Smed talks sandbox

Posted on February 12, 2014 by SynCaine

Smed has a new blog that yells at you with giant text. I wish he had named it “MMOs are still a niche market”, but no dice on that. His first post is about sandbox design.

“When we first began making these kinds of games 18 years ago (I mean no disrespect to the Muds and other games out before Everquest)”

In the Smed history of MMOs, the first one was EQ, a themepark before the word themepark was a thing. This is funny because the first commercially successful MMO was Ultimate Online (sorry M59), a sandbox. What’s also interesting here is that while UO was indeed a virtual world, a game experiment in what would happen if Britannia was populated by more than one Avatar, EQ was a 3D graphic skin over existing MUD design, rather than the brave adventure into unknown lands that Smed views it as.

Fast forward to 2004, and we all know WoW was just a better EQ1, thus beginning the long chain of SOE attempting to copy something, and Blizzard coming along and simply doing the copy/paste job better. EQ1 is also the first and last time one could say SOE did something more right than wrong. The SOE MMO graveyard can attest to that.

No event is more memorable in sandbox history than the NGE for SWG, taking that sandbox and (spot the pattern) trying to make it more of a WoW-like themepark, without success. Smed being the man behind that blunder is something he has admitted and apologies for countless times, but for SWG fans that wound hasn’t quite healed yet, as evident in the comments section of his blog. That he has decided to target that group to hype his next (not EQN) MMO is an… interesting decision.

“A great example of this happened with SWTOR. I happen to think it’s a very well done game and the team at Bioware should be proud.”

That Smed considers it a very well done game should be alarming. From the first reveal of SW:TOR in 2010, some of us could easily see the critical flaw in basing your game on the 4th pillar (one-off content). Now granted, back then we couldn’t predict that the most expensive MMO ever would also come with a terrible engine, plenty of bugs, and all the other problems SW:TOR had; but even if none of those other things happened, the game would still have failed because at its very core, it’s a horribly flawed way to make an MMO. If the leader of my company looked at something like SW:TOR as a ‘very well done game’, I’d be jumping ship.

Now, Smed does finally mention EVE in the second to last paragraph, calling it a shining example, so that’s certainly a positive if you have hopes for the next SOE product.

“Our belief at SOE is that it’s smarter to head in this direction now rather than waiting.”

The above can easily be taken out of context, given that EVE has been the blueprint for a sandbox for over ten years now, and SOE has been around longer than that, but I take the above as Smed saying that rather than making EQ3 yet another themepark that can’t succeed (forget competing with WoW), he would rather try to tap into the magic CCP formula. And while I’m all for that, at the end of the day this is SOE we are talking about. They will find a way to screw it up. And then they will try to fix that screw-up and odds are decent they will make it worse. Because SOE.

Welcome to blogging Smed, hopefully you stick around for a bit.

Posted in EQNext, EVE Online, MMO design, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | 2 Comments

Stay in school kids

Posted on February 12, 2014 by SynCaine

A few of us have been laughing ourselves to tears over the latest ForumFall post-of-the-year entry, and someone insisted I share with the rest of the class. Fair warning, the rage is very strong here.

“You have no clue what I like because you’re simple minded, clearly. Stop saying I have no idea, when I have more of an idea than you can imagine.

My brains huge btw.

I came to this game because it was ADVERTISED as a 3d version of UO. They never attained anything CLOSE to the sandbox of UO that I fell in love with, but they eventually got the combat to the same level of fun I had in UO, so I stuck with it because of that.

Does that mean I’m narrow minded enough to say all a game needs is good combat? Not at all. That’s you being daft and trying to think you have me pegged as an elitist. Do I enjoy playing with good players more than bad ones? Of course, it’s less stressful as a leader when I can count on those under me. It’s also different mindsets.

If you’ll notice, mountains of people agree with me, people from guilds I’ve dominated, people I’ve made my enemies through trolling and forcing them to, and people that can just tell I know what I am talking about. From the combat, to the economy, to sandbox ideas, I have it all covered. Does it bug you that I know what I am talking about from every single aspect of an MMO? I wish I was a lead developer for a gaming company, because I would make the single best sandbox game on the market, alas, I don’t believe in the current schooling system in this country, and I have other ways I make money nowadays. Luckily a couple of friends of mine are making a good sandbox game, and I hope down the road I can learn enough code to actually help them carry the weight.

Maybe you just don’t like me, but you can go read my suggestion thread on how much Sand I wish was in this game, much more than you think.

This will be the last response I’ll garner to you btw, because you just started off insulting me for no fucking reason, other than your bad reading comprehension.

Darkfall COMBAT lovers, do not love Eve’s combat, at all.

That is a simple fact, and no amount of douchebaggery you spout, will change that.”

 

(Side notes: a minute later he would go on and post another reply to what originally sent him off the rails. Sadly I can’t claim credit for the original effort that got him going. The above treasure has me reblocked. Yes, reblocked, as he ‘blocked’ me, but then would continue to reply to my posts quoting me, and I think someone tipped him off to it. So he now claims to have ‘reblock’ me, and tries to keep the illusion up by simply direct-replying to posts without quoting them. Kid’s really smart.)

So on the plus side, Darkfall has the greatest dev-that-never-was sharing his brilliance, and believe me, it really is next-level design wisdom. Crafting unicorn hunts like you read about.

One question that we kept going back and forth on though; when someone says they are uneducated… err sorry, um… “doesn’t believe in the current schooling system”, they mean they never went to college right? And they are using that excuse as to why their genius hasn’t been recognized by the gaming industry. (Spoiler alert; college degrees don’t do much for you in the gaming industry)

No chance someone would admit to being a high school dropout on a public forum in a post about how smart they are, right? The mysteries of ForumFall.

Posted in Darkfall Online, Random | 35 Comments

EVE: Learning skills in a F2P world

Posted on February 11, 2014 by SynCaine

A few years ago CCP removed the Learning skills from EVE Online. To quickly recap, the Learning skills took about three months to train, and their only benefit was a boost to training other skills faster.

They were, overall, a design mistake, in large part because players are famous for min/maxing, even to the extent of taking the fun OUT of a game that is intended to be played for fun. In theory the Learning skills would be something you training when you don’t have more pressing skills to finish. In reality, the common advice was to sit your pilot in a station for the first 3 months and just train those first before you started playing. If you are a new player asking for advice, being told to do nothing for 3 months isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for the game.

Again, they were a design mistake, and CCP was right to take them out while refunding the skill points.

Would CCP have done that if EVE was a F2P MMO?

One of the criticisms of the sub model is that developers will put things such as raid lockout timers to keep you subbed for longer. Now, I find that criticisms a bit silly, because what ultimately makes someone unsub is the simple question of whether you are having fun or not with the game, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who enjoyed a game overall but then unsubbed because of some lockout timer. (Timers help pace the players to content, yes, but IMO that’s more to help players not burn themselves out.)

As EVE is a sub MMO, isn’t CCP hurting themselves here by removing a nice 3 month sub buffer? The short-term view would say yes. The long-term says no. The game is a better game without Learning skills, and as CCP is in the business of running a successful game for years, not weeks/months, long-term making EVE the best possible game is what’s best for business. When you have a solid product, you don’t need cheap tricks to leach another month or a few bucks off someone before they catch on to the garbage you are peddling.

But of course the big elephant in the room here is that under F2P, ‘lockout timers’ are not only in place, but are a prominent feature in the business model; be it locked chests that require a cash shop key, slower XP gains designed to push you towards an XP booster from the shop, long pointless travel unless you buy a portal license; the list goes on. In most F2P MMOs, the “learning skills’ would be an item you purchase in the shop, and just like in EVE, that purchase would do nothing for your actual enjoyment of the game; you would simply feel like it was something you needed to do. We players can be dumb like that, and more than a few suits (and basically everyone at EA) are not above exploiting it.

So again, if EVE was a F2P MMO, would CCP have removed the Learning skills (an example of bad design), or would they have instead introduced that new item to their cash shop to allow you the pleasure of paying to remove the design mistake, and allowed freeloaders to suffer that 3-month “do nothing” phase?

If EVE was run by SOE, Turbine, or EA, I think we all know the answer to that question.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design, RMT | 13 Comments

ESO: Sand in unexpected places

Posted on February 10, 2014 by SynCaine

Quick ESO beta weekend update: At one point the three different quests I had were all bugged out (named mob not spawning), which initially made me log out because whaaa I can’t progress. Wanting to play the game more (a good thing), I logged back in a day later and just decided to wander off towards something on the map and see what would happen.

I found some ‘hidden’ gathering stuff, got some xp, and eventually leveled and made it to another questing area (still all the same ‘zone’), this one with working quests. Good times.

I’m currently leaning towards the CE and RP’ing a ‘better than you’ Imperial character. You know, do something out of character and really challenge myself with the RP…

Posted in beta, The Elder Scrolls Online | 2 Comments

EVE: CCP you are the worst, besides everyone else

Posted on February 7, 2014 by SynCaine

Jester has, as always, a great post up about the reaction to the real life EVE monument CCP recently unveiled, which as his post shows, has largely been negative. EVE is famous for having lots of bitter vets, and as the only MMO to still be growing after more than a decade, many of those players truly are vets, and truly are bitter.

His post however reminded me how good EVE players have it compared to everyone else. For example take this complaint:

I think this boring and featureless statue symbolize EVE expansions.

EVE receives two free expansions every year, plus point releases between those expansions that do more for the game than what some MMOs call expansions they charge you for. Oh how I wish DF:UW got such ‘boring and featureless’ expansions. Hell, I’d take just one, or even half.

Doom and gloom fills every MMO forum. It’s what players do. The happy ones are playing, the unhappy are posting, regardless if your game is a dumpster like SW:TOR or the blueprint like EVE. That said, EVE players should take a step back once in a while and look around the genre. You really wouldn’t trade CCP for anyone else. Not the interns who gave us space goats and pandas. Not the wing factory of monthly embarrassments and flip-flopping. Not someone who burns $300m on a pillar of trash and sells you hotbars. Not the authors of the manifesto of lies. Not the ad-spam One-Ring sellers. Not the fools in white shades, or the ones to put a bullet in the head of an MMO shortly after release.

Be glad CCP runs EVE. It could be a lot, lot worse.

Posted in Age of Conan, Darkfall Online, EQNext, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, Rant, SW:TOR, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 7 Comments

Pathfinder Online: What 1.9m gets you

Posted on February 6, 2014 by SynCaine

The latest dev blog from Goblinworks, makers of the upcoming Pathfinder Online (currently holder of the very distinguished “Next sandbox MMO least likely to suck” award) talks money, specifically that they spent 1.9m in 2013.

Numbers are fun, especially once this game is released and we see just what 1.9m in a year really gets you. We know what 300m+ from EA gets us (Tortanic), we know 38 Studios wasn’t able to create much of anything with a giant pile of (Rhode Island’s) money, we know the relative cost of WAR, and now we will see what happens here and with the slew of other Kickstarter MMOs.

Side note: The screenshots in the dev blog look refreshing, in that the world won’t be a neon crapland of ‘magic’. The closer someone comes to making a game that looks and feels like a Mount and Blade Online game, the better.

 

Posted in Kickstarter, MMO design, Pathfinder Online, Star Citizen, SW:TOR, Warhammer Online | 9 Comments

SOE is going to pleasantly surprise you because they are SOE

Posted on February 5, 2014 by SynCaine

Oh Smed.

The guy knows he works for SOE right? The “we haven’t done anything right since EQ1” studio? The studio that NGE’ed SWG probably shouldn’t be trying to get people back by reminding them of that, especially since the easy money is on whatever Smed is hinting at being terrible, because SOE.

Between this and “lulz Minecraft”, we will be entertained by the stumbles and bumbles of SOE all throughout 2014.

 

 

Posted in EQNext, FreeRealms, Mass Media, Random, Rant | 6 Comments

Might and Magic X: Legacy review

Posted on February 4, 2014 by SynCaine

Gaming nostalgia is a weird thing. Sometimes the idea of playing something again is a lot better than the actual act of doing it. Ultima Online is one such game for me. It still holds up in many ways from a systems and design perspective, but the overall charm that it had in 1997 is gone in 2014. First MMO love and all that. The recently released Might and Magic X: Legacy is basically the opposite.

It plays like an old-school Might and Magic game; each move advances time, its turn based, you create a part of four, the world is quasi-open, it has a lot of older design elements going for it, and it has that (now iconic?) first-person perspective that is undeniable Might and Magic. The setting is post Heroes of Might and Magic 6, so if you have played that game, you will enjoy the references and recognize some of the characters (including the use of portraits straight from that game).

If rumors are true, it’s also a budget game from Ubisoft, testing to see if the market for such a game still exists. The graphics aren’t state-of-the-art (though very decent if you crank everything up), the total amount of content can’t hold a candle to something like Skyrim, and while charming, you do just get the sense that this was a small-team effort.

But man is the game fun. The mix of open-ish world and dungeons is fantastic. Just as you might be wishing for something more open, the dungeon ends and opens up more world. Just as ‘more world’ starts feeling overwhelming, here comes a perfectly timed dungeon with a new, interesting tileset. Towns and conversations are spaces such that you never feel flooded with text, or have a quest log suddenly stacked with a dozen new objectives. The flow (up to chapter 3 of 6 so far) is perfect.

Progression feels more meaningful than in any recent game I’ve played. Monsters that were tough become fodder a few levels and gear upgrades later, and with a wonderfully satisfying feeling to it. Party and character builds give you enough control that you can see other tactics working in a different playthrough, while also seeing your party grow and expand in capabilities as you go. Returning to a once-impossible boss monster to just barely beat him gives you that awesomely rewarding gaming feeling so few games get right.

Combat is simple but not insultingly so. You have a good range of spells and abilities to use, while at the same time you need to pace how often you chug potions or rest if you want to finish a dungeon without having to return to town to restock. There is no penalty (other than your gaming time) for restocking, so the difficulty is something you can somewhat control (the game also has normal and hard modes), which I think is a smart design decision and doesn’t force you to min-max your characters. That said, you absolutely CAN min-max and see results, which makes the inclusion of a hard mode a nice option for a second trip through the game.

The game has been a great surprise, and if you are looking for a bit of old-school RPG fun, or are curious what all the hype was for the Might and Magic series back in the day, MMX:Legacy is well worth your time.

Posted in Random | 3 Comments

EVE: Required reading

Posted on January 30, 2014 by SynCaine

CCP dev blog about the longest and one of the largest battles in MMO history. If you consider yourself an MMO fan, consider it required reading, start to finish.

A few quick notes:

CCP gets it. Not only does the blog contain a ‘sales pitch’ at the end (something I know from personal experience hocking DF1 works amazingly well), but they also acted quickly to immortalize the event with the in-game monument. How many other MMOs have done that? How many devs have been so quick to do it? How many MMOs are even capable of anything close to this type of event?

This is the type of event that hammers home the sandbox theory of peaks and valleys and its importance to retention. I think its very safe to say that not only will this battle result in thousands of new players learning about EVE and giving it a shot, but will also server as reason for current null-sec players to keep going. This is the type of event that justifies shooting structures, mining ore, or running PvE content for ISK. And a large part of WHY it works so well is it’s rarity. If a battle of this scale happened often, it not only wouldn’t make news, it also wouldn’t serve as such a huge catalyst and motivator.

This type of event is also why EVE is the only MMO still growing after 11 years. It simply has content so unique to itself that it’s impossible to ‘burn out’ on all of it. Players take breaks, yes, but most pilots that get beyond the training stage never fully leave, because you are never really ‘done’ in New Eden, and there is always some hook pulling you back. It’s amazingly discouraging that seemingly no other developers are capable of creating anything similar in the genre, even after the blueprint has been out for 11 years.

Finally, there is a bit of sweet irony in the timing of all of this; as SOE shuts down so many of it’s failed MMOs, the ‘niche’ MMO that dwarfs all others in scope has one of its biggest event to date, one that will likely trigger at least a bump in continued growth.

Posted in EVE Online, Mass Media, MMO design | 24 Comments

ESO CE: Racist

Posted on January 29, 2014 by SynCaine

The only pay-to-play (beyond, um… having to pay for the box and the sub…) race in ESO will be Imperials, found ‘only’ in the collectors edition.

Imperials are the ‘white people’ of ESO.

So if you pay extra, you get the privilege of playing a white person.

Once in-game, whenever you see a non-white character, you can just safely assume the person behind the character is too poor to afford the privilege of playing a white character.

Only thing missing is a farming-based crafting skill, where you can hire other characters to pick the crops for you, and only the Imperials (for lore reasons, obviously) can’t be selected as farm hands. Bonus points if the Redguards (dark skin) get a bonus to farming speed.

Edit but not really an edit: I originally had (blacks) after Redguards, but went with the safer and more PC (dark skin). Meta layers everyone.

 

Posted in The Elder Scrolls Online | 25 Comments