Goals and lack thereof (LOTRO)

Once again, a session of LOTRO has left me thinking about how different people approach these games in different ways. The most frequent complaints I see aimed at LOTRO are that there is too much running around, and too much grinding. I disagree with both of these complaints.

And granted “too much” is a very subjective number, but I felt like there had to be more to it than that. And then I thought about my session this morning, at the same time I was replying to Ysharro’s post about immersion.

I was having coffee, listening to some music and feeling pretty mellow. So I figured I’d take my 33 Champion to Ered Luin to start on some of the deeds there that I’d never done. For the uninitiated, this is the starter zone for Elves and Dwarves, I think the mob level caps out at 13 or so.

I arrived at Celondim and started my task. The next hour or so had me running around in Ered Luin, discovering locations, killing enough wolves, goblin and brigands to get those deeds going, mining lots of ore for my ‘younger cousins’ to practice on (or to sell), also got some good loot off the brigands and goblins for the youngsters. I chased deer around just to watch them run. Admired flocks of birds swirling through the skies. Climbed ruins to see how far I could see. Caught snowflakes on my tongue. Splashed through ponds full of lilly-pads. Picked some berries for cooking later.

At the end of the session, I’d completed a couple of deeds, earned a modicum of coin, and gained about 100 exp (less than I’d get from killing one mob of my level). And I was quite content; I’d had much fun.

And I think that’s pretty significant, particularly when you hook this experience into Ysh’s post. I was *in* Middle Earth. I wasn’t worried about what I was accomplishing…I was immersed. I was role-playing, even if it was only in my head. There’s no “catch snowflake on tongue” action in LOTRO.

At one point, a dwarf asked me if I’d make him some roast pork. I needed yellow onions for that recipe and the vendors were all out. So I switched over to my Captain, who is a farmer, and he grew some onions. While in the midst of this, he struck up a conversation with a minstrel about what a good life the farming life was. The minstrel took a break from his own farming to play a song to help pass the time, and my Captain gave him a round of applause for his efforts before wishing him well, but explaining that he needed to ship off his produce before it spoiled.

And that’s why I play MMORPGs even if I don’t often group; for people like that minstrel. I add this just to head-off the “why play an MMORPG solo” contingent. 🙂

Now if I played LOTRO to watch my experience bar move and get to the next level, today would’ve just been a huge waste of time. And if I played it to be “uber” and have every trait completed, so I felt like I *had* to go back and kill 60 wolves, I can see where that’d be pretty distasteful. And in fact I do sometimes play other games that way. When I played WOW originally, I played it the way I do LOTRO now (back then, people really *did* roleplay, and some nights I’d play for hours and never leave Stormwind), but after a few years of that, when I start a new character on a new server, as I did to join CoW last month, *all* I care about is leveling as fast as possible. So I do get it.

I think there are two significant facts to expose here. First, I grew up on Lord of the Rings. I first read it at 14 or so, and re-read it every few years. It influenced my life in many ways: specifically, it nurtured this sense of imaginative play that led me to become a fan of fantasy in all forms, and to gaming and RPGs in particular. So being in the world is its own reward, in a sense. Also, I have a Lifetime Membership. This means if it takes me 5 years to get to cap, I don’t care. As a solo player, cap is more or less Game Over in MMOs. Time to start a new character. A monthly fee would probably add some sense of urgency to the experience.

For me personally, these times of playing games just to “be in the world” are the best times I have playing, and I actually feel kind of sorry for people (including myself, when I get caught up in it) who are driven to push that experience bar, or accomplish some other explicit goal every time they log in. That to me seems too much like out-of-game life. Rush, rush, rush, push, push, push. Get ahead of the other guy. I have enough of that in real life; in an ideal world, games are about play and imagination and relaxation to me. (At the same time, I recognize that to many people, games are all about competition.)

This is getting long and less and less focused. But I wonder if the people who find LOTRO slow and grindy are more driven, accomplishment oriented players, and those of us who enjoy the game are more about the experience of being in a fantasy world?

LOTRO through fresh eyes

The other day Angela expressed an interest in giving Lord of the Rings Online a try. As I have a Lifetime Membership, I was delighted by the prospect of having her playing too, so immediately send off a Trial Key. She downloaded the client, created a character and got to level 2 while I was at work (so basically she was testing that the game would run). Tonight she decided to play again, and I had the chance to watch her.

Now, I really enjoy LOTRO a lot. Looking at the game through my eyes, it’s a thing of beauty. But the difference between Angela and I is that I play tons of games and feel compelled to at least try every major MMO that hits the market. And I’ll often randomly download and install a F2P MMO just to try something new. I’ve seen dozens and dozens of MMO HUDs and GUIs and I jump around from game to game very easily. Angela, on the other hand, has been playing EQ2 pretty much non-stop since it launched in 2004. She doesn’t play single player games on the PC and only very very rarely will she get into a console game.

So there I was, watching her play LOTRO. Problem one, of course, is the intro segment. I have all my character slots filled so I couldn’t roll a new character to play with her, but I did have a Rune-Keeper who’d just left the starter area (he was level 7), so I was waiting for her. But from the time she logged in at level 2 until the time she left the starter area at level 6, all I could do is watch and advise. I know she could have skipped the starter area, but that brings its own set of problems and let’s face it: the point of it is to teach you the game mechanics. Now it takes me almost no time to zoom through the starter areas, but I know all the quests and where to go when. I’d forgotten how long it can take when you don’t know that the rubble is actually in the cave under the town, not in town itself (for example).

None of the ‘big stuff’ was a problem for her. Getting quests, looting, fighting… all that is similar enough that she didn’t have to give it a second thought. What did bug her, a lot, was the sensitivity (or lack thereof) of the keyboard when it came to turning her character. As she ran across the world, she appeared to be a bit intoxicated, veering back and forth slightly as she kept under, than over, steering. After a bit of discussion we determined that LOTRO has a bit of an “acceleration” feature to turning. You press the Left key and you turn slowly, then faster the longer you hold it down. At least, that’s how it felt to her; I’ve never noticed it but again, I play skillions of games and I’m used to adjusting. But it drove her crazy.

Also, she didn’t like the constant location of the tooltips (though I think that might be tweakable); she prefers them to be right where the arrow is pointing. See what I mean? It’s the little details that make a new game feel strange and unfamiliar after a long time spent with an old favorite. I could tell that LOTRO just felt awkward to her.

One of my favorite aspects of LOTRO is the lore. I drink in every paragraph of text quest. I sit transfixed during the infrequent cut scenes between Chapters in the book quests. Angela was playing with the sound so low I don’t think she even heard the voice over during these, and when she got a new quest she’d immediately scroll down to see what the reward was and hit accept. Later she’d skim to figure out where to go, but she didn’t seem to care about the ‘color’ text one way or the other.

On the other hand, she seemed to like how you can hide or show you cloak or helm from the character panel, rather than digging into the options panels to toggle them. She stopped to stare at flocks of birds bursting out of trees to fly off into the distance, and asked me how to hide the UI so she could start taking snapshots. And once she finally got out of the starter area and we could group, she seemed to enjoy the actual gameplay. Deeds were something new to her, but I advised her to play like I do; to not really worry about doing them at first, and to get your kill counts up ‘naturally’ and then go back and top them off if you need to, before you leave an area.

It was a fun change of pace for us that she was playing a Guardian (Tank) and I was playing a Rune Keeper (hybrid healer). When we play EQ2 together, she’s almost always a healer and I’m always a Melee DPS class.

I still love LOTRO, but I’m not at all convinced the game is going to “stick” with Angela. We knocked out 5 quests or so (maybe 20 minutes of playing together), and then she’d had enough. And as a write this, she’s back in her beloved Everquest 2. But even if she decides not to continue, it was a neat experience seeing LOTRO though another person’s eyes. LOTRO seems to be the “Hater Flavor of the Week” now that everyone is done trashing Warhammer and my instinct is always to defend it since I feel its a great game. But seeing someone I care about play it and not being immediately enchanted really gives me perspective; we really are all different when it comes to these games. Knowing that on an intellectual level is a lot diferent from experiencing it on such a personal level. Here’s someone who I care deeply for, and share many, many interests with, and she’s seeing the game in a totally different light than I do. Hopefully from here on out I can be better about ignoring the haters (they’re entitled to their opinion and nothing I say is going to change their mind) and just enjoy talking about the game with my fellow enthusiasts.

Gaming Podcast Review: Giant Bombcast

I’ve been kicking around the idea of reviewing game-related podcasts for a while now. For the past several years I’ve pretty much completely replaced listening to music during my commute with listening to podcasts. But there’re a *lot* of podcasts to choose from. Some are gems, some are junk, and there’s no way any individual can cover them all. But I figured I’d take on this one small slice: the gaming podcast.

I’ll be tweaking the format as I go, and don’t expect these to roll out very regularly since, well, it takes a long time to listen to a bunch of podcasts!

Review: Giant Bombcast
(Based on 10+ episodes)

URL: http://www.giantbomb.com/podcast/
Subscribe on iTunes

Overview: Giant Bombcast is the weekly podcast of GiantBomb.com. Regular cast members are Ryan Davis, Jeff Gerstmann, Brad Shoemaker & Vinnie Caravella. Format is loosely based on 3 segments: What We’ve Been Playing, News of the World, and Listener Feedback. Focus is mostly console games.

Length: This is a long podcast, often over 2 hours.

Production Value: Very good. All four members are in the same room, meaning the quality is excellent. All four are also articulate speakers that seem to have the knack of carrying on a good ‘casual conversation’ without drifting into ‘sloppy’ everyday speech. It’s not like, they’re like, saying like three times in every sentence. All four have good “radio voices” and sound like adults.

Comments: Four guys that clearly love to talk about video games. They definitely do a certain amount of rambling, but never go too far astray. Their individual tastes seem diverse enough to present a nicely rounded view of console gaming and after a few listens you’ll probably gravitate towards one member whose views and opinions most reflect your own. They don’t always agree, but are able to respect each other’s opinions.

PC gaming is definitely not a focus, nor are MMOs. They’ll mention both topics in terms of news, but that’s about the extent of it. Sports games also seem to be pretty lightly covered.

Intangibles: Somehow these four guys talking to each other manage to make the listener feel very included. I feel like I know these guys and that if I were suddenly dropped into the room with them, I’d mesh right into the conversation. The overall vibe is very welcoming.

Quirks: XBox Live Achievement points seem *very* important to the gang. Also Jeff has a fondness for weird music box toys that can get a bit grating at times. The show often opens with some kind of drink taste test, which is often pretty amusing.

Rating: Mature. They’re sometimes drinking, or have been drinking, and language can be a tad salty at times. Nothing overtly obscene going on…just typical language for a group of guys talking passionately.

Conclusion: Listen to the Giant Bombcast if a) you have 2 hours+ to spare every week and b) you’re a console gamer. If you primarily game on your PC, then this is a definite “maybe” podcast; you’ll probably still enjoy it but much of it won’t be directly applicable to your gaming habits.

* * *

OK, so that’s a first pass at a format. Would love to hear comments on how it might be improved, and whether you found it useful. I also welcome suggestions for other gaming podcasts to cover. I have a few more I listen to but beyond them I’ll be reaching out to discover more.

Pet PS3 Peeve

Dear Sony,

In general I really adore my PS3s (to the point I own two of them) but, please please PLEASE give us an option to turn off “preview” sound on the XMB.

Picture this scenario. The lady and I have dinner in front of the tv, and are watching Ghost Whisperer on DVD. A generally quiet show, not lots of explosions or screaming. We finish, turn off the PS3.

A few hours later, late enough at night that neighbors are sleeping, I turn on the TV, Receiver and PS3 on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water. Suddenly the walls are shaking with explosive sounds. I drop my glass and run back into the living room, where the PS3 is on, the XMB cursor sitting on the FEAR demo (thanks to Qore I already have it), and it is *blasting* out sound at an ear-splitting level.

I really, really hate that. I mean, I get that its cool that we can see and hear a preview window of the title selected, but please let us turn that off. Not everything enjoys an assault on the senses every time we turn our system on. The PS3, in our home at least, is much more than a game system: we watch DVD and Blu-Ray movies on it, watch Hulu via the built-in web broswer, and stream audio and video off the PCs in the office. It is very much a ‘media center’ for us, and me hitting the power button does not mean that I’m in the mood for EXTREME!!!!! violence.

And if Sony doesn’t give us that option, then publishers, please at least give some thought to what you’re blasting at us. The irony is that I turned the receiver way down to where the sound was reasonable, and started the demo…and had to turn the sound UP again. The ‘teaser’ was much louder than the actual game (and much louder than the DVD we’d been watching). And honestly, it made me think less (slightly) of the game…it was a bad first impression.

Thank you Sony, for your prompt attention to this matter!

Sincerely,
Dragonchasers!

Warhammer “Zone Domination” patch

Another wacky video from Paul Barnett. He teases multiple items in a mail, suggests that zone crashes are virtually abolished, and talks about “Zone Domination” in which the method by which you’d capture a zone would be “less rubbish.”

Probably too late for me, but good to see they continue to improve things. But the cynic in me wonders why things weren’t “less rubbish” at launch?

Switching channels

So my EQ2 sub ran out, leaving both myself and Angela feeling a bit blue. We’d been adventuring together quite a bit; something we haven’t done all that much of in the past. I’ve left EQ2 so many times, and each time I come back I like it a bit more. This is the first time I’ve left wanting more. As soon as we get money stuff straightened out I’ll be re-subscribing.

Today I was MMO surfing a bit. I tried Warhammer again. Made a level but that didn’t really feel like it made much difference. Spent way too much time deleting gold spam from my mail box. Bleh. Did some more FusionFall, and honestly that game continues to be fun in a very cotton-candy sort of way. So easy to jump in, run around a bit, and jump out.

Then finally I fired up LOTRO. I’ve been exploring Evendim. Correction: I thought I’d been exploring Evendim but in fact I’d really been just on the fringe of it. Today I got into Evendim proper. One thing Turbine knows how to do is take your breath away as you explore Middle Earth. Remember in the movie version of Fellowship, when they’re paddling down river after leaving Lothlorien, and they come around a curve in the river and suddenly there’s the huge guardian king in front of them? While Turbine took that scene to heart. I don’t want to say more because the whole beauty is discovering this stuff for yourself.

I’ve said it ad nauseum, but I just adore exploring Middle Earth. It feels like almost a burden, though, that I have a quest log full of Fellowship quests at this point. I just can’t experience the world quite the same way when I’m in a group of people; can’t take time to stop and gawk at landscapes and ancient ruins and amazing creatures… I suppose I can always come back when I’ve out-leveled the content, right?

evendim

Mini-review: Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy

I was browsing around the Steam store looking for something to occupy my time when I found an indie game called Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy. Hell yeah, pirates always rule! I immediately started downloading a demo of it.

The blurb was enticing:

Set sail across the Caribbean with Buccaneer. Will you become the world’s greatest and most feared pirate captain, or will you let your infamy ebb away and risk mutiny at the hands of your bloodthirsty crew?

I boot up the game and it is *gorgeous*. Detail on the ship is very nice, and the sea is filled with little ‘flavor’ touches like sharks prowling below the surface and gulls flying above. My first mission is to drive a rival pirate gang away from a merchant vessel so I can plunder it. Yo ho ho! I’m psyched!

And then I start to control my ship, and the world comes crashing down around me. First of all, there’s no wind in the game. Second of all, you have to hold down an ‘acceleration’ key to move forward. Let up on it and your ship quickly comes to a stop. Third, your ship turns fastest at slowest speeds. The “s” key puts you in reverse. If at this point you’re thinking “Well, that sounds just like a car!” well, you’re absolutely correct. You may be looking at a ship on the ocean, but what you’re playing is a car-combat game played on an infinite parking lot.

Forget any thought of tactics. Raking fire is less effective than trading broadsides. Your cannons fire nearly constantly so there’s no strategy there. No choice of shot type, or where to aim. No sail damage. No… well, no hint of any sort of nautical kn0w-how needed. Strap guns on the sides of a couple of cars, put them on a parking lot and let them circle around shooting at each other, and that’s what Buccaneer is.

What an incredible disappointment.

But wow, does it ever look pretty!

sailing

Why I love Twitter (and the internet in general)

Every so often I run into someone who snorts dismissively at my use of Twitter (follow me here). Today is a perfect example of why I value the service as much as I do.

First, there was that crash landing of a US Airways jet this afternoon. It first came to my attention via Twitter, and I was able to watch the story develop. In retrospect that seems a little macabre, but the point is, a breaking news story came to my attention first via Twitter (and I heard about it before anyone else in my office did via traditional news alerts). Of course, knowing about that crash as it was happening wasn’t all that important in the long run — I could easily have read about it later.

But for another example, I was at my computer tonight when @MarsRovers sent out a tweet: “Live on Ustream, 10pm ET: Rover Principal investigator Steve Squyres will give a one hour talk on the rover”.  I’m a big space fan so I jumped over to Ustream and was able to catch most of the talk (which was fabulous). Since it was live, had I not heard about it via the immediacy of Twitter, I would’ve missed out.

I’ll grant you that there’s a lot of noise on Twitter, but sifting through people you follow cleans that up a lot. I will “test-Follow” almost anyone. If they do nothing but send out updates about what they have for breakfast, then I drop them. Simple as that. It seems silly to me to discard a whole communications system just because some channels aren’t worth listening to. There’s some story about babies and bathwater that springs to mind…

Fusion Fall First Foray

It seems almost silly to do a “first look” of a free, no active download game…after all, if you’re interested, go sign up and play! But I’m old school, eh?

I got about 90 minutes to play Fusion Fall tonight. It was gently amusing, but so far what I’ve seen has been *very* kid oriented, with little or no humor slipped in for the grownups (I’d hoped for some ‘dual layer’ humor similar to what the cartoons often have). The closest I’ve seen to “snuck in adult humor” so far was a quest name: Shock and Ow. But that’s ok; after all, kids *are* the intended audience, and it feels like they’ve gone to great lengths to make a safe game, right down to naming characters. During character creation, you can build a name by picking from lists of words (rather like Second Life) or you can request a custom name. I did the latter, and was told it would have to be approved first and that I’d be given a temporary name until my chosen name got approval. So all night I was Player43489342 or something. I’m guessing name approval goes in front of bonafide human eyeballs or something.

future_dexter

Dexter, of Dexter’s Lab, is the first Cartoon Network character you’ll meet, only its an adolescent Dexter, and he’s come to transport you into the future so you can help save the world from a gooey alien menace. Of course, Dee Dee gets involved and screws everything up and you get flung “too far” into the future. Now I have to admit my Cartoon Network knowledge is pretty out of date, so I didn’t recognize many of the characters, but presumably an age-appropriate player would.

Character creation - typical stuff

Combat is fairly traditional action-RPG fare, with you basically holding down a mouse button to swing/fire. Targeting is similar to Tabula Rasa though. Normally you have no mouse pointer on screen and instead are in constant “mouse look” mode.  There are no classes, at least at first, but you customize characters via the use of “Nanos”. These are tiny versions of CN characters that you collect as you quest.  You have 3 “equip” slots for Nanos, and each Nano has 3 potential skills, of which 1 is active at any time. So basically you have 3 skills available at any time. You can hit a machine that lets you swap Nanos or activate different spells on your Nanos in the various “town” areas. (This system feels a bit like Guild Wars to me…lots of potential skills but limited slots to use them in.)

As an example, my first two Nanos were one of the Power Puff Girls and “Numbah two” from some current show that I didn’t recognize. The PPG’s active skill was a Stun, and Numbah 2 came with a run-speed buff. In both cases, their other skills were some kind of group buff, and some kind of collection buff (extra currency from kills).

Lookin Mighty!The premise of this Planet Fusion which is trying to take over the earth means that you spend a lot of time in pretty banged up neighborhoods. Green goo is everywhere; walking on it causes you to take damage, and most of the monsters have some green goey bits on their bodies. Lots of cyborg looking amalgamations of goo and machine parts like some twisted Battle Bots arena. This goo-factor serves to lighten an otherwise potentially dismal motif. But there’s a LOT of green in this game!

There are some nods to arcade games. Every so often you’ll find an “egg” and running over it gets you a powerup buff (I’ve gotten run speed and jump duration buffs this way so far). There are also some light platforming aspects in certain areas, but you’d have to be really inept at platforming for these to give you any difficulty.

It isn’t clear at this point what the difference is between playing for free and paying for a sub. Presumably that comes a bit later, after they have you hooked.

Technically, the game ran very nicely, and did a lot of its downloading in the background; I was up and playing in no time. My browser (Firefox 3) did crash on quitting the game, but in all fairness FF3 on my Vista machine isn’t the most stable browser I’ve ever used. I do rather wish there was a desktop launcher, but maybe I can make one via a URL shortcut.

The "town" of Cul de Sac from outside the walls

I think its natural to want to compare Fusion Fall to Free Realms. Both are bright, “lite” kid-friendly MMOs. I haven’t played Free Realms but from what I’ve seen it might be a bit more “different” than Fusion Fall (it seems to be heavy on mini-games?), which in most ways feels very ‘comfortable’ to an MMO player. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on what you’re looking for, I guess.

Will I keep playing Fusion Fall? Maybe a bit. It was amusing, but really for the little amount I played, it was *so* focused on being kid-friendly that I almost had an “I don’t belong here” feeling. I didn’t do any chatting and in fact didn’t *see* any chatting. So whether there was a channel I missed, or maybe you can only chat with friends, I’m not sure. For all I know everyone else running around was just as old as me. I can’t really put my finger on why I feel the way I do: I was quite comfortable in, for instance, Wizard 101.  But I really felt kind of “out of place” in this world. We’ll see if that feeling continues. I want to at least get my name (Gillain Edgeward) rather than Player293r2342!

Early Battle