Design Test: Favorite Zone and Why?

My posts have been pretty few and far between, and for that I grieve.

Then again, nobody probably ever actually visits my webpage anymore, and is let down by a lack of new posts. All you young whippersnappers and your RSS feeds get Ixo delivered directly to your inbox, so I take that back. Short term grieving FTW!

I've stayed relatively quiet on one important front for a while, and that's been my search for employment in the gaming industry. Just because I haven't talked about it doesn't mean it isn't underway, and in fact I've just received a huge indicator that it's actually going pretty well!

I won't jinx myself by disclosing... well, much of anything... at this point, other than to say this: they saw my raid dungeon and NWN2 module, and took the next step of calling for a phone... uhh... chat. It wasn't so much a real interview as probably just making sure that I can carry on a normal conversation, because with the internet, well... you never know. The official interview (hopefully) comes later. The chat went pretty well, I think, and I've moved onto step 3 in the process. I'm whacking away at a "design test" they've given me to see how I handle certain problems, or my assessment of certain things in existing games.

Again, I'm not going to just paste the whole test up here or anything ridiculous, but some of the questions are what I imagine to be pretty standard fare for stuff like this. So I think I can get away with asking the question of the day without fear that I'm giving away any huge trade secrets. In addition, I've already answered it, SO YOUR RESPONSES MEAN NOTHING TO ME!

Oh wait, I mean... your responses aren't going to influence mine, but it might be a neat excersise for you guys to take part in, too, and hooray there's a new post on Ixobelle to boot! Win Win!

THE QUESTION:
What is your favorite zone from a current MMO and why? How would you improve it?

MY ANSWER:
Howling Fjord in WoW is awesome. From a purely visual standpoint, you have these huge cliff faces all over the place, absolutely towering over you from the distance, the instant you arrive into the zone by blimp. Pulling into Vengeance Landing (as Horde), your first exposure is this awesome little distinctly undead town, as indicated by its unique architecture, dwarfed by this backdrop of huge cliff faces looming over you. There's some rickety chain elevator leading up to this dragon's mouth, and although you aren't sent directly to it on your first few quests, it didn't stop me from running up there and immediately surveying the area from the highest vantage point I could find.


Borean Tundra, by comparison, feels like a flat collection of tepid puddles and cob webbed crevices. It's much more claustrophobic. Arriving at Warsong Hold gives you a rather muddled view of your immediate surroundings; you don't have an expansive vista to greet you. You jump off the blimp into this... castle thing... and are running around on elevators looking for skill trainers. Questgiver exclamation points are visible, but you don’t know if they’re above or below you. Warsong Hold itself is a poorly laid out and confusing introduction to Northrend in contrast to the wide open and direct first impressions of Vengeance Landing at Howling Fjord. Vengeance Landing itself is a proper town, and you run from building to building looking for NPCs to interact with, not up and down magically floating pentagonal elevators. Even the elevators themselves are frustrating; if you're stuck at the top level, you need to stand around and wait for it to meet you before you're allowed back down. I would have opted for a simpler layout using staircases.

If I were to make changes to Howling Fjord, it would be from a content perspective; adding quests to climb around on the cliff faces themselves. After a while, it eventually sets in that the cliffs are nothing more than the "boundary mountains" that surround any of the old world zones like the Barrens or Desolace.

By giving us a reason to climb around on them, it gives them a purpose for being there, instead of having them just be fancy looking walls. Eventually we gain the ability to fly in Northrend, but all that does is grant us the ability to skip the rickety elevators, not reach some out of the way nooks that were impossible to access before. By having a reason to revisit previous zones, it allows us to spread higher end content to the lower end zones, and gives players a chance to interact with each other outside of that zone's "designated level range". As it stands, the primary reason you see 77+ players in the Fjord is because they're farming herbs or ore.

I'm curious what you guys think, what zone(s) do you like, and why?

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MUT MUT ENVENOM!

Welcome to raiding as a Rogue! I've shelved my priest, because healing is dumb, and healers who heal are boring people. There, I said it. I tried to pretend that staring at Grid (and using Clique to Ctrl and Alt click little boxes) made for exciting gameplay, but at this point I'm pretty much over it. I tend to roll healers because it guarantees me guild invites, and I never get booted from PUGs, but then once I'm firmly in place I pull the ol swicheroo and out comes IXSOBELLE.

MUHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHHA! FOOOLS!

I'm being kind of a dick, and you gotta take it with a grain of salt. Healing has its place, and I've done/still-do it when the need arises. But, honestly, I just wasn't the best healer there was. I would heal reactively, which means if nobody was taking damage, I wouldn't be spam spam spamming my big CDs. In fact, I tended to kind of take a simple pleasure in just... standing around... during quiet portions of the fight, letting my mana regen. Apparently this was all wrong, and I should have been spamming Circle of Healing every instant it cooled down, whether the raid needed heals or not. I even tried on a few attempts to do just that... to spam Flash Heal into people who didn't need it, and pop CoH every time it was up, and I still came in at the bottom of charts. Friggin Prayer of Mending... I need a big siren attached to my monitor to tell me when it's done and I need to chuck it back out there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big chart whore; but in our guild we have these guys who can just CRANK out health, and then there's me. Maybe I just didn't want it enough? Whatever.

Raiding as a healer also had (has) a few big drawbacks. Primarily there's what I like to call my "effective UI":

Basically, this is what a healer sees all raid long. Grid (raid unit frames) and SmartDebuff (decursive/cleansing) are all I'm looking at, and I faithfully watch as little bars shrink and then grow. Oh, and every once in a while I check a little sliver of the screen in the middle, right below my feet, to make sure I'm not standing in fire. Zzzzz.

Now, I won't pretend that DPS is gloriously taking in the entire scene... in fact, on fights like Saurfang, I just tunnel vision my Rogue cooldowns and a few buffs like Hunger for Blood to make sure I'm doing my job effectively. At the end of the run, though, I find I was much more 'useful' to the raid as a whole. I feel like I'm just better at being a rogue than I am at being a priest.

Then again... as shadow DPS, I do alright, too.... ugh. I'm not sure where this post is going.

It's no secret that there's good DPS and there's bad DPS. I think everyone should roll a tank, healer, and DPS just to see the game from every perspective. Not respec one day and pretend that you get it, but really PLAY each role from 1-80. It gives you insight to how annoying it is to put up with the other two thirds of the group. From tanks that don't move bosses out of fire for their melee, to DPS that feel like standing in the fire to finish this 2 sec nuke cast is acceptable.

I think tanking is probably the most exciting (glamorous?) thing you can do in a raid. The spotlight is on you and everybody is reacting to what you do. You set the pace of the run and although a DPS or heal can die and you can still finish the encounter, you can't die, period, or it's over.

DPS have a nice, relaxing groove they fall into, where you're just trying to optimize your CDs and positioning for maximum output... you're mostly just trying to get in the zone, and that's your main priority.

Healing just feels stressful, especially during fights like Festergut where there's so much damage and you need to make decisions from time to time on who gets to live and who to let go, all in a single GCD and ughhfgghahsgasjas

MUT MUT ENVENOM! Ahhhhhhhhh, my life is so much simpler now.... we can get into it later how Mut rogues are two button wonders, but for now I'm just enjoying the simplicity of it all...

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70% of BLAH BLAH BLAH

There is a shocking (shocking!) bit of news that's been going around how 70% of WoW players never make it past level 10. That there's a whole slew of people who never make it any further than level 10.

SHOCK!

Like, ZAHMIGAW---SUPER CALI FRAJALISTIC XP ALLA SHOCKZORS! Before you read any further, think really, really hard about this SHOCKING bit of trivia.

And then think about what I see all the time on my way to the mailbox from the AH:






MOMMY, YOU MEAN THOSE AREN'T ALL HEROIC ICC25 HARDMODE GEARED TANKS?!

... shocking, right?

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Pears are Delicious

Especially THIS PEAR. It's ... so delicious.









I don't know why everyone hates Halls of Reflection so much. Falric seems like an okay guy to me...


(okay, while looking for a picture of Falric to Photoshop above, I realized I'm a bit late to the party with this joke. Apparently everybody already knows he's got a thing for pears. I just heard someone talking about it during Forge of Souls in guild vent the other day, and we were having a hoot with it. I honestly don't think I'll be very effective during HoR any more once this guy gets rolling... I extracted that WAV file from the MPQs, and have it ready to go for the middle of "OMG SRS BZNES RAID TIME" next time in ICC, tho. I gotta read up on how to incorporate '/script sound' stuff into macros, and put it into an Intimidating Shout macro for my warrior / Howl of Terror macro for my lock!)



*update*: That took all of 12 seconds. Enjoy!

macro:

#showtooltip
/cast Howl of Terror
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Falric\\HR_Falric_SP01.wav")

replace Howl of Terror with Psychic Scream, Intimidating Shout, any AoE Fear you have. Of course, only YOU will hear it, but whatever... it's worth it.

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The Belkin N52te (and how to use it)

This post has been WAYYY too long coming, so I finally just sat down this morning and started taking photos. My original post on my old Belkin n52, and how I configured it for my Warrior, was one of the more often read and commented-on articles of mine over at NotAddicted, and is actually the #6 result to come up on googling "belkin n52 gamepad". I'm top ten baby! Woo!

For anyone that has no idea what a Belkin N52 gamepad is, just sit tight. For all of you who know what one is, but are not using it to its full potential, buckle up, and let's do this.

First of all, what is a Belkin n52 gamepad? It's a little keyboard that sits to the left of your main keyboard. It consolidates a useful cluster of keys for your left hand, so you don't find yourself trying to hold Shift with your pinky while you stretch for the Y key with your index finger, all in the middle of a crazy pull.

There's a closeup below. There are a few things I immediately like about the layout of the keys, one being that the W and S keys in my layout are directly above and below each other. Now look at your keyboard. In a typical WASD layout, the W and S are slightly shifted, because for TYPING that makes sense. But when you're using those keys to move forward and backward for hours on end, it makes no sense. I have two joints (and a knuckle?) attached to my middle finger, and they primarily move vertically. It's ergonomics. Whatever. Let's take a look at the basic layout of the thing before I begin to sing its praises.

This is the Belkin n52te. The "te" stands for Tournament Edition, which is a little ironic, because I doubt you'd be able to use one of these in any kind of regulation play. The old, silverish, n52s (and the older n50s before that) were actually made by Belkin, but then Razer stepped up and took over the construction of the product, and the keys are much more responsive, and there are horrendous blue LEDs that you can turn on or off depending on how into that kind of stuff you are. They also added a round joystick nub thing on the dpad area that I promptly popped off and gave to my cat.


There are 14 keys in the primary cluster, with two more (and a dpad) for your thumb to handle. There's also a scroll wheel on the unit where the "15th" key would have gone. One of the biggest things that the Belkin has, and a standard keyboard doesn't, is that thumb area.

Let's take a closer look:

That's a lot of stuff for your thumb to handle, which is good. I'm a big fan of the thumb; it's kinda what separates us from the lower mammals. Wasting a fully opposable thumb on spamming the spacebar to jump around Ogrimmar is pretty shameful. The Belkin elevates your thumb to its proper status.

Check it out: In Japanese, yubi is the word for finger. Oya is a word that basically... well, it's for denoting someone of higher status than you (you call your landlord Oya-san, for example). So how do you say thumb in Japanese? Oya Yubi. It's the friggin Boss Finger. How cool is that?

Anyway, your (pasty, white, Frodo Lookin, The-One-Marriage-Ring Crafted-in-Mount-Doom Havin) hand sits on the little palm rest, and everything falls into place.

If you have freakishly oversized Man Hands, you can adjust the little palm rest thing to one of two positions:


Okay. Enough of the little build up crap. Foreplay's over. Let's get into the nitty gritty.

One of the biggest points the Belkin has going for it is that it doesn't actually pretend to be the left half of your keyboard. There are all kind of silly knock offs that try to be Belkins, but they just give you another WASD cluster, complete with Q E R T Z X C V keys and all that crap. The Belkin is fully programmable, which means if you don't use WASD to walk around, you don't need the main four keys to be that. You could have them be ESDF, UHJK, RDFG, Numpad 8456, WHATEVER. Any key on the Belkin can be any key you want it to be, and they can even be any combination of two or more keys, or fully customizable macros. You can have a single key be Ctrl-Shift-5. Or you can have it be 44444444444. Sadly, I actually use that when I play combat swords on my Rogue, it just repeats 4 every 50ms as long as I have it held down. SINISTER STRIKE, HOOOO!!!!

Not much has changed from the main layout I decided on oh-so-long-ago when I first started using it, save for new moves needing to be incorporated.

The main UI of WoW (or any MMO, bascially) has numbered keys from 1-0 along the bottom of the screen. 1-0 = 10, WASD = 4, there's 14 keys in the main cluster. Coincidence?

I bascially have my WASD dead center (on the home keys), and then I wrap 1-0 around it clockwise. The scroll wheel has two keys bound to it, Numpad Zero and Decimal, and I put "-" on the upper thumb button. The astute among you will have noticed that WoW actually has a TWELVE button action bar. The "-" key is my upper thumb button (the "ohshit" button usually, that I can activate while on the run; I put Health Pots there or whatever), and the twelfth button is activated with rolling that extra scroll wheel down, towards me (Shield Wall, on my tank). Rolling that same wheel up pops Last Stand (I think of it as "locking myself DOWN", or "bringing my health UP").

Let's see that whole thumb section in better detail:

There's that "-" up top, with Tab (for targetting) being what your thumb is resting against when it isn't using the dpad. The dpad itself is used for jumping around Ogrimmar like an idiot, but so many other things as well. Alt is my Ventrilo push-to-talk key, and Shift and Ctrl are my button modifiers. For a while I had Alt where Shift was, but found I would Alt-Tab out of the game at bad times, so reversed those bindings.

Once you begin to look at how many buttons you have confortably at your command, I try and come up with a system for using them. I play a lot of alts, and there are some moves that mimic others. Rogues and cat druids both have something they use to build up combo points, then finisher moves, etc. I tend to find that I want my 'spammy' moves to be the easiest for my fingers to reach. I don't want to be reaching 'up there' to my 3 key for a move I do ALLL the time. On my warrior, tanking, 3 is Shockwave. I use it, but it has a longish cooldown. I'm constantly spamming Heroic Strike and Devastate, so those get the prime real estate locations of 5 and 8. My fingers naturally rest on the WASD chunk of keys, and moving straight down has my index and pinky in line to whack those over and over. My ring finger is on Revenge for when it lights up in the 7 slot, and I can interrupt casts with my middle finger on 6. Devastate and Revenge sometimes proc Sword and Board, and it's a short reach up to Shield Slam on 9. Taunt is on the upper corner at 0. I don't need it too often, but when I do it's in an unmistakable position.

All that I just laid out is personal preference. I don't pretend that my key binds are TEH BEST or anything ridiculous. I just know how I play, and my fingers know what to do when it's time to interrupt a cast or whatever.

One other thing I touched on was similar situations across toons. Before I get into that, I have a few similar situations happening on my one toon here. Ugh, this is where it gets kind of weird, but hopefully by the end it will make sense.

6 is Shield Bash. It interrupts spells. I think of 6 as my 'stop that from happening' button. That means, when I set up keys on my Rogue, I immediately want to hit 6 when I see someone casting on me. So I drop Kick on the 6 key, duh. But what about 3? Shockwave interrupts spells too, but in an incapacitate sort of way... a Shockwaved mob is stunned for a few seconds. So on my Rogue, I have another move like that... Gouge. So Gouge is 3 on my Rogue. Obviously the playstyles are different, but if I just want to interrupt a cast, I hit 6, if I want to stop a cast, AND have time afterwards for whatever, I hit 3.

See what I'm getting at?

My brain is crazy, and I think in pretty abstract ways about this kind of crap. I don't really sit down and analyse it beforehand, but I try to have a system for stuff like this... Ctrl-5 and Ctrl-6 are similar too... Ctrl 5 is my 'buff myself' combo... this is Sprint on the Rogue, Battle Shout on the warrior (this was before tanks had Commanding Shout), Hysteria on the DK... etc. Ctrl-6 is the "debuff you" flipside to that... Curse of Weakness on the Lock, Evasion on the Rogue (which I guess is a buff to me, but reduces your chance to hit me), Demoralizing Shout on the tank, Mark of Blood on the DK.

Not every single thing lines up like this, but when I play a new class, it's easy for me to have these pre set up slots that moves fall into. Sometimes I trip up, or sometimes they need to be moved. I didn't realize DKs get a normal taunt, and I already have Death Grip in my 'taunt slot', but with DKs you just pass out drunk on the keyboard and win anyway, so....


ANYWAY.


Not a whole lot has changed since my previous writeup, except that I shuffled around a few moves to make space for the BC/Wrath moves, and I rolled a whole bunch more alts. 4,5,8,9,0 still tend to be my money keys for my main moves/spells. I mentioned the spammy 5/8 thing because with my warrior I literally just hit those two keys a zillion times a minute. With more methodical playstyles (Rogue, Warlock), I tend to use 4 as my main nuke... Mutilate, Incinerate/Shadowbolt (depnding on spec), and the 8,9,0 lineup is stuff like my DoTs or Kidney Sshot, Slice n Dice, Evsicerate/Envenom.

Key Modifiers:

I've mentioned before that the biggest thing the Belkin offers is that Dpad. It's true. I find it's so easy to have those 1 thru 0 wrap around, but it's extra good when you realize that you ALSO have Ctrl & Shift + all of them. Well, almost all. I find it's a stretch to try and pull back to hit Ctrl on the dpad with my thumb, and also reach your index finger up to the 1, 2 or 3 keys, so I delegate those to stuff like warlock pet sit, stay, follow. Shift 1 and 2 I don't have a problem with, and make those my Will of the Forsaken and Cannibalize ON EVERY TOON. All my girls are undead females, and they all will BREAK FEAR, all over your ass, then kill you, and then EAT YOU. If I play on my Shaman (level 11), and I get feared, I hit Shift-1 out of reflex, and then just curse the stupid orcs and their dumb axe racial or whatever crap they have.

At any rate, you begin to realize how many slots you can actually use, AND ACTUALLY REACH, and it's a little bit much. I actually have a problem where I can't NOT have a skill somewhere on my bars. Some people are just like 'oh move Z, fuggit, it's lame, I never use it', but I keep thinking how I'll need it eventually in some lame ToC Faction Champs crap (Banish? lol? CC?), and so I have it somewhere.

Again, a lot of moves fall into my slots... Shield Bash (spell interrupt) is 6, so Spell Reflect? Shift 6. AoE stun (Shockwave) is 3, so single target stun (Conc Blow) is Shift 3. Taunt is 0, so AoE taunt is.... wait.... Ctrl 8. Oh crap, Taunt USED to be 8, so AoE Taunt was Ctrl 8... but then I put Devastate there, and omg my brain... ugh....

Warlock!

Life Drain is 7, so Mana Drain is Ctrl 7. 7 is ALSO Mana Burn on the Priest, blah blah blah... Look. I'm not going to list every single keybind I have for every toon I play. You get the idea. Your fingers' muscle memory will learn to react in certain situations if you don't just throw crap around willy nilly. Try to be aware that you basically have a zillion buttons, and none of them is more than ONE NEIGHBORING KEY away from the WASD homekeys. THAT is the biggest point.

I won't even get into my mouse


oh crap yes I will, apparently. I have the increase and decrease sensitivity buttons on my mouse rebound to + and - on the numpad, and tilting my wheel left and right I have bound to brackets [ & ]. BUT! This isn't 4 keys, it's 12, because of those shift and ctrl modifiers.

I mean... I haven't given up on my keyboard. I'm typing this whole thing up using it. I use it all the time. I don't waste keybinds on Map or the Talent Pane windows to the Belkin, because I don't need to open those map during combat.

When you realize how far I've gone with this, trust me when I say I haven't even touched the surface.

Below the thumb key are three little LEDs indicating which "shift state" you're currently in. I leave mine in Blue, and am able to sleep at night (barely). You can bind a separate key to shift the entire unit into Green (or Red) state, and then remap ALL the keys AGAIN. Frankly for WoW, we don't need

14+14+14+3+dog+3+cat+3+3+pizza+12+

whatever, a zillion keys. I could see how it could be neat in an RTS game, where Green state was Building, Red was Combat, and Blue was macros that typed out in fractions of a second how lame your teammates are for feeding the enemy army. That is a completely real and viable way to use the unit. I use it for WoW, and don't need more than all the buttons already available in one shift state.

I have, however, shown people how to use it for things having nothing to do with gaming. At my old job before I went to Japan, when I was doing IT, we did a lot of grunt work in Photoshop, and we used a lot of people on staff that had never used anything more advanced than MSPaint. Rather than have them try to remember how to find the Brightness and Contrast sliders (which, to this day, have no keyboard shortcut) among the zillion dropdowns Photoshop has, I just made simple macros that would play out "Alt I, down, down, right, enter" in 10ms, and bound it to a key. I showed them how to bind a key to be the Lasso tool, and use the dpad to modify that with shift, so they could cycle through the various version of the lasso tool to find the one they need. Yes, they could have just learned that L was the Lasso tool, but they weren't all touch typists, and to have the 7 or so tools we used in Photoshop be so easily accessible was a huge boost to productivity.

I took those same lessons and set my 60-something father up with a Belkin just recently. He uses Photoshop all the time (he's an illustrator), but never used keyboard shortcuts, because of the hunt and peck method he uses for typing. He just has no idea where the keys are. I went crazy over the top, and made Photoshop Actions for him that select a hard brush/50% opacity, bound that to F2 in Photoshop, and then bound F2 to be a key on the Belkin. Once you start to see it in this light, you realize just what you can do with it.

Or hell, you can just play WoW with it, right?

The software to bind the keys is pretty straight forward. I liked the last version better, but I'm getting the hang of the new one. One thing the TE edition offers that's cool is that it has flash RAM on board the unit itself, and is a universal USB device. You can create a loadout, and flash it to the unit, then take it over to a friend's house, plug it in, and all your macros and whatever will (should?) work. I've never actually tried this, but that's the theory. The old version required the drivers be installed before you plug it in, or it would create a hassle. Both versions are 'aware' of executables launching though, so you can have a loadout for WoW, and a different for CoD4, and when you launch either EXE it will pop to the right loadout.

Probably the worst part of owning one is how reliant you become on it, once you've tasted its milk and honey. When you FIRST buy it, you hate it, and you don't want to use it. But after the first day or so, you begin to see the light, and then forever after you will carry one in your laptop bag like a ball and chain. Playing WoW without one of these reduces me to a mouse clicking, keyboard turning noob.... but with one, I'm a force to be reckoned with.

;)

[continue...]

How to be TOTALLY RAD for the new VOA stuff

Want to show everyone how badass you are, but arbitrary Gearscore numbers not doing it anymore? Ever wanted to crap on 24 other people simultaneously? Well, look no further! In this guide, I will show you how to be a total friggin badass, all while having your name prominently displayed for all to see!






Pay attention, it's pretty complicated!

Step 1) Get in a raid for VOA
Step 2) Beat the first (new) boss
Step 3) Bail on the raid the instant you see there's nothing for you personally that dropped

Here's the total sum of all the HELLA BAD ASS parts, in conclusion:

1) 24 other people are stuck trying to beat rest of the content without you, because NO ONE will join a VOA raid where the newest boss is dead.
2) Everyone sees you were the first to go, and anyone who realizes how FRIGGIN SWEET you are might just try and follow suit. This will create a snowball effect of TOTAL BADASSERY!
3) pretty much anyone who has a problem with it can eat a hot bowl of weiners, because... well, see #1, above.

I like in my screenshot here, that not only did Riass bail on the raid before the second piece of loot was finished being rolled on, Jlee apparently is following suit by 'thanking everyone for the run', Dooknookem is suggesting a pre-crapped-on 10 man variant, and Originfreak is even so bold as to ask for a teleport exit. Wouldn't want to activate your heartstone, bro! God Forbid, no! You'll need that to bail on the next thing you run within thirty minutes!

Also, Riass, bro... come on! What's with the rez? The proper TOTAL BADASS thing to do in this situation would have been to "/spit" on any FUGGIN NOOBS WHO DIED ON EZ MOAD TOVARLON (or whatever his name is), and then /quit the raid. That way everyone knows that you're disgusted not only with the lack of priest drops, but ALSO of the mentally deficient in the raid who took AOE to their faces.

I guess I have too many alts, because I actually still look forward to Koralon (and even Emalon's!) loot tables, and I'll gladly spend the 37 seconds it takes to kill Archavon for a badge.

Am I alone on this planet?

/le sigh

[continue...]