If you’ve played EQII or WoW recently you might be familiar with the feature. But if you haven’t, it isn’t a hard concept. It is a UI window that lets you sign yourself or your partially full group up for a dungeon that is something in your level range.

The feature released and was practically dead on arrival. For the most part, the feature works. If you have a group of similar level people of appropriate classes, it will form them into a group and deposit them into a dungeon.

So why didn’t this feature get used? It sounds good in theory, I was excited. I jumped in on day one, with my tank, so I could learn some new dungeons and find new people to play with.

    Cross Server?

One of the criticisms that was quickly thrown at the Dungeon Finder was it’s lack of cross-server grouping. It seems reasonable for people to expect that it would be a better feature if it had a bigger population of people who could form groups.

There are two fundamental problems I see with adding the cross-server option for EQII.  The first is born of experience watching the cross-server feature in battlegrounds. While the DF has been relatively bug free, the battlegrounds were a disaster and continue to be problematic. For large periods of time, battlegrounds were offline because of bugs. Players who logged into battlegrounds might find themselves stranded or return to their world without any spent AA’s.

If we think that DF has a reputation for being a useless feature now, imagine the negative impression it will leave when those kinds of disasters strike. Add in all the reasons for group dungeon runs namely: shinnies, quest updates, achievement updates, experience, AA exp. Each one of those has the potential to be broken. And while they are making changes to the group dungeons to make them cross-server, they might just break it for “normal” groups too.

The second problem is it would not solve, what I see as, the real flaws with the Dungeon Finder.

    A Group?  Yes.  A Useful Group? Unlikely.

While I was using the Dungeon Finder (DF) my main problem with it was the groups it created were unable or unwilling to complete the dungeons they were placed in. No matter how big your pool of participants is, if you put them into a situation that is likely to result in failure the majority of the time, they will stop coming. And that’s what I think has happened here.

The DF currently selects a tank, a healer and any four others for most dungeons. If they don’t have the required critical mitigation they won’t be given the option of joining some of the hardest dungeons, but even a badly geared tank is given the option of most dungeons in the game.

So far I have not been able to complete any dungeon with the tank provided. In the cases that we were able to complete the dungeon it was because one of the players switched to a tank that was better suited or better geared for the dungeon.

Let me be a little clearer about what I think the problems here are:
* Not all fighters can be tanks but the DF treats them all the same.
* Not all healers can heal a group through all the offered dungeons.
* The DF does not offer the option to anyone to select their role. It assumes any fighter will want to be the main tank ect.

I think the last on the list is probably the simplest so lets look at it first.

    I Don’t Want To Be The Tank (or Healer, or Maybe I Do!)

I think people generally fall into the “I do”, “I don’t” or “I don’t care” camps on whether they want to be the tank.  Let’s assume that by tank I’m also referring to solo healing, crowd control, pure dps ect.

A simple box that would let the player pick their position would solve the problem of under-geared, unknowledgeable, or unwilling fighters being put in uncomfortable psitions. My Guardian would love to main tank in a group, but I know she will die quickly when she attacks many mobs and I only have so many life saving spells to cast.  I want to be able to take her into a group and be a support class in dungeons I can’t tank so that I can get loot, xp and quest updates.

WoW accomplishes this with having three options: Tank, Healer, & DPS.  I think EQII could have the same setup or even add a ‘crowd control’ for classes who can do that.  Obviously, pure tanks shouldn’t be able to sign up as healers.  But let a Monk just do DPS to fill in a slot.  It may not provide the same dps as an equivalent ranger, but it will be some and it will fill out the group with a better play experience.

    And It Solves the First Two

If all fighters can’t tank all dungeons then not giving fighters the option to participate without being the main tank will often doom the group to failure. I am not saying that any particular fighter class can’t tank any specific zone if they don’t have the proper gear and experience.  However, if you are running most mid-tier dungeons it is quite likely that you are attempting to get that gear and you don’t already have something better.

If the most common occurrence is that you have aspiring rather than already high achieving fighters on your hands then an option to play in an alternate role is absolutely necessary.

This is just as true for healing classes. While they may be able to heal a group solo, they might be more effective as a spot healer and dishing out damage.  If you combine the case of an ‘average’ tank with an ‘average’ healer and put them into a hard dungeon it just isn’t fun.

So have I beat this horse to death? I want to pick my role, not have it picked for me.  Let’s move on.

    Lack of Granularity

As of now, the DF will exclude you from a few dungeons if your crit mit is low.  But is that really the best way to form a group?

Should a level 90 tank wearing level 30 gear and no AA’s be treated the same as one wearing level 90 gear with max AA’s?

WoW solved this problem by giving each piece of gear in game an ‘item level’ and then requiring you to meet an average ‘item level’ requirement for each dungeon.  Generally, by the time you had all your gear from the current dungeons you were running you are ready to move on and allowed to enter hard dungeons.

I really don’t think EQII needs to add another stat to items. We definitely have enough numbers to make a value judgment on items right now.  But is any one stat appropriate to define a class? There is the base stats for each class but that becomes muddled when you take into account all the other stats like critical chance, critical mitigation, multi attack ect for each of the types of classes.

What I think would make sense is to create an average based on the level and tier of your items. For example, my fairly well geared raiding Bard currently has almost all “Fabled” and “Level 90″ gear. My Guardian, who is also level 90, has a mix of Public Quest gear, a few raid hand-me-downs and some quested items.  She would probably come out at “Treasured” and “Level 88″ gear if they were all averaged.

So if my logic is clearer than mud, I am proposing taking the tier (Mastercrafted, Treasured, Fabled ect) combining it with the level and then taking the average to create our very own EQII item ranking.

Each zone would then need a value added to it that basically says “Hey you need to have mostly Treasured gear at <the level of the zone -5>”. Or for harder zones it could be the level of the zone and a higher tear of gear.

I personally think this would make each zone much more likely to be completed by the group that gets sent into it. And if I’m following my own logic above, more successful groups means more goodwill towards the feature and more people using it.

I also see one big problem with this idea. Each zone would have to be given a ranking. That means each zone would require hands on effort from a developer and a decision on how hard it is.  This is much more time intensive than a few crit mit checks and requires someone who is either knowledgeable about all the class combinations and their gear or someone who is given a lot of time to find this out.

    What Dungeon Finder?

In addition to the problems I’ve laid out, the DF suffers from a lack of any marketing. Anyone who missed the DF launch in October of 2011 might not even know that the feature exists, whether they are brand new players or returning players.

This one is easy to fix. If the feature is solid and useful, people will talk about it with each other and people will find out that way. There is also in-game messaging on the launchpad, welcome screen, the zoning “Did You Know…” and MOTD.

If it were a better feature right now, I’d think the UI for it should be more prominent in the game so it is easier to find.

    Good Groups, Easy to Find, So What?

So what if the Dungeon Finder did make zone appropriate groups and let you play in the role you wanted. Would it really be better than player created groups? Players are so ingrained now to use their friends or in-game channels to create groups that I think we need a carrot for the DF.

Players wanting to run dungeons often want to get gear for their character. Again, there are exceptions to this that I won’t argue, but there are many casual players who would hop into a group if they had a good chance of getting a piece of gear out of it. So I propose (by stealing the idea from other games) that once a day you should be awarded a piece of gear that is level and class appropriate and would be a suitable piece of gear for running groups. Something on par with what you would need to rise up into the next rank of dungeons from what you are running now.

There is also the well established EQII tradition of offering tokens that can be used to buy unique items. I don’t see a problem with adding a DF token that is given only if you choose to run a random dungeon in your appropriate level/tier. And the rewards can be the standard carrots we are all used to: gear, house items, illusions, food, temporary buffs, ect.

I don’t think that the DF should just be the shard camping that normal dungeons require.

If we could just get every casual player to log in once during their weekly or twice weekly play sessions it would greatly increase the amount of people using the feature. And if those groups are capable of winning the dungeon they are put into, we will greatly increase the number of players who leave the game happy and with a potential new in-game friends they can play with again.

Boy was I wrong.  I got to the airport security during peak time and it was moderately busy.  During most of my wait no one agreed to go into the machine, all opting for a thorough pat down instead.  And by thorough I mean the pat down of my chest area, which I’ll agree I could be hiding a fair bit of stuff in, was as invasive as my recent breast exam by a doctor during my annual physical.

My decision to be pro-technology and opt for the body scan dissolved quickly when I saw the machine.  I wish I had been able to use my phone to take a picture but they had ‘no cell phone’ posters up quite prominently.  The machine was something out of Dr Who when the insane scientist goes into a big circular tube and turns into a raving monster, or the sitcom Better Off Ted when the whiny scientist gets cryogenically frozen in a tube.  Basically, any TV show where a person goes into a tube-shaped machine and the person comes out horribly malformed could have used this scanner as a prop.  Alternatively, I can say, I’ve never seen anything good happen when someone gets out of one of those machines.

While popular culture might have skewed my perception of the technology there was another even stronger stimulus at play, peer pressure.  When one lady finally agreed to go in the machine there was an audible gasp from the other people waiting in the line.  One woman screamed “No! Don’t do it!” as the lady started walking towards the scanner.

So not only is there an intimidating large machine, you also have all the other passengers judging you as you enter the machine.  Understandably, the area you stand in to be scanned is a completely transparent circular room, I wouldn’t want to be in a room that small if it wasn’t clear for any amount of time, elevators are bad enough.  But the machine was not in a private or shielded location inside the airport.  So while someone in another room is looking at your naked form, everyone in the security area is looking at you knowing that someone is looking at you naked, which is much more intimidating.

While pat downs are an option, I doubt I’ll be getting into the machine.  I need to fly for some things so if this becomes a mandatory part of an already unpleasant experience, I’m sure I’ll go along with it.  I do wish the media had done a better job of portraying what I’d see in the airport, because the reports I saw and the sites I read did nothing to prepare me for the true experience and the gut reaction of avoidance I saw mirrored in the faces around me.

I’ve been disappointed that during my time in the industry I haven’t seen more women joining the ranks of engineers.  There are more and more designers and artists in game development but I work with very few female engineers.  Of course there are exceptions, just by being there I’m one myself, and the others I’ve met have all been interesting and sometimes inspiring people to work with.

But that’s something you can think about any time.  The bathroom is another story.  There are usually screaming kids, makeup, someone crying, sometimes someone sick and people comforting them, someone is always out of toilet paper and trying to ask around for it etc.

Now take a peek into a women’s bathroom near the engineering team.  It’s like a graveyard which leads to a whole new social situation that no other women’s bathroom has preparred me for.

Assume you know the bathroom is a quiet place that there is rarely anyone else in, so if you need to have a quick phone conversation you duck in there.  Now assume you’re a person in the stall doing your business while this new person comes in to make a call.  Is it ok to flush or more polite to wait until they are done with their conversation?  A flush is going to be an unmistakable giveaway of where they are and who knows who they’re talking to.

We also have these nifty motion sensing lights in our office.  I’m happy to know we’re saving electricity, but when you’re sitting there for a few minutes and suddenly the lights go off what is a girl supposd to do?   It’s not like I can jump up and wave my arms around since I’m somewhat busy.  And if someone does happen to come in and realize you’ve been sitting there in the dark it is just a tad embarassing.

My favorite is what I call the “zombie  bodyslam”.  If you know you’re going to be the only one in the bathroom, and the stall doors always swing shut after you, the normal thing to do is walk into the bathroom and walk right into the first stall.  The problem is if someone just happens to be in that stall and you, in your zombie state, slam right into the stall door.  I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened and I still have a hard time not laughing out loud.  But I can’t for the life of me figure out when I was supposed to pick up the social etiquette for this one.

In the end it just gives me a lot more respect for all the women who had to brave a new path for the first time because I’m definitely not the first to do my job, but there are so many things I just wasn’t prepared for.

AFK BIO.

- Jen

The Sim franchise is right up there with brands like “Levi’s” and “Coke” to me. If the Sims comes out with something new, chances are I’ve heard about it and considered buying it. If we’re talking the Sims 1 or 2 I’ve bought every expansion back and stuff pack sometimes more than once.

The Sims recently lost me when they moved away from Stuff Packs into the pay per item model. For $20 I would buy the pack of items from my local Target, but I can’t justify buying individual items for a $1 or $2. When it comes down to that level of detail I’m thinking I should be shopping for my own new clothes instead of my sims and it starts to feel like real work. Pressing Play is fun to me, not pressing Buy.

So while the Sims in all it’s incarnations has been a constant backdrop in my gaming life it might now be at the point where the Sims have moved into the RMT world and I’m not ready to followt. Fortunately , the base game runs just great without the add-ons.  When the mood strikes I can play, even if it means looking at a few ads while I log in.

But enough of that train of though, the game that has probably stolen more hours from my waking moments than any other has to be Tetris. I knew it was a game developed in Russia, which was more than I knew about the development of any game at that period.

I used to try to play for as long as I could, giving up some of the big bonuses in exchange for playing longer and longer. I’d alternate between playing at high and low levels to see which would keep me going, but I’d often get bored with the easy levels. It wasn’t until recently that I found John Brzustowski’s thesis which states that you can’t play Tetris forever. I’m a little crushed, I was convinced that some day I’d get the perfect game and keep going till I just couldn’t move my thumbs anymore.

The other game I cut my teeth on was Galaga. The one thing these two games seem to have in common is the incredible number of versions and variations that have been made. They are also still widely available after 20+ years. I was at Best Buy this weekend and saw a hand held Tetris game. A quick google search found an online version of the Galaga which is eerily similar to what I remember. It has significantly delayed me writing anything for quite some time.

Most recently I’ve been playing Cooking Dash and Zuma. The difference between what I’m playing now and 15 to 20 years ago seems much smaller than what is the same about these games. They all have some obvious things in common:

• A numeric score
• Repetitive and simple actions
• The concept of putting something ‘right’ or organizing
• An endless play mode with light or non-existent goals

A score seems so tiny and yet is so important to me while playing these games. With a lack of social play and the lack of defined goals the score becomes the focal points for both. While you may never seen another person playing Galaga at the arcade, you can feel some competitiveness and camaraderie with the people on the high scores list. With no elaborate goals to track your progress the score is usually the only thing that signifies how you’re doing.

Zuma is something I drown into when I really don’t want to have to think about the game I’m playing. If you’re trying to pay attention to the storyline in a game like Zuma or Galaga, I think you’re missing the point of the game. Click, click, tap tap tap click click “Boing”.. it’s like music to my tired brain at the end of the day.

I’ve come across a few articles that seem to imply that Time Management games like Diner Dash might help people learn to organize their time. I’m having a hard time believing that. While I was playing Diner Dash I learned that it’s more efficient to feed everyone at the same time even if it means some people are blowing smoke out their ears, don’t tip or just plain walk out. While this might make for a better score, in real life if I was told by a waitress she couldn’t serve me right now cause Table A hadn’t paid yet and she didn’t want to break her combo bonus I’d be beyond pissed.

I don’t see any big leaps coming up in the future for this category of games. Almost any of the leaps I’ve seen in other games like graphics, great writing, voice acting, cut scenes, interactive stories and massive online communities would detract from the engaging simplicity of what makes me play and continue shelling out when a new one of these games launches.

I’ve been trying, but I can’t remember a time in my life where video games weren’t in the house in some form. Before I could read, I recall watching my Dad playing Adventure and Zork. I found the screenshot of Zork but it’s a bit fancier than I remember. We didn’t have a color screen then.

Soon, I became the player instead of the voyeur. Arcade games, MUDs, MMO’s and simulations are some of the high points. I think the lowest point was the time I saved up all my pennies and then wasn’t allowed to buy a Nintendo system because my parents were concerned about the epilepsy warning (I’m not epileptic but that warning was scary to young parents). We’re not talking a fancy Nintendo here, but the blow-on-cartridge-to-fix-every-problem kind.

They must have caved at some point, because not only did we have an NES for quite a while, but I remember my Mom really getting into shooting those ducks in Duck Hunt. By some quirk in the storage of memories the horror of being told ‘No’ to the NES stands out to my adult self but the time we actually got the NES is a long lost memory.

So I’ve grown up with games as a household fact. I’ve been influenced them for most of my 30 years and we know that in the computer world that’s a VERY LONG time. So my question to myself is, have my tastes changed in those years? Have games?

I’m thinking that this is more than a one post topic. So next time puzzle and arcade games get my attention.

The fish tank is, for the most part, self sustaining.  It requires some feeding, cleaning and general maintenance on an easy to follow schedule.  And it is a place to decorate with cute little fish structures like hidden treasure and underwater plants.

I’ve never been interested in the games that try to mimic a fish tank on my computer.   I haven’t been able to sit back and enjoy the fake fish swimming around because it seems like cheating.  Shouldn’t I just get a real fish tank?  And plus I don’t even like fish (while they are alive and not smothered in butter that is).

But recently I’ve been enthralled with a facebook game called Restaurant City.  In it, my little restaurant has chefs, waiters, and janitors all working at a plodding pace to keep the restaurant churning through customers.  I only need to occasionally feed them, decorate the restaurant, and clean up some garbage to keep the place running.

Other than that I can just sit back and watch the little people go about their day of cooking, cleaning and eatting.  Sometimes they’ll do something interesting but always within their limitations of the artificial world created for them.

And it was today that I realized I was falling into the exact same pattern with this game that I had with fish tanks previously.  I had to wonder is this really a fish tank in disguise? Based on the amount of time I’ve spent watching the little people lumber around and the time I’ve spent rearranging their chairs and decorations I’m leaning heavily towards fish tank.

That brings up one other question for.  If this is a re-skinned fish tank, is it a game at all?  I wouldn’t consider a fish tank to be a ‘game’ if I had one in real life.  I might call it a hobby or a diversion but not a game.

Restaurant City refers to itself as a game but the more time I spend watching the little creatures go back and forth and up and down between their stations I’m more and more convinced it’s pushing the label of game a little too far.

Maybe it isn’t a coincidence that the name of the company that makes Restaurant City is Playfish.

If it’s a day I’m on the internet I can guarantee I’ll see most of those examples plainly laid out.  And I’m OK with that, it’s just a part of the internet I’ve come to expect and either ignore or try to puzzle out depending on my interest or commitment to the thread.  If it’s a post on the forums for the game I work on, I’ll try to figure out what that person was saying and even google abbreviations I’m not familiar with.  If it’s reading a blog post’s reactions from someone on foodnetwork.com I’ll probably get bored pretty quick and stop reading.

There is one thing I’m seeing more often that I can’t seem to just ignore and has become a pet peeve that gets me everytime I see it.  It’s the person who posts, either after an article or a in a long forum thread something to the effect of:

“I can’t be bothered to read this article/forum thread/blog because the title sucks/it’s too long/I don’t care about it and my opinion on this is [insert random opinion here]“.

Of anything I’ve seen since I got my first introduction to the net back in.. sometime a long time ago… this has to be the most ridiculous and it’s common!

After reading 150 pages of a forum thread on any topic why are people subjecting me to their opinion when they didn’t bother to read even the first two pages?  And if they only read the title of the article and not the full thing why do they feel they have an opinion other people would be interested in reading?  And why do they even want to take the time to post about it!

Maybe the only thing that gets me is the people who write a fairly long post and then somewhere near the end add in they didn’t read anything else about it.

My wish for all future posts is that people stop admitting they didn’t read the thread/article, just let me exist in peace pretending that they at least read some of what they’re critiquing.

We started the day with a nicely timed 9:55AM flight that was a little delayed.  But all in all we got to vegas in short order, hopped in a taxi and I was in my room lickedy split.

Then came the sore throat inducing hours.  Chatting with people in large or small but equally loud rooms followed up by one of Brenlo’s Welcome Speeches that mostly involves getting the crowds to cheer for their game while giving away some snazy prizes.  I was right along in there cheering for the EQII folks.

I’m not sure what the numbers are but it sure does seem like a great turn out this year.  I’m having a great time seeing some people that I haven’t had a chance to see since last Fan Faire but I do miss some of the familiar faces that couldn’t make it this year for various reasons.  Hopefully we’ll see them again at future events.

So my big goal for tomorrow is to remember to take some pictures!

The novel has the now familiar construct of a young woman mostly on her own who somehow ends up with a horribly dangerous vampire that doesn’t eat her immediately.  Through the harrowing experiences they have she learns about herself and grows up.  But as with so many retold and remolded tales the story telling is what kept me turning the pages and regretfully putting it down when it got too late each night.

About half way through the book I started to notice the narrator has a tendency to spring major story changing facts on the reader without much lead in time or notice that you’re about to hear something important.  At times, they were presented in such a way I was turning back to reread them because I didn’t believe I’d read the past few pages correction.  After finishing the book and thinking about it for a week, I can’t decide if this helped me connect with what the main character was going through while she deals with sudden life changing events or if I was just annoyed by the mental whiplash I felt each time a new bomb was dropped.

Either way, I have a few more of McKinley’s books on my ‘want to read’ list now and if Sunshine has a sequel at any point I’ll be picking it up.