Editorial – MMO Fallout

Diaries From H1Z1: How Does It Get Continually Worse?

I want to talk about H1Z1 on the Playstation 4.

H1Z1 has become the Battle Royale of choice for me, partially because I have invested enough time and money ($20) into the game that I’d rather not start anew on another BR title and partially because I like the simplistic gameplay. I don’t have the reaction time to build and play Fortnite at a decent level and PUBG is a bit too much of a broken mess most of the time to keep my attention while Realm Royale’s player base was crashing hard. Plus my character looks like a total badass.

That said, I have to hand it to Daybreak for instituting the battle pass into H1Z1, because if it weren’t for the fact that I can log in a couple of times a week and churn out some decent ranks, I would have stopped playing out of frustration a long time ago.

It could be because the stamp missions in H1Z1 are broken beyond recognition. It only took five times entering and reentering the training grounds before the game recognized me picking up an AR weapon for the achievement, and after the third time I picked one up in solos for it to register that mission completed. While writing this article I spent the fifth match in which I used the “wave bye” emote three times during a match without it registering completion. What the game did register is me surviving to place in the top 15 in Fives which we didn’t (we placed in the top 20), me driving an ARV 1000 meters in any BR mode (I didn’t), placing in the top 15 without using bandages or first aid kits (I had used numerous), and one achievement I had actually accomplished in reviving a teammate and one for finishing three fives matches.

Free for all, to put it bluntly, sucks on ice. The Battle Royale engine that Daybreak has put together is clearly not built to house this many people in this close proximity on the Playstation 4. I play with the Playstation 4 Pro which is connected to an ethernet and sits within arm’s reach of my router, on a Verizon FiOS line running to the tune of 150mbps. I’m not humble bragging about my internet speed, I’m just pointing out the kind of connection I’m working with. At many times, H1Z1 Free for All gets such bad lag that the original Everquest has less character rubberbanding by comparison. There’s nothing that says engaging gameplay quite like pumping a full clip from an automatic weapon into someone at close range and having none of the shots register, only for the game to recognize that you actually died five seconds ago from a guy who was probably killed before he pulled the trigger.

And because the zone is so small and seemingly randomly placed, the spawn points are absolute trash. You’ll find yourself getting thrown into the wide open valley only to be immediately popped by the group of snipers that were already aiming in your direction. If not an open valley, you’ll be lucky to minimize the number of times that players will spawn in right in front of you, only to gun you down while still in an immune phase, or twenty feet behind you only to do the same. Get a good spot? Think again, because the random spawn system loaded you up with the worst weapons possible and screw you.

This of course assumes that the game properly loads itself while spawning you into the world, and doesn’t let you die while the loading screen is still up. This also assumes that the game grants you any immunity and doesn’t just let someone with a high powered sniper pop you in the head the second the loading screen does disappear. This assumes that the loading screen appears and doesn’t just leave you hanging as a spectator. This assumes that the game responds to your pressing X to respawn and doesn’t just ignore your controller. This assumes it doesn’t crash to the console dashboard. This assumes that it lets you bring your weapon out.

It’s incredible how the further H1Z1 gets away from launch, the more it seems to degrade in quality. Some stamp missions are broken, some weekly missions are broken, Free for All is broken, experience boosts seem to be broken, the master coins you get after completing the battle pass are (for some) broken.

A Response to the Venture Beat Cuphead “Controversy”

Let’s talk Venture Beat and Cuphead.

Now in case you haven’t noticed, I tend to avoid covering controversies involving game journalists being bad at video games. Polygon’s video of Doom was embarrassing on a level that the people involved should have known not to publish it, but the factor that blew it out of control was the lack of context. There was no commentary on the video, nor was there an explanation about who was playing and why they were so bad. I’ve pointed this out when talking to/about developers, but it’s not proper to leave plot holes in your messaging, because the internet has a tendency to fill in those holes and by default assume the worst.

It also doesn’t help that Polygon has a history of publishing articles that are at best outrage clickbait, and at worst an open admission that the author has utter contempt for playing video games and gamers. Polygon hadn’t reviewed Doom at that point, so people weren’t sure whether the person recording the footage was going to be scoring it. As I said in our previous coverage, my dad doesn’t understand how to use a DVD remote control, I probably wouldn’t put much faith into his “this thing is a piece of crap” review. But the review came out, by another person, and Polygon ultimately gave the game a respectable 8.5.

But we’re here to talk about Venture Beat and Cuphead, specifically a video lacking context and commentary that popped up on their Youtube channel of Dean Takahashi playing the game and failing miserably. In fact, the video is titled “Dean’s Shameful 26 Minutes of Gameplay.”

The video above is from Gamescom, with Venture Beat’s writer managing to fail at the basic tutorial when the instructions are literally spelled out for him on the screen. Watching the video from start to finish, you might think that the message conveyed by Venture Beat is that the game is too hard, and therefore we might be looking at a bad review similar to Polygon’s Doom video.

Well that’s not the case. In fact, Takahashi seemed to quite enjoy it while admitting that he was terrible at it. An accompanying article explains pretty clearly that Takahashi has respect for the lost art of skill-based games.

While my performance on the captured video below is quite shameful, as I never finished the level, I think it shows quite well why Cuphead is fun and why making hard games that depend on skill is like a lost art.

And this is where we come to the video’s number one and pretty much only flaw: There is no context. Like the Polygon video, there is no commentary either live or post where Takahashi or another Venture Beat editor describes what is going on. Having a post-recording commentary session where Takahashi and the guy who convinced him it was worth uploading watch the video and talk about the game while laughing at his dismal performance would drastically alter the mood of the video, letting the viewer know that VB is in on the joke and it’s all in good fun. Entire Youtube channels are built on guys playing video games badly and then reacting to how badly they play, so it works.

Imagine adding in context like explaining that the guy had 26 minutes to play a game and the developer just sorta handed him a controller and said “go with it.” Time crunch, plus a potentially crowded and loud showroom floor is the kind of context this game is missing. A staffer standing over your shoulder and/or constantly talking to you while you play can easily distract from what is intended to be a difficult game. Again, we’re not told any of this.

Venture Beat doesn’t even link to the article I posted above in the video, stripping it of what little introspective context that it might have had. You wouldn’t know that the article existed unless you read the website and happen to stumble on it.

Ultimately in both cases we’re dealing with a video that was released in a context that nobody wanted that should have never been published in the form that it was. Venture Beat thought that the video was hilarious and published it thinking that the internet would find it hilarious, kind of like when a group of friends get drunk and record one guy in the group doing bad impressions because they’re drunk and think it’s hilarious, so they post it to the internet so everyone else could find it hilarious, but then find out that sober people outside the group don’t find a straight video of a man stumbling around, drunkenly mumbling half-quotes from 80’s movies funny. It’s an inside joke that should have stayed inside but didn’t because when you laugh at something long enough, you forget that the outside world doesn’t share the same context that you do.

And yes, people are going to be offended no matter what you put out and question your journalistic integrity, it’s the way of the internet. The proper response is for other outlets is to not all simultaneously put out a “no you’re stupid” response about how being good at video games is actually a bad thing.

Other than that, I have no opinion on the matter.

Column: Jagex and the RuneScapes

I’ve written quite a bit about Jagex and the issue of “not-RuneScape” in the past, and while I penned an editorial about its history over at MMORPG.com earlier last year, I’ve been meaning to give the topic another look for quite some time. If you aren’t acquainted with Jagex’s history of developing games that are not RuneScape, I highly recommend reading that article before you continue here otherwise it’ll probably look like I’m just trashing a successful company for no reason. It’s a long history of failed “hobby projects,” mismanaged and abandoned long before anyone would bother to inform the public.

So since my last full editorial in 2012, there has been a lot of stuff going on at Jagex. Transformers Universe went into beta and, as I suspected, it fumbled the ball at the two yard line and Hasbro pulled the IP. Block N Load launched and has subsequently plummeted in traffic, relaunched as a free to play game and has been on the decline ever since. The winter league was a mess and ended in a cancellation due to the number of teams dropping out. Carnage Racing, released on Steam in 2013, can no longer be purchased and its online was shut off with no announcement if you read the forums. It looks like Jagex pulled out of publishing Entropy since they are no longer credited and the game has a monthly average of six users.

But something else happened in that time frame, Jagex successfully launched Old School RuneScape. So successfully, in fact, that Old School has surpassed the population of RuneScape 3. It launched as a snapshot of what the game was like back in 2007 with Jagex talking about how they might make a few small changes here and there, and it has grown into a separate title entirely, one that continues to receive substantial content on par and possibly even better than its bigger budget big brother considering the team size.

If I had to comment on Old School, however, I’d say that the original point I made years back still stands: That RuneScape is Jagex’s sacred cow, and that any venture outside of that property is doomed to failure. Old School RuneScape was an experiment that went right, but at the end of the day it is RuneScape. It’s like the model train you pull out of a box in the attic. While you dust it off, give it a fresh coat of paint, and make some additions to it, its core remains the same. The guys and gals working on Old School made the right choice by allowing the community to dictate what updates the game is allowed to receive.

RuneScape Chronicle is in beta right now and we’ll have to see how it does considering that while it is based on the RuneScape lore, it isn’t RuneScape. There is still the MMO that Jagex announced earlier last year that may or may not be Stellar Dawn. Ace of Spades and Block N Load are still online with their small communities.

But who knows where Jagex’s new CEO will take the company. Mark Gerhard apologized a few years ago for treating their non-RuneScape games like “hobby projects.” We’ll have to see what direction the company takes under Rod Cousens, and I’m holding on to faith that the company can break ground into games that are not RuneScape.

In the meantime, check out our interview with Jagex on Deadman Mode from last year.