Catching Up on an Online Story as a New or Lapsed Player

I used to play World of Warcraft like a lot of fantasy fans, and while I gradually became disenchanted with it over the years, what finally killed it for me was the one-two punch of my stomach cancer surgery, which prevented me from playing for months, and the sexual harassment scandal at Blizzard. The news broke literally the month I thought it was time to resubscribe.

This was during the Shadowlands expansion and I'd long since tired of raiding and grinding. I was mostly there for the ongoing story, and my favorite activity when I ran out of story on my main was making an alt of a different class and leveling through the story all over again.

After enough expansions, Blizzard understandably did not want everyone to play through an increasingly long leveling experience all over again with every character, nor did they want new players to spend too much time trying to catch up with their friends at end game.

So they introduced things like experience boosting heirloom gear to help people level up faster, or outright level skips that could come with the purchase of an expansion. I never used either because the point of my leveling a new character was to see all the stops along the way.

Eventually the leveling process went through so many expansions that they just overhauled the entire process, relegating all content older than Battle for Azeroth to being just "old content" and starting all new players off immediately with BfA as a new "Year 0." Older players could choose to timewalk and level in a different expansion of their choosing, but gone was the whole leveling through the entire story to understand the context of what happened before. I think that was about the time my interest in leveling alts really started to flag.

I actually came back for a few months of the latest expansion Dragonflight because a friend surprise gifted it to me along with a subscription so I could play with her. It was my first time coming back in the middle of an expansion, and I lacked any idea of what happened between the end of Shadowlands and the beginning of Dragonflight.

My Favorite Games of 2017

My gaming backlog is something impressive, as I typically buy a few more than I can play in any given year, and then those extras build up. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed.

But I'm not adverse to playing older games. As long as the gameplay is still there I generally don't care. Maybe that's the same for you?

These are the nine games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2017, in the order I finished them. (I think there could have been more, but I blame Persona 5 for being so long.) As I did with my book roundup, the three games I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year and definitely worth playing.

Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness * (PS Vita and Steam)

Fans of the anime series will get the most out of this dystopian cyberpunk visual novel. The player takes the role of one of two investigators tracking down a criminal that cannot be brought to justice in the way the system is intended to work. There are multiple endings based on the choices made, and a walkthrough will probably be needed to see them all. It's easily the best spin-off of the original (and better than the sequel anime) because it manages to be its own thing while playing within the rules of the first series, and it's good. It's not for series newcomers though. Even with a glossary it tends to assume players know the basics.

Attack on Titan (PS4, XB1, and Steam)

Having come out between the first and second season of the anime, it does a good job of extrapolating the story into three playable chapters; the battle for Trost, the Survey Corps expedition prior to being recalled, and the Female Titan arc. There is also an unlockable fourth chapter that vaguely covers the first half of season 2, but with minimal spoilers and a unique ending, so deaths and major plot revelations are withheld. The game does a remarkably good job of conveying the feel of using maneuvering gear and slaying titans is incredibly satisfying. One of the best media-based games I've ever played and even klutzes like me can beat it on Easy. The developers loved the property and it shows.

The Sims 2: Ultimate Collection (PC)

I'd forgotten that I downloaded this a while ago as part of a promotion on Origin. It's every expansion of the Sims 2 plus the base game, and despite the years since its original release, it's still really good and runs just fine even on a new computer with Windows 10. I'd played the base game years ago and this was a welcome trip down memory lane with some new content that I'd never played before (new jobs, university, vacations, oh my!). As always, the fun part for me is making a bunch of Sims based on characters I know (my characters, other people's characters) and seeing how they interact in the sandbox. One of the most hilarious things was Attack on Titan's Erwin Smith deciding that his life's dream was to become a World Class Ballet Dancer.

80 Days (Steam, iOS, and Android)

This came to me through a friend's recommendation. It's not something anyone's likely to play for hours on end, but as an afternoon time-waster it's pleasant enough. You play as Passepartout, the valet to Phineas Fogg from the Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days. As such you are constantly put upon to care for your master as all sorts of shenanigans occur on your trip around the globe. The player gets to pick the route, and there are some randomized events, so there is some replay value, but I found that two was enough to figure out how to succeed in less than 80 days. I ended up playing a third time though just because I wanted to check out how the same-sex romance was written versus the straight one. It's a fun, casual friendly game, but not something most players are likely to spend more than 4-5 hours on.

Persona 5 * (PS4 and PS3)

Persona 5 was my most anticipated game of the year. I've bought all the Persona games since the first installment (I'm old school) and placed my pre-order for the deluxe edition with all the trimmings. I was not disappointed as it continues the contemporary fantasy setting with a fresh layer of panache as the protagonists are now all phantom thieves. I've never seen heists integrated so well in a video game before, let alone an RPG, and the Persona-specific game systems involving the social aspects of getting through a year of high school are as good as ever. While I'm not sure if it will hold up against Persona 3 and 4 once I have more time and distance from it, at least at the moment it was one of the best games I played this year. If there's a fault I'd give it though, it's that it's extremely long, probably too long, even allowing for the fact the game has an in-game summary so you can catch up if you've been away for a while.

Collar x Malice (PS Vita)

Collar x Malice was my second most anticipated game of the year. It was giving me Zero Escape vibes (though sadly not the Zero Escape puzzles) with a female protagonist. Though this is technically an otome, it's not all fluff. Officer Ichika Hoshino spends as much time chasing a group of vigilante terrorists as she does potentially romancing various officers and ex-cops who are on the same case. It didn't reach the height that Code:Realize did for me, but the storytelling is more even between routes. Yanagi is route locked behind everyone else unfortunately, since his is the "real" route, which I wish Otomate would stop doing.

Plants vs Zombies: Game of the Year Edition (PC)

This came to me via one of the periodic freebies on Origin. I'd never played the original past the demo, but this landed in my lap at a time when I really wanted a puzzle game and it scratched the right itch. Being a puzzle game featuring cartoon zombies it's aged pretty well, though I was surprised when it forced my monitor down to a lower resolution. I didn't think it was that old. It's not too difficult by puzzle game standards and the game makes a point to introduce a new complication every few levels to keep things fresh. I think I only lost once, and that's because I was careless rather than being overwhelmed. I don't think I would have bought this normally though.

Dungeon Fighter Online * (PC)

This is a quirky online RPG that is like Diablo had a lovechild with your favorite side scrolling beat-'em-up game. It's 2D like Final Fight or Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, but it's an RPG designed for small parties or solo players. You can perform attacks fighting game style, but there are also equipment drops, skill trees, dungeons, pets, guilds, etc. It's free to play, and amazingly, you can get through the entire leveling experience without spending a cent, and more importantly, without seeing microtransaction ads thrown at you every other screen. The Korean to English translation is a bit janky in places, but if you like retro games, and have a fondness for old school JRPG music, this an excellent bet.

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth

I actually started this last year, but got derailed about a third of the way through due to This War of Mine. This is probably the closest thing to having a playable Digimon anime series. The player-named protagonist has an online encounter with a mysterious entity that leaves her (or him, I played as a girl) in a weird half-digital body while her real one is comatose. As a result she can jump in and out of the computer networks Tron-style. The story moves at a relaxed pace sometimes, but really captures the feel of the anime. Together with her human friends and their combined Digimon companions they try to solve the mystery behind the origin of the Eaters, why people are being found comatose from EDEN syndrome, and what the corporation Kamishiro Enterprises has to do with all of this.

Quality of Life in Dungeon Fighter Online

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope that you're enjoying some time off, or at least a less hectic time of year. I don't really expect anyone to be reading this today, but it's Monday, so that means a new blog post (and I wrote this ahead of time).

As one can guess from my post last week, I been delving into Dungeon Fighter Online. I'm not generally a big MMO person, I've played a few free ones here and there, but the only tentpole AAA MMORPG I've played is World of Warcraft, and I've discovered some quality of life things that I really like in DFO that I now wish were in WoW.

So this is more or less a wishlist of things I've noticed that I wished were in World of Warcraft, so I'll be using that game as the baseline. Most of these are quality of life issues.

1) Buying customized quantities on the Auction House

Sometimes you just need seven of a particular item, no more, no less, but the only options in the auction house are Seller #1 listing 200 of Item A for 50 gold each, or Seller #2 listing 10 of Item A for 70 gold each. I could buy from Seller #2 and eat the higher price, hoping to unload the few leftovers individually myself, or I could buy the larger bundle from Seller #1 and be stuck with even more inventory to unload.

DFO lets you buy the specific quantity that you want from the seller that you want. So I could buy seven of Item A for 50 gold each. As a buyer this is the best option since you don't end up with more than you need. And arguably, for a seller, you're sure to sell something as long as it's in demand.

This also solves the ridiculous flooding problem in WoW where someone individually lists two pages of Item A at a high price because the system reads the lowest aggregate price on a bundle rather than the lowest individual price when it presents the lists by price to the buyer. DFO, however, only acknowledges the lowest individual price (since quantity is chosen by the buyer) so all those overpriced one-offs would rightfully be listed at the end.

2) Seeing the prices of other Auction House sellers when you list something

Using the vanilla auction house interface in WoW, it's only possible to see other people's listing for Item A if you search for it and look. Listing the item happens on a separate panel so you can't see the prices while you're listing.

DFO lets you see the prices as you list, and since prices are listed by how much they are individually being sold for, it's easy to decide exactly what you want for your asking price. If everyone else is selling Item A for 500 gold. You can list 495 gold and the game will math out the total price if someone were to buy you out, no additional player hoops needed.

Yes, WoW has mods that will do that for you, but DFO goes a step further with this next item.

3) Showing the average auction price for any listed item (assuming it's listed often enough to have a record)

Whether you're a buyer or seller, the DFO auction house will tell you the historical average price something goes for. If you're a seller and the auction house is currently empty of that item, you have a baseline to set your buyout for. This also tells you whether or not everyone else is currently gouging.

I'm not sure how this is determined, but I assume it's over a period of several days as I've seen the average price change over the course of days, but not over hours. So as a buyer, it lets you know whether something is currently overpriced, and you can choose to wait (or not) as your pocketbook allows. This was immensely helpful as a new player who was looking to buy some quest items. They looked ridiculously expensive, but without the average price helper, I wouldn't have known they were currently overpriced. I waited until the next day and was able to buy them for a third of the previous days' listings. (They were still overpriced, but low enough that I could tolerate it.)

4) Account bound banks

I'm an alt person. Rather than focusing super hard on one character, I like to have lots of them stuck in various stages of development. In WoW that means that if I want to send something to an alt, I have to put in a mailbox. Sometimes, because of the number of alts, I'm not even sure who needs an item most so certain items might end up in a ridiculous mailbox daisy chain bouncing between alts until I find who needs it.

In DFO this is solved by a special bank for any items that are bind on account or capable of being traded between unrelated characters. So things that are "soulbound," to use WoW parlance, are still stuck with whoever earned them, but everything else can be shoved into the account bound and retrieved by alts as needed. No shuffling things through mailboxes.

5) In game encyclopedia of where every equipment drop in the game comes from

WoW has a nice dungeon feature which has in-game maps, boss strategies, etc. for every dungeon and raid in the game. By clicking on each boss, it's possible to see what loot they have. This is nice when you're going on a raid, but if you're looking for a very specific item and you don't know where to start, you usually just end up asking someone or going to a third party web site like Wowhead and typing it in to search.

DFO allows you to open up an encyclopedia in game and you can look for every piece of equipment based on rarity and equipment type, and then from there it's possible to look at the individual item stats and where they drop or where they can be bought/crafted. You can also see the stats while you're at it, so you can decide whether you want that item in preference to another.

I suspect there are mods that allow this as well, but again, this is not something natively supported.

6) Mileage system

I think WoW has tried to find ways to reward players just for playing and doing what they want, but the game doesn't feel like it's ever quite hit the mark, because it generally boils down to giving people gear, and better gear comes from raids. It's not that there are only gear-based rewards, but a lot of times it feels like the rewards are gated behind having the gear to do something.

For instance, it's common to have a special cosmetic reward for having completed a difficult challenge. And while it's fine to have something to strive to, there's no "thank you for simply playing."

DFO has something called "Mileage," which is earned by completing dungeons of an appropriate level (which can be done solo and is what the player has already been doing the entire game anyway). The character does not need to be max level and a level 30 character earns mileage as the same rate as a level 90.

Mileage can be used to buy a variety of things, from avatar appearances to in-game tokens that can be exchanged for equipment, to experience boosting potions to use while leveling, and other consumables specific to the DFO ecosystem. While nothing in there is so incredible I'd go out of my way to earn mileage for them, they're very nice quality of life things to get after I've already been playing.

As of this writing I have enough Mileage to buy 390 Demon Invitations, which is a hefty bonus as DIs are used for chances at epic equipment during special dungeon runs. It would take me 13 million gold to buy this normally, and while 13 million does not go as far in DFO as it would in WoW it is still a fair chunk of money.

But the reality is, I probably won't spend all my Mileage on DIs because I don't expect to become an end game raider. So I will probably spend a good chunk of my Mileage on avatar appearances and potions to increase the amount of gold dropped during my next few dungeon runs.

It's nice having this kind of flexibility. And while WoW has activities where you can gradually accumulate currency or reputations towards something, it's always tied to a particular faction or activity. There's no general purpose bucket, so there's no happy surprise where you can suddenly get something that you want without realizing that you've been working to earn it this entire time.

Conclusion

It isn't that I think DFO is wildly better in WoW, particularly since they take very different approaches to their games, but having spent most of my MMO life in the World of Warcraft ecosystem, I haven't had much opportunity to see how other companies do things. Prior to DFO I didn't think things were particularly better on the other side, especially when so many games end up ape-ing WoW to some degree or another.

Even then, these are mostly quality of life issues, particularly with the Auction House. I don't use it too heavily in DFO yet, but the Auction House has been a great source of in-game wealth for me in WoW and now that I've seen how DFO's works it irks me that we don't have some of these things as a baseline in World of Warcraft. It would save so much hassle!

RPG Talk: Dungeon Fighter Online

In which I talk (write) about RPGs from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: PC (standalone and on Steam)
Release: 2010 (original) and 2015 (global relaunch)

I debated whether or not to write an RPG Talk for this one, because the game is rather story lite in that the plot mainly serves as an excuse to move the player from one setting to another as they brawl their way through the fantasy world of Arad. But that said, Dungeon Fighter Online does some interesting things that I think are worth talking about, some of which requires real world context.

I don't remember when I made my first DFO account, but it was during the original Nexon release, and while I had fun, I eventually put down the game and was a little sad to hear in 2013 that the North American servers were shutting down. Because I had played during this period, I was aware of what is now known as the pre-Metastasis world. I'd adventured in it.

When DFO returned in 2015 as a worldwide edition under the umbrella of its original Korean developers, Arad had gone through a massive event called the Great Metastasis that upended the world. On a whim, I logged in on my new account in 2017 expecting to relive my glory days in Grand Flores only to discover that the newbie forest had burned down!

I'm not sure if the overhaul was a reboot intended for the relaunch, or something that happened in the Korean original (like how World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion transformed old Azeroth), but it was definitely a surprise and if tied specifically to the relaunch, then there was no better way to do it.

Though an online game, DFO is closer to being a side scrolling Diablo series in execution. Barring a few instances, gameplay can be done completely solo (though there are shared town instances so players will see each other while in shared areas).

The new storyline has the player character going through Arad after the Great Metastasis, which has torn the world so badly that the formerly subterranean city of Underfoot is now on the surface, serving as the main player hub, and the Sky Tower which connected Arad with the land of Empyrean has been destroyed.

Following the Metastasis, a malevolent force called the Black Nightmare has infected Arad. Its tendrils reach everywhere, making elemental spirits go mad, bringing the dead back to life. It's much the usual fantasy world bad mojo and the player character gets roped into helping various people investigate it.

There apparently were four great heroes who faced off with one of the Apostles (incredibly powerful and not necessarily evil entities) and gained fame because of it. The timeline's a bit fuzzy, but this seems to have happened before Metastasis since it's clear a fair bit of time has passed for them and the Metastasis itself may have been about ten years before the game starts, and it wasn't just a physical remaking of the world. Reality itself changed, so some characters who were previously enemies in the original timeline could be allies in the current one, and the interesting thing is we get to visit the original timeline at a few points.

Much like Diablo III, each character class gets a class-based introductory sequence that explains who they are and how they came to the starting point of the game. For classes with different genders, they will have two entirely different sequences depending on whether the character is male or female. (This carries over to gameplay as well, as characters of different genders will play a little differently even if they're the same base class.) In some cases, the character's past will come up during the story, though never to the point where it interferes with the plot. For instance, the demonic lancer was once a famous gladiatorial slave in the imperial arena and when he meets Vaughn, an imperial knight, he hopes that Vaughn doesn't recognize him. It has no relevance to the main story, but it's a nice touch.

Beyond the occasional class-based nod, the player character dialogue appears to be similar across classes, though as of this writing I've only spent a significant amount of time with the male mage and the demonic lancer (the latter of which is currently a male only option, but might open up to a female variant later as most of the older classes were single gender at the start and eventually got male/female variants). The result is occasionally odd as the same dialogue doesn't always feel appropriate depending on which class the player is playing.

Compounding that, the Korean to English translation was clearly not done by a native English speaker, and the translation quality varies wildly. A game like this is large enough that there were probably multiple translators. The result feels like a fantasy adventure written by a kid. It's been spellchecked, but sometimes the wording is a little strange and the dialogue feels like it fell out of a cartoon. (For instance, while writing this, I found this gem from an enemy: "Sonic waves never miss! Dang!") Quests are typically workmanlike, go here and do that, and when there is an attempt at humor, it feels forced. The cinematic subtitles are actually worse than the rest of the game and have that "Engrish" feel of older Japanese to English game translations.

I'm not sure if DFO reads this clunky in Korean, it's not a deep story to begin with, but I feel like some opportunities were lost.

For instance, there are two clearly sad moments in the main story. The first is when Iris is revealed as a traitor. She begins helping the player early on in the first third of the story, and by the final third, we learn that she was an instrumental part in causing the Great Metastasis. In fact, she's been manipulating the player since they'd met.

Her betrayal is played for tragedy, because it was out of her control, but even with the requisite soft piano music, it wasn't enough to feel like it really meant something. Clearly it was supposed to be, but I just didn't feel it.

The other moment has to deal with Vaughn, who is probably the most complicated character in the story. Vaughn is one of the heroes who defeated Sirocco, but he's flighty, gives his men a hard time, and is constantly talking about his wife, Emily. He also clearly has an agenda as we discover he was involved with the Metastasis experiment that caused the tragedy (not to mention whatever the hell it was he grabbed off the last boss in that final cinematic).

Emily never appears in the game, but Vaughn uses her as an excuse to go disappear an awful lot, or talks about how he wants to be with her. It turns out that Emily dies during the storyline while Vaughn is helping the land of Empyrean get under control again. There is no indication at the moment it happens, because Vaughn behaves completely normally (doing the usual gushing about how he's going to see her and it'll be so sweet). The player finds out much later, in the final leg of the game, that Emily passed away.

The fact that Vaughn hid that should have revealed something about his character, but he more or less says that he didn't want his men to worry. While that is a reason, it didn't feel like an honest one, because we never see him interact with any of his soldiers aside from Hartz, who takes just about everything in stride.

Eventually the player tracks down the origin of the Black Nightmare to the Apostle Luke (I'm not sure if he was named after the Luke in the Bible because 11 of the 13 Apostles do not have Biblical names) and it's funny how fighting the Nightmare is everything to the people of Arad, and yet it's merely a means to an end for Luke. Luke, ironically, had a vision that foretold of his death, and he's been using the Black Nightmare to collect energy so he can strengthen himself and survive. But in doing so, he brought about his own end.

This isn't lost on the other Apostles who help bring him down.

The Apostles are interesting, because they're not a united front. They come from different realities and eventually arrived in the land of Pandemonium. They are not able to kill each other, and there seems to be some sort of mechanic that forces them to acknowledge those of a similar power. But they don't have to like each other and may scheme to have another killed by the hands of mortals. Though the storyline currently ends with Luke's death, it's implied that Hilder, who was the one behind Iris, has plans that can now be enacted due to Luke's death.

The world of Dungeon Fighter Online is an interesting mash-up of genres, which helps since the gameplay largely consists of punching through dungeons upon dungeons of enemies. Though Arad is more or less medieval fantasy, the land of Empyrean is an Asian-influenced future with energy plants, robots, and a train that cuts across the ocean. Yes, DFO has the usual goblins and minotaurs (called "taus" in this world), and various demonic threats, but the player also faces pirate crocodiles, biker gangs, and robot insects. It's an everything and the kitchen sink approach, but it oddly works as the enemies are themed to where they appear and though biker gangs aren't appropriate to medieval fantasy, they work well enough in the more modern Empyrean.

Arad is a little unusual though, using a dark elf city for its main hub, and the human empire on Arad is oddly unnamed for most of the story. When I finally found it, it turned out to be cultural mishmash with De Los Empire being led by Emperor Leon Heinrich (not to mention that "De Los Empire" sounds like it was named by someone who knew what Spanish looked like, but not what it meant). And though the empire is typically portrayed as the evil empire, it has redeeming qualities in the individuals who represent it, showing that it's not the monolith it appears to be.

From my understanding, the current storyline is at its end, and there has already been a soft reboot of the world on the Korean servers. It will probably remain playable for a few months, maybe even half a year or more, on the global servers, and it's not bad. If you're looking for a RPG brawler, it's enough to keep you entertained.