jackcrescend

[jackcrescend]

My first character, and also making my own build. SSF btw. I reached end-boss of act 10. It was unbeatable.

I knew to expect this outcome, yet I was hopeful that I’d be able to craft something semi-working, since I love delving deep into mechanics and taking the time to fully understand the game. The problem was, I didn’t know how important certain aspects of the game would be before those things came to bite me in the arse.

I was warned against following my own build so many times from so many sources, but here’s the thing; I refuse to follow other people’s builds. To me, it’s the same as summoning allies in Dark Souls, or paying for mobile games; it’s cheating. To me, big pull of this game is figuring out how to make a build work, and if I was simply following a pre-made build the only thing left would be just grinding. Failure is just a part of the experience, and I don’t mind restarting with a new character, since now I’m armed with all the knowledge I gained from my journey.

So, about my build. I started as a shadow, and with only a vague idea of a physical attacking dual claw setup in mind. I quickly fell in love with Frost Blades, which allowed for ranged hits while still counting as melee. Looking at the talent tree, I decided to use evasion as my main defense, with life leech from the claw talents to keep me alive. I think this decision eventually became my downfall, but I’ll get to that later.

At around end of act 5, I realized how important resistances were. I was getting one-shot by boss attacks, and no amount of evasion was going to save me from spells. Since then, I focused more into making sure I had my resistances in check, and started collecting extra life bonuses in my talent tree. I even got acrobatics, which might’ve been a slight bit of an overkill since my evasion was sky-high already thanks to an insanely good evasion flask I’d gotten which almost tripled my already high evasion to untouchable levels.

I ascended into assassin class, and shifted my build towards a crits. By the end, I had constant 5 power charges, and a base 40% chance to crit on every hit, which went up to 63% with a ‘lucky’ crit flask. This combined with frost blades + herald of ice gave me even better survivability, since I could simply freeze most mobs in their tracks before they could even touch me. I would clear all adds first, and then switch to dual strikes for boss kills. The build showed promise, but there was a problem...

My DPS was lacking all across acts 5-10. Incursions became super tough, when I couldn’t even kill the bosses quick enough within the time limit to upgrade the temple floors. In retrospect, I think this was because I simply wasn’t getting the drops I needed. Since I specialized into claws super early, I struggled to find good claw drops, especially since I needed two of them for my dual wield build. I probably could’ve gotten around this by crafting my own weapons, but here’s the other problem: I didn’t figure out how hideouts worked until well into act 7. I was scratching my head wondering how the hell I was supposed to level up the masters when I never found them out in the wilds, I had no idea about the daily missions I could’ve been doing from my hideout. As a result, my crafting possibilities were limited, and I wasn’t particularly keen on spending a whole bunch of orbs on rerolling for better gear.

Also, my chaos resistance was super bad. I had kind of been ignoring it, but when I reached the last boss, I was at -8%. I was getting wrecked. I kept throwing myself into the boss fight repeatedly, but faced a stone wall in the add phase, where I couldn’t kill the adds before they bursted me down in under a second. There was a horde of them, right on top of the boss entrance, and they all used chaos dmg.

Maybe if I grinded a whole new set of gear and refunded some trait points, I might’ve been able to win the fight, but I decided I’d rather start all over with a new character. I like INT and DEX builds, so I might try shadow again, but this time focusing on magic damage, maybe trap build? We’ll see :)

[jackcrescend]

Gwent + Hearthstone: F2P Analysis

One glorious morning, I wake up with an idea in my head. I spent something close to 3 hours crunching numbers on a series of notepads like a maniac. Having been bitten by the trading card game craze, I wanted to know which game would be the best fit for me. I don’t like dropping money on a F2P game straight off the gate, so if the game isn’t enjoyable as purely F2P then it’s highly likely I’ll drop out rather than dropping money on it.

Wanna take a guess which one came out on top? You probably already have a hunch which one it might be. I’ll try to be as objective as possible, letting the numbers do the talking for me. For Science! 

(TL;DR at the very bottom)

Comparison Method

I figured the most fair way of comparing the games would be to analyze how long it’d take to make a full deck in either game. The goal is to make a high-end competitive deck for both. Hearthstone decks are always 30 cards, but Gwent decks vary from 25 to 40, so to make it fair I’ll count both as 30 card decks. Both games use a rarity system of common, rare, epic and legendary, the only difference being that Gwent limits epics to 6 per deck and legendaries to 4 per deck. Since Hearthstone doesn’t have any deck guidelines to follow, I’ll be using 2 decks from HearthPwn as examples, one cheap and another more expensive. For comparing progress, I’ll analyze how much materials you can collect by playing daily by playing the same amount of matches. I’ll also take match length into consideration at the end of this piece.

Gwent deck requirements

You typically want to keep your deck as close to 25 cards as possible, to reduce card draw RNG, but for comparison’s sake we’ll be making a 30 card deck. 

10 commons * 30 scrap each = 300 scrap

10 rares * 80 scrap each = 800 scrap

6 epics (silver cards) * 200 scrap each = 1200 scrap

4 legendaries (gold cards) * 800 scrap each = 3200 scrap

Total: 5500 scrap

The cost is basically the same for all decks. The exact balance between commons and rares depends on the deck, but even if it was nothing but rares it’d only be an extra +500 scrap, about 10%.

Gwent progress

Gwent likes rewarding you in small little chunks, which makes counting all of it together slightly complicated. Both games have diminishing returns for daily playtime, so I’ll use two daily milestones: 6 rounds won and 18 rounds won daily. These coincide with two particularly large rewards; 100 ore and 75 ore respectively. 100 ores = 1 new card pack (keg).

To establish how much one keg is worth in scrap, we have to make a couple assumptions. 

We always get the worst draw, 4 commons and 1 rare

We already own all the cards we just drew, and mill all of them into scrap

This way, we can establish a kegs scrap value, which is 4 commons x 10 scrap + 1 rare x 20 scrap = 60 scrap. We’ll also be making this same assumption for hearthstone packs.

Another thing that throws a wrench in the calculations, is the random reward you get every second win up until 18th win, excluding the milestone times. You’ll either get 15 ore, 15 scrap, 15 meteor powder (used for making animated cards) or one card. Let’s assume meteor powder is worth nothing to us, since we only care about deck functionality, and also the one card we draw is always common (10 scrap). This way, assuming all are equally probable, the average scrap gain per 2 round wins is:

(15/100 * 60 + 15 + 0 + 10) / 4 = 8.5 scrap

Thus, the total scrap you’ll earn by reaching 6 round wins is:

2 * 8.5 + 100/100 * 60 = 77 scrap

and 18 round wins:

7 * 8.5 + 100/100 * 60 + 75/100 * 60 = 164.5 scrap

How many matches does it take to get those wins? We divide by 1.5, so it’s 4 and 12 respectively. Why? You need 2 round wins to win a match, and the way Gwent is balanced its VERY rare to lose 2 rounds in a row. Thus, assuming a balanced 50/50 chance of winning, you’ll get an average of 1.5 round wins per game.

But Wait, There’s More! Every match, you can give your opponent GG at the end of the game, which rewards your opponent with extra 5 scrap. From what I’ve seen, most people are generous and hit GG every time, but exceptions exist. Let’s just assume some bad luck on our part, and say only every second opponent GG’s. Counting this in, the new totals are:

6 round wins = 77 scrap + 4 * 1/2 * 5 = 87 scrap

18 round wins = 164.5 scrap + 12 * 1/2 * 5 = 194.5 scrap

Now, there’s other scrap sources too, like level / rank rewards, and end-of-season rewards, but those are very hard to calculate and highly inconsistent, so I’ll count them out from both games. For the record though, Gwent rewards for both reaching any rank for the first time AND your highest rank at the end of season, so Gwent would’ve been the victor here.

Gwent summary

So what do these numbers mean? Let’s munch them into a tangible form: How long does it take to make a competitive deck? We take the scrap requirements, and divide by how much scrap we earn daily, and we get:

6 wins daily: 5500 scrap / 87 scrap = 63.2 days

18 wins daily: 5500 scrap / 194.5 scrap = 28.3 days

So in the absolute worst case scenario where we are never lucky with draws and have to craft everything ourselves, we can get a competitive deck in a month. According to this bit of research an average match of Gwent is about 8 minutes, so getting 6 wins is about 32 minutes a day, and 18 wins is 1 hour 36 minutes. I did also count the numbers for 42 wins a day (approx. 18 days to complete deck), but that’d be near 4 hours of playtime every day so I didn’t want to promote that to burn anyone out :D

Hearthstone deck requirements

Decks vary wildly in cost, so for this comparison I’m taking 2 decks: Budget Druid for 1820 arcane dust and N'Zoth Beast Hunter for 8280 dust. I could’ve picked even more expensive deck, but a deck with 4 legendaries and 2 epics seemed reasonable for a F2P end-game goal.

Hearthstone progress

Hearthstone is considerably easier to count, since there’s really only 2 sources of income: quests, and a 10 gold reward for every third win.

You get one quest a day, for a typical reward of 40 gold, but it can be higher. We’ll assume the average gold gain per quest to be around 50 gold. We’ll also assume that you finish one quest a day, even at the lowest playtime tier. For comparison’s sake we’ll use the same milestones as in Gwent: 4 matches / day, and 12 matches / day.

Now the more lucrative the quest, the harder they’re to finish. Still, we’ll assume you’ll get one quest done per day even if the quest required 5 wins with a specific hero, and you only play 4 matches a day. Why? Because you can stack 3 quests, so best case scenario you can progress multiple quests simultaneously.

Once again we’ll establish the base dust value of a new pack, making the same assumptions as with Gwent:

Worst card draw luck, getting 4 commons and 1 rare

You already own all the cards, so everything is milled

Thus, the dust value of a pack is: 4*5 dust + 1*20 dust = 40 dust.

One pack costs 100 gold, and again assuming perfectly balanced 50/50 chance of winning, you get extra 10 gold every 6 matches. With these, we can calculate how much dust you earn per day:

4 matches: (50 + 4/6 * 10) / 100 * 40 dust = 22.666... dust

12 matches: (50 + 2 * 10) / 100 * 40 dust = 28 dust

Ah, but wait, we can also get one extra pack per week from Tavern Brawl, let’s add that to the daily progress. So 40 dust divided by 7 days = 5.7 dust / day. So the new totals:

4 matches: 28.38.. dust

12 matches: 33.7 dust

Now, there is still the end of season rewards, but so does Gwent, so I didn’t count those for either of these. Hearthstone also has Arena, but since we earlier assumed 50% win rate for everything, we’d always average 3 win streak. There’s a small chance for slightly increased rewards, but not worth counting.

Hearthstone summary

So what do these numbers tell us. Well, to create one of the 2 decks, we can count how long it’d take to craft them.

Budget Druid

4 matches a day: 1820 / 28.38 = 64.1 days

12 matches a day: 1820 / 33.7 = 54 days

N'Zoth Beast Hunter

4 matches a day: 8280 / 28.38 = 291.8 days

12 matches a day: 8280 / 33.7 = 245.7 days

So, in conclusion, it’d take over half a year playing daily to make a deck with some proper legendaries in it. According to this persons research, an average game of Hearthstone takes about 6 minutes, so 4 matches daily would take about 24 minutes a day and 12 matches daily would be about an hour and 12 minutes.

Overall Conclusion

I knew Hearthstone felt like glacial progress, but I was honestly surprised how bad it actually is. Near 2 months for even a very basic budget deck with only one epic in it is insanely slow, playing the same deck daily for 2 months before being able to make even a basic new one is not worth my time.

There’s one point in the graphs where these two games are equal, and that’s when playing very minimal amounts daily, and making the cheapest possible Hearthstone deck. Anything beyond that, Gwent scales way past it, all the way up to 8.7 times faster progress at 12 matches a day when compared to the proper hunter deck. I find this to be a very reasonable estimate of F2P progress, since 12 matches takes less than 2 hours in either game, and we crafted 4 legendaries in both decks, and 4 more epics in the Gwent deck.

Hearthstone progress is carried almost exclusively on the back of daily quests and the weekly tavern brawl, and it rewards the player very poorly for any extra time spent in-game. By comparison Gwent scales rather nicely all the way up to 42 round wins, which takes almost 4 hours of playtime so it’s more than enough leeway to enjoy the game in however long bursts as you want.

Gwent decks are also standardized, so that they all have the same amount of epics and legendaries, which means even the best deck imaginable costs the same as any other. Where we struggled to make a budget HS deck, we finished a fully viable competitive deck to our own liking.

Gwent matches tend to be about 30% longer on average, but in our calculations we’re still talking under 2 hours of daily playtime in either case. Games of Gwent are a bit more consistent in length, since every game the same amount of cards is played, whereas Hearthstone has far greater game length variety depending on deck types. 

So there you have it, I hope someone found this enlightening ^^ Just as an interesting tidbit, I have something around 90 hours logged in Gwent, large chunks of it in deck builder, and I’ve made 2 fully fleshed out decks so far. Even with 2 years of headstart, I’d struggle to do the same in Hearthstone.

TL;DR Gwent is up to 8 times faster progress even at a reasonable estimate.

[jackcrescend]

So that one thing I said...

that I’d write about immersion in GW2 without minimap? Yeaahh... I tried getting back into GW2 but just couldn’t. Not a game for me, even with the new expansion hype. 

I tried so hard to relive the game from ground up, designing a new character I loved, selling every little collectible I had collecting dust and exchanged all of my money into gems. I moved all of my bank items to my other alts, to clear the clutter that had accumulated over the years that really weren’t worth all that much but I just couldn’t bring myself to trash them either. I did everything I could to relive the experience of starting the game from a fresh start.

Why?!? I can imagine anyone with a penchant for hoarding would exclaim. I thought about all these chains that MMO’s use to keep players hooked in their games, and all the junk you collect in GW2 is definitely one form of sunk cost fallacy. Are you truly enjoying the game, or do you feel obligated to continue because of all the stuff you’ve collected over the years? I decided to find out, and cast everything out. If the game’s not enjoyable without them, then the game’s not worth playing for me.

It wasn’t an easy task. In fact Arenanet has made it particularly difficult to relive the game without having something carry over from previous characters. Bank slots, material, and gold are all account bound, which I were able to somehow empty by selling loot and buying gems, but there were other things I couldn’t do anything about. Like the hundreds of thousands of Karma. Or extra currencies I had no idea how to clear out. Or the rare dye collection. Achievement points. Tried as I might, only a new account could make a completely fresh experience. I toyed around with the idea of making a new account, but didn’t because if I really did get attached to the new character, I’d be torn when it came the time to buy the expansion for one of my two accounts.

Having finally got a character to play with, I tried to do what I’d set out to do from the get-go: play without minimap. I went into options, expecting full control over the UI like in FF14... and I’d completely forgotten UI adjustments were non-existent in GW2. The minimap was there to stay... Or atleast, through official methods. Arenanet has always been on the fence about modding, but there’s one mod that has been semi-approved for a while called Immersive Combat Mode. It’s mostly meant for improving combat feel, but one thing it also does is remove parts of the UI as was my desire. While I was already on the mod-path, I got myself ReShade to improve visual clarity of the game, ‘cus I’ve always felt the game was somewhat muddy. I spent hours debugging, testing, tweaking to force the game into my liking, at the end of which I finally had some results I was happy with, but also exhausted.

For instance, the first thing I was disappointed with was the framerate. Frequently dropping below 45 FPS in cities, no graphic setting option seemed to help to keep the game running smooth. This was a devastating blow, for I had also been thinking of getting some footage for a music video, but without stable framerate I didn’t even want to try. Not sure why GW2 runs worse than FF14, when the latter looks better IMO. 

So I finally got everything working, playing the character I made (Sylvari Elementalist), playing through the starter zone... I got to lvl 20 or so, logged out and couldn’t bring myself to load the game back up again. Something about the combat just feels inherently unsatisfying, even as an elementalist which on paper has the largest skill variety. Poorly balanced, mobs die way too quick, or they’ve been buffed to such a ridiculous degree that you’ll die in a couple hits. Having played through the game before, I know this is a trend that won’t fix itself no matter how far I got in the game. 

I wasn’t looking forward to playing any of the upcoming content either. The game areas are largely designed to be constantly changing regardless of the player, so chances are you’ll never be in the right place in the right time to experience the cool stuff, especially not while trying to play without a minimap, which was the entire point of my experiment. I’ve grown accustomed to the old questing system, where I can do content at my own pace when I want where I want, but GW2 is having none of it and requires you to play through each area multiple times to see everything about it. I quit, this time probably for good.

I wanted to love GW2 so badly, GW1 was my very first MMO after all, sadly it just ain’t for me. What little I played without the minimap, I found it a refreshing change being forced to learn the landscape the hard way. It was considerably harder here than in FF14 since GW2 is more akin to a labyrinth at times. Talking with scouts to learn of the close-by heart events and simultaneously learning some extra lore backstory became a pleasant routine. It was very difficult to participate in random events though, since I had no idea if one was happening nearby. There’s potential there, but too much of the game’s been designed around having the minimap always there.

[jackcrescend]

You Won’t Believe This One Immersion Trick!

Turn off the minimap.

As handy as the minimap is, I also find it to be the most insidious immersion killer in MMO’s. You don’t think too much about it as glancing at it becomes second nature over countless hours of gaming, but eventually you’re not even looking at the game world around you as you’re solely navigating on minimap alone. Even in areas you’ve never been to before, the omnipotent compass is always pointing you to places of interest, what need do you have for actually learning the landscape?

I’ve been playing FF14 for the past 2 months now, and removing the minimap was one of the first things I did. On top of that, I also made a vow to myself to not check the world map unless I really needed to. A quest would task me with fighting specific monsters, or delivering a message to somewhere nearby, I’d have to rely on my memory to get to the right place. I wasn’t always sure where I was headed, but to my delight my hunch guess was correct 80% of the time.

First change that I noticed after ditching the minimap, I started remembering area / NPC names much better. I have a notoriously bad name memory, yet now when quest points me to a person or area I know where to go. A quest was about to introduce me to a new character, but from the back of my head I recalled walking past that completely random NPC in the town aaages ago.

Gathering was a little trickier, since typically you’d see nearby gathering nodes on the minimap, but there’s a skill that gives distance and compass direction to the nearest one. I started taking note of large structures in the landscape and using them as pointers to figure out which way I was headed. A good while later, I realized that the game’s fully functioning day/night cycle meant that I could use the sun and the in-game time to find south even in completely unknown areas. In-game the moon is always directly opposite from the sun, so it can be used for orienteering during the night just the same as the sun. Even in the case of overcast, the players shadow can be used as a replacement.

You’d be surprised how nicely consistent most quests are with giving you a hint of the right direction. If you’re following an NPC, they’ll walk off into the right direction before disappearing. Or they might say “Under the cliff to the northeast.”, it’s typically just enough to get within sight of the right place and to continue the quest. 

Very rarely do I need to pull out the map anymore, and I find myself more invested in the game world than I’ve ever been before. If you ever feel a little burned out by MMO’s, challenge yourself to play without the map and see if you like it ^^ I intend to try this same thing in Guild Wars 2 with the new expansion, I’ll make a new post for it.

[jackcrescend]

Testing

std::cout << “Hello, world!” << std::endl;

return 0;