My Favorite Games of 2012

I played games this year. Some of them were new to this year. I bet you played new games too at some point. Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order.

Sound Shapes
This Vita title is a pseudo-rhythm platformer with a robust level creation and sharing tool. Playing as a little eyeball and jamming to the beat of the music that drives the beat of the gameplay was really fun, as are many of the levels created by the community. Definitely unlike any other platformer that I've ever played.

Spelunky
Another platformer? Well, I happen to like them, and this one was exceptional. Spelunky's procedurally generated levels, challenging design, and tight controls and tuning make it exceptionally fun. Unlockable characters, plenty of secrets, and rewarding learning opportunities have made this a game that I've been playing for well over half a year, still haven't beat, and am still having fun.

Thrill Digger
This minigame in last year's The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword became quite the obsession of mine, so much so that I coded up a version of it to put here. This Minesweeper variant adds more uncertainty to the game that I couldn't help but obsess over.

Journey
Never have I had a game impact me so emotionally. Simple gameplay, beautiful scenery, unique multiplayer, and wordless storytelling combine to make a truly amazing experience. The story of your character and the history that you discover over the course of the game play out beautifully and gave me so much to ponder and I'm still not exactly sure of all the details.

Diablo III
The very controversial third entry in the Diablo franchise was one of my favorite games of the year. Many people didn't like how the auction house affected the gameplay and complained about a lack of depth to the endgame, but as someone who never got to the highest level, I never had a dull moment. My only complaint that I could levy would be that the Act II becomes quite tiresome much faster than the other acts. Being able to find a new way to play the game at any point in time gave me an experience that never got dull.

Nintendo Land
Nintendo launched a new console late in 2012 and the Wii Sports analog for it was Nintendo Land. A collection of minigames that use the Game Pad in different ways to highlight the new types of gameplay afforded by it is incredibly fun. If Nintendo can follow up on half of the great gameplay types exhibited here then the system should do just fine.

Frog Fractions
This indie flash game take the educational genre for quite a spin. This is the best way to learn fractions, as you'll go on a journey across so many different classic game genres. I have but one hint, when you get the turtle, use it to go underwater. This game is quite the love letter to gaming. The game is fully playable at the link above.

The Unfinished Swan
This game starts as a literal blank canvas, a stark white space upon which you fire paint to discover the shape of your surroundings. Later levels also exhibit new and interesting gameplay. This game tells a beautiful story in a very interesting way with wonderful gameplay. Definitely worth checking out.

Things I wish I had played: FTL, Mark of the Ninja, The Walking Dead, Persona 4 Golden, Theatrhythm

Things I wish I had played more of: Mists of Pandaria, Tokyo Jungle

Why I'm Not Combining Gems Until the Patch 1.0.3

A change is coming to Diablo III where it will take fewer gems to combine into higher gems. Here is the relevant quote

...reduce the cost of combining gems so that it only requires two gems instead of three (up to Flawless Square)...

 This will occur in patch 1.0.3. I took this to mean that it will only take two to make something of Flawless Square quality or below. For an individual tier, this isn't a big deal, but as you work your way up to Flawless Square it becomes rather significant.

Number of Chipped gems to make...
Gem	New Count	Old Count
Chipped	1	1
Flawed	2	3
(regular)	4	9
Flawless	8	27
Perfect	16	81
Radiant	32	243
Square	64	729
Flawless Square	128	2187

As you can see this is a pretty significant change.  After a few tiers the difference becomes great. For example: 9 chipped gems would just make you a regular gem in the current system, but would make a flawless gem in the post patch system and leave you 1 chipped gem. That's an extra upgrade with a chipped left over.

The potential gains that you can achieve by waiting until the patch to combine gems. Blizzard is making this change partly because it's most cost effective to just sell chipped gems instead of combining them to make higher gems to sell on the auction house. However, the price has also tanked so they're basically selling at vendor price, defeating the purpose. Making it easier to make higher level gems will hopefully rectify this situation. I'd be willing to bet that if this change isn't significant enough that they'll push this change up to higher tiers as well.

So I'll just wait until the patch to combine my gems thank you very much.

UPDATE: In addition to lowering the number of gems needed to combine, they are also drastically reducing the associated gold cost to combine gems at these levels. Relevant post here.

BlizzCon 2013 Predictions

"100% chance we'll see these costumes." or "BlizzCon dot j p e g"

A while back, much to the dismay of everybody, Blizzard announced that there would be no BlizzCon in 2012. They cited a lack of good information to dispense, since I guess game would either be to close or to far from completion to talk about. But they did assure us that they're planning on hosting on for 2013. Since it's never too early to speculate, here are my predictions for what we'll see at BlizzCon 2013.

At this point, I expect that Starcraft II's first expansion Heart of the Swarm will be released. We first got details about the game's new multiplayer units at Blizzcon 2011. The multiplayer for the game will be playable in June at the MLG Spring Championship and I highly doubt that it would take Blizzard another year from then to release the game. Especially since Starcraft II was released back in summer of 2010.

The big question for me at this point is whether we'll hear anything about a Diablo III or World of Warcraft expansion. Since Diablo III just came and people expect Mists of Pandaria to be released by the end of summer, both games would be a year of more past their release by the time BlizzCon would roll around. If we were to only get one announcement, I would expect a WoW announcement, since they are trying to stick to a schedule when it comes to WoW releases and since WoW is the largest property for BlizzCon.

 Titan. If for some reason we don't get a WoW, Diablo III, or Starcraft II announcement, then I'd have to bet we'll have a reveal of Titan. We're getting to the point with Titan where there is always hope, but little reliability of prediction. All I can say is that if we do get a reveal of Titan, I will be incredibly excited.

It's not games that I'm most looking forward to about BlizzCon 2012. What I'm really looking forward to most about BlizzCon is the potential of meeting my internet friends and guildies! Seriously, you all. I'll be so psyched to meet those of you that I can. I went to BlizzCon '07 and '08 but I've never gone to BlizzCon to meet guildies before so that will be a new experience for me.

We'll have to get together, alright?

How Many Diablo III Builds Are There?

In Diablo III you can have a an ability mapped to both of your mouse buttons and to the 1-4 keys on your keyboard. By default each skill in the game can only be placed on a particular button. For example, my Zombie Dogs have to be bound to the 1 key. This means that under the default settings you can't have some skills on your bar at the same time because they would have to be bound to the same key.

There is, however, an option called elective mode that removes this restriction and allows you to put whatever skills you want on whichever key/button you want. This has led me to wonder how many different builds you can get out of each particular mode. So to look at this, I will use my witch doctor, Tauzex, as an example. The number of skills I use in this post will come from him. Other classes have different numbers of skills, so these numbers will vary from class to class.

Some background on what goes into a build

• You have 6 active skills and 3 passive skills at max level
• Each active skill can have 1 of 5 runes attached to it. 
• I will assume that you'd never want to use a skill unruned
• In both modes at max level, you can pick any 3 of your passive skills with  no restrictions.

I will not be considering a build with the same skills but on different buttons as being a different build. 

For my witch doctor, the number of skills that I can attach to each key in standard mode is

• 1 key: 4
• 2 key: 3
• 3 key: 4
• 4 key: 3
• Left Click: 4
• Right Click: 4
• Passive Skills: 15

In general, the number of builds in either mode is the number of choices you have for your active skills times the number of choices you have for your passive skills (since your active skill choices and your passive skill choices are independent of each other). In both modes, the number of passive skills that you can select is the same

The middle section is read as "15 choose 3" and is explained in the footnote*

To count the number of active skill choices, I will first count how many choices of skills you have and then factor in the different rune choices for those builds. If you have a selection of 6 skills and each of those skill has 5 runes, the number of ways that you can rune a particular set of skill is 

So now we just have to count the number of skill choices each mode has.

Active Skill Choices in Standard Mode

To figure out the number of builds in standard mode, I just have to multiply the number of choices I have for each skill slot. This comes out to

choices for your active skills. In whole, this brings active mode to 

builds for your character. That's over 16 billion distinct builds.

Active Skill Choices in Elective Mode

In elective mode, you aren't restricted by abilities needing to be placed in certain positions. So as a witch doctor I would just need to select 6 active skills out of my 22 total active skills. The number of choices in elective mode is 

choices for your active skills. In whole, this brings elective mode to 

builds for your character. That's over 530 billion distinct builds. This can be done for the other classes as well, which gives us the following table.

Class	Guided Mode	Elective Mode
Barbarian	20,160,000,000	652,863,750,000
Demon Hunter	21,840,000,000	717,670,078,125
Monk	9,828,000,000	308,626,500,000
Witch Doctor	16,380,000,000	520,451,796,900
Wizard	34,125,000,000	1,259,070,312,500

Followers

We shouldn't forget our followers! They play an important role in single-player gameplay. So how many choices do we have for our follower builds. Well, there are 3 followers, and each one requires that you make 4 choices that each have 2 options. 

So that multiplies the number of distinct was to outfit your character by 48. Of course, since you don't have a follower in multiplayer mode, this doesn't apply there.

Conclusion

Wow, that's a ton of different builds for your characters, and elective mode has so many more builds. In fact, elective mode over 32 times as many builds as standard mode does. I don't believe I have to tell you that that's an impressive number of choices!

* As I said above, that particular notation is read as " choose ." In mathematics it's known as a combination (as opposed to a permutation) and is calculated as follows.

where

Diablo III First Impressions

Diablo III came out yesterday (5/15/2012) and although it spent much time down because of the massive amount of traffic they were experiencing, I was able to spend a good couple of hours playing. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to play until a couple hours before doing so. I originally settled on the wizard but when I got to the character creation screen I went for the witch doctor. I feel like whatever attracted me to play him is the same thing that made me want to play a warlock in WoW.

I logged in and watched the great character intro scene. Once the game started I did the first thing necessary: turn down my graphics settings so it played at a decent framerate. I was a bit dismayed that my computer had as much trouble as it did, but it's from 2007 and its graphics card is from 2008 and well, what do you expect?

The witch doctor started out okay. I had Shoot Poison Dart and Stab With Knife for my two actions. I didn't really enjoy that very much. But Shoot Poison Dart was quickly replaced by Throw Jar of Spiders and I really started to love the flavor of the class. In short order I also received Grabby Zombie Hands, Summon Zombie Dogs, and Shoot Flaming Bats and I was quite happy.

The voice acting in the game is a wonderful addition. It allows you to take in the lore and story without slowing down and stopping, which is very important so that you can keep that Diablo pace without miss out on the story. I really enjoy the random spurts of lore you occasionally get from the "Lore" button that will occasionally appear in the bottom right of the screen. The more thorough questing system is a wonderful addition to the game. It still feels like Diablo (as opposed to WoW) but makes it much easier to keep track of what's going on.

I also think that the skill system in Diablo III is great. For those who haven't played it you have skills bound to left mouse, right mouse, and 1-4. Each of those buttons has a particular set of skills that can be assigned to it, and there is no overlap in what skills can go in each position. Furthermore, skills have runes that are accessed as you level up which augment them. And skills cannot be switched out mid-combat.

Having your skills locked to certain buttons gets me really excited. It's simultaneously simplifies the gameplay and challenges you. By not having access to all of your skills at a time you're forced to strategize outside and inside of battle. You have to figure out what skills go well together and execute them well. It allows for a great diversity of gameplay because switching out your skills and runes you can create a vastly different character.

And yes, the game still feels like a Diablo game.

With regards to the launch day issues: I don't feel contempt for Blizzard, because I do understand that there is a limited degree to which you can prepare for these things, but it is still their responsibility to prepare for it and I do hold them accountable. I understand all the reasons that they have for requiring the online connectivity and agree that it's the best choice, because it's not JUST a single-player game. There is an economy, of currencies both virtual and real, that is attached to this so that security is of paramount importance.

Interestingly, I read an article a short while back about Zynga's server structure. They have their own servers that they use to host all of their games that they have custom built and everything, like anyone with a large number of servers should. However, they also utilize Amazon's cloud servers to deal with spikes in their server needs. This way they can quickly react to changing server loads without having the type of errors that Blizzard is having. Now, I don't work for Blizzard nor am I particularly versed in server things, so I don't know if there may be something that could keep them from doing such a thing, but it's definitely something that, if I were an executive and Blizzard and I had heard about, I would have the right people look into it.

In short: amazing game :) but launch day issues :(

BlizzCon Speculation

Sarah and I attended Blizzcons '07 and '08, but haven't attended one since. We have watched it online, just not the gone. What's funny is that now that we don't play WoW, we wish we were attending more than in past years. Next weekend is Blizzcon, so it's well past time to wonder what it going to happen at the show.

It's pretty much a given that Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm details will come out at the show. They've been teasing silhouettes of units on the official twitter account for a while now. The show would be a really great followup to the reveal that happened a couple months back.

Not as much of a given but definitely my prediction, I think we'll get a Diablo III release date. The game is in beta right now and all of its secrets have been spilled. Furthermore, Blizzard hasn't had any big reveals at foreign events in a while, so if there ever was a time to dramatically do this, it would be now. I don't think we'll be getting any new information about the game. I'm pegging it for a holiday release for this year.

This one is a bit of a wildcard and could definitely not go this way, but I'm sticking with it. I thin we'll hear about a new WoW expansion at Blizzcon. Why?

1. The last patch for the Cataclysm expansion is currently being tested on the public test realms. No new info could possibly be revealed about it that hasn't already been.
2. This means that a new expansion shouldn't actually be that far away.
3. There have been a lot of good things about this past expansion, but staying in old Azeroth hasn't been one of them. People want to explore new lands. Blizzard seems eager to get the players out of here.
4. A trademark filing for something called "Mists of Pandaria" was filed by Blizzard a while back that includes it as a trademark for game software. It isn't conclusive, but it doesn't take away from my point either. I don't necessarily believe that this will be the title of the expansion.
5. There's a ton in this schedule that hints at a new expansion announcement. There are several generically labeled 'World of Warcraft' panels that take place before the 'World of Warcraft: 4.3 Raid and Deathwing' panel at 5 pm on the opening day.

Tell you what, if I'm wrong about any of this, I will publish an incredibly embarrassing story. Believe me, it's really embarrassing and, to this day, only one person knows it.