With the recent release of Diablo 3, there’s plenty of “first-impressions” posts out there. We haven’t gotten around to writing ours sooner because our play-time has been somewhat limited, in part because of poor system performance. Before going iPad-only, we purchased the 2009 Mac Mini Server model in order to have something to setup and sync our iOS devices to, and to serve as a headless Mac Mini connected to our LCD television. This was before buying an Apple TV, so the Mac Min was a dual-purpose machine handling the brunt of our multimedia needs.

We sold our last PC back in 2007 or 2008, so when Diablo 3 hit the scene, our inner-gamer, lingering from years of neglect, suddenly felt reinvigorated and yearned for a way to play the game. We were apparently not alone here, as we’ve seen many a post online about running Diablo 3 on a Mac Mini. So here’s the deal.

Integrated vs discrete GPUs.

The Mac Mini is built around the idea of a compact footprint and low-energy consumption. It’s basically a laptop scrunched together in a small box, which you hook up to whatever accessories you want. As with most other laptops, this means the machine isn’t built for gaming, and incorporates an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU). Without going into too much detail, this means the GPU shares system RAM, and since the GPU is also designed to consume little energy, it’s not a very fast beast, and while it works great for typical computing tasks, it doesn’t have the power for much 3D computation, which is vital in modern games.

Yet, there are low-power GPUs that some manufacturers put into laptops, and accordingly, Apple put one into the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini.¹ Our 2009 model sports an Nvidia GeForce 9400M with 256MB RAM, which is to say back in 2009 it wasn’t horrible, but three years later, it’s not so good at keeping up with modern graphics.² In comparison, the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini sports an AMD Radeon 6630M, also with 256MB RAM.

The 9400M is actually listed as a supported GPU on Blizzard’s Diablo 3 requirements site, under “low performance”. Curiously, the 6630M isn’t listed, though it does work, and performance is substantially better.

Playing Diablo 3 on the 2009 Mac Mini Server

The misleading proposition with the 9400M is that Diablo 3 just runs a tad sluggish. When you start the game, characters move noticeably less smooth than they ought to, but you assume the game’s playable nonetheless. Here or there, for the next couple hours, you’ll find some lag spikes, but generally Act I of the game is playable.

We should also note that this testing was done on the lowest possible resolution (800×600) with all effects off turned down to their minimum, or off entirely if the option was available.

Some folks have mused that certain classes play better on older video cards. The argument goes that classes with lots of special spell effects like wizards play worse, but we didn’t find this to be true. Rather, the problem seems to be large open areas, particularly those with “tiered” levels. For example, areas that are “up high” in the environment, where you can observe a drop (e.g. a cliff) tend to make the game lag considerably worse. The same is true when there are lots of environmental effects (e.g. burning villages). Here, the game is so laggy that if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself suddenly dead due to a lag spike. We mused on Twitter that the experience, complete with poor graphics and network lag, was not unlike playing Diablo 2 after it’s respective release.

In short, the game is technically playable, but the experience gets worse over time, to the point where you can barely keep up with players online. In fact, the character ghosting in Act II is so bad that by the time you see monsters upon you, you might already be dead.

We’ve read mixed reports about the game beyond Act II. Some say Act II is the worst, with Act II and Act IV offering a better experience due to less environmental effects. Though, the beginning of Act III also seems bad.

The experience can be somewhat improved by not playing online. We found that joining public games offered the worst experience, as did playing during peak hours; it seems in-game lag is made worse by network load, and the combined effect of the game’s popularity and a poor graphics card make for a very poor combination.

Upgrade your Mac Mini?

If you’re currently using a Mac Mini, chances are the advice to buy a gaming PC is going to fall on deaf ears. After all, if you were a huge gamer, you wouldn’t be trying to play Diablo 3 on your Mini in the first place. So, if you don’t want to struggle through the lag on an older Mini, you can consider buying a new one.

As we said earlier, only the mid-range 2011 Mac Mini offers discrete graphics, which starts at just under $800. Upgrading to the i7 processor isn’t worthwhile for gaming purposes, and the HD and RAM upgrades are unecessarily expensive through Apple, so if you have any DIY skills, you’re better off doing these upgrades yourself if you need them. Just to play Diablo 3, the standard 4GB RAM option is adequate.

Depending on how old your current Mini is, you may be able to make back up to half the cost of the new Mini, so you’re basically looking at a $400 upgrade. That’s not cheap, but you also get a standard HDMI output port, as well as an integrated power brick, so the Mini is a lot more portable than the old version.

Some people may argue for ditching the Mini altogether and upgrading to a higher-end Mac, but it’s hard to justify the price increases if you already have a monitor and aren’t going to do a lot more gaming on the machine. The $1200 iMac is $400 more than the Mini, with basically the same specs. The only real difference (other than the integrated display) is an upgrade to the AMD Radeon 6750M, which sports 512MB RAM.³ Unfortunately, Apple’s lower-end notebooks only sport integrated GPUs, so if price is a huge concern and you want to stick with Apple, a new Mac Mini is your best bet.

Or wait?

Most Apple rumours hold little water, but it’s worth considering the fact that Apple may refresh the Mac Mini this summer. New low-power Intel CPUs are now available, and it’s likely that Apple will start using these new “Ivy Bridge” processors in their lineup. The big question for would-be gamers, however, is whether a Mac Mini refresh will include integrated graphics or go the discrete route. After all, it’s quite possible that all new Mac Minis will include the newer Intel HD 4000 GPU, which albeit faster than the Intel HD 3000 used in the 2011 Mac Minis, won’t really be an upgrade to the AMD Radeon 6630M.

If Apple does decide to use discrete graphics, at least in one of it’s new 2012 Mac Mini models, then they’ll likely use another Radeon model, whose performance would be around 10-20% better than the 6630M. That’s about the speed boost we’d see from Ivy Bridge over the older Sandy Bridge CPUs in the 2011 Mac Minis, so performance-wise, the upgrade won’t be too substantial.

Ultimately, an upgrade comes down to how badly you want a smooth Diablo 3 experience today. The 6630M plays the game great at medium settings, with some lag if you pump everything to high-res.⁴ If you decide to hold out, consider that no Mac Mini refresh has yet been announced by Apple, and the rumours indicate a possible lineup refresh announcement during WWDC in the second week of June. While Apple has used this event to announce Mac hardware changes in the past, it doesn’t happen every year. The 2011 Mac Mini was released last July, so we’re coming up on a year, and since computer sales tend to be greater in the month preceding a new school year, any hardware refresh will likely happen in July or August at the latest.

This means that deciding to upgrade is a gamble. At the earliest, we’ll see new Mac Minis in about three weeks, but it could be around 12. And that’s only if Apple can get production in gear to meet the start of the new school year sales rush. Can you afford to wait that long to kill Diablo?

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While people love to talk about how intuitive touch is as an interface method, the cold reality is that for certain applications, legacy input formats still reign supreme. For example, for writing, there is no unseating the keyboard in one format or another, as writing by hand is slow and cumbersome for longform input. ¹

Keyboards themselves are a rather interesting animal, which can be analyzed from several perspectives. There’s DVORAK vs QWERTY, for example, and strong arguments for practicality either way. But perhaps a less niche argument is design implementation, where we have mechanical keyboards in one corner, and cheapo rubber dome and scissor keyboards in another.

Shawn Blanc just wrote a good piece on this very topic, and if you’re at all interested in how mechanical keyboards are becoming the new in thing among the blogging elite, be sure to read his piece on clicky keyboards.

We won’t go into detail here about why a mechanical keyboard is better than most mass-produced keyboards today, save for mentioning that the tactile nature of the former is what gives them a place in our hearts. Some people go all googly over the sound, but we consider that secondary to the feel. It may be a matter of min-maxing, but as Shawn can attest to, a good keyboard does make a difference in typing speed and accuracy, and over the long-term, the investment in a more expensive mechanical keyboard may be worth it.

Shawn rounded up three different mechanical keyboards in his review. One was a legacy Apple Extended II, while the others were modern mechanicals: the Das Keyboard and the Tactile Pro 3. To the casual observer, those are perhaps the big three options², but there are actually a lot more possibilities based around different types of switches. Of the keyboards Shawn tested, two use Alps mechanisms and one uses Cherry blue switches. Don’t worry about the differences, just know that both are considered very good for typing and not much else.

Not just for typing.

The other big area that keyboards excel at is gaming, and other than the PC gaming industry’s propensity to push the edge of the graphics race (which nerds love), superior controls are the other reason why PC gaming remains so full of vigor; no matter how convenient a handheld controller is, the mouse and keyboard combination maximizes human reflexes for the most intense gaming experience possible. For this reason, some savvy gamers have pushed the envelope by acquiring mechanical keyboards to further maximize their game.

Without going into too much detail here, the crux of the issue is the activation point for a given key; gamers want to know exactly when a given action is registered, and they want it to be quickly repeatable as well as predictable. As such, they prefer keyboards that allow them to ride the activation point, whereby they float their fingers on the keys at the point where a given action is registered. However, they also don’t want the keys to be too soft, offering enough resistance such that unintentional pressure doesn’t cause a key to register unexpectedly.³

For gaming purposes, none of the keyboards Shawn reviewed are great. In fact, the blue Cherry MX switches are not prefered for gaming at all, and while some claim the more linear Cherry black switches are ideal, most of the research we conducted pointed at the Cherry brown switches as more preferable, as they still provide appropriate tactile feedback. Another option many pro gamers opt for are Topre switches, usually with an actuation force of 55g.⁴ Topre switches are actually capacitive in nature, and are a sort of hybrid mechanical switch, which offers great tactile feedback and the smoothest force gradient available. They’re also the most expensive switch out there.

What about for the iPad?

We started looking into all of this ourselves some months back when we realized that we missed our old IBM Model M. We played around with many a keyboard during our past gaming days, but most were rubber dome keyboards and therefore equally bad. We kept a Model M around for casual use and loved it, despite it being a loud clacker. When we left desktops behind and started using Powerbooks/Macbooks, we didn’t revisit keyboards until we made the iPad our main computer. To this end, we picked up an Apple bluetooth keyboard, which is conveniently sized for travel, but uses the same scissoring mechanism that laptop keyboards do. We’ve said before that we consider a physical keyboard a necessity for longform writing on the iPad, and to this end, wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a better keyboard companion?

The first problem is, obviously, the wireless connectivity. Mechanical keyboards don’t typically come with bluetooth connectivity, so we have to connect the keyboard to our iPad using the camera connection kit. That’s not sexy, but it works.⁵

The second problem is form factor. If you only write longform on your iPad at home, maybe this isn’t a problem for you, but a typical 103-key keyboard is a massive beast, and most people can do without the numpad. If you’re to take your mechanical keyboard on travel with you, having a smaller physical footprint is always beneficial.

Fortunately, for the Cherry switch lovers, Leopold makes tenkeyless boards with whatever switch you prefer. If you’re willing to spend another $200 for Topre switches, Realforce makes tenkeyless models also (model 87u), with their traditional model offering variable-weight keys, and other models offering specific actuation forces across all keys.⁶ Finally, there’s the Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) Pro 2, which has the smallest footprint of the bunch, but with the added problem of a built-in USB hub. This means the iPad won’t power the HHKB Pro 2 without some sort of auxiliary power source.⁷

Because mechanical switches take up more physical space than the scissor switches used in laptop-style keyboards, there’s no way you’ll ever match the footprint of the Apple bluetooth keyboard, but the HHKB Pro 2 is reasonably close.⁸

Of course, if you go this route, the last consideration is finding a suitable iPad stand; we’ve relied on both the WINGStand and Incase Origami in the past, but both are designed to work with Apple’s keyboard, so neither will work with the HHKB Pro 2. It took us awhile to discover the Origami and WINGStand, which are the top two solutions for typing on one’s lap with an iPad and physical keyboard, so we might have to hack something together from scratch in order to make the HHKB work even half as well.

We just put an order in for the HHKB in gray/black⁹, as well as for some USB accessories so we can experiment with powering the board properly. If all goes well, it will mean we can charge the iPad while we’re using the keyboard, which was always a concern of ours in the past when we mused about using a wired keyboard instead of a bluetooth one.

Once we have all the parts in hand, we’ll be sure to report on our findings.

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Two weeks ago, rumours were running wild that Valve would jump into the console fray. The rumours were quickly squashed by Gabe Newell, but it didn’t stop some from dreaming. Maxator summed up the hopes of many gamers on his blog.

I think the stage is set for a new console player. If The Valve rumors are true, they choose their hardware well, throw in a slick interface, and court software partners, even those with competing online distribution systems, they will have a winner on their hands. So if Gabe Newell and company announce hardware at E3, I’ll be first in line to preorder a SteamBox. Who’s with me?

We weren’t with Maxator, because the notion of a Steambox doesn’t make sense. Maxator compared the state of today’s console gaming industry with the industry 12 years ago when Microsoft entered the fray, and similarities aside, it’s still comparing apples and oranges.

First and foremost, Steam is a Windows-based product, and a distribution method for Windows-based games. Microsoft was able to leverage their operating system (OS) expertise and enable developers to quickly port PC titles to a watered-down version of Windows still utilizing Direct-X. Valve doesn’t control an OS however, so they make for a poor parallel to Microsoft. More succintly put, Valve’s experience is with writing software for another company’s OS. For Valve to ship a Steambox, they’d need to license Windows, a cost Microsoft never had to endure.

If Valve didn’t license Windows, they’d need to delve into an area foreign to them: OS design. And if they did that, the ease of porting titles thanks to relying on Windows APIs and Direct-X is no longer possible, and that’s the biggest draw to a proposed Steambox.¹

Another important consideration is that PC gaming is very different from console gaming, and not just in genres and gameplay, but in the types of gamers themselves. Microsoft realized that their plan to rely on PC-based hardware wasn’t sustainable long-term, and that customized hardware needed to be developed for the XBox 360. That’s because PC games are designed to run on current-generation hardware, and PC games tend to push the envelope in regards to what that hardware can do. What we see is PC gamers who are constantly in an upgrade frenzy, swapping out video cards or more major components on a fairly routine basis, with developers generally supporting the latest hardware, rather than sticking to what’s been around. These types of upgrades aren’t possible with consoles, which is why custom hardware ensures that a console is relevent for a longer period of time.

The point here is that even if Valve found a way to license a Windows-based OS for use in a console and still pull a profit, and support PC control schemes that the target audience would want, it’s unlikely that PC gamers would care; since Steam is already available on PCs, and gamers want the flexibility to upgrade hardware as it comes out, why would they ever choose to buy a Steambox?

It comes down to a misunderstanding of what PC gamers and console gamers want. Just as you can’t lure a PC gamer over to a console full-time, you can’t get console gamers to buy into PC gaming, even if you ported select PC games to a console. It’s not about casual vs hardcore, either.

Ten years ago, Microsoft took advantage of Nintendo moving to casual gamers and Sony focusing more on Japanese gamers than profitable Western audiences. De Ja Vu? Now it is Microsoft shifting to casual gaming and social computing and Sony is still focused on the Pacific rim. Core gamers are hungry, advantage Valve.

What Maxator identifies as “core gamers” are a minority. Those who crave PC gaming titles game on the PC. The movement towards casual titles on consoles is driven by the market, because your average console gamer is now from the broader population, whereas PC gamers are still primarily younger, tech-savvy males. In every market that this demographic broadens, we see a move to more casual gameplay, which we can easily see in the evolution of games like World of Warcraft.

The bottom line is that if you want to play PC games and love Steam, get a PC and use Steam. Valve would be stupid to compete in the console wars offering the same old product wrapped up in a non-upgradeable package that gamers connect to their TVs. A much more innovative solution would be to leverage technologies that bypass the rapid upgrade cycle that defines PC gaming, and that’s where services like OnLive have come in and found success. For a Steambox to succeed, it has to offer everything Steam does today, and more. Simply dumping Steam onto a console isn’t going to do that.

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Since 2007′s release of the iPhone, Nintendo has adamantly opposed the device in favor of its own mobile consoles, much as they’ve done with every competitor’s hardware in the past. And Nintendo has a legacy to stand on, with the NES and SNES and even the N64. But things kind of break down after that, as competitors moved to optical media and basically left Nintendo in the dust. With the Gamecube, Nintendo attempted to get back in the game, but it wasn’t until the Wii that they were finally back in the good graces of the gaming populace. But even that momentary lack of judgement on our part has faded, as Nintendo’s ability to capitalize on the Wii’s innovations leave us with a few nice gimmicks, but ultimately little staying power.

The argument for Nintendo has been two-fold:

1. Nintendo will use the momentum of the Wii to finally offer competitive hardware in their next console.
2. Nintendo still has the mobile gaming market locked down.

Early reports of the Wii successor leave little to drool over, and the mobile market has slowly been pushed into iPhone territory, even though Nintendo ironically called it a novelty. It’s one thing for Nintendo to have dismissed the iPhone in 2007, but year after year is no longer excusable, especially when their countermeasures are a poorly performing 3D Gameboy. Nintendo’s now no longer leading much of anything, other than a steady march to the grave, much as SEGA did when they fell over thanks to the Dreamcast flopping.

There are investor calls for Nintendo to develop for iOS, but we’re still seeing push-back. It’s the same stubborn push-back that Nintendo of America has been cooing for the last couple years, and now it’s coming straight from Japan. “No, we want our software to run on our hardware.” Nintendo must be quoting a long-lost SEGA exec. The problem is that Nintendo’s hardware is, in a nutshell, crap.

Nintendo does one thing well: it makes great games. Old ports would be wonderfully on the iPhone, let alone new games using Nintendo IP. It’s a no-brainer to bring these titles over, and if Nintendo really wanted to brand some hardware to go along with it, we’d gladly support an iPhone sleeve with hardware bluetooth controls to go along with it.¹

If Nintendo doesn’t wake up soon, they’ll be forced to go this route anyway. Why not capitalize on the transition early instead of blowing more capital on failed hardware projects?

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There’s a rule that most Monopoly players don’t know about, which we remember a cousin telling us about when we were but a wee lad. The rule states that if someone opts not to purchase an available property after landing on it, then it is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Not having ever played with the rule, it came as a shock to us, but once accustomed to it, it becomes immediately evident just how much the rule adds to an otherwise straightforward game. Critical Miss talks about the rule and why early Monopoly players chose not to keep using it, resulting in a Monopoly rule-set passed down verbally that doesn’t even acknowledge the rule’s still right there in the instructions.

We, gamers as we are, might think a game featuring lots of inter-player shafting is superior to one without. But Monopoly is, and always was, played not by gamers, but by families; and inter-player shafting is liable to cause all sorts of upset… Somewhere along the line someone said, “Let’s just leave out that stupid auction rule; we’ll have much more fun that way.” …parents want to play a crippled game of Monopoly because they’re too scared to teach their children how to deal with interpersonal conflict…

It’s a solid theory of why the auction rule vanished from the Monopoly hive-mind, but if it’s accurate, it says a lot more about American parenting and culture than it does about protecting fragile young emotions from the evils of board game strategy. That’s because the kind of inter-player shafting that can result from something like Monopoly’s auction rule is highly prevalent in European board games, which unlike their American counterparts, are based less on chance and more on player skill and strategy. The reason board-game enthusiasts love games like Settlers of Catan, for example, is because European board games almost always have some degree of player interaction, while typical games of Monopoly are mostly about rolling dice hoping to get lucky. There’s no skill in the latter, whereas the former requires haggling, player manipulation, and in most games, a degree of bluffing.

The dumbing down of American board games may make little children less apt to cry because they can quicker learn to understand how chance screwed them versus getting screwed by their own family, but how much of that attitude results in American children growing up with incredibly thin skin? Much like how Europeans don’t put up metal guard rails on the side of every mountain road, European board games don’t coddle their players, and instead teach them how to survive in a world of danger. Even if a few crying sessions happen at an early age due to being screwed out of some play-money in a board game, Nietzsche’s rule is apt, here. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

There’s a difference between protecting our children and teaching them how to survive, let alone teaching them the difference between friendly competition and familial loyalty. Suffice to say, if removing Monopoly’s auction rule was an intentional dumbing down of the game just to keep a bunch of whiny youngsters happy, then it seems we’ve been on a slippery slop of poor parenting for quite a long time, considering the game is over 100 years old.¹

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While the Sim City franchise was the flagship for the Sim genre, other Sim games managed to capture an audience as well, offering similar gameplay but in a different setting. One such title was Sim Tower, released in 1994, which resembled Sim City in most aspects, but instead of building a city across a landmass, Sim Tower required the player to build what amounted to a contained city inside a skyscraper. The same core elements were in the game, however: residents would need to be attracted to the player’s world, and if their needs weren’t being met, they’d move back out. Just as in Sim City, random events would mix things up: terrorist bomb threats, discovering buried treasure while digging underground sections, etc. While Sim City had players optimizing roads and mass transit, Sim Tower required optimization of the elevator system.

Tiny Tower is not Sim Tower. Released for iOS a few weeks ago, Tiny Tower borrows several elements of Sim Tower, but doesn’t claim to be a spiritual successor to it. In fact, while Sim Tower was a relatively deep simulator, Tiny Tower is the exact opposite: it’s a casual game more reminiscent of a Facebook game than a serious PC or console title.

The gist.

Tiny Tower is a freemium title, and it works rather well considering it’s a casual game.¹ There are two in-game money systems: coins are generated from store and apartment profits, and is used to build new floors and stock store supplies; bills are used to speed up restocking of supplies and upgrade your elevator. While bills can be earned in-game, they come in very slowly, so players can opt to buy bills via real money transactions (RMT). Ultimately, this means that players willing to spend real money can generate coins quicker, and that means building a larger tower faster than if they earned bills from simply playing the game. Fortunately, progress is not woefully slow without RMT, so unless you’re truly impatient, RMT is not necessary.

Money aside, the core gameplay consists of building new floors and assigning them a floor type; you can choose to build a residential floor for people to live on, else one of five commercial floor types (creative, retail, recreation, service, and food). There’s not much to manage at the beginning, but as you build your tower up, you’ll end up with a variety of stores, because while you can choose your floor type, the store actually built is random.² Each bitizen of your tower has an inherent preference for working in a particular type of store, so where you place them will ultimately determine not only how happy your bitizens are, but how efficient things on their assigned floor are. This is the resource management aspect of the game that becomes more time-consuming as the game goes on, as you end up reshuffling bitizens around once you have adequate floors that match your bitizen’s preferred employments.

Each store has three things it can sell, and three bitizen employee slots. You can only sell as many types of items as there are employees, so a store with only one employee can sell one item, while a store with three employees can sell all three. You spend coins to “stock” store items, and then wait until a certain amount of time has elapsed for the stocking to be completed.

Ultimately, there’s no “winning” in Tiny Tower, and most of the gameplay involves keeping stores stocked with items and trying to place you bitizens appropriately. There are also random visitors to your tower that request a floor number, and you manually move the elevator in your building to the floor in question. You’re rewarded when you deliver a visitor to the correct floor, by either receiving coins or bills. Or, you can receive a restocking/construction time bonus if you deliver a VIP bitizen to a floor of your choice. There’s also a mini-game of sorts where you need to find a particular bitizen in your tower by touching the floor they’re on.

Where it wins and fails.

Tiny Tower is a small time investment, and perfect for short breaks where you can complete a queue of tasks like restocking stores or building a new floor. The casual nature of the title is arguably its biggest strength, and is a passable time sink for when you can’t get vested into something deeper. There’s always a reward around the corner, which explains why Tiny Tower is addictive, but whether the rewards are sufficient to keep you playing for more than a week or two is the big question.

Ultimately, Tiny Tower succumbs to its casual gameplay, revealing a rather hollow game. Not only can you not lose, but you can’t really be set back by anything, either. There’s a way to compare your tower size to that of your friend’s towers, but no ramifications for falling behind, nor any way to interact with their towers by exchanging bitizens to optimize one another’s stores. With no competition or random events that would set you back, Tiny Tower ends up a treadmill that doesn’t take you anywhere.

The resource management isn’t overly complex, but for such a casual title, you’d think that certain tasks could be automated, even if not efficient. For example, bitizens should automatically occupy vacant apartments, instead of relying on a system where you deliver potential, random bitizens to an unoccupied apartment via the elevator mechanic. This is so cumbersome and slow, it’s almost always worth it to spend bills in order to “force occupy” a vacant apartment.

While there’s a “demand” meter for floor types, it’s highly predictable. Keeping a balanced number of floor types pretty much results in full demand all the time, whereas building too much of a given floor type will push demand for that floor type down. It’s horribly simplistic, and makes Tiny Tower feel more like a game for kids than a game well-suited for adults standing in line somewhere or sitting on the toilet.³

In the end, we have a game that’s reasonably addictive for a few days, then trails off once it’s clear that you’re not getting anywhere good, with almost every task repetitive with a growing annoyance factor.⁴ There are cute aspects to the game like reading bitizen “Facebook” entries, but these are novelty. Things clearly missing from the game that actually impact gameplay are questionable design decisions. For example, backing out of a VIP bitizen delivery because you want to quickly construct a floor to make a construction time bonus pay off is impossible, because as soon as you click on the VIP, you have to make the delivery immediately. We wish the developers considered things like this more than adding bitizen Facebook updates, which offer no bonus to gameplay decisions.

The one thing Tiny Tower does do for us is make us wish that a Sim Tower port were in the iPhone’s future. If anything, Tiny Tower shows us that tower games of this nature have an audience, and upping the strategy in a game like Tiny Tower is something that would still attract a sizeable audience. Unfortunately, that’s still an area that most iOS games aren’t capitalizing on, as the casual gamers have a solid lock on top iOS games. Maybe that makes us the silly one, since we stand by the fact that what makes a good game isn’t always what makes the most money, or what attracts the largest number of players. Still, we’re pretty sure that there’s a middle road, and we’d love to see developers find it.

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We’ve been somewhat critical of the Apple TV as a gaming console, and when we last wrote about the subject, we proferred that the key to Apple’s gaming platform success was already achieved in Apple’s mobile devices:

Technologies like AirPlay, or even video-out adapters, may well serve gamers to stream iPhone and iPad gaming to the big-screen, and this is where we expect to see additional innovation. Why tack on additional costs to the Apple TV by offering new controllers, or muse about potential storage solutions, when we already have capable storage on existing iOS devices?

John Gruber linked a comment from Phil Harrison, who was involved in the original Sony Playstation launch. The future of Apple, Harrison contends, is also the future of gaming. And Gruber responds by noting that the Apple TV doesn’t even support apps yet, as though to point out how the Apple TV will be another salvo aimed at the console industry. But as we pointed out back in April when we talked about the Apple TV as a console, the changes Apple would need to make to the platform to complete against the traditional console market is unecessarily complex, and the more likely scenario Apple will pursue is much easier to envision:

The Apple TV doesn’t need gaming apps, it simply needs to present the apps already on our iOS devices to the big-screen. Everyone thinks the Apple TV could be another platform for Apple to push, but its true strength is in acting as a bridge between our existing Apple devices and the television. Just as it already streams music, photos, and video from our devices, the Apple TV could be leveraged to present a gaming experience served up from these same devices. The issue then is not adding controllers and storage to the Apple TV, but adding an Apple TV to our iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Or more simply put, mobile Apple devices shouldn’t be seen as accessories to the Apple TV; the Apple TV should be considered an accessory to mobile Apple devices. We can take this further to say that the Apple TV will never be a gaming console, but it will be the accessory that brings the console experience to the home, thanks to bridging audio and video from iPads and iPhones to the family TV. The proof-of-concept was playing iPad games on TVs thanks to a wired adapter, but the release version of this technology is AirPlay, which already works fairly well for conventional media. With iOS 5, AirPlay will work for streaming audio/video from games to the TV as well, and as Real Racing 2 for the iPad illustrates, the technology will allow mobile devices to display additional information, while the main visual output will show up on the TV.¹

There’s still the small issue of storage, because 64GB max on the iPad means that only a handful of truly deep games can sit in one’s future Apple console library at a time, but that storage limitation will slowly disappear. Plus, the reality is that many gamers are content playing games that don’t require massive storage requirements for graphics files and video, so just how serious this storage problem will be is questionable over the course of the next couple years.

We fully expect gaming developers to implement AirPlay functionality in future titles, to at least supplement the gaming experience There’s no need for Apple to compete for shelf-space in Gamestop, because beyond their digital distribution of games thanks to the AppStore, Apple’s console is already being shipped in several form factors thanks to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. The Apple TV is just icing on the cake.

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Naysayers be damned: Gameloft has posted on the upcoming Order & Chaos (O&C) patch, despite the fact that most critics insisted that Gameloft’s lazy attitude on updating previous titles would negatively affect O&C. The bullets:

• New quests will be added in the last two high-level regions
• A server migration system will be implemented, allowing you to change your server
• The cost needed to teleport from one city to another will be adjusted
• The amount of money lost upon dying will be adjusted
• All cemeteries will become non-Player-versus-Player areas (non-PvP), meaning no player will be able to attack another one in a cemetery
• A teleport will be added in Greenmont
• Additional content and several bug fixes will also be implemented…

What this does is confirm that the game was pushed out the door without being fully done. That is to say, the lack of quests at certain levels was suspicious, in that it felt like Gameloft didn’t spend as much time on quest content as they could have, and just wanted the game out to start generating money. If the lack of quests in the mid-20 level range is any indication, the high-level tiers must be truly quest-sparse, which the update should address. Same is true for dungeons¹ and PvP.

Presumably, the server migration system will be RMT-based², and is of questionable worth; after starting our first character, we realized that the Goons were on another server, so we briefly considered re-rolling. Switching servers would be useful, but since guilds have a max capacity of 60 people, most people who’d use this feature would switch servers to play with a smaller group of friends, rather than switching to play with larger groups.

We wonder if the likelihood of cheaper transportation³ and less of a death penalty is any indication that Gameloft expects to make adequate money via other RMT, or if they’re afraid that the complaints about these things will drive off new players. The teleport hub in Greenmont is a logical addition, and it’s amazing that it wasn’t added already.

Overall, it’ll likely be a couple patches down the road before O&C feels like a complete MMO, if things beyond solo PvE are important to you. We’d start to get more enthused about dungeons if there were a parallel announcement about a good group-finding system, but there hasn’t been one as yet. The arenas don’t intrigue us too much, as we’re skeptical that they’ll work well given the small amount of abilities, specs, and classes the game offers. But at least Gameloft is trying, and they do still have a veritable lock on the genre right now on iOS.

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Questions about Order & Chaos (O&C) are still making the rounds, because the game’s features aren’t documented well, and finding out more about the game is either a practice in raising your Googling skills, else based on in-game experience. For some, neither of these options is desirable. Since we’ve wasted time on both endeavors, we’ll happily regurgitate our findings, and correct some of our misunderstandings from our post two weeks ago.

The classes.

We pointed out earlier that we actually wanted O&C to invest in the Diku-genre, as it’s a solid starting point for a robust MMO scene on iOS. It turns out, however, that the holy triad concept is watered down in O&C, which in a way makes sense, since O&C is just watered-down WoW to begin with. What we mean here is that in games like WoW, aggo is a function of threat, which can be generated in a variety of ways. In O&C, threat is based purely on damage, which means that healers can freely spam spells, and DPS classes need to be aware that they will likely be expected to kill anything that runs towards them, or at minimum, tie it up until someone else does. This makes the defensive Warrior spec rather questionable, because while it helps keep a Warrior alive, it doesn’t really aid in herding mobs, and decreases the Warrior’s damage output.

We suppose that at end-game, and/or when Gameloft places further emphasis on team dynamics, that Warriors will be expected to hold adds, while the DPS classes help burn down main targets, but the lack of taunting, or threat mitigation via skills for DPS classes, means that Mage AoE abilities are basically too dangerous to use against difficult mobs. Since so much of the game is solo-friendly, like WoW, most Warriors are speccing offensively, and the rage-like generation that Warriors are capable of keeps them fighting with little downtime. Gear is pretty self-evident here, with a focus on strength and stamina. With the exception of maybe fighting over one-handed weapons with Rangers and military Monks, Warrior itemization should be easy, since Warriors are the only class that wear plate.

The same can be said for Rangers, whose specs basically determine whether they are ranged or melee capable¹. Ranged Rangers² specialize in slow, high-damage attacks, with crowd-control abilities keeping enemies distant so they hopefully die before getting in our face. Melee Rangers, on the other hand, mimic World of Warcraft’s Rogue class, which emphasizes stealth, fast dagger attacks, and some crowd-control to keep adds at bay until a primary target can be neutralized. The obvious downside to the Ranger is that it’s a pure DPS class, which means if more Diku-style encounters are to be added in the future, these classes will likely be a dime-a-dozen. Gear is all about agility, with melee Rangers likely looking for some stamina items as well. Since this is the only class that exclusively wears leather, itemization shouldn’t be a problem for the most part.

The Mage is pretty straightforward, with one tree focused on pure damage output (fire), and one with slightly less damage output (ice) but with arguably more utility. Both versions of the class are for ranged DPS play, so if played correctly, Mages, like non-melee Rangers, shouldn’t be getting hit much. Mages may fight over some cloth gear and weapons with healing Monks, but most leveling Monks should be military-specced anyway, so gearing up in a team shouldn’t cause too much heartache.

Monks are different than the aforementioned classes because the specs differ so much; healing Monks rely on Wisdom, while militant Monks require Strength and Stamina gear. The former is also ranged, while the latter is melee. The former is a great support class in teams, while the latter is more of a utility DPS class. Geared up correctly, a healing Monk should have adequate mana regeneration, such that downtime is minimal, but in our own experience pre-level 20, there’s a lot of eating food between fights to regenerate health and mana. Long-term, this is supposedly more of a problem with militant Monks, who blow through mana a lot quicker than their healing-focused counterparts. Still, the potential nice thing about the Monk is that you can spec for melee DPS, and as long as you have healing gear stashed away somewhere, you can probably get away with healing in a team without re-speccing³. Healing Monks are also incredibly boring to play, because they don’t have many combat abilities, and quickly get beaten in the face.

The world.

Travel is painfully slow, especially if you need to run back to a major city in order to upgrade skills. There’s a teleport system in place, but it’s arguably expensive, and doesn’t go everywhere you’d want it to. There are no mounts in the game yet, which is curious considering this would be a perfect use of RMT⁴. The main city starting out is not easily traversed, and it’s somewhat of a pain to run from one side to another; the main city needs to be redesigned to be less linear, and have vendors more easily accessible.

The auction house remains the most viable method for acquiring gold, especially considering that your character is docked money whenever she dies. At least one of the minor towns has a convenient-placed auction “vendor” near a chest, so you have a decent way to bid on and post items. It seems that raising the cash at early levels to afford skills, deaths, inventory upgrades, and the occasional purchase relies on the auction house or RMT. We hear that at later levels, there’s enough gold coming in from quests and mobs that this is less of an issue, but at earlier levels, expect to price gathered crafting materials competitively at auction in order to have reasonable spending money.

While Gameloft is known for being slow or simply unresponsive in getting game updates out, they seem to be committed to rolling out updates to O&C; some form of team-based Diku-style encounters for end-game seem planned, though it’s unclear if these will be instanced, or simply be world objectives. Currently, PvP is based on dueling or World-PvP at later levels, but a WoW-like arena system is also planned. The World-based PvP is complainant-prone, thanks to loss of gold after each death. This may be mitigated somewhat by better cash inflow at later levels, but we can see this being very annoying if it happens often.

The rest.

Crafting is actually useful, but an extremely long grind. Only smithing relies on items gathered from ore nodes around the world, as leather-working and tailoring are based on items collected from mobs. This means that ore is generally priced a bit cheaper on the auction house, while leather and cloth are less bountiful and more expensive. Expect to spend cash at the auction house for these items, unless you’re okay with farming low-level mobs for crafting supplies. We’re told that high-level crafting relies on RMT-derived items, which we’re not a fan of, but we don’t expect to get to that point anytime soon considering how much of a grind professions are.

O&C is a great way to get a WoW-like fix in a less complex package, and Gameloft has a lot of potential here to make huge waves with the game. However, updates will need to be iterative, and the business model needs to be tweaked to keep a dedicated player-base that won’t cry foul if RMT is required for success in-game; RMT should be a crutch at best, but not mandatory, especially on top of a subscription fee and up-front purchase.

We’re looking forward to how the game evolves, but with reports that the grind becomes unbearable at the later levels, we question whether Gameloft can get end-game updates out in time for more casual players to hit the level cap. Unless Gameloft gives level-60 characters something to do, World-PvP ganking will likely become more commonplace before people get bored of the game and move on. A proper end-game PvE and PvP experience will keep players around for longer, however, and with the iOS distribution model, expansions can be funded quickly and easily as time progresses. Gameloft had better lock this down now before another big player makes their entry into the iOS MMO arena.

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The business model of Order & Chaos (O&C) is irking us a bit more now, and it might help us to have a better understanding of Gameloft’s expenses for this title. Freemium titles are typically free, with profit derived from real money transactions (RMT), where players purchase in-game items for actual cash. Overall, freemium titles are considered profitable, so why is O&C not being distributed under this model? In other words, what makes O&C less profitable than other successful freemium titles, necessitating the monthly subscription¹ and up-front cost?

Because of the RMT model, players paying the monthly subscription alone are at a disadvantage; buying gold becomes advantageous when min-maxing, because more gold means more vendor and auction house purchases, which means players who dabble with RMT can level faster than regular subscribers. Plus, since characters lose money whenever they get killed, players who take too many risks, or are simply not very good, could find themselves without adequate funds to purchase skill upgrades. Again, a clear advantage for those who spend on RMT.

That said, Gameloft’s done a good job of relying on craft funds to limit gold expenditures on crafting skills. This means that crafters can potentially see decent profits on the auction house, assuming their better items don’t bind on pickup. The auction house really becomes the only way for regular subscribers to stand any chance of making decent profit for their characters, but there are a couple problems with this, too. For one, the primary auction house location doesn’t have a chest nearby, which means players can’t easily post a lot of items to the auction house at once (because of inventory issues). A good solution would be to combine the auction house and chest system at auction house locations, such that there’s no need to courier items between the chest and auction house. Two, the auction house should be more readily accessible. As it is, running to the auction house takes too much time, especially since there’s no cheap transportation system in the game, unlike World of Warcraft’s hearthstone which quickly transports a character to a major city. Here again, RMT provides players a way to get around faster, because those who buy gold can afford to make use of portals, while regular subscribers cannot.

Finally, while O&C doesn’t run on 3G, a nice feature Gameloft could add is an auction-house/chest/mail interface that’s still accessible over 3G, letting players check in on auctions, post new ones, etc. This would allow players to remain engaged with the O&C world, even though they couldn’t actually “play” because of a lack of wifi.

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