Droid thoughts

Werit isn’t the only one who got a Droid this week. I did too. I’d been coasting on a pre-pay cell plan using a Razr (which I *hated*) for about a year. Hated the phone, but loved spending only $15/month on it.

But I felt the siren-call of smartphones, and yet I knew I didn’t want an iPhone (I’ve gone from complete and total Apple fanboy to not really trusting the company or their hardware, though I do still like OS X). Windows Mobile seemed dull and Palm OS feels like it’s going to go *poof!* any day now. What was feeling new and exciting was Android, so I was waiting to see what came out of Google’s mobile OS. When I first heard about the Droid I kinda fell in love with the phone but I wasn’t really ready to a) be a trailblazer or b) take on a $70/month phone bill.

However I was headed towards a gadget crossroads. My iPod was on its last legs…the connector was going on it, the battery was shot and it needed replacing. And I was really starting to want a small camera to carry around, and to be able to upload images to twitter or facebook from the road. And again, I hated my phone.

The Droid solves all these problems. It has a 5 megapixel camera that takes OK shots for what I wanted (stupid things like “Look at this cheeseburger I’m about to eat” twitpics — see example below), it plays music and more importantly, podcasts, and it’s a nice phone and a great geeky toy. Oh and as a bonus it does a great job as a turn-by-turn navigational system.

And of course it runs Android, which is a platform that’s much, much more open than the iPhone. No, there aren’t a million apps (or whatever the iPhone is at now) but there’s 10,000 and more all the time.

Still, I was holding off, until Werit ordered his. I knew my willpower wouldn’t stand up to hearing him tweet and blog about his new toy, and I had a trip coming up where I’d be far from any internet connection: the perfect test for a Droid. So last Wednesday I went out and got one.

And so far, not the slightest hint of buyer’s remorse. I love the thing (though I do have some nits to pick). It worked great on our trip and I was able to get myself into trouble by uploading pics of Angela being tired and grumpy, and take dumb snapshots from the ferry and share them on twitter. I was able to show my mom (who is in her mid-80s) Facebook for the first time, pointing out a shot of a guy who is now probably 45 that she last saw when he was about 10. Heh, exposing my mom to Facebook was probably worth the cost of entry right there.

I downloaded a nice podcast catcher/player so I don’t even have to sync the phone; I just d/l the podcasts right to it. I haven’t bothered to move much music to it since it has a Pandora app. I found a nice little e-book reader app. Of course snagged a few games. A twitter client. Shazam, which does that “What song is this?” thing that Midori does on the iPhone. A barcode scanner…

Anyway, haven’t had it for even a full week yet so no ‘review’ at this point, but early signs are positive. My one real gripe is ‘waking’ the thing up. When the screen goes dark (to save power) I have to hit a tiny button on top of the unit which wakes the screen, but the screen is still locked. I then have to do a swipe on the screen to get the unit to a fully functioning state. That’s 1 step too many, IMO. I did find a neat little app that will prevent the Droid from going to sleep mode when certain apps are running, and that works great (this was a big deal mostly with the podcast player…if I missed something and wanted to back up, the player has a nice easy 30-second rewind button, but first I had to unlock the screen to access it, which wasn’t a great idea while driving).

The Android app market is still really young and I’m confident that as developers get better, little rough spots like this one will get smoothed out.

For now, I’m a Droid Fan.

Taken out the window of my car. Resized/cropped to desktop size

The Calm Before the Expansion

Gah! I hate the weekend before an MMO expansion releases!

In just a few short days I’ll be able to experience all kinds of new content and game system changes, so I get totally pumped to play the game (LOTRO in this case, and the expansion is Siege of Mirkwood). But suddenly the “old” non-expanded game seems a bit tattered and worn. If there’s some specific thing I want or need to finish before the expansion launches, I’m fine, but otherwise it just feels like killing time before the new shinies arrive.

Mind you, this is all in my head this time out. The old content won’t really feel tattered and worn once Mirkwood launches. And it isn’t like I’m at the level cap and ready to charge into the forest. Hardly. I haven’t even been to Moria!

But I did preview the expansion and already have some Skirmish-earned armor picked out and I just want to get working on earning it NOW. I’m ready to start my quest to enable Skirmishes.

I feel like a kid waiting for Santa to arrive!

Dragon Age DLC Pricing

Over the weekend I went through the two current DLC packs for Dragon Age: Origins. I didn’t really plan it, it just happened that I liberated the Warden’s Keep on Saturday and got Shale into my party on Sunday. It got me thinking about the cost of DLC.

The Stone Prisoner (which adds potential party member Shale) costs $15 while Warden’s Keep costs $7. The upcoming Return to Ostagar will cost $5.

Some folks think these prices are too high, while others consider them fair. I can kind of see both sides of the argument. When I’m determining value in a game, I basically break it down into a cost/hour number.

So in support of the pricing, if I spend $5-$7 for a piece of DLC and it entertains me for an evening, that seems ok. Going to a movie is going to cost me a lot more than that. Going to a meal still more. I could get a Starbuck’s Latte for $5, or I could spend an evening going through this content.

Looking at it another way, though, how does that $5 compare to the entire game? Dragon Age (PC) lists for $50 and has what? 60 hours of gameplay? (I’m guessing..I haven’t finished yet.) For ease of use let’s assume it’s a 50 hour game. So that’s $1/hour. Does the Warden’s Keep contain the 7 hours of content it would need to match the value of the main game? No, it doesn’t. Of course there’s more than just the adventure of recovering the Keep from the forces of evil. You also get some unique items and some storage space. Putting a dollar value on that is tough.

The Stone Prisoner is even harder to gauge. From Bioware’s point of view I can see why they’d price it so high. It’s another NPC in the game, with new art assets and animations, new (and considerable) voice talent, and both the quest to free Shale and his NPC quest. Plus potentially more voice acting from the other actors to react to Shale (guessing here too…I don’t use him).

So I can understand how this content was costly to produce. But I’m not sure that’s going to matter to most gamers. Will they get 15 hours out of Shale? Rescuing him is pretty fast (maybe an hour). I don’t know how elaborate his personal quest is, but neither does the potential buyer.

Bioware has promised 2 years worth of DLC for Dragon Age: Origins but (as far as I know) they haven’t really gone into detail about what that DLC will be. Will the story be extended or will it all be “side story” stuff? Will we see more NPC companions?

If the Stone Prisoner costs $15, how much would a short add-on campaign that’ll last you a few evenings cost? Twice as much? $30? Over half the price of the game? That seems crazy.

Maybe Shale was priced high just to drive customers to one of CE or Deluxe versions? The Collector’s Edition is $60, so it costs less than buying the standard edition + the Stone Prisoner DLC.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what we get with Return to Ostagar. $5 seems like a good price for a chunk of DLC. If I spending an evening having fun playing through Ostagar, I’ll feel like I got my money’s worth.

How about you? Where’s your comfort zone when it comes to paying for DLC? I’ve used Dragon Age: Origins to illustrate this post, but feel free to comment on DLC costs in general.

More on Skirmish Traits (LOTRO)

I realize I kind of skimmed over the whole skirmish trait system in my last post. Here’s more detail.

You’ll talk to a Skirmish Captain to organize your traits. Here’s an empty trait panel — it’ll feel pretty familiar to any LOTRO player:
Empty Skirmish Trait Panel

And here’s my “full” panel, tricked out for a healing companion:
Full Skirmish Trait Panel

You’ll see there are slots that I need to unlock as I advance, same as with normal traits.

The top trait row, Attribute, basically sets the ‘class’ for your soldier. Right now I have two choices, Warrior (essentially a Champion) which I got via the tutorial, and Herbalist (a healer) which I bought with Skirmish Marks. You put a Role Attribute trait in slot 1 of this row; I’m as yet unsure what goes into the other slots in this row. I couldn’t slot both Herbalist and Warrior. There are some cosmetic traits; maybe those go in the other slots? If you want your Companion to be a hobbit-lad, for instance, you can buy that feature with skirmish marks. Maybe someone can fill in the gaps here.

Here’re the pop-ups for the two Roles I currently have:
Warrior Role   Herbalist Role

If you notice the red text at the bottom of the Warrior Role, it’s because I had the Herbalist Role slotted when I took the screen shot.

Next two rows are Skills and Training. I’m honestly not clear on what the difference between the two is. As a reward for completing the Skirmish Tutorial, I took “Herbalist Education” which gave me a bunch of herbalist traits; two each of Skills and Training. (Note I had to buy the Herbalist role in order to put these to use).

Skills:
Herbalist Skill #1   Herbalist Skill #2

Training:
Herbalist Training 2   Herbalist Training 1

The last row is for Personal traits which directly impact your character. I only have one of these to show off:
Personal Trait

Changing skirmish traits costs silver, same as changing normal traits does.

And that’s as far as I’ve taken this. I was going to do some more experimenting but the Skirmish Join panel says I’ve exceeded the max number of skirmishes I can take part in this week!! I assume that’s a bug (since I only fought in 1 skirmish), but it does indicate that there are systems in place for preventing you from doing nothing but grinding skirmishes all day.

Obviously this is all new to me and I can’t say how I’ll feel about the system come springtime, but for now I’m pretty excited. Hopefully there’ll be lots of traits to unlock and/or purchase which will give the player many options for customizing exactly the kind of companion he or she will be taking into battle.

First look at LOTRO Skirmishes

After all the problems that players ran into last Tuesday during the Siege of Mirkwood Preview/Stress Test, Turbine decided to open Bullroarer (the test server) to all players again this weekend. I jumped on tonight and sure enough, Skirmishes were working like a charm.

I wasted no time in going through the Skirmish Tutorial, which comes in two parts. In part 1 you begin outside the south gate of Bree, and have to liberate the gate, then the Auction House, and then Bill Ferny’s house. But before you do that, the Second Watcher gives you a Horn you can use to summon help. The horn is a skill, not an inventory item, and it basically summons your soldier, who at this point is a kind of generic man-at-arms.

Once you have him at the ready, off you go to take on a few pretty easy fights, and soon enough you will have liberated south Bree. Part two of the tutorial is the defense of the Prancing Pony. Before you begin this battle, you can talk to a couple of NPCs. One sells you a soldier trait, and the other is a Skirmish Bard which lets you slot that trait. You get a Warrior Trait, so buy it (for free), slot it (for free as well) and then summon a soldier, who’ll now be a Tier 1 Warrior.

This is a defensive battle as you fight off three waves of mobs. Skirmish mobs don’t drop much; at least I saw no random loot. If they do drop something it’ll either be a temporary item that gives you a buff (use it or lose it; it disappears at the end of the skirmish) or coin and some kind of Skirmish Mark.

This is a fun little battle. It’s really neat seeing Bree under a heavy snowfall. The challenge rating isn’t very high but this *is* the tutorial after all. After you’ve completed it, you’ll travel back to the Skirmish Camp (by the way, I should point out that I took the Skirmish Tutorial outside of Bree but you can take it from any Skirmish Camp; I’m not sure if other camps send you into different tutorial skirmishes) where you’ll finally finish the tutorial, opening up the Skirmish System as well as the Skirmish Vendors.

And wow, do those vendors have some nice stuff. Everything from rare crafting materials (shards and such) to armor or weapons for general use, to new Traits for your soldier, to house items and cosmetic items for your soldier. You buy all this stuff using Skirmish Marks.

I opted to buy an Herbalist Trait for my soldier. Once I slotted this trait, plus some skill traits, I had a capable healer to follow me around in a skirmish (I was playing a Champion so a healer seemed a natural choice).

It was time to try my first “real” skirmish, and I picked a Solo Level 40, Tier 1 skirmish on Weathertop. Gandalf’s battle with the Nine has drawn evil things to this place, and you have to aid the Ranger stationed there in protecting the area. I don’t want to go into too many details because half the fun is experiencing these things first hand.

I will, however, say that it was an awful lot of fun for me. And I’ll rile the haters up by saying it was particularly fun for someone who always solos. Between the Ranger (who aids you) and my healer minion, I had half a fellowship, which meant for once I could use all those Champion skills that are generally pointless when soloing (Challenges/Taunts) or that I never use due to shortness of solo battles (lots of the AoE melee attacks).

There are Lieutenant mobs that show up now and then, and some of them were pretty epic, at least to someone level 40. And there was (simple) stuff to do beyond just fighting.

The rewards for completing the skirmish were pretty generous. Maybe too generous. 75 silvers and between the tutorial and this one skirmish I had enough Skirmish Marks to buy a piece of heavy armor or a weapon better than what I was using. 75 silver is more than I pay for a week’s rent on my cottage! So 1 skirmish = weekly rent with some left over to spend on wine and wenches? Sign me up!

Siege of Mirkwood launches on Dec. 1st and I’m sure by Dec. 2nd people will be whining about “grinding marks” because, let’s face it, MMO players are a whiny bunch. And if you’re some kind of crazy completionist and want to buy everything you can as soon as you can, then yup, you’re going to be doing a LOT of skirmishes because there is a *ton* of stuff to buy. Maybe its time to get some counseling for that OCD!

But the system should be a dream for ‘normal’ players. I love that there’s good stuff to buy after just doing a couple battles, but there’re also some really nice, very expensive items that will take some time to obtain. Setting and achieving personal goals adds so much to these games, at least for me. I’m really looking forward to playing “for keeps” once Mirkwood launches. This (I assume) is just the beginning of what they’ll do with this system.

I have a few images from the tutorials. I was so engrossed in the one ‘real’ skirmish I took part in that I forgot to take any shots!

[Update: Oh, I forgot to mention this. When I reported on Tuesday’s Preview Program I said the combat changes made my Champion look like he was going into convulsions at times. I did not see this effect last night, so perhaps the problem Tuesday night was due to lag (which was awful for me when I was playing).]

Bioware announces Return to Ostagar DLC for Dragon Age: Origins

So it seems someone else may have survived the Battle of Ostagar, but this person was captured by the Darkspawn (rare, but it does happen. Bregan was captured, after all). Now this individual has escaped and he or she is looking for help from the Grey Wardens.

Yeah, that’s pretty sketchy, but thus far Bioware has revealed only a few details. We do know the just-announced Return to Ostagar DLC for Dragon Age: Origins will cost $5 and should be out ‘this holiday season.’ In it, you’ll head back to Ostagar for some payback, the chance to find the king’s arms and armor, and get another chance to recruit BarkSpawn into your party (actually my dog is named Milo but so many people seem to name theirs BarkSpawn, I coudn’t resist).

Hopefully we’ll get more details soon. Stay tuned!

Payback time!

Siege of Mirkwood Preview Event (LOTRO)

I didn’t do anything to prepare for the Siege of Mirkwood preview event that was held tonight, and it kind of bit me on the arse. My intention was to get in there and check out Skirmishes, but first I had to d/l the test client, then I had to patch the test client. So that took up about half my night.

Then I logged in somewhere in the midst of the Shire. I couldn’t do a Skirmish until I did the Skirmish tutorial, and I needed a Skirmish Camp to do the tutorial. So I recalled to Bree and quickly found the Skirmish camp outside the south gate. But before I could do the Skirmish tutorial, I had to do a quest which involved killing humanoid baddies. I was bound to Esteldin so I mapped to there, then headed towards Angamar to find some non-gray baddies (I was 39). Found some of those giant-ish types that fraternize with the hillmen, spent some time killing them until I had 10 Orders that I needed. Rode back to Esteldin, then Fast Traveled back to Bree, only to realize I need 10 Orders plus 1 War Plan. Argh! Haste makes waste!

I was still waiting on cooldowns so I thought I’d try another venue for the last bit, so I headed to the Trollshaws, a zone I don’t know very well. Actually I Fast Traveled to Ost Guruth (?) on the edge of the Lone Lands, then rode into the Trollshaws. Saw some goblins who conned green but I headed deeper into the hills and found the trolls that the Trollshaws got their name from…but they were all Yellow Elites. I wasted far too much time in there, dodging worms and fighting wights and bears and everything *but* humanoids. I did hit 40 though. My map had cooled down by now and I was making no headway in the Trollshaws, so I recalled back to Esteldin, then Quick Traveled to Tinnudir, then took the boat across the lake and headed up to go after those Gauradan that roam the hills above the lake. Finally found the War Plan I needed, and recalled to Bree.

Finally I finished my quest! And got another quest which was the Skirmish tutorial. It was one of those “Talk to me again and we’ll go” quests, but when I talked to the guy again and hit “Travel Now” nothing happened. Tried waiting, tried spamming the button, tried relogging. Lag was tremendous, frame rate was like a slide show, so I’m assuming that’s why.

Sadly I’m an adult who has to be up at 6 am to write a blog post, so at 11 pm I gave up on getting a taste of skirmishes. I should’ve just played Dragon Age tonight. But now at least I know not to worry about playing Siege of Mirkwood for the first few days of release.

I generally play LOTRO pretty casually, and now I guess I know why people get so upset with the travel options. When you’re really feeling driven to accomplish a particular goal, travel really does become an issue. I’m glad I don’t normally play with that mindset of “Must complete goal tonight!”

I did get to experience the new combat system, though honestly it was hard to tell what was abbreviated combat animations as a result of the new system, and what was lag. Frankly it looked a LOT worse than the LOTRO I’m used to. I guess I’ll get used to it, but my Champion looked like he was going into convulsions at times. I never had any issues with the combat system the way it used to be; I guess I’m in the minority there.

I snagged a screenshot of the new “Main Menu” which will look familiar to anyone who’s played any of a number of other MMOs. Also a shot of the poor besieged Skirmish Captain. I checked out the old goat that comes with Mirkwood (or is that in the Adventurers Pack?) and named it Pete, of course. And my Lithe Festival horse got renamed to Mimi. Silly me, one of the things that most excites me about Mirkwood so far is being able to name my mounts, and being able to talk to NPCs from horseback.

Really, the best thing to come out of this preview for me was discovering all kinds of cool things going on in the Trollshaws. I have to go there on my ‘real’ character!

News alert! Dragon Age is big!

A busy weekend kept me from playing as much Dragon Age as I suspected I would, and it came after me not touching the game in any significant way in the last few days of last week (due to other commitments, not lack of desire).

Tonight I finished one… ‘chunk’ of the storyline. Trying to avoid spoilers but if you’re playing you know what I mean. You’ve got a bunch of X items you have to take to various places to do some things. 🙂 Anyway, I finally finished 1 of them. My save game is at 20 hours. There are 4 (or 5?) of these chunks, plus side quests, DLC quests… there’s a LOT to do here.

What’s amazing is how it feels like they’ve tucked games within games. A section I just finished had gameplay quite different from anything I’d done up to then. And when I say “section” I don’t mean 10-15 minutes. It took me a few nights of playing to get through it. Wonderful stuff.

I had hoped by now to be covering the modding scene and things of that nature, but it looks like it’ll be a while before I get to that.

On the bright side, the modding community isn’t going as crazy as I thought it would. I installed the tools and took a quick look at them and they were somewhat daunting, so I’m sure modders are still getting comfortable with them. With luck by the time I finish plodding through the game, there’ll be some quality modules available.

One thing I’m not going to do, is rush through the game. I’m enjoying myself far too much to cut corners; I’m going to savor every minute.

In the meanwhile, it never hurts to check out the list that Bioware maintains.

I hope everyone is enjoying the game as much as I am!

Dragon Age is not perfect!

So I’m about 16 hours into my current game, with enough in other characters that I can probably safely say I’ve put 20 hours into Dragon Age: Origins so far. I’m growing ever more sure that this is my personal Game of The Year, which frankly surprises me given how much I enjoyed Infamous and Uncharted 2.

But no game can stand up to 20 hours scrutiny without revealing some imperfections and Dragon Age is no exception. Of course, no game is perfect. The title of this post is intended to provoke.

Anyway, here’re two things I’d like to see changed/added to Dragon Age: Origins.

First up, inventory. We’ve got a fairly limited amount of inventory space, and I’m not 100% sure why that is. Plus, there’s no way to put something down (unless I’m missing something); if your pack is full and you want to pick something up, you need to destroy something you’re carrying. When I’m in a large area with no vendors and no way out and my inventory fills up, it can be a little annoying. Granted there have to be some limits. But I hate that I’ll have to throw away, for example, a kite shield in order to make room for a silver ring.

Why not let us pile up extra gear somewhere in the corner of an area, so we can come back for it later (there could even be a chance that by the time we get back, someone or something will have rummaged through our loot).

As a sort of corollary to this issue, here’s a more controversial issue. I’d like to have a different inventory system. The way things are now, you get X inventory slots and every item (or stack of items) takes one 1 slot.

I get why they did this: to keep things simple. But Dragon Age isn’t a simple game. Now don’t be alarmed, I’m not calling for a “Tetris” inventory system. Rather, I’d assign a number of “burden points” to every carryable item, and then I’d give the party a set capacity for burden.

An example might make this more clear. Currently you start the game with 70 inventory slots. Instead of 70 slots, give the party the capacity to handle 700 encumbrance points worth of stuff. A ring would have an encumbrance value of 1. A shield would have an encumbrance value of 10. A plate chestpiece might have an encumbrance value of 20.

So now when you’re at capacity and want to pick up a ring, you can throw away a shield and get the ring and have some extra room to spare. Or you could throw away a salve and swap in the ring and still be capped. On the other hand if you find some plate armor you want to lug around, you’re going to have to make a number of sacrifices to fit that in.

Honestly that’s a “thinking out loud” idea. But I do think it’d be nice if we could drop items. This isn’t an MMO where we have to worry about lag from items being dropped by hundreds of parties, after all.

Until we get changes to the inventory system, you can head to Spinksville where Spinks talks about a mod that gives you some storage space in camp. That’ll at least help you squirrel away all those rings, statuettes, bottles of wine and other giftable finery you’ll pick up in your travels (but that each take up the same space as a piece of platemail).

Second, I have a feature request. I want a combat review camera. I love the combat system and I love the spectacle of combat. But I feel like I miss a lot of cool stuff because my back is turned, so to speak. This is particularly true while playing as a rogue, since you’re in the middle of battle and constantly moving to get in some back stabs. It may not be as bad for mages or other ‘back line’ characters.

Too frequently something will happen in a battle when I’m not looking. Suddenly two of my party will fall and I’m not sure what caused it. Or a Tactic condition will be met causing a mage to cast a spell that levels half our enemies and I’m not really positive which spell it was.

Enter the review camera. This gizmo lets you rewind time to the start of a battle and then gives you a free floating camera that lets you observe (passively…I’m not talking about a retry) the combat from whatever angle you feel is best. You can watch from the position of that enemy mage who lurked in the shadows until we sent our hound after him, for instance. Or you could just fly around the battle, watching it from all angles; maybe even add a feature so you could save “films” of epic battles in this way? Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to edit ‘combat films’ and then save them in an online album to show off to friends?

Anyway, that’s enough for today. Can’t wait for the weekend to arrive so I can put in more serious Dragon Age hours. Sneaking in 30-45 minutes on a week night is almost worse than not playing at all!