Micro transactions hate the hardcore player.

Posted on August 28, 2007 by SynCaine

Payment options in MMOs have been fairly consistent since the release of UO, you pay a set amount of money per month, and you are granted unlimited access to the games servers and all its features. A current ‘hot topic’ in MMO circles is the coming of micro transactions, small little fees for specific content. The lure of micro transactions is that the base game is discounted or even free, and the company makes money of these small transactions.

Lets do a little breakdown of the two payment methods from the perspective of the ‘hardcore gamer’ and the ‘casual’. In the monthly fee structure, both players pay the exact same amount each month, but the hardcore player get a lot more game time out of his payment, resulting in a much higher time/pay ratio than the casual. The hardcore player is likely to go after all the content available to him/her, maxing out reputation grinds, crafting, pvp, etc. The casual player will pick what he/she finds enjoyable while fitting it around their more limited play time and pursue that, perhaps completely skipping over other aspects of a game. They might focus on PvP, ignoring raid content, or focus on crafting and ignore reputation-based questing.

Lets assume a set number of micro transactions is assigned to each area of the game (pvp, crafting, questing, raiding), and the game itself is ‘free’ to play. Now if we compare the play style of the hardcore player to the casual, the time/pay ratio swings in favor of the casual. They will require fewer micro transactions before they run out of the current content, while the hardcore player will burn through each area faster on a monthly basis, requiring more transactions.

In effect, micro transactions punish the ‘complete everything 100%’ type of gamer, and favor the casual. Without a monthly fee, a casual can continue to come back at random to a game, each time paying a small amount for a quick burst of entertainment. A dedicated player will quickly outpace this rate, and be forced to pay more money each month the more they play.

It seems to me that micro transactions are a poorly veiled return to the AOL method of ‘pay per hour’ dialup. If you only use the internet to check email, this works great for you. If you are someone who is online for hours each day, it’s a smart move to ditch the old AOL and go with a set rate provider.

Which brings me to my point, will the type of payment an MMO has, micro transactions vs set rate, separate the player base into the hardcore vs casual crowd? Will those that play for 5 hours or so a week be playing micro games, and those that play 20 hours+ stick with set rate games? And to a further extent, will game design reflect payment type; will we see more casual games are designed around transactions, while the more hardcore games are designed around a set rate?

Posted in MMO design | 2 Comments

LoTRO heat, and EVE missions.

Posted on August 27, 2007 by SynCaine

Quick note about LoTRO before I go into my latest EVE adventures; for whatever reason, LoTRO likes to overheat my computer, resulting in graphic artifacting and eventually a complete crash that results in the comp restarting itself. I have a system capable of running the game on ultra details while maintaining 30FPS, yet even if I set the graphics to medium, the comp still overheats anytime the room temperature is above 75 or so. LoTRO is the only game to cause this; Oblivion has no issues, Company of Heroes runs fine, everything but LoTRO. So aside from the normal LoTRO burnout I’ve been having, it does not help that I’m limited to playing it only on cool weather days, as the AC does not reach far enough to apparently help the computer. A large room fan does little. Anyone else have a similar issue?

Moving on to games that DO work, I played a good bit of EVE Online this weekend, doing some level 1 missions solo and also ganging up with my Corp to tackle some level 4 missions on Sunday.

For the level 1 missions I decided to mix things up a bit and leave my Cormorant and hop into a Kestrel. I loaded the Kestrel with 4 rocket bays, an afterburner, and some low slot speed thing. Top speed was pushing 600m/s, perfect for getting in quick to unload the rockets. Everything was going great until the Kestrel ran into a rat destroyer, and being slow to realize this, it was too late to warp out. Pop goes the Kestrel. Granted the ship and its fittings are nice and cheap, so setting another up is not that big an issue, but it was sad/silly to lose a ship during a level 1 mission.

Sunday is the day our Corp likes to get together and run some level 4 missions. I got in my Cormorant fitted for long range combat, 4 150mm rail guns and a missile bay. Ok, long range for the Cormorant… Anyway, I’m not exactly a big factor in the combat force, considering the other gang members bring battleships or battle cruisers. It’s just fun for me to come along and see the big stuff go boom. Well, that and the fact that the big rats have a very hefty bounty on them, and getting a cut of that is always nice, especially for Kestrel replacement costs. So we get the level 4 version of Worlds Collide, a tough mission I’ve completed for a level 1 agent. The level 4 version was crazy. You know you are about to see a lot of ships when after the warp gate, EVE takes a few seconds to load everything up, and once it does your radar fills up with red x’s of various sizes. Even with our gang of experienced pilots, they at times did have to warp out to repair up before coming back in. It was during one of these moments that my poor Cormorant, for the second week in a row, got target locked by 4-5 big ships and proceeded to melt. Between the lock-on notification and seeing my pod, I must have had a good 5 seconds. Sadly warp had indeed started on my Cormorant, but a stray shot must have taken me out before I was able to squeak out. As frustrating as it can be to lose a ship and have to re-buy everything again, it certainly does add a nice hint of danger and a sudden rush to missions knowing you are a few target locks away from death. Overall profit for Sunday was a good 7-9 million, and considering I went into the day with 5 million, I would call that a good day. Looking forward to next week, especially if I am able to train up enough to jump in a Cruiser and actually contribute some worthwhile damage.

Posted in EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MILK Corp | 5 Comments

On Tap.

Posted on August 24, 2007 by SynCaine

With my Corp (Milk in a Bag) planning a little low sect trading mission soon, I’m eagerly waiting for my Learning skills to finish up so I can start training towards a Caldari Moa and increasing my combat effectiveness overall. The Moa should at least give me a fighting chance should we encounter trouble, instead of just being a flying target like I am in the Cormorant now. Great ship for level 1 missions, but as my brief experience with level 4 showed, destroyers get eaten by the larger ships in the game. Speaking of missions, since MILK operates in Amari space, I’ve decided to work up my standing with that faction instead of the Caldari Navy. So it’s back to a -14 level 1 agent for me, with the paltry rewards he offers. Hopefully I’ll grind that out soon and get back to a higher quality agent. With my recent purchase of Rank 3 learning books, my bank account is once again hovering around 1 million ISK, and I still need to buy two Rank 3 books, at 4.5 million each. Here’s hoping for a group mining effort tonight to get me some fast cash, otherwise its back to Mr. -14 for more missions.

Hopefully this weekend I can finally log on to LoTRO for the first time in a week and check out book 10. Rumor has it some nice changes have been made, but if the enjoyment of the lower levels does not return soon, I fear my time in Middle Earth may be drawing to a close. Between the Wii and EVE, I have little time for LoTRO, especially when it starts to feel like a chore just to grind and get to 50. If I do decide to quit, I’ll certainly keep an eye on it and perhaps return once a few more books have been released. Maybe the consistent enjoyment that I had with the game from 1-30 will be there from 1-50 in a few months.

Have a good weekend everyone, happy gaming!

Posted in EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MILK Corp | Comments Off on On Tap.

Going the distance

Posted on August 23, 2007 by SynCaine

Going to rip CrazyKinux today and follow his post by linking a good interview about EVE here. While a bit short, one question in particular brings up a good point about MMOs in general.

Me: You mentioned there being a 10 year plan for EVE, are we now four years in or is that another 10 years?

Hilmar: Another 10 years.

Me: Where do you see EVE in 10 years time?

Hilmar: We have a buffet of options that we’d like to add to the game and we priorities those in cooperation with the community and the response from the players. So it’s difficult to envision where it will be exactly, but I hope that we will add all these dimensions to it, the character aspect, flying over planets, and those type of things, so that its a much richer experience. So you can if you want stay in a station and operate a store, or solely focus on fighting. You have this much vaster set of options and more specializations and create an even bigger social pyramid from having so many options.  

The idea behind a MMOs success is that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. You make more money if you sell 100,000 copies on day one and keep all your fans for two years than you would if you sell 500,000 copies and everyone plays for the free trail month before moving on. Given this fact, one has to wonder what current developers are thinking when they pack in all the good stuff in one months worth of gameplay, and then scramble to tack on further content to keep people interested, rather than building a game from the ground up to be interesting for years to come. Granted, I’m sure it’s much easier to design a month of content than it is to plan to keep players interested for 2-3 years, but clearly the reward is there. EVE continues to grow despite the fact that it has no retail presence and a grassroots marketing campaign, while most of the games released in that time are either dead or dying.

 

With a slew of MMOs set for release in the next 6 months or so, it will be interesting to see how many of them are build to last, and how many are build to flash and fizzle.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design | 2 Comments

Quick Update.

Posted on August 22, 2007 by SynCaine

Not much of an update today. Seems the internet is quiet these days waiting for all the new releases, and with NDA’s on all the big beta’s, not much news is out. Still trying to find the time/will to play LoTRO, I really don’t want to give up on it before hitting 50, but the progress has been very slow lately. EVE and online poker have been taking up a good amount of time. Amazing how well those two play together when you park a laptop next to the desktop…

Still need to get around to that Mario Strikers review. So far I must say it’s been a solid purchase, especially with internet play. I’ve yet to play a full game in The Bigs, just a lot of HR Derby. Need to give that one some time to try out all the other modes of play and see what it’s all about.

Posted in Console Gaming, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Site update | Comments Off on Quick Update.

Lum and I share a moment…

Posted on August 21, 2007 by SynCaine

During a bit of random internet wandering, clicking from one site to another, I stumbled upon an old post made by Scott Jennings (aka Lum the Mad) that is eerily similar to my very first blog post. Granted, his piece is far more details and overall… well better, so boo to that. On the plus side, my mind during one blogging session worked in a similar manner to Lum back in 2004. So yay for that… right?

Far more interesting however is that what Lum talked about in 2004 is still being talked about in 2007, just like it was first talked about when UO-R was released. For some reason, a segment of the MMO community still longs for a gaming experience similar to that of ‘oldschool’ UO. It’s like some ancient gaming itch we can’t scratch, continually reminding us of what we once had.

Lum’s stance on the issue was very clear back in 2004, saying the following:

But, for Surly Bob and the other “old school evil players” nostalgic for the glory days of Ultima Online – it won’t happen again. Ever. That moment in time was unique – and it’s gone.

Is he right; is it really impossible for the world that existed in 1998 to ever appear in a game again? Lum’s main point is that without the sheep, the wolves have nothing to hunt, and that since now the sheep have choices in what games they play, they won’t hang around in a world full of wolves.

While I certainly think that line of thinking is very valid, and choice has no doubt enabled many players to leave more ‘pvp friendly’ games for something a little safer, I’m not sure it’s a be all end all answer. I still believe a balance can be reached between the sides, allowing some pk/pvp, while supporting the ‘carebears’ a bit more than UO did, which is to say not at all.

Consider a game like EVE Online, which in 0.0 space has rules very similar to 1999 UO, basically allowing griefing, pk’ing, ganking, etc. However, unlike UO, EVE also has Empire Space, which has far stricter rules and penalties for random pk’ing. EVE also has a complex and rewarding mining/crafting system, one that a player can specialize in exclusively and be very successful. No more ‘go grind rats so you can craft better stuff later’ junk here. Of course, there is a catch; the best ore is found in 0.0 space, so if you get really serious about crafting, you will need 0.0 access, or pay for the ore on the market. Either way, the risk goes up at the highest levels, but so do the profits. It’s that lure of profits and economic power that keeps the ‘sheep’ of EVE playing, even when they have run-ins with PvP pilots. Add in a diplomacy layer, which allows Industrial Corps to pay Merc Corps to protect them, and once again EVE has created a way for players to govern themselves and figure out a solution to a problem, without hard-coding in Trammel (UO’s no pvp carebear side).

So EVE has shown us that in the right context, sheep and wolves CAN exist in the same game world. The trick seems to be not to favor one faction over the other, and provide means for both sides to be successful without being completely separated. If the balance shifts more towards one side or the other, both sides will suffer as a result of a population decrease. Keep both sides happy, while still interacting, and you get the deep layers of a game like EVE. The job if keeping that balance is certainly a difficult task, and some developers might seek the easy way out (see: Horde Paladins), but for those that do stick to their ideals, the reward is out there in the form of a rabid fan base that sticks with your game far beyond the few months it takes to reach the level cap, or jump ship when ‘the next big thing’ is released.

Furthermore, it’s entirely possible that the MMO market is now big enough to support an all pvp game like Shadowbane, which it was not back in 2004 (lets ignore that SB itself was not very good). The overall player base has grown, and with that growth come players with a large variety of play styles. You no longer need a game that will be the jack of all trades, offering pvp, pve, crafting, etc. A developer can now focus on one major aspect, and if the execution is there, they will have a successful game with a loyal fan base. Will it be an 8 million giant like WoW? Not likely; but with 150-250k subscribers over the course of a few years, a company can still turn a tidy profit while providing a needed service to a segment of the overall MMO market, furthering its growth and the expansion of new ideas.

That type of growth could lead to a very healthy cycle, with new ideas coming in at a regular pace. Otherwise, we find ourselves in the current cycle; with each new game being a clone+1 of the previous game, and eventually the fan base will grow tired and bored of that rat race.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | 4 Comments

Milk run.

Posted on August 20, 2007 by SynCaine

Over the weekend I joined a very friendly and casual Corp named Milk in a Bag (MILK) after one of there members (Iron Mcfly) noticed my bio saying I was looking for a corp. We ganged up and did some mining together, Iron using his mining ship to strip-mine asteroids while I had my main hauling with his Badger and my newer pilot doing some mining in his frigate. Window mode on a 24” screen worked wonders here, letting me switch from one account to the other with one click. His ship mined at a good 5 times faster than the frigate, and overall we made close to 10 million in ore. Afterwards the CEO of the Corp, Mordakia, logged on and we got to talking a bit on Teamspeak. Getting the basics of the Corp, I decided it seemed like a good fit and joined up with both my pilots.

On Sunday the Corp runs level 4 missions in gangs, to which I brought my Cormorant to. It was an interesting experience, as it was the first time I’ve seen battleships in action, as well as rats in big ships. A few of the missions had us fighting a great number of drones along with some heavy ships, and my little destroyer actually proved quite useful versus the smaller stuff. The highlight, or lowlight perhaps, was when a rat battleship decided to target me and send a few missiles my way. The initial volley took out my shields, and before I was able to fully warp, the next wave hit and bye bye Cormorant. Luckily I had nothing of any real value on the ship, and the ship itself only costs 900,000. The Corp gang leader provided me 1 million ISK to help offset the cost, which was very nice of him. Not that I needed it, as the bounty on the bigger rat ships is over a million each, and even just getting a cut of that made by bank go up a few million by the end of the night.

 

Overall joining the Corp has added another interesting layer to EVE Online for me. Our goal currently is to reach a higher standing with the Amari Empire, and then put up an Empire POS, as we are mostly an industrial/carebear Corp. As for my pilots, they are still training the Learning section skills, which my combat pilot finishing Learning V soon. In a week or so I should be ready to start picking up some more combat-oriented skills, hopefully raising my usefulness for future Sunday mission runs as well as getting myself into level 2 missions.

Posted in EVE Online, MILK Corp | 1 Comment

The art of the lob pass, plus mining fun.

Posted on August 17, 2007 by SynCaine

Quick Mario Strikers Charge update; Online play is damn fun. The game itself is somewhat basic, with really only a few moves (shoot, pass, dodge, tackle, lob), but how you combine those moves into combos really determines who is the better player. As I was playing last night, I played vs a player who used lob passes frequently, making tackling him a real issue. His strategy was basically lob pass the ball until it charged up and then attempt a lob shot. The odds of the goalie stopping the shot are high, but since he was taking a lot of shots, eventually he would score some goals. It was the first time I had seen such a strategy, and not surprisingly lost the game, but it was still fun to see someone use the same basic tools yet play in a completely different style. The only minor complaint at this point is that the connection is sometimes flaky to the server. You can play a game lag free, but once the game ends and it’s time to report scores, you will get the disconnect message. I’m willing to overlook that right now as the game is still new and they may be working out the kinks to the servers, something any MMO player is more than familiar with.

In other news, I set up a second account in EVE Online in order to train both a combat pilot and a mining/industry pilot at the same time. I ended up running my new miner through the tutorial and into mission 10 of the chain “Mountains out of Molehills”, and the final step of the quest should be completed when I get home. As seems to be the running theme with EVE, I’m once again surprised by the depth of the entire mining/blueprint/industry aspect of it, and this is after 1 day. In a strange way, I’m looking forward to logging on and finding a nice spot to do some mining now, even though overall mining is a very boring activity in and of itself.

I also had my first serious talk with a member of some Corporation looking to recruit me. Originally we got into contact after the pilot was very helpful in explaining some of the details of Industry to me, and we got talking about character goals and such. Seeing as I was a miner and his Corp was an Industry focused one, it seemed like a natural fit, until we realized his Corp is mostly Minmatar and I was Amari, so that would not really work out all too well. I’m wondering how active I should be in trying to find a Corp, as I have no doubt a great number of benefits could be had for a new pilot. For now however, and will just train and see what happens, as I don’t feel I need to force the issue just yet…

Posted in Console Gaming, EVE Online | Comments Off on The art of the lob pass, plus mining fun.

Quest vacuum

Posted on August 16, 2007 by SynCaine

Having finally gotten a good chunk of time to play LoTRO, it was time to take a trip back to Evendim and continue our adventures there. Previously we had completed a few of the lower level quests, but left the zone around level 33 to finish up the Lone Lands and take down the Red Maiden, after which we finished up most of the North Downs quests, leaving only a few group quests behind.

Coming back at 37 opened up many new quests for us, along with allowing us to travel without the fear of getting hoof stomped by some overly aggressive deer. Traveling only a little ways to the North of the first quest hub we found a gathering of NPCs among some ruins, most of which had a quest or two for us. In the end, I believe we picked up close to 10 new quests, most of which seemed to indicate the enemy/item/location was north, so rather than setting out with one quest in mind, we just went out and killed anything new we ran into, and if it counted towards a quest, we would kill the 8-10 others we needed to finish the quest. If we saw something shiny on the ground, we would head over and see what it’s about, and more often than not it was a quest item for someone. Using this method, we fully completed 5 quests before hitting the northern border of the zone, at which point we used our map to get back to town and turn them in. With the quest log trimmed down, it sets us up nicely to finish the remaining quests in the more traditional fashion.

 

While its no surprise that the ‘head out and see what happens’ method works well in LoTRO in terms of getting quests done, it certainly degrades their importance and meaning. We just went out and scanned over a general area, and anything we picked up we turned in, regardless of the quest.

 

What saves LoTRO in terms of quest importance is that the really important quests have their own tab and title, the Book quests. I think without these LoTRO would be one big series of ‘who cares’ quests until you hit 50. Turbine was smart to put extra emphasis and care into the Book quests, making them far more interesting and involving. When you finish any of the books, you not only get a great reward, but also a true sense that you accomplished something major in the world of Middle Earth. The fact that some steps in the books require grouping is a wise choice as well, as those moments feel more ‘epic’ than they would it you did them alone, and finding a group is generally not too big an issue, as everyone needs to do the same quests, and the group parts are generally fairly short, making helping your kinsmen more possible.

 

Another nice aspect of the Book series is that each major update, which are currently set for one update every other month, contains another book, meaning you will get at least one great quest chain per update. Book 10 is set for release shortly, and Book 11 is slated for October, an update that will also bring player housing to LoTRO.

 

While initially LoTRO might appear as a WoW clone, the quality and pace of the updates from Turbine continue to move it further away from the dev style of Blizzard and WoW. If Turbine can continue delivering this type of quality, they will keep many of their fans very happy and entertained, and give some very compelling reasons for others to come over and see what LoTRO is all about.

Posted in Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, World of Warcraft | Comments Off on Quest vacuum

User generated content; more DoTA less TD please.

Posted on August 15, 2007 by SynCaine

PotShot today wrote a nice long piece about user generated content in MMOs. He ponders why it’s not an idea used more often in today’s MMOs, as well as suggesting a game should be build with the tools to support user generated content from the ground up. An excellent post overall, but I see one major issue with the idea.

The new content might really suck. Say you find some new content created by a player, and you are informed it’s a 10 man quest. You gather 10 people and head off on your new adventure, only to find out the content is terrible, be it balance, loot, etc. How many times does a player have to waste their time attempting bad content before they abandon the idea, or the game overall?

 

As frustrating as it may be to gather a group for an instance, or even a raid, you at least know that once inside, the content will be of decent quality. The encounter will be balanced for the recommended level, as will the loot. We all know it only takes a few bad experiences to sour someone’s view towards a game, and by giving users the option to create content, a developer takes a large risk.

 

Going way back here, but one of the major complaints about early UO was that player killers could run rampant, ruining the game experience for players. To me, bad player content would be the modern day equivalent of an old school pk, something that frustrates players to the point of calling it quits.

 

That said, I do think player generated content COULD work. Look at something like DoTA for Warcraft 3. That user made content has nearly eclipsed the original game in terms of b.net traffic, and has spawned a huge community. It alone is the reason WC3 still resides on my computer. But for every DoTA, you have 100 unbalanced and ultimately time wasting Tower Defense maps. It works in WC3 due to how easy it is to go in and out of a game, which might not be so easy to do in a MMO.

 

Again, if done right, it certainly could work, but user generated content comes with many pitfalls. It’s perhaps because of these pitfalls that we have not seen it take center stage yet, but all it would take is one major game to kick start a new trend.

Posted in MMO design, Ultima Online | Comments Off on User generated content; more DoTA less TD please.