Question

What is fair?

Whether socially, politicaly, in games, business, or whatever. I’m curious to see how other people view this term. I’ve got a fairly strong grasp of how I view the concept across all the spectrums, and would like to hear yours.

Changing Play

Yesterday was patch day for League of Legends. The big ticket items were the rework for Kayle and the introduction of another new 6300 IP champion, Wukong the Monkey King. Having been a previous enthusiast for Kayle, I was eager to see what changes she had coming her way, as I felt she was a bit on the weaker side of things. She had a great passive, but wasn’t able to really fulfill either of her roles as a support/carry very well. Of course, when the video was released, I was a bit saddened. I had just finished up all of her rune page a few days back, and the change meant buying 18 new runes and 3 new quintessence if Phreak’s predicted build would be more suitable. So, after I put the daughter to bed last night, I jumped into a few games to play with her to get a feel for the revamp.

I’ll be blunt, I’m not super happy with the Kayle rework so far. It’s not bad per-se, but it has definitely taken her far away from what she was before. Where before she was a good support/carry blend, that could be nasty super-late game, she’s now more of a pure carry. The hit to her heal spell, Diving Blessing, is a real kick in the nuts to any aspirations of support play. Nidalee’s heal was a far superior support tool before this change, as it has a better cooldown and a vastly greater power ratio, and after the change, it’s not even a comparison worth making. It’s as if the functions of Kayle’s heal have been swapped, making it more of a speed boost than a heal now.

That’s not to say that all the changes were bad, but Kayle is clearly no longer the champion I once played and enjoyed. She is being put almost wholly into the carry slot than the support slot. That shift is a new way of thinking when playing as her and how to approach building her. Once I’m able to get past this paradigm shift, I think I’ll have a strong hold on Kayle, but I’m not entirely sure if I want to. Playing a pure carry can be fun, but in LoL, I really enjoy more diverse and complex champions. Nidalee may take over as my primary champion after this patch.

As for Wukong, shocker, he seems pretty strong on the power curve. He’s also 6300 IP. I’d really like to see some more low and mid-range champions released, Oriana was the only one in recent history who came in under 6300 point. Relatedly, I’d enjoy a more frequent IP push-down for older champions. The push-down doesn’t have to happen as frequent as new releases, but doing a price cut of 1 old champion for every 2 new ones that gets released shouldn’t be something that will cause a revenue loss, and would go a fair way to pleasing customers.

Directing Frustration

For whatever reason, for the last few months, I’ve had this concept bouncing around in my skull, and I’ve started to put it up here a couple of times, but have yet to follow through until now. As a person matures with any endeavor they tend to think about things beyond their immediate perceptions and understanding. A long-term view starts to be adapted as the fullness of involvement starts to be realized. For myself, part of that is acknowledging personal past behavior, comparing it to others, and analyzing those actions. Part of advancement in anything is reflection and analysis, and opinions should be shining examples of this. I say this because, like I said, I’ve had a thought/nagging/what-have-you bouncing around in my skull for a while, and it just won’t go away. That thought is simple:

Do we, as players, mis-direct our frustrations towards people who are undeserving of it?

I think the simple answer to the question is “yes” (the converse question of directing our praise to those deserving is a valuable question as well, though, of probable less importance given the disparity between the projected emotional spectrums). Any romp through most MMO forum’s will see a majority of people expressing frustration. Those people more deeply embedded in the social structure of the community will probably have a greater insight to the workings of their game of choice. In-as-much as they will likely know the names of some of the designers or the forum handles of the “devs” that interact with them on the message board. That “insight” isn’t as great as some of us would like to believe (I believe). This perceived greater insight lends itself to a higher sense of involvement, and emotional attachment to a product, which can be a very nasty two-edged sword.

 

Environment

5 new videos from pitch black games for their new game Prime were released yesterday, after the live ustream dev chat of audio fail.

Enjoy!

(p.s. worpress is fail at imbedding videos as detailed in their explanation page).

 

 

 

 

Welcome back!

But sorry, your lost item will remain lost.

A recap if you don’t want to read his yellow text:

CSR: How can I help?

SW: My Golden Ankrh is missing. I for sure last saw it in February, not sure about a few weeks ago.

CSR: Let me look into it.

CSR: Sorry, no-can-do.

SW: Any particular reason you can’t restore it?

CSR: Canned response. Anything else?

SW: No.

I get that customer service can only do so much, but when a customer asks for a particular or specific reason, it’s nice to get one. Letting your customer know WHY you can’t do something makes them feel like you aren’t just punching a card, and that there are actual reasons that can’t be overcome. Canned answers as a response to a request for more details is a TERRIBLE way to reply.

Guess who’s back?

From outerspace (okay, Wisconsin – semantics!).

The vacation was good. There was much drinking of beer, much eating of brats, and the lighting of fireworks, with the occasional dabble of family visitation, and a picture of my 93-year-old grandmother surrounded by her 9 great-grandkids. And the whole thing got capstoned by some terrible mucous plague that infected me about 5 minutes before the plan left the tarmac – a nice parting gift from the lovely midwest. While I was away, I stayed mostly out of the loop of the goings-on of the digital and gaming world, but I still tried to check my twitter feed once a day to see if anything amazing, fun, and cool happened.

There were a few things, but nothing monumental. The same-old drama of the interwebz.

Drama and Resolution.

Someone’s new job got me a Tee-shirt (in return for a Haiku)!

EA keeps gobbling up different territories of gaming.

Warhammer had another round of Blogger–invasion (not enough words for links!).

SoE’s FanFaire landed with some insight at upcoming games (finally), and a new graphics engine called Forge Light.

Relatedly: Planetside 2 looks pretty darn spiffy.

I’m sure there was tons more than that I missed in my drunken revelry, but that should be enough to keep any sane person busy for at least 15 minutes, more if you link-dive like I do.

Happy 4th of July

Happily between Canada Day and Bastille Day.

Vacation

I will be gone for a bit shy of two weeks. Enjoy whatever it is that you play, but do so for your own reasons.

Have a happy independence day to all of my countrymen and a happy weekend to everyone else.