Cyan Worlds, the creators of URU Live / Myst Online, have announced that they will be releasing their game to the open source community. I think that's a pretty brave move, and shows a commitment from the developers to their work. The game was fun and very unique; it didn't involve leveling, or combat, or anything of the standard forms of interaction and progression that most MMORPGs consist of. Instead, Uru Live players engaged in adventure, exploration, and puzzle solving. The game had a strong narrative with new stories released in an episodic fashion, like in a television series. Unfortunately, the game flopped, twice.
It had a very strong and faithful fan base though. I think its a really brave move of Cyan Worlds to let the open source community have a chance to continue this effort, so that the fans can continue to live out their dreams in the world of Myst Online.
It would be nice to see other games that can no longer be effectively commercialized migrate into the open source community so that their fans can continue to breathe some life into them after the commercial services shut down. After all the effort that goes into building these games, it's always a shame to see them simply disappear forever.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
MMO Feature Wish List: Henchmen and Gambits
There are a lot of features that my imaginary "dream MMORPG" would implement. Some that I have touched on before have included: kudos and other social networking features, a rebirth system, and small rewards for people who help another player advance a quest when they aren't already on the same quest themselves.
A few days ago, I was reading about Tesh's frustration with Heroes and henchmen in Guild Wars. (The article is actually about quite a lot more than that, and a good read, but venting about henchmen was a part of it.) I happen to share that frustration. Though the flag system in Guild Wars offers some limited control over henchmen, they aren't as sophisticated as I wish they were.
Collecting Heroes is a great feature in Guild Wars. I think more MMORPGs should make that a standard part of the gameplay. Instead of having the world split up between soloable "normal" mobs and heroic "group" mobs, which is simply weird, have all monsters be group mobs, and allow solo players to collect AI controlled NPC party members for the occasions they can't find (or don't want to find) other people to play with.
I'd like to see an MMO take give us the ability to collect henchmen/minion/Heroes and then take it a step beyond that: give us the ability to train them over time. Like any good RPG, this should be something we have to work at! The minions might start off requiring a good deal of micro-management but as we work with them, eventually we would earn the ability to get more flexible allies over time.
One RPG that I thought had a really clever NPC control mechanism was Final Fantasy XII. The way it worked is each character in the game had a certain number of "gambit slots". Each slot could take a simple order, which amounted to a command that executed under a certain condition. The orders were prioritized with the highest priority commands declared first. The command with a matching condition with the highest priority would execute.
From 1up, an example gambit setup.
For example, a simple healer might have two gambit slots:
1) IF Players health < 50%, cast HEAL
2) Attack
While my player's health remained at or above 50%, the healer would attack our enemies. If it went under 50%, the healer would cast heal unless they ran out of mana (the condition would already fail if they couldn't cast). At any point, I could also order that the entire party follow me and flee.
Characters started off with very few gambit slots; these had to be unlocked over time. Towards the end of the game, most of my characters had seven or eight gambits, dictating how they behave in specific circumstances. During the game, we would have to buy or discover new gambits to gain more fine tuned control of our allies.
I'd enjoy seeing something similar in an MMORPG. In addition to collecting new Heroes, leveling and gearing them up for battle, we would also have to improve our "leadership" abilities by undertaking difficult missions; the rewards from these missions would enable us to grant new gambit slots to our allies and unlock new gambits to program them with. It could also introduce more depth to the system than the Final Fantasy version had, perhaps by introducing gambits related to camping and pulling. I'd even enjoy PVP minion battles between henchmen where gambit selection is the major determinant of who wins or loses.
A system like this would add some additional depth to a henchman system and provide some lateral forms of character advancement. It also makes existing itemization more valuable since it doesn't sting as much to fight your way to the bottom of an epic dungeon only to get NO-TRADE drops for a class that isn't even in the party when you have a henchment that can use it. With Heroes that you can equip and train, everyone has a potential use for every drop. (Though I guess that could complicate Need vs Greed.)
A few days ago, I was reading about Tesh's frustration with Heroes and henchmen in Guild Wars. (The article is actually about quite a lot more than that, and a good read, but venting about henchmen was a part of it.) I happen to share that frustration. Though the flag system in Guild Wars offers some limited control over henchmen, they aren't as sophisticated as I wish they were.
Collecting Heroes is a great feature in Guild Wars. I think more MMORPGs should make that a standard part of the gameplay. Instead of having the world split up between soloable "normal" mobs and heroic "group" mobs, which is simply weird, have all monsters be group mobs, and allow solo players to collect AI controlled NPC party members for the occasions they can't find (or don't want to find) other people to play with.
I'd like to see an MMO take give us the ability to collect henchmen/minion/Heroes and then take it a step beyond that: give us the ability to train them over time. Like any good RPG, this should be something we have to work at! The minions might start off requiring a good deal of micro-management but as we work with them, eventually we would earn the ability to get more flexible allies over time.
One RPG that I thought had a really clever NPC control mechanism was Final Fantasy XII. The way it worked is each character in the game had a certain number of "gambit slots". Each slot could take a simple order, which amounted to a command that executed under a certain condition. The orders were prioritized with the highest priority commands declared first. The command with a matching condition with the highest priority would execute.
From 1up, an example gambit setup.
For example, a simple healer might have two gambit slots:
1) IF Players health < 50%, cast HEAL
2) Attack
While my player's health remained at or above 50%, the healer would attack our enemies. If it went under 50%, the healer would cast heal unless they ran out of mana (the condition would already fail if they couldn't cast). At any point, I could also order that the entire party follow me and flee.
Characters started off with very few gambit slots; these had to be unlocked over time. Towards the end of the game, most of my characters had seven or eight gambits, dictating how they behave in specific circumstances. During the game, we would have to buy or discover new gambits to gain more fine tuned control of our allies.
I'd enjoy seeing something similar in an MMORPG. In addition to collecting new Heroes, leveling and gearing them up for battle, we would also have to improve our "leadership" abilities by undertaking difficult missions; the rewards from these missions would enable us to grant new gambit slots to our allies and unlock new gambits to program them with. It could also introduce more depth to the system than the Final Fantasy version had, perhaps by introducing gambits related to camping and pulling. I'd even enjoy PVP minion battles between henchmen where gambit selection is the major determinant of who wins or loses.
A system like this would add some additional depth to a henchman system and provide some lateral forms of character advancement. It also makes existing itemization more valuable since it doesn't sting as much to fight your way to the bottom of an epic dungeon only to get NO-TRADE drops for a class that isn't even in the party when you have a henchment that can use it. With Heroes that you can equip and train, everyone has a potential use for every drop. (Though I guess that could complicate Need vs Greed.)
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Sony, RMT, and You
Looks like Sony is letting you buy in game items with cash now. Technically, you might argue, they'd already been doing this for a while now, with Legends of Norrath loot cards. But Legends of Norrath cards could also drop in game (rarely) so there were ways to earn those without spending cash.
I'm fine with the sale of RMT items in games that are designed around it (such as online collectible card games like Legends of Norrath or Magic the Gathering Online.)
In traditional MMO games like EverQuest, I'm not against the sale of fluff items like appearance armor and other items that don't impact gameplay. It allows developers to use the standard subscription fees and retail box income on the gameplay and the features that the majority of the playerbase want, and still have a revenue stream they can use for items that a vocal minority wants. Everyone wins.
However, some of the items they are including do not seem like fluff to me.
Are potions that increase adventuring, achievement, and tradeskill XP fluff? If that's the case, why even have levels in the first place. If its fluff, if its optional, give me a button the sets me to level 80 adventurer, level 80 tradeskill, and level 200 achievement instantly.
It's one thing to give people the ability to slow down their XP gain. The default setting is what everyone gets, and people who want it slower can get it slower. That's fine.
But to make it so that some people can progress faster than others because they pay more is most definitely not fluff. It impacts gameplay.
Granted, XP gain in EQ2 at this point is extraordinarily fast, so it's not exactly a huge advantage. I can hardly finish quest arcs in the old world zones before they go gray at this point. But I still disagree with the notion that these types of offerings for cash aren't gameplay impacting.
They seem to offer other kinds of potions as well, such as potions that increase movement rate. How is that not fluff? Movement rate is most definitely a part of the gameplay.
Now, I don't know if I would quit EQ2 for this, like some people on the forums are threatening. The rewards don't appear to be unbalancing; they seem to be the same rewards you get from Legends of Norrath loot cards, and people were already buying hundreds of packs at a time for a chance to get those items. This just gives them an additional avenue to purchase those items without having the hassle of unloading the unwanted cards.
But it is a little worrying. Mixing a game based around leveling and obtaining achievements with RMT just doesn't sit well with me.
I'm fine with the sale of RMT items in games that are designed around it (such as online collectible card games like Legends of Norrath or Magic the Gathering Online.)
In traditional MMO games like EverQuest, I'm not against the sale of fluff items like appearance armor and other items that don't impact gameplay. It allows developers to use the standard subscription fees and retail box income on the gameplay and the features that the majority of the playerbase want, and still have a revenue stream they can use for items that a vocal minority wants. Everyone wins.
However, some of the items they are including do not seem like fluff to me.
Are potions that increase adventuring, achievement, and tradeskill XP fluff? If that's the case, why even have levels in the first place. If its fluff, if its optional, give me a button the sets me to level 80 adventurer, level 80 tradeskill, and level 200 achievement instantly.
It's one thing to give people the ability to slow down their XP gain. The default setting is what everyone gets, and people who want it slower can get it slower. That's fine.
But to make it so that some people can progress faster than others because they pay more is most definitely not fluff. It impacts gameplay.
Granted, XP gain in EQ2 at this point is extraordinarily fast, so it's not exactly a huge advantage. I can hardly finish quest arcs in the old world zones before they go gray at this point. But I still disagree with the notion that these types of offerings for cash aren't gameplay impacting.
They seem to offer other kinds of potions as well, such as potions that increase movement rate. How is that not fluff? Movement rate is most definitely a part of the gameplay.
Now, I don't know if I would quit EQ2 for this, like some people on the forums are threatening. The rewards don't appear to be unbalancing; they seem to be the same rewards you get from Legends of Norrath loot cards, and people were already buying hundreds of packs at a time for a chance to get those items. This just gives them an additional avenue to purchase those items without having the hassle of unloading the unwanted cards.
But it is a little worrying. Mixing a game based around leveling and obtaining achievements with RMT just doesn't sit well with me.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Weekend Update: MMOADD Redux and Reasons Why EQ2 is Better than WoW
I spent the weekend popping in and out of various games. I've been suffering from a terrible bout of MMOADD lately. Right now, I'm subscribed to EverQuest II and Warhammer Online, and I just bought Eve Online so I've been trying that out for a month. I also resubscribed to World of Warcraft for one month, though I doubt I'll play it much. Also, City of Heroes reactivated all former player's accounts for the weekend.
I haven't been playing Warhammer Online much lately. I seem to be stuck at level 27 with my Bright Wizard, Dastari, formerly known as Brendis. Even after all the server merges, the PQs seem empty. Scenarios do pop faster, and I should try some RVR this week to see how that's improved. I popped in game to go make the long trek to a warcamp so I can respec my Bright Wizard, as the latest update made a lot of changes to my class of choice. But I just wasn't in the mood to play it, so I logged out once I got there and moved on to another MMO.
I popped in to City of Heroes to run a mission. Sometimes I think about resubscribing, because it's a good game with a vibrant grouping scene, but its missions grow old real quick. One of the problems with relying on randomness to generate dungeons is that they tend to lack the immersiveness of a handcrafted zone (the hallways of the corporate buildings just aren't laid out in any realistic or rational manner) and people recognize the patterns and see through the randomness very quickly. After that, no matter how much you randomize, it all starts to feel the same.
I played a little Eve Online though I'm at a point where I probably need to join a Corporation so I can gain some direction. Right now, I'm focusing on skill training, mining, and running the occasional mission. I'll look into Corporations soon, but at the moment, while I'm too ADD to settle on one game, or a manageable few, I think its best to continue on my own while I continue collect my bearings.
I toyed around in World of Warcraft. My characters are all under level 20 and although leveling seems much faster than it used to be, I doubt I'll bother to get anything over that. Something about that game just doesn't work for me. I guess I had forgotten that. I see all the advertisements and read about it on the blogs, and I think how can 11 million players be wrong, but when I actually pop in game, its like: 11 million subscribers at $15 a month and this is the best you can do?
So why did I resubscribe? I'm not sure. I think I might roll a hunter and check out a starting area I hadn't seen before, just to see a side of the game that's new to me. It seems apparent that Blizzard puts all their work on the end game though, since the old world zones my characters have been parked in for four years are exactly as I remembered them. One of the things that Sony does right is they occasionally revamp old world zones to keep them fresh and interesting.
I have been getting frustrated with EverQuest II, so I guess a part of me is on the lookout for something that might capture my imagination the way EQ2 used to. The problem is, recently I've had a terrible time finding groups for the TSO zones. I'm not sure what the problem is. I think the population on Najena is fine, so its probably not that. My main is a monk, so maybe its partly that my class just isn't as desired as it should be. Maybe a lot of people just have their static group of friends they normally play with so the rest of us get stuck in level chat limbo spamming "LFG TSO PST".
So when I haven't been able to do what I've wanted to do in EQ2, I've started to look around to see what else I might be interested in playing.
Except there doesn't seem to be any other game like EQ2. For all its flaws, it still offers the most of any MMORPG out there. Blizzard, with their cash cow of millions of paying subscribers, SHOULD be the game that offers the most, but for some reason they simply don't. I guess they just don't have to.
Its unfortunate that Blizzard has been sitting around resting on their laurels (I guess with 11 million subscribers they have no business incentive to do so). These are the reasons I prefer EQ2 over WOW:
- Tradeskills are a mini-game: Crafting should not involve simply hitting a "Combine" button and watching a progress bar; that's seriously lame.
- You can be a dedicated crafter: In WOW, crafting skills are capped based on your adventurer level. In EQ2, tradeskill levels are separate from adventurer level so you can be a pure crafter who never sets foot outside. One of the nice things about EQ2 is you can be a level 1 paladin AND a level 80 carpenter with the same character if you want. You can do it entirely by buying the raw materials you need for crafting from other players, or you can harvest them by running around zones where everything is 79 levels higher than you and can one shot you. It's your choice.
- Mentoring: In EQ2, you can temporarily lower your level, so you can help out someone lower level than you without trivializing content. In fact, it even rewards you, so if you are a level 80 and you have a level 15 friend, you can play together and both characters will be REWARDED for it.
- Level-Scaling Quests: EQ2 has quests that scale with level so your holiday, seasonal, or important story related quest arcs can be enjoyed by players of ANY level. If you are level 40 the monsters you fight for the quest will spawn at level 40, and if you are level 80, the monsters will be level 80. Level appropriate loot will drop from them as well.
- Housing: EQ2 lets you rent an apartment or house. Guilds can have their own Guild Halls where members can gather together. You can also acquire useful items to store in your homes, such as crafting equipment, Altars which let you earn faction (and temporary buffs) with the god of your choice in return for sacrificing items, or Mirrors that let you store different AA specs (similar to Talent specializations). Guilds can acquire items that assist with organizing raids, facilitate fast travel around the world, gather harvestable items for use by the guild crafters, and much, much more.
- Movable Items: The game has furniture and other items that you can move around in game; in your home or guild hall, you can move items around to decorate the property. Quests also sometimes involve moving items around a zone; my favorite quests in EQ2 are still from the Splitpaw zones where you have to stack crates to jump over barriers or to reach a high ledge; I loved moving barrels of dynamite up to "weak" parts of a wall and then lighting the fuse, causing the wall to collapse.
- Climbing Walls: Many cliffs and walls can be scaled, introducing the third dimension to the gameplay. (WoW does have free flight in some zones so it does get a point there.)
- Collection Quests: These are addictive. Scattered around many zones are items that you can collect. They show up in game as shining spots on the ground, usually with a floating ? or ! above it. If you complete a collection, you earn a reward. Players can trade items with one another to help complete their collections.
- Alternate Advancement Tracks: EQ2 has a lateral progression system called Achievements (which is different than Achievements in WOW). Achievements in EQ2 is similar to the Talent trees in WOW. However, Achievement points are earned from completing quests, discovering new areas, completing collections, and killing named monsters. Talent points, on the other hand are coupled with your adventurer level. Because they are separate in EQ2, you can continue to earn new skills, specialize your character, and improve him even after you get to the level cap, simply by continuing to do what you have always been doing: questing, exploring, and taking on challenging encounters. You might not get XP anymore once you get to the level cap, but that doesn't stop you from progressing.
- Adjustable Leveling Speed: Some people like to rush to the level cap. Others like to take it slow. In EQ2, everyone can be happy since you can disable the ability to earn experience points at any time.
- The Level Cap Doesn't Increase Every Year: One of the best things about EQ2 is that it kept the level cap the same with both The Shadow Odyssey and the Echoes of Faydwer expansion packs. The game emphasizes lateral forms of progression that allow people to advance without always making the previous expansion pack's content obsolete.
- A Living Guild: Guilds in most MMOs offer little more than a custom chat channel. However, guilds in EQ2 are levelable entities. Guild members can earn status, complete difficult missions, or defeat powerful enemies to help their guild earn status and level up. This, in turn, enables guild members to unlock exclusive mounts and powerful items.
- Appearance armor: World of Warcraft has some nicely designed armor sets, but because you are forced to look like whatever you are wearing, everyone runs around looking like they are wearing clown costumes. Appearance armor gives you an additional tab in your inventory. Items on the appearance tab determine what your character looks like; items on your regular tab determine what stats you get. (If an apperance tab slot is empty you gain the appearance of the item in your regular inventory tab just like you do today.) Collecting cool looking level 1, no stat, and otherwise useless armor sets in EQ2 is actually fun because it allows us to make our characters look exactly like we want without worrying about gimping ourselves.
- More Classes, More Races: 24 adventurer classes and 19 races... almost too many to pick from.
- The Monk: Even though Sony can't seem to implement the monk and bruiser classes PROPERLY in EverQuest II, at least it has them. Monks exist in the Warcraft lore, so there's no reason they couldn't exist in the game. Make playable Pandaran and introduce the island nation of Pandaria and you are your way to a fun expansion. I like monks. :)
World of Warcraft has some nice features too, of course. Blizzard is known for its polish; the UI design and layout in WOW is very accessible, clean, and easy to understand. Combat in WOW is more repsonsive. I like how the world is seamless with fewer places where you receive loading screen transitions to move between areas.
I guess my ideal game would take the best features from both games: it would merge the worldliness and sheer diversity of gameplay available in EQ2 with the accessibility of WOW. It would add some next-generation forms of gameplay as well (a flatter level curve, perhaps more skill based instead of class/archetype based, emphasis on lateral forms of progression instead of the exponential level curve that causes empty newbie content, discourages new players from joining, and makes grouping harder by spreading players thinly across the level range.) Until then, I'll probably continue to suffer from my MMOADD.
I haven't been playing Warhammer Online much lately. I seem to be stuck at level 27 with my Bright Wizard, Dastari, formerly known as Brendis. Even after all the server merges, the PQs seem empty. Scenarios do pop faster, and I should try some RVR this week to see how that's improved. I popped in game to go make the long trek to a warcamp so I can respec my Bright Wizard, as the latest update made a lot of changes to my class of choice. But I just wasn't in the mood to play it, so I logged out once I got there and moved on to another MMO.
I popped in to City of Heroes to run a mission. Sometimes I think about resubscribing, because it's a good game with a vibrant grouping scene, but its missions grow old real quick. One of the problems with relying on randomness to generate dungeons is that they tend to lack the immersiveness of a handcrafted zone (the hallways of the corporate buildings just aren't laid out in any realistic or rational manner) and people recognize the patterns and see through the randomness very quickly. After that, no matter how much you randomize, it all starts to feel the same.
I played a little Eve Online though I'm at a point where I probably need to join a Corporation so I can gain some direction. Right now, I'm focusing on skill training, mining, and running the occasional mission. I'll look into Corporations soon, but at the moment, while I'm too ADD to settle on one game, or a manageable few, I think its best to continue on my own while I continue collect my bearings.
I toyed around in World of Warcraft. My characters are all under level 20 and although leveling seems much faster than it used to be, I doubt I'll bother to get anything over that. Something about that game just doesn't work for me. I guess I had forgotten that. I see all the advertisements and read about it on the blogs, and I think how can 11 million players be wrong, but when I actually pop in game, its like: 11 million subscribers at $15 a month and this is the best you can do?
So why did I resubscribe? I'm not sure. I think I might roll a hunter and check out a starting area I hadn't seen before, just to see a side of the game that's new to me. It seems apparent that Blizzard puts all their work on the end game though, since the old world zones my characters have been parked in for four years are exactly as I remembered them. One of the things that Sony does right is they occasionally revamp old world zones to keep them fresh and interesting.
I have been getting frustrated with EverQuest II, so I guess a part of me is on the lookout for something that might capture my imagination the way EQ2 used to. The problem is, recently I've had a terrible time finding groups for the TSO zones. I'm not sure what the problem is. I think the population on Najena is fine, so its probably not that. My main is a monk, so maybe its partly that my class just isn't as desired as it should be. Maybe a lot of people just have their static group of friends they normally play with so the rest of us get stuck in level chat limbo spamming "LFG TSO PST".
So when I haven't been able to do what I've wanted to do in EQ2, I've started to look around to see what else I might be interested in playing.
Except there doesn't seem to be any other game like EQ2. For all its flaws, it still offers the most of any MMORPG out there. Blizzard, with their cash cow of millions of paying subscribers, SHOULD be the game that offers the most, but for some reason they simply don't. I guess they just don't have to.
Its unfortunate that Blizzard has been sitting around resting on their laurels (I guess with 11 million subscribers they have no business incentive to do so). These are the reasons I prefer EQ2 over WOW:
- Tradeskills are a mini-game: Crafting should not involve simply hitting a "Combine" button and watching a progress bar; that's seriously lame.
- You can be a dedicated crafter: In WOW, crafting skills are capped based on your adventurer level. In EQ2, tradeskill levels are separate from adventurer level so you can be a pure crafter who never sets foot outside. One of the nice things about EQ2 is you can be a level 1 paladin AND a level 80 carpenter with the same character if you want. You can do it entirely by buying the raw materials you need for crafting from other players, or you can harvest them by running around zones where everything is 79 levels higher than you and can one shot you. It's your choice.
- Mentoring: In EQ2, you can temporarily lower your level, so you can help out someone lower level than you without trivializing content. In fact, it even rewards you, so if you are a level 80 and you have a level 15 friend, you can play together and both characters will be REWARDED for it.
- Level-Scaling Quests: EQ2 has quests that scale with level so your holiday, seasonal, or important story related quest arcs can be enjoyed by players of ANY level. If you are level 40 the monsters you fight for the quest will spawn at level 40, and if you are level 80, the monsters will be level 80. Level appropriate loot will drop from them as well.
- Housing: EQ2 lets you rent an apartment or house. Guilds can have their own Guild Halls where members can gather together. You can also acquire useful items to store in your homes, such as crafting equipment, Altars which let you earn faction (and temporary buffs) with the god of your choice in return for sacrificing items, or Mirrors that let you store different AA specs (similar to Talent specializations). Guilds can acquire items that assist with organizing raids, facilitate fast travel around the world, gather harvestable items for use by the guild crafters, and much, much more.
- Movable Items: The game has furniture and other items that you can move around in game; in your home or guild hall, you can move items around to decorate the property. Quests also sometimes involve moving items around a zone; my favorite quests in EQ2 are still from the Splitpaw zones where you have to stack crates to jump over barriers or to reach a high ledge; I loved moving barrels of dynamite up to "weak" parts of a wall and then lighting the fuse, causing the wall to collapse.
- Climbing Walls: Many cliffs and walls can be scaled, introducing the third dimension to the gameplay. (WoW does have free flight in some zones so it does get a point there.)
- Collection Quests: These are addictive. Scattered around many zones are items that you can collect. They show up in game as shining spots on the ground, usually with a floating ? or ! above it. If you complete a collection, you earn a reward. Players can trade items with one another to help complete their collections.
- Alternate Advancement Tracks: EQ2 has a lateral progression system called Achievements (which is different than Achievements in WOW). Achievements in EQ2 is similar to the Talent trees in WOW. However, Achievement points are earned from completing quests, discovering new areas, completing collections, and killing named monsters. Talent points, on the other hand are coupled with your adventurer level. Because they are separate in EQ2, you can continue to earn new skills, specialize your character, and improve him even after you get to the level cap, simply by continuing to do what you have always been doing: questing, exploring, and taking on challenging encounters. You might not get XP anymore once you get to the level cap, but that doesn't stop you from progressing.
- Adjustable Leveling Speed: Some people like to rush to the level cap. Others like to take it slow. In EQ2, everyone can be happy since you can disable the ability to earn experience points at any time.
- The Level Cap Doesn't Increase Every Year: One of the best things about EQ2 is that it kept the level cap the same with both The Shadow Odyssey and the Echoes of Faydwer expansion packs. The game emphasizes lateral forms of progression that allow people to advance without always making the previous expansion pack's content obsolete.
- A Living Guild: Guilds in most MMOs offer little more than a custom chat channel. However, guilds in EQ2 are levelable entities. Guild members can earn status, complete difficult missions, or defeat powerful enemies to help their guild earn status and level up. This, in turn, enables guild members to unlock exclusive mounts and powerful items.
- Appearance armor: World of Warcraft has some nicely designed armor sets, but because you are forced to look like whatever you are wearing, everyone runs around looking like they are wearing clown costumes. Appearance armor gives you an additional tab in your inventory. Items on the appearance tab determine what your character looks like; items on your regular tab determine what stats you get. (If an apperance tab slot is empty you gain the appearance of the item in your regular inventory tab just like you do today.) Collecting cool looking level 1, no stat, and otherwise useless armor sets in EQ2 is actually fun because it allows us to make our characters look exactly like we want without worrying about gimping ourselves.
- More Classes, More Races: 24 adventurer classes and 19 races... almost too many to pick from.
- The Monk: Even though Sony can't seem to implement the monk and bruiser classes PROPERLY in EverQuest II, at least it has them. Monks exist in the Warcraft lore, so there's no reason they couldn't exist in the game. Make playable Pandaran and introduce the island nation of Pandaria and you are your way to a fun expansion. I like monks. :)
World of Warcraft has some nice features too, of course. Blizzard is known for its polish; the UI design and layout in WOW is very accessible, clean, and easy to understand. Combat in WOW is more repsonsive. I like how the world is seamless with fewer places where you receive loading screen transitions to move between areas.
I guess my ideal game would take the best features from both games: it would merge the worldliness and sheer diversity of gameplay available in EQ2 with the accessibility of WOW. It would add some next-generation forms of gameplay as well (a flatter level curve, perhaps more skill based instead of class/archetype based, emphasis on lateral forms of progression instead of the exponential level curve that causes empty newbie content, discourages new players from joining, and makes grouping harder by spreading players thinly across the level range.) Until then, I'll probably continue to suffer from my MMOADD.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Be Careful What You Wish For
Over a year ago, I wrote a post detailing my thoughts about EQ2's combat system. I suggested that it would be better (while waxing reminiscent about Final Fantasy XI's combat) if it weren't as spammy and action packed. I prefer combat systems where fewer actions can be triggered at any one moment, so each one has a greater impact.
Yesterday, this happened:
That might be going a little overboard, guys...
(It was just a cosmetic bug, but I found it amusing.)
Yesterday, this happened:
That might be going a little overboard, guys...
(It was just a cosmetic bug, but I found it amusing.)
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
More Baby Space Steps In Eve
My initial impression of Eve Online was fairly poor. I think I called it a pretty screenshot in the last blog entry. That wasn't quite right, since the pictures move. It's more like a mashup of a screensaver, Excel spreadsheet, and IRC chat room. But it's freaking addictive.
I haven't quite figured out what it is I like. I guess it's the truly sandbox nature of the game? Or the more tactically oriented (less spammy) combat? The laid back (except when I'm being blown up) nature of the gameplay?
Tactics haven't actually factored much into my fights yet: Pithi pirates seem to enjoy going up in flames from kinetic damage. But I can see that it certainly will... there are a wide array of fittings to use on your ship and an overwhelming number of options to customize your character and ship with.
The tutorial needs some work though. It's better than nothing, but it is still a little confusing. I got stuck early on when the game told me to drag an item from the hangar to my ship, or vice versa. The problem was that nothing onscreen had the word "hangar" on it, and while it said it was highlighting a button for me, I didn't see it. It turns out it referred to the "Items" button in the lower left hand side.
Then later the lady who starts the tutorial missions tells me she's sending me to a friend of hers and that she put the contact in my People & Places tab. That's fine, except I guess I got confused because I had already met a few other agents, and thought one of THEM was the new one. And so I started on the "A New Venture" mission series thinking it was a continuation of the tutorial. The first two missions were easy courier missions, but the third one sent me against an industrial that my little frigate could barely make a dent in. So I got frustrated and abandoned it, only to get a new mission that sent me against pirates. I got myself all blowed up.
Then I remembered that I had other agent contacts in the People & Places tab and I figured out that the tutorial actually continued elsewhere. Oops.
Now I have three ships: the starter Ibis ship, a Condor I made battle ready, and a Bantam for mining. I've been doing a little high-sec mining (I'm too scared to leave the safe areas right now!) to earn a little isk. I still need to finish off the tutorial missions also; I only did the first five or so. Then I got distracted exploring other aspects of the game. Oh my, this is overwhelming...
I guess I'm sticking with this for a while longer.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Too Many Games, Too Little Time
Some fellow bloggers have given up trying to find the One True MMO and are now playing multiple. I don't blame them. I've been like that for some time, flitting about between multiple MMOs, with a handful of single player games thrown in the mix.
This weekend was a good weekend for gaming. Most everything my wife and I have on "The List" for this year have been completed, so we had little to do around the house. Which meant, for the first time in almost a year, I actually had a lot of time to play games. In fact, I had so much time to play, I didn't know what to play. It was weird. So I ended up playing a lot of different games this weekend:
Eve Online
I decided to try out Eve Online. Every time I complain about leveling games, people mention Eve Online as something I should check out. I spent a few more hours than Xfire shows because I learned early on that I'm spending more time watching the game than playing it. So I had Eve Online on one computer and the screen next to it had me shouting LFG in level chat for a mission in EverQuest II until I got bored of not doing anything and I shut down both games.
Hopefully Eve Online gets more interesting than this. I guess I have to join a Corp because so far I'm not seeing a whole lot in the game I like. The mission descriptions are confusing and one of the early tutorial missions seemed to send me against overpowered enemies who destroyed my ship in almost one shot. Unless those weren't the NPC enemies. Its hard to tell.
So I went and decided to do some mining. That went well. I guess. Mostly I click on a menu and find an asteroid. Then the screen turns into a pretty screensaver while I mine concentrated veldspar and refine it into Tritanium and dump on the market. Rinse, repeat, grind.
I'll give it some more time later, but it seems like it would take forever before I'm battle ready to try on factions or PVP. And a good Corp could help me out but I don't know if I can do that... Is that fair to them, given that I'm not even sure if I'm going to stick around?
Given that the gameplay felt like this (yes, I know its a screenshot, but that's what the gameplay felt like), I'm not sure I want to.
But maybe screenshots are more fun in groups?
STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl
This is an FPS game that I read good reviews for. Unfortunately, none of the reviews for that game warned me about the excessive head bobbing the game does, and I spent the first half hour getting seasick. Head bobbing is not that realistic people... Sure our heads go up and down and around as we walk, but our brain compensates.
So I spent more time looking on the Intertubes for a patch that would remove the stupid head bobbing than I did playing the game.
For an idea of what the gameplay felt like before this, print this screenshot out, hold it up in front of you, and then shake your arms madly like you're having a seizure:
After the patch, the game was more fun. I did a few quests and saved a few grateful people from bandits. The game has a lot of bugs. One time, when reloading a game, the bandits apparently lost the memo that told them they had been defeated as they started respawning like crazy. But a subsequent reload did not have the same problem. Quality.
It's fun now that it doesn't induce nausea. The headbobbing I mean. The number of bugs and the lack of polish is a little nauseating. Playing the game just makes me want to restart and replay Fallout 3. But I like the story so far, so I'll tough it out.
Warhammer Online
I jumped into Warhammer for a bit. I actually found a good, solid PQ group going on in Chapter 14 and managed to get the second bar filled for my Chapter Influence. It was a lot of fun and reminded me exactly what drew me into the game in the first place. You see, this is when a game doesn't feel like a grind: when you are having so much fun, you almost don't even notice that you gained a level -- because you would have done what you were doing anyway, even without the reward.
I also joined a few Scenarios, and actually had a good time there as well. One of the things I like best about Warhammer is the fact that I can just log in and instantly be doing something. Well, I can instantly be doing Scenarios. I guess the thing I don't like about Warhammer is that they still haven't made it easier to find instant action in RvR and that the PQs (this weekend notwithstanding) are usually dead.
Neverwinter Nights 2
I tried to play this but I encountered a bug early on where even though I found the quest item (a silver shard of some sort) that I needed, the game wouldn't trigger the cut scene and I couldn't continue. Even after running the autopatcher, the game still wouldn't work right. I ended up having to reinstall the game and run the autopatcher all over again, and now suddenly, magically, the stars have aligned, and I could finally continue with the quest.
I progressed a few baby steps further into the game and met the dwarven monk. I'm really early in the game, and I've owned this game for quite some time, but I never really played it. I think, this time, I'm going to give it a chance.
Guild Wars
I also hopped into Guild Wars to try to get a few quests completed. I had not played this game in over a year, but I decided to dust off my Dervish and see what happened.
Apparently I own a Guild Hall all to myself now that (*ahem* almost) everyone had quit the guild I was in. Somewhere along the way I was made leader and there were two people left when I logged in. *Click*. Make that one person left: me. (They hadn't logged in for over two years, I don't think they'll mind.)
I'm trying the Nightfall campaign, and my character is stuck at level 7, and the main quest doesn't progress until I get to level 11 or earn some points. It seems to me like they took shortcuts in the Nightfall campaign, as I don't recall any point in Prophecies where I was basically forced to take a break to run the more mundane non-story-based quests until I got to a certain level.
Guild Wars, during the Prophecies campaign, was for me the ultimate example of a game without the grind, but with Nightfall I'm actually feeling like I'm forced to grind out those levels just to do what I want: follow the story.
EverQuest II
I like the new expansion pack: The Shadow Odyssey. It's a lot of fun. When you can find a group. Hopefully its just because of the holiday weekend, but I must have spammed level chat LFG all weekend without a single bite.
I did join a pick up raid in Protector's Realm that went really well until we tried to take on Doomcoil. The way PR works, there are four named mobs you have to fight earlier and each one drops a charm item in a random raid member's inventory. Then we need to trade them to one person who can then trade them to an NPC to trigger the next fight. Only three people could find the shards in their inventory (even though we killed all four skeletons.) Apparently someone in the raid had poor inventory management skills... or we were bugged perhaps... but we couldn't continue without the fourth shard, so we called it a night.
The rest of the time was spent spamming LFG and duo boxing the soloable quests in Moors. Unfortunately, I'm very tired of quests, and really want to do more missions and instance runs. That's the kind of game play I enjoy the most.
I Can't Be Satisfied
So that was my weekend. I also spent a little time in LittleBigPlanet (on the PS3), Blue Dragon (on the Xbox), and the Wii Fit (I had to make sure I was at least a little active.) And I still had time in there to meet real life friends out on the town for drinks and dinner.
Going forward though, I'm not sure what I will continue playing.
EverQuest II has been my main game since it launched because it has more group oriented activities; it has more raids and more group instances than "the competition." That's what I enjoyed about the game, and they are a blast when you find a group. But that hasn't been the case lately.
EverQuest II is also a much more time consuming game. And it also has a habit of having multi-stage quests that are partially soloable up to a point, and somewhere in the middle of the quest there will be one step that requires rounding up a group of people, dragging them to the middle of nowhere, and killing a heroic that doesn't reward them. I've always thought that was really bad design, and its commonplace in EQ2's signature and heritage quests.
So there are going to be plenty of times when I EQ2 frustrates me (usually when I can't find a group) and I need a break. Or times when I only have 15 minutes to spare. And I'm searching for a game to fill that gap.
For a while that was Warhammer Online. When I started out in it, it was easy to get into the action instantly and play with other people. But as I mentioned in previous posts, I'm getting tired of that game. While I had a great weekend, good times like that are increasingly rare. Its harder to find those people, even after all the server merges going on. On the new server, Scenarios pop quickly, but the PQs where I'm at remains dead.
I know some members of my guild have moved from Warhammer Online to World of Warcraft. I would follow them (most of what makes an MMO fun is the group you play with), but I simply can't get into WoW. Every time I've tried to play it, I think "this is ALMOST a good game... its ALMOST like EverQuest II."
I thought I'd try out Eve Online, but that's not winning me over.
I guess its time to play a few more single player games. (I guess I sound like Openedge1 right now... :) ) I've collected a few over the last few years that I simply haven't played, since I spend so much time in EQ2. But I think I'm going to try to finish off Neverwinter Nights 2, Blue Dragon, and STALKER.
And maybe on the MMO front, I might pop back into Guild Wars. I never did try the PVP in that game when I played it. But now that WAR has given me a taste for PVP I never had before, it might be worth seeking out elsewhere. I also want to try to finish off the Nightfall campaign for good this time. At least in Guild Wars, with the Heroes and henchmen features, I can do tasks that require a group by myself if I can't find one. This is a feature I think more MMOs should have.
One of the things I'm afraid Guild Wars 2 will do that will ruin it is removing the henchmen from the game, forcing people to group. I love to group, and I prefer to group, but one of the nice things about the current Guild Wars is that you have the choice to do either.
Another thing I love about Guild Wars is that it has an ongoing story with its mission system. I guess that's a large part of why I'm frustrated with being stuck having to level up before I can go on. I like to follow the story and having to run around doing mundane quests to level up ruins the experience for me.
Too many games, too little time...
This weekend was a good weekend for gaming. Most everything my wife and I have on "The List" for this year have been completed, so we had little to do around the house. Which meant, for the first time in almost a year, I actually had a lot of time to play games. In fact, I had so much time to play, I didn't know what to play. It was weird. So I ended up playing a lot of different games this weekend:
Eve Online
I decided to try out Eve Online. Every time I complain about leveling games, people mention Eve Online as something I should check out. I spent a few more hours than Xfire shows because I learned early on that I'm spending more time watching the game than playing it. So I had Eve Online on one computer and the screen next to it had me shouting LFG in level chat for a mission in EverQuest II until I got bored of not doing anything and I shut down both games.
Hopefully Eve Online gets more interesting than this. I guess I have to join a Corp because so far I'm not seeing a whole lot in the game I like. The mission descriptions are confusing and one of the early tutorial missions seemed to send me against overpowered enemies who destroyed my ship in almost one shot. Unless those weren't the NPC enemies. Its hard to tell.
So I went and decided to do some mining. That went well. I guess. Mostly I click on a menu and find an asteroid. Then the screen turns into a pretty screensaver while I mine concentrated veldspar and refine it into Tritanium and dump on the market. Rinse, repeat, grind.
I'll give it some more time later, but it seems like it would take forever before I'm battle ready to try on factions or PVP. And a good Corp could help me out but I don't know if I can do that... Is that fair to them, given that I'm not even sure if I'm going to stick around?
Given that the gameplay felt like this (yes, I know its a screenshot, but that's what the gameplay felt like), I'm not sure I want to.
But maybe screenshots are more fun in groups?
STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl
This is an FPS game that I read good reviews for. Unfortunately, none of the reviews for that game warned me about the excessive head bobbing the game does, and I spent the first half hour getting seasick. Head bobbing is not that realistic people... Sure our heads go up and down and around as we walk, but our brain compensates.
So I spent more time looking on the Intertubes for a patch that would remove the stupid head bobbing than I did playing the game.
For an idea of what the gameplay felt like before this, print this screenshot out, hold it up in front of you, and then shake your arms madly like you're having a seizure:
After the patch, the game was more fun. I did a few quests and saved a few grateful people from bandits. The game has a lot of bugs. One time, when reloading a game, the bandits apparently lost the memo that told them they had been defeated as they started respawning like crazy. But a subsequent reload did not have the same problem. Quality.
It's fun now that it doesn't induce nausea. The headbobbing I mean. The number of bugs and the lack of polish is a little nauseating. Playing the game just makes me want to restart and replay Fallout 3. But I like the story so far, so I'll tough it out.
Warhammer Online
I jumped into Warhammer for a bit. I actually found a good, solid PQ group going on in Chapter 14 and managed to get the second bar filled for my Chapter Influence. It was a lot of fun and reminded me exactly what drew me into the game in the first place. You see, this is when a game doesn't feel like a grind: when you are having so much fun, you almost don't even notice that you gained a level -- because you would have done what you were doing anyway, even without the reward.
I also joined a few Scenarios, and actually had a good time there as well. One of the things I like best about Warhammer is the fact that I can just log in and instantly be doing something. Well, I can instantly be doing Scenarios. I guess the thing I don't like about Warhammer is that they still haven't made it easier to find instant action in RvR and that the PQs (this weekend notwithstanding) are usually dead.
Neverwinter Nights 2
I tried to play this but I encountered a bug early on where even though I found the quest item (a silver shard of some sort) that I needed, the game wouldn't trigger the cut scene and I couldn't continue. Even after running the autopatcher, the game still wouldn't work right. I ended up having to reinstall the game and run the autopatcher all over again, and now suddenly, magically, the stars have aligned, and I could finally continue with the quest.
I progressed a few baby steps further into the game and met the dwarven monk. I'm really early in the game, and I've owned this game for quite some time, but I never really played it. I think, this time, I'm going to give it a chance.
Guild Wars
I also hopped into Guild Wars to try to get a few quests completed. I had not played this game in over a year, but I decided to dust off my Dervish and see what happened.
Apparently I own a Guild Hall all to myself now that (*ahem* almost) everyone had quit the guild I was in. Somewhere along the way I was made leader and there were two people left when I logged in. *Click*. Make that one person left: me. (They hadn't logged in for over two years, I don't think they'll mind.)
I'm trying the Nightfall campaign, and my character is stuck at level 7, and the main quest doesn't progress until I get to level 11 or earn some points. It seems to me like they took shortcuts in the Nightfall campaign, as I don't recall any point in Prophecies where I was basically forced to take a break to run the more mundane non-story-based quests until I got to a certain level.
Guild Wars, during the Prophecies campaign, was for me the ultimate example of a game without the grind, but with Nightfall I'm actually feeling like I'm forced to grind out those levels just to do what I want: follow the story.
EverQuest II
I like the new expansion pack: The Shadow Odyssey. It's a lot of fun. When you can find a group. Hopefully its just because of the holiday weekend, but I must have spammed level chat LFG all weekend without a single bite.
I did join a pick up raid in Protector's Realm that went really well until we tried to take on Doomcoil. The way PR works, there are four named mobs you have to fight earlier and each one drops a charm item in a random raid member's inventory. Then we need to trade them to one person who can then trade them to an NPC to trigger the next fight. Only three people could find the shards in their inventory (even though we killed all four skeletons.) Apparently someone in the raid had poor inventory management skills... or we were bugged perhaps... but we couldn't continue without the fourth shard, so we called it a night.
The rest of the time was spent spamming LFG and duo boxing the soloable quests in Moors. Unfortunately, I'm very tired of quests, and really want to do more missions and instance runs. That's the kind of game play I enjoy the most.
I Can't Be Satisfied
So that was my weekend. I also spent a little time in LittleBigPlanet (on the PS3), Blue Dragon (on the Xbox), and the Wii Fit (I had to make sure I was at least a little active.) And I still had time in there to meet real life friends out on the town for drinks and dinner.
Going forward though, I'm not sure what I will continue playing.
EverQuest II has been my main game since it launched because it has more group oriented activities; it has more raids and more group instances than "the competition." That's what I enjoyed about the game, and they are a blast when you find a group. But that hasn't been the case lately.
EverQuest II is also a much more time consuming game. And it also has a habit of having multi-stage quests that are partially soloable up to a point, and somewhere in the middle of the quest there will be one step that requires rounding up a group of people, dragging them to the middle of nowhere, and killing a heroic that doesn't reward them. I've always thought that was really bad design, and its commonplace in EQ2's signature and heritage quests.
So there are going to be plenty of times when I EQ2 frustrates me (usually when I can't find a group) and I need a break. Or times when I only have 15 minutes to spare. And I'm searching for a game to fill that gap.
For a while that was Warhammer Online. When I started out in it, it was easy to get into the action instantly and play with other people. But as I mentioned in previous posts, I'm getting tired of that game. While I had a great weekend, good times like that are increasingly rare. Its harder to find those people, even after all the server merges going on. On the new server, Scenarios pop quickly, but the PQs where I'm at remains dead.
I know some members of my guild have moved from Warhammer Online to World of Warcraft. I would follow them (most of what makes an MMO fun is the group you play with), but I simply can't get into WoW. Every time I've tried to play it, I think "this is ALMOST a good game... its ALMOST like EverQuest II."
I thought I'd try out Eve Online, but that's not winning me over.
I guess its time to play a few more single player games. (I guess I sound like Openedge1 right now... :) ) I've collected a few over the last few years that I simply haven't played, since I spend so much time in EQ2. But I think I'm going to try to finish off Neverwinter Nights 2, Blue Dragon, and STALKER.
And maybe on the MMO front, I might pop back into Guild Wars. I never did try the PVP in that game when I played it. But now that WAR has given me a taste for PVP I never had before, it might be worth seeking out elsewhere. I also want to try to finish off the Nightfall campaign for good this time. At least in Guild Wars, with the Heroes and henchmen features, I can do tasks that require a group by myself if I can't find one. This is a feature I think more MMOs should have.
One of the things I'm afraid Guild Wars 2 will do that will ruin it is removing the henchmen from the game, forcing people to group. I love to group, and I prefer to group, but one of the nice things about the current Guild Wars is that you have the choice to do either.
Another thing I love about Guild Wars is that it has an ongoing story with its mission system. I guess that's a large part of why I'm frustrated with being stuck having to level up before I can go on. I like to follow the story and having to run around doing mundane quests to level up ruins the experience for me.
Too many games, too little time...
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