Overwatch Gameplay Review

Welcome back agents!

As promised, this week I want to talk about the series of gameplay previews posted on the Overwatch youtube page over the past two months. We have previews for all of the currently known heroes as of this past Thursday, and now it's time to analyze a bit. I recommend watching the videos if you haven't to this point. Most of them are entertaining to watch, although a couple characters have this issue of being somewhat dull to watch without having hands on experience. Keep in mind as we go that I don't have a ton of experience with team based shooters so take my my thoughts with a grain of salt.

First I want to talk about the base UI. These videos are the first time we see a version of the in game interface. As with anything there are some things to like and some things to be improved upon. This is a pre-alpha version of the game obviously, but that doesn't mean that we can't critique and provide feedback on what we are given.

He we have the base UI for Tracer out of combat before the game starts. The targeting reticle is a small circle at the center of the screen. The bottom left side of the screen has the player health bar in white, and armor in blue and the current total health amount larger next to the hero portrait. The bottom right side tracks the current ammo count and cooldown for your on use abilities. Shift usually controls your movement speed ability (in Tracer's case her Blink), and E controls a secondary ability that varies from character to character (her Recall ability). The blue arrows at the center of the screen depict the number of charges of Blink available. And finally the bottom center of the screen tracks progress toward your hero's ultimate ability. Throughout the action you will see the ability charge up based on damage done, damage taken, and for some heroes, damage absorbed or healed. Overall I think the UI is ok for this stage in the game. Vital information is all readily available, and the UI itself helps to explain how the character plays right from the start. I am a fan of a minimalist approach to user interface for most games, but I'm sure there are people out there who want more information. There are a couple of things worth noting. As you can see in the videos, once the game actually starts the timer at the top of the screen lets you know if capture points are currently being taken, and in the case of payload maps, how far along the payload is to a checkpoint, and how many players are actively escorting it. The other is the gun icon at the bottom right, depicting Tracer's Pulse Pistols. This may be nothing of importance, but it may suggest that different weapon types may eventually become available at some point. This could simply be an old aspect of the game that has yet to be removed so it may be nothing, but I think it's worth drawing attention to.

Of course there are also some issues with the UI that may not be as apparent from Tracer's point of view.

Here we have screenshots from Zarya and Winstons perspective. One of the issues that is present throughout these videos is the amount of screen real estate that the character and guns take up. In Zarya's case, Her Particle Cannon and left arm take up nearly a third of the screen and can take even more when she is firing as a beam. Winston meanwhile, has a Tesla Cannon that takes up a decent amount of room, but he also has a left arm that comes into view every step that he takes that blocks vision on that side of the screen. Don't get me wrong, I love the attention to detail that Blizzard is taking when integrating these characters. This is in line with how a gorilla would run so it fits for you to see it in front of you to maintain the fantasy of playing as a giant rage-ape from the moon. However, one of Blizzard's own values is "Gameplay first" and the character models taking up that much of the screen hurts the gameplay in my opinion. There have been countless posts on the Overwatch Reddit with complaints and requests for a field of view slider as is typically present in present day shooters. They have listed issues with nausea and headaches resulted from a FOV that is too small, and as of now the only response we have heard from Blizzard was that they wanted to have a locked FOV in order to create an even playing field for new and experienced shooter players. I understand Blizzard's desire to keep UI aspects consistent among all players, but at the same time I can sympathize with players being concerned about actual medical issues as a result of the current state of things. We have evidence, especially lately with what happened in World of Warcraft surrounding flying, that Blizzard is willing to compromise. I think a fair compromise would be to increase the field of vision, or at the very least scale back the size ratio of the character models, and then lock the FOV and weapon size there.

Some aspects of the combat UI can also feel cluttered once the fighting begins.

Both of these screenshots show both sides of Mercy's channelled ability to empower her targets attacks. From Mercy's point of view, we have a huge health bar in the the center of the screen obviously meant to give information and urge you to switch to her healing channel if your target starts coming under fire. The problem is that the bar appears directly in the center of the screen where your eyes naturally go as you move around the battlefield. As I watched the gameplay video for Mercy I couldn't help but feel like that aspect of her UI was too prominent and distracted from what was actually happening in the fight. It's similar to how players new to healing in WoW can tunnel vision their player frames and end up standing in the fire and dying themselves. I understand this shouldn't be a problem for experienced players, but it could present a problem for new players intrigued by the prospects of healing in a shooter. The second screenshot shows the same power-up being provided to Pharah. It's hard to tell from a still image, but the blue arrows on the outside of the screen scroll by continuously while you are being channelled on. I think the one central blue arrow next to your targeting reticle is enough to let you know you are being powered up. The outside ones are almost a distraction to me. I could be being overly critical of this but it's just another thing on the screen in a fight that I don't think needs to be there.

Outside of the UI, I think there is a lot to be excited about from these previews. The game length seems to be between 7 and 12 minutes depending on how close the game is. This is great for a couple of reasons. First, games that are roughly 10 minutes long lend themselves to short game sessions really well. One of the things that turned me off of League of Legends was playing for 45 minutes to an hour only to lose. The fact that I can log into the game on a lunch break or quickly before I head out for the day and get a few games in is really exciting. Secondly, the 7 and 8 minute games are pretty one sided where one ream doesn't capture the first point or reach the first checkpoint with the payload. Everyone has been in one of those games where you are just getting steamrolled. They aren't fun and if they last too long they can turn people off of the game. The fact that the games are designed to be short makes it easier to shake off a bad loss and also makes the closer games last longer so you have more chances to make plays to come out on top.

The maps themselves are really well designed as well. From what I can tell, there are tons of narrow halls and choke points that lead to a lot of interaction from the start. And Blizzard has done a really good job making the maps seem vertical as well to take advantage of difference heroes mobility. Widowmaker and Hanzo have no shortage of places to set up shop above the fight using their grappling hook and wall climb. Likewise, Torbjorn and Bastion have plenty of places they can strategically set up turrets and siege mode to "safely" hold off the other team. Given my limited shooter experience, there could be some shortcomings I'm missing with these maps that more experienced players can see, but so far I'm very impressed.

If these videos were meant to get me even more excited for Overwatch then it definitely succeeded. Selfishly I am worried that Wednesday will come and we will have nothing else to view or analyze on this game, but that's what is great about it. This world is all new to us, and every tidbit we get will be brand new. With all that being said, feel free as always to comment with your thoughts or hopes for Overwatch.

Thanks for reading as always,

Chris

A quick trip around the Blizzard landscape

Greetings Travelers!

This week I have been somewhat distracted by real life things. As a result I haven't been able to give as much though to a full post this week. Next week the plan is to dive into the series of Overwatch videos Blizzard has been releasing over the past few weeks. I want to touch on the gameplay itself as well as the UI elements that have been a hot topic around the internet. For this week, I'll just touch on the few things that have happened across Blizzard's game in the last couple weeks.

World of Warcraft

The much maligned issue of Flying in Draenor was tackled by Blizzard as I'm sure most players are aware. I touched on the subject myself a couple of weeks ago, and I'll just elaborate by saying I am happy with Blizzard's decision to instate flying with 6.2. It will have to be earned through a series of achievements which shouldn't be much trouble for most players who care about flying to accomplish. I myself unlocked all of the achievements necessary up to 6.1 just through leveling and normal daily content. There is an argument that by gating the ability to fly behind a bunch of exploration and questing content, that Blizzard is giving us flying only after making us do all the things we wanted flying for in the first place. I think the argument is fair, but I don't have a problem with developers and designers not wanting content that they spend time creating simply being passed over and potentially ignored for convenience sake. I understand that not all content is for all players and it should be the players choice how they enjoy the game, but I'm fine with trusting a company to create a sense of immersion with their content and allowing that to dictate my gameplay to certain extent.

With that being said, 6.2 hits on Tuesday and along with it Tanaan Jungle and Hellfire Citadel the REMIX! I'll will no doubt write a post detailing my experiences once I've had a chance to dive in. Blizzard posted a developer Q&A on June 13th that touched on some of the changes as well as a variety of other topics. After watching I came away with the opinion that they realize a lot of the missteps of Warlords so far, and are looking to avoid them in the future. There were are few times where their response to a criticism was just simply "we were wrong". I like when a company has the awareness to be able to look past what can often be a loud offensive critical minority of fans, and acknowledge their shortcomings. Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of work to do. And I'm fairly certain that Warlords of Draenor has been somewhat of a nail in the coffin of the prospects of Warcraft returning to its heyday. As someone who enjoys some aspects of the game and finds himself finding other things to do with his gaming time far more often than he used to, I can only hope that Blizzard learns from their mistakes this expansion and can keep me interested going forward.

Starcraft

Last week amidst all the gaming keynotes at E3 there was a PC gaming show which Blizzard attended. Most of the show was sort of dull and slow with only a few real gameplay previews or demos over the course of 3 hours. Blizzard came in toward the end of the show and gave one of the few true presentations. In addition to some Heroes of the Storm stuff that I'll touch on later, Dustin Browder and Chris Sigaty announced Prologue missions for Legacy of the Void that will be free to play for everyone.  I think this is a nice touch when paired with the fact that Legacy of the Void won't require players to own the previous Starcraft 2 expansions. This will let those of us who dabble in Starcraft for the story get caught up with what's going on heading in to Legacy without some tie in novel as has been the case previously. I like Christie Golden and recommend her novels to anyone who loves Blizzard lore, but they shouldn't be required for people to get the whole story. I'm excited to see the culmination of this story and I'm glad more people will be able to see part of it for free.

Heroes of the Storm

Along with the Starcraft announcement, Blizzard surprisingly also showed a new trailer for the Eternal Conflict which gave us some new tidbits. We got a full blown preview of the Skeleton King, a new Diablo Warrior, and a look at the model for the Monk, a Diablo Support. Leoric the Skeleton King has a very interesting trait that allows his ghost to stay on the battlefield while he is dead, and his attacks accelerate his resurrection timer. His kit seems pretty strong and his trait is a nice twist on death mechanics. It is somewhat similar to Uther and Tyreal and their traits but it seems like Leoric's can have a lot more of an impact. The Monk fills the Support deficit we are seeing currently and less importantly fills the gap at Diablo Support. What we have yet to see if whether or not the Monk will be a true Support or a hybrid similar to Tassadar and Tyrande. Right now there is a balance issue in matchmaking where a team with Tassadar as a support will be matched against a team with a Brightwing or Uther who fill more a true healer role. Blizzard has mentioned a couple times that they want to recategorize some heroes for this reason, but we haven't been given any details.  Blizzard has been knocking it out of the park leading up to this event in Heroes of the Storm. What we originally thought was simply going to be a couple of heroes and new battleground, has become at least 4 heroes, multiple skins, and potentially multiple battlegrounds. I really like the precedent that the Eternal Conflict can set for Heroes going forward. Hopefully we see it expanded to not only Starcraft, Warcraft, and Retro games, but also crossovers and things like that. Blizzard seems to be all-in on Heroes of the Storm and I am excited to see what happens.

Hearthstone

Tavern Brawl launched this past week along with the first 3 new hero portraits. I'm not going to spend any more time on the portraits since they've been talked almost to death. But I do want to talk about Tavern Brawl a little bit. I've seen a lot of criticism that the feature isn't an online tournament mode. I don't think people quite understand the kind of behind the scenes work that a tournament mode requires. I don't doubt that we will see a tournament feature in the Hearthstone client eventually, but it is a completely different set of matchmaking and player pairing system than is currently in place. Blizzard would also need to implement some kind of server side locks prohibiting deck changes or just determining tournament format rules and how to enforce them unilaterally. All in all it is a ton of work and as someone who wants it as much as the next guy, I want it to run correctly once it's here. What we did get in Tavern Brawl is a bit disappointing from the bit I've played so far. Ragnaros vs Nefarious seems a bit lopsided in Nefarion's favor primarily due to his card advantage from his hero power, and his mana advantage from starting with 4 mana crystals. It is not impossible for Ragnaros but he definitely starts on the back foot. I got a good hour of enjoyment out of seeing all the new cards specific to the brawl decks, but after that it gets pretty stale. I'm also a little concerned given the balance issues this week. We can't look past the difficulty of creating a new twist week after week. And if a event for the week of Tavern Brawl isn't properly tested or implimented, people could be turned off quickly. When the main complaint with the game is that there isn't enough to do besides ladder and arena, you can't really afford to have a new mode fizzle out. In all fairness, the could be weeks where whatever mode we are given is exciting and addicting, but for now I'm not sure it has the staying power it needs.

And that should be about it for this week. Next week I'll be going in depth on Overwatch. As always, comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Till next time,
Chris

The Eternal Conflict

Welcome back friends!

In my "break" from committing and real game time to World of Warcraft, I've been spending a lot of time making another Legend push in Hearthstone, and playing a lot of Heroes of the Storm with friends. The game is a ton of fun, especially when playing with a group you can talk to over Skype or whatever your voice chat of preference is. And this past weekend Blizzard gave us an event that we should have had in London at the actual launch event. But I won't go into that because I want to do a positive post ffs. Blizzard announced their first in what I'm going to assume is a series of in-game events of sorts.

The Eternal Conflict is a series of in-game releases based around the Diablo universe. It began, somewhat unceremoniously with the release of Johanna, and will continue for "a few months". We were shown a preview of the Butcher and our eighth battleground, The Battlefields of Eternity. I like the approach Blizzard is taking by creating an event around its releases. Let's face it, the Diablo and Starcraft universes are heavily overshadowed by Warcraft in Heroes at the moment. We still need a Diablo Support and a Starcraft Warrior. The approach of a theme surrounding releases spices up normal hero releases in comparison to other games. 

The Battlefields of Eternity battleground is our first venture into traditional Blizzard areas making their way into Heroes, and there are some nice changes that could be easily overlooked. There are only two traditional lanes, with the map objective in the center. This puts a huge emphasis on the objective of defeating the enemy's Immortal and controlling your own. On maps like Cursed Hollow and Sky Temple there are times that ignoring the map objective is a viable strategy that allows you to take an enemy fort or keep while the other team focuses on the objective. With only two lanes there is less of an opportunity to gain an experience advantage or to destroy an early keep to strengthen your lane minions. Another nice change is new type of mercenaries. Sky Temple brought a new look to siege giants and bruisers, but with Battlefields of Eternity, we get mercenaries with different abilities. Bruiser camps have two hell hounds and a shaman that will resummon the hounds until his is killed. This is similar to how the web weavers in Tomb of the Spider Queen behave and it's nice to see it transitioned to other maps and minions. 

The Butcher is our next melee Assassin. I was a bit worried he would be another Warrior based solely on his size, so it was a pleasant surprise that he was announced as a damage dealer. His trait is a twist on Diablo's soul gather mechanic. The Butcher collects Fresh Meat from minions and heroes he kills, and those stacks of Fresh Meat buff his attack damage up to 25%, all lost on death. He also comes with what seems to be a strong kit. He has a melee attack with a slow, a debuff effect that causes attacks against that target to heal him, and a long range charge stun. The charge stun seems a little unreliable. He moves pretty slowly so the target should have plenty of time to get away. His heroic abilities seem pretty strong as well. His Furnace Blast is a delayed explosion surrounding the Butcher that can be activated while using his charge ability to set up a sort of combo. But I think his Lamb to the Slaughter ability is insanely strong. He pins an enemy hero to a post and that hero can't move from that location. If they leave the area they are pulled back to the center. The level 20 talent for the ability causes it to chain all enemy heroes in the location. The potential this gives in team fights should be easily exploitable in the late game. 

We also got a glimpse of a new mount that sort of resembles a Kodo from WoW dressed up in Diablo garb. And there a poster for the event gives us a glimpse at some skins we can expect to see.

We saw Amazon Nova in one of the launch videos Blizzard released, but we also have an Angelic Diablo of some sort, and perhaps a preview of the redone Demonic Tyreal we were promised. And obviously we see the Skeleton King Leoric that we saw at Blizzcon last year. Expect him to be the next hero launched after the Butcher sometime in July. After that I would like to see a support from the Diablo universe to round out the event. Auriel could give us our second Angel hero, or we could see a Monk hero. Blizzard also hinted at multiple Diablo themed maps so we could see a second one similar to how Sky Temple and Tomb of the Spider Queen were tied together. I'm excited to see how much content this event brings to the game, as well as what it means for the inevitable Starcraft, Warcraft and Retro versions. While I still think the prices for these items are still too high, a strong amount of content released with this event is at least a show of good faith that the money is being used well. 

Feel free to let me know what you think of the event or what you would like to see in the future. Thanks as always for reading.

Till next time, Chris

Blizzard's price points are missing their mark

Welcome back friends!

When I started this blog, all I wanted was a place so modestly speculate and discuss the things Blizzard Entertainment had coming our way. I chose the name Blizzard Forecast partly because it was a weather pun, but also because regardless of what they have released over the last few years, I was excited about it. Hearthstone blindsided me as something I did not expect them to foray into. Heroes of the Storm made big changes to many of the things I disliked about the MOBA genre before. And Overwatch was a new IP that has created a level of excitement I haven't had for many games. With all of that in mind, it's disheartening to now have a second post in as many weeks that will be focused on a negative view of decisions made by Blizzard. Last week we talked about the decision to possibly discontinue flying in the future expansion of World of Warcraft. This week we are going to talk about their announcement of new Hearthstone hero skins.

Hearthstone's popularity is right up there with the League of Legends  and WoWs of the world. With that kind of player base comes a microscope, analyzing every decision and release that you make. The outrage surrounding the hero skins was immediate and plentiful. The big arguments seem to be these; "You can't give us deck slots but you can give us this?" and "Holy shit $10 for nothing but a reskin?". While I understand the desire for new deck slots, I don't think the first complaint is legitimate. Deck slots is a UI change, where as hero skins is a art asset change. But I couldn't agree more with the pricing for these to be excessive. While we don't know all the content and changes coming in the patch containing these skins, given the information we have, we can assume that a full set of these reskins will cost us a whopping $90 USD. That's more than 3 full adventures and 75 packs. At $5 each I wouldn't bat an eye at picking these up as they are released. A change of scenery while climbing the ladder, along with another card back, which Blizzard does so well, would be a no brainer to me. At the current price however, I feel guilty about wanting to pick them up. No player should have to be ashamed for spending money on a game they enjoy. But this isn't the only game where Blizzard is "guilty" of these missteps.

Heroes of the Storm has been gaining a ton of momentum since the "launch". Twitch numbers are up and new players are coming in droves. But since the technical alpha one big criticism of the game has been the price of heroes and mounts in the shop. $10 for a mount that you will see maybe half of the game seems excessive. Compare that to $10 for every new hero that is released. At least the heroes come with a new kit of abilities and the team composition changes that come with it. A mount is purely a cosmetic item but cost the same as something that literally changes the game. Even the skin prices are on the high side. I'm not as bothered by the skin prices for two reasons. The more expensive skins come with new ability animations and voice effects, and the overall quality of even the lower level skins, is better than other games offer. Come on, if you play Tychus often, the Infested skin is worth it. That doesn't mean that the prices couldn't stand to be reduced by 20 or 30 percent. $10 for a "Legendary Skin" the quality of Infested Tychus seems about right. But that brings up my biggest issue with how they chose to price all of these items.

Blizzard has backed themselves into a corner in Heroes of the Storm and could potentially do the same with Hearthstone. By setting the price for these items high to start, they prevent themselves from lowering the price later without alienating the portion of the player base that already purchased them. Now their only option is to use sales to lower the prices temporarily. If they had started low on these prices they would have the option to increase them over time. Players who purchased initially feel like they got a deal, and players who didn't are urged (begrudgingly at time) to purchase items they want in the event the prices go up in the future. While increasing price may alienate players who feel like they missed out on their opportunity for the "right price", it's not much different than how Blizzard is removing mounts from the shop entirely. When the mounts return to the shop, player will feel like they need to purchase a mount they want in fear of never being able to obtain it, rather than the alternative of having to pay $2 more for it. The goal for Blizzard is for their free to play titles to earn money and we can't forget that. But I think they have ways to earn that money without alienating  their player base that they didn't take advantage of. Like I said before, we want to be satisfied with our purchases. Part of me wonders if due to their popularity as a company, Blizzard sees the number of purchases coming from their free to play titles and are happy with that number and therefore assume nothing is wrong.

I hope Blizzard sees the reaction to the Hearthstone skin announcement and takes the opportunity to lower the price before they are faced with the same situation as Heroes of the Storm. At the end of the say, we as players want to pay for content they enjoy.

Thanks again for reading. Please leave your thoughts or opinions in the comments. I'd love to discuss it further with the community. Have fun!

Chris