Tobold has a post about the "trap" of virtual rewards which I posted a medium-sized comment on. Of course these rewards could be achievements, gear, titles, gold, high scores or whatever else a game gives you, and the topic is obviously quite relevant - if not specifically directed at - WoW.
I commented because I wasn't quite sure what he was trying to say. I don't put much stock in the idea that virtual rewards are impermanent, because we are impermanent and everything we do is impermanent. If that disqualified things from having value then nothing would have any value.1 I think, though, the phenomenon that he is concerned with is the following. Please bear in mind this that I don't mean to put words into Tobold's mouth, but just that this is what I understand the problem with virtual rewards to be:
When we first start playing a game, we get really excited by the gameplay, the graphics, the world, or whatever it is we like about the game. Most games quickly start giving us some kind of reward for playing. Our character levels up or we get a new weapon or we unlock an achievement, for example. The reason we like the game is because we actually like playing it, but the rewards we get serve as a point to crystalize our enjoyment around. In order to easily attach value to an activity as a whole, we like to be able to give that activity a beginning, a middle and an end and the end is what gets top billing. This, of course, all has something to do with dopamine, apparently, but whatever the chemical explanation, we do seem to have a fascination with conclusions.
So though we liked exploring the game, we affix all of that like to hitting level 2 or getting a new weapon or whatever. Then we affix a bunch more like to hitting level 3, and so on. We create for ourselves the mythology that we are enjoying the game because of the rewards it gives us. At some point we will have ceased enjoying the actual gameplay, but we will have long since convinced ourselves that the rewards are good, and so we will continue to trudge through gameplay in order to get to the next reward.
Humans, being terrible at knowing what makes them happy, will not realize that this is not making them happy, and will continue doing it, expecting it to make them happy despite the fact that reality has stopped supporting that expectation.
The fact that there are undoubtedly tons of people playing WoW who fall into this category, and tons of people playing other games as well doing this same thing, certainly seems like a problem. Perhaps less of a problem than marrying someone you really don't like or spending your entire life addicted to a damaging substance - two other things that can be caused by the same phenomenon - but a problem nonetheless. People are doing something for fun, and not having fun doing it.
Of course I think Tobold is also concerned with the other effect that this has. The longer a game like WoW exists, the more people are playing it who don't actually like playing it. Those people think that they'd be happier if they got more stuff, so they tell the developers they want more stuff. The developers put in more stuff. The game ends up being all about getting this stuff and it loses the reasons why the people liked it in the first place.
But here's where I think things get a little weird. Yes, the developers eventually start taking out the things that made those games popular in the first place. But no one actually likes those things anymore. People may have come to the game because it was hard as hell, because there were insane grinds, because there was massive travel time and forced grouping. Those are the things I was talking about at the beginning - the things they liked that ended up getting lumped in with the virtual rewards. The whole reason, however, that the virtual rewards became the desired thing was because none of that stuff that originally attracted people to the game is enjoyable for them anymore. If they still loved all that stuff then they'd be getting the same satisfaction out of the game they were in the first place. The reason they are on the virtual rewards treadmill is because the game isn't fun for them anymore. So what value are all those things that have been taken away to make the virtual rewards grind faster? Who wants those things anyway? Just because people liked a game for reason X when they first started playing it doesn't mean they will ever want to play any game for reason X again.
Virtual rewards trapping people into games is more of a function of how people are than how games or virtual rewards are. The real problem here is that our love for games, like everything else, dies.
And this is why the reams of blog posts saying that WoW sucks or that it has gone completely wrong or that it is dying are so depressing. It's like looking in on a eulogy - an angry eulogy all about blaming the person who died. Of course this has nothing really to do with the Tobold post I started off talking about, since it isn't a "look at where WoW went wrong" post.
A lot of people are still genuinely enjoying playing WoW. It is quite possible to do so. Lots of people like getting virtual rewards, not because they've fallen into a trap, but because they are fun to get. If you don't like doing these things anymore, then maybe it's time to give up the game, or at least cut back on it. As long as you actually like doing those things, there is no problem.
Game designers can make better decisions that will help games have more longevity and that will make them better games, but they can't do anything about the fact that the individuals who play their game will stop wanting to play one day. They also can't make a new good game by just resurrecting all the things that made an old game good.
1. The fact that I am personally troubled by the idea of affixing value to impermanent things is a major contributor to me needing drugs to be able to function in society. I don't recommend this, and if you can manage it, I'd go with accepting that impermanence is okay instead.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
10 / 25 Player Differences
For most heroic bosses, it seems that 10-player is currently harder than 25-player. Interestingly, the two bosses where it is clearly much harder on 25-player both have chain lightning abilities.
Which brings us to the obvious question of what abilities actually make fights harder for one size of raid than the other. Here is a quick compilation of things that the developers should be keeping in mind when balancing the next round of raid encounters for 10 and 25 players.
Spread Out
When there are more people, there is less room for each person to stand. This is pretty obvious, but it doesn't seem to translate into ability balancing. If a chain lightning jumps 8 yards on both 10 and 25 player mode then it is pretty easy to stand in appropriate positions to avoid jumps on 10 and quite difficult on 25. Since chain lightning often does more damage with each jump, 25-player makes it is very harsh mechanic.
Solution: Vary the jump distance for 10 and 25 player. With a shorter jump distance on 25 player or a longer distance on 10 the mechanic won't favour one size or the other.
Melee Hate
A typical 10 player raid might bring two melee characters, while a typical 25 player raid may have five. Many melee hate mechanics much more difficulty with more melee characters. Think of Kel'Thuzad's Frost Blast. In 10-player, there was no need for more than one person to get hit by it at a time. In 25-player, brining more than three melee meant it was always possible.
Solution: Significantly reassess melee hate - this needs to be done anywway.
Limited Access Abilities
This is a wide range of different abilities that are only available to certain classes and specs. I'm not talking about the fact that it's harder to get all the buffs you need when player with 10 people than it is with 25 people. I'm talking about interrupts, damage reduction cooldowns, Leap of Faith, AoE slows and other abilities that make boss fights much easier. In a 10-player raid, you may have no AoE slow, making the fester blood part of Cho'gall extraordinarily difficult. On 25-player you should have four or five interrupters available to stop a mob that needs to be interrupted regulary, in 10 you might have just one or two. The less specs that can use an ability, and the more uesfull the ability, the more likely it is than 25's have the edge.
Solution: Consider which abilities have a strong influence on the ease of the encounter and whether those are widely available or open only to a few specs. Especially do this with Hand of Protection.
Adds
In 25 player you have a pretty easy option for a third tank, in 10-player a third tank is not very viable for the majority of fights. Putting in a large number of adds to be tanked dramatically shifts the difficulty from 25-player to 10-player.
Solution: Vary the number of adds, not just the add health, between the difficulties.
There are plenty of other asymmetric abilities between 10 and 25 player. Most 10-player encounters still feel like afterthoughts based almost precisely after the 25 player version but with lower numbers. Blizzard still has a way to go in terms of understanding 10 player raiding and the same mechanics feel so different when there are different numbers of players up against them.
Which brings us to the obvious question of what abilities actually make fights harder for one size of raid than the other. Here is a quick compilation of things that the developers should be keeping in mind when balancing the next round of raid encounters for 10 and 25 players.
Spread Out
When there are more people, there is less room for each person to stand. This is pretty obvious, but it doesn't seem to translate into ability balancing. If a chain lightning jumps 8 yards on both 10 and 25 player mode then it is pretty easy to stand in appropriate positions to avoid jumps on 10 and quite difficult on 25. Since chain lightning often does more damage with each jump, 25-player makes it is very harsh mechanic.
Solution: Vary the jump distance for 10 and 25 player. With a shorter jump distance on 25 player or a longer distance on 10 the mechanic won't favour one size or the other.
Melee Hate
A typical 10 player raid might bring two melee characters, while a typical 25 player raid may have five. Many melee hate mechanics much more difficulty with more melee characters. Think of Kel'Thuzad's Frost Blast. In 10-player, there was no need for more than one person to get hit by it at a time. In 25-player, brining more than three melee meant it was always possible.
Solution: Significantly reassess melee hate - this needs to be done anywway.
Limited Access Abilities
This is a wide range of different abilities that are only available to certain classes and specs. I'm not talking about the fact that it's harder to get all the buffs you need when player with 10 people than it is with 25 people. I'm talking about interrupts, damage reduction cooldowns, Leap of Faith, AoE slows and other abilities that make boss fights much easier. In a 10-player raid, you may have no AoE slow, making the fester blood part of Cho'gall extraordinarily difficult. On 25-player you should have four or five interrupters available to stop a mob that needs to be interrupted regulary, in 10 you might have just one or two. The less specs that can use an ability, and the more uesfull the ability, the more likely it is than 25's have the edge.
Solution: Consider which abilities have a strong influence on the ease of the encounter and whether those are widely available or open only to a few specs. Especially do this with Hand of Protection.
Adds
In 25 player you have a pretty easy option for a third tank, in 10-player a third tank is not very viable for the majority of fights. Putting in a large number of adds to be tanked dramatically shifts the difficulty from 25-player to 10-player.
Solution: Vary the number of adds, not just the add health, between the difficulties.
There are plenty of other asymmetric abilities between 10 and 25 player. Most 10-player encounters still feel like afterthoughts based almost precisely after the 25 player version but with lower numbers. Blizzard still has a way to go in terms of understanding 10 player raiding and the same mechanics feel so different when there are different numbers of players up against them.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Strength of Soul Revisited
I posted about Strength of Soul in light of the 4.0.6 changes to Power Word: Shield. Now we have the subsequent hotfixes to increase the cost of Power Word: Shield and to increase the value of Rapture. Is Strength of Soul still a useful talent?
I had concluded that against a single target, Strength of Soul provided a 10% increase in throughput and a 4% increase in efficiency. Assuming you still cast Power Word: Shield whenever weakened soul is done, Strength of Soul now provides the same 10% increase in throughput but actually ends up costing you some mana for that extra throughput, decreasing efficiency by 2%.
Of course Strength of Soul is also what lets us do heavy single target throughput when the fight calls for it. The Shield -> Flash Heal x3 rotation just doesn't work without it.
Strength of Soul is now a talent that lets you burn mana for throughput when you need to. Given the state of Discipline Priest healing, I think this makes it a worthwhile investment. But if you are not in a moment where high throughput is required, Power Word: Shield should be timed to maximize Rapture procs instead of being cast whenever it is available.
I had concluded that against a single target, Strength of Soul provided a 10% increase in throughput and a 4% increase in efficiency. Assuming you still cast Power Word: Shield whenever weakened soul is done, Strength of Soul now provides the same 10% increase in throughput but actually ends up costing you some mana for that extra throughput, decreasing efficiency by 2%.
Of course Strength of Soul is also what lets us do heavy single target throughput when the fight calls for it. The Shield -> Flash Heal x3 rotation just doesn't work without it.
Strength of Soul is now a talent that lets you burn mana for throughput when you need to. Given the state of Discipline Priest healing, I think this makes it a worthwhile investment. But if you are not in a moment where high throughput is required, Power Word: Shield should be timed to maximize Rapture procs instead of being cast whenever it is available.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Extrapolating
1 week ago - Power Word: Shield cost in increased by 36%
Now - Rapture is increased from 6% to 7%.
Power Word: Shield cost too little, so they made it more expensive. Apparently then discipline priests couldn't afford it so they gave us more mana when we cast it. At this rate by mid summer Power Word: Shield will cost 50k but Rapture will return 70k when it breaks.
Now - Rapture is increased from 6% to 7%.
Power Word: Shield cost too little, so they made it more expensive. Apparently then discipline priests couldn't afford it so they gave us more mana when we cast it. At this rate by mid summer Power Word: Shield will cost 50k but Rapture will return 70k when it breaks.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Cast More Spells
On Monday I looked at one way to liquidate excess mana: by substituting an intense casting rotation for a more regular one. Another way to liquidate mana is to simple cast more spells. If we simply took our excess mana and converted it into Power Word: Shields then the rankings for secondary stats would be Spirit (41.5%) > Mastery (28%) > Crit (12%).
If we instead used the extra mana to cast half shields and half renews - thinking that we are probably squeezing these extra spells in while on the move - then the values wouldn't be much different with Spirit (41.4%) > Mastery (23.5%) > Crit (14.7%).
But I feel that this is probably less representative of what is really going to happen in a battle, since encounters are designed around the idea that you will cast spells pretty much as often as you can, but in reality we don't have 100% active time on our log reports, so we can definitely squeeze some more casts in there. I was using a figure of 130k excess mana to spend, which would be enough for 28 shields, or about 38 seconds of extra casting over a 5 minute fight. This is surely an unattainable figure. 38 seconds would mean increasing your active time in a fight by 12.6%. Since my active time is usually around 87% this is getting a little too close to 100% to be believable. In addition to this, the reason we use intense healing rotations is because there are periods that warrant intense healing - even if these periods are just the result of a long time with dodges or critical heals. We can't make up for that loss by simply casting more shields during the lighter damage times.
Another option is to take a half-and-half approach, where we spend half of our excess mana on intense single target healing and half on extra shields and renews.
This result looks a lot like the result from Monday but with the numbers even closer together: Mastery (31%) > Spirit (28%) > Crit (23%).
Of course this doesn't mean that it's time to reforge spirit into mastery. In the case where we are simply running out of mana by the end of the fight, more mana would allow us to continue our normal 6.92 mana efficiency rotation. In this case Spirit (40.6%) > Mastery (18.7%) > Crit (16.5%). So it's a real blowout in favour of Spirit. If such a situation where actually winnable, it would mean damage output was low enough that the full rotation wouldn't be necessary, and mana efficiency would go even higher, making the benefit of spirit relative to the other secondary stats even more extreme.
Spirit has a kind of diminishing returns. Once you have enough mana to cast a baseline mana efficient rotation over all available times during an encounter, the value of spirit drops off. Similarly because an important part of what Intellect does is provide you with mana, the value of Mastery and Crit relative to intellect increase when you pass that point.
But of course determining where that drop off point happens is pretty difficult. Fights are not simple enough to be easily modeled all the way through. Also, I haven't talked about haste at all. Haste increases throughput at the cost of mana. But if I am trying to compare spirit to mastery through estimations of what extra mana can do for us, then surely I can try to fit haste in there somewhere.
When I have some time in the next week I'm going to build myself a spreadsheet dragon and discipline priest and have them face off in a tug-of-war over tank health. That will provide a better picture of how haste fits into the overall scheme of things.
If we instead used the extra mana to cast half shields and half renews - thinking that we are probably squeezing these extra spells in while on the move - then the values wouldn't be much different with Spirit (41.4%) > Mastery (23.5%) > Crit (14.7%).
But I feel that this is probably less representative of what is really going to happen in a battle, since encounters are designed around the idea that you will cast spells pretty much as often as you can, but in reality we don't have 100% active time on our log reports, so we can definitely squeeze some more casts in there. I was using a figure of 130k excess mana to spend, which would be enough for 28 shields, or about 38 seconds of extra casting over a 5 minute fight. This is surely an unattainable figure. 38 seconds would mean increasing your active time in a fight by 12.6%. Since my active time is usually around 87% this is getting a little too close to 100% to be believable. In addition to this, the reason we use intense healing rotations is because there are periods that warrant intense healing - even if these periods are just the result of a long time with dodges or critical heals. We can't make up for that loss by simply casting more shields during the lighter damage times.
Another option is to take a half-and-half approach, where we spend half of our excess mana on intense single target healing and half on extra shields and renews.
This result looks a lot like the result from Monday but with the numbers even closer together: Mastery (31%) > Spirit (28%) > Crit (23%).
Of course this doesn't mean that it's time to reforge spirit into mastery. In the case where we are simply running out of mana by the end of the fight, more mana would allow us to continue our normal 6.92 mana efficiency rotation. In this case Spirit (40.6%) > Mastery (18.7%) > Crit (16.5%). So it's a real blowout in favour of Spirit. If such a situation where actually winnable, it would mean damage output was low enough that the full rotation wouldn't be necessary, and mana efficiency would go even higher, making the benefit of spirit relative to the other secondary stats even more extreme.
Spirit has a kind of diminishing returns. Once you have enough mana to cast a baseline mana efficient rotation over all available times during an encounter, the value of spirit drops off. Similarly because an important part of what Intellect does is provide you with mana, the value of Mastery and Crit relative to intellect increase when you pass that point.
But of course determining where that drop off point happens is pretty difficult. Fights are not simple enough to be easily modeled all the way through. Also, I haven't talked about haste at all. Haste increases throughput at the cost of mana. But if I am trying to compare spirit to mastery through estimations of what extra mana can do for us, then surely I can try to fit haste in there somewhere.
When I have some time in the next week I'm going to build myself a spreadsheet dragon and discipline priest and have them face off in a tug-of-war over tank health. That will provide a better picture of how haste fits into the overall scheme of things.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Mana Liquidity
In a previous post I said that Discipline Priests were in the position of usually having enough mana to do the healing they needed to do over the course of the fight, but not having the throughput to actually apply that mana to remedy bad situations. Pach 4.0.6 changed that. Discipline priests now have the ability to have an all out mana fire sale, shipping our mana off in massive quantities for whatever healing we can get.
Before I get into that, I want to look at the question of how to understand spending more mana to do more healing. Given a fixed fight length you generally find yourself with a certain amount of mana to spend. In the case of a discipline priest and a 5 minute fight, that amount of mana might be in the neighborhood of 450k to 490k (plus about 40k per resto shaman in the raid). In a fight of that length you will probably be called on to do something like 2.5M healing, meaning you'll need to average between 5 and 5.5 healing per mana to get there.
A simple single target rotation of Shield -> Penance -> Renew (when Borrowed Time is up) -> Inner Focus -> Greater Heal gives 6.92 mana effiency, more than enough to do the job. With a rotation like this, you'll spend only 361k mana doing 2.5M healing, leaving you with something like 130k mana to play with. The question is, how quickly can you liquidate your mana into healing when you need to?
There are two ways to spend more mana: cast more often or cast more expensive things when you are casting. If we are sticking with a simple single target healing model then casting more often probably isn't a legitimate option. While no one is casting all the time, we are generally casting at all times when we are able and when healing is needed. Running out of a fire might cost us healing time, and a phase transition where no damage is incoming might also cost us healing time.
So today I am going to talk about replacing our existing casting time with more mana intense casting time. I hope to come back to this subject tomorrow or the next day with comments about casting more during downtime.
Discipline now has the Shield -> Flash Heal x3 rotation available. The ability to cast a Power Word: Shield every 5.3 seconds makes for some pretty extreme throughput. Using just Flash of Heal and Shield in 359s you can achieve a throughput of 19.7k, but at the cost of around 4360 mana per second, 2100 more healing per mana than the baseline rotation. For that extra mana you get 4130 more healing per second. You are buying extra healing at a rate of 1.97 healing per mana.
If you use the slightly less insane rotation of incorporating Penance when it is off cooldown, you can buy 3670 healing per second for around 2.23 healing per mana. If you incorporate Renew you get only 3250 extra healing per second but actually only get 2.19 healing per mana, so this is not recommended.
Given the high cost of these rotations, it stands to ask how long we actually afford them. With the 130k unused mana, Shield/Flash could replace the baseline rotation for up to 61 seconds. That actually sounds like an awful lot. If you are casting 90% of the time then you could afford to be on all out mana destruction mode for almost a quarter of the time that you are casting.
So can this tell us anything about how to value Spirit compared to throughput stats?
Using this model, we can calculate how much more healing we can expect to get out of various stats. Of course there are two ways to approach it. One is to fix the amount of time you have to heal and calculate how much more healing you can squeeze out in that time with more of a stat. Another is to fix the amount you need to heal and see how much mana you have left over.
Using either of these methods generates fairly similar results. With fixed healing time, we get Mastery > Crit > Spirit at 36%, 28%, 20% of an Intellect respectively. With fixed healing to be done we get the same order but closer together in the raw amounts at 33%, 27%, 26% respectively.
This model has a lot of deficiencies, and should not be applied as a stat weighting. My hope is that by doing calculations like this I can get a better sense of how Spirit interacts with the other secondary stats. These results can only be narrowly applied, but could suggest that if you find you have enough mana to get through fights, you should consider moving some of your spirit into mastery to increase your ability to deal with difficult situations. They also make me fairly comfortable that mastery is the better choice than crit for improving my throughput, but that could change as I go through more examples.
Before I get into that, I want to look at the question of how to understand spending more mana to do more healing. Given a fixed fight length you generally find yourself with a certain amount of mana to spend. In the case of a discipline priest and a 5 minute fight, that amount of mana might be in the neighborhood of 450k to 490k (plus about 40k per resto shaman in the raid). In a fight of that length you will probably be called on to do something like 2.5M healing, meaning you'll need to average between 5 and 5.5 healing per mana to get there.
A simple single target rotation of Shield -> Penance -> Renew (when Borrowed Time is up) -> Inner Focus -> Greater Heal gives 6.92 mana effiency, more than enough to do the job. With a rotation like this, you'll spend only 361k mana doing 2.5M healing, leaving you with something like 130k mana to play with. The question is, how quickly can you liquidate your mana into healing when you need to?
There are two ways to spend more mana: cast more often or cast more expensive things when you are casting. If we are sticking with a simple single target healing model then casting more often probably isn't a legitimate option. While no one is casting all the time, we are generally casting at all times when we are able and when healing is needed. Running out of a fire might cost us healing time, and a phase transition where no damage is incoming might also cost us healing time.
So today I am going to talk about replacing our existing casting time with more mana intense casting time. I hope to come back to this subject tomorrow or the next day with comments about casting more during downtime.
Discipline now has the Shield -> Flash Heal x3 rotation available. The ability to cast a Power Word: Shield every 5.3 seconds makes for some pretty extreme throughput. Using just Flash of Heal and Shield in 359s you can achieve a throughput of 19.7k, but at the cost of around 4360 mana per second, 2100 more healing per mana than the baseline rotation. For that extra mana you get 4130 more healing per second. You are buying extra healing at a rate of 1.97 healing per mana.
If you use the slightly less insane rotation of incorporating Penance when it is off cooldown, you can buy 3670 healing per second for around 2.23 healing per mana. If you incorporate Renew you get only 3250 extra healing per second but actually only get 2.19 healing per mana, so this is not recommended.
Given the high cost of these rotations, it stands to ask how long we actually afford them. With the 130k unused mana, Shield/Flash could replace the baseline rotation for up to 61 seconds. That actually sounds like an awful lot. If you are casting 90% of the time then you could afford to be on all out mana destruction mode for almost a quarter of the time that you are casting.
So can this tell us anything about how to value Spirit compared to throughput stats?
Using this model, we can calculate how much more healing we can expect to get out of various stats. Of course there are two ways to approach it. One is to fix the amount of time you have to heal and calculate how much more healing you can squeeze out in that time with more of a stat. Another is to fix the amount you need to heal and see how much mana you have left over.
Using either of these methods generates fairly similar results. With fixed healing time, we get Mastery > Crit > Spirit at 36%, 28%, 20% of an Intellect respectively. With fixed healing to be done we get the same order but closer together in the raw amounts at 33%, 27%, 26% respectively.
This model has a lot of deficiencies, and should not be applied as a stat weighting. My hope is that by doing calculations like this I can get a better sense of how Spirit interacts with the other secondary stats. These results can only be narrowly applied, but could suggest that if you find you have enough mana to get through fights, you should consider moving some of your spirit into mastery to increase your ability to deal with difficult situations. They also make me fairly comfortable that mastery is the better choice than crit for improving my throughput, but that could change as I go through more examples.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Almost 50%. Really!
In July I wrote about why the developer idea that discipline priests would get 50% of their healing from shields was ridiculous.
This week Blizzard multiplied the strength of Power Word: Shield by more than three. Of course this didn't just mean three times as much shielding from shields, it meant casting more shields since Power Word: Shield became such a good spell with the change. It also meant stacking mastery over crit, further increasing the power of the shields. I now have one night of raiding data, and my total shields as a fraction of heals was 49.4%. Very near the 50% mark that the developers thought we might have.
So they were basically right, assuming you are willing to overlook the mistake of making our signature spell about 30% as good as it should be.
This week Blizzard multiplied the strength of Power Word: Shield by more than three. Of course this didn't just mean three times as much shielding from shields, it meant casting more shields since Power Word: Shield became such a good spell with the change. It also meant stacking mastery over crit, further increasing the power of the shields. I now have one night of raiding data, and my total shields as a fraction of heals was 49.4%. Very near the 50% mark that the developers thought we might have.
So they were basically right, assuming you are willing to overlook the mistake of making our signature spell about 30% as good as it should be.
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