Christmas -- 2014

Merry Christmas! Next year, I'll be trying to write more.

For now, go spend time with your family. Because that's more important than my blog.

Thoughts on Dawngate

First of all: I liked Dawngate. It was a fun game. But, the people on the Dawngate Reddit are really getting in their two-minute hate at EA. I'm not a huge fan of EA, but, in this case, I can see the business sense in what they did.

I can't really blame them for closing Dawngate though. It's been in Beta for a year and a half, still had balance problems and had low populations even during peak hours (sometimes taking 15~ minutes for a game to pop for me, someone at the middle/newbie MMR.) There's no guarantee it was going to be a money maker with LoL, DotA2, Smite and soon Heroes of the Storm to compete with. EA is also giving refunds on in-game purchases. Every dollar spent on Dawngate is a loss; odds are, they would have been throwing good money after bad to keep developing it. An economic reality that a lot of gamers don't want to face, I know, but games need to either make money or not be someone's primary source of income to get made.

If Dawngate had gotten to this level of polish a year, maybe two years ago, it would have been well-positioned to be a major player. Unfortunately, it just didn't strike at the right moment. What Waystone provided [an amazing lore and world] is sadly something that the vast market of MOBA players don't care about.

People blame EA for not advertising; I constantly see people saying "my friends say they would have played it if they heard about it!" Honestly, these people are most likely soft lying. They honestly believe that they would have played it, but the fact is, they would not have. You know how I know? Because anyone passingly familiar with MOBAs is aware when new ones show up because we all follow the same news outlets, or have friends who try them and try to get us to play. I doubt most of them would have tried Dawngate if they had heard about it, and those that DID try, even fewer would become paying customers.

Which is sad. Dawngate was on the way to be a very good game. It just missed the moment.

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P.S.,

With NaNoWriMo happening, I realized I'd been neglecting the blog. Maybe after, I'll get back to writing more regularly.

New Basic Rules, A Quick Note

The new D&D Basic Rules are posted.

I expect I'll do a full read over the weekend and give you a lot more insight as I go. But, just after skimming the opening [which I'll re-read again], one thing stands out to me as kind of... awkward. Especially given the reason we moved AWAY from 3.5/3.0 to the 4E model was to fix the very problem.

Go read The Wonders of Magic section.

Though, the section on the Wonders of Magic makes me leery for our brave non-magical people. All of their examples are ways adventurers are screwed without their magical helpers. You need clerics or you will DIE. You need bards or you will be OVERWHELMED. Without wizards and druids everything is TEN TIMES WORSE. Even if everything is more balanced, someone may have wanted to say something about warriors and paladins being a protective shield in front of their more vulnerable members, just so it didn't seem like the warriors were just sort of there for other people to be awesome around.

Bad Ideas

Sometimes, you should leave well enough alone. This is the conversation I imagine preceding this article:

"It'd be super easy to recreate a highly lethal contagion."

"It would not."

"Would too."

"Prove it." -- The start of a dark, tongue-in-cheek Outbreak parody, or a bunch of real scientists?

Some real quotes: “'These critics fail to appreciate the precautions and safeguards built into our work. ... The risks of conducting this research are not ignored, but they can be effectively managed and mitigated,' Professor Kawaoka said."

Also said by every bad guy in Jurassic Park ever.

GM Secrets: The Importance of Names

If you give any inconsequential NPC a name, he or she is suddenly the most important person in the session. If ever a PC asks an unimportant person's name, you are doomed. The adventure is now officially going off whatever carefully planned path you had set out. Accept that now Bob, Farmer guy with the Cows, is the central point of your plot. Your heroes are now cow wranglers for Bob. It is happening -- accept it, move on.

Pet Peeve in Gaming

Gammarauders comes with empty plastic bags for its own punch outs.

This is a TSR game from the 80s. Board game designers: Why don't you think of these things today? My biggest pet peeve with new board game design are game boxes that will not fit sleeved cards. Designers, you know people are going to sleeve your cards. Why should I need to buy a deck box and mess things up just to protect my game?

If TSR in the 80s could do it, you can do it too. Make my life easier.