Victorea_Ryan_Meadow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elise_rasha) wrote2019-09-01 01:32 pm
elise_rasha) wrote2019-09-01 01:32 pm
On the Subject of Gaming, Part Nine: Epic Adventures via an App - Why I'm Not Digging It
I thought I was going to be done with entries on gaming for a while. After all, I profess to be quite selective when it comes to what I play, and I'm in a position where I either need to be familiar with the series, like Dragon Quest and Star Ocean, to do a blind purchase, or it's gotta be free to play. That's why I'm glad Square Enix does demos for games and why I love gaming rooms at conventions in addition to rental companies like (the now defunct) Blockbuster. (This is also why I'm a fan of reading samples when purchasing books online and libraries, but books are a different discussion for a different day.)
I thought wrong. You see, for at least a week now (possibly longer - I'm not digging deep into my memory banks to find out when this started), Facebook has been showing me an ad for a game called Hero Wars. It wasn't showing me actual game play for it but puzzles to be solved in order to get loot. I like puzzles in my games. I like puzzles, and I like puzzle games. I hadn't told Facebook to stop showing me the ad because I was pretty keen on ignoring the stupidity of the demo. I also admit that I was curious. I wanted to play those puzzles and get the loot so, three days ago, I clicked on the link and began to play.
Basic breakdown of Hero Wars: You start out as a pre-determined character, and you have a mission to save what's known as Guardians. In a Farmville-esque manner, upon starting up the game, you see all kinds of things you can do in the game. Arena, Grand Arena, Tower, Airship, Outlands, and you have your merchant, quests, etc . . . Basically, everything you'd need in your gaming hub for a Facebook app game in order to get goodies and the like. You get chance to either get a free character by logging in daily or what they call soul stones to either summon or enhance your character once you hit a certain number.
I've gotten probably 1/4 of the way through the fourth chapter map. I've stopped playing it as of earlier today.
I don't like it.
I have nothing against the concept of this game. I also think it's great that the game's designers have set up YouTube videos to enhance the game play for players. There might even be a way to adjust how an autoplay character behaves in battle. I'm just not interested in having to step outside of the game in order to learn more about the story. I'm not interested in having a healer-type character who doesn't heal the others when they get below half hit-points and where a cover-all heal spell is reliant on what I'm going to call a Rush-mode attack. For those who have never played Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, Star Ocean: Anamnesis, or Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, the Rush mode attack is basically you can perform against an enemy without taking any damage from said enemy. It's a specialized attack or series of attack once the battle gauge for it has reached maximum capacity. If there are other games that have this type of an attack, I couldn't tell you. I'm basically mentioning the games that I know of and have played where this is something that can be done, and they can be chained together for maximum effect. I won't say other games haven't done it when I haven't played every. Single. Game. Out there.
At any rate, the issue with the beginning healer aside, I find the overall game play, at the point I hit, both bland and a little on the frustrating side. I find it bland because the only scenery I get is when I'm in a battle. I just click on points on a map to progress, which reminds me of Bubble Witch Saga 3 and the Candy Crush/Soda Crush games. Hero Wars, the moment I started to play, went from being teased as a puzzle game into a fantasy-style RPG, complete with an online server, backstory, and so on. When I play a fantasy-style RPG, I want to see the scenery as I travel to my boss points, to the next village, and I want the points to be more than just battle points. There's gotta be something else there for me. Characters have to be interesting for me. The backstory can be woven into the game. I mean, I really want it to play like an adventure. If there's a burned village, I wanna talk to the survivors and learn more about where the enemy is heading. It's no fun for me if I know each point on my map is the battle point.
Before I go further into Hero Wars and why I'm pretty much not going to be bothering with it again any time soon, I admit that some of what the designers for HW did was standard for both app games and RPGs. You can only find select items in select areas. There's item creation, which is a bonus, much like Star Ocean. You're also not guaranteed to get that item every single time, either. What's frustrating if you can't buy some of the basic equipment your party needs in order to set out. You have to fight for it, and it's equipment you need. So you're grinding on levels to get the equipment, to get the team party level up, all in order to face the tougher bosses. I've never played a game that capped my individual character levels based on team party level. Capped because they hit the max level they could reach for a given point? Yeah. Capped until something else was unlocked in the game or some milestone was achieved? Yeah. I recall Till the End of Time doing that with battle trophies, but I also didn't have a team party level for my console games.
For Hero Wars, I'd gotten to where I was grinding for team level and wasting potential experience points on level 20 characters because they'd hit the team level cap. While I understand the point of a maximum level, I don't agree with putting a level cap in place before level 100. I just don't. And, as I said, you have to grind for team experience points. You get team experience for the amount of energy used up to participate in a battle. That's great, until you realize the only levels you can play repeatedly are the ones that cost 6 energy. The ones that cost more are specific battle points, and you can only play them three times per day before you have to stop. And, unless you've overdosed your energy on opening various mail, you have a limited amount of energy to spend. I believe at my Team Level of 24, I have a maximum of 75 energy points. Because I've collected things, I'm actually sitting at over 100 or 200, so I could play until I ran out. I just don't have that patience for a generic game with an uninteresting story. I was frustrated with the game as of yesterday, but I was playing because it was a distraction. And not a great distraction, either.
Pretty much, this game can play on auto. You can leave the room, miss the rush modes, but still not miss anything because the battles aren't important. They're just experience points. After you defeat the final boss of each round - the only challenges are not dying, getting three stars, and defeating each group of enemies in under 20 seconds, though you have two minutes for each round - it simply ends. There's no dramatic moment, no final breath from the boss. You simply unlock the next point and move on. The only time you get that is when you first start the game, and the bad guy in question claims, you're not getting all of your guardians back. The battles do what they're meant to do, which is allow the player to progress to the next point, but it's all uninteresting.
Add into this the skill points. I don't mind skill points. I've gotten skill points in the console games I've played. I actually love skill points. I get to enhance part of a character that has a specific use in the game. In Till the End of Time, the points were allocated for the basics: hit points, magic points, attack, defense, and I believe one other area. I'm not recalling right off the top of my head, and I'm not sure if the Star Ocean wikia page covers it. I know in that game and in The Last Hope each character got his or her own skill points that could be allocated for them on an individual level. Each skill set had a specific point, be it for item creation or enhanced attack. The Last Hope saw group skill points, which could be used for the individual, but it was also reserved for item invention with Welch. I only used those when I really wanted to max someone out on something, and I had more than enough from the group to do it without detracting from item invention. Once you had invented the item, you didn't need the points to create. You just made sure you had the necessary ingredients on hand to make what was needed. And here's the thing: At least you knew where to go to either buy what you needed, because the shops were set up, and their wares never changed, or where to harvest or mine said items. I had to reset the harvesting and mining points by returning to my ship, but I didn't need to fight battles each and every time I needed an item or a piece of equipment. I also had control over restorative items in battle, which aided me in keeping everyone alive. Don't have that in Hero Wars, and my current healer-type sucks.
With that said about item creation, ingredient and equipment retrieval, Hero Wars also has skill points. Twenty, to be precise. For the whole group. So if you want to max someone out, you can, but then you can't max another person out once you start getting into the higher levels. I mean, if you're going to utilize skill points, give the individual characters their own set so they can be maxed out on an even level. Otherwise, you have a potentially disproportionate party when it comes to dealing damage. You also have characters who aren't completely equipped. This is mainly because, once the character has all necessary equipment, the game allows you to promote that character to a different type of ranking. The character system for Hero Wars is actually quite complex, with things becoming unlocked upon the team party level hitting certain numbers and the characters hitting certain levels and rankings. It's an interesting system, but the game has one fatal flaw that seems to afflict almost every single online fantasy RPG.
It comes with the characters already created for you.
It might not seem like a big deal, because most fantasy RPGs come with pre-created characters. It's something tri-Ace and Square Enix have been doing since their inceptions as gaming companies, along with sending out the pre-packaged story. How they were able to be successful (or not) with the pre-created characters was because of how the characters actually behaved during the game play. The pre-created characters weren't generic, either, and that's what's happened with Hero Wars. They've given players the pre-created character in a generic setting where eventual player contact is possible, and players, when it comes to online fantasy RPGs, want to create their own characters. I say that with confidence because, despite Final Fantasy's insane popularity here in the U.S., the first time Square Enix tried to do an online game with Final Fantasy, it failed. It lost out to games like World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Even the online Lord of the Rings RPG enjoyed an insane amount of popularity because the players got to choose how to create their characters. Given the opportunity, a lot of people will create their own characters. The online games aren't the only ones that prove that. Halo was one of the first console games to prove that. (Note: Halo wasn't the first console video game that allowed a player to create the character. Earlier games of Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior did the same thing, albeit it in a more limited way, due to the technology of the time. Other console games have come along and done the same thing to varying degrees of popularity.)
These are, ultimately, just my thoughts, opinions, and observations, which have been quite limited since I worked at a Gamestop (which was for the 2005 holiday season only). I'm one of 268K+ people who started to play Hero Wars. Others are probably enjoying it way more than what I did in my brief amount of time. I'm just disappointed that I didn't get to do the puzzles right away, and I find it jarring that I have to step out of the game to learn more about the story's history instead of it being integrated into the game itself. Say what you want about other RPGs on consoles, be it you liked this game but not that one, but they at least integrated everything needed to generate some kind of interest.
If you've played Hero Wars and have enjoyed, I say excellent! It does have a lot of potential, and I wish you happy gaming!
That concludes this entry. Have a great rest of your weekend!
I thought wrong. You see, for at least a week now (possibly longer - I'm not digging deep into my memory banks to find out when this started), Facebook has been showing me an ad for a game called Hero Wars. It wasn't showing me actual game play for it but puzzles to be solved in order to get loot. I like puzzles in my games. I like puzzles, and I like puzzle games. I hadn't told Facebook to stop showing me the ad because I was pretty keen on ignoring the stupidity of the demo. I also admit that I was curious. I wanted to play those puzzles and get the loot so, three days ago, I clicked on the link and began to play.
Basic breakdown of Hero Wars: You start out as a pre-determined character, and you have a mission to save what's known as Guardians. In a Farmville-esque manner, upon starting up the game, you see all kinds of things you can do in the game. Arena, Grand Arena, Tower, Airship, Outlands, and you have your merchant, quests, etc . . . Basically, everything you'd need in your gaming hub for a Facebook app game in order to get goodies and the like. You get chance to either get a free character by logging in daily or what they call soul stones to either summon or enhance your character once you hit a certain number.
I've gotten probably 1/4 of the way through the fourth chapter map. I've stopped playing it as of earlier today.
I don't like it.
I have nothing against the concept of this game. I also think it's great that the game's designers have set up YouTube videos to enhance the game play for players. There might even be a way to adjust how an autoplay character behaves in battle. I'm just not interested in having to step outside of the game in order to learn more about the story. I'm not interested in having a healer-type character who doesn't heal the others when they get below half hit-points and where a cover-all heal spell is reliant on what I'm going to call a Rush-mode attack. For those who have never played Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, Star Ocean: Anamnesis, or Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, the Rush mode attack is basically you can perform against an enemy without taking any damage from said enemy. It's a specialized attack or series of attack once the battle gauge for it has reached maximum capacity. If there are other games that have this type of an attack, I couldn't tell you. I'm basically mentioning the games that I know of and have played where this is something that can be done, and they can be chained together for maximum effect. I won't say other games haven't done it when I haven't played every. Single. Game. Out there.
At any rate, the issue with the beginning healer aside, I find the overall game play, at the point I hit, both bland and a little on the frustrating side. I find it bland because the only scenery I get is when I'm in a battle. I just click on points on a map to progress, which reminds me of Bubble Witch Saga 3 and the Candy Crush/Soda Crush games. Hero Wars, the moment I started to play, went from being teased as a puzzle game into a fantasy-style RPG, complete with an online server, backstory, and so on. When I play a fantasy-style RPG, I want to see the scenery as I travel to my boss points, to the next village, and I want the points to be more than just battle points. There's gotta be something else there for me. Characters have to be interesting for me. The backstory can be woven into the game. I mean, I really want it to play like an adventure. If there's a burned village, I wanna talk to the survivors and learn more about where the enemy is heading. It's no fun for me if I know each point on my map is the battle point.
Before I go further into Hero Wars and why I'm pretty much not going to be bothering with it again any time soon, I admit that some of what the designers for HW did was standard for both app games and RPGs. You can only find select items in select areas. There's item creation, which is a bonus, much like Star Ocean. You're also not guaranteed to get that item every single time, either. What's frustrating if you can't buy some of the basic equipment your party needs in order to set out. You have to fight for it, and it's equipment you need. So you're grinding on levels to get the equipment, to get the team party level up, all in order to face the tougher bosses. I've never played a game that capped my individual character levels based on team party level. Capped because they hit the max level they could reach for a given point? Yeah. Capped until something else was unlocked in the game or some milestone was achieved? Yeah. I recall Till the End of Time doing that with battle trophies, but I also didn't have a team party level for my console games.
For Hero Wars, I'd gotten to where I was grinding for team level and wasting potential experience points on level 20 characters because they'd hit the team level cap. While I understand the point of a maximum level, I don't agree with putting a level cap in place before level 100. I just don't. And, as I said, you have to grind for team experience points. You get team experience for the amount of energy used up to participate in a battle. That's great, until you realize the only levels you can play repeatedly are the ones that cost 6 energy. The ones that cost more are specific battle points, and you can only play them three times per day before you have to stop. And, unless you've overdosed your energy on opening various mail, you have a limited amount of energy to spend. I believe at my Team Level of 24, I have a maximum of 75 energy points. Because I've collected things, I'm actually sitting at over 100 or 200, so I could play until I ran out. I just don't have that patience for a generic game with an uninteresting story. I was frustrated with the game as of yesterday, but I was playing because it was a distraction. And not a great distraction, either.
Pretty much, this game can play on auto. You can leave the room, miss the rush modes, but still not miss anything because the battles aren't important. They're just experience points. After you defeat the final boss of each round - the only challenges are not dying, getting three stars, and defeating each group of enemies in under 20 seconds, though you have two minutes for each round - it simply ends. There's no dramatic moment, no final breath from the boss. You simply unlock the next point and move on. The only time you get that is when you first start the game, and the bad guy in question claims, you're not getting all of your guardians back. The battles do what they're meant to do, which is allow the player to progress to the next point, but it's all uninteresting.
Add into this the skill points. I don't mind skill points. I've gotten skill points in the console games I've played. I actually love skill points. I get to enhance part of a character that has a specific use in the game. In Till the End of Time, the points were allocated for the basics: hit points, magic points, attack, defense, and I believe one other area. I'm not recalling right off the top of my head, and I'm not sure if the Star Ocean wikia page covers it. I know in that game and in The Last Hope each character got his or her own skill points that could be allocated for them on an individual level. Each skill set had a specific point, be it for item creation or enhanced attack. The Last Hope saw group skill points, which could be used for the individual, but it was also reserved for item invention with Welch. I only used those when I really wanted to max someone out on something, and I had more than enough from the group to do it without detracting from item invention. Once you had invented the item, you didn't need the points to create. You just made sure you had the necessary ingredients on hand to make what was needed. And here's the thing: At least you knew where to go to either buy what you needed, because the shops were set up, and their wares never changed, or where to harvest or mine said items. I had to reset the harvesting and mining points by returning to my ship, but I didn't need to fight battles each and every time I needed an item or a piece of equipment. I also had control over restorative items in battle, which aided me in keeping everyone alive. Don't have that in Hero Wars, and my current healer-type sucks.
With that said about item creation, ingredient and equipment retrieval, Hero Wars also has skill points. Twenty, to be precise. For the whole group. So if you want to max someone out, you can, but then you can't max another person out once you start getting into the higher levels. I mean, if you're going to utilize skill points, give the individual characters their own set so they can be maxed out on an even level. Otherwise, you have a potentially disproportionate party when it comes to dealing damage. You also have characters who aren't completely equipped. This is mainly because, once the character has all necessary equipment, the game allows you to promote that character to a different type of ranking. The character system for Hero Wars is actually quite complex, with things becoming unlocked upon the team party level hitting certain numbers and the characters hitting certain levels and rankings. It's an interesting system, but the game has one fatal flaw that seems to afflict almost every single online fantasy RPG.
It comes with the characters already created for you.
It might not seem like a big deal, because most fantasy RPGs come with pre-created characters. It's something tri-Ace and Square Enix have been doing since their inceptions as gaming companies, along with sending out the pre-packaged story. How they were able to be successful (or not) with the pre-created characters was because of how the characters actually behaved during the game play. The pre-created characters weren't generic, either, and that's what's happened with Hero Wars. They've given players the pre-created character in a generic setting where eventual player contact is possible, and players, when it comes to online fantasy RPGs, want to create their own characters. I say that with confidence because, despite Final Fantasy's insane popularity here in the U.S., the first time Square Enix tried to do an online game with Final Fantasy, it failed. It lost out to games like World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Even the online Lord of the Rings RPG enjoyed an insane amount of popularity because the players got to choose how to create their characters. Given the opportunity, a lot of people will create their own characters. The online games aren't the only ones that prove that. Halo was one of the first console games to prove that. (Note: Halo wasn't the first console video game that allowed a player to create the character. Earlier games of Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior did the same thing, albeit it in a more limited way, due to the technology of the time. Other console games have come along and done the same thing to varying degrees of popularity.)
These are, ultimately, just my thoughts, opinions, and observations, which have been quite limited since I worked at a Gamestop (which was for the 2005 holiday season only). I'm one of 268K+ people who started to play Hero Wars. Others are probably enjoying it way more than what I did in my brief amount of time. I'm just disappointed that I didn't get to do the puzzles right away, and I find it jarring that I have to step out of the game to learn more about the story's history instead of it being integrated into the game itself. Say what you want about other RPGs on consoles, be it you liked this game but not that one, but they at least integrated everything needed to generate some kind of interest.
If you've played Hero Wars and have enjoyed, I say excellent! It does have a lot of potential, and I wish you happy gaming!
That concludes this entry. Have a great rest of your weekend!