Playing to not have fun

Posted on April 13, 2010 by SynCaine

Hey look, someone finally tried an MMO near-everyone has been telling him to try. Of course, going into an MMO with the “I won’t be here long” mentality is like going into a restaurant right after you just ate a huge meal, thinking to yourself “man this place better be awesome, because I’m stuffed”, but yea. And of course, going into anything looking to spot the imperfections rather than, wait for it, just have fun, is likely to result in not much fun had. Shocking.

And right on schedule, day two brings us the whole “EVE Offline” argument, which should surprise no-one with some basic knowledge of said player. EVE offline is not the problem of course, the player is. If you want to pay for an account, buy yourself enough cash to make the first few months of expenses trivial, and then not actually play the game beyond a Farmville level, that’s kinda your choice. You can also just save yourself some waiting and buy an advanced pilot, just like you can buy an advanced character in any other MMO to skip ahead and get to whatever you think is ‘the good stuff’ (only difference here being that your bank account won’t be raped by some ‘reputable’ 3rd party). Now me personally I like to have fun when I’m playing a game, but if chasing a progress bar is your thing, go for it. Just don’t forget to correctly lay the blame when you step away and cry “no fun” later.

Also somewhat comical is the talk of the ‘optimal’ path, without the identifier that it’s the optimal path for a veteran player and not someone new. Yes, maxing out your learning skills is the best thing to do to ultimately have the highest skill point total, and if that’s your goal for the game, have at it. But again, if skipping ahead is ok to begin with, you might as well do it right and just buy a character with all of the learning skills maxed. Sitting there complaining about EVE Offline while you make the choice yourself to not play and not get skills that would help you right now is, well, rather silly. Just because the veterans of the game have min/maxed something, does not mean everyone is forced down that path, and that applies to any MMO. The fastest way to level 80 in WoW is certainly not the most fun, yet somehow I don’t see anyone whining about that, or calling new players out for ‘wasting’ their time getting non-80 gear. Don’t those idiots know the real game is at 80, and unless it’s an iLvl-capped item, its garbage? Fools, all of them!

And the wrong approach continues when the topic of joining a corporation comes up. The WoW-mentality is very evident, and rather than joining a group to share in the MMO experience, get/give some help from/with other players, and get involved in something bigger than just your own little experience, the WoW-mentality tells us that you don’t need help, don’t need camaraderie, and that solo is the way to go. That is the predominant mentality in the Massive, MULTIPLAYER Online gaming genre. Disgusting really.

Oh and one final note: How can someone who ‘plays’ the AH in WoW through a UI mod for an hour a day, day in day out, selling the same stuff and gaining gold in a game where gold has next-to-no meaning or challenge in acquiring it, call mining in EVE boring?

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design, Rant, World of Warcraft | 40 Comments

DarkFall character update

Posted on April 12, 2010 by SynCaine

Best clan name I’ve seen in a while: Fat kids lag IRL (it’s funny because it’s true)

My vitality title quest is finally done, whooo!. 200 Revenants was a haul, albeit a very profitable one. With the title bonus I’m at 314 base HP, which I’m more than happy with. Combined with a greatsword mastery of 70 and a strength stat of 60 unbuffed, I feel comfortable going into melee combat with most players, and even though I know many of the upper-elite still have a sizable advantage, I in no way feel underpowered.

I also hit 100 earth magic, and I’m skilling up meteor strike along with my plan to get Disintegrate and Pungent Mist to 75+. Once that’s done my earth intensify should be up there, making everything all the more powerful. Also on my offensive spell bar is fireball, so fire magic has been going up as I’m using that as well. I still need to get Greater Magic to 100 for confusion, it’s currently at 79 and increasing ever so slowly, though I’m not really focusing on it just yet. Some Heal Other skilling up should move that along a bit; I want that spell to 50+ as well as it makes for a nice rotation with Witches Brew and Sacrifice. Finally I’ve been slowly working on all of my self-buffs and buff-other spells, trying to get each one to 50+ so they last long enough to be worth casting. The buff-other spells are crazy powerful, and once we get decent at actually casting them before a fight, they should really make a big difference.

Overall things have been busy politically as well, with lots of sieging going down and a lot of holdings changing hands. I’ve been seeing warhulks used more often in addition to boats being deployed whenever possible. Players have also been coming out in some impressive gear (infernal and dragon, with highly keened r60s), and when the numbers are right and the server plays nice, the fights have been epic.

Posted in Darkfall Online, PvP, Site update | 4 Comments

The MMO hype-release cycle getting worse?

Posted on April 9, 2010 by SynCaine

Is it just me, or is the hype-release cycle in the MMO world getting crazier and less professional as time goes on? It just seems like not only are projects being announced as soon as someone comes up with a rough sketch and a general concept, but we are seeing early beta or even alpha-quality products pushed out, not to mention companies asking for money earlier than ever.

Take for example Xsyon, which beyond looking terribad on just about every level, started taking pre-orders before they even had a single gameplay video up. Are people really that quick to throw away $40? And is that all it takes today; just put together a long list of features that may, at some point in time, be in your game, create a few screen shots (be sure to include awesome clipping in 90% of them!), and ask for cash?

Slightly better but still extremely questionable is Mortal Online. MO was set to go live when they had still not solved the very basic issue of players staying connected to the server, and that those connected could not actually interact with others due to desync issues. And if this desync issue is a problem in a limited beta, what exactly would you expect to happen when you go live and get flooded (relative to the size of beta anyway) with players? Yea, I’m sure the desync issue will just sort itself out when you increase the number of people trying to connect all at once… And who knows how the actual game will function when you do have all those players connected and interacting, hardly anyone can test whatever content is there. Again though, I’m sure all of that will just sort itself out in a PvP MMO, rather than be abused to hell and back. No no, THAT has never happened before, and certainly not recently…

Let’s move on to an MMO that did launch, but then not, shall we? Algonan has gone through more crap than most MMOs go through in five years of successful release, and it’s not even officially out yet, sorta. See Algonan did launch, it did charge for the client and then a monthly sub, but since it was (reportedly) an utter disaster, the devs decided to roll back time and not launch 4realz, and went back to open beta. And during post-go-live-open-beta, they decided to change the game over to the F2P model (sorta, I think it still costs $20 initially, for now), with a cash shop coming soon, setting the record for fastest sub MMO to demote itself to F2P status; current record: open beta. And this is all over a game that is literally just trying to copy WoW word for word.

And then we have Copernicus from 38 studios, which has already had a longer hype cycle than most games and we don’t even have a name for it yet. Props to them for not taking pre-orders I guess. Or SW:TOR, which even before release we already know it’s make-or-break status thanks to big talk by EA, which worked out really well for them the last time they did this with WAR. Plus who can forget Allod’s very, er, memorable cash shop price switch in it’s early days? I could go on, as the list really does appear endless here.

Are we really this stupid? Do we really have so much money/time to throw around that the second someone waves a feature list under our nose, we open up our wallet? Has the hunt for “the next great thing” gotten to the point where not only does the next thing not have to be great, it does not even have to exist yet for us to start drooling?

(And yes, I realize the above is somewhat hypocritical coming from someone who has been playing DarkFall since launch, but at least DF launched and surprised everyone when it actually worked. And even though the first few months were a bit rough, it’s shaped up nicely and now, more than a year later, is still going strong. And yes, DF did start its hype cycle somewhere around 2003-4, with a now completely out-of-date gameplay video dating back to at least 2007. Still waiting on half the stuff in the video…)

Posted in Allods Online, beta, Darkfall Online, Mass Media, MMO design, Random, Rant | 20 Comments

Blogger recognizes other bloggers concerning developers recognizing bloggers

Posted on April 8, 2010 by SynCaine

Ravious over at KTR put together a nice piece talking about developers recognizing bloggers, which is rather timely considering Mythic’s recent invite of four bloggers to their offices. Various bloggers were asked for opinion, myself included. Enjoy!

Posted in Blogroll, Random, Site update, Warhammer Online | 2 Comments

PvP Hotspots

Posted on April 8, 2010 by SynCaine

The term “PvP Hotspot” is used often when describing some of the additions Aventurine has made to DarkFall since the games launch, and all too often I’m seeing players misinterpret what the design intent is behind these additions, and just what exactly you can expect from a PvP hotspot itself.

For starters, a PvP hotspot does not mean you will find PvP in that location 100% of the time. A hotspot and something like a battleground/scenario are two very different things. You WILL find PvP in a BG/Scen each and every time, but what you gain in availability you give up in meaning or variation. A BG designed for 10 players and with a match length of 30 minutes will almost always be a 5v5 match, and will always end in 30 minutes or less. It will likely play out in a similar manner each time, and generally the reward is pre-determined. A well designed BG/Scen accomplishes its goal of being quick, ‘pick up and play’ PvP, but its role is very different to say, Stranglethorn Vale (STV).

STV is (or at least was) a PvP hotspot in WoW by design. It’s when the two factions generally first meet, and the overall layout was such that they would cross paths often. If you liked a bit of random PvP in the early days of WoW, STV was a great zone. It was not, however, 24/7 on demand PvP like a BG. You could go to the zone looking for PvP and not find a single worthwhile fight, while the very next day you could be in STV just trying to quest and have PvP find you at every turn. Point being, PvP happen more often in STV than in other zones, but it’s one and only purpose was not PvP.

Going back to DarkFall, when villages were first added part of their intent was to be PvP hotspots. Since their introduction changes such as a visible vulnerability counter have been made to help increase the chances of PvP happening, and it’s likely that further changes will need to be made to improve this even further (the ‘what’ of which is another topic). But what villages are NOT is a BG/Scen in DarkFall. They are not PvP 24/7, or even PvP 100% of the time when they go vulnerable. What they are is a location where PvP is more likely to happen, and even in their current state, they accomplish this (just not enough in the opinion of many). If you actively capture villages often, you WILL get PvP out of them. Now even if the rate is 1 PvP encounter in 10 villages captured, that’s still something. What you can’t expect is to go 10 for 10 in encounters, and I think many do, which is both unrealistic and somewhat silly.

It’s silly because you have to remember what else villages do. They are the source of player housing, the source of player vendors, and the source of house-based resources (gardens, trees, slot machines). If PvP did happen 24/7 at a village, player vendors would be worthless, teleporting to your house would be suicide, a snakeweed garden would not be worth the time to place it, and you could not finish watching the slot machine spin before someone bashed you over the head with a club. Not to mention that the more villages you add, the less likely you are to find a fight at any one particular location, yet I’m fairly sure most players are in favor of more housing, not less.

And other hotspots, like popular mob spawns or hamlets/cities, function in much the same way. You won’t find PvP at them 100% of the time you go, but you WILL find it more often than if you just randomly ride around, and so they accomplish that part of their design. Now some do it much better than others in terms of frequency, and there are plenty of changes Aventurine can make to improve this, but the fact remains that if you are out looking for PvP, knowing the popular hotspots and putting together a solid route through them is more often than not going to get you into some PvP. Just don’t expect it 100% of the time, or you are just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Posted in Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Housing, MMO design, PvP, World of Warcraft | 7 Comments

Civilization V: Here sooner than we thought?

Posted on April 7, 2010 by SynCaine

Not that these things are always (ever?) accurate, but since this is one game I’d be willing to kill someone with a blunt object for, Steam saying Civ V is coming out September 1st caught my eye.

Please god (that would be Sid Meier), let this be true.

Posted in Civilization Series, Site update | 4 Comments

What any major publisher should fear

Posted on April 7, 2010 by SynCaine

From The Motley Fool comes this article about Nintendo being wrong about Apple and the free games market on the iPhone/iPod/iPad, which very nicely fits into the somewhat recent blogging trend of discussing social games and their impact on the games most of us enjoy (that being games with actual gameplay).

As I commented before on all of this, whatever happens is likely to be a win/win for us. If Facebook/iWhatever games do reach a level where they are challenging Nintendo in terms of gameplay and quality, and start actually pulling people off Pokemon and into PokeFarm, well then that’s just another area to play decent games. If they stay on the current level of ‘gameplay’, the fad will pass faster than the pet rock, especially when what made them profitable to begin with (scams) are now being removed.

What I do believe is a significant difference between many iWhatever games and the FB games I’ve seen is that the iWhatever games are already on a much higher level. They might be simple in terms of graphics and sound due to hardware limitations, but with many the gameplay is as solid as it was back in the NES/SNES days. If anything, it’s actually a return of sorts to a focus on gameplay and innovative ideas, when for a while now flashy graphics and fancy movies surrounded stale rehashed gameplay.

Another major advantage to the App store platform is the standardization of it all. Everyone has the same hardware, everyone goes to the same spot to shop, and everyone uses the same review system that is just one click away for any potential buyer. A bad game is quickly identified by user reviews, and quality products will likewise move up the Top Seller chart. It’s certainly not a perfect system, and trash apps still show up on those lists, but more than ever the buyer has a wealth of information right at their fingertips, which will hopefully lead to smarter purchases and more rewards to those making actual worthwhile products.

So while I don’t believe Nintendo should worry about the new business model behind the App Store, what they SHOULD worry about is all these new game studios turning out actually interesting, innovative games on a platform that is not nearly as restricting as the current console space, and how favorably their products might stack up by comparison.

Posted in Console Gaming, iPhone, Mass Media, Random, RMT | 9 Comments

DarkFall: The shift to group PvE and it’s PvP impact

Posted on April 5, 2010 by SynCaine

Now that I’ve had a little bit of time with the new patch in DarkFall, I can safely say the PvE changes are a definite step in the right direction for the game. It ultimately comes down to group PvE being more rewarding than solo PvE, and that’s exactly how it should be. Solo PvE should be a last resort option; you should only be going out to solo PvE when nothing else is going on, rather than having it as the most efficient/effective method, and this patch shifted that balance correctly.

As I mentioned before, but have now confirmed, mount farming is no longer viable, which means the more difficult mobs can no longer be soloed effectively (you can still bow down just about anything, but the amount of time it would take you to down something tough vs just fighting easier mobs does not make this a smart choice unless you have a specific reason like an enchanting mat or some item to farm). This is not to say that soloing is now impossible, its not. Anything you could solo on foot before the patch you can still solo, and more or less the rewards for such mobs are fine (just not when they got compared to battlehorn farming 1200hp mobs).

Group PvE itself is actually not that difficult in DarkFall once you know what you are doing, as even mobs that hit extremely hard and have a great deal of HP can be taken down by a small (2-3 man) group so long as everyone is playing smart. Parry when needed, heal and buff each other, and focus on the same target and soon the mob will fall. The better you get the faster you will be able to clear a camp, and so long as the respawn is fast or you have a second camp nearby to work on while you wait, the money will accumulate quickly.

And because of how DF combat works vs the more traditional model (where once a mob is on you, its stuck on you unless taunted/agroed off), even two players are far more powerful than one when farming simply because you can have one player running away or parrying while the other is dealing damage or healing, and the amount of time a mob spends between players is significant. Under the more traditional model, if a ‘red’ mob gets on someone, its going to pound you until you drop, and there is usually very little that you can effectively do to stop this from happening (short of reseting the mob, which just makes killing it impossible anyway). DF combat being a bit more fluid and not as restricting means that player action and skill can help overcome pure damage and HP imbalances. Enhanced mob AI does not always mean the mobs are geniuses and destroy you, it also means they fight and react a bit more naturally rather than following a set script, and this makes them more interesting to fight. The mobs in DF, when compared to other MMOs, do indeed accomplish this, even if not perfectly.

Ultimately though this balance between group vs solo is exactly where an MMO should be. You SHOULD be encouraged to group up with your buddies, as not only is anything more fun with friends, but the system should actually reward you for making the effort to get a group together. It sounds so simple, yet so many MMOs (DF included until this patch) fail at this basic concept, and so the rather simple gameplay of any MMO (even DF’s more active combat is relatively simple when compared to any console action game) can easily be taken as ‘the grind’ when you are ‘forced’ to go it alone. And again, soloing should still be an option (no early EQ1 please), but as stated above it really should be a last resort. If someone truly wants to play solo in an MMO, they should NOT be encouraged with the fastest advancement path. The more grouping you encourage, the stronger the social bonds between players will become, and the more ‘hook’ your game will have once someone gets into it.

Usually when DF comes up the topic is PvP, and ultimately that is the main selling point of the game and the source of its highlight moments, but just having great PvP does not make the game a complete MMO, especially one aiming at the sandbox style. My guess is that once the community adjusts to this patch and we see more groups heading out to PvE, the amount of random wilderness group vs group PvP will also significantly increase. What adjustments players make because of this will be interesting to see, but it will be nice to see more than one mounted player at a spawn going forward.

(DarkFall-related post disclaimer/reminder. If you click the image link near the top-right of this page and buy a DarkFall account, I get paid 20% of the client cost. If you believe this taints my views and reporting on DarkFall, your opinion is wrong.)

Posted in Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, MMO design, Patch Notes, PvP | 12 Comments

DarkFall Patch: Group PvE now a real option?

Posted on April 2, 2010 by SynCaine

Ah DarkFall patch day, where the servers go down for longer than expected (can it really be unexpected when it happens every… single… time…?), the average ForumFall post is even more whiney, and while no one really knows how the new changes will play out in the long run, they sure don’t hold back on trying to doom and gloom predict things. Good times all around.

Which is not to say that some of the complaints are unwarranted. Certainly adding the dungeon-portal issue to cities (enter a portal, disconnect while loading, and bam, free escape back to your bindpoint) is not good, and the servers going down, back up, down, etc is annoying. I’m also going to go out on a limb here and predict that this patch also broke something else that will shortly be hotfixed. But like I mentioned above, this is par for the course with every patch from Aventurine, so while certainly not ideal, it’s not exactly shocking at this point.

One change that I do want to talk about that I was able to test very quickly last night is the mob AI change regarding mounts. Previously when you fought a mob mounted, many mobs would not behave very intelligently and instead of trying to kill your mount would get confused and try to get to you (which is impossible since you are mounted) by casting spells like Come Hither, or think the only way to reach you (despite you being in their face swinging away) is to cast an AoE spell. This allowed players to solo tough mobs like Blood Knights with a battlehorn rather quickly, and this more or less borked the ‘expected’ gold per hour rate. Why would you group melee/archery farm medium mobs that drop 200-300 gold between 2-3 players when instead you can solo battlehorn farm a Blood Knight and get up to 1200 gold in 3-4 minutes of work, especially when you then ride to a nearby spawn, kill that quickly, and head back to the Blood Knight? These PvE ‘loops’ were insanely profitable, making all mobs not worthy of battlehorning ‘worthless’ in terms of gold.

And in addition to borking mobs, this also made set-cost/gain things like villages, vendor reg costs, quest rewards, and respec costs trivial. Why spend the time needed to capture a village and get 250-550 gold an hour when in far less time, you can do a battlehorn PvE loop and get far more gold? Why worry about picking a specialization that costs 2000 gold to switch when you can make that amount in ten minutes? Quests that give 200 gold as a reward look like a joke when any mob you kill with a battlehorn drops more than that amount in a single kill. All of the above ‘broken’ because the AI was not responding to mounted fighters correctly.

Well this patch changed the AI, and mobs are now smart enough to realize they have to kill the mount in order to kill the player. From my brief time in-game, I noticed that a mob will still start by casting spells at you when you are away from them, but when you close the distance they will switch to melee. They also seem to do a better job at trying to move to a mount’s ‘blind spot’ rather than standing straight in front of you. In short, mobs like the Blood Knight are no longer doable solo on a battlehorn, and even lesser mobs like Moonbeast Ravagers are a definite challenge.

So what does this mean going forward? In terms of the economy, the amount of gold a player can expect to earn per hour solo will decrease, meaning gatherable items such as ore and wood prices will also drop, though how long it will take for this to happen will be interesting to watch. This will also change the value of the common drops from the previous ‘high value’ mobs. For example, I have enough Q4 blood from the Blood Knight to last me for a long, long time, but I fully expect the price of Q4 blood to increase now that fewer players will be killing him.

I’m also hopefully this patch finally makes group PvE worthwhile, as encouraging players to group up and go out to farm mobs is not only good general MMO design, but in DarkFall also means roaming PvP groups should find more players to engage without everything being a 5v1 mauling. I think this is what I’m most excited about, because as profitable as battlehorn farming was, it was also rather dull when compared to heading out with 2-3 people and camping a few spawns. Now that (hopefully) group PvE will be worthwhile, it should make DarkFall an overall more fun game to play.

How this PvE change, plus the addition of storage boxes (which are not cheap enough to spam, but are not so expansive as to make them worthless when heading out for some organized PvE), plus the teleportation chambers all come together and impact PvE and PvP will be interesting to watch, and I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on everything once I spend a little more time with it all in-game.

Posted in Combat Systems, crafting, Darkfall Online, MMO design, Patch Notes, PvP | 11 Comments

April Fools=Themepark, Halloween=Sandbox

Posted on April 1, 2010 by SynCaine

Ah April Fools Day, the redheaded stepchild of Halloween. Instead of normally reserved girls dressing up as sluts in ‘costumes’, we get normally unfunny people making ‘jokes’.

Posted in Rant | 9 Comments