Dmosbon over at Construed has posted the first part of an interview with Matt Staroscik, Game Designer and Lead Writer for The Agency. The Agency is Sony’s upcoming spy-based action-MMO for the PS & PS3. Well worth a ready with your Sunday morning coffee.
Category: MMO
WoW am I ever tempted
This weekend is World of Warcraft’s 4th “birthday” and to celebrate it, anyone with an active account gets a baby polar Blizzard bear pet (as well as an achievement I guess…I don’t even get what the point of WoW achievements are).
This probably circles back to me not fitting into the “too old and too male” comments that sur- rounded Wizard 101, but I’m seriously tempted to re-activate my account just to get this little guy!! I’ve always been a sucker for non-combat pets in MMOs, for whatever reason. Probably the same reason I’m a sucker for non-combat pets in real life, I guess.
[SOURCE]
Back to EQ2
Last night I *finally* booted up EQ2 for a real gaming session. Sure glad I activated on Tuesday — one tenth of my monthly fee squandered! (See, that’s the mentality that a monthly sub causes in my cheapskate brain that a lifetime one doesn’t.)
Anyway, sheesh, talk about starting on a negative note. Let’s get on to the good stuff. My berserker’s hotbar was filled to the brim with 30+ skills that I no longer had a clue how to use effectively, so I started out by knocking some gray quests out of my journal. A few updates past, gray quests started giving Achievement Point experience so they’re actually worth doing now. I played for about three hours and never took on anything more dangerous than “green” but it was a good shakedown to get the kinks out.
The increased leveling speed was really noticeable. I made almost half a level by doing gray and green quests and killing gray and green mobs. My ‘zerker is a wisp of experience away from level 40 now. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I do like getting the rat pellets of new levels and abilities. On the other hand, I’ll always feel like I failed to reach cap (if in fact I do reach cap) “fairly.”
What really struck me last night, though, was how much “local knowledge” is contained in a long-running MMO. My berserker is in Angela’s guild (of course) with a few other old friends, and I was just listening to them talk and feeling totally lost. The shorthand lingo that gets used and the common knowledge shared makes the game really confusing for a “noob” and I’m essentially a noob who is starting at level 40ish. This isn’t even remotely an issue exclusive to EQ2; all MMOs have their own local dialect. I just usually return to MMOs guild-less and so am not immediately exposed to the lingo.
What also struck me is how much deep lore there is behind the game. I went to Butcherblock vi the Sinking Sands and saw a dude who had work for me, so I stopped to chat. Since I was alone I read everything he had to say, and he had a lot to say about the political climate of the main city in the area, what sorts of dangers I might face there, who the local tribes were, and so forth. I think I stood there for 10 minutes reading and re-reading until I’d absorbed all the info.
On the negative side of things, I’m not sure EQ2 does enough to put events and things in your line of site. They have a lot of “live events” that come with updates and patches, and whenever I’ve wanted to partake in them, I’ve felt like I needed to ask Angela where they were. That might just be laziness on my part (it’s easier to just ask her) but I’m not sure. But I just consulted her on how SHE learns this stuff and it sounds to me like she learns about stuff by reading the patch notes or surfing forums. I’m a firm believer in putting all the info a player needs IN THE GAME in such a way that most players will self-discover it. Use Town Criers or something in the main cities, near the banks, that sort of thing.
Last and trivial point in this wall of text. I took some screenshots, which you can see parts of in this post. These are the default quality screenshots and I think you’ll agree they don’t look great. I wonder how much bad press this has given EQ2, because the game looks pretty sharp when you’re actually playing it. I need to tweak the settings in order to get better screenies.
Oh, and one more last point. My crashing is gone; turning off multi-core support seems to have fixed it.
Tabula Rasa, RIP
Tabula Rasa is shutting down as of Feb. 28th.
Details here.
Upgrades and patches and crashes, oh my!
So last night, leaving work, I was like a kid the day before Christmas. Not one but TWO shiny new expansions awaited me at home. By the time I went to bed, I felt like a kid on Christmas afternoon who’d found that all those mysterious packages had held socks and underwear.
I first hit LOTRO to get Mines of Moria installed. I’d opted for the downloadable version of that, and had “pre-downloaded” and installed the expansion a few days earlier. When I got home, the servers were down for a hot fix, but I ran the client anyway and… it took two hours to convert the game to Moria! Urgh. Once that finished, I logged in (after sitting in a queue) and played “spot the differences” with the UI (which primarily seemed to surround traits). I’d read about the big combat changes but I didn’t really see anything markedly different, but then I’m no theorycrafter. I wanted to get EQ2 going so I logged out after a few moments.
Angela had run the updater for EQ2 for me in the afternoon, so no patching was necessary. I had to re-open my account, apply my key and off I went, back to Norrath. My Dire Bear was kind of cool, but not as cool as the higher level ones (my character is 38) and not as fast as my horse. And beyond that… nothing really. I can’t fault Sony; they’d made it clear that this expansion was for level 50+, but I figured I’d find *something* shiny and new to excite me, but not really. I did log in to find I had 153% of the experience I needed to level from some change made in the past. So as soon as I got a point of xp, I dinged to 39 and half-way to 40, so level 50 doesn’t seem out of reach.
But then I crashed. Silently and with no fanfare. The screen froze for a second and suddenly I was looking at my desktop. I rebooted the PC, just in case, and once Vista eventually lurched back to life I logged back in. Played for 20 or so minutes and bam! Another crash to desktop. No obvious cause…nothing that connected the two occurrences in my mind. When last I played EQ2 (this past summer) the game was rock-stable for me, so I dunno what’s up. I have updated my video drivers since then; maybe its the PhysX crap in the nVidia drivers? I started surfing the support forums, but by this time it was after 11 and I finally just said “To hell with it” and went to bed, dejected and rather cranky.
And woke up even crankier this morning. Tonight I get to check out the “New XBox Experience” which honestly doesn’t sound all that exciting, but we’ll see. I’m going to set EQ2 to use a totally default interface in case one/some of my mods are out of date and breaking that game. If that doesn’t fix it, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Probably let it set for a few days until I’m more in the mood to troubleshoot PC gaming. If it turns into a long-running diagnosis/fix attempt cycle I’ll just write off my return to the game as a bad idea and go back to Warhammer.
Ah well. At least its Ghost Hunters night!
BattleForge
There is a Battleforge beta, and I am in it.
That’s all I can say about my first evening in the beta without breaking NDA. But I can talk about what the game is, given that you could read about it in previews or on their website. Prior to a few days ago I hadn’t even heard of the game, that I can remember, but Fileplanet was giving away beta keys so I signed up. Figured the game could use some exposure.
Turns out that Battleforge is a mashup of MMO, RTS and CCG. Acronym soup! Mostly, the game is an RTS game, but what units you can create is determined by the cards in your deck. You create a deck in the same way you would in Magic or any other CCG. The MMO aspect comes in via a persistent meta-world (anyone remember Cavedog’s Boneyard…this seems similar). Within this meta-world you can choose from solo, co-op and pvp missions. By doing missions you earn more cards (I think??) which allows you to tweak your deck more.
It seems like a fun and interesting premise. I’m not sure what the cost is going to be, and in all honestly all I played last night was the solo tutorial mission, so I couldn’t significantly break the NDA even if I wanted to.
I’d like to say I’ll be playing a lot more of the beta, but with Moria and Shadow Odyssey both out today (and Amazon pulled through and the latter is expected to arrive today), Wizard 101 still begging for some attention, and Fable 2 still drawing me in regularly…I’m not sure WHEN I’ll play this one.
I’d say if you enjoy RTS games, it’d be worth signing up for the beta, though.
Update Week!
This week is going to be full of excitement, once we get through the typically dreary Monday.
Tomorrow, the first major Warhammer patch goes live, LOTRO: Mines of Moria launches, and EQ2: The Shadow Odyssey launches. I’ve got Moria pre-ordered and pre-installed but I have to wait for Thursday, apparently, for Amazon to get Shadow Odyssey to me. In between those 2 MMO expansions, Wednesday brings the “New XBox Experience” which should be worth an evening of playing with.
I am, frankly, more excited about Moria than I am about Shadow Odyssey. On the other side of the room, however, Angela can’t sit still, she’s so eager to get the latter, and she has zero interest in Moria or LOTRO. Moria brings 2 new classes and a level cap raise, along with lots of other stuff, not least of which is 2 more character slots/server. Odyssey is directed at casual level 50-80 characters, from my understanding, and since my highest level EQ2 character is 38…well you can see why I’m not that excited.
Still, more games to play than I have time for… I kinda hate the 4th quarter holiday rush of game publishers.
A Wizard is born!
Spent maybe an hour in Wizard 101, due to the influences of Ysh and through her, Tipa. Well, honestly I’m not *quite* that easily swayed…it’s a game I’ve heard some low-level but positive buzz about for a while. These blogs just pushed me over the edge.
So far its pretty much what I expected in tone, but the combat system is actually more interesting than I thought it’d be in one particular way. Combat is turn-based (card based, really) but it takes place in the world. For some reason I assumed I’d be whisked off to a private battlefield when it got time to fight, but no. And other people can jump into your battle if they happen to be running past. That’s pretty neat. No need to form a party or anything…just stand on a caster’s circle and start fighting. In the same way, additional mobs can jump in.
Anyway, I’ve barely scratched the surface. But checking it out is easy enough…no need to pay for anything until you’ve learned about the basics of the game, and the client is quite lightweight, so no need for an hour of downloading, either. So if you’re curious, check it out.
I’m actually most confused about how to pay for it, if I choose to stick with it. I can pay $10/month, or I can buy crowns and pay for access in crowns, but how many crowns that’s going to cost me is pretty unclear. But I think I’ll just play for free for a bit longer before I fret too much about that.
MMO devs need to be Left 4 Dead
Last night I played through the Left 4 Dead demo again, mostly to make sure I’d given it a fair shot. I still don’t think I want to spend $60 to kill endless hordes of zombies, but I did come to appreciate some other aspects of the game.
During the hype-storm we learned a lot about L4D’s “AI Director” system. This system modulates the game experience in real-time. If you’re getting your arse handed to you, the number of baddies will abate a bit. Conversely, if you’re sailing through effortlessly the AI Directory will spawn more enemies to make the game a little more difficult.
It’s hard to quantify these changes in a game with as many enemies as L4D, and more so in the course of a 2 level demo played twice, but let’s assume this was working as intended. It felt like it was. I performed a lot better during my second try but the game didn’t feel any easier. But what I *can* quantify is that the experience was different in two play-throughs.
For instance in my first session, I ran into what I assumed was a “mini-boss” character in the subway. This massive creature came crashing through the wrecked subway car using the ‘terrain’ intelligently and provided a good challenge and change of pace. If felt like an “Encounter.” The second time through, I approached this intersection carefully, waiting for the boss. And he wasn’t there. In fact I didn’t encounter him at all in the second run through the levels, though I did encounter another “hero zombie” that I hadn’t the first time. Additionally ammo caches showed up in different places and the zombies came from different directions.
Which leads me to the title of this post. How cool would it be if MMO devs could incorporate this system into our favorite online games? Both in terms of scaling the difficulty of an area based on player concentration, but more so in having random bosses roaming around providing “Encounters” at unexpected times? Some games do a little of this: think of resource spawns, or random chests that you might come across out in the world.
I’m imagining an instanced dungeon that could be done by 1 person or 10. Obviously the loot drops would be better when 10 players took it on, but a solo-er could at least go in and have fun and experience the storyline of the dungeon. And every time through could be a little different in order to keep players on their toes.
I’m also imagining random Encounters that are self-contained quests. Your party is out questing when you unexpectedly run into some strong mob. If you can defeat him, you get some quest experience (maybe an NPC runs in to reward you or whatever) and loot, same as if he was a fixed Quest. But he isn’t…the next time you pass through this area, he isn’t there. I’m not suggesting a whole MMO built around this: set-pieces are part of the fun of an MMO. But I’m thinking of these as an addition to what we play now.
I also was once again impressed by the AI of my NPC party members, and it’d be interesting to see more MMO devs follow the Guild Wars example of allowing us to hire some extra muscle to fill out a party. I understand there’s a delicate balance between helping the MMO experience and essentially destroying it by letting everyone just hire NPCs rather than grouping. But wouldn’t it be nice to hire a healer (or tank, or whatever) rather than standing around with 4 friends yelling “Looking for Healer for BigBadInstance!” for half an hour?
Warhammer in my world
I’m going to leave the taxonomy for now. I had a rough evening and morning (had my identity stolen and dealing with banks and such, but oops, banks are closed) so I’m going to be self-indulgent today.
My Warhammer account has a week left before I have to take a break. The downside to the break is, well, not playing. The upside is lots of shiny goodies when I return, I hope. So what are these goodies? I dunno, but I know what I *wish* they’d be. So here’s my list of desired Warhammer changes.
This is a list born of selfishness and I’m sure lots of people will take strong exception to it. I get that, and if I ruled the world, I still might not make these changes because I don’t want to break the game for others. I’ve also not let practicality get in the way of my dreams, as you’ll see.
1) More social mobs. I’m sick of (at low tiers at least) being able to pick off enemies one by one, while their friends stand there and watch them die. I want to (sometimes) face crowds of weaker enemies. Y’know what game does this really well? NCSoft’s freebie, Dungeon Runners. You’re always disappearing under a mass of enemies in that game, only to eventually emerge victorious. Instead of a single even level skeleton, send 6 or 7 of them a couple levels lower, and let me go crazy and send bodies flying in every which way. THAT feels powerful. Similarly, there are very few “skill pulls” in the solo PvE stuff. I’d like to have to rely on my smarts now and then when I need to attack baddies.
2) Shuffle the world!! Twenty-four zones sounds like plenty, right? But to me at least, it feels small, and I think it feels small because we have three nice neat corridors, with an entrance at one end of each zone and an exit at the other. Connections between tiers via teleport (essentially) makes it all seem very disconnected. Let’s change things up, make the world messier and more chaotic.
3) Eliminate scenarios. *ducks and runs away*
4) More “fluff”. Non-combat pets, housing, social gear (take the trophies and make them more obvious, maybe?). Just stuff to futz around with when you don’t feel like fighting but do feel like being in-game to hang out with your guild.
5) More PvE Quests. There’s enough now, but barely. Some Epic PvE quests would be fun…long term collection stuff, maybe. Put some of the objectives in the RvR Lakes, to get people out there now and then. Some “lever” quests (I just made up that term). What’s a lever quest? It’s a quest where one step “pulls a lever” to set something in motion that will impact other players. DAoC had some quests that caused mobs to attack a town. Everyone would have to stop their buying and selling and fight off the attack. WoW has stuff like Stitches. Actions that indirectly involve other players remind us all that we *aren’t* in a single player game. Beating back these attacks tend to bind players together. Common cause and all that.
6) More open RvR at all levels. Right now you can totally skip the RvR Lakes. My assumption is that the game is built that way so that PvE players can play and not engage in Open RvR. But really, as a PvE Only game Warhammer isn’t incredibly compelling. I do think that it needs better PvE for long-term success, but until then, RvR is the big hook that makes Warhammer stand out. So dammit, force people to cross those RvR Lakes now and then. Have the Lakes stretch clear across a zone, with a few chokepoints where players will naturally congregate. Put moving quest rewards out there (static rewards would get camped by the enemy, probably). Do something to get people (including me, frankly… I haven’t done any RvR since before Witching Night) out there.
7) More bag space, please. If we have to pay for it, that’s fine. But as someone who hates to leave corpses laying around causing lag (that’s old school, huh?) I get really sick and tired of spending as much time futzing with inventory as I do playing the game. If not more bag space, then fewer types of crafting resources.
8) Add a third realm. Hey, I don’t ask for much, do I? LOL
9) Give me a Lifetime Membership option
10) Reader’s choice!
Yeah, I’m not coming up with a #10, so I’ll leave it to others to add to the list. I told you it was selfish. I get 9 and you get 1.