PotBS this weekend, along with some EVE time.

Posted on October 5, 2007 by SynCaine

Pirates open beta/stress test is going down this weekend, looking forward to it. Not so much because I’ve been really looking forward to Pirates, but just to try it and see what all the hype is about. I honestly have no clue whether I will like it or not, and unless it blows me away I don’t plan on buying it. EVE and EQ2 are keeping me busy as it is.

Speaking of EVE, my wallet is up to 50 million ISK, only another 100 million or so before I can buy a Rohk battleship. It’s going to take a bit of training to get that ship up and running, but at least the short term goal of getting one is getting closer. I also have close to 300 random fittings sitting around waiting to be sold, which I plan to get to this weekend.

The Ferox has been doing a nice job on most level 3 missions, and I might play around with a passive shield tanking setup this weekend, something along the lines of 3 large shield extenders and a few shield rechargers with some PDUs. Curious to see how it works. Currently I have an active tank going, and that works well for most missions. The only time I get into trouble is when a fight goes for long periods of time with sustained dps, then the capacitor gives out and I usually have to warp out. I figure with a solid passive tank, that won’t be the case. The only other issue with the Ferox is that with five 250mm turrets, each mission eats ammo like crazy. I recently bought 20,000 rounds of medium anti-matter ammo, which should last me for a while, but transporting it with the hauler and finding a good price delays actually running missions. All issues aside, still having a great time in New Eden.

Posted in EVE Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea | 1 Comment

Why not having fun is fun.

Posted on October 4, 2007 by SynCaine

Darren over at Common Sense Gamer has a post up commenting on a Gamesutra article, which contained the following:

“The biggest lessons I’d like to see products like World Of Warcraft and other traditional, retail games learn are:

1) Free to Play – the traditional game world needs to embrace this when possible to avoid missing the next generation of gamers.

2) Little to no install (or let me start playing and stream in the rest).

3) Minimum spec graphics compatibility.

4) Deferred/minimized sign up process.

5) Warp not walk (trudging all over the world is a hardcore “feature”).”

He agrees with all but the first point, which I found very surprising. I agree with him on point 1, no game is completely free in the F2P model, and more times than not it ends up being MORE expensive if you get into it than it would be in a per-month payment basis.

Point 2 seems very odd to me, unless we are talking simple 2d games. How is a game expected to function and make a good first impression if you don’t install all the art/sound? Forget intro movies, which can really set the tone if done well (WoW, EVE, EQ2), what about simply not having to download huge chunks of data while you try to get into something new? Is it really that difficult to put a DVD into a drive and click a few times through the auto-install? Especially since for an MMO you have to set up an account, you might as well do it while the game is installing itself. Maybe I’m missing something, but what advantage other than playing 5-10 minutes sooner ONCE does limiting a game to ‘no install’ give?

I agree with 3, but that does not mean the graphics should be last-gen stuff. Developers need to find a way to get the most out of hardware, instead of just dumping a laundry list of features and hoping everyone can handle it. Part of WoW success is not that it has low hardware requirements, but that it looks so good while requiring so little. As Darren points out, personality is great in the long run, but it won’t get you in the door. Very few people are going to give a game a shot in the very competitive market we have now if it looks like trash, even if it runs on your calculator.

Point 4 is somewhat simple. Don’t make me write an essay to sign up for your game, but at the same time do SOMETHING to keep out the bot programs that sign up and send out gold spam. If reducing gold spam requires us to fill out an extra field or two during the account setup process, I’m very ok with that. Similar to my comment on point 2, I’ll gladly give you 5 minutes up front to avoid hours of trouble later.

Point 5 is the one I really have an issue with. It’s very easy to point out things that are not fun in an MMO and say “ok remove all that, it will be more fun”. Problem is, the game WON’T be more fun, and very likely will be awful. Bind on Equip is a pain to players who want to sell old gear, but we all know the overall game is better with BoE. Repair costs annoy players, but we all know they are necessary to balance the economy, or try to at least. Why then would you view travel time as anything different? Granted, if you have to run in a straight line for an hour pointlessly to complete a quest, that’s not good, but the run is not the problem, the quest design is. Travel time, if used well, can actually ADD to a game. Look at EVE; prices of items vary based on the market, and travel time plays a HUGE roll in that. If you could instantly jump to any location you wanted, the entire concept of being a trader in EVE would be destroyed, an aspect many people greatly enjoy.

Posted in MMO design | Comments Off on Why not having fun is fun.

Search Engine fun.

Posted on October 4, 2007 by SynCaine

WordPress has a nice feature that shows you what internet search terms were used to find this blog. Most are somewhat generic and not very entertaining, but once in a while, you get a gem. Below are a few of those gems, with some commentary.

‘warcraft steals warhammers idea’ – Yeah just a few. Or more accurately, Blizzard steals Games Workshop’s ideas. I can’t wait to see the forums explode in the countless ‘Bliz vs GW’ and ‘WoW vs WAR’ threads. One has to wonder if the sheer number of WoW fans will overwhelm the truth about who stole from whom. Guess that all depends on how well received WAR is, right?

‘Two man MC’ – This blog is the first link when you enter that search, which is a bit surprising, but I’m not really sure why. This is one of the more common Google searches I see on the report, now I know why.

‘boxing vanguard on one computer’ – Haha, so someone thinks Vanguard works well enough on their computer to try to run two copies. Sorry, cheap shot at Vanguard. Release a trail already, people are interested!

‘Optimus prime guild on wow’ – Hmmm, most likely it’s just a search for a poorly named guild’s website, but it COULD be super secret hidden content. To the searchmobile fanboys!

‘d2 single player bot’ – So let me get this straight, you want a bot to play the SINGLE player game for you… Anyone care to comment on how this could possibly be fun?

More to come I’m sure, as long as I remember to keep a log of them.

Posted in Random | 2 Comments

How do we judge skill in an MMO?

Posted on October 3, 2007 by SynCaine

Tobold made a post today asking what should be rewarded in an MMO. Halfway through posting a comment I realized it was getting a bit lengthy, so instead we get this post.

Tobold is correct in his statement that an MMO needs to be somewhat easy to capture as great an audience as possible. Simply put, some players might quit if they are getting constantly beat down by the game. To avoid this most games are VERY forgiving and go out of their way to make things easier.

That said, even in an ‘easy’ MMO like WoW player skill can still be a factor, although highly diminished. If we have two identical characters at a give level, the player who is more comfortable with game mechanics and knows how to use them to his advantage will be able to tackle tougher quests/mobs than a player who is new to the game and does not know the ins and outs. Both will eventually reach the highest level, but the higher skilled player will do so faster.

MMO formula: faster = skill

In the raiding game, the most coveted prize is a ‘World First’ kill of a boss, again showing us that faster = skill. Yes you need to invest a great deal of time into a raiding guild to make ANY progress, but at some point the cream rises to the top and top tier guilds simply progress faster than others.

If we break it down further, inside any raiding guild you have players of varying skill. You have your top tier players, generally those that are the MT/MH/class captains, and then the ‘rest’. Aside from knowing the mechanics of a game, a player must also be able to take this information and use it effectively. Two tanks could be provided the exact same strategy for a boss, but when it comes down to it, the higher skilled tank will make the correct decisions on how to react and when long before the other tank does. Yes eventually both will succeed, given enough time, but by the time tank 2 completes the current boss, tank 1 and his guild will already be working on the next encounter.

My point is that even in the easiest MMOs, skill DOES factor in. The real problem is that you can get the same experience out of 99% of the game with or without skill, with time being the only factor on WHEN that happens. Whether that is a good thing or not is debatable.

Posted in MMO design, World of Warcraft | Comments Off on How do we judge skill in an MMO?

Darklight Woods, and a quick trip to Jita.

Posted on October 3, 2007 by SynCaine

We finally made it to level 17 in EQ2, and are still having a good time with it. The gf and I are finishing up Darklight Woods, and the zone is getting more interesting as we get further into it. Most of the quests are still fairly basic stuff, but with more skills and tactics to use on the mobs, it draws you in a bit more than it did in the earlier levels. We did our first bit of getting killed when we first ran into a camp of level 20 mobs which promptly dropped us, and later got overrun by level 16-18 mobs when we pulled one too many of them. Both mistakes could have been avoided, but it’s good to be reminded that you can indeed die if you are not careful. I’m curious to know when we will receive our first dungeon quest, or even group quest, as so far everything has been doable solo.

In EVE news, after some tweaking my Ferox is finally shaping up. I’m now able to run level 3 missions without having to warp out multiple times, or have them take hours. This should increase the pace of getting a battleship considerable. I also took a trip to good old Jita to check some prices. Sadly a Rokh was still around 135 million, and most of the fittings that I was after were also very expensive. After selling what I had brought, I only ended up getting a named afterburner and a named shield booster. Prototype versions of the 250mm hybrid turret were going for crazy prices, and I would rather continue to use my five Carbon 250mm than spend 10s of millions upgrading to the Prototype for what seems like minimal gain. Hopefully some rat wreck provides me with an upgrade soon.

Oh, and Mythic really needs to invite me into the Warhammer beta, seriously…

Posted in EQ2, EVE Online | Comments Off on Darklight Woods, and a quick trip to Jita.

More ‘Sword of Insta-pwn’ talk, and why EVE is better than WoW/EQ!

Posted on October 2, 2007 by SynCaine

If you go look at any item database website, you can easily look up any mob in WoW or EQ2 and find out exactly what item could drop off said mob, especially raid bosses. Long before most people kill Illidan (if they ever do), they most likely have his loot table memorized, knowing exactly what he drops, and even the % chance he has to drop each item.

While it is still a rush to see what loot a boss has dropped, part of that thrill is no doubt gone knowing what each item is even before it drops. You know that Illidan has no chance of ever giving you ‘The Sword of Insta-pwn’. You know this because his loot table is static, and limited to only a few items. This applies to all boss mobs, and in general most mobs in a game that is item based, like WoW or EQ2.

Part of what makes EVE Online missions fun is collecting the wrecks once you have handled all the enemy ships in a given space. What makes this more fun, in some ways, to downing even a raid boss is that you never really know what you will find in a wreck. Most likely it will be a common fitting or ammo, which while useful are nothing really special. There is however always the chance that you will find some really nice named fitting, which will either be usable or that you can sell on the market for a decent amount of ISK. In some cases you might find something worth a large amount of ISK, which is what happened to me last weekend. During one of the level 4 missions we were running as a Corp, I looted a wreck and found a named sensor booster fitting. At the time I had no idea what it was worth, but when I went to put it up on the market the initial listing was 3.4 million ISK, and that was 20% below the regional average. I went ahead and listed it for 4 million, and within two days it sold. While I know 4 million ISK is not that much in a game that has 46 BILLION ISK ships flying around and getting blow up, but considering I had 23 million ISK at the time I sold the fitting, 4 million ISK was a big deal. The sensor booster dropped randomly; if we had run that same mission again it’s very likely I might not get anything near that value, but there is also a chance I get something even more valuable, or that I get a few fittings that improve my own ship.

I’m not saying this makes EVE Online better in every way compared to WoW/EQ type games (well, not in this post anyway, haha), but it’s another of those small things that enhances the game, increasing its appeal in the long term. Whether that design was intentional or simply a by-product of a game that is not item based I’m not sure, but I do know it works.

Posted in EQ2, EVE Online, MILK Corp, MMO design, World of Warcraft | 4 Comments

Endgame, pick your poison.

Posted on October 1, 2007 by SynCaine

Recently I was thinking about the past MMOs I’ve played and the different ‘end game’ systems they offered. Some had raiding (WoW, LoTRO), some had PvP (DAoC, AC on Darktide, Lineage) and others left it open-ended (UO, EVE).

Anyone who has played any of the games I mentioned above to the highest levels will no doubt be able to argue that game x was not just raiding/pvp/whatever, but I think if you had to break it down and put one label on them, those are fairly accurate. My question now is if it was the intent of the designers from day one to have their game end like that, or if something along the way caused this shift in thinking.

It’s easy to understand why UO was so open ended, simply put the developers had very little to go off of and just designed a world with different system (combat, crafting, advancement) in it. It was basically a ‘wait and see’ approach, and depending on your view of early UO, you can either say it worked or it was a disaster. Either way, UO had no set ‘end game’ in terms of how we think of that now. When you hit your characters max (700 total skill points) you had basically just as much to do as you did when you had 200 skill points. The game did not dramatically shift once that magic 700 number was hit, as it does in most games today.

When you hit 70 in WoW, questing to gain experience is no longer an option, nor is grinding mobs. In DAoC once you hit the max level, you go and do Realm vs Realm combat, the games major selling point. Before that you would quest and grind to hit max, all for the sake of getting to RvR at the highest level. EVE is different in two ways, for one no one can ever realistically reach the ‘highest’ level, as training all the skills would literally take dozens of years real time, and secondly skills are only one facet of EVE. No amount of skills will give you a Titan to fly, or a space station to run, or a Corporation to manage. I believe part of the reason EVE has managed to keep certain players playing for years is that it allows you to alter your play style and goals on the fly, be it going from a trader to a pirate or a PvP CEO to a mission runner.

This all makes me wonder if a game would be better if the developer focused exclusively on just one source of end-game. Warhammer has made it fairly clear their game is all about RvR combat, and it sounds like that focus will be rewarded by a very fleshed out system. WoW continues to add little side distractions to its game, despite the fact that it funnels players into a ‘raid or die’ endgame. Yes it has PvP, but its PvP using skills balanced around raiding. How good would that PvP be if Blizzard did not have to balance it for raiding, how much better would the Arena be if more development time could be spent on it? I highly doubt we would still be sitting at 4 battlegrounds, almost unchanged in some cases since release. I’m very curious to see the reaction to Warhammer, especially its PvP. With all the focus and detail being put into it, from the ground up, one would think it will be a very polished and rewarding experience.

Posted in Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 6 Comments

EVE weekend, WAR hype, and Gothic 3.

Posted on October 1, 2007 by SynCaine

Played a lot of EVE this weekend, which is definitely a good thing. I finally feel like my skills are catching up to me Ferox, and I’m getting more out of it. Perhaps in a day or two it will be time to give level 3 missions another go, which will speed up the process of gathering enough ISK for a battleship. Focusing primarily on gunnery right now, I’m aiming to get a Rohk, but that’s going to take some time, as I’m currently only sitting at around 30 million ISK, and the best price I’ve seen for a Rohk was around 130 million.

Speaking of ISK, I made a good deal of it on Sunday from the level 4 missions we ran as a corp. To be honest it was overkill, as we had 7-9 members in our gang, with I believe 4 flying battleships. If we had access to a level 5 agent, we would have given it a shot, but sadly no one has the standing for that just yet, although I think a few of us are getting close to the 8.6 standing needed.

Moving on, seems a lot of Warhammer news came out in the last few days, but I find myself somewhat uninterested. Not because I’m not looking forward to WAR, but simply because I’m just not going to get myself overworked with each tidbit released. We all know MMOs more than any other genre change rapidly, and often in dramatic ways, so whatever info is released now is likely to get changed up greatly even before open beta starts, let alone release or 6 months after. At this point, I know I’m going to buy Warhammer, and know I’ll at least enjoy it. Whether it becomes the next big thing for me is not going to be determined by a bit of new info released over the weekend, and I guess that is what makes me so ‘meh’ about the videos and such. That or the fact that I was crazy about Shadowbane before that game was released, literally combing over any bit of info that was released each week. The fact that the game was delayed made the waiting worse, and when the game finally came out… well it was terrible. But it was not terrible based on anything released, it was terrible because of how it all game together, or did not I guess. I think SB was the last game I was REALLY hyped for, and I guess I learned my lesson.

In a somewhat random note, I downloaded the demo of Gothic 3, as it was a game I was interested at when it neared release, and then it just fell off the radar. Well now I understand why. Simply put Gothic 3 is a poor mans Oblivion, with a whole bunch of bugs thrown in for fun. The game, while not ugly, is not nearly as good looking as Oblivion (both games turned to max), yet runs a good 5-10 FPS worse. Same with the controls, not terrible, but somehow they feel less responsive and natural compared to Oblivion’s. I will give it credit for having the main character voice responses to quest dialog, and the dialog is presented in a somewhat stylish way, with the camera jumping back and forth between characters. The fact that you could not pick a class/race/look really did not bother me, as I think that’s a somewhat overrated feature in a single player game. I encountered a rather crippling memory leak that would drop the game into slide show mode before finally crashing. I almost want to say the demo is some old version that has since been patched and improved, but that might be a long shot. If anyone has played the full version, I would love to hear about it.

Posted in EVE Online, MILK Corp, Warhammer Online | 1 Comment

The Game of Thrones, MMO style.

Posted on September 28, 2007 by SynCaine

Tobold today made a post about the possible successor to WoW, listing some upcoming MMOs and commenting on their chance for success. As always, it’s a good read, but I think he ignores one aspect of the MMO market; games already released.

The standard trend for an MMO game is that it builds up a player base in its first few months, and then that base declines until it hits its ‘sweet spot’ and maintains for a given period of time. This happened with UO, EQ, DAoC, AC, etc. If the game was a success, it would stay active and live off the player base and expansions, secure in its spot.

Recently however we have seen a different trend, one that clearly reflects the fact that players have a lot more choice now. Now if a game launches and is not ready to go out of the gate its numbers instantly see a decline after the first month. Rumors had it that Vanguard sold around 150,000 copies, but only 35,000 accounts remained open after the first month. EQ2 also had a rough launch, and its player base greatly declined shortly after launch. This of course is partly due to WoW being as polished as it was at launch, but even WoW had its share of troubles in the first few months. Blizzard was smart enough to give generous amounts of extra play time to players whenever the servers would be down, which no doubt went a long way to keep people playing. Remember WoW did not launch with 9 million subscribers, it faced similar struggles when it released, especially with EQ2 being called the MMO juggernaut back then.

However, recent history has shown that even after a rough launch, with enough resources and dedication a MMO can fix its issues and make a comeback. EVE Online continues to grow, despite a rough release in 2003, and as your player base grows, positive word of mouth grows as well. That’s the snowball effect WoW used to gain its amazing numbers. It seemed everyone was playing it, so in turn anyone who had not was more likely to give it a shot, after hearing from all his guilt mates or friends how great it was. While the numbers have not been released, I believe a similar thing is happening with EQ2. Many of the issues that game had have been fixed, and a game engine that was out of reach for most is now playable on more computers. I’m not saying EVE or EQ2 will ‘de-throne’ WoW alone, but if enough games rise up and maintain a dedicated player base, it will pick away at WoW at a slow rate. This is already happening to an extent, as many players tire of WoW and give EQ2 another shot, or wait for a Vanguard trial.

I believe WoW will maintain high numbers for a long time to come, but not anywhere near 9 million. It might remain top dog in terms of numbers, but the gap between it and the #2 MMO might be a million or so accounts, not the 7-8 million it is now. Gone will be the throne that an 800 pound gorilla sits on (WoW), to be replaced with a ‘game of thrones’ of the MMO world, with games that are highly successful competing with each other to hold their spot near the top. This high level of competition will push developers harder, forcing them to give their players the very best each month, or risk losing them to one of a number of other, highly successful competitors.

Posted in EQ2, EVE Online, Ultima Online, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 2 Comments

A look ahead, and why can’t I have the Sword of Leetness+5?

Posted on September 27, 2007 by SynCaine

Playing EVE Online, EQ2, and Sword of the New World all at the same time gives you a very interesting view of where MMOs are today. Two of the games (EVE, EQ2) were released a few years back, but both had rough starts and are now finally hitting their stride, in very different ways. The third, SotNW, is a new game from Korea that is having its launch issues now, mainly translation and formatting issues. The three could not be any more different, with EVE having its massive scope, EQ2 having its deep and refined game systems, and SotNW being an ‘instant gratification’ type of game with plenty of flash.

If I was to make a prediction now, I would have to say I’ll be done with SotNW within a month, EQ2 within a year, and I’ll still be logging into EVE, although how often and for how long I can’t say. This all depends on the games coming out soon, particularly Warhammer. If Warhammer delivers on even half its hype, especially the PvP hype, I could easily see myself devoting a large amount of my gaming time to that. However, if it falls flat, or indeed proves to be WoW+1, then that free time will easily go towards EVE in large amounts.

The reason I can’t see myself playing EQ2 for a great amount of time is partly to blame on WoW. Having played that game to death, and with EQ2 being similar enough in many ways to it, it just feels like I’m going down a familiar path with EQ2 that I was on when I played WoW. Granted, EQ2 does enough things different to keep it interesting for now, and I could easily see it continue to do this as I continue to level, perhaps enough so to make it a great fallback game should WAR not work out, but that’s a big ‘if’.

Finally, I just don’t see SotNW holding my attention for very long. While it does a lot of things well, or at least different enough to be interesting, it’s overall gameplay feels dated. MMO’s have evolved from the ‘grind grind grind’ gameplay, where it is no longer entertaining to repeatedly kill mobs from level 1 to 100 with no purpose other than leveling itself. Even the multi-character system and the fast pace of combat can’t hold off the boredom of the grind for too long. The flash and style are great at first, but those only go so far as to make a good first impression, which SotNW certainly does. If it was a single player game, with an estimated time of say, 20 hours of gameplay, it would be a great game to pick up and play for a month or so, but as an MMO that hopes to keep players for months on end, I just don’t see how it’s going to succeed. It’s very shallow now, and I don’t think it has the underpinnings to expand the basic gameplay. Still curious to see how PvP works, but I’m guessing it comes down to who out grinds who for gear rather than any real PvP skills, but I could be way off base on that one.

I will say this, the enhancing system, putting a +1 on an item for a certain cost, and once you hit +4 anything beyond that has a chance to blow the item up, is brilliant. I know Lineage had this system, so SotNW is not breaking new ground, but props for having the system in the game. It’s a great money sink, as well as giving players the chance to create something of real value if they take a risk. Say you have a rare weapon that you intend to sell, but first you gamble and enhance it to +6. If you blow it up, you take a huge hit by losing a rare weapon along with any money you put in to getting it to +6. However, if the risk pays off, and you get it to +6, it could be worth a fortune on the auction house. This also makes money always relevant in the game, as at no point will you reach the ‘I have nothing to buy’ status you do in many other MMOs. It also makes getting the same drop not as useless as it is in other games. Let’s take WoW as an example, anyone who has done any raiding has killed Onyxia, and very likely you have killed her more than once. Onyxia has a fairly limited loot table, dropping all tier 2 helms along with a few rare weapons. Once you have your tier 2 helm, that drop is no longer interesting to you in WoW. Imagine if WoW had the enhancing system, and you could gamble with your tier 2 helm, pushing it to +5 or +6. If it blows up, it makes going after Onyxia the next week a little more interesting. If you succed in enhancing it, you gain a small advantage over other players wearing the same item with only +4 on it. Why more games don’t feature a system similar to this I don’t understand. Am I missing something here, am I not seeing some major downfall to the system?

Posted in Combat Systems, EQ2, EVE Online, MMO design, SotNW, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 9 Comments