Like every other person on Earth, I have been playing Pokemon Go.  I have seen all of the running jokes about players wandering into traffic, off of cliffs, and other feats of stupidity.  I have seen a few things as well.  It brings to mind that there are things that the players can do to fix this, aside from the obvious, pay some F-ing attention.

         First, I would like everyone to bear in mind, that the people wandering into traffic and off of cliffs, are the same people who would do that while texting, reading, or attempting to chew gum, while walking.  It’s not like they weren’t already causing problems of that sort.  That kind of person always will.

       One obvious adaptation that players don’t seem to be taking advantage of is humanity’s status as a social animal.  Like deer, or meerkats, or prairie dogs.  See those animals have a rotation that occurs rather naturally, where one is always looking out for danger, as the others go about their business.  It’s not the same one every time, but at least one is always watching out for the others.  

       One player could act as the “crossing guard” for the others.  At the next intersection, or obstacle, it would be another players turn to watch out.  It seems a lot of players travel in groups anyway, so may as well take advantage of it.

Stay safe out there.

Mech balancing. An alternate approach.

       Do you have a car?  (or have ever ridden in one)  Is it exactly as good as every other car on the road?  Of course not.  Some are better than others.  Some are newer, some older.  Some newer cars are not as good as previous models.  Some cheaper cars are better than more expensive ones.

       My point is that balancing the mechs against each other is not something that should be done.  What makes a cheap car attractive is that it is, in fact, cheap.  It should not be expected to perform as well as an expensive one, nor last as long.  But if you needed 50 of them for a fleet to outfit a team of delivery drivers, you'd likely go cheap.

       What I am getting at, in a roundabout way, is that in warfare there are concessions to be made, and some equipment will be outdated.  Some will be outright bad.  But it will be cost-effective (or a sunk cost), and therefore still used.  That is just life.

       I can already hear you calling me names, so let me answer the complaints immediately.  "Why would I ever play a bad mech?":  you say.  "That wouldn't be entertaining at all": You state.

       Quite correct, of course.  Balancing needs to be done.  I just do not feel that attempting to match the performance of each mech, so that all are approximately equal, is reflective of lore, reality, or reason.  The balancing, I feel, should be accomplished in the rewards system, not the play system.

       In this system, bad mechs would be bad, and slow mechs (Cough, cough, Urbie) would be slow.  Therefore, if you manage to cap a point with an Urbie, that should be a bigger reward than if you used a Spider.  Taking down an Atlas with that Spider, however, should pay far better than doing so with a Direwhale.

       Under my proposal, matches would not be balanced on tonnage, but on c-bill value of the mechs.  C-bill cost is a fairly good proxy for an effectiveness rating, in the absence of role-based rewards, and could be tweaked to be even more accurate.  You would have the unmodified mechs not counting as much against the total, because they shouldn't, as they are less likely to be effective.  The heavily min/maxed mechs would count greatly against it, because they are much more likely to be effective.

       Within each class, more expensive usually means more effective.  This means you could even preserve the 4/4/4/4 system.  Although you may not need to.  This would make the teams balanced, but individually reward players more for piloting mechs with a better "kills/cost" ratio.  This would reflect the grim realities of the expense of warfare.  I also would like to see a prestige system employed, but this would further complicate the game with the steepest learning curve in history.  Also, that would be another post.

Good Hunting.

Two Games.

       During a recent online discussion, a remark, intended to be insulting, was thrown my way.  Being discussed was the viability of brawling vs. sniping.  The remark was that sniping has been nerfed, and brawling buffed, to the point that sniping is only viable in (expletive) PUG matches.

       While this was clearly intended to insult me, by implying I was not an elite competitive player, it did not.  Firstly, because being an adult with a life, who lives in a home I pay for myself, I don't have the time to devote to competitive play.  Secondly, it's true.  Sniping is mostly for PUGs.

       This caused me to reflect on the dual nature of this game.  In competitive play, you have a team that communicates via voice comm., (via third party software AHEM) and has a team created to support each other in the various combat roles.  To see one in action is amazing, and shows a simple fact, since even the bad teams are good compared to a PUG team.  Communication and coordination trump individual play, no matter how skilled the player, and always will.

       The competitive community is what you will mostly see in the forums.  They are into this game far more than the casuals, like myself, and it shows in many ways.  Mostly in their assumption that everyone in the forums plays competitively.  The numbers do not reflect this, but the online community is mostly competitive players, so they tend to forget that most people only play pick up games.

       The PUG community, (if it can even be called that) is a mixture of beginners, casuals, and those of us who actually used to go to the local battletech center to play.  ($20 for 10 minutes. {that's about $33.00 in today's dollars} Bear that in mind when complaining about the cost of this game).  The game play in PUGs is markedly different.  The lack of coordination, or the ability to count on your teammates to act for the good of the team, or even in a sensible way, results in a very different successful play style.

       There are very few pushes, almost no planning, and many unintended friendly fire accidents.  And while you would think that this environment would lend itself to up close and personal combat, it doesn't.  It happens, but it is not the productive brawling that occurs in competitive play.  It is simply a way for LRM boats on each team to get locks on a Mech that someone else is targeting.

       So the game is really two completely different experiences, depending on how you play.  Most of the disagreements we have about balance stem from this fact.  While there is no ready fix for this, native voice support would go a long way.  Good Hunting.

Turnaround for MWO

       There seems to be a huge amount of optimism, and suggestions, posted in the official, and unofficial MWO forums following the announcement of the sale of the game to "The Right People".   While I too feel this, and look forward to seeing what changes come, I am advising patience and caution.

       Patience because even if they immediately begin to turn everything around to the way the community has been politely suggesting for months (with ropes, torches, and pitchforks in hand), it will take time.  Given the nature of the changes, quite a bit of time.

       Due to school demanding my time (in between my job and kids) I haven't played in a while. (Weeks)  I'm done now. (MBA)  But I hadn't played because I felt the game was stagnating.  I am going to keep up with the updates and see where this goes though.  I feel the same optimism the rest of you do.

       I also advise caution.  Just because the right people own the game does not make the things they (and we), want economically viable.  Remember many have already given up on the game, and may not ever return.  As far as MMOs go this one is Medium, not massive, Multi-player, Online.  Smaller player bases make some features cost more than they could ever return.  I don't work for them and am not privy to their numbers, but I suspect if the things we wanted were economically viable, they would be done already.

       In any case there is the old Hollywood adage: "Good, Fast, Cheap.  Pick which two".  This applies to most things.  Now you could argue we had none of the above before, but even best case scenario: a good, fast game won't be cheap.  A cheap, good game won't be fast, and a fast, cheap game won't be good.

       So be optimistic, but be patient with the new owners.  And don't be surprised when not as much changes as you were hoping for.  Good Hunting.

The likely and unfortunate sale of Minecraft

       There are currently rumors that Microsoft is in talks to buy Mojang/Minecraft.  These sources (Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg) also state that Notch is the one who initiated the talks.  I would say that these rumors are likely true.  This is not based on the reputations of the reporting companies, (Although they are right an alarming percent of the time), but on recent events.

       Allow me to explain.  Notch and the rest of the team have expressed, in recent months, their displeasure at being harassed and second-guessed bu certain types of server owners.  These are the ones who sell items on their servers that are free in the game.  Not original content, game features.  This meant they were not only completely unethical (Selling someone else's content without licence), but also violating the End User Licence Agreement. (EULA).

       There was a big to-do over this "sudden" enforcement, with many of these server-owners, which represent a truly small minority of server operators, making a big stink over being told they can't sell someone else's work.  It was at this point some despairing tweets came out of the development team.

       Then we have the takedown of Bukkit.  If they were to sell the game, a site that allowed the downloading of nearly identical content would obviously need to be eliminated.   This all adds up to a picture that either a sale of the game or company is about to happen, or some other, very major announcement is coming.  Also likely not good.

       The writing is on the walls.  As of my writing 16,646,675 copies had been sold.  If each major update (1.1, 1.2 etc.) sold for 15 dollars (and a few cent) they would make back the 2 Billion dollar price.  This is assuming no other content is sold in game, (it would be) and no money from merchandise, (which there would be).  This would also give Microsoft (or any purchaser) access to the player base.

       I believe this will happen, and it saddens me that the greed of a small few, will wreck things for the vast majority.

      Fingers crossed anyway.  I have never wanted to be wrong so badly.

The Minecraft EULA and you.

       If you are like the overwhelming majority of Minecraft players, the amount of attention given to the End User Licence Agreement seems high.  After all, it affects so few.  Most of the problem concerns Mojang stating that they are going to enforce policies that already exist.  Policies that are already super lenient.

       Mojang created a game.  They allow others to host copies of it and run a server.  The idea has always been that you can run a server, and split the cost of running it among a group.  If some amount of money was made, that was OK.  Server owners charging for elements of the game was not supposed to be part of the deal, and should not be tolerated.

       The whole problem is that Mojang is trying to be nice about the whole thing.  They want people to have fun playing their game.  They don't want people having to pay to get things that are freely available in the game.  This expectation is more than reasonable.

       Not only that, but with the advent of Minecraft Realms they are in the market of hosting servers themselves.  That is, in plain speak, they are graciously allowing server owners to use a copy of their own product to compete with them.  Is it beginning to sink in just how kind they are being to even allow private server hosting?  Granted Realms does not allow mega-server sizes, but it could be easily scaled to do so.

       It would be in their best interest to update the EULA in the 1.8 release to read that: "Non-Mojang-Hosted servers are for private, non-commercial use only.  As such no fees of any kind may be assessed to access them, in part or in whole."  They haven't done this because they are trying to be good about it.  But really, their lives, and the lives of the majority of players, would be easier if they did.

       This all could change due to the sophomoric, greedy, morally-questionable actions of a small minority of server owners.  The continued twitter-spamming, insults, complaints, and threats (Yes, threats) are causing a great deal of irritation, frustration, and disappointment on the part of the Mojang staff.   They are tired of it.  I don't blame them.

       Unlike most, I have read the EULA.  Mojang's EULA is not written in legalese, and is short enough to be easily understood.  There is simply no excuse for anyone to be mad about this.  They were told of the changes, given time to review them and adjust, they have now been warned and even given a grace period.
     
       There is also no reason for Mojang to put up with it.  If it were my choice I would add a phrase to the 1.8 EULA push: "Any attempt to charge for access to any part of the game, other than a server access fee, will result in an immediate revocation of license for the offending party.  This is entirely at Mojang's discretion, and may be appealed."  I might be tempted to leave off the: "other than a server access fee" part, as well.

Multi Core Support and Minecraft

       It was recently suggested in a tweet by Dinnerbone (Tweet) that Minecraft would be possibly be altered to support multi-core processing.  Like many of you I said: "Finally!"  But this brings me to a topic that can't be denied.  Multi-Core, despite being the norm in computers for some time now, is not supported by many online games.  Look up another game you play.  Odds are it isn't supported.

       The reasons for this are legion, but all boil down to not wanting to exclude people with older, or less powerful systems, and trying to optimize across a near infinity of hardware profiles.  While I can see the logic of these, it is a point of frustration for many.  The fact is that the hardware available on the market has passed by the needs of the vast majority of users.

       If you are old enough, you remember having the list of games that you were "so going to buy" the minute you got a better machine to play them on; because your current battle station didn't pack the gear to run the newest games.  When is the last time that happened?  I'm guessing sometime back when people still used the word "Millennium" a lot.

       Back to the topic at hand.  There will be many hands up right now asking why this particular non-issue is being addressed ahead of some real problems, missing features, or other content.  Those are the same questions that are asked in every online game, when any feature is announced.

       The good news is that the developers take the community's interests to heart.  They do listen, and one gets the impression that they care.  Look up the forums for Mechwarrior online to see what the other side of the coin looks like.  While they have reformed, of late; historically their draconian policing of the forums is the stuff of legend.  Or at least a case study in how to turn people away from your, otherwise excellent, product.

       I sit here typing this on an Asus ROG laptop that I have only ever come close to maxing out playing The Sims 3.  (Meh).  So any time a developer says they are going to optimize for multi-core, I get excited.  I want that feature for every game.  I just don't expect it.