle on behalf of a pair of greedy brothers. It's set in a silly world which embraces the absurdity of this sort of highly-staged combat.

Embracing the ridiculousness and making that the story gives tremendous wiggle-room when worrying about breaking immersion. Why is there an omniscient announcer at every battle? Why? We don't know! But of course she's there, how could she possibly not be? It just makes sense. Why does it make sense? Because there are no logical or story structures which would contradict the idea of the announcer. So of course she's there. We'd be surprised if she wasn't!

Valve doesn't try to create a deep, story-filled world rich in history to discover. Instead they create a silly world where we feel silly. The silliness is consistent. This works well with their item shop which mostly sells extremely silly-looking hats. While in a fantasy game you may be turned off by money buying a flashing-looking and otherwise inaccessible sword, when everything is silly, someone spending money on a silly hat only adds to the sense of immersion. Immersion in silliness.

This is alternative immersion. This is a different sort of world. A world where flamethrowers are doused with jars of pee, where spies escape notice with a simple paper mask, and where gigantic Russian men fire guns that cost $400,000 to fire for twelve seconds. And it all makes sense, in its own special way.

Anyone opposed to cash shops is an idiot

Tobold thinks MMOs are Communist. Well you know what? I agree. I think it's time we started treating MMOs like the free market that they should be.

These days we've finally moved past the absurd notions of patience and so-called "experience". We know now that it's not the journey that matters, it's where you end up. We go for success. Who would go for failure? Idiots. Complete idiots.

And yet, when people oppose cash shops that give in-game advantage, that's exactly what they are: idiots. Cash shops should give advantages within the game. Not merely time-savers like XP potions or gold. Definitely not just cosmetic items. That's frivolous Communist feel-goody money-hating anti-market nonsense.

Imagine that you're starting a business. What do you do? I'm guessing you think up some great product or service. That's because you're stupid. The first thing to do is get money. Then use that money to generate hype and marketing advantage. The product, we can get to that later. First step: money. Only an idiot would say "but you're supposed to complete on the quality of the product and service, not advertising." That's an idiot talking. First thing to complete on: profits. Well you need money to make money, so if you want profits you'd be an idiot to not get some investment capital.

Similarly, if we're saying that our goal is to down a boss, why would we not use a cash shop? If an item helps kill the boss and the cost/benefit ratio is satisfactory, we should buy it and be glad to have the opportunity to do so.

If our goal is not to down the boss, then what the hell are you doing? Do you join raids just to waste time with friends? Ever heard of instant messaging? Phones?

Cash shops should give competitive advantage. If they don't, they're failing to help advance player goals. That makes them worthless.

If you're opposed to a cash shop, it means you're opposed to success. If you're opposed to success, then you're wasting everyone's time and should quit. Anyone opposed to cash shops that give competitive advantage is a cheap, lazy, time-wasting idiot. It's a good thing when you all cry about it and leave: no one wanted you anyway.

You're still useful as long as things don't change too much

Remember that Starcraft 2 game thingy that came out not recently? So I first played that recently. That's how I roll. Slow. If it helps, imagine that I pronounced roll more like roww, so then it rhymes with slow.

My friends bought it slightly less recently and I played with them a few times. It made me happy. Why? Because it's not so different from Starcraft 1. Oh sure, some new units, some strange tweaks, but more or less the same game. The Zerg got a disgusting upgrade (sound effects make me want to vomit), Terran got even more anti-ground capability (banshees ftw!), and Protoss require more vespene gas. Siege tanks, bunkers of marines, and a few turrets and we're good to go with the turtle.

I wasn't a Starcraft expert, master, or even decent player. I was the sort of person who would cheat to get through the campaigns because dammit, too hard! Then I'd cheat in me vs. AI matches. Wasted away a lot of weekends. Fun times. But I did learn a bit about it. I learned what units do and a bit of the rock-paper-scissors of it all.

The fundamentals were all the same. Harassing enemy gathering with hit-and-run attacks. Peace through superior firepower. High ground. Detectors. Spamming the crap out of gathering units.

So in the few games we've played, I won most of them. I'd surprise them with surprising tactics like vikings blowing up all their SCVs when they had no turrets, then running out when the marines arrived. Or dropships, sorry, medivacs, carrying siege tanks.

And of course as Protoss I still had it all figured out, and by figured out I mean figured out very poorly, since they use a much more dynamic sort of defense than the Terrans, which I'm not very good at. But at least they still have carriers.

And zerg are still disgusting. I did notice that the Ultralisk got majorly buffed, since it seemed to be a giant waste of everything before, whereas now it's like a giant death walker of death and doom.

As I write this I'm waiting for Starcraft to download, since even if it isn't the new one, I can at least get some of the fix.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

A blogger I've never heard of, Silverspar (apparently just started), has gotten into a tiny little tussle with a podcaster I've never heard of, TotalBiscuit (podcasts are for the illiterate, true story). I can't say I have much of an opinion on their fight, since I've never listened to him and have little incentihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifve to do so. Apparently he quit WoW and as is the popular thing to do, blamed it on WoW being a gigantic pile of crap and noobs wrapped in noobish crap, to paraphrase the general claim.

So all that aside, I came across this comment on her post.

If your idea of raiding is whiping 50 times on a boss then you obviously aren't very good at the game and are probably part of the problem that in the new WoW community, players that lack skill and have to have the content nerfed into the ground so they can do it all the while not actually developing the skill that the rest of us had to do while in Vanilla and TBC, you are a disgrace to the game and you have no right to talk about this subject.

The classic damned if you do, damned if you don't. Let's leave aside the part that 50 is obviously a big, round number chosen for effect rather than accurate reflection of a raid experience. Instead, let's consider this: whhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifat if she wiped once? Never? She'd probably have a much different perspective. And there it is, the classic issue in anything about balance, fairness, challenge, or whatever other word of the week you can think up: If you have difficulty you're a noob, but if you're successful you're proof that everything is fine.

Or as I phrased it three years ago (minus a few weeks):

If you're in Kara complaining about your class/spec, you're just a noob. Get better gear and see the real game, until then, shut up.
If you're in Sunwell, what is there to complain about? You're proof that your class/spec clearly does work, at least well enough to be in demand.
If you're 1400, you're a noob and shouldn't talk like you know real PvP.
If you're 2200, aren't you proof that it can be done, that your class/spec does work?

But wait, there's more! (of the other guy, not my old post)

Also to argue the teirs mean that raiding is about gear if absolutely ridiculous, apply to any raiding gear that's worth a damn and they'll require you to show logs so that they can till have efficiant you are with your performance to your gear level, you all around have no idea what you're talking about in this blog post and it sickens mean that there are some idiots out there that'll agree with your horrendously bad points of view.

So funny story, I seem to recall a whole lot of gear-checking for raids. Let's see, during Wrath when things were all flat. But also in BC. And vanilla. Hm. I wonder if maybe, just maybe, gear is something that people are always checking, because it's a hell of a lot easier to check gear than dig through logs.

Let's go back to this bit in the first block: "developing the skill that the rest of us had to do while in Vanilla and TBC... you have no right to talk about this subject."
So obviously we're looking at a bit of generic internet asshole, mixed in with an unhealthy dose of "I played vanilla so I'm better than you" (guilty). But the no right to talk part, that's something uh... okay even beside the censorship aspect of it, let's pretend that Silverspar is incredibly bad at WoW, ungodly bad, so bad that you'd weep to see her pitiful attempts at play. Does that mean she should shut up? Well perhaps we don't particularly want to listen to her noobish opinions, but silence is risky. Silence is an undiagnosed problem. Not with her, but with the game. Let's pretend that from Wrath onward no one (or a sufficiently large portion of the population) learned to play better. That would be a very strange situation! Would it be caused by some unusually concentrated influx of idiots? Or some sort of change in the game design?

Or am I reading far too much into just another jackass? Vanilla and BC grouped together? Hm, bit of a revision there. I remember more than a little bit of how vanilla was so much harder and better than BC and how back then people had to be better. Could we be looking at a bit of fuzzy history? No, perish the thought, we all know memory is a perfect record.

Heh, earth shock used to have a massive aggro component on it. Fun times.