Taugrim's MMO Blog

On Friday, BioWare posted in-depth information on how the Ranked Warzones will work.

Here’s how the rating system will work…

In Game Update 1.2, any level 50 player will be able to queue up for Ranked Warzones by themselves or in a group of any size up to eight players. Performance will be tracked on every player who participates, as a rating that will be adjusted with every match won or lost (leaving counts as a loss and prevents you from re-queuing for several minutes) considering the ratings of all other players in the match. In other words, if the enemy team has an overall much higher rating than you and your team, your rating would only go down a small amount if you lost. Players will have a separate Solo and Group rating, meaning only the rating for which the player queued will be affected by each match.

…so the rating system is similar to WoW’s Rated Battleground system – i.e. rating is attached to each player not to a team. I’m glad to see that there is no requirement to create a team with a roster. Of course, players can form teams if they want, but it’s not enforced by the game itself.

As far as solo vs group queuing…

However, in order to ensure that players won’t have to wait too long for a match to occur, the system will become more ‘flexible’ over time. Solo and group queued players might be pulled together after a while if needed to launch a match.

…I don’t like this at all. I was looking forward to queuing solo for Ranked Warzones to play with and against 15 other people who queued solo. It’s the ultimate competitive PUG. Having solo players face a premade for Ranked Warzones makes no sense, because it’s unfair matchmaking.

But there’s more…

If a match cannot be made for extended periods of time, then Normal and Rank queued players (except those who queued as a group of five or more) might be pulled together to launch a ‘mixed’ match

…yikes. I’d rather wait for a longer queue pop than fight with or against players who are not queuing for the same kind of match that I am. The whole point of Ranked Warzones is to create a competitive context where you get matched up against opponents of roughly the same skill level.

At least it sounds like “flexible” and “mixed” matches will be temporary…

We know that the flexible matchmaking and mixed matches are not ideal. They are only in until cross-server queuing is available and are the primary reason Ranked Warzones in Game Update 1.2 are Pre-Season, along with the opportunity to collect data and refine various systems in preparation for Season One.

How do you avoid these issues for group Ranked Warzones during Pre-Season? The solution is to queue as a full premade of 8…

Note, Rank queued players will never be prompted to backfill a match. So you’ll never be placed in a match that is about to end that could cause you to suffer a negative rating adjustment. Additionally, the Group rating is adjusted regardless of the size of group you queued up with and groups of five or more players are never called into mixed matches. So for complete control over the fate of your group rating, we suggest you queue up with your seven closest buddies that are good at PvP!

As far as buying the new War Hero gear…

Ranked Warzone Commendations in tandem with the equivalent Battlemaster piece can be used to purchase pieces of the brand new set of PvP gear called War Hero. There are no other requirements for purchasing or equipping this gear.

…the key thing to note: in order to buy a War Hero piece, you need the equivalent Battlemaster piece. Some of us have been min-maxing by mixing different BM set pieces. E.g. I am currently using the Trooper healing (Combat Medic) implants, which have Crit/Surge instead of Power/Surge, because my goal in 1.1.5 is to get to ~400 Crit Rating. So in 1.2 I’ll need to buy the Battlemaster Eliminator (DPS) implants if I want to upgrade to the War Hero Eliminator implants.

There is a 2nd set of War Hero gear…

Additionally, there is a set of Rated War Hero Gear and mounts which do have Highest Rating requirements to purchase and wear. Rated War Hero Gear has the same stats as regular War Hero Gear, except with a more prestigious appearance.

…and thankfully this gear won’t provide a stats advantage.

The rewards at the end of the match are based on team and individual performance…

The final score for your team at the end of a match now always directly affects the rewards of all players on your team. So, high scoring games will reward more. Thereby better preserving reward meaning for continued good team performance – even if it looks like your team is losing. Experience reward is an exception to this. It will be a factor of time in the Warzone and participation.

Players who earn few to no medals will have their overall rewards reduced. For example, if a player goes ‘AFK’ for some reason and gains no medals, they will receive no rewards.

There are twelve new objective medals awarded for thresholds of objective offense and defense points which are earned for various objective accomplishments and participation (e.g. help defend a door in Voidstar, passing for score and scoring in Hutball, heal allies near an objective in Alderaan, etc.).

…and this is the way it should be. One of the things that I found most irritating in WoW was the mentality of “let them win, it’s faster Honor” when things weren’t going well in the first minute of a battleground. The game mechanics should not encourage intentionally losing matches. And one of the most gratifying experiences is turning around a match.

And finally, we’ll be able to vote to kick AFK players…

Players will be able to vote to kick AFK players out of a Warzone. Any player can vote to kick a player through the group context menu. This will not initiate a vote prompt, but rather must be actively sought out by multiple players. Once a player has received several votes they will receive a prompt indicating that they’ll be kicked from the Warzone in a few seconds if they do not engage in combat or defend an objective. A player who is kicked from the Warzone in this manner will be returned to their original location before they queued, and will not be able to queue up again for several minutes.

…although I don’t recall seeing players on my server (Ajunta Pall) on either faction who were chain-AFK’ing matches. But I do understand it’s an issue on other servers, so the addition of this functionality is a good thing.

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GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/video-game-shows/star-wars-the-old-republic-video/the-republic-swtor-show/

The patch notes for PTS 1.2 are up: http://www.swtor.com/test-center/patchnotes/313976

Simply put, the number and degree of class changes are significant.

I’m an advocate of the approach of tweaking fewer things, putting them on Live, and seeing how  balance is impacted. That has been the working mode of BioWare up through Patch 1.1.5. However, in 1.2 many classes are being changed in significant ways, and it’s hard to tell whether the changes will collectively bring classes into the desired balance.

After talking with my Maven guildees on Vent, below are our thoughts on the notable initial changes in 1.2. For brevity, I do not cover every single change.

Summary

• Overall
  • Sustained healing for 2 of 3 ACs nerfed
  • Instagib / burst DPS nerfed
• By AC
  • Guardian / Juggernaut significantly buffed
  • Sentinel / Marauder significantly buffed
  • Sage / Sorc healing took an arrow to the knee, for DPS no more proc to insta-cast AOE
  • Shadow / Assassin basically untouched
  • Commando / Mercenary sustained healing nerfed. Grav Round / Tracer Missile damage nerfed
  • Vanguard / Powertech can’t hybridize tank with right-hand DPS tree, and the RNG burst has been lowered for that tree
  • Gunslinger / Sniper buffed
  • Scoundrel / Operative healing buffed, DPS instagib nerfed

Sentinel (Marauder)

• The Focus / Rage cost for CC abilites is being removed. I think this is a fair change, because previously you’d have engage in combat before having the resources to use CCs.
• The “Execute” ability is usable at 30% HP instead of 20%
• The healing debuff can’t be cleansed
• Watchman tree
  • Can no longer talent the in-combat stealth to provide 100% damage mitigation. A nerf, since damage will break you back out of stealth
  • Cauterize can be talented to snare at 50%, so this removes the GCD contention with the “Hamstring” ability
  • Valor is now in Tier 1 of the tree, which is great as any spec can take it
• Combat tree
  • Fleetfooted now buffs the Transcendence buff. This change keeps the Combat tree consistent with being about mobility and anti-kiting
• Focus tree
  • Inner Focus causes Zen to provide up to 4 stacks of Singularity. This is consistent with the philosophy of being able to generate resources immediately (or not need them) to do something you want to do
  • Improved AOE damage via the Swelling Winds talent

Guardian (Juggernaut)

• The Focus / Rage cost for CC abilites is being removed. I think this is a fair change, because previously you’d have engage in combat before having the resources to use CCs.
• The “Execute” ability is usable at 30% HP instead of 20%
• Finally, Guardian gets a CC effect early: Charge stuns at level 10. However, some players are concerned about building Resolve on the target, whereas the existing root effect does not build Resolve
• Defense tree
  • Blade Barrier was moved down a tier. This fantastic ability will become reachable for Vigilance / Defense hybrids
• Vigilance tree
  • Single Saber Mastery damage buff no longer tied to stance. Everyone will likely take it
• Focus tree
  • Inner Focus causes Zen to provide up to 4 stacks of Singularity. This is consistent with the philosophy of being able to generate resources immediately (or not need them) to do something you want to do

Sage (Sorcerer)

• Seer tree
  • Conveyance buffs have been nerfed. The fast-cast, mana-inefficient flash heal is having the mana cost reduction replaced by increased Crit Chance. The greater heal is having the cast-time reduction replaced by reduction in mana cost. Both are bad changes for PVP
  • Resplendence no longer removes the HP cost from Noble Sacrifice. Per Ryndar, this change is crippling. Right now NS is the only way to regain mana, which regens slowly, and in 1.2 it will cost HP to use again
• Balance tree
  • Presence of Mind proc now only usable on spammable single-target spells. Significant nerf. No more insta-cast AOE

Shadow (Assassin)

• No noteworthy changes

Gunslinger (Sniper)

• Can finally enter Cover while rooted
• Healing debuff effect added to the armor debuff ability
• Sharpshooter tree
  • Burst Volley may be worth taking, as it will not only boost Alacrity but mana regen as well
• Dirty Fighting
  • Crit Chance talent nerfed from 6% to 3%

Scoundrel (Operative)

• The backstab ability’s cooldown increased from 9s to 12s
• The opener from stealth now has a 7.5s cooldown. This is probably being added to prevent instagibs (Shoot First -> vanish -> Shoot First). In practice most of the better Scoundrel / Op players I know don’t rely on the instagib technique, but it is funny
• Sawbones tree
  • Upper Hand limit increasable from 2 to 3
  • AOE heal amount increased and made more compact, cooldown increased from 12s to 15s
• Scrapper tree
  • Not sure why they’re making the changes
• Dirty Fighting
  • Crit Chance talent nerfed from 6% to 3%

Commando / Mercenary

• Channeled ground-target (DFA / MV) AOE diameter nerfed from 16m to 10m – probably a good change
• Full Auto attack animation timing fixed
• Base cost for cast-time nukes reduced
• Combat Medic tree
  • Crit Chance talent nerfed from 6% to 3%
  • Net-higher mana costs for healing
  • Healing buffs and damage mitigation buffs nerfed
• Gunnery tree
  • Grav Round damage nerfed 10%

Vanguard / Powertech

• Interrupt costs no mana
• Shield tree
  • Some abilities moved off GCD
  • Mitigation tweaked (can’t tell whether it’s net-buff or net-nerf)
• Tactics tree
  • Melee DoT can be talented to snare 30% for 6s
• Assault Spec tree
  • The proc cooldown reset talent for High Impact Bolt now requires a specific stance to work. No more Carolina Parakeet (21/2/18) hybrids
  • The proc cooldown reset talent has a 45% / 60% change to proc but has an internal 6s cooldown – which is a net-nerf due to loss of RNG burst

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GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/

At GDC 2012, I attended the panel on launching SWTOR as a AAA-quality MMORPG hosted by SWTOR Executive Producer Rich Vogel and Director of Production Dallas Dickinson. Massively provided a nice writeup on the panel.

There are two takeaways from the panel that I wanted to discuss:

1. the team size and ballpark burn rate
2. the parallels of working across disciplines between the gaming industry and online business

Team Size and Ballpark Burn Rate

Rich and Dallas talked about the massive headcount involved in delivering the work:

• 30 Producers / Project Managers
• 75 Designers
• 80 Engineers
• 40 Platform
• 10 Localization
• 10 Audio (not including LucasArts)
• 140 Artists
• 280 QA

That’s 665 people total! What is not clear is whether that was the max concurrent team size, or the number of people involved in the lifetime of the project, etc. My impression is that it was the former.

When you know the headcount numbers, you can ballpark the resource costs, i.e. the sum total for of the costs per resource for compensation, benefits, training, equipment, licenses, etc. If we were to assume an average cost per resource of $100K* per year, that’s a burn rate of $67MM USD annually, excluding costs for PR / Marketing, Community Management, hardware / network / data center costs, etc.

* Keep in mind I’m not saying the average salary of a BioWare team member living in Austin is $100K per year. $100K is a ballpark figure that includes not only salary but all of the organizational costs per resource listed above.

So when we hear numbers being thrown around for the cost of developing SWTOR running in the hundreds of millions of dollars, they’re not unreasonable. A team of that scale generates a significant burn rate of millions of dollars on a monthly basis, and the extent to which such a massive team is structured to deliver effectively and managed effectively has a huge impact on the total costs and quality of the deliverable.

Parallels of Working Across Disciplines Between the Gaming Industry and Online Business

One of the big aha’s that Rich and Dallas had was the critical importance of setting up “strike teams” that were multi-disciplinary, i.e. teams that consisted of Designers, Engineers, Artists, QA, etc to work on specific issues and solutions. After the panel, people from other development shops, e.g. from Microsoft’s XBox 360 team, shared that they recently came to the same realization.

What I find interesting is we reached the same conclusion in the Internet business space over a dozen years ago. Launching online products and services required close collaboration across multiple disciplines: Product Managers, Information Architects (who define the site / app structure and functionality from the perspective of the user), Content Writers, Graphic Designers, System Architects, Front-End Engineers (the ones writing the web scripting / pages), Back-End Engineers (the ones implementing the middleware, business rules, databases, integration with other systems, etc), etc.

The good thing is that as developers learn to better execute and manage these large-AAA launches, the smoother the process should be and the better the end product for gamers.

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The Game Developers Conference is the world’s largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event. As the target audience is not the gaming public, the focus and feel of GDC is very different from other recent conferences that we attended, such as New York Comic Con back in October 2011. We didn’t see a single cosplayer. Most of the sessions are hosted by developers sharing their insights and experience with various properties or companies hawking their upcoming games, platforms, and tools.

When I attended GDC back in 2010, “Social” was the big buzzword as there was a lot of attention paid to the burgeoning Social Gaming market. Skimming this year’s schedule, “F2P” (Free-to-Play) and “Cross-Platform” are the hot keywords.

Why the shift in focus?

Let’s talk about F2P first. In a nutshell, the business model is to entice players to download and try your game and convert some of them to paying customers. The concept has been around for years and as the Internet’s infrastructure has matured, it has become an increasingly cost-efficient and viable distribution platform.

Most Social Games have been F2P from inception, as the games are very lightweight to download, require no separate (e.g. Facebook Apps / Games) or minimal (e.g. App Store) installation, and have viral incentives to encourage players to rope in their friends.

However, the traditional gaming markets, PC Gaming and Console Gaming, have their roots in physically-shipped boxed products and the games were – prior to a few years ago – impractical to distribute en masse online as the game downloads were huge relative to the average customer’s bandwidth. The costs of real-world distribution are significant.

The synergistic rise of high-speed Internet access by ISPs and the maturation of CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) has made it feasible and viable to distribute even large games over the Internet. E.g. everyone I know playing SWTOR, which launched 3 months ago, downloaded the 20GB game instead of waiting for installation discs. Contrast this to Blizzard’s The Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft just 5 years ago, where I dragged my wife with me to Target in the East Bay to stand in line with hundreds of other diehard WoW gamers at midnight to buy the game. (The game sold out about a dozen people after us, and there was a near nerd-riot LOL).

So the distribution side of making heavyweight MMORPGs F2P is there. But what about the monetization side? This in my opinion is the bigger challenge. How do you create a game that is sufficiently enjoyable without paying that it attracts and retains players, while still providing virtual goods and other perks that a fraction of the playerbase will gladly pay for? And how do you do this for massively-multiplayer games without creating a game that is essentially “Pay-to-Win”?

F2P is a bad word to the majority of MMORPG players, but that is mainly due to poor design and implementation rather than the concept being flawed itself. I’ve had both positive (Knight Online back in 2005-2006) and negative (Allods Online in 2010) experiences with F2P properties. Back in KO, one of my guildees, a pizza shop owner down in Brazil, was forking out hundreds of USD a month to maximize his enjoyment of the game, and I became a monthly sub ($15 USD) because it was worth it to me as a full-time working stiff who valued his free time.

The PC and Console Gaming industries have the benefit of watching what has worked with Social Games, which have proven that players will pay for convenience and for virtual goods, e.g. cosmetics / customization / in-game items, etc. Microtransactions FTW.

It’s only in recent years that some of the larger mainstream MMORPGs have transitioned to F2P, e.g. Turbine’s LOTRO and NCSoft’s Aion. Industry analysts and bloggers have been predicting the end of P2P (Pay-to-Play) games for a few years now, and while the industry is moving in that direction, P2P games are not dead yet – see EA/BioWare’s SWTOR and ArenaNet’s upoming Guild Wars 2 launch.

One huge reason why games are still P2P is that game developers need to recoup their sunk costs to reach product launch. E.g. the estimates for SWTOR have ranged anywhere from $100-200+MM USD. (The ironic thing: the most common complaint I’ve heard about SWTOR is the lack of endgame content or issue-free content. But hey we’re gamers and we’re never satisfied, amirite?).

And here’s the basic problem: how to make a P2P game scale its customer base over time. Having a hefty (e.g. $50 USD) price tag is a significant deterrent to acquiring new customers. Arguably no developer has figured it out aside from Blizzard with WoW, and even Blizzard started offering WoW to level 20 for free last summer.

As MMORPG developers sort out F2P, what I expect to happen is for the large-scale AAA-quality launches, e.g. the RIFTs’, SWTOR’s, and GW2′s, to be continue to be P2P at launch to recoup the sunk costs, and for those games to eventually transition to F2P but with mechanics that entice players to pay on a recurring (subscription) basis, expansion basis (GW / GW2), or microtransaction basis. We’ve already seen Trion Worlds offer new mounts (spider!) for a microtransaction even though the game is P2P and requires a monthly sub. This shift from P2P to F2P for a given game may be necessary to achieve a sustained net-gain of customers over time after the initial “burst” of customers at launch. And to do it right means that the developer would need to consider F2P mechanics before the game transitions from F2P to P2P.

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BioWare revealed many key features for Patch 1.2.

Here are some of the notable takeaways from the livestream. My comments in italics.

Quality of Life Improvements

• Sprint (out-of-combat movement buff) will be available at level 1. Thank. Freaking. Goodness.

UI Changes

• Customization
  • You can move / re-position elements
  • You can resize individual elements or the entire UI
  • You can export your UI settings (XML file format), so you can share them with other players. Unfortunately you can not export keybindings
• They are adding Target of Target as a UI element
• Companion bar will be separate instead of an overlay
• Mouseover targeting is not making it into 1.2
• No ETA on macros. What they are ruling out are macros that affect combat directly
• No ETA on API for addons
• No plan on adding a separate bar for Stealth, just as there is in Cover

General PVP

• Valor Rank will not be a gate / requirement for gear – it’s merely a measure of how long you have been PVP’ing. Unarmed Brawling combat will be unlocked at higher ranks. It appears it will be more for Prestige and for fun
• Stats on PVP gear are getting re-worked. My hope is that with the changes PVP gear will be the best option for PVP for each slot, which is not the case now. Right now the DR cap is too low for Expertise, which makes slotting all PVP gear a waste
  
• Tab targeting is being worked on. So many people have complained about this, so it’s good that BioWare is looking at it
• You can target players by clicking on their nameplate. BRB need to rename character to “Tau” and guild to “Mvn”

Rated Warzones

• You have two options for queueing for Rated Warzones
  • solo for 8v8. I think having solo queues for Rated Warzones will be hilariously fun. People in the chat over on GAMEBREAKER speculate that this will be a lot of Assassin/Shadow and Operative/Scoundrel, and I’d throw in Sentinel / Marauder as well. Those 3 classes are the strongest for soloing and most difficult to shutdown in terms of their DPS. Regardless, it will be an entertaining option while you are waited for guildees / friends
  • 8-person group for 8v8. Finally, we can run full 8-person groups! The catch of course for smaller guilds is having 8 players available and online that make for a functional comp. As Leiralei tweeted, it would also be great for smaller guilds if you could queue as a 4-person team, and get paired up with another same-size team.
• There will be a “pre-season” for Rated Warzones at the start of 1.2, and the the “regular” season will begin. What this means exactly is not clear, but some people are speculating that pre-season will be used to bracket people at the start of the regular season. TBD.
• Rating will be at the individual level, as opposed to the team level. Prior to this announcement, I was concerned that Rank warzone teams would have a fixed roster, a la WoW’s Arena. The issue here is that creating teams with fixed rosters can create schisms within guilds and you need the same team members online to be able to run. Having the rating at the individual level will allow for much more flexibility
• Best-in-Slot PVP gear will come from Rated Warzones. I have mixed feelings about this. IMO titles / bragging rights are sufficient reward for the cream of the crop. Giving them a gear advantage will make PVP even more faceroll, especially against lesser-ranked opponents in whatever context. When Blizzard largely removed the Arena Rating requirements for epic PVP gear in Cataclysm, it created a much more level playing field, where outcomes were determined based on skillful play and coordination (and composition)

Multi-Spec

• They are targeting Dual Spec shortly after 1.2
• You have to manually click gear to swap sets, i.e. no predefined gear sets

PVE Difficulty

• Normal Mode is being replaced by Story Mode
• Nightmare Mode Operations will drop different loot and have additional mechanics compared to Hard Mode Operations

Companions

• Regarding same-gender relationships
  • They don’t want to just take the existing storylines / voiceovers and re-work them – that isn’t storytelling
  • They did have some romance relationships that did not make the cut due to budget reasons
  • They will come out with same-gender relationships with the Story Updates later this year

Population / Distribution Numbers

• Overall population breakdown across all server types
  • 57% Empire
  • 43% Republic
• The population is more lopsided on PVP servers, but Georg did not say by how much
• Not surprisingly, Sith Inquisitor is the most popular class, with almost one-fifth of the entire game population

UPDATE (2012/03/07): Dulfy took in-depth notes from the livestream, so check out her post. She has a kick-ass blog, so make sure to follow her on Twitter.

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GAMEBREAKER Host for “The Republic” SWTOR show: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/category/the-republic/