Fallout 76 – Improvements

Hello everyone, Kelvoran back again and it’s time I got into the second part of my promised Fallout 76 discussion blog. For those of you who read the first part where I discussed my thoughts about the game, I did say that I was going to write a post concerning what I thought could be changed to make the game better.

Now, to be clear, I am not in any way a game developer, I have some background knowledge, having studied it to enter the industry but I have no formal qualifications and no experience, so this post is not an attempt to tell the people at Bethesda Softworks how to do their job, nor am I saying that their current version of Fallout 76 is trash and that it should be replaced. These are just my humble suggestions, so keep that in mind before you roast me over an open flame.

So, let’s begin with what I would remove from Fallout 76, starting with six enemies of the Fallout games. Those six being Super Mutants, Mutant Hounds, Feral Ghouls, Deathclaws, Gulpers and Anglers. These enemies above all others don’t really make a whole lot of sense existing in the game as it currently stands and let me explain why.

Super Mutants: These hulking mutated humans were created as a result of human testing of the Forced Evolutionary Virus (or F.E.V) which had only just been named such in 2075 and was still being trialed on animals all the way in California when the people of Huntersville West Virginia were supposedly infected with the FEV by West-Tek. Human trials of the F.E.V would not begin until 2077 and even then they were done in absolute secrecy.
Mutant Hounds: These beasts first made an appearance in Fallout 4 and they’re unique to the Commonwealth, having been created by the Institute (who were also responsible for creating the Super Mutants of the Commonwealth). Now it is unclear as to when the Institute created the Mutant Hounds, but it is highly unlikely that they would have existed in West Virginia 25 years after the bombs fell, which is when the events of Fallout 76 begin.
Feral Ghouls: While Ghouls would have existed by the time of Fallout 76, the concept of Feral Ghouls would not be widespread, as it generally either took a large exposure of radiation OR excessive time for a Ghoul to go feral so there would not have been large numbers of them in places like Morgantown.
Deathclaws: While iconic to the Fallout universe, these creatures were primarily created by genetic manipulation and the FEV in California. They were considered mythological and rare in the Year 2161, meaning that they would be non-existent in West Virginia during the events of Fallout 76.
Gulpers: Gulpers are a unique beast that can only be found on the island of Far Harbor. Regardless of when they were created as a species, they would not be present during the events of Fallout 76 in West Virginia.
Anglers: As with the Gulper, the Angler is a unique beast that can only be found on the island of Far Harbor. Additionally, as they are mutated from a deep-sea fish (the Angler Fish) they would not be found in the landlocked region of West Virginia in any capacity.

Now let’s talk about what could be added/changed, and in all honesty, there is only one major thing that could be added, and that’s living human NPCs. This, in my opinion, is vital because not only does it allow for players to be more invested in the world because they’re getting quests from living, breathing humans, it also allows for greater storytelling as human NPCs will have their own goals and their own personalities. Factions would have different personalities which could clash, and we could even be forced to choose between them as we did in previous Fallout games. Take this scenario for example:

We emerge from Vault 76, seeing Appalachia for the first time in 25 years. Upon leaving the immediate area we get our first encounter with the enemies of the region. The giant ticks, feral hounds and scorched. We find the Overseer’s camp, but instead of finding a holotape we actually find the Overseer herself. This is where we learn the basics of survival, how to set up the camp and the importance of scavenging supplies. Then she recommends that we scout out Flatwoods to see if there are any survivors there, as she heard gunshots from that region. She has her own mission to undertake, which takes her in another direction altogether.

Now at this point, we can choose to go just about anywhere. We can roam as we see fit, but, for the sake of this scenario, we go to Flatwoods to find the area under attack by a raider gang. We help the survivors who are holed up in the church, and after we kill the raiders we are introduced to the First Responders. This is the first faction we discover in the game and they are trying to survive despite constant attacks by raider patrols. Here we can discover some side quests, such as discovering who killed the town Reverend who also served as the cooking teacher. Originally chalked up to an unfortunate casualty of the raider assaults, we investigate and discover that it was a fellow First Responder, Sofie, who killed him and she has been sending messages to the raiders, essentially offering inside intel on when to attack.

After we’ve finished helping out the people in Flatwoods, we get tasked to report to Responder HQ up at Morgantown who have gone radio silent. We get informed that the best way to get there is through Sutton, but the Responders who went that way didn’t return, so there’s something dangerous either on the road or in the town. When we reach Sutton we discover that it has been overrun by Raiders who are using it as a base of operations from where they launch their own raids on the surrounding region. We clear out the raiders and continue on, discovering a town decimated by the Scorched and we get our first sighting of a Scorchbeast, although it doesn’t attack, it just flies around the area. Continuing on we discover some survivors from the scorched village living in an abandoned crash site who have begun to call themselves the Shadow Walkers, and they’re under constant assault from the nearby scorched who are making their lives difficult, although they have to eliminate their targets quietly as to not attract the attention of the scorchbeast, so they sell throwing weapons, crossbows, silenced weaponry and muffled armor to those who earn their favor.

Eventually, we reach Morgantown and this is where we encounter our first faction rivalry between the First Responders and the Fire Breathers. Once a part of the First Responders, the Fire Breathers have since separated and become a far more zealous group with a unique outlook on how humanity must be saved, which is to purge all non-humans with purifying flame, especially ghouls and any individual remotely infected with the scorched plague. The First Responders disagree with this view, they want to save as many people as possible, especially the victims of radiation and the scorched, going as far as to attempt to create a vaccine for the scorched plague. Right now the player is not a part of either faction, but, they will eventually get a choice as to whether or not they want to join the First Responders or the Fire Breathers and joining one faction makes you an enemy of the other and reflects what weapons, armor and plans you get access to. Additionally, the Brotherhood of Steel has an outpost in the town. They are regarded warily by both the Fire Breathers and the First Responders, as they seem to be interested in securing technologies rather than aiding humanity, but as they were former West Virginia military, their firepower makes them difficult for either faction to contend with, so neither wants to openly trade blows with them.

…

Now I could go on and on here but I am sure you get the idea. Living, breathing NPCs allow for more in-depth stories and that is something I feel Bethesda should embrace, not ignore.

Now for some additional things that I feel should be changed:

C.A.M.P Improvements: Todd Howard said during E3 that we would be able to build our camp anywhere, but in reality that is not at all true, and instead we are forced to build in the wild, fairly far away from any structure. This is a mistake. What better place to set up a base than in a ruined home or an already established (then abandoned) outpost? There are plenty of prime C.A.M.P locations which could be used, but because of this restriction, they can’t be touched. Obviously there would need to be ‘some’ restrictions to prevent people from locking down quest NPCs or quest items, but generally speaking, there should be more freedom with C.A.M.P setups.
Workshops: The current concept of Workshops should be removed entirely. Instead, have workshops exist as an upgrade to the C.A.M.P which you can earn by working with a specific faction in the Wasteland. When you upgrade your C.A.M.P to a workshop you increase the budget of items that you can build and increase the radius that you can build in, allowing you to construct bigger and better things. Workshops should also allow you to open up your base to other players (whereas C.A.M.Ps should be player owned only) so if you want to create a base where players can congregate to trade and use various workbenches to build or upgrade their gear, you can do that.

Now I am sure I can think of more suggestions and as I do I may create more posts about this in the future, but here are my base ideas. Let me know what you think, I’d be interested to know if anyone reading this likes my ideas or whether they’re horrible garbage.

Until next time!

Fallout 76 – My Thoughts

Hello folks, Kelvoran here with another Fallout 76 post. This time though, I’ll be giving my thoughts about the game and I will be creating another post later today detailing how I feel the game could be improved.

Before I begin though, just a note to anyone reading this hoping to see a rant about the canvas bag mess, or the atomic shop, or the recent customer support data leaks, you’re not going to see that here. This post is going to be focused on the game, it’s performance (from my perspective) and generally how it plays. I will also be including an honest rating based on my own experiences. There will be minor spoilers ahead as well!

So first things first, what is Fallout 76? Well unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months, Fallout 76 is Bethesda Softworks attempt to use the Fallout universe to get into the multiplayer survival genre. You start off as a member of Vault 76 and you are released into a portion of West Virginia 25 years after the nuclear war which ravaged America in the Fallout universe with the goal of rebuilding America from the ground up. To assist you in this endeavor you are given a Construction and Assembly Mobile Platform (or C.A.M.P for short) which you can place down in the world and when you do this you are allowed to build a base in a radius around the camp using materials which you’ve salvaged from nearby areas by scrapping just about anything you can pick up, just as you did in Fallout 4.

Speaking of Fallout 4, if you enjoyed that game, you’ll find Fallout 76 remarkably similar, because it looks and plays the same way. Many of the staple enemies will be familiar to you (including feral ghouls, super mutants, mole rats, mutated hounds etc) and the terrain and structures also use a similar style. There’s no point beating around the bush on this, Fallout 76 reuses many assets from Fallout 4 and let me be clear for a moment here. There is nothing wrong with that! I am sure that there are plenty of gamers out there who would like nothing more than to see game developers create all game assets from scratch when they create a new title in a series, but this is not feasible from either a time or financial perspective, which is why assets are reused in game development as much as they are. After all, why recreate a ruined house when you have the model for one already built in another game that uses the same engine?

But I’ve gone off track.

Anyway, as a member of Vault 76 you emerge from the Vault and begin to explore Appalachia, which is the first ‘zone’ so to speak that you’ll fight enemies in, most of which being between levels 1 to 10, and one of the first quests you get is to head to the Overseer’s Camp and find her. Unfortunately, you don’t find her, but you do find a holotape she left behind, and this sets the theme for the entire game as far as quests are concerned. Listen to holotapes, listen to repeating radio messages, talk to robots with personalities etc, because as Todd Howard stated during the reveal of Fallout 76 at E3, every human that you encounter is a real player.

Unfortunately, this statement from Todd and what it means for the game does spoil a lot of what made the Fallout games under Bethesda so good, because one of the key features of the Fallout games has been, at least to me, seeing the survivors who did not get into a vaults do the best they can in the now ruined America by constructing their own settlements whether they be civilians trying to get by, or Raiders trying to assert dominance over a particular region. Knowing that the only human that I will see will be players not only makes entire areas of the game feel empty and lifeless (quite literally in the case of the latter) but it also ruins certain quests. Here I’ll give you two examples of what I mean:

Example 1 – The Town of Flatwoods: This is the first major destination that you’ll go to if you follow the Overseer’s instructions on the second holotape you find of hers. She encourages you to go to the town of Flatwoods if its still standing, and meet her there. When you arrive you’ll see signs from a faction called ‘The Responders’ and many of the buildings are intact. Unfortunately, as you explore Flatwoods there are no surviving human NPCs. Every single one of them is dead and has been for a short while, and you’re tasked with listening to more holotapes and completing objectives assigned by computer terminals.

Example 2 – The Order of Mysteries: The Order of Mysteries appears as a small faction which you can become a part of a short while after starting the game after you locate a deceased member of the Order and clues found on the body lead you to their headquarters. After you arrive at the secret headquarters, you’ll get your first mission, to find your handler and receive your training. Unfortunately, because of Todd Howard’s statement about the only human characters that you’ll see being players, you already know exactly what you’re going to find when you arrive at the last known location of your handler. She’s dead, you’ll get no training, and because she can’t exactly stop you, you pinch her holotape from her body and give yourself a promotion to a higher rank which gives you access to more quests.

See what I mean? Because you know that every human you encounter will be dead, there are no humans to interact with and get a story from, nor are there living raiders to kill or spy on as you hear them rant about enemies they’ve fought in the past, meaning that even the raider outposts and fortresses are empty, or filled with Scorched who all look identical more or less, which is a shame because even the feral ghouls have more varied looks in this game.

Everywhere you go, all you’ll find are dead human bodies, and sure, you can piece together how the humans may have been killed by looking around and trying to ‘solve the puzzle’ but ultimately it doesn’t really matter because there’s no real bonus for doing so. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this really does drastically impact what makes the game fun and it also hurts the developers as they are limited in what quests they can add to the game.

So what else in the game is there to do aside from robot quests and collecting the holotapes? Well, you can capture Workshops. Now, for those of you who played Fallout 4, you know what a Workshop is. A workshop is a small building which exerts control over a larger area and if you control the workshop you can build within a large area. Now in Fallout 4, Workshops were the only way you could build settlements in the game, and the number of workshops was limited (compared to the number of locations you could visit at any rate). In Fallout 76 this changes somewhat. Workshops still exert control over a large area, but this time they are controlled by whoever captures the workshop and other players can come along and ‘steal’ your workshop from you if you leave it unguarded. Additionally, if you log out, either because you’re done with the game for the day or because of a crash/server disconnection you lose everything including control over the zone, and any structures you built in the workshop area. This makes building in workshop areas seemingly pointless, save for defensive buildings (such as turrets and traps) and resource collectors for the unique resources that are found on workshop sites. This doesn’t mean that the Workshops aren’t worth trying to get control of though, because the resources you can gather from these places are much harder/slower to obtain if you try to get them elsewhere.

And finally, I have to mention PvP. Now, PvP is in an interesting spot in Fallout 76, because in all the reviews I’ve read about the game, none of them talk about the PvP mode, but rather, how PvP is initiated. Now how PvP is initiated is fairly simple. You just attack other players. However there are caveats to this, and that caveat is that unless the player you’re targetting starts attacking you, they take greatly reduced damage, meaning that they can’t be killed by you even if you have some of the most powerful weapons. If they, however, decide to unload on you, the attacker after you’ve already engaged them, they will do full weapon damage to you, easily allowing them to kill you, especially if they have high powered weapons equaling your own.

But that is not the PvP mode that I am going to highlight. The PvP mode is called Hunter/Hunted and it is accessible starting at level 5 when PvP is enabled for your character. To access it? Go to your radio and turn on the Hunter/Hunted channel. This triggers a quest which tasks you to hunt down another player who also has Hunter/Hunted turned on. Additionally, anyone with Hunter/Hunted radio turned on is automatically ‘flagged’ for PvP, meaning that you’ll do full damage to your target without them needing to fire back. Unfortunately due to the fact that this is hidden away as a radio station, and there are no real indicators to point out that it exists (with the exception of a loading screen hint which may, or may not appear depending on how long your load times are) there aren’t many players openly using it to engage in PvP with other players.

But what about technical issues and bugs? Well, the game has plenty, not going to lie, and this is part of the charm that is Bethesda game releases. It’s an ‘expected norm’ at this stage. Unfortunately one far less accepted this time around, but still an expected norm. There are performance issues with the game, but these vary depending on the rigs of each player being used. In my time playing the game I have encountered only a few bugs/technical issues. Notably a few CTDs, some framerate tanking and a few invisible enemies which I had to melee the air to kill effectively. None of which are completely game breaking. That being said, some of the other bugs and glitches that other players have experienced are more severe, and the prevalence of these bugs has contributed to the poor rating that the game has received on multiple platforms.

So if I had to give a rating to the game based on the 48 or so hours I’ve sunk into the title, what would I rate it? Well, I don’t generally like the singular X out of X number system, whether it’s out of 5 points or 10 points because I don’t really feel like that gives the game justice. Rather, I prefer to rate each individual area of the game, so here is my ‘score’ for Fallout 76.

Graphics: The world of Fallout 76 looks amazing, and the way the zones of the game look so different from each other allows for some rather amazing experiences and photomode screenshots. Rating: 8/10

Audio: The audio for the game is similar in many ways to Fallout 4, but there are quite a few new audio tracks to listen to, and the radio stations that play music can be interesting to listen to from time to time (but not all the time, need to hear the enemies sneaking up on you after all). Rating: 6/10

Gameplay: The gameplay for Fallout 76 is much like Fallout 4 but with some new changes here and there to bring some fresh elements to the game. The introduction of the C.A.M.P and being able to build a settlement anywhere in open space is great but hampered by the inability to place it in or around structures. Overall depends on the player as to how entertaining or boring it will be. Rating: 5/10

Performance: While my personal experience with glitches and bugs is minimal, I cannot pretend that other gamers are not experiencing their own issues which are much more severe. Performance for the title drastically needs to be improved if the game wants to have any significant longevity. Rating: 3/10

Story: The lack of living human NPCs has really impacted the story of Fallout 76 severely. In addition, while the Fallout series has always played fast and loose with the lore (even going back to the original games made by Interplay) there are a few lore changes here which don’t make much sense. Rating: 3/10

So there you have it folks, my thoughts on Fallout 76. I will be writing up another post later today concerning how I feel the game could be improved. So stay tuned.

Until next time!

Fallout 76 – The Atomic Shop

Hello folks, Kelvoran here with another thought of the evening, but this one is going to be short. We’re going to talk about Fallout 76, or rather, one specific portion of Fallout 76 which is the Atomic Shop, a digital storefront accessible from the menu of the game where you spend the digital currency ‘atoms’ to purchase cosmetic items that you can then use within the game in one form or another. Here’s a picture of the shop front for those of you who don’t play the game:

Now, as you can see you can purchase a number of things from the Atomic Shop all for the currency known as Atoms, which can be purchased with real money (with the cheapest price being $5 for 500 atoms) or you can earn atoms by completing challenges in-game. These challenges are not really difficult, pick a certain number of locks, kill a certain number of enemies, complete a quest or certain number of quests, there are multiple ways to earn atoms in game, and they add up over time, ensuring that if you don’t want to spend money you don’t have to, which seems harmless right? Especially since it’s not even that much of a grind to get the atoms with the current build of Fallout 76.

But unfortunately in true ‘gamer outrage’ fashion, this is not good enough, and what we’ve seen on the internet of late are multiple critics on YouTube lashing out at Bethesda for, among other things, having items that were freely available in Fallout 4 on the Fallout 76 Atomic Shop for atoms.

Let that sink in for a moment to see if you can grasp the absurdity of the argument that they’re making.

Because X item was free to obtain in Fallout 4 (which was a single player open world sandbox game), it is a travesty when X item costs atoms in Fallout 76.

Now let me be clear where I stand on this if I wasn’t already.

There is nothing wrong with what Bethesda is doing as far as the Atomic Shop is concerned. Just because gamers (myself included since I own Fallout 4) bought an earlier game in the series, does not mean that any of us are entitled to items in a completely different game that released years later, regardless of whether the assets in the game were reused or not.

Bethesda has done many things wrong with Fallout 76. From releasing the game in a bugged state, to the mess with the canvas bags for those who purchased the big ticket $200 collectors edition of the game, to most recently a leak of personal information via their support portal. There’s a lot which has gone wrong for them, but this? Well it isn’t one of them. So my honest and brutal advice to any gamers reading this post, and any YouTube personalities who may stumble across it, is to untwist your knickers and don’t let every tiny microtransaction cause you to fly into a steaming rage.

Your mental health will thank you.

Until next time!

Battlefield V Drama

History vs Fiction.

This is a late night post (for me, I am in Australia after all) so I hope you’ll all forgive me if this post isn’t quite up to the standards that I’ve set in previous posts that I’ve ported over. This also, honestly, marks my first real post here on WordPress since I ported my stuff over.

So with that said let’s get to work.

Now, Battlefield V launched quite recently, as many of you gamers will already know, and it hasn’t exactly gotten the warmest of welcomes in the gaming sphere. Sales numbers are lower than Battlefield 1, and the game is already on sale in many places. Not a really good sign for a major AAA release, but, and let’s be honest here, probably an expected one. Now, what do I mean by that?

Well to get the answer to that we have to rewind the clock a bit to when Battlefield V was premiered and EA/DICE showed off the cinematic to the game which heavily featured a female soldier wearing a prosthetic limb. Now after that cinematic dropped there were a LOT of complaints about ‘historical inaccuracy’ along with misogynistic views about how women and how they didn’t fight in World War 2 which is the historical setting for the game. We’ll come back to the comments, but for now, I want to talk about the concept of authenticity and what it means for Battlefield.

Now for people who enjoy their military shooters, authenticity has always been something that the fans want. They want period-appropriate weapons, outfits, vehicles and maps, and that’s perfectly fine, but, and let’s be honest here, the game has never really been authentic when it comes to how the game plays, and this is what makes the Battlefield games so amazing to watch, because you can see skilled players do amazing things with the tools at their disposal, including (but not limited to) leaping out of an aircraft and using a sniper rifle or missile launcher to eliminate another player (whether they be in a vehicle or on a rooftop) before managing to get back into their aircraft and fly away at full speed. And this is something that DICE is happy to work with. They prefer to focus on fun over authenticity. In fact, this is something that the Executive Producer of DICE, Aleksander Grøndal‏, stated in a tweet shortly after the trailer was revealed. You can find that tweet here:

https://twitter.com/Alekssg/status/999545829475090432

We will always put fun over authentic 🙂
Aleksander Grøndal

So they’re always happy to bend the rules around authenticity if it means that gameplay will be more entertaining as a result. Sadly this is not something that a certain community of gamers has been able to accept, and so now we’re back to the comments, as mentioned above. With the hashtag #notmybattlefield appearing on Twitter as a rallying cry to those who were opposing the inclusion of female characters Battlefield V. Now DICE could have bent to the will of the angry few. They could have decided to exclude female characters and make the game less inclusive to ensure that the angry few were happy, but ultimately (and justifiably) they decided not to do that and decided to instead, stick to the vision they had for the game and that is a brave move, because in effectively ‘giving the finger’ to a portion of your audience you do risk portions of your community not buying the game.

Yet this is something they ultimately anticipated, with Patrick Söderlund dismissing the outrage and telling Gamasutra in an interview the following:

“We felt like in today’s world—I have a 13-year-old daughter that when the trailer came out and she saw all the flak, she asked me, ‘Dad, why’s this happening?'” Soderlund said.
“She plays Fortnite, and says, ‘I can be a girl in Fortnite. Why are people so upset about this?’ She looked at me and she couldn’t understand it. And I’m like, ok, as a parent, how the hell am I gonna respond to this, and I just said, ‘You know what? You’re right. This is not okay.'”
“These are people who are uneducated—they don’t understand that this is a plausible scenario, and listen: this is a game,” he added. “And today gaming is gender-diverse like it hasn’t been before. There are a lot of female people who want to play, and male players who want to play as a badass [woman].”
“And we don’t take any flak. We stand up for the cause because I think those people who don’t understand it, well, you have two choices: either accept it or don’t buy the game. I’m fine with either or. It’s just not ok.”
Patrick Söderlund

And he’s not wrong. Comments from the vast amount of people pushing the #notmybattlefield hashtag on Twitter refused to accept the facts that women did indeed fight in World War 2, and on Reddit when posters commented about history, either about female fighters or prosthetics, their posts were buried by mass downvotes by those who prefer outrage over rational thought.

Now this outrage has no doubt contributed in part to the fact that Battlefield V’s sales are low, but I don’t think anyone at DICE is worried about that. Judging by the Battlefield V twitter, they seem to be in high spirits as they work to get content available for those who are playing the game while fixing issues that players bring to their attention, which I have to commend them for.

But what about that ‘History vs Fiction’ title? Where does that come into play?

This is a good question and it does tie into what I wrote earlier, so I hope you’ll forgive the rambling before we got to this point, but I wanted to ensure that there was as much context as possible. Now, before we go further there are two points to remember:

DICE favors fun over authenticity.
DICE never claimed that Battlefield V was going to be 100% historically accurate.

So with that in mind let’s look at the mission Nordlys. This is one of the single-player missions that you’ll be able to play, and it follows the story of a young Norweigan Resistance fighter who is attempting to save her mother and stop the German army in their attempts to manufacture heavy water. This mission takes place in 1943 at Vemork in Norway and without giving too much away, your character along with your character’s mother manages to sabotage and destroy the heavy water production at Vemork.

This has, of course, incensed certain groups in the social media space because the raid on Vemork was very real. The operation to raid the facility was named Operation: Gunnerside and it involved the British approving and sending in six Norwegian commandos to join up with a pre-existing team who would then sabotage the base and destroy the heavy water stockpiles and facilities that the Germans controlled.

Can you see why certain people on the internet might be upset? If you can’t that’s understandable, as it takes a very ‘special’ mindset to see what isn’t there, but the claim is that DICE is ‘breaking from historical accuracy and attempting to use historical revisionism to erase the efforts of the Norwegian commandos and replace them with female characters as some sort of forced inclusion for the sake of inclusion’.

Now whatever angry thought just popped into your head after reading that. Push it back.

Remember what I said earlier about DICE not aiming for historical accuracy? This is an example of that because rather than engage in ‘historical revisionism’ they are creating a story that is firmly planted in the Alternate History genre. This genre deals with fictional creations which talk about ‘what if’ moments, or moments created by altering a specific scene from history to show something that isn’t on the historical record. Wolfenstein: A New Order does this perfectly, as they show a scenario where Germany won World War 2. Now in this particular case, the commando team isn’t ‘written out’ of the story. They’re mentioned, albeit briefly, because in this ‘what if’ scenario, the raid that occurred in 1943 involving the Norwegian commandos failed, and all of the commandos were killed save for the guide that was escorting them, that guide being the campaign protagonists mother. This is something that the commander of the enemy forces actually mentions before you even take control of the character.

So this is essentially a ‘what if’ story, where DICE explores what might have happened if the Norwegian commandos were killed before they could complete their mission. Perfectly acceptable alternate history, and not even close to being considered ‘historical revisionism’.

But the outrage will continue of course. People who aren’t playing the game will rage because they can because in the Year 2018 there are far too many people with skin thinner than a sheet of rice paper. Personally, it’s not going to affect me. But I will admit, it’s a sad sight to see.

Anyway, if you made it this far and read the whole thing, congratulations and thank you. My apologies for the late night ramble, but it is what I do.

Until next time!

Diablo: Immortal

‘Ooof’.

This announcement went down as quickly as a lead balloon, and I’m going to be blunt, it’s very easy to see why. But first, it’s important to take a step back and look at what I’d call the ‘Diablo Community’ as a whole. The Diablo Community is one of the veteran communities of Blizzard Entertainment. If Blizzard Entertainment was a house perched high above swirling waters, the Diablo Community, alongside the Warcraft Community and Starcraft Community would be the three major pillars which keep the house from falling into the water. Granted there are other communities as well, such as the Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone communities, but these three, these are the main ones, the ones that the company created with its original three IPs.

So what has been happening with the Diablo Community of late? Well, not a whole lot. Diablo news has been mostly absent in recent years. Diablo 3, one of the most controversial entries in the series (at least until today) released in 2012 and its first and only expansion pack, Reaper of Souls, launched in 2014 and with the exception of the Rise of the Necromancer pack which launched in 2017 there have been no significant content updates for the game, and certainly no news about Diablo or its future since then, at least until today.

And here we have today’s announcement, Diablo: Immortal, a new game in the Diablo franchise which is set between the events of Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, which is a nice 20-year gap. You get to explore never before seen areas of Sanctuary, revisit some areas that you may have seen before in previous entries, you can even play as one of six playable classes (the classes from Diablo 3 including the Necromancer and Crusader, the latter of which makes no sense as they were elsewhere between the events of Diablo 2 and 3) with high-quality models, and the gameplay seems to be engaging, judging by the trailer.

So what’s the problem? What caused the announcement of Diablo: Immortal to crash faster than a max speed Lamborghini hitting a steel wall? The answer lies in the platform that Blizzard Entertainment chose to release the game on, because while previous entries in the series have been on PC, and more recent entries have appeared on various consoles as well as PC with the version of the game for Nintendo Switch releasing today, this is the first game in the series that is on mobile devices, and unfortunately, at least for the time being, that’s an exclusive thing. Diablo: Immortal will not be appearing on any console or on PC and this has caused a colossal amount of backlash and the simple reason for this is that mobile games are not seen as ‘games’ in a positive way. Due to excessive monetization, most of which appears in what can best be described as a ‘pay to win’ format, many mobile games are seen as ‘cash grabs’ designed to get as much money out of the players as possible, and no one embodies this monetization platform more than NetEase, the main partner who is working alongside Blizzard Entertainment to create this game.

And to add insult to injury, when inspections were performed by the fans, the game was exposed to be nothing more than a reskinned version of some of Net Ease’s other releases down to extremely similar art assets (in some areas) and a full port of the games UI style.

And Blizzard Entertainment wonders why players are angry?

Had Blizzard released this title on PC and Consoles as well as mobile, and made the necessary changes for each platform to make it friendly to all of them, then I feel Diablo: Immortal would have been a resounding success at the convention, but as it currently stands? It is one, perhaps even the most hated release ever shown at a Blizzcon. It’s left many fans of the series disappointed, including myself.

I can only hope that Blizzard will correct course on this and go back to the drawing board. Not to scrap the entire project, because it does have potential, but to at the very least bring Immortal to PC and Console, with changes made so that it doesn’t look or feel like a bad mobile port.

Editor’s Note: This post was ported over from Tumblr.

Morally Grey

The Warcraft Meme

Alright so, this is a hot button topic after the release of the second week of the War of Thorns quest chain, and by this point I am 100% positive that everyone has seen the Warbringer’s short or they’ve played through the quest chain in the game, so yeah, we all know what happened, Sylvanas burned down Teldrassil which surprised no one.

And this has apparently caused outrage because of a meme that has been flying around the internet since a Q&A from Ion Hazzikostas, the Game Director for World of Warcraft when he spoke of the Horde being ‘morally grey’.

Note the key words there. He spoke about the Horde being morally grey. He never said that Sylvanas was morally grey, or that the War of Thorns was morally grey, or that the Burning of Teldrassil was a morally grey moment. The idea that Sylvanas or her decisions were going to be morally grey is a meme brought about by what Ion stated about the Horde as a whole, he said the Horde as a whole is morally grey and let’s be honest for a moment, he’s not wrong.

Since the very beginning of the Horde on Draenor, we have seen evil and ruthless actions from some, and honorable actions from others within that faction. We saw the corruption and evil destruction wrought by Gul’dan and Blackhand tempered with the courage and willingness to stand up against said evil by Durotan and Draka. We saw Thrall shift the Horde away from it’s darker, bloodthirsty roots and move it further towards an organization that values honor and respect, rather than ruthless violence. We saw the majority of the Horde rise up against Garrosh rather than follow the tyrant down the path of conquest for the sake of conquest and more recently in the War of Thorns we saw the evil wrought by Sylvanas and her Forsaken Assassins tempered by the honorable actions of Saurfang as he saved civilians and refused to kill an opponent after inflicting a dishonorable blow to end a fight.

No one from Blizzard has implied that Sylvanas was going to be some morally grey character. She has always been a ruthless character, willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish her goals. She is also a character who has on more than one occasion, allowed her emotions and attachments to override her decision making, which is what we saw with the Burning of Teldrassil when she was angered by the dying Captain Summermoon.

So where do we go from here?

Well, that’s a difficult question to answer, because everyone has their own opinion on the Burning of Teldrassil. Some see it as outrageous, some feel betrayed by the Blizzard writers (although I feel this stems more from the fake meme than anything else) and others seem to be perfectly fine with it, or at least are taking a ‘wait and see’ approach to the rest of the storyline that Battle for Azeroth is going to present.

It’s worth noting that we’ve just started the Battle for Azeroth journey, and there’s a lot of the story that will be revealed, not only after the game launches later this month but also during post-launch content. If Battle for Azeroth was a movie in the cinema, we’ve only seen the first fifteen minutes of the film, we’ve watched the opening act which sets the tone and the pace for the rest of the film.

Take from that what you will.

See you in Azeroth.

Editor’s Note: This post was ported over from Tumblr.

Bethesda and Game Reviews

An Opinion Piece by Kelvoran

Hello everyone, Kelvoran here and I’m back here to speak about video game reviews and some news that has just recently been revealed on an official level involving Bethesda Softworks.

Now I imagine if you’re following my Tumblr (not anymore lol) or you see this post as a recommended blog, then you probably have some idea of who Bethesda is as a game studio/publisher and what they’ve created over the years. They are without a doubt one of the most popular AAA game developers in the world, responsible for such masterpieces as Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and the ever so popular Elder Scrolls series, the two most popular being Morrowind and Skyrim. They’re also responsible for publishing several other popular games such as Fallout: New Vegas, Dishonored and most recently, DOOM, which was developed by ID Software.

Now, why is this developer in the news as far as gaming is concerned? Well, recently they released an official statement related to the games that their company would be developing / publishing. Here is the official quote:

At Bethesda, we value media reviews.
We read them. We watch them. We try to learn from them when they offer critique. And we understand their value to our players.
Earlier this year we released DOOM. We sent review copies to arrive the day before launch, which led to speculation about the quality of the game. Since then DOOM has emerged as a critical and commercial hit and is now one of the highest-rated shooters of the past few years.
With the upcoming launches of Skyrim Special Edition and Dishonored 2, we will continue our policy of sending media review copies one day before release. While we will continue to work with media, streamers, and YouTubers to support their coverage – both before and after release – we want everyone, including those in the media, to experience our games at the same time.
We also understand that some of you want to read reviews before you make your decision, and if that’s the case we encourage you to wait for your favorite reviewers to share their thoughts.
Skyrim Special Edition releases globally on October 28 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Dishonored 2 releases globally on November 11 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Bethesda Softworks

Now this news is already causing quite a stir in the gaming community, and it’s already been picked up by at least one youtube personality known as the Jimquisition who created a video about the matter, now he covers this issue in a much better way that I probably ever could, you can watch a video about it on his YouTube channel. (I would provide a link to the video, but WordPress seems to be bugging out when it comes to displaying YouTube videos correctly, sorry folks.)

Now, this is by no means an isolated issue. Multiple game publishers have already been doing this for a very long time. Ubisoft, EA, Activision, and 2k Games have also been partaking in this activity and let’s be real here, it’s a shady practice. Game reviews and critical assessment from game critics are extremely important to customers, because there are a large number of customers out there who will not purchase a game without knowing a bit about it first, what they want to know is if the game is worth their money, if it lives up to any generated hype or if it is going to be a stinker that they should avoid. Game reviews and critical pieces serve as the means for these customers to get the knowledge they’re after while still giving them time to put money aside for a pre-order.

However this ideology of waiting for reviews and withholding money clashes with that same, very troubling area of game marketing and sales. Pre-order culture. Game publishers want your money as soon as possible, and as the years have passed and games have become more and more popular we’ve seen more and more publishers start offering incentives to purchase their game before release. The bonuses vary between publishers, but more often than not the bonus is exclusive or free content, be it physical or digital. Now most of these pre-order marketing campaigns manage to slip by unnoticed, but there have been a few that have been exposed and universally pissed on by the critics and consumers alike, such as:

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – Augment Your Pre-Order: This was a scheme which enhanced the pre-order bonus as more people pre-ordered, but forced each person to only pick one of the available rewards. It was received so poorly by critics and consumers that it was scrapped entirely by the publisher.
Warhammer: Total War – Chaos Faction: Creative Assembly and SEGA, the companies responsible for the creation of the popular Total War game series thought that they could earn some additional pre-orders by locking one of the most popular factions of the Warhammer franchise, Chaos, behind a pre-order scheme. Pre-purchase the game and you could play the faction right away, but if you didn’t pre-purchase and decided to wait, you’d have to shell out some more cash to unlock it as paid DLC. This too was met with scorn from critics and consumers, and Creative Assembly, in an effort to sooth the anger of the masses, chose to allow those who purchased the game within the first week of release to also get the Chaos race for free.

These campaigns serve only one purpose. To separate your money from your wallet before the game is released to the public and despite many critics, including the very popular TotalBiscuit speaking out about pre-order culture and stressing that people should not pre-order (to the point where he even had t-shirts made with a game of thrones style theme to them proclaiming ‘We Do Not Pre-Order’) the pre-order culture has done nothing but grow as more and more consumers willingly part with their money for a product they haven’t seen and know very little about.

And the growing popularity of pre-ordering despite a large number of people speaking out against it is bound to drive some people off their nut. Especially when the people who pre-order then complain when they realize that the company slipped them a stinker instead of the hyped product they thought they were getting.

Now you may be wondering. What does all this talk about pre-order culture have to do with Bethesda joining the ranks of these other publishers who are not handing out review copies of their games to critics and game journalists?

The answer is quite simple. Game publishers want your money as soon as possible, and the last thing they need or want is to have game critics and journalists tearing their game apart on a public stage before they can get as much money as possible from consumers. The goal behind limiting access to review copies of a game is simply there to protect the publisher’s bottom line. Because if a game is full of bugs or isn’t even close to being finished (compared to what they advertised), then a critical review will ensure that they as publishers get very little from the consumer, as many consumers will deliberately avoid a product that they know is a waste of money, which is exactly what they should do.

Look at one of the latest games to release this year, No Man Sky. If you look at reviews for that game now, you’ll see that it is almost universally panned by journalists and critics alike. This is because what was delivered by the company, was nowhere near what was promised during development, or even in the game’s advertising. As it so happens, they did not hand out review copies to critics and games media, and it is really no surprise that they did that. Because if they had, they would not have gained as many pre-orders as they did, as there are very few people out there who will willingly shell out money for a product that is not what is advertised.

And then there is, of course, the issue with Aliens: Colonial Marines. A game with advertising so misleading that games media who did hype the game was actually shown a slice of the game with effects and mechanics that never made it into the released version, which was a buggy, unappealing mess of a title. They managed to get a lot of people to pre-order the game through the practice of not releasing review copies to games media and instead leeching off the misleading slices of the game given to games media, along with the popularity that comes from being associated with a famous science fiction brand.

And yet, despite these horrid examples, pre-order culture continues to grow in popularity. It’s enough to make someone want to slam their head into the desk until they knock themselves out.

In short, limiting access to review copies is a shady practice that can ultimately mislead consumers and result in the consumer spending money on a product which may be faulty or misleading. And while it is true that there have been some games which have been amazing releases despite the lack of review copies, such as DOOM, what limiting access to review copies does is imply that as a publisher/developer, you are not confident in your product, and really, if you’re not confident enough to put your product up for critical review, why should we as consumers be confident that you can deliver on your promises?

Editor’s Note: This post was ported over from Tumblr.

Fallout 4 – Console Edition

Warning: Minor Spoilers Ahead

Here we go ladies and gentlemen, after playing Fallout 4 for roughly 9 hours, I am prepared to give my first impressions on the latest post-apocalyptic RPG.

But before I do that, I want to emphasize one particular point in regards to the title of this article. While it does say ‘console edition’ I did not actually play it on a console, I played it on PC. There is a point to the title, and it is one of the sticking issues that I have with the game but I’ll get to that point later.

So where to begin? Let’s start with the visuals which are, in my opinion, very well done. Bethesda has a track record for making beautiful environments and Fallout 4, despite being a post-apocalyptic wasteland, is no exception. Even though I did not manage to explore much further than the Sanctuary (not even reaching Diamond City) I did find that I was both amazed and chilled as I looked around the ravaged environment and explored the ruined settlements, even entering ruined supermarkets and assembly lines was a treat, and it demonstrates just how much energy the art team at Bethesda put into this game. The way they managed to blend the 50s visual style with futuristic technology is also quite amazing, especially during the prologue which sees you move around your characters home before the nuclear fallout, at least until you are forced to move on toward the vault to begin your real adventure. Character creation is also fairly solid, you have a choice between creating a male or female character, and the amount of changes that can be made, especially to your characters face is extensive. Almost every part of the face can be sculpted or altered in some fashion, allowing you to create the character you want to be.

In saying all that, however, I did experience my fair share of issues with the visuals in Fallout 4. There were times when I would look at certain areas of the game world only to see poor quality textures despite having the texture quality set to ultra. This was especially true when it came to the enemy NPCs. Some of the ghouls were extremely low quality, and that quality level did not improve as I continued to fight or after the fight was finished. Also, despite how well done the character creation is for detailing your character’s face, the body gets a very bare bones customization by comparison. You can choose between making your character muscular, thin or large by using a simple scaling element, but you do not have the ability to sculpt individual areas of your character’s body, which is a real shame as it is primarily what you are going to be looking at when you play this game, unless of course, you play in first person mode all the time.

Enough with the visuals, let’s talk audio.

I thought that the audio within the game was fairly well done, at least for as much as I experienced. I didn’t encounter any glaring issues in the 9 hours that I played, although your individual experiences may vary. The dialogue seems to be on point, and the voice acting is decent, although I do wish your main character showed some more emotion. There is a portion within the prologue where you watch your baby being taken as your spouse is executed (which one gets executed entirely depends on what gender you choose to be. If you choose to play as a male, your wife is executed, if you choose to be a female, your husband is executed) and you show next to no emotion as you take the wedding ring off their lifeless finger. Some small emotional bits are played when you speak to your old robot within Sanctuary but that’s it, there is no real sense of grief coming from your character, despite the fact that being witness to something like that has the potential to cause serious emotional and psychological damage.

Now let’s focus on the meat and potatoes of the game, and by that I mean the gameplay. What you’re going to be doing as you play through this title, spending hours upon hours moving through post-apocalyptic wastes. This to me is what matters the most because in my opinion sandbox games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim are just like MMOs. As one of my favorite youtube personalities said in his review of Guild Wars 2 (that personality being AngryJoe), the most important part of an MMO is not the story, the voice overs, the graphics or the cinematics, it’s the gameplay, because it is what you’re going to be doing for hours on end, and that holds true to sandbox games as well. If the gameplay is stale and boring, or bugged and unplayable, then the experience with the game is going to be poor, and no amount of good storytelling or excellent cinematic quality is going to change that.

Sadly, this is where my experience within Fallout 4 fell short. Controls on PC are horrible. Overall character movement is fine, but trying to aim with a mouse is slow compared to other titles in the genre. Even Skyrim allowed for faster mouse movement than what I experienced in Fallout 4. Dialogue options are streamlined to an almost excessive amount. Where in Fallout 3 and Fallout NV you had multiple dialogue options with each character, in Fallout 4 you only get 4 options, which you have to either select with the mouse or with the arrow keys (at least by default). This type of streamlining, combined with the horrible mouse controls, makes me feel like this game made for consoles first and PC second. Remember right at the start when I mentioned that ‘Console Edition’ would play a part in this post? This is why. The game feels like a console port, especially in ‘workshop mode’ the new system in Fallout 4 which allows you to build your own structures and provide for refugees in specific areas of the world. Rotating items is far more precise when using a controller, allowing you to get that minuscule angle adjustment, which is very important if you are trying to place furniture inside a house, or trying to get a workbench to line up flush with the wall of whatever building you’re putting it against. And on the subject of moving items, there apparently isn’t an option to move items into the ground, which may not seem too bad, until you try to build a fence or a house and have entire sections of it floating above the ground because the object snaps keep the construction completely level, without factoring in where the ground is.

And then there are the bugs, ahh yes. Bethesda has a track record for buggy releases, and they did not disappoint with Fallout 4. In my 9 hours of gameplay I have had enemies attack me from inside my body preventing me from hitting them, I’ve had enemies fall through the floor or through the ceiling at random. I’ve had my entire display flicker when positioning items in Wardrobe mode. Enemy detection also seems bugged at times, because enemies will engage you completely differently depending on how you alerted them and where you were standing when you alerted them. I have had groups of six ghouls race up stairs to try to slaughter my character, yet by standing three steps further inside the building (same floor, just three steps closer to the enemy I was fighting in the first place) no ghoul attack.

Now maybe that’s intentional, in which case, that’s at least one bug I can remove from the list, but only one, there are many others and that’s not even touching on all the bugs that other players have experienced in different areas of the game.

So what do I think of the game in brief?

I think Fallout 4 is certainly a competent game. It has done extremely well for Bethesda and the game does many things right which will resonate well with fans of the series and new players jumping into the Fallout universe for the first time. However, for me, the poor PC controls and streamlining of dialogue has essentially crippled my enjoyment of the game, not to mention the many bugs that I encountered throughout my nine hours of gameplay.

Sadly, while bugs can be patched out and PC controls can be improved, the streamlining of the dialogue is not something that can be changed in a content patch, and that to me is always going to leave a black mark on this game compared to previous games in the franchise.

Editor’s Note: This post was ported over from Tumblr.

Overwatch and Blizzcon 2015

An Opinion Piece by Kelvoran

Hello everyone, time for another opinion piece from Kelvoran. Today, I’ll be looking at the newest game from Blizzard Entertainment which is due to release in 2016 and that is if the title and the video weren’t obvious enough. Overwatch.

For those who are unaware of what Overwatch is, it is Blizzard’s foray into the genre of competitive FPS. Now first I want to get the praise completely out of the way, so let me just say a few things right now. I think Overwatch has the potential to be an amazing game. While I have not yet had a chance to participate in the beta for the game, I have watched many people engage in various matches on live stream via twitch and judging from that I can say that I like the game. It has a very fresh, Pixar-esque visual style which I love and there appears to be a very wide array of heroes each with their own strengths and weaknesses, furthermore the game appears to focus on the ability to swap your hero on demand, meaning that if your team is getting beaten into submission, you have the chance to turn the tables by having your team select heroes that counter the ones that are crushing you.

This is an absolutely amazing system, and I believe it is going to work quite well for Overwatch throughout the beta and well into release.

But here is where I move on to the meat of my opinion, and that is from the information that was given out at Blizzcon 2015. Specifically information on the payment model. Again for those who are unaware, Blizzard has announced that Overwatch will have 3 different versions, a PC only version for $40, the Origins edition for $60 which is available for PC, PS4 and Xbox One and the Collectors Edition at $130 which includes a number of extra items such as a soundtrack, artbook and statue. (Note, these prices will change depending on your region).

This to me is a mistake, and let me explain why I think that is. To put it simply, I think it is a bad idea to have a price on Overwatch because the market is currently flooded with competing titles. Titles like:

Dirty Bomb
Storm United
Quake Live
HAWKEN
CS:GO
Team Fortress 2
Call of Duty (various titles)
Battlefield (various titles)
Unreal Tournament (various titles)

Now I will state this right now, not all of these games are the same, in fact, they are all very different from each other. What they have in common, however, is that they are all action shooters with a competitive element to them. Many of them have dedicated communities and loyal fans, especially in the case of Call of Duty, Battlefield, Team Fortress 2 and Unreal Tournament.

And in 2016 Blizzard is going to throw Overwatch into this melting pot of competing titles with the hope that they will get a dedicated community and an extremely loyal fan base, large enough to keep the game running and to likely promote it as an e-sport title, and this may indeed come to pass, as I’ve stated this is an opinion piece, nothing more. I may end up completely wrong about this entire deal, it’s very much a wait and see scenario at this stage. (Editor’s Note: I was in fact VERY wrong about this!! And gladly so.)

But let me get back to the main point.

My thoughts are that because Blizzard have placed this price tag on Overwatch, they are already effectively cutting off entire sections of their player base. These are players who are interested in the competitive multiplayer scene but are not interested in paying high costs when there are other alternatives out there that offer a similar experience, with a much lower or even non-existent price tag. The biggest competitor for Overwatch in my mind, due to its similarity in gameplay and visual style is Team Fortress 2 and that game is completely free, and it is almost impossible to compete with free unless you have a vastly superior product.

And having the vastly superior product is something Blizzard Entertainment should know quite well at this stage, given the long history of success it has had with World of Warcraft, their flagship MMO. Even if you take into consideration all the subscriber losses that it has suffered through since its launch back in 2004, it still manages to maintain a large population of players, making the majority of its competitors feel small by comparison. They have such a stranglehold on the MMO market at this stage that MMOs that have launched in recent years, even those that have loyal communities of their own have been forced to turn to the free to play business model in order to keep their games running.

So what does this mean for Overwatch? Simply put, I believe that because the market is flooded with so many cheap or free alternatives, that Overwatch will not gain the player base it needs to survive long-term as a pay to play title. I feel that it will be forced to adopt the free to play business model, which if that does happen, is going to significantly sting anyone who purchased the game at and shortly after launch. If that happens, the game will gain new players there is no doubt about that, because at that point competitors like Team Fortress 2 and Dirty Bomb no longer have the advantage of being free, but a significant number of the ‘old guard’ as it were, will feel betrayed and will likely abandon the title altogether, which doesn’t bode well for Blizzard should that happen.

So what do I think Blizzard should do about it?

Well, sadly there really isn’t much they can do at this stage. They could change the business model while the game is still in beta, and either offer refunds or add more digital goods to justify the optional purchase of a copy of the game, but I doubt they are going to do that. They will likely push forward with the development of the game and hope for the best in the weeks up to and the following launch in 2016.

Personally, had I been in a lead development role for Overwatch, I would have made the base game and all heroes free and focused instead on the sale of high-quality skins and accessories for heroes to wear, so that they could appear unique on the battlefield. Giving Widowmaker a skin to look like Nova from Starcraft for example, or giving McCree a weapon skin that makes it look like he is wielding a futuristic revolver complete with laser fire, The ideas for potential customization options are limitless. Hell, invite a murlocalypse by giving every hero a wearable Murloc suit complete with aqua themed weapons, the only limit, in reality, is the imagination.

So there you go folks, my opinion on Overwatch and sadly, the bleak future I believe is in store for it. Personally, I hope that I am wrong. I want Overwatch to succeed, but I cannot help but feel that the current market will cause major shifts in the Overwatch business model, which will hurt the game significantly should Blizzard decide to alter the current business model further down the line.

(Editor’s Note: This post was ported over from Tumblr.)

MMOs & DLC

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Where to begin with this topic?

It’s interesting when I think about it because I have mixed feelings on MMOs when it comes to DLC and microtransactions. Let me say first off that I am a supporter of the F2P business model. I first got a good grasp of it with Dungeons and Dragons Online (as it is known today) which went from a subscription model to an F2P hybrid in 2009. Prior to that, I hadn’t really been exposed to many F2P MMOs but that one really caught my interest, mainly because I had already purchased the game, and played off and on with a subscription.

Of course, as the F2P business model kept expanding, there were more and more companies looking to make their mark and shape the business model. Some being more successful than others and soon there was a clear idea, so to speak, of how to do F2P correctly. In saying that though, I must concede to the fact that everyone has their own opinion on what ‘done correctly’ means. Some might forgive an overpriced set of microtransactions, others might not. It really varies from person to person.

For me, my rules for what makes a F2P game good are as follows:

Microtransactions must not offer player power, especially at the end game.
Content must not be restricted by recurring microtransactions.
Microtransactions must have a reasonable price.
There should be a method to earn store items in game.

Those are my 4 requirements and I’ll be honest right now, not every MMO that has gone F2P lives up to them. Star Wars the Old Republic is a significant one, because there are major restrictions on content that can only be removed if you subscribe to the game or are willing to spent money on weekly passes to remove those content restrictions.

Then there are the MMOs that get it right. Wildstar, the most recent addition to the F2P market, nailed this one right on the head. No store items which give player power, no content restricted by recurring microtransactions, reasonable prices across the board and a means to earn those items without spending a cent if you’re willing to put the effort in.

And that brings me to the reason for this post existing in the first place.

As you can see at the top of the post there is a video showing the trailer for the latest patch for RIFT, an MMO by Trion Worlds that went F2P in 2013. Now RIFT is one of those interesting cases, because it almost hits the nail on the head for me in regards to what a good F2P business model is. It doesn’t offer player power at the end game in their store, but you can buy armor and weapons. There are no recurring microtransactions which limit the content you can take part in, but there are features in the game which are cut off until you pay for them and for the most part, the price for these items is reasonable, although there is no method in game to earn store items.

Okay that is somewhat of a lie, that last part, because there are ways to get the items. You can pay platinum (the games highest coin currency similar to gold in World of Warcraft) for REX on the Auction House, and use that REX to give you loyalty points and credits to use on the store. You can also pay players a set amount and if they’re willing they can buy and gift you the item you want. But there is no currency you can farm, like in Wildstar, to allow you to buy store items on your own without needing REX or other players.

But recently, this opinion changed somewhat.

Now please, don’t misunderstand me. I still enjoy RIFT, it is a fun game to play, I love the world events and the various callings (classes) that you can play as, but recently there have been decisions made by Trion’s team which have shaken my faith in the business model. Earring slots for example were added with the Nightmare Tide expansion, but are locked unless you purchase them individually or across your entire account. This gives players who have purchased the expansion a power advantage, because they will have two items offering stats that anyone who didn’t purchase will never have.

Souls (the core mechanic of class diversity in RIFT) have also been locked away. Storm Legion, the first expansion for RIFT offered 4 souls. The expansion launched before the conversion to F2P, so those who purchased the expansion earned the 4 souls that came with it at no additional cost. For those that jumped into the F2P game and didn’t spend any money, those souls would be locked away. A small price to pay considering that the rest of the expansion content was offered for free.

But then came patch 2.7, which added the ‘Dream Souls Pack’ 4 additional souls which offered new ways to experience the game. You didn’t need them to continue enjoying the game, but it still felt like you were not getting all the power from your chosen callings, especially since these 4 souls gave callings the ability to perform in roles they couldn’t before. Mages with the Arbiter Soul were capable of tanking, Warriors with the Liberator Soul were capable of healing. These were roles that were locked off to those classes previously, as there were no souls which allowed them to perform in those roles prior to the release of the Dream Souls Pack.

Now you might be wondering at this stage ‘Okay so what’s the problem? You’re getting new ways to play for a small price. Isn’t that worth it?’

The problem is that the price isn’t small. Scroll up to my rules on what makes an F2P game good. Rule 3 – Microtransactions must have a reasonable price.

The Dream Souls pack costs (to this day) 5000 credits. If you were to spend money to buy those credits, you would need to spend between $40 – $50 US to have enough gems to buy the soul pack.

That is the price of an expansion, and you are only getting 4 souls. That isn’t just unreasonable, that is in my mind, criminal (although not really, because there are no laws actually being broken).

And with the recent patch (patch 3.4) Trion did the same thing again. Wanting over 5000 credits for the Primalist calling ($40-$50 if you buy the credits or $35 for a direct purchase from their website). True it is a new class, with six souls for you to play with, but again we come to the same problem. They want players to pay the price of an expansion, for one class. Which is at best, one tenth of what an expansion should be.

Of course, that’s just if you want the calling itself. If you want extra themed goodies to go with your calling, including:

A War Beast mount.
Ceremonial Garb for the Wardrobe so you can look like a Primalist.
A month of patron access (basically what you would get if you subscribed)
Over 87,000 loyalty (earns you free rewards based on your loyalty tier).
An additional character slot.
A warfront announcer (unique voice for PvP)
A unique pet and minion card.
A trinket for your calling which scales as you level.
A cloak
A portrait frame.

You’re going to be shelling out $100 US. You do get the calling as part of that package as well, but it is still WAY too overpriced for what could be considered a content patch feature.

The sad thing is that there is no outrage. There is no news about this. The RIFT forums are talking about known issues with the patch and other miscellaneous topics. No major MMO sites are talking about it, and they should be because this is far worse than anything EA or Activision has ever done with their games. Perhaps it is because it is Trion Worlds and not EA or Activision that has allowed this to slip under the rug because if any other MMO tried to do what Trion is doing now, there would be an uproar. Imagine if Blizzard entertainment launched Legion for free, but made you pay $50 for the Demon Hunter, and $100 for a Demon Hunter themed pack which offered a unique mount and customization options. How much of an outcry would be raised there? (I imagine a lot considering how much rage there is whenever a new store mount is released).

Now obviously I can’t do anything about this. I am one person, and one person can’t change the price of an item sold by a company, but what I can do is spread the word. Let people know that this is happening and try to convince people that it is unacceptable.

Have a nice day everyone.

Editor’s Note: This post was ported over from Tumblr.