Category: Gaming

Time, value and scorn

Posted on by Nimgimli

I argue with MMO bloggers a lot. Maybe I’m just old and set in my ways, but so much of what these youngsters say just rings so false to me…

One topic to always get me embroiled in an all-day rasslin’ match is this concept that most MMO publishers are just out to fleece their customers and they make MMO’s full of un-fun time sinks so that people will play longer and so keep subscribed.

I don’t agree with this argument. If the activities that bloggers refer to as “time sinks” aren’t fun to the players, then why don’t the players leave the game? Why stick around if you aren’t having fun? Anyway, I’ve argued that argument until I’m blue in the face. Not going to do it again, life is too short.

In fact, I’m throwing in the towel and I’m going to AGREE with these bloggers, but on condition that they cast their nets wider. It isn’t the MMOs are full of time sinks. GAMES are full of time sinks.

This struck me when I was reading In Praise of the 3-Hour Game (doh, no stretch there.. I sure can make mental leaps, eh?). In it, Wired’s Clive Thompson suggests that most (narrative driven) games are bloatware and shouldn’t run more than 4-5 hours. The argument goes that games cost a lot to make, so you have to charge $60 for them, so you have to fill them with time sinks to stretch out how long they take to play so that players feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth.

For the record, I don’t totally agree with Thompson either, but I agree with him more than I do with the bloggers. When I’m grinding levels in a Final Fantasy in order to take on the next boss, all I’m doing is grinding levels. Nothing unexpected is going to happen. Nothing else in game is going on. Compare that to grinding levels in an MMO. I never know what’s going to happen next. Maybe someone is going to come running past any minute, in need of help or something. And I’m probably talking with guildies or friends while I’m grinding, so even if nothing unexpected happens I’m still having a pleasing conversation.

In either case, people are paying to do time sinks. Either at $15/month, or with that big fat $60 fee up front. If the basis of the argument against time sinks is that time sinks aren’t fun, and we’ve established that both single and mmo games are full of time sinks, then why do we find games fun in the first place?

I mean, any non-gamer would tell you the entire game is a waste of time and a ‘time sink.’

I could do into this some more, but I have to go grind a couple more levels in Star Ocean: First Departure before I can take on the next boss. And y’know what? I’m really looking forward to playing after the day I’ve had.

# # # End gaming discussion # # #

To my friends: A while back I was apologizing about being so negative and all that and mentioned that my mom wasn’t doing too well. A few of you expressed concern, and that was very much appreciated. I just wanted to post a quick update. It’s been an on-going struggle since, as we’ve tried to motivate her to take care of herself. Funny thing I’ve learned. If a person is lucid, you can’t force them to help themselves. We’ve been trying like crazy to get her to check herself into the hospital but she wouldn’t. Then today she fell (not for the first time) and hit her head (the first time). Thank goodness someone happened to be there, and an ambulance was called, and now mom is *finally* in the hospital getting some medical attention. Tests will be run; they think she may have pneumonia, or worse (her white blood cell count is way low – she’s smoked like a fiend for close to 70 years…draw your own conclusions) but at least they have her eating and drinking.

I know it sounds weird to be ‘celebrating’ my mom landing in the hospital, but it feels like such a relief. She’d gotten to where she would choose not to answer the phone, and every time I called I’d get to worrying that she’d fallen or had just passed away and was laying there, or hoping she’d just decided she didn’t feel like talking to anyone (you wonder where I get my crankiness…the apple don’t fall far from the tree!) Thank goodness an old high school friend lives across the street and he’d check on her for us. I’m far less worried with her IN the hospital than I was when she was OUT of it.

Spellborn Quick Tip: Chat Filters

Posted on by Nimgimli

If you’re anything like me, one of the first things you do when you start an MMO is turn off the “General” chat channels. Nothing breaks immersion like the on-going bitch-fest that is General Chat which happens in every single MMO I’ve ever played. In Spellborn, this constant bitching and epeen displaying happens in Zone Chat. Getting rid of it is a little tricky.

To the right of the chat entry window is a little ‘bubble’ icon. If you click on that you get a bunch of chat options, including filters. You can untick Zone chat, and you’d think you’d be done. You’d be wrong. What you’ll see now is the same chat with a warning:

[POST EDITED BECAUSE PEOPLE TAKE THINGS TOO LITERALLY]

Zone: Player1: So psyched for BSG finale tonight! (warning, channel not active)
Zone: Player2: I love that show! (warning, channel not active)
Zone: Player3: Where can I find Young Bears? (warning, channel not active)
Zone: Player2: I need Young Bears too! (warning, channel not active)
Zone: Player4: What’s BSG? (warning, channel not active)

And so on. Clearly the game REALLY wants you to see the Zone chat. So what you have to do is, under that same pop-up chat widget, pick “New Channel” (which really means “New Tab”). On the old tab, re-enable Zone Chat, then move to that new tab, and set your filters accordingly (ie, untick Zone Chat there). Your preferences will be respected in your new chat tab, as long as “Zone chat” is un-filtered in another tab (which you can blissfully ignore).

Now you can enjoy the lore and the magic of Spellborn without all the asshats breaking your immersion!

The Circle of Life??

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ve been feeling a bit glum about the state of gaming for the past few months, and I just need to get this out in the open on the off chance someone out there feels the same way I do. Just to be really clear, this post isn’t about Massively Multiplayer Games, for reasons which should quickly become apparent.

When I was, oh, 13 or so, I got really hooked on wargames, mostly those produced by SPI. I couldn’t wait for every new issue of Strategy & Tactics to come so I could see what new game was bound inside. There was just one problem: I had no one to play against. I grew up in a rural area and my friends were more interesting in going hunting or fishing than in playing any game that had more than a page of rules. I could coerce them into a game of Monopoly on a rainy day, but that was as complex as they were willing to go.

So I made up all kinds of systems for playing wargames solo. When D&D launched, I started rolling up characters for it, drawing maps, creating dungeons…none of which were ever played. I aced my senior high school English class when I wrote a paper called “On Creating a Consistent Universe” which was based mostly on my D&D campaign creating. (This was before you could just buy a campaign.) But D&D was way WAY too ‘out there’ for my friends to grok. It was something I hid from them, in fact.

I wasn’t alone in this predicament, and as I hit my late teens S&T started running articles and questionnaires about the possibility of somehow using personal computers to act as the AI. I was fascinated by the possibility, but it took a few more years beyond then before Atari brought out the Atari 400 and I scrounged up enough extra $$ to buy one. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the quarter-century or so since then, I’ve played a *lot* of computer (and later video) games. I took (and take) great joy in the fact that I could sit down anytime and fire up a game. No longer was it all about waiting for a rainy day to find someone so bored that they’d actually play a board game. I could finally experience D&D, after a fashion, when SSI grabbed the license and started producing the “Gold Box Games.”

But lately, things are changing. More and more, games are moving away from being single player activities. Shooters come out with shallow single player campaigns and rich multi-player components. Resident Evil is designed to be played Co-op, Left4Dead is designed to be played with a party of 4. I loved the first Lost Planet, but the next one is going to emphasize co-op mode.

I was looking forward to deeper, smarter AI, but instead, AI is getting pushed aside in favor of multiplayer (both vs and co-op). It feels like single player gaming is a dying activity.

And that’s damned depressing. I still don’t have friends who’re interested in gaming, really. Not because they’re hunting and fishing now. It’s more because they’re just too damned old to be bothering with games. They’ve got kids to put to bed and American Idol to watch, dammit! And frankly, I don’t *want* to play with other people. I’m old and curmudgeonly and hate like hell to be held to someone else’s schedule or pacing. I’m a crotchety old man, dammit. You kids get offa my yard!

But I feel like I’m pushing counters around again, only this time there’s no way to fudge things. Resistance: Fall of Man was an excellent shooter. Resistance 2 is an ok shooter with great multiplayer. Killzone 2 has an ok single player and terrific multiplayer. RE 5 I mentioned. And of course there’s all kinds of interesting MMO worlds being created.

The one saving grace I have is that I probably have enough single player games stockpiled to last me the rest of my gaming life, literally (I figure at best I have 15-20 years before something deteriorates far enough that I can’t game). But those stockpiled games aren’t all good, and a lot of them are already showing their age. By 2019 they’re going to be ancient, as will be the hardware that can run them!

I sure wish there were more people like me left. People who like just ‘curling up with a good game’ without it having to become a big social outing full of trash talking and pauses for another round of beers. I want to get lost in the games I play, become part of the world I’m playing in, and that’s hard to do when there’s the garbled static of someone yammering in your ear. But the developers aren’t interested in my demographic. They’re interested in the endless hordes of youngsters who’re only interested in gaming together.

Rest in Peace, Single-Player Gaming!

Combat in Chronicles of Spellborn

Posted on by Nimgimli

Tonight I’m going to try to puzzle out how combat works in The Chronicles of Spellborn. Again, there’s a healthy amount of speculation on my part in this post. The game is growing on me now that I said to hell with frantically jumping around and instead am focusing on using skills and moving a little bit. I think there’s a happy medium where I won’t take too much damage, and also won’t feel too frazzled. Oddly someone in chat said “I’ve been wanting an MMO that played like Oblivion.” and I realized that’s kind of what this combat system is like. (Oooo, I just thought of something…I wonder if there’s a way to play with a gamepad!!?) Somehow, that got me to approach it differently!

Anyway, more on combat.

combat1

This is the top left corner of the screen. The mouse cursor isn’t picked up in screenshots but I’m hovering over those 3 small bars, and the bluish window is the pop-up help window for it.

The red behind the character name is health. The yellowish green circle is my Fame Level (5) and the smaller circle is my current PeP level (1). The orange, purple and green bars are Physique, Morale and Concentration, all of which are at +1. I’m pretty sure that +1 is from having PeP level 1. You can read the pop-up text to see what these do for you. All three of these stats are pretty fluid in combat, as we’ll see.

combat2Here we have a sample skill from my skill book. The cursor is hovering over the skill name (Swift Kick) resulting in the pop-up. We see it’s a short range “Maneuver” skill that deals “calculated” damage.

I’m skipping the “Legal Sigils” because I still have no clue about Sigils!!

At the bottom of the pop-up we learn what a “Maneuver” skill does:  every time we connect with a Swift Kick, our Concentration goes up one (which means, from looking at the image above, that our attack speed increases by 5%, assuming a smooth increase per point of Concentration. If we try to plant a Swift Kick and miss, our Concentration, and attack speed, drops by 5%.

We also learn that Calculated damage means that if my Concentration is higher than the mob’s, I’m going to do increased damage. Not sure how much increased, or if that’s a sliding scale or a flat bonus.

combat3Here’s another skill, Break Defense. This one is a Burst skill. Burst works the same as Maneuver, except here it’s Physique that goes up and down, rather than Concentration. Physique increases movement speed. Having a nice high Physique is great for speeding away from battles going poorly!

Break Defense does Piercing damage, which has nothing to do with our 3 Status Attributes but instead bypasses resistance and affinity values of the target. What’s an affinity value? No clue yet!

combat4 This series of shots just shows what the icons on the right of the skill listing indicate. The first indicates that Break Defense uses the Body attribute. As player gain levels, they get points they can put into 3 attributes: Body, Focus and … um, Will maybe? Persumably, this skill being tagged Body means it gets stronger as you put points into the Body attribute.

combat5The second icon indicates that this is a melee skill.

combat6The third icon indicates the magic type for this skill. Honestly, I don’t understand this one at all. I don’t *think* my character has a magic rating? This one has me really puzzled.

The 4th icon, with the number, is the cooldown time.

skilldeck This, by the way, is what the skill deck setup window looks like. Corrections to yesterday’s post, clearly you have have 5 skills per row (or Tier as they’re more properly called) and eventually 6 Tiers in total.

As of now, my character has 3 Tiers of 3 Skills. I don’t yet have 9 skills (I’m adding them very slowly as I try to understand what I’m doing) so I put Shoot in twice, once in slot 1,3 and once in slot 3,3. In theory I could Shoot, Battle Cry, the Shoot again, but in practice I rarely have that much time before I enter melee, so that second “Shoot” is something of a wasted slot.

One of the challenges is going to be distinguishing the icons. At a glance, a lot of them look pretty similar in the heat of combat. At least to my tired old eyes. Younger folk will probably have an easier time of it, but this gets me wondering if the UI is “modable” and if so if someone might make some cleaner skill icons.

Well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. The game has grown on me a lot in my past 2 play sessions as I started playing it *my* way instead of the way that the drones shouting on Chat were telling everyone to play. Rapid circling might be more efficient, but it isn’t as much fun for me.

I’m already thinking about how I need to re-arrange my Skill Deck as I write all this and stare at that image.

When it launches, my understanding is that the Spellborn client will be free to download and some initial segment of the game will be free to play. I hope everyone interested in MMOs will at least give it a chance, because it *is* something at least a bit different from the standard DIKU MUD system everyone is getting tired of.

Blogger flockers

Posted on by Nimgimli

I find it interesting, and by that I mean sometimes fascinating, other times depressing, how MMO bloggers seem to travel in packs at times (and I’m pointing at myself just as much as at others). The past week or two, Runes of Magic seems to be the place to be. For a while it was Wizard101. Then of course it was the WAR -> WOW transition.

Why do we travel in packs like this? RoM isn’t news…it’s been in open beta since December. The WAR thing made sense; it was a brand new game and everyone was curious. Ditto those in Darkfall now. And the bunch of folks going into CoX to play together is different, too. That’s a bunch of friends looking for a game they all feel like playing.

I’m talking more about this hive-mind mentality that suddenly some MMO that’s been cooking along is the kewl place to be, even though the various bloggers playing don’t seem to be actually playing together.

It’s just weird, and for some reason tonight, it really kind of bugs me. I guess because I don’t understand it..it’s a mystery I can’t unravel. Why Runes of Magic, now? The game’s been in open beta since December and no one deemed it worthy of a second glance until the last couple of weeks. Now suddenly its The New Thing. Why? What changed?

It baffles me. I hate stuff that baffles me… 🙂

Peggle mania

Posted on by Nimgimli

Peggle, the PopCap pseudo-pachinko casual addictive-as-heck hit, has been available on the PC for a good long while, but last week it came out on the Nintendo DS, and this week it hits XBox Live Arcade.

It’s an incredibly fun game and I urge everyone to give it a go, but is it a casual game, or is it hardcore?

Wired asks just this question in Getting Lucky: Hard-Core Gamers Penetrate Peggle’s Physics.

It’s an interesting read for both Peggle enthusiasts and armchair (or for-reals) game designers. Quick quote to get you warmed up:

For a casual gamer, Peggle seems too heavily based on luck. You aim the ball, but once you’ve dropped it and it hits the first peg, all bets are off: It bounces and careens through the forest of pegs in crazy, zigzagging patterns. For casual players, there doesn’t seem to be a clear enough correlation between how they aim and the results.

But hard-core gamers see the game quite differently. When they look at the Peggle board, they see the Euclidean geometry that governs how the ball falls and pings around.

Time to retire guilds?

Posted on by Nimgimli

A lot of bloggers spend a lot of time talking about how the mechanics of MMOs need to be refreshed. The level grind, the loot systems, the payment model, whatever… basically a lot of thought is put into how these games might be improved by the enthusiasts who play them.

I wonder if its time we look at the social aspects. Particularly, guilds. Depending on the MMO, being in a guild can range from pretty helpful to crucial. And on the face of it, guilds seem like a good thing, right? A way to meet people and make friends.

But the flip side is the guild drama. In the past few weeks I’ve heard from several different friends about guild drama implosions in each of their (different) guilds. In all cases this has created a lot of bad feelings for the people involved. In each case, these have been guilds of mature, lucid people who I know to be good-hearted individuals. And yet their guilds fractured amid much drama.

Why do these games try to force us into large guilds? Such groupings aren’t natural. We live in a culture of small, liquid groups. Outside of our jobs, what other activities do we, as adults, partake in that requires us to bind ourselves with large groups of people to work shoulder to shoulder with them? The only think I can think of are team sports, and those are generally small groups of people.

Outside of a game, when’s the last time you gathered in a group of 25-100 people to the extent of labeling yourself as a Member of this group and interacting directly with all members of that group. I’m not talking about “joining” a gym or a church. In instances like those, you aren’t directly interacting with all members of that group.

Guilds were a fine idea when we were all 15 or 20 and had endless time for playing games and no other pressures on us. But as the gaming population gets older, we by nature get less flexible as the matrix of our lives grows more complex. Free time grows more precious to us. Political views solidify. We develop Ideals.

The idea that I can find a group of 25-150 people that I can get along with day to day in a specific leisure-time activity is, frankly, ludicrous. I’d feel really really fortunate to find a dozen such people. I’m not saying there aren’t 150 people I can get along with in my social circles. I’m saying there aren’t that many people doing the specific activity (ie, game) in the specific place (ie, server) that I am.

I’m not talking about abolishing grouping or raiding. But I think a better system would involve allowing players to form small-scale long term groups (essentially friend-lists on steroids) and then allow those “micro-guilds” to come together for the purpose of accomplishing a specific task, then going their separate ways.

I realize nothing prevents this from happening now. But game developers could build in better tools for aiding this kind of short-term aggregation. It might be as easy as re-working the “looking for group” into a “forming a raid” system where you could list your group in the window and a raid leader could build a raid by inviting a selection of groups that fit the raid’s needs.

I admit I’m pretty biased in this, as I’m not very social to begin with. But it bothers me to see my friends being upset because of guild drama/implosions, and I don’t think we’d have this kind of drama if games weren’t developed in such a way as to favor large guilds over small ones. Let people form Friendships based on, well, LIKING each other’s company rather than on needing more warm bodies to fill out a raid.

Let’s place the value on the strength of the relationships between players, rather than on numbers alone.

Breaching the gap

Posted on by Nimgimli

So it’s Friday. My daily post for IT World is written. Guinea pig houses are cleaned. Shopping done…in short, all my chores are done. Time for some gaming. But what to play?

I have no clue. And this has become a pattern in my life; one that I’m not sure how to break.

There’s a kind of inertia to my game playing, I’ve found. Once I pick up a game, I can enjoy the heck out of it as long as I keep playing it. But once I take a break, my focus drifts and I start gazing at new gaming horizons with a feeling of longing. And that’s a problem these days.

Let me back up a little. My fulltime job runs 36 hours/week these days. I divvy that up as 4 9-hour days, Mon-Thursday. Then I have my blogging job, where I’ve committed to 1-2 posts/day for IT World during the week. So in theory, Friday I have a couple blog posts to write, but otherwise Fri-Sun is me-time (of course that isn’t always true…both jobs sometimes slop over into weekends)

So assume I’m really enjoying a game over a weekend. Then I hit Monday when I have both jobs to do. By the time I get to the gaming part of the day its often after 10 pm and sometimes as late as 11. I still squeeze in a bit of whatever game I’m playing though. Ditto on Tuesday. But usually by Wednesday and Thursday, the fatigue of the work week has built to the point where I just don’t have the energy to keep going so late, so I don’t get any gaming in on those days.

By Friday, it’s been a couple days since I’ve done any gaming, and four since I’ve really been deeply immersed in the last game I’m playing. My inertia is shot to heck as I’ve been hearing all kinds of interesting gaming news for a week, while not ‘reinforcing’ my habit of playing my current game. Does that make sense?

So I’ll feel like starting something new, but at the same time I know I have 2-3 days before the cycle starts all over again. And I find it really hard to return to a game I’ve started and put down in the past. That shiny new game smell has worn off (I’ll be past all the tutorials but won’t really remember all the nuances of how to play, or in the case of an RPG I won’t remember the story or what I was supposed to be doing to finish whatever quests I’m on.)

Often I’ll end up watching TV or reading rather than playing. And then at the end of the weekend feel like I’ve squandered my time because I didn’t get any good gaming in.

I’m not sure what the solution is to this problem, but what’s more interesting is wondering if this “gaming inertia” is something unique to me, or if others experience it too. I kind of think they do, because I’ve seen people who’ve been fanatical MMO players forced to take a break for a few days (for a business trip or family holiday, say) come back and no longer have any urge to play the same game that was driving their lives before the break.

I guess what I need is for developers to start designing ‘bite-sized’ games that still offer a lot of depth. I know there’s a big debate over game length, but frankly I’d rather have a great 15 hour game that I could finish over a weekend, than have an 80 hour epic journey that I’m never going to finish, or even get into the real meat of.

What about you? Can you set a game down for a long period of time and pick right up where you left off, or do you suffer from a gaming inertia problem, too?

Ys Online – Call of Solum (MMO)

Posted on by Nimgimli

Years and years ago, I popped a CD — very cutting edge technology for gaming at the time — into my TurboDuo and thus discovered the magic of Ys.

Now mind you, that was in 1832 or thereabouts, so I don’t remember it well (OK actually it was 1992 or so) but I remember loving the game. Since (and before) then there’s been a bunch of Ys titles (including a current version for the DS, Legacy of Ys: Books I & II) but up until now I’ve never gone back. You can’t go home again and all that…

So maybe that’s why I was totally unaware that there was an Ys MMO: Ys Online – Call of Solum. It has apparently been live in Japan for some time, and is now being brought to Europe by KeyToPlay, where it has just entered closed beta.

Unfortunately there is no indication that anyone has picked up the title for a North American release. If any of my European readers gets a chance to play, I hope they’ll share their thoughts (assuming any NDAs allow that, of course).

Maybe I need to order that DS version. Or just dig out the old TurboDuo!!
yso_logo

More for Spore: API now available

Posted on by Nimgimli

How’d this one slip past us all?

Maxis releases ‘Spore’ API, contest

Electronic Arts has released a “Spore” API, which for the first time will make it possible for fans of the hit evolution game from legendary game designer Will Wright to create their own applications.

And if you’ve got a hankering to get started making some neat new Spore apps, Maxis has you covered: Spore API. Or you might even want to enter into a contest to win fame and fortune (actually, an unspecified NVIDIA graphics card).