Options vs Momentum

Posted on June 13, 2011 by SynCaine

Whenever P2P vs F2P models get debated, the F2P crowd likes to point to the fact that most people will only pay one monthly sub at a time, which greatly limits how many games one can play in a given month vs how many you could play with the F2P model. Assuming you are someone who falls into that “one sub only” crowd, this is correct.

Yet while “more” is usually better, in the MMO genre I don’t believe that’s actually true, at least not when it comes to how many games you play at one time.

Generally, the more you get into an MMO, the more you play it. And the more you play, the more ingrained you become in the community, be it a guild or a server. This momentum is one of the reasons MMOs entertain us for far more hours than single-player games, and it’s also why almost everyone’s MMO highlights include others in them. Community and player interaction are the “secret sauce” of the genre (because lets be honest here, even the best combat systems and such in an MMO are, at best, decent by overall gaming standards).

Solo content and solo focus are two very different things. I believe any good MMO will have solo content, as being handcuffed to always play with others is not always ideal, and such things can actually lead to reduced player activity (the whole, log in, no one around, can’t do anything, log off cycle). Sometimes, you just want to zone out and do something quick and easy, and such content should exist. But that content existing is very different than that content being the focus. In recent themeparks, solo content has been the focus, especially before the level cap.

Solo content becomes the focus when it’s more optimal to do something solo than to team up. Horrible examples include WoW leveling, where it is actually harder to level with someone than solo, but anytime it’s NOT optimal to group up, that’s bad MMO design.

Mix the two together (F2P + solo focus), and is it any wonder guild, and especially server communities are so poor? And the downward spiral is easy to see as well: more people casually playing = more need for casual (solo) content = more of it = more player focus on it, etc etc. I fully believe communities reflect the content focus of any game, and the more solo/casual focused you become, the less community matters.

The golden solution would be to create a game that is both casual but also group/community focused, but things like player momentum still get in the way. At the end of the day, the MMO genre (in the traditional sense, not Farmville) is a somewhat ‘hardcore’ genre; it requires more time than others to really get to the best stuff, but as we know, the best stuff tends to be much better than what a solo game can provide. The more you get into something, the more you enjoy the fruits of your labor, and taking shortcuts to reach a goal always cheapens the satisfaction you get.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but at some point you have to make a decision: do you create a game that some players will love, or do you create one that many can hop in/out of. I don’t believe you can do both in this genre.

Posted in MMO design, Random, Rant, RMT | 5 Comments

Oh Bobby, you dumb gamer-hating puppet

Posted on June 9, 2011 by SynCaine

Linking to this because it’s hilarious.

Only thing better would have been for the EA rep to inform Bobby’s aid that the BF3 demo is for gamers only, and that he is not ‘elite’ enough to see it. Sell that for a buck.

Posted in Mass Media, Random, Rant | 20 Comments

Tarnished brilliance

Posted on June 9, 2011 by SynCaine

I’ve written about this before, but for some strange reason (solar flare?) it’s on my mind again today, so here we go. I hate Atlantica Online. I mean I hate it in that “I love you, I hate you, oh god I love you” Eminem kinda hate.

You see I think Atlantica Online is one of the best MMOs out in terms of design. Combat system? Awesome, fresh, deep, new (still, seriously how has no one copied this yet?). Graphics? Great, good style, runs really well. World design? Fantastic, classic stuff with twists, covers all the bases. PvP? Top-notch, be it 1v1 or guild vs guild, that perfect mix of player decision and character/gear influence. Extra stuff like the NPC arena, town bids, crafting, etc? Probably better than what your favorite MMO does. Payment model? Go kill yourself.

Atlantica Online is an oldschool F2P game.

And that makes it unplayable.

If all other F2P crimes were instantly wiped, I would still hate the model for Atlantica Online alone. It’s the epitome of why the F2P model (in the tradition sense, not in the LoL sense) is so horrible; because the better your game, the more F2P destroys it. I think the main reason this is not more front-and-center is because, quite frankly, most traditional F2P MMOs are garbage even before you factor in how the payment model actually affects gameplay, so you just don’t notice it that much. After all, the target audience for F2P games are people who just hop in, hop out and never actually take the time to care or look beyond the surface. I mean, how many blogs break down Farmville strategy or game design? Exactly.

It really is a shame, as I fully believe a relaunched, P2P Atlantica Online (or an updated clone) would be a huge hit in the west. Just rebalance things a bit to remove the influence of XP potions, lottery chests, and all the other F2P trash that affects design, and what’s left is one of the purest, most unique MMOs out, one that has some pretty damn good PvE for carebears, and one of the best guild vs guild PvP end-games around.

Again, just a total shame.

Posted in Atlantica Online, Combat Systems, MMO design, PvP, Rant, RMT | 11 Comments

Rift: How bad is the PvP?

Posted on June 8, 2011 by SynCaine

Rift PvP is bad. I don’t know if it’s historically “all time” bad, but it’s at least close. It has, more or less, nothing going for it. The warfronts are meh, the balance is off, and the entire end-game aspect of it is just terrible. Why games so focused on PvE continue to tack on PvP is beyond me, but with Rift it really is a total waste of dev time.

The warfronts: For starters, you get a grand total of four maps. Four. Warhammer launched with what, 20+? And that game was rushed out the door… Four is a low number, but if those four are great, it’s not that big an issue. The four in Rift are overall bad.

Black Gardens is, IMO, the best one, and it’s a very simple and straightforward map. Nothing super memorable, but nothing that screams terrible (really high bar we are working with here, huh).

The Codex: This one comes close, but the variables turn it into a formulaic map with basically one way to win. That the top point is worth more than the others means everyone rushing for it, and whoever controls it wins the vast majority of the time. While the actual fights around the points can be interesting due to the terrain, they play out too similar each battle, and come-from-behind wins are very rare due to how the points are balanced.

Whitefall Steepes: Remember how in WoW the most annoying thing about WSG was that it was a standstill and encouraged people to do stupid stuff like going in 1v10? Hey lets re-create that! Bonus points for making the middle ground larger to give the halfwits extra time to fight pointlessly in the middle. At least the match ends in 20 minutes or less, but far too often the map is a total campfest, and the whole design encourages cheesy soul combos just for this one map.

Port Scion: You finally made it to 50 and can now play the final, epic warfront. Surprise, its terribad! I swear Trion must have stolen the worst copy of Alterac Valley from WoW. Just so many things wrong with this map; from the main goal being totally ignored, to the snowball effect of the buffs (now nerfed, but still), to the quests the do more to distract people than encourage them to help out in a win. Port Scion should be used as an example in how NOT to design PvP, it’s that bad.

Bad maps are just the beginning though. If Rift nailed everything else, you would be left with two decent maps and could ignore the other two. MMOs have done worse.

You know what MMO history says about crowd control when it comes to PvP? It sucks. No one likes to get stunned, mezzed, disarmed, or whatever you want to call the effect of not being able to play your character. Not playing is not fun, shocker! Double suck kicks in when you get to watch yourself die when not playing. Yay. So hey, let’s release our game with a 12 second sheep, that someone can spam-cast. I’m sure that will be TONS OF FUN! Then go on to give most souls (but not all…) AoE CC in bunches, long-lasting single-target stuff, and massively inefficient anti-CC.

And the worst part of that? Even your own team hates you sheeping, because if they break it they feel bad, you get pissed, and now both sides are not having fun. Design 101 fail.

So we have rampant CC from specific souls, and since CC rules PvP, that’s how people spec. Now change it up and make CC worthless, but don’t change those souls, and watch as everyone suddenly turns super happy. Oh wait.

Let’s go for the bad design hat trick and introduce a specific stat for PvP that makes WoW look like 97 UO in terms of PvP. The way Valor is designed is staggeringly bad, in that it not only creates a massive gap between those with and those without, but turns those with into uber-tanks. Nothing says “I’m having fun now” when your giant axe wielding warrior charges a mage and bounces right off him, and then gets roasted in an AoE due to the damage amp and from the lack of actually being tanky.

Rift PvP is actually half-decent pre-50 in small bites, but it’s just terrible at 50 thanks to Valor. The difference is pretty shocking, and just highlights what a major mistake Valor really is.

I’d mention world PvP, but um… well this has been negative enough already.

At the end of the day though PvP in Rift is a total afterthought, and I doubt many would leave if it was completely removed. Which it should be, because continuing to try and bandage it together is just a waste of time, and I’m sure Rift players would much rather that time be spent on releasing PvE updates faster, or tuning souls with PvE in mind.

Trion has done a lot of things right, and created a very solid themepark MMO, which is perhaps why this total miss on PvP is so surprising.

Posted in Combat Systems, MMO design, PvP, Rift | 29 Comments

Rift: Today and tomorrow

Posted on June 7, 2011 by SynCaine

The release of the 1.3 update trailer seems like a pretty good time to give everyone here an update on my status with Rift, and the plans going forward.

The 1.2 update, quite simply, killed 5 man dungeons for Inquisition. What was once challenging but very doable content become faceroll speed runs, and after just a few days our core had seen enough. It’s just sad to face a boss that was once a fun encounter, and not only one-shot him, but watch as he just stands around harmlessly because the majority of his abilities have either been removed or nerfed so hard that you no longer need to react. How people find that kind of content ‘fun’ is beyond me, but then millions ‘play’ Farmville so there you go.

Having talked to some people in-game, it sounds like the 10 and 20 man content has, so far, escaped the loving embrace of ‘accessibility’, but as a guild we just don’t have the numbers, and our one attempt to work with another guild failed hard (WTB carrying people through content again). Our core however would like to see said content, and so our one real option is to join an existing raiding guild. I’m actually looking forward to this, not only to get back into the more regular raiding game, but to also worry less about having people online and more about just seeing content and improving my character and player skills.

Currently Rift is very hit or miss for me. On the one hand, its fun when things come together and it does what it does well. Its peaks are very enjoyable, no doubt. Not highlight reel MMO content, but still something to look forward to and log in for. On the other hand, its valleys are pretty low, in that “why care” way, which might actually be worse than that feeling of eternal grind. At least with eternal grind you log in and do it to reach another peak. When you don’t care, you log out. That’s killer.

There are some pretty serious holes in content chains, like why collect more crafting plaques through rifts/quests when everything for those plaques is meh? Great addition to add those rifts/quests, but then you leave the ultimate point unchanged? What? Or you add new expert rifts, but the rewards are still so poor that even half-geared characters are passing on drops? Really?

The problem Trion faces going forward is that they released a game that does little to surprise anyone, and so rather than riding the massive peaks, it gets held to a higher standard when it comes to the middle ground and the valleys. Dropping the ball, even on something as ultimately minor as weak rift drops, counts more because I don’t have “awesome content X” to make it all worthwhile like I would in other games.

DarkFall character progression might not be as smooth or streamlined as it is in Rift, but Rift has nothing that compared to a siege. Nothing, and it’s not even close. So my motivation to improve my DarkFall character is a lot higher, due to that upcoming siege, than it is in Rift and its upcoming 10/20 man raid. When that general feeling becomes the norm, things break down.

We’ll see just how joining a raiding guild goes, and what 1.3 and beyond bring.

Posted in crafting, Darkfall Online, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, Patch Notes, Rift | 19 Comments

M&B:W PoP army issue

Posted on June 6, 2011 by SynCaine

I’ve been playing a good amount of Mount and Blade: Warband (PoP mod) lately, especially with the newest version of PoP having fixed my last crashing issue. The game is pretty damn epic with everything maxed out, battle size set to 300, and number of corpses at 150. Blowout battles actually look, feel and play like massive confrontations.

I restarted from the previous game I was playing, and so far things have been interesting playing as a town and merchant raider. My honor rating might be low, but my treasury is looking very full indeed. I’ve got my set of companions, everyone is playing their role, they have the gear, all good. Solid progression in that area. I’ve also got a nice little 40-60 man band, mostly mounted, very mobile, and able to take out Lords with 50-80 troops or merchant caravans.

My issue, and this exists in vanilla as well as PoP, is that without joining an existing kingdom, I have no way to build up a long-term force. When I finally get a unit upgraded to a Hero Adventurer for example, I have no choice but to keep fielding him, rather than being able to put him away and save him for an important encounter. This makes progressing your overall force, to the point of taking out a castle, very difficult if not impossible.

Now granted, this is somewhat easily solved by just joining a kingdom, and I think I’m going to have to do that shortly, but it would be kinda nice to have some way to store extra troops for a big push and go straight into the personal kingdom game.

Unrelated side-note: The whole SW:sRPG and Origins thing? The biggest crime here is taking a once-great name (Origin) and using it for your Steam knock-off. Just shameless.

I also don’t get the blind faith by some that somehow, EA won’t use Origins for evil. Because, you know, EA is the pillar of good in gaming. Sure, Activision currently owns the “lets bend gamers over” crown, but EA has a pretty solid history in that department too.

Posted in Mount and Blade: Warband, Random, SW:TOR | 3 Comments

Consensual murder

Posted on June 3, 2011 by SynCaine

Is killing someone in a FFA PvP MMO a malicious act? Eliot Lefebvre’s Daily Grind post today asks if FFA PvP is a dealbreak in an MMO for people, and not surprisingly for most it is, but that one line stood out to me.

On the one hand, isn’t killing someone in a game like EVE/DF basically, well, playing the game? To an extreme, it would be pretty silly for a Quake player to ask why someone just shot him, right? From the start such games make it very clear what they are all about, so can you really feel bad for someone being surprised that they just got attacked? “Bank often” and “only fly what you can afford” are popular saying in each game for a reason.

On the other hand, aimless FFA PvP is also somewhat out of place in a virtual world. In Quake, everyone logs in just to shoot people in the face. That’s all the game claims to be, and all it is. A FFA PvP MMO is still an MMO though, and things like community and player interaction should still factor in.

One of DarkFall’s earlier design problems was that it was always better to kill a random player than to work with him in terms of profit. Not surprisingly, whenever you came across someone in the wild, you either went in to kill them, or you ran away because you knew they were going to come kill you. It was a rare day that two players would pass each other without someone pulling out a weapon. While very “play to crush”, it’s not a good system even in a FFA PvP MMO.

The problem was (somewhat) fixed by retooling the alignment system, and today players do sometimes pass each other without incident, or even work together in a dungeon. This, IMO, is a large step forward for the game. PKs can still go out and kill players, but at least now they have a slightly more significant penalty for doing so, and, far more importantly, blue players actually try to stay blue rather than going red and then just farming an alt for a few minutes to get back to being blue. Combine this with the retooling of the wardec system, and suddenly not EVERYONE in the world is looking to put a knife in your back (just most).

Not that this is anything new of course. EVE has had a good system in place for years now, and UO PvP peaked during the Dreadlord days.

But going back to the original line, I don’t believe attacking someone in a FFA PvP MMO is indeed a malicious act. If I jump you at a creep spawn when you are at 10%, that’s a smart move. The golden rule of PvP is, after all, if the fights fair, you already lost. I would never fault another player for jumping me. I should have been more aware of the situation, or went out with a buddy, or countless other ways to mitigate the risk. Same goes for a group attacking a solo player. Unless the situation is a pre-agreed duel, 5v1 is what happens out in the world. Expecting those five not to jump in is pretty foolish, and if when you go out with your four buddies, you all take turns attacking people, you are doing it wrong.

Posted in Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Mass Media, PvP, Ultima Online | 11 Comments

Delicious red drops of MMO community goodness

Posted on June 2, 2011 by SynCaine

What I object to is that in EVE the players with all the advantages are the leeches who pay nothing. In the F2P model the people who pay at least get some advantages over the people who leech. – Tobold

It’s an interesting take, and one that I 100% disagree with.

First, I’d never call the most successful EVE players leeches, as that’s just incorrect. In a sandbox, it’s that player base that DRIVES the content of the game. 0.0 stories? Yea, not driven by Joey Casual. Joey is also not planning a BBC-reported bank heist. Actually he’s not planning anything, he just shows up and does what his FC tells him to do. No FC, no goals for Joey. Now who’s leeching?

But maybe EVE is unique in this aspect, much like it is in just about all others. What about WoW?

That UI you enjoy so much? Yea, it’s not from Joey putting in the work. And no, it’s not from Blizzard either. A ‘leech’ created it. That dungeon you just completed? Thank a ‘leech’ for creating not just the dungeon guide you used, but the build you run and the guild comp you use. Because Joey Casual just logs in to collect his epics (once the content is nerfed down to his level).

Podcasts, web comics, and um, blogs: Joey Casual doesn’t creating a single one of em. The ‘leeches’ do. Forum posts that point out hard-to-find bugs, or imbalances, or lead to great additions? Joey, at best, just reads those sometimes.

Tobold is correct in that the F2P MMO model does indeed work in reverse. The more you play, the more you pay. Love an MMO so much that you want to see all the content and play it to the fullest? If it’s EVE, it’s going to cost you nothing. If it’s a traditional F2P game, enjoy paying $100s a month. Also enjoy knowing that while you do invest a lot of time/effort into the game, ultimately it’s your ability to spend money that determines how successful you are. I don’t know about you, but I feel like a real winner when I go to the store and buy a World Championship trophy to ‘proudly’ display at my house. Oh yes, real men buy accomplishments.

On a different level, which game would you likely get more into; the one you can eventually play for free, or the one that’s going to increase in cost the more you play? Now if we’re talking single-player games, I could care less. You want to blow $100s to collect all the Pokemon or whatever? Knock yourself out.

But MMOs are different, because they (should) emphasis community and player relations/interactions, and nothing crushes a community faster than everyone half-assing everything. The worse kind of MMO community is when everyone logs in once a week or less, and there is no continuation or momentum; just a bunch of random characters occasionally checking in and knocking something out before disappearing again. That’s so un-MMO it’s disgusting (remind me to blog about the whole “lets play five MMOs at a time” thing another day), and that’s EXACTLY what F2P encourages. “It’s free, hop in and out whenever you want, wheee” is just such a horribly unappealing sales pitch for an MMO. I want community, I want dedication, I want players who are INVESTED in the game. The more everyone around you cares, the more you care, and the better it just makes the whole thing.

Edit: Plus what exactly does it say about your game if your sales pitch is “Hey, we are fun for short bursts every now and then!” What’s that? SW:sRPG just called. Oh.

Casual and MMO don’t mix. They just don’t. At least not in the way I view an MMO. If your view of an MMO is an online collection of solo tasks and random names drifting across your screen that you occasionally get matched up with to roll over something as mutes, well, we are talking different genres. I don’t know what to call that style of game, but it sure as hell isn’t an MMO.

I like playing with the ‘leeches’. I like being around passionate players that drive communities and content forward. I like being around people who are invested, who care about what happens, and who ‘get’ what’s going on in the virtual world. It’s fun to log in nightly to pick up where you left off the night before.

That’s just me though, leeching away.

Posted in Blogroll, EVE Online, MMO design, Rant, RMT, World of Warcraft | 24 Comments

The Settlers 7 review

Posted on May 31, 2011 by SynCaine

Last week I picked up The Settlers 7 when it was on sale from Steam. I think the sale dropped it down to $25 or so. Right as I hit buy I felt a bit of regret, as I was unsure just how good the game would be (Settlers 6 was pretty terribad), and $25 or so is still enough that loading a game up once and hating it is a waste. I must say I’ve been pleasantly surprised so far.

A quick primer on the game: it’s an economy/building sim, with a few minor factors like combat thrown in. You place a cabin near some woods, create a lumberjack, he cuts the trees, the logs go to the sawmill, that turns the logs into boards, the boards are used to build other buildings or items. There are a dozen or more of these chains, some longer than others, some more critical than others. You “win” by getting and holding a certain number of victory points that are awarded for different things (total population, most territory, one-off special events, etc).

One feature that I immediately like about Settlers 7 is that each map is divided into lots of small sectors rather than being one giant area, and each sector has its own resources, size, and features. Some areas are great for farming, some for hunting, and others for mining. They are all large enough to build something, but never big enough to build everything. This forces you to make tough choices and attempt to balance things across each sector, taking travel time and building location into consideration. The name of the game here is efficiency, and the better your planning, the smoother everything runs. Run things smooth-enough, and you win.

The game runs like a dream on my system maxed out, and the graphics look very good. The style is very cartoony, but the detail is there and the animations and humor is pretty spot on. The only complaint I have is the lack of a V-sync option, which occasionally causes some tearing on my screen. It’s not major, but somewhat annoying, especially given how near-universal V-sync is. I’m guessing I can force V-sync through some Nvidia controls?

So far I’ve only completed the basic campaign, with the first 50% of which is a prolonged tutorial that introduces the difference concepts of the game. This is done well considering how deep The Settlers can get, as not only do you have a few dozen different items to manage, but also technology upgrades through the church, through the prestige system, and the expansive trade board. Along with the 10 or so mission campaign, there are numerous one-off missions, along with co-op and vs multiplayer. All in all there is a lot of total content here, whether you go the solo route or jump online (which I have yet to attempt).

There is a pretty deep “build a castle” mode with a silly number of options. You could literally spend an entire day just with that. The cool thing here is that the castle you build is the castle used in-game when you play, and every enemy has a different castle (total fluff, but still). Along with the castle editor, there is a map editor, though I have yet to open that up. Finally the version I got comes with all the DLC included, which is always nice. The game launches through a Ubisoft portal after Steam launches it, but so far I’ve had zero issue with that

I’d recommend the game if you think you might enjoy a different take on the RTS genre (although even calling it an RTS is a stretch, given how truly basic the combat is, but yea, it all happens in real-time) and like the building/economy parts more than the clicky-micro stuff. It very much has that “fun game” feel to it, while maintaining a high level of polish and AAA-ish qualities. I also suspect it would make a great co-op vs AI game for friends to play.

Posted in Random | 5 Comments

EVE explained, again, this time with vanity items included!

Posted on May 31, 2011 by SynCaine

I’ll give people that EVE is a complex game compared to other MMOs. But man, is it really that difficult to understand? It might be a game about spaceships, but it appears that some consider the mechanics on par with rocket science given how they talk about it.

I made my short post about the vanity item additions to EVE because, honestly, I assumed it was pretty self-explanatory. Queue the “assumptions” saying.

Let’s go over some basics before we jump into the deep end. The items are vanity-only, so CCP is not adding direct power to the game. We good here?  Not direct power.

Next, the items are not BoP, meaning they can not only be traded to other players, but they also now factor into the economic game. This is one of the +1 reasons for CCP’s shop over MMO X. In MMO X, when you buy a vanity item, the only in-game effect it has is it lets everyone know you enjoy standing in line for a $25 reskins. Helpful, perhaps, but not a huge impact overall. In EVE those who are into the trading game will have something else to factor into the profit equation, and how vanity items trade between the new currency and ISK should be interesting.

Finally, the all-important fact that so many either forget or ignore is that in EVE, items of power are not permanent. This simply can’t be left out when discussing the game, be it balance issues or vanity items. Case in point, this comment from Tobold’s blog (which always does a wonderful job of spreading EVE misconceptions):

on the other hand, there’s bugger-all i can buy in the LOTRO Store that’s going to advantage me with respect to other players – some pots, basically, and yet i honestly don’t know anyone who’s bought them. whereas, i purchase an enormous quantity of PLEX, and i *can* (given scarcity limits, already mentioned) buy my way to end-game Titan happiness.

In LotRO, or just about any other MMO, once you buy something from the cash shop you own it (or own it until the game takes it away, with things like temporary power boosts). It does not matter how many times you die, or how often you play poorly, once you buy that power item from the shop, you have that power forever (or until the company looks to cash in again by selling something even better). To make things worse, often that power is ONLY available in the cash shop, so not only is it permanent, it’s a simple choice of “buy or stay under-powered” (the degree of UP is another issue here, but lets ignore it for now). Even if CCP turns the vanity items into +stat items, players would still have the choice of paying cash or playing to earn them. That is a very, very important difference.

But going back to the quote above, it again highlights a major misconception that non-EVE players have about the game and just how PLEX/ISK works. Buying a Titan with PLEX is not only foolish, it would not get the player what they are looking for. You would NOT have end-game Titan happiness. What you would have is an expensive wreck shortly after you complete the purchase. Congrats, you paid a ton of money to play the role of a temporary loot piñata for some Corp in 0.0. Thank you, come again!

On a lesser scale, the same applies to quickly jumping into high-level missions in Empire, or going deep-end with the market. Simply put, the game will eat you alive before you even realize it, and all that “power” you buy goes poof until, wait for it, you L2P. And once you do, you start to realize just how much impact PLEX really has.

Posted in EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, PvP, RMT | 25 Comments