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Game Ramblings #193 – World of Warcraft: The War Within – First Couple Weeks

More Info from Blizzard

  • Genre: MMORPG
  • Platform: PC

I’ve been playing mostly the same main since Wrath of the Lich King – a hunter. I’ve played all three specs at various points, including a run for a while raiding as melee survival. For the past couple of expansions though I’ve settled back into playing Beast Mastery. The War Within in a lot of ways feels like a continued push for Blizzard to allow me to play the game in a way that best suits my current capabilities – limited time because of work and kids and really a lack of time to dedicate to high end playing. However, that has come with some early oddities in terms of playing as a hunter.

From a surface level, this expansion really pushes you to play in a way that best fits your lifestyle. The main story line is segregated from other quests in a very obvious way, so you can simply run that. Dungeons are still there so you can simply run those. Follower dungeons where you run normal difficulty dungeons with AI allow you to get the dungeon experience in a less public and more digestable format. The new Delves system brings back a system similar to the Pandaria Scenarios with difficulty scaling that looks like it’s going to continue throughout the expansion. Basically, there’s a lot of options in how you want to play that support any sort of play style.

Delves are probably the thing I was most excited about because they gave me something tied to a dungeon-like experience, but without the need to queue and deal with PUGs in what will ultimately be limited hours to play the expansion. Early runs through all of them show a tremendous amount of promise as there’s a nice mix of objective-based gameplay and normal pack killing, combined with the Brann Bronzebeard AI helper to provide healing for me. Some of the delves slot into the overall story arc of the expansion similar to how dungeons have always kind of existed near the end of story beats. Some of them simply exist to thematically exist within areas. They all feel like they are meant to be there as smaller dungeon experiences, rather than simply replacing existing planned dungeons. However, as difficulty increased and as I hit level 80 some scaling and class-specific issues started to really show up.

Scaling is definitely one of the biggest issues that I’m running into this expansion. I would say from about level 70 to 78 the game was easy easy. Part of that was coming in with gear that I didn’t really replace until about level 75, but part of it was just that it was easy. I could easily kill mobs in a couple of hits, so I was never really getting into any sort of rotation. Elite mobs generally didn’t require me to even heal my pets, let alone do anything other than face roll. Around level 79 things started to feel suddenly appropriate. At 80, it’s like a flip was switched. Delves that I was previously clearing without issue were suddenly rapidly killing me. Non-elite world mobs in level 80 areas were in some cases near unkillable if I got more than two or three leashed to me. It all really caught me off guard.

What it feels like to me is that the automatic scaling system was not given enough testing at lower levels and potentially given too much testing at level 80 with instance gear. For someone that is going to exist on the fringes of gear quality, it does not encourage me to go into the current systems at max level. World quests in these high level areas are fine now with a lot of people playing, but I can imagine they will become frustrating as server populations naturally drop past early expansion stages. Delves giving me trouble now will not be something I want to continue doing when higher level difficulties open up in a few weeks.

Some of this comes down to just weird scaling, but part of it also feels like class issues for soloing content. There’s really two main issues for me – pet threat and lack of AoE – that are really hampering the level cap experience. Ultimately I guess pet threat is the big issue here, in so much as my pets just cannot hold NPC focus which ends up being a huge issue for high end delves. One of the theories I’ve seen floated around is that the Stomp talent is actually redirecting threat to the hunter instead of the pets, and it wouldn’t surprise me very much. It seems like no matter what I do my pets will not keep focus in packs of enemies, so I spend a lot of time in the current tier 3 delves not doing DPS and instead feigning death or running around to save Brann from pulling the pack. This is somewhat exacerbated by Misdirection now being a talent that is tough to justify speccing into over other options on BM hunters. This is even more exacerbated by the lack of AoE damage – and in particular AoE damage that triggers threat generation by the pets. It all leads to a situation where the class mechanic decisions that have been made for this expansion really just reduce the ability to solo content as a BM hunter that should be soloable.

All that being said, the leveling experience and story quest line experience was a lot of fun. Each zone has a very distinct feel to it. The starting area Isle of Dorn is a normal wide open WoW zone to get you situated with the new Earthen race. The second area – The Ringing Deeps – is a huge underground mine that features some of the more fun use of sky riding for me with height being such a constraint in a lot of situations. Hallowfall is a huge human zone that would feel right at home in Classic Alliance areas – even if it comes with some really confusing Arathi civilization timeline stuff. Azj-Kahet then finishes up the base story with a zone that feels like a fulfilled promise of what the Wrath Nerubian areas started to tease. Each area feels like some WoW zone that’s come before, but done to a degree of iterated polish that hasn’t been seen before. I suppose after 20 years that isn’t a huge surprise, as there’s not going to be a whole ton of completely unexplored area left. However, the promise of the expansion is that we’re going to be interacting with the very soul of Azeroth, so I suspect we’re simply waiting on the really weird stuff.

The difficulties with scaling and class balance that I’ve run into so far feel like the typical start of expansion woes. I am disappointed that the scaling is so wonky right now, and I am disappointed by how the BM Hunter currently feels, but this isn’t my first rodeo and I do think that things will be fixed. In the case of hunters, they haven’t really mechanically changed so it isn’t like they are going through a failed fundamental rework. However, they really do need a solution for solo threat generation on pets and that is not a new problem. On the core balance side, a mix of natural gear progression and ongoing balance patches will almost certainly smooth things out, and even at my current ilvl in the mid 570s it’s slowly improving. However, finding a natural balance point for things like Delves is not something I really think they are going to be able to pull off. Ultimately some classes are just going to be more suited to the high end of that content without some significant reworks to Brann as your AI helper.

Overall it’s not a bad first week though. The game works, the main quest line was fun, the solo content shows a ton of promise, and I’m enjoying the lore so far. This is a brave new World of Warcraft where factions for maybe the first time really don’t exist as a core idea of the expansion, and to this point it’s feeling like a compelling situation where both Horde and Alliance will be working together for something bigger than the last 30 years of Warcraft fighting, and I’m hoping that Blizzard ends up delivering on that promise.

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Game Ramblings #192 – The Legend of Tianding

More Info from Neon Doctrine

  • Genre: Beat-em-up
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Switch, Windows, iOS

Sometimes my backlog randomizer just really hits the mark, and this is one of those cases. I’d recently played Double Dragon: Neon and was left disappointed by how slow basic movement felt to me so I had set it aside. My randomizer followed it up immediately by this one and it was like night and day. Fast movement, solid platforming, a good power curve, variety in combat styles – this one feels like a modern take on the genre that really just worked well.

The thing that will pull your attention first is the overall presentation of the game, and it’s pretty solid in that regard. The in-game visual style is incredibly solid with a lot of obvious inspiration from comics. That extends to the way the story starts being presented with small vignettes cutting through actual comic book panel layouts. However, when gameplay starts it becomes obvious that the quality is more than just flashy visuals.

At its core, this is a very melee-focused beat-em-up. The player’s main weapon a dagger that works fine on its own. Other melee-focused defensive maneuvers include the ability to dodge as well as the ability to deflect projectiles back at the firing target. However, the red sash is the real fun item here. This isn’t necessarily a weapon on its own (though it’s used for traversal mechanics like a hookshot). What it does is allow you to wrap a weakened enemy and steal their weapon. This is where combat in the game really opens up wildly.

Any combat situation is an opportunity to change how you’re playing. Big enemies coming around that cause a bunch of damage? There’s likely a large weapon available to steal that will stun them quickly. Bunch of environmental dangers that make movement risky? There’s probably an enemy carrying a gun or molotovs that you can throw instead of moving. The combat scenarios overall felt like they were crafted with far more care than is typical of the beat-em-up genre simply due to the wide array of weapon mechanics available through stealing.

The way this was pulled into bosses was also pretty clever. Boss weapons can’t inherently be stolen. However, at certain health transition points the bosses get stunned and then can be stolen. This gives the player something fun to beat the boss up with during the stun phase if they want. However, the more important thing is that because the player stole that weapon, the bosses have to change their mechanics turning those periods into phase transitions. The actual mechanic of phase transitions and attacks changing isn’t new, but implementing it via the typical weapon steal mechanic is a clever way to both reinforce the mechanic for the players as well as tie it hard to the mechanics of the game.

The rest of the game is a pretty standard sort of platformer, though it is well tied together. The player routinely earns upgrades to enhance their traversal ability (ex: double jumps, air dashes, etc). The sash itself can be used like something akin to a hook shot. There’s hidden and puzzle areas with upgrades to be found all over the place. Basically, the game keeps you busy between combat segments in a way that really prevents boredom and enhances the platformer part of the game that isn’t typically that present in beat em ups.

The upgrades themselves are probably also worth mentioning. They’re all relatively small upgrades, but they are present all over the place and have a wide array of effects. Some are increases to weapon durability (ex: +1 swings of a stolen axe). Some are upgrades to core capabilities (ex: +10% dagger damage). However, the effect of this is that it really smooths out power increases so that the player always feels like they are improving. Rather than being large steps and plateaus when gaining upgrades, the player is always just getting a bit more inherently strong. It really works as an effective way to make it feel like some progress is always occurring.

This was a pleasant surprise. I’d picked it up a little bit ago when I saw the disc version on sale and just hadn’t gotten around to it for a while. I’ve been in a bit of a run of just letting my backlog randomizer choose and it sure hit here. Games like this that have a tight mix of platforming and combat where both sides are solid are just so rare to find, and this really hits both. The combat is incredibly varied despite its surface simplicity, so it doesn’t get old through the 6-8 hours of play time. The platforming is incredibly fluid and makes good use of an expanding set of capabilities as you get to new levels. Overall this just hit all the marks I’m looking for in this type of game.

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Game Ramblings #191 – Marble It Up! Ultra

More Info from The Marble Collective

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Windows, macOS, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series

Sometimes you just need a game that you can play in quick sessions. For me, it’s when I’m sitting around waiting on Visual Studio or Unreal Editor to load for a couple minutes. This was that latest one to really hit that perfect spot for me. It combines some solid platforming, just enough chaos caused by physics, and levels that generally lasted under a minute to become something I could pick up and play whenever I had a minute to kill.

The way I played this game really benefited from being on the Switch. Playing this didn’t require me turning on the TV or getting away from my desk. It simply required me to reach over, grab the Switch, and immediately be in the game. The way the game levels are setup really played into that. It has a mix of speed and puzzle levels that are pretty evenly spaced throughout the game’s 100 or so levels. What it ended up meaning for me is that I would find a place to take a few minutes break waiting on something on my PC, get a run or two in with a couple chances to improve my time, then go back to what I was doing. It’s the perfect setup for something that I can do that isn’t just screwing around on Reddit during those little wait periods.

Within individual levels, the game is also setup to just let you rapidly push through improvements. The game levels load extremely quickly so I could retry to improve my times quickly. The select button is linked to a quick reset of the level so if I screwed up I could get back to the start even quicker. If I wanted to move on to the next level, there’s a button in the end level screen that immediately moves you there. Intentionally or not, the entire setup of the game was one that really pushed into this 5 minutes or less session time that I had for it.

Granted, it helps that the game itself is still fun so I want to play it repeatedly. There’s something about physics-based ball platformers that I really always just enjoyed, whether it’s the Monkey Ball series or older games like Marble Madness. Some of what keeps me engaged may very well be the inconsistency of the physics itself, or at least manipulating the physics to find some amount of consistency. This game really excels here due to a handful of small mechanics.

The first one that really stands out is that jumping forward while moving allows for speed gains. This turns every interaction into a sort of game around how many mini jumps I can fit in to maximize speed before it becomes hazardous. That same mechanic then combines with jumps in other direction and momentum gained via the ball’s rotation to allow me to manipulate direction in interesting ways while keeping speed up. However, the ball rotation is also an interesting mechanic at slow speed. As an example, if the ball is rotating to the left when it lands, it will inherently jump to the left because of friction. In slow speed platforming heavy segments this allows me to travel a bit faster than safely jumping forward, as I can change my rotation in-air to bounce me in a new direction when I land without necessarily losing all of my forward speed. The final mechanic is really just the core rolling itself. It feels good. High speed feels appropriately out of control, but pushing in a direction different than your movement shows obvious momentum changes. High speed racing-style courses in particular show a ton here where you’ll be really leaning heavily into the corners to drift in a new direction without ever really losing that sense of speed.

If there was one real gripe I had though, it’s that I kept wanting a quick key to reset to my last checkpoint rather than to the start of the course. This may be a habit from playing Trackmania, but I do like the distinction between reset to checkpoint and reset to start of level when I’m working on improving times. It gives me a lot more rapid iterations in going through sections to figure out best lines compared to falling off a level and waiting to reset (and in this game’s case, waiting a variable amount of time – the reset volumes are extremely inconsistent). Given runs with resets are inherently not going to be efficient, I don’t see a leaderboard concern for it being an option either. It probably didn’t help that at times I would just habitually hit the reset button expecting it to be a reset to checkpoint but that part is at least on me.

All that said, this game really hit a perfect spot for me. It was fast to get in and do a couple runs, fun to play during that, and fun to replay levels trying to improve my time. It has super solid physics, which is incredibly important for this type of game. It’s got a good mix of puzzle and speed levels, which is good for keeping the game from feeling repetitive. It just kind of checks all the boxes for me.