Starter 80 Gearing in GW2

At last, I hit 80 in GW2!

Of course, my gear was utterly terrible. My last ring upgrade was in the mid 50s (and I'm a jeweler!) and my weapons were from the early 70s (and I'm a huntsman!). I had several lvl 60 blues on.

After getting roflstomped by a few dungeons, I realized that this simply wouldn't do.

Gear Basics:
Armor comes in five different rarities: Fine (blue), Masterwork (green), Rare (yellow), Exotic (orange), and Legendary (purple). While exotics and legendaries have the same stats, each of the other tiers gives a stat boost.

But how big of an improvement? I used gw2db to build a set of medium armor with toughness, vitality, and power*:

Moving from fine to exotic gear is a 35% increase in stats on gear.

But characters come with 916 base stat points. This makes moving from fine to exotic gear only a 11% increase in total stats not accounting for traits. Accounting for traits (another 300 of a chosen stat) drops that to about a 9% increase.

In Guild Wars, gear matters, but not for much.

So where to get starter 80 gear?
Trading Post:  I've had a fair bit of luck getting a full set of Mastercraft (green) gear from the Trading Post for mere coppers above its vendor price. I grabbed a full set of gear with power/toughness/vitality for about 40 silver. [EDIT: if shopping for rares, the difference between lvl 79 and lvl 80 gear is only a couple defense, which is another way to save a bit at the TP.]

Crafters: I'm guessing crafters are the source of all that trading post gear. Once I got my huntsman to 400, I found out that I can craft green gear pretty cheaply. And rare/yellow gear isn't much more expensive to craft. I've been equipping guildmates with some pretty excellent weaponry since then.

I only just realized how important runes are on gear! For example, getting a set of six Superior Runes of the Undead is worth about 165 condition damage and 50 toughness. Tailors, leatherworkers, and armorsmiths can craft runes with other desired stats.

Where not to get starter gear
Prestige Gear: Early on, prestige gear was pretty cheap (bug!), so there are a some lingering threads on the internet about them. Nowadays, the cultural and prestige gear are comically expensive. Like over 1g per piece.

Karma/Dungeon Vendors: These are great pieces of gear to work towards, but it takes plenty of time for one upgrade. Karma gear runs 42k karma apiece. It'll take 4-5 exploreable runs for a single piece of dungeon armor. Getting a starter set first made that grind much easier.

*Some pieces with these 3 stats didn't exist, so I extrapolated their values based on comparable gear for ease of explanation. Adding that complexity doesn't alter the basic point that going from blue to exotic gear doesn't add much in the way of stats.

Curiosity Killed the Sith

Ok. The Curiosity Rover now has an open invitation to the Dark Council. "Interrogating" martian rocks via laser fire? Deliberately targeting Coronation? You'll fit in just fine.

Alas, that isn't my posting topic.

In my last post, I noted that I was taking a couple weeks of vacation from the SWTOR news cycle. I was worried about my enthusiasm for the game... particulary given that my guildmates have been Eeyore to my Pooh. (At least, I hope I'm Pooh? I'll settle for Owl. Please don't let me be Rabbit.)

Well, I goofed on that. Ended up reading the news. D'oh.

So I've completely returned to the land of Telara. I'd been playing Rift on the side for a month. Now I'm swapping to it completely. (Its the season, I think - Honor's Code did a similar return to Azeroth.)

So. Much. To. Do!

Unsurprisingly - this is Rift, after all - a ridiculously large amount of content has been released since I left in December. Two raids, instant adventures, Conquest (a giant PVP deathzerg), a mobile ap (?!), a PVP revamp, fishing(!!!), mentoring, ... . I'm sure I missed stuff.

Oh so much to learn. So much gear to get. I'm psyched.

I've found a new high-pop home (yay Faeblight! horray for free server transfers!) and have a great guild. I've got myself back to raid-ready and am rolling in gear. Time for a new world of myths to bust.

Defiant aren't big on superstition.

PS: To those still serving on the Dark Council: can someone get Curiosity to cover my quota of Jedi killing while I'm gone? Jedi spawn like rabbits without regular culling. And even then, some come back. Which causes problems with the EPA over ghost storage. Messy.

The Inquisition Roadshow

I've resolved to take a two-week break from reading gaming news. I'm hopeful that everything will be puppies, kittens and rainbows once I get back. (What is the Star Wars equivalent of that?  Wookies, Ewoks and Lightsabers? Hm, as a sith, I guess I should go for lightening, lightning and more lightning.)

[SWTOR]: F2P, A New Hope

Well, my feedreader just exploded like Alderaan.*

By now, I'm guessing most folks have seen the announcement that SWTOR is going Freemium and taken a look at the subscription vs free features of the game.

Not enough verbage?  Don't worry, the blogosphere has you covered. Inquisitor's Roadhouse, Sprinksville, SWTOR face, Moon Over Endor, SWTOR commando, Blessing of Kings, Hawtpants of the Old Republic, Fynralyl, Aggronaut.  (Who'd I miss? My reader is moving at Kessel-record-breaking speeds.)

Alright, now everyone use the force, turn off your targetting computers, and just say to yourself "I'm alright".**

At this point, its probably a great idea to mention what SWTOR's F2P announcement isn't:

• The death of MMO gaming.
• The death of subscription models.
• TORpocalyse Now.
• Evil incarnate.

What this is:

• A good time to wish SWTOR well.
• A ton of potential.

I've always viewed SWTOR as a first-rate RPG just finding its footing as an MMO. Setting up a persistent RPG story with regular continuations via patches and expansions seems to be the most promising selling point of SWTOR.

Problem is, most RPG gamers I know are skeptical of subscription models.  This keeps them out of the MMO market. If Bioware can now attract these players to the MMO market, they can escape from the mentality that the "mmo market is zero-sum". They can use their solid RPG - for a box price - to hook players on MMO elements - for a subscription. They'll have found a sustainable niche.

Obligatory EA hedge: don't get me wrong, they could blaster-to-the-foot this design in the details. They could nickel-and-dime the fun right out of it. They could market it to the wrong crowd. If they are shooting for an RPG crowd, they need better tutorials to adjust folks into MMO gaming.

Side note: I don't think this move is being made because they currently have between 500k-1m subscribers. Those numbers, if sustainable, would make everyone happy. I think they're doing it because they see a WoW expansion, Rift expansion, GW2,... and wonder what would happen to those numbers unless they do something big.

But the potential of this change... I find impressive.

EDIT:  MMO melting pot posts links to yet more posts on the topic.


* Video added for soothing effect.
** Optional step: at this point, find a Sith to shoot your ship droid. I'm happy to volunteer, so long as you aren't grouped with a smuggler.

Keep Calm and Game On

I love forums data. Its a great way to look at how players relate to the game. But I started to wonder... what do other MMO forums look like? I scraped the Aion, LOTRO, and Rift general forums, and charted post views and posting frequency over time. I threw in the Rift PvP forums and SWTOR PvP forums for good measure.* Dotted lines denote major content releases.**

In this context... SWTOR's launch looks stronger than Rift's (the SWTOR PvP forums have higher posting volume than the Rift General forums). While the SWTOR forums have seen a decline in volume, the fall-off is comparable to post-launch Rift - a game that is still going strong a year later. No, really. Play a game of Conquest. Its fun, massive, and has a flobbidy-gillion players.

In the F2P category, at least from posting volume, I'd say that SWTOR looks looks like it is in a completely different league than either Aion or LOTRO. Maybe, one day, the SWTOR forums will look like the F2P pack, but at least for the moment, it'd look pretty out of place.

Much of this just reaffirms the conventional wisdom about MMOs: judging by Rift and SWTOR a fair number of players leave the game after the first couple months. Its normal, natural, and probably healthy. Across all games, content updates reinvigorate the game, but generally don't create lasting upticks.

But if this is the general life-cycle of an MMO... the recent layoffs at Bioware-Austin are puzzling. (And my heart goes out to everyone affected.)

PS:  a second way to look at the data (personally I don't find it as interesting).

* I'd use the SWTOR general forums, but given how the forums are organized, I'd take about 2000x longer.
** I've never played LOTRO or Aion so I'm uncertain how many major releases I'm missing.

The Great Server Migration

Thought I'd share a visualization of how the SWTOR server migrations have shaped realm populations. Here I'm just taking a look at realm status (1 for light, 2 for medium) over time, by region and type. Short story: origin servers are ghost towns, destination servers are hopping (but that much was clear already).*

Slightly cooler story: even before the migrations, as far back as April, destination servers had higher populations than the other servers in their zone / type. There is one exception. Until just days before the migration, The Swiftsure averaged a higher population than The Bastion (which ultimately became the destination server for West Coast PvP servers). Makes me wonder why Bastion got destination status. Rounding errors between status and true population numbers? Server hardware?

I also went ahead and re-collected data on posting volume on the PvP forums. Activity - in both posts and views - is definitely down from earlier in the year. Curiously, while 1.2 saw a remarkable increase in activity on the pvp forums, the 1.3 release had almost no effect. It looks like a focus on the server migration drew posters away from the forums around the roll-out of that feature.**



*The gap in data from the start of April comes from my failure to backup a week's worth of data and then getting a drive failure.
**The white band around May 5th is a day of data I'm missing.

Measuring Gaming Value by Depth, not Time

I see a fair number of comments arguing that 'hours occupied' is the way to measure the value of a game:

A 2 hour long movie will cost you at least $3 at a cheap theater, at best that's $1.50/hour of entertainment. Most movies cost closer to $8 to go to and lots more if your poor judgement gets you to pay for overpriced snacks ($4+/hr of entertainment). I've played 250+ hrs of D3, maxed every class to lvl 60 and tried a little Inferno with each of them. For less than $0.24/hr of entertainment I'd be hard pressed to find a better deal. For me D3 was definitely worth it! (source)

Which is a sort of weird quantity-over-quality argument... akin to arguing that a long movie is better than a short one, simply because it occupies more time. Because 'The Wolfman' would magically become a better movie by making it longer.*

When I choose to be online, I'm opting to not be hiking outdoors, playing with data, hanging with friends, (insert other favorite activities here). My time is another scarce resource I invest in games.

I measure the value of a game in its depth - the ability to generate those quirky moments of surprise that make for lasting memories. Social games have a greater potential for depth, by adding a layer of player interaction to the game.

Years later, I can chat with friends from WoW and have a laugh. It isn't the boss kills we remember, or even the 'big guild achievements'. Its the random quirks. We joke about kiting world bosses to capitals, giant world pvp deathmatches, random "you heal?" whispers, odd pranks, endless travel times... All of us remember a half hour wait for one priest to return from afk before a boss fight (her name is still a curse). Whether good times or bad, I remember those moments fondly.*

Typing that, I can't help but smile. That is great value.

D3 - after about 100 hours /played - is pretty thin on those memories. On the whole, I look at D3... distastefully? I can't point to anything from my time in-game as epic, or ask "remember when...". D3 just didn't have enough depth in game mechanics to have those quirky bits of fun. The world was a bit too linear and unsurprising, and the game design was a bit too flat. Group size was too small for a good social dynamic.

That is poor value.

I could just as easily write the same paragraph about SWTOR. It is too linear, and the groups were a bit too small (at least for the crew I game with). What saved it was the depth. I remember killing guildmates via sorc pulls. Endlessly slaughtering infinitely respawning ship droids after one too many irksome 'conversations'. Dodging instant nukes hopping up walls in the trenches of Denova.

This parallels the recent ForceJunkies and Gamespy articles on content depth (via fluff). In an MMO environment where the raiding can't be the sole endgame for all players, games need depth - at launch - to keep a wider range of players excited about the game. Which is why I'm surprised D3 and SWTOR ended up selling themselves short - by launching without more of that content, the games were great on potential, but thin on value.

Which loops back to a better understanding of why good games occupy more time. The kernel of truth there is that additional content will take more time to work through. But in a great game, that content enriches what is already there.


* Worst. Movie. Ever.
**I'd be content to call this nostalgia... but I can do the same for Rift.