Kerman's World

#011. On how TA changed the way I game (or did it?)

I never really thought about why I play video games.
When you grew up like me in the days that saw the inception of video games, it’s not a question you ask yourself, it was just another and new media of entertainment. As a kid that sees Arcades moving into our homes, there was nothing more exciting than being able to have the fun available at our fingertips, and ‘free’. As I then grew up, I didn’t give it much more thought, I carried on playing. On the way, what I played, where I played and how I played changed of course, it had to fit in a personal and professional life that evolves, but there was never too much of a rift.
The arrival of achievements didn’t change much the way I played either, but since I’ve started using TA however, that may be another story.

Epyx World Games – That Caber Toss! So hard yet so fun

Before I get to TA I’m going to have to go through a simplified history of my gaming experience first.
As a kid I almost never played on my own. Back in those days, most of the fun was playing with or against one or more friend. Games were about total replayability, and this was achieved either via simple but fun game mechanics, often involving competitive play, or hard as nails gameplay that kept you coming back for more trying to get just a bit further each time. I’ve spent countless hours playing the fantastic Epyx Games (World Games, California Games, Winter Games, …). Just as much time as I spent playing games that were designed to become really hard and almost never meant to reach the end level (Impossible Mission (!), Bubble Bubble, Digger, Skweek, Boulder Dash, …). Somehow the gameplay was king and it was never frustrating to die.
Another type of games then started to come up slightly later, those were story based games. Given the limited amount of space available on floppies at the time, those required a lot of disc swapping which was painful, and as a result it was very early days for those type of games, but they provided new experiences that were pretty fun. I remember the fantastic feeling I had when I first completed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (and that was at the time when the internet did not exist and solution guides didn’t exist). And so the game industry started changing.
Probably in a drive to get you to stay longer in front of your screen using their product, games started to be longer, more story driven, with a beginning and an end, and a difficulty that wasn’t as punishing as before. The reason you were playing a game actually was wanting to see a final scene video animation. And it gave a sense of fulfilment getting there. The democratisation and lower price of CD-ROMs and then DVD-ROMS, sped up that transformation. And I always felt a lot of the great advances of gaming were meant to either dazzle or overwhelm the players (as in giving them bang for their buck), but it didn’t prevent me from embracing and loving where it was going. And so I was slowly changing, from a quick 15 mn gameplay type dominated gamer, to a single player story driven RPG/Adventure/Action dominated one (although I still love me a good party game, not enough of those and couch gaming games).

Then achievements appeared. I was far from impressed, although I don’t mean that negatively, it just didn’t do much for me. I actually saw them back then as small bragging right material. If that existed before, I could have proven I finished that Indy game (and the ones after). It was a great tool I thought to compare how good I was at playing a given game, with a mate, but nothing more. Until I started using them as a measure of if I was done playing a game or not, if I was ready to sell it back. This now feels like a turning point.
I was never anal (or should I say OCD) about playing a game. I remember when the first Tomb Raider game came out. I had a discussion with a friend who proudly boasted how they had gone through every nook and cranny, had been in every single secret cave there was and picked up all stash and weapon ammo there was. Me, I was happy I made it through the game to the end and did so on my own with no help or hack and patch. I didn’t care about seeing every single secret room or easter egg there may be. And that was generally my approach, I never felt the need to unlock absolutely everything there was, costumes and cheat codes, I was happy to do, whatever felt right. Until I wondered if using those newly created achievements could be used as a measure of that, and started doing so.
You could say I gave away control of my gaming hobby just as I did this, however this wouldn’t be true. I could agree to say I may have started using a tool inappropriately, but I was always in control of what I wanted to play. When to stop playing is what I gave some control of, when I did this.

When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better

And so I now come to TA. As I started to use achievements to measure part of my completion assessment of games, I started to need to complete certain tasks I’d never have otherwise. So when a friend told me they were part of this community and recommended I should join, I did.
So how did my gaming change because of TA? I can see two so far.

1- Boosting

Before TA I used to hate boosters. I never knew there was a word before actually, but I had experienced the behaviour. To me that had been part of the reason a lot of my online experiences had been sour. I considered those as cheats and I had only one word for these people: tw@ts.
After TA… well without getting into a full on discussion on it, I still don’t think much of boosters actually, and I still consider it cheating. But I’ve had to make use of it in order to ‘achieve’ and ‘complete’ several games. I don’t boost to gain an advantage but to complete a task so it may be a special kind of boosting, but it is definitely a change of behaviour. Yet the fact that it is in the process of doing this that I collected all my negative session feedbacks, confirmed a lot to me about what I thought of boosters.

2- Achievements list

Even as I started to get into single player story games, I never liked doing something I’ve already done. And I’m not talking about grinding (although I do abhor this) but multiple playthroughs. It may seem contradictory that I still absolutely love short burst of repeatable fun gameplay but hate replaying a game, however the key word is ‘fun’. Re-doing something that took me 20h+ to complete, will hardly ever be as fun as doing something completely new and just as good. When I had to replay Half-Life 2 almost completely because I made the mistake of playing offline and then recovered my gamertag before I connected back online (that’s how I thought it’d get offline achievements online, I didn’t know any better), even though the game is clearly fantastic, I did not have as much fun.
I used to not understand why someone would look at an achievement list first before deciding to play the game or not. Well I still don’t really get that, but I now have some sympathy as I’ve started looking at that list as well sometimes, not to decide whether to play or not, but to plan how to tackle a game I want to play, so I can minimise the number of replays.

That is a very small list in the end and one that arguably has only limited impact, but still is more than I would have expected.
Yet I do feel maybe I’m lucky that is the case. I’d hate to feel hostage of achievements, completion or ratios as some gamers seem to be these days.
Maybe that comes from having had a different history with video games from the start.
Maybe that’s a benefit of being an ‘old generation’ gamer.

Ker
First posted on 7 April 16

#010. On gam(bl)ing

Gaming has become contaminated with gambling in recent years, just as much as gambling is trying to turn a page and look more like games. What are those trends about?

I remember when I was a kid, my father used to play Lotto (or National Lottery) every week.
He used to have each of the kids pick the numbers for their own grid. Do little kids have more luck than adults? We never won (big).
It was fun as a kid, we felt involved in grown up stuff and loved it. Luckily we didn’t see much into it and never caught the gambling bug, the taking part was all the fun for us.
Playing games was even more fun though, video or physical. As a kid picking numbers for the lottery was 1 minute of fun, but playing a proper game was for hours. We were using our imagination to create new opportunities, make up new worlds; and it felt good.
Eventually my dad stopped the weekly tradition; to be fair, probably strongly coerced by my mum. The reality of the accumulated wealth spent for little benefit became too strong to continue. The fun had was not worth the price of entry and luckily, noone was hooked to it so it was easy to let go.
I say luckily because gambling is known to be addictive and as a result potentially very dangerous. So it is worrying when we realise gambling is making its way into gaming.

It is actually not that surprising as the two are very closely related, but the playing field has traditionally been pretty different in each and the insidious blend that seems to be happening these days is interesting to look at.
We have all seen this trend growing and becoming more mainstream in games. When the player is invited to build up some kind of collection, and said collection is obtained or improved by way of booster packs. There are then two types, where that collection can either be used in the game anytime, or as a single use item.
Regardless of the type however, the way to obtain them is always the same: random. There is no knowledge of what is inside a pack prior to opening it. Sometimes items can be obtained outside of a pack (as a random drop or loot during the game) or as a random reward at the end of a round, but the principle remains the same and is all down to luck.
How exciting discovering what we got is!? It is like opening a present each time. And the excitement we get from the wait while it opens is a great buzz that feels great.
This used to be specific to looting and RPGs, but has now evolved and through tiny mutations made its way to virtually every type of games (Player packs in FIFA, Expedition cards in Tomb Raider, Burn cards in Titanfall, Mods cards in Forza, etc…).
This mechanic is playing on the player’s hope of getting something great giving them joy. If it isn’t, better luck next time, but I want, no I need, that item.

That behaviour is the same seen in gamblers. The desire to play with the possibility and hope of a win, and the need to keep doing so until satisfaction is achieved. Which can create addiction. And the implementation in some games is in fact not far from a game of Craps. It is often nothing more than a roll of dice, a random number generator (or RNG). So the mechanic is clearly akin to gambling.
Now I’m not talking about micro-transactions in particular but the model only, which in itself is addictive and similar to gambling behaviour. That being said, if you add the fact that most of the time those packs can be purchased with real money (either directly or via an intermediate funny money wallet) it does complete the comparison with gambling and increases the importance and effects of that strategy. And talking about ‘addictive’, I’ve always been puzzled by reviews using this adjective as a positive (I actually don’t believe many people -gamers?- know what it means anymore. Like literally…)

An argument in defense of the practice, is that those collections randomly and incrementaly built can be limited in size, so if damage there is it is controlled. Weak but better than nothing defense, however they can just as easily be expanded with title updates and/or DLC. And they are. And even if they don’t keep growing, newly addicted players can go and find their fix elsewhere, in another game with the same mechanic.
The problem is setting and encouraging the behaviour.

Obviously this is not really unique in life. When I was a kid I used to love collecting stickers for my Panini albums (didn’t have Merlin) and you could say the same apply. However in this case you could exchange your duplicate with friends 1 to 1, and parental guidance that was holding the cash was serving as control.
Gambling (or Betting) itself has rules and regulations that protect people, in particular minors, but gaming is aimed at children as least as much as adults, and there are currently no real controls in place.

Gambling is getting gamified and gaming is getting gamblified, but the fact the betting world is trying to change its image is a sign not to follow suit. Having invented the pre-order culture (effectively gambling on future quality of your purchases) is already enough and even getting questioned more and more.
Developing gambling mechanics and encouraging gambler behaviours in games is simply a dangerous trend and it should stop.

Ker
First posted on 04 January 16

#009. On Fallout 4 Companions & Promiscuity

So in Fallout 4 one of the noticeable change is the number of companions, but also the fact they can be romanced when maxing out your relationship.

I’ve recently been having a lot of fun with it. There are some great gems to uncover when visiting places or talking to them. Just as entertaining are some of the exchange between two of them when you swap one for the other. They seem to have only one thing to say to each other per pair, but it’s still fun to discover.
The romance doesn’t really add much but it’s interesting how they allow multiple partners of both sex. And unlike Fable, you can have them all in the same settlement they won’t get jealous. May be a sign of the ages… or simply the fact that this is just a game and nothing else matters than a bit of fun.
To be honest, I only bed them all for the extra dialogue challenge xp, you can still have the perks without bedding them. And they actually don’t all want to.

Roughly in order of preference and worth the bother, also roughly in order I maxed them, here’s my current state, how I progressed and my take on the perks:

Three Musketeers

Those are my favorites. They have great combination of fun interaction, dialogues, perks and usefulness in battle. My go to people without a doubt.

– Piper – Romanced
Great partner and her perk increases XP for location discovering and dialogue challenges, which is very helpful.
Decent shooter and good company with fun remarks and sweet comments.
Natural and fairly easy progression through lots of actions.

– MacCready – Romanced
May be the best one to have thus far in terms of aiming and hitting targets.
Also his perk is amazing, it makes headshots easier in VATS and I really felt the difference as night and day.
Bit of a pain to progress though as has less actions he likes than Piper, also has a personal quest to complete, but well worth the effort I reckon.

– Cait – Romanced
What a gal. Fantastic fun to be with and listen to when you go to pretty much any place (try taking her to a bar). Even when she’s not with you but in the settlement you visit I love her random quotes.
Great partner to roam with as she knows how to fight. Her perk however leaves a bit to be desired, but she is well desired as she is anyways… ;)
Easy to progress as soon as I found out she enjoys watching me streaking in settlements, although does require completion of a personal quest at one point.
Her tone changes a bit after her questline, it becomes sweeter and nicer so may be worth keeping in mind. You may want to consider keeping her as she is for the whole fun ride as her perk isn’t all that.

Three Little Pigs

The next three are mostly good to stay home. Their perks can be progressed on easily and concurrently without having them as your active companion.

– Codsworth
Bit useless but I didn’t travel long with him, hardly at all.
Nothing great about him and discussions are bland too, but perk gives protection against energy damage so there’s that. He can’t be romanced however.
Very easy to progress without partnering if you leave him at a small settlement (has to be small so he can be in range at all times) where you’ll do weapon and armour mods, he loves both.

– Preston – Romanced
Supposedly best of the Minute Men, but bit useless on the battle field. So I didn’t spend much time with him, but also couldn’t even if I wanted to, due to what seems to be a glitch after I dropped him for someone else.
Ok perk and luckily I could progress him without partnering, same as Codsworth if you leave him at a small settlement where you’ll do mods, except he only likes weapons. But I wouldn’t worry or bother much.

– Danse
The man is a powerhouse and great help in a fight so may still be good to have on occasion.
But as much as he’s easy to progress he seems to be playing hard to get with me. I get a lot of love for ever but no option to romance. I’ve given up for now, “you’ve had your chance Danse, I’m going with Deacon now”.
Very easy to progress without partnering if you leave him at a small settlement where you’ll do weapon and armour mods, he loves both.

Three Ghosts of Christmas

– Deacon
He’s my current active companion, and I regret not having taken him earlier.
He is a human chameleon and changes appearance more often than my character uses stimpacks. Some pretty good ones as well, like the Vault outfit that matched that Vault number I was visiting at the time. Fun discussions too, although don’t be fooled by his little lies ;)
Also seems to be a lot less clumsy that any of the others, he hasn’t botched any sneaking attempt yet. Looking forward to get his perk, whatever that may be.

– Nick Valentine
I tried, but he seemed to like only hacking terminals, making it slow to progress. I left him aside for now.

– Strong
Not my type.
Only got dislikes with him for the short time we travelled so definitely not matching my playtype. Maybe good for a “bad” playthrough?

So there you go. These are my findings and tips but all companions are worth a shot. Even Strong had some funny moments with me, just not matching my character.
Have fun!

Note: I also recently found a new companion, Curie, but won’t add it to my list now otherwise it’ll ruin the lovely 3×3 structure of the post. Also didn’t include Dogmeat as there is no relationship progress to work on.

Ker

———————
[Update]
Since posting this I’ve progressed on three more companions.
– Deacon is definitely great to have. And for a sneak type character like mine, his perk enhancing sneaking damage is a must have
– Nick Valentine also got maxed, all of a sudden it went fast, not sure why. So I actually didn’t spend that much time with him and thought he was just okay.
– Curie is the best of the bunch and the only one I could romance as well. At first her accent annoyed me but I got used to it. She is a strong fighter and can handle a mean flamethrower! Her personal quest is one of the best storywise so overall I highly recommend using her.
Potential bug to be aware of: she seemed to always run back to Vault 81 instead of the place I’d tell her to go when dismissing her, so if can’t find her anymore, get over there; she will be outside the doctors room, below the classroom.
(Danse still stuck, I’m now trying to get Strong to progress. But may drop him in favour of fun instead, so probably either Cait or Deacon, or Piper)

[Update 2]
Seems MacCready’s exceptional perk may have been a bug and may not be as useful anymore after a patch.
In which case I’d replace him with Cvrie for my Top 3.

First posted on 30 November 15

#008. On Fallout 4: First Impressions and fallout

Thought I’d jot down some first impressions after a weekend full of Fallout 4.
I did something similar with GTAV a few months ago, if I carry on it will start to look like I’m on my way to write full reviews. Not the plan.

Anyway, back to the topic, these will be first impressions.
Those are as I just arrived in Diamond City (I think it is the 2nd main storyline quest, seems to be the main city in the map, right in the middle of it too) but I spent a long time rummaging across the wasteland for a total of 25 hours and 32% game progress (as per the game hub stats).
Also worth noting for full disclosure that I played Fallout 3 a lot and loved it. Also played Fallout (the first one then) and got frustrated by it.

How do I find Fallout 4 so far?
A mix of F1 & F3: Some great stuff but with some annoying frustrations.
Before playing I actively avoided reading reviews, first because I didn’t want to know what others thought, given I had made up my mind to purchase, second to avoid spoilers. Now that I’ve played, I’ve had a quick look at some ratings, and find it quite laughable. But not really surprised, reviews do not fit the same purpose they used to anymore (but enough of that, probably worth its own post for another time).

So what is great? It is more Fallout.

The companions are a great part of the game. I love how they extended on this here. They all have something funny or interesting to say. And being able to build a strong personal relationship is a nice touch too.

But for me the attraction to Fallout relies mostly on the retro futuristic atmosphere. Being simultaneously in the 50s and in the future, whilst listening to some fantastic tunes on my radio is a great joy. So when I’m given the opportunity to free roam and travel to ruins everywhere, full of unknown stories to discover, it is a pretty amazing experience.

Until you’ve exhausted all the songs and the radio starts to loop; and the ruins start throwing challenges at your face that ruin your stay. Then all that remains is a bit of a sour taste in your mouth…

So what is not so great? Quite a lot.

Starting with the companions. Quite a lot is wrong with them, beginning with the fact that you are not told who can join you and how to get them to follow you (apart for the dog, your first companion, who automatically joins). Luckily I knew companions were a thing because I played F3 but why was it so well hidden and I had to actively seek to enrol someone else? Sure Dogmeat (that’s the dog’s name) is well loved and you will feel like bad ass Mad Max to have one as your companion, but others were implemented so don’t let them go to waste. (Update: you do get notified for later companions, but definitely not Preston nor Codsworth, had to go and talk to them)
Another problem comes once you managed to replace them and you send the previous one to a given settlement. If you then want to recruit them back again, good luck and have fun running around all over the place like Benny Hill, trying to find them. Because they will be walking all over the place, seemingly playing hide & seek. Yes in a life like behaviour no one would stand on a chair waiting for you to talk to them again, but it is not a fun mechanic in a game. The solution ends up sending them to the smallest location you own so they are easy to find, as they will stay there (want to make a comment about life-like behaviour again?).
Yet another problem, is even when you solved the previous two, you may still find yourself unable to get someone to join you again. Case in point is Preston Garvey (I think he’s the third potential companion you could have, first human). I managed to get him to follow me then swapped him at one point. Now I can’t get him to join anymore as his only dialog option is about storming some kind of castle, when said castle is all the way to the other end of the map. “No Preston I don’t feel we’re ready yet, looks more like an end game or at least much later objective when we’ve levelled up, but how about we go help those survivors over here?”. Preston is not interested, I’m stuck. Probably a bug, but annoying nevertheless.

Next comes the looting. I have a few big issues with it.
First it gets a lot more complicated. There is modding now where you can use junk to enhance an existing weapon. Problem is it is not user friendly and difficult to understand. Plus you find yourself always running short of ridiculous items like screws (…) until you spend a skill point on a clearly important perk.
Next is the small parts gear you can mix and match on top of regular gear you may be used to. Those are never explained and it took me a while to try them on randomly, as I was convinced they’d be used to mod standard apparels. Oh and by the way, you can mod those too; it’s become way too complicated.
Next is the painful process of selecting which one is the best. Not only can you not easily compare two items that go on the same body part, they are not even sorted together. So the task of selecting the best apparel or weapon, ends up taking way more organisation and time than it should.
And finally the loot management. As touched on the previous point, there is no sorting for weapons or gear but none for anything at all either. When I want to use some chems to boost some stat I have to go through all my food mixed in it for example. It is all very cumbersome. I don’t remember how F3 was but even if it was the same, then they should have improved it with this latest iteration.

I’ll end up with issues on the new stuff.
First the well promoted building management. I knew I wouldn’t be into it, but even then, it feels unnecessary and botched. It is extremely overwhelming to start. And then it becomes a chore when you have to take things down one by one, a way to clear a full house would have been nice. Also a warning that an item will be too far from the generator without an extra electric pole would be nice (I had to reload a save because I found myself in a dead end in the “tutorial” quest that introduces electricity…). I can say I’m not looking forward to the achievement requiring to have top satisfaction in a large settlement!
Next, the occasional character freeze. Not talking about clipping or occasional glitches, but my character sometimes decides to not move for a couple of seconds. Most of the time when coming out of a building or looting a safe. Having seen the same in battle I think it may be linked to a new stunned mechanic, but when it happens out of combat I’d say there is a bug that is pretty frustrating.
And then the companion app. I was hoping for a great helper, in particular was expecting to have the map constantly showing on it, and using it to swap weapon and apparels. But it’s been nothing but a mess, hard to use and not fixing the issues of the game version. Looks like I’ll only be using it when playing the holotape games instead.
And I’ll end with what is probably the most annoying of all, linked to how looting has been “improved”. In F4 they implemented it so that you don’t need to press a button to check the content before looting anymore. So with just the crosshair on a furniture or body, you can loot anything inside. Once you look in a different direction that inventory disappears. Sounds great so far, until you find yourself in a tough battle fighting for your life. And you need to reload as an emergency… but the game decides you need to pick up some Duct Tape & Turpentine instead… then you die.

Ok well, that was meant to be a quick first impressions and it feels I’ve written way too much already.
The game is still pretty good by the way, don’t hesitate to pick it up I’m sure they will fix most of the problems or implement alternatives. And I’m definitely looking forward to what the PC mods will come up with. But it does not make sense to say it is the best ever, perfect, or even close to perfect.

Ker

——————-
UPDATE:
Played some more, a lot more, and can add a few more annoyances to the list:
– AI: I had a bad feeling about it but got confirmed playing more.
AI of companions is awful, they always go where they shouldn’t (walk in front of you when you collect loot -bad with the new “improved” looting, see above- or stand in doorsteps), they don’t go where they should (taking an elevator with them is rarely easy, and pointing them to it I was answered by “can’t go there, I’m not a magician” :) at least it got a smile of me).
AI of enemies is ridiculous, either standing still waiting to be killed, or hearing you when you’re not moving and being perfect when throwing grenades.
– Dialogues/Story: The new dumb down system I can get used to, it is the “Tell Tale” fakeness of it that I don’t appreciate; i.e. most often than not, it doesn’t matter what you say, in the end it is all the same.
– Quests & Loading screens: Most quests are of the boring type and repetitive. I got to the stage where following the dog for miles during one of the main quests was making me happy. That huge map feels like a lot of padding in the end. And with the boring quests, the loading screens become painfully more obvious when you still get 3 or 4 in a row to return a quest. Why have they not improved on this?
– More bugs: Looks like a bug prevents the Vault 75 quest to start altogether. This is locking me out of one of the longest achievement, unless a fix comes in a later patch. It is one of the worst bug I’ve seen, but far from the only one. It is getting old.

Well what can I add as a new conclusion? The game is still great fun, but very disappointing at the same time. It is broken in many ways, and as much as it had to be expected, I hope gamers won’t be blind and won’t give them a free pass. And I hope that Bethesda react as well as Ubisoft did last year, and give the first DLC free.

First posted on 16 November 15

#007. On campaign mode and progression gating

I was thinking about how campaign mode has historically been working until now and how we’re used to have to progress from the start to get to the end.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could skip forward, if you wanted to?
Looks like someone is going to do just that in a AAA game (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-10-12-you-can-play-the-last-level-of-call-of-dutys-next-campaign-first)

Campaigns have always been my favourite part of a game. I enjoy a good story telling and compelling visuals that go with it are a great bonus when playing a game or watching a movie. Going through a journey can often be amazing, emotional and rewarding. Back in the beginning of games, when visuals were more scarce all we were playing for was to get to the end and be rewarded with the end video. But back then games were pretty harder too and there have been campaigns I never saw the end of.
I sometimes wished there was a way to skip forward and I suppose this is how save games started being exchanged on PCs. In days before internet this was the only way to see the end. I never did it myself but felt frustrated being stumped, as much as I felt elated when I was managing to finish one.
Those are two different experiences that could be achieved from playing a campaign. One being experiencing a journey, the other being overcoming a challenge. This is definitely accepted as a fact and recognised by certain difficulty settings defining Easy as ‘Just the Story’ or Hard as ‘Challenge Me’. So why don’t games go one further and allow you to play completely freely?

You could argue that to appreciate a story, which is the main draw of a campaign, you can’t just watch the end. But do you have to do it all? If other media allow you to skip at will why does a game have to restrict it?
Now some games with a progression unlocking skills or XP wouldn’t work well that way but others might. Plus it could always have embedded automated progression to allow it (e.g. Hearts of Stone DLC in Witcher 3).
Another interesting mechanic could be skipping bits you don’t like or struggle with, so you can continue experiencing the story and not have to give up and fall back to a video site (I think Splosion Man is the game I played that did that).

This is something worth thinking about and getting out of conventions. Let’s see what happens next.

NB1: talking about the experience, not giving away achievements
NB2: talking about a different approach, not making a quick buck mobile-style (where micro-transaction sometimes allows unlocking everything)

Ker
First posted on 14 October 15

#006. On the GTASC 2015 and what is has in common with cycling

So a few months ago I joined The Great TrueAchievement Score Challenge 2015, or GTASC.
I had no intention to compete in it but rather was simply partaking in a social event organised by the site. Truth be told I only joined after seeing a couple of people from my friends list joining it. And I was curious to see what would happen with it.
Having no intention to strategize around it, I actually was expecting to get dropped fairly quickly. I even had a few weeks when I wasn’t able to play more than a day and hardly unlocked anything. Yet here I am, still in the game half way in. Which is rather funny.

So I started looking at what was going on and noticed that my score was generally going up on its own. Also the elimination score was not only low but often even negative. That’s when it hit me that this Competition wasn’t much of a competition, not a strategy game either, it is a special kind of race.
And as I say that, there are obvious types of race that probably come to mind, is it a sprint or a marathon? Well, it is neither and you should stop thinking athletics. This is a jump race, where contestants are dared to make a move. This is a cycling sprint race.
Have you ever watched track cycling? They have sprints where two riders race each other, but sometimes both rather let the other be in front at the start, and this means a face off at the beginning of the race where they do a track stand that can last a while. This is what the GTASC feels like. Because so many people have been taking part and don’t really care (guilty as charged), added to the fact that only very few people (proportionally) get the drop each week, there really is no pressure to move or do anything. Worse, it discourages it, and this is bad because it ends up removing all fun from playing games as I’m about to illustrate.
I can take the example of someone that had to actively try and ‘commit GTASC suicide’ and still found it hard to execute. In something called a ‘Competition’ this tells you a lot. Given the lack of pressure to score he was trying to save them for later, eventually finding himself taken hostage by it and not able to play games properly (let alone enjoy them) anymore. This should not be the spirit of a social event.
Given the rules, the only reliable way to commit suicide is to play brand new games. The reason is those do start with extremely unstable and very high scores, that you can waste when you don’t need them, with the high probability that they will then come back at you the following week with an awful decay and stab you in the back. So if you care about staying in the competition, the newer the game, the more you should avoid it (or be ready & able to play a lot more games). The GTASC ends up then discouraging participants to play the latest games. This should not be the spirit of a social event.
In fact another weird behaviour given the rules is that your pedigree will play a big part on how well you perform. The more new Games with Gold you already played, the safer you are the month they are given away. So luck plays a fairly big part here. This should not be the spirit of a… competition.

And that’s the key. This, at least as it stands with the current rules, is not what I would call a competition. At least not a skill based competition. Rather it is more akin to another statistic ranking or a semi-special leaderboard.
Although it will become a competition, and a fierce one at that. The difficulty looks like it’s growing exponentially so at one point, it will likely be extremely difficult to stay in, and it will definitely transform into a good old sprint. Good luck with that one to those who care. This is where I find myself lucky to have only signed up whilst considering it a curiosity and nothing more. So I haven’t stopped playing the games I want and can still enjoy them (for now, as interest in dwindling but that’s another matter).

Ker
(First posted on 10 July 15)

#005. On Ratings

When I finish playing a game and then give it a rating, I almost always add a one liner comment to complete it. But I know rating a game 2 out of 5 and then going on saying it was average may be raising some eyebrows.
This is the explanation of how I use ratings on TA.

Firstly I am a regular guy and not a reviewer. This is important not in explaining how I give ratings but how I game. Because I don’t have to play everything and certainly don’t want to either. So I choose what I play and only play what I think will enjoy, or occasionally the odd unexpected one out of curiosity. I don’t play all the free to play games either nor all the Games With Gold freebies, not even adding them to my library for later if I know I’m not interested.
And what this means is I am not very likely to play something I don’t like, hence making the most regular worst rating I’d give, ‘Average’, or 2.5 out of 5.
Then in addition to that, I am also one of those people that think ‘nothing is ever perfect’. It doesn’t mean I never give top mark on anything but as a general rule that would be my first reaction.
So this means the likely best rating I’d give out of 5 would be 4.
Because half points are not part of how I think about ratings (if you need more granularity then I say change the base instead), that would leave me with pretty much all my games being either 3 or 4 out of 5. And that isn’t very helpful.

So the way I do it is actually fairly simple.
To start with, the ‘nothing is perfect’ is not stringent so I’m perfectly (…) happy to give excellent games the top mark on the scale.
Then I want to allow myself to have enough range to play with to rank the games, so I apply a non linear scale where the average is 2.This makes my personal ranking scale look something like:

1=Bad ; 2=Average ; 3=Good ; 4=Very good ; 5=Excellent

Now I do use half stars as well but in two different ways.
One is we can’t give ratings of 0, though luckily it shouldn’t happen very often. However if needed (e.g. a game is so terribly shallow it shouldn’t even be called a game) I’d give it half a star.
Then I use them as brownie points when I thought something was particularly nice or special and the game deserves some sweets. Sometimes not sure why but just feel like giving some extra. After all, rating something will always be subjective and irrational won’t it?

Ker
(First posted on 25 June 15)

#004. On TA ratios

With the recent poll on ratio re-evaluation for TU achievements, I thought I’d put something together to sum up my views.
First, in order to have it in one place, make it easier to understand and avoid contradiction; second to try and come up with helpful suggestions.

I do not have an answer to the problem as I am not certain what the problem is, but this would be how I’d go about it.

1. The problem

Ratio is used by people differently. Either as a rarity or a difficulty meter.
The rationale for rarity is that difficulty is subjective and can’t be agreed on, so rarity is all that can be accurately measured.
The rationale for difficulty is that rarity is pointless and unfair.
Out of the two I don’t personally take side, I do not care.

The problem further exacerbates because some people use comparisons between achievements in order to assess what they want to play or compare the value they give an achievement, which creates the following further issues:
– rarity rationale: as it stands, ratios are impossible to compare from different games, so a ratio of 2 can be much rarer than a ratio of 5
– difficulty rationale: as it is accepted being subjective but wants to be objective, it allows calculation to be based on relative rarity, which opens the door to criticism and calls to jump rationale boat; plus ‘relative’ is relative and creates debates around the subject and mixes completion into it

There are probably more issues on each sides, but no issue can discredit the rationale it is linked to. Instead it should prompt into questioning if the calculation is appropriate for its objective. In either case it seems safe to say it isn’t. So how could it be fixed?

2. Predicates

Some ground rules have to be set or there is no point continuing. So let’s assume and accept the following:
PR1 : The selection of site members is varied and representative of gamers
PR2 : Calculations should only use unequivocal data and never guess
PR3 : Cheaters are excluded from stats as per site rules (cf. Cheaters Policy)

I’ll say PR1 is a stretch about the representative bit, but not that bad that I’m not ready to accept it here.

3. Abbreviations & Definitions

As we will be using certain concepts a few times, let’s put them down to have an easy reference and type less.

TAU = TrueAchievements Users – Number of people having registered on the site
Game = Unique container ID that can include different types of items, being base, TU or DLC
GWA = Unique Gamers w/ Achievement – Number of TAU having unlocked the achievement
GWG = Unique Gamers w/ Game – Number of TAU having unlocked any achievement in the Game
GWI = Unique Gamers w/ Item – Number of TAU having unlocked any achievement in the item (where item can be either base game, TU or DLC)

Not wanting to get into what a ‘Game’ is and off-topic semantics, let’s call here Game the overall container of a variety of content. This allows covering all cases in the new digital world where we can have free or non-free everything and where DLC can be played without having base container game.

So to be clear, it’s important to understand the distinction between GWG and GWI. GWG is not the sum of GWI, only if not a single player has played more than one item is this true, otherwise
GWG <= A.GWI + B.GWI + C.GWI (where A can be base game, B TU1 & C DLC1)
I will assume TA is able to determine the number of unique players in each item or combination of items, given what it already does or plans to do.

4. Ratio Suggestions

4.1 Rarity rationale
This is probably the easiest.
Rarity is a number defining frequency of occurrence. It can be defined from a pool serving as a sample.
As such, it actually is not necessary to ponder if the fact that not every single player having an Xbox console isn’t registered on the site, statistics tell us the number doesn’t change (given PR1).
If I was advocating rarity as what ratio measures, I’d then probably say:

TA_rarity_ratio = TAU / GWA

This provides a consistent ratio and allows for comparable numbers.
Rare games will have high ratios. It’s not stupid. They don’t ‘deserve’ it. It’s not ‘fair’. It simply is aligned to the definition of what the ratio is within the premise of the rationale of this section.

4.2 Difficulty rationale

This is harder as I have to stick with the principle of calculating a ratio rather than suggest having it averaged from votes; after all we want to stay compliant with PR2.
So we have to accept that difficulty has to inject a bit of rarity to estimate a ratio and this will also allow me to stay away from a discussion about boosting and how this affects difficulty of obtaining an achievement.
Furthermore let’s tackle TU vs DLC here, because TU can be turned down or never prompted to a gamer depending on the case. As we are in a difficulty rationale, not rarity, this is not enough to warrant separation.
If we then accept all that for this section, let’s then say we will be using relative rarity. We then have to pick one of two options: (GWI / GWA) or (GWG / GWA)

All depends on if we consider each item worth considering standalone or if we rather look at a Game as an entity that makes sense only as a whole
Note the first is how ratios used to be calculated for everything some time ago before the DLC poll changed things.
Note also the second may be how the new TU poll proposes to change TU only calculation, although I’m not completely sure.

The reason for calculation changes has often been that certain non-base achievements don’t have a ‘fair’ value. It was the reason for the previous DLC change, to use a geometric mean calculation and is often mentioned (with a range of examples) for the current discussion. All good and well-meant but the wrong moves as it adds complexity and steps away from consistency.
If the original calculation was felt inappropriate, the right solution should be identified and then implemented en masse, so as to maintain integrity and consistency (so my view back in the DLC poll, was that none of the available options were going to be the right answer).

Looking back at the two options we have, and given the way things have evolved, there is no way to know for sure the concept of a base game will remain prevalent. Like it or not it will probably go more the route of containers from which customers can pick and choose packages or dare I say IAPs.
Because of that, if I was advocating difficulty as what ratio measures, I’d then probably say:

TA_difficulty_ratio = GWI / GWA

This provides a consistent ratio and satisfies PR2.
Each item has the same relative rarity applied and is never stretched depending on the type of the item and a different lens being applied. Also prevents forcing all contents and ignoring accessibility limitations.
Unpopular items may have low ratios. It’s not ‘unfair’. It simply is aligned to the definition of what the ratio is within the premise of the rationale of this section.
The fact is, certain TU or DLC achievements stack on base game achievements and their ratio may look ‘off’. I’m not disputing this but will handle this later. Either way, there is no ‘fairness’ to be talking about, if at the same time we claim and aim for objective stats.

5. The Fix ?

Without taking sides for any meaning of the ratio, I’d suggest a change in any case. And I always applied a principle of consistency and not treat exceptions as a driver.
The fact is, some ratios will ‘feel’ ‘unfair’. Clearly if I need to do one thing 10 times for an achievement and the exact same thing 20 times for another, I’d want the 20 to be rewarded better than the 10 and also expect it to be rarer.

My suggestion is not to include that aspect blindly to a bag of achievements but create a new flag instead.
Some achievements are directly linked to other achievements, whilst others are completely independent. So how about considering that an achievement can be of a certain ‘type’, which could be managed by a new flag designating a dependency? A new ratio calculation could then apply.
Now it could be simply adding the ratio of its predecessor but as the calculation would be completely different, instead I’d suggest the following:

If Ach1 belongs to Item1 and Ach2 belongs to Item2, and Ach1 is defined as a pre-requisite for Ach2, then:

TA_ratio_successor = (Gamers with Item1 or Item2) / GWA

The calculation would remain the same whether the achievements are both part of the same base game or DLC (becomes GWI/GWA) and so the idea of keeping things simple and consistent remains whilst awarding a seemingly more appropriate ratio to those that ‘deserve’ it.
Very little achievements would be impacted, keeping this an exception treatment, and no achievement that would not ‘deserve’ it would see it applied to it.
And as there already is a flag that affects ratio (unobtainables due to dev error) then it certainly is doable.

6. Conclusion

Again, I don’t claim to have the solution to something I’m not sure I understand given it doesn’t matter to me. But I reckon the above may be something to think about.

Ker

PS: Addendum regarding TA score
May sound off topic at first but want to add a few quick comments on TA calculation.
In addition to the contentious way of how ratios are produced, there is potentially a similar reserve about the TA calculation multiplying that ratio with the standard GamerScore. Some view keeping an arbitrary value in the mix (GS), as ‘dirtying’ the TA as a result.
Now we need to keep in mind that a standard GamerScore being attached to the target does affect how people react and aim for it. The GS is like a carrot and the higher the prize, the more people will try to get it. The result is that for an hypothetical identical achievement in two games, if one game rewards more GS, it will likely end with a lower ratio (in particular in the difficulty rationale, a lot less impact in the rarity rationale).
So given GWA and GS are linked, if the Ratio includes GWA, and if the TA calculation includes the Ratio, it then makes sense to also use GS in the TA calculation.
This is what TA currently does.
Now how much of an impact the GS has on the ratio cannot be an exact science and you could certainly say it is not as simple as a straight multiplication, but it is at least clear the GS should feature somewhere in the TA formula.

(First posted on December 19^th, 2014)

Batman Arkham City – Review

Batman Arkham City is a game that can provide a lot of fun whilst being pretty bad at its core.
The epitome of modern games, it is probably one of the best examples one can find to understand why gaming has been changing for the worst.

The Good – A wonderful visual experience

Batman has a lot going for it, starting with a crowd of fans wanting nothing but to love the game. And it delivers with stunning visuals from the start.
The atmosphere of the city is gritty, on point and you can only be satisfied with what they’ve done with the architecture of the buildings. The characters themselves are varied and detailed. It’s all a treat to look at.
The story is well written, with side plots making things more interesting and creating opportunities to encounter more villains. What’s more, the stellar voice acting really brings it all to life.
The animation wraps it all up. Added to the voice over in perfect synchronisation, it raises the story telling to a very high level. But it’s not just in the cutscenes, every single animation in the game is smooth, flashy and badass. You never stop being bedazzled by them and changing character between Batman & Catwoman means it’s hard to get tired of it.

The Bad – A terrible gameplay experience
When it came to playing however, it was a slog.

The fighting is awful.
The aforementioned flashy moves apparently make people feel like Batman, it made me feel like a mug. I was enjoying the bombastic spectacle on screen, but I wasn’t Batman. And I don’t blame the simple button layout, this was absolutely fine. It was just very bland and mostly repetitive.
You quickly learn there is no need for flashy moves anyway as most enemies stay there watching you, waiting for their turn to get whooped. Other times you are stuck in an animation and will see your combo ended.
Many times you jump across a whole room to punch someone in the face. Other times you can’t finish the one just in front of you.
And so very quickly, I was avoiding every fight I could, taking it to the sky when possible. Little did I know, I wasn’t out of the woods…

The traversal is weak.
Taking the sequel to a more open space, it came up with grappling and gliding.
Looking at it from a distance it does seem cool at first, but doing it made me laugh.
Let’s start with the grappling. It doesn’t always work when you expect it should and many a time I had to shake the camera until it eventually locked onto the target. When I mentioned ‘modern gaming’ this is one of those ‘features’ that is relevant. More and more games have this feature when things ‘snap on’ when in close proximity. This can be an appropriate mechanic at times, but when it becomes used as the solution for everything it becomes a problem. In this case, I believe it wasn’t done right. Furthermore if you do grapple and want to use that as a slingshot to keep moving further, the game applies its own physics and changes your direction not based on your movement but rather on the fixed object you grappled on. Most of the time. Not great.
Let’s deal with gliding now. Batman isn’t Superman so he’s not going to have as much control, but my problem was with what seemed to be inconsistency in the turning around, especially going up and down. It was most prominent when an AR challenge had me start from a high vantage point and I simply had to jump-glide to reach the first ring. Despite being seemingly a single button press to get, with apparently zero chances of missing that first ring, the game managed to make me lose enough altitude to miss it, about a third of the time.
Maybe with a lot of practice there is a way to master it all and move across town as if you were flying, but I doubt many people do. All in all, although it looked good, the traversal quickly began something I had to do, not enjoy. Because at the end of the day, this open space wasn’t a well designed one, it was just a path to cross to move from one closed space level to the other.

The stealth is hilarious.
In the previous game, at least stealth was viable. Here they have heartbeat monitors and as soon as you take one down, they know you’re here and go into combat mode. But more annoyingly, only one type of takedown is silent, so it’s a lot more hit & run than ninja cleanup. Not my kind of stealth.

The bosses are lame.
You face a lot of super villains if you do all the side missions, but not one of them is satisfying. The worst is probably the one you don’t even fight but lock up automatically in a cutscene. Another you defeat with the press of one button. Not a single boss was satisfying.

The Ugly – Collectibles & bugs
Not much to list here so there’s that.

400 collectibles for the Riddler’s storyline is not a lot of fun, especially as it requires a lot of backtracking.
And I found many bugs, not only several achievements not unlocking but also enemies stuck in place mid-fight and Batman not moving properly.

Final Word – Appearance over substance
Batman Arkham City is a modern game for a modern audience. These are the days of instant gratification and the importance of looks and social presentation.
There is an undeniable fun one can have playing this game and I think it does a great job at making the players forget the bad and only remember the good when it reaches the end.
The stroke of genius is the end game that allows anyone to remain in the game world to mop up anything left or simply make their own fun and enjoy ‘being Batman’ and looking badass. This end game becomes nothing more than a playground where almost all negative aspects of the gameplay disappear.
And I don’t blame anyone glossing over or forgetting the bad, it’s all by design, and you have to applaud the developers for being that successful in their endeavour.
The problem becomes when the success of such a formula, leads to it being replicated by all and variety and creativity suffer as a result.

So for me, I can’t forget that this game is all appearance and no substance. I expect more from my games than just bells and whistles.
As I much as I enjoy a Big Mac once in a while, I wouldn’t give McDonald’s a single Michelin star.
2/5

(written on February 27^th 2023)

#003. On GTA V, or A disappointing start

To start I want to make sure I state this will not attempt to be a review of the game.
This will be simple first impressions on a game I had been waiting eagerly for, on the new generation.

In a month filled* with amazing** titles, GTA V featured quite high in my list and promised to be something special.
Now I have only played for about 15 minutes and only one (real) mission, but already my enthusiasm has been bruised and I reckon I will shelf it for a few weeks. Why?
Well from the moment I started the game, it felt wrong almost every step of the way.
In a nutshell, I felt restricted and pushed on a conveyor belt, not having much fun at all during the ride.
I am confident I will end up loving it but here is how the first contact unfolded.

After the initial loading screens I was expecting some kind of cutscene to introduce me to the new story and put me in the mood; instead I found myself straight in the game. Bit weird I thought, could have done with an intro. Well, if there was one then I already forgot about it. But what really made it hard to take was that I was finding myself under immediate duress. That is to say straight into an action scene where my partners were constantly nagging me to get a move on. Now some people may actually enjoy that straight in start, but I wanted to take the time to enjoy that first sight of that first room in gorgeous new generation definition. Because it was actually amazingly crisp! Yet my AI mates wouldn’t stop badgering me and insulting me. Add to that the deluge of in game notifications explaining a few things that you don’t have the time to read and the settings I had to go and change to modify the Y-axis inverting (shame the One doesn’t have console-wide settings for this like the 360 had) and you can imagine the stress you find yourself in. Feeling you may have missed important information on how to play, you search for the briefs. It is a pain to have to go there, but at least they are comprehensive so that’s handy.
Now the action is one of a heist though so maybe it all fits in and is meant to stress you. Feel in the situation. I can accept that for now. Then comes in the part where they show you how to switch to FPS. Which I did. And was not happy. It felt like I was in constant drunken bullet time. I didn’t stay long. Missed opportunity for something new? Maybe. It just didn’t feel right yet and I just wanted a good bite of my usual GTA experience first before trying to change it. Of course I will give it a go later, I am conscious that using it only until I left the first room is not really giving it much chance.
So I eventually moved on and decided to have a look around. Until the AI reminded me ‘You went past the room mate‘. So no looking around allowed? No having fun? Just move your stick where you’re meant to?
Getting more and more frustrated here, but then they show off the character switching mechanic and it feels fantastic again. What a feeling.

The prologue then goes on for a bit and we finally get an intro video, before we get introduced to another character. And as we do, we jump straight into a car. But if you were expecting some learning steps this time round, you can forget that too. This is not a simple driving activity but a chase. So again, no time to learn at you own pace, you are thrown right into the pit. And it has no GPS destination. So if like me you managed to overtake the fool that thinks he can drive faster than you, you will most certainly have found you went too fast and he took a turn you could not anticipate, which triggered your very first failed mission screen… Was the game designer budget cut for that bit? Trying again you endeavour to stay behind and realise the car is not easy to drive either. Which is probably by design this time, as I expect driving is a skill that needs to be built up and will get easier as one progresses through the game, but then please let me start with a simple delivery or pick up mission, not a chase.

With that done you find yourself eventually at your house where they show you very smartly all the things you can do there before putting you into free roam. But the ‘fun’ isn’t anywhere finished yet.
Free roaming games are great, you get to do anything you like and can go crazy or simply look around can’t you? Well, not in GTA V apparently. Only two blocks away from my crib I walk next to two girls having a chat. I stop right in front of them to listen the well written discussion they created in the game. They notice me and walk away with a sniggering comment. And I am amazed at how dynamic this world promises to be. But five steps away a group of blokes are coming at me, insulting me and eventually, as I’m trying to walk away, punching me. Obviously I respond and knock them cold, but not before it triggers the police to come after me and I find myself in a desperate chase again because of course, police answers street fights with gunshots. I’m all up for saying the game probably takes place in a rough neighbourhood but this is meant to be a game and moreover the beginning of a game, where I haven’t done a thing yet! Give me a break.

Starting to feel really annoyed but I decide to go and do the first real mission. It is a collect and drop mission. Sounds good. But again things will not turn out to be so simple. You end up in your first gunfight, which is ok, but as it ends and you think you can look around and collect ammo, your second ‘Mission Failed’ screen appears. What did I do now? More what you didn’t, turns out you were meant to run after someone. Again, keeping with the trend of no taking your time, no fun allowed in this game, keep running like a dog gamerboy. So you restart -thankfully there was a checkpoint at the end of the gunfight- and go on another chase. During that they show you the ‘focus on target’ button and you quickly realise this should never be used again as it is extremely awkward to drive with and was the reason for my third red screen. Even after using my character’s special at some point and realising that shooting during it seemed to make the enemy completely impervious to bullets. Was that a bug?

Either way, so many failures before having even completed the first real mission felt absolutely ludicrous. And especially the pace at which I was thrown into the game killed the fun element of it all.
This is definitely not the first game to present any of those ‘flaws’ but it certainly felt like the first time they were all experienced in the same game and that quickly.

Maybe that is the way games are today, or maybe I am getting too old for this shit.
I’m not sure, but will soon find out. And am still looking forward to a lot of fun with the game.

Ker
———–
* Two in the same month is a lot for me
** AC:U falls in the lot, not as broken as people may report
First posted November 24th 2014