Making an MMO is hard

Posted on June 6, 2013 by SynCaine

Are you trying to make an MMO but what you have so far is garbage? No problem, just declare your game is not an MMO, and boom, problem solved!

At least until someone noticed your ‘multiplayer’ Elder Scrolls game sucks compared to Skyrim.

Posted in Mass Media, The Elder Scrolls Online | 8 Comments

Eador: Masters of the Broken World is near-perfect

Posted on June 4, 2013 by SynCaine

Eador: Genesis took me by surprise, and I’ve now had a few weeks with its upgraded version, Eador: Masters of the Broken World. Darkfall being released has limited my time of course, but even so Eador is so good it does occasionally pull me away, and that alone speaks volumes.

To be clear, MotBW is not a sequel to Genesis. Much of the game is basically the same, but with a graphics overhaul and a new UI. That said some things have been improved. The campaign moves along faster now, so you won’t be playing 10 maps just to get out of tier 1 units. That IMO is a huge change, because in Genesis the campaign was just way too long and slow. In MotBW the pace feels better (though for some it might still be a bit slow).

The graphics are great. I love the look of the different units you can recruit and their animations. They might not be top-of-the-line in terms of poly count, but they have the great charm and character you often find in indy games.

The maps look fantastic. The lore is that you are fighting over shards of a broken world, and so the background for each map is the galaxy and the edges are cliff-like, which really goes a long way to ‘sell’ the fact that you are fighting for a broken piece of a world.

The details of each area you conquer also have nice details. Each race(goblins, dwarfs, humans, etc) has their own style of village, and the building you add can be seen as well. In addition, random little scenery bits such as towers, ruins, and monoliths dot the landscape and add to the overall feel.

In terms of gameplay and strategic depth, Eador is the best strategy game to come out in years (probably since Civ V). It makes Heroes of Might and Magic look like tic-tac-toe, while at the same time not coming off as being complex for the sake of complexity. The hero upgrade system, the town building, unit promotions, the economy; they just all work and all matter, and it feels extremely rewarding when you win a map because you put together a killer hero/army combo.

I could go on but it would just be more of “this is awesome”, so instead I’ll just wrap it up and I can always answer more specific questions in the comments.

The only major issue I have is the lack of multiplayer; you can only do one-off battles rather than play a map with others. Once that is patched in, Eador will be damn near perfect.

Posted in Eador | 4 Comments

Gaming moving in the right direction (mine)

Posted on June 4, 2013 by SynCaine

Remember when certain people would argue that World of Tanks is not pay-to-win? That gold ammo can’t aim for you and gold tanks aren’t even that great and blablabla? They look a bit silly now that the company behind the game just admitted they had a P2W game. Woops.

Being right aside, I’m happy about this. Not because I care about WoT itself, but because I’d much rather see the Riot/LoL model of selling quality fluff win over selling power. LoL doing it and being the most popular game out right now was big for that, and now Wargaming saying they are following suit further drives the point home.

Not that this will help so many of the fledgling F2P MMOs, because the key to selling fluff and making money off it is it has to be quality. If most of the LoL skins looked like the typical garbage you see in F2P MMO shops, Riot would be doing as well as Turbine or EAWare, rather than dominating the industry.

Posted in League of Legends, Random, Rant, RMT | 13 Comments

DF:UW – Dungeon content in a virtual world

Posted on June 3, 2013 by SynCaine

Last Friday the latest patch for DF:UW was released, and it included the first dungeon added to the game. Sunday night OTG and allies put together a group of eight to go check it out.

Entering the dungeon works like it did in DF1, where you click on the portal entrance, charge for a few seconds, and then you are taking down into the dungeon. You are not in an instance like in themepark MMOs, but rather in a different ‘zone’ that anyone else can enter as well.

A bit of strategy plays into entering or exit a dungeon, as we sent in our warriors first and delayed the entry of our squishy characters. This is done in case someone is camping the dungeon entrance/exit, but that was not the case last night.

Once inside, we explored what is ultimately a large loop with a few offshoots, one being a spawn of lizard-like creatures and another being the boss room. The main room of the dungeon contains a large cave troll (new mob) spawn, featuring cave trolls (easy), cave troll shamans, and cave troll fighters (fairly tough in numbers). The boss is a Primordial Troll Juggernaut, who while not overly difficult for our group of eight, was not a complete pushover either.

The dungeon itself has a good look and feel thanks to the advanced lighting and effects new to DF:UW, and the spawn rates are such that you are always kept busy. The loot from the troll mobs was nice (they drop gold and a good amount of large pots), and the boss mob drops a key to a chest that, among other loot, usually had 1-2 portal shards inside.

The dungeon overall would be decent content in a pure PvE game. It’s not huge or overly challenging, but it is larger and more detailed than the starter dungeons found in the capital cities, and just from a pure PvE perspective we had a good time. Of course DF being DF PvE is only a part of the equation, and like almost all locations, the PvE also drives PvP, with the dungeon being no exception.

The first time we arrived at the dungeon we found one player just outside trying to recall. We quickly gave him an express ticket home, and found a decent amount of dungeon loot on his tombstone. Once inside, we found another player farming and he too was dropped quickly. After killing the boss once and farming for about 30 minutes, we left the dungeon to bank at our nearby hamlet.

Along the way back we came across a few players, killed a couple and had the rest run away. On our trip back to the dungeon, we caught a naked player on his mount, killed the mount, and chased him to the nearby village. He ran into a house he owned, and one of our members followed him inside. He killed him, looted a treasure map, and found himself stuck inside as the door had been closed. The owner came back, we asked him nicely to open it, he refused, and so out came the battle spikes to blow his door down.

On our third run in the dungeon, we had two geared warrior run into the boss chamber with us, and a short, cramped melee commenced. They did well, taking down two of us before one of them got very low and ran away. We made the mistake of not pursuing immediately, forgetting that in order to exit the dungeon he would have needed to charge at the portal, and that would have been easily interrupted. We left the dungeon shortly after and called it a night.

I think the dungeon is a great addition to the game. It brought new feats which you progress through at a good rate thanks to the quick spawns, the boss is something different, and your PvP tactics need to adjust thanks to the limited spacing. It’s very ideal for a group, adjusts well for small or large numbers, and creates a new PvP hotspot in the world. Hopefully AV doesn’t take too long to add more, and we get them ‘soon’.

Video of the dungeon from Ripper Exe. Enjoy!

Posted in Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Housing, MMO design, Old Timers Guild, PvP | 3 Comments

Massive Chalice

Posted on May 31, 2013 by SynCaine

:Throws money at screen:

Posted in Kickstarter | 7 Comments

DF:UW – TheMercs crush VAMP

Posted on May 29, 2013 by SynCaine

Good video here from TheMercs showing solid group tactics and how to string out a much larger force. Also love that voice comms are included in the video, as it gives a much better view into how such a group operates and what it takes to PvP at a high level.

Posted in Darkfall Online, PvP | 4 Comments

DF:UW – In the halls of old Aradoth

Posted on May 28, 2013 by SynCaine

Darkfall: Unholy Wars takes place (I believe) 200 years after the events of Darkfall. Aventurine hasn’t done a lot with the lore, but in-game some areas reflect this more than others. The location of today’s story, the city of Aradoth, is a prime example of the change.

Right as I logged on a few members of NOX were attacking our city of Kvit. I don’t know how many they killed, but as a response force was gathering they left. Once our force was gathered, and being eager to engage in some PvP, we decided to head over to the home of NOX, the city of Aradoth.

In DF1 Aradoth was a very popular city for a number of reasons. It was a city with a mine, it was centrally located, and it was highly defensible since it was located inside of a mountain and accessibly only through winding cave tunnels. In DF:UW, the city itself is now outside, next to the mountain.

As we rode up to the city, we could hear the sounds of combat, which we correctly assumed was dueling. Our force crept right up to the city zone line, surveyed the situation, and picked the right time to rush in and murder the occupants.

The initial surprise of the attack worked, and we brought down a good number of them quickly, with only three fleeing. Two fled out of the city to the east, and one fled into a mountain tunnel. The group pursuing the target into the tunnel quickly lost him, and then one of them had trouble finding his way back out. Meanwhile, the rest of us chased down one of the two that fled east.

The splitting of our force, along with some general miscommunication, resulted in one of our numbers going down in the city, which forced all of us to re-enter and deal with the naked mob that we had created. That however was successful, and we were able to recover the fallen’s gear bag and get everyone out of the city.

We rolled to a nearby chaos stone to resupply and bank some loot. While at this stone a local informed us of a group farming nearby that had killed him, so we followed him to the spot and killed his killers (while he amusingly yelled “revenge” in area chat).

At this point we had the option to either return home, or head back to Aradoth, where we knew a response force was gathering. Picking action over pixels, we went back to Aradoth.

We again swept into the city and killed those around the bank, and yet again one player fled into the mountain. This time however we all followed inside.

What’s really cool about the mountain is it now contains the ruins of old Aradoth, right down to the location of buildings the old city had and the layout of some of its tunnels, which was very nostalgic for me having spent a good amount of time in that city in DF1.

A new addition however was a second exit from the tunnels, which the one enemy player used to get out. The exit (from what I saw, which was brief) appears to be a narrow gap among some rocks that you need to climb up on. One of our players found it, the rest of us did not. Unfortunately for the one player, he jumped right into the full NOX response force, which quickly brought him down. They then started attacking the rest of us, and the call was made to retreat back into a larger room before fighting.

We ran back and hid amongst the ruins, waiting for the enemy to run by. They did, and once five or so were in the room, we jumped out and attacked. Initially the battle was going in our favor, and I personally chased around a primalist to keep him from healing others. However as the fight dragged on, more and more NOX members spilled into the area, and we were eventually overwhelmed. I went from chasing one primalist to dodging 3-4 warriors all swinging at me. All but two of us went down.

The two that survived did so thanks to the rubble in the tunnels, as they were able to hide long enough for the enemy to clean the field and move out. Once they did, they were able to recall home.

Not a fully successful return to Aradoth, but a lot of fun.

Posted in Darkfall Online, Old Timers Guild, PvP | 3 Comments

DF:UW – Scroaching

Posted on May 23, 2013 by SynCaine

Last night there were multiple large sieges not involving OTG, and since our clan had no formal plans to attend, I made my way down to the area to do some good old scroaching.

For non-Darkfall players, scroaching is basically attending a siege as a neutral third party and picking off anyone you see, while also trying to grab as much loot as possible. It’s an evolution of the word roach (though I can’t recall why it went from roach to scroach, someone in the comments help me out)

Since I was solo, I focused more on the looting part than the fighting, and set out with some basic gear and a mount. Once I arrived at the scene of the first battle, I dismounted and crept from tree to tree, doing my best to not get noticed as I moved towards the closest gravestone. At each gravestone, I looted anything of value before ducking back into the shadows. After five graves I was close to being overloaded, and rather than push things further I rode off to bank my spoils. Round one was a massive success!

I returned to find that the battle had ended and the winning side was cleaning up the battlefield. Since I had little to lose, I took a chance and ran in, hoping people would assume I was an ally. That didn’t work, and shortly I had a small mob on me and was killed. Round two not so good.

A second city was also sieged that night, and since I still had time before our scheduled PvP practice, I again set out to see what I could loot. This city was on the coast with a lot of water surrounding it, and I was able to swim out to a little island with a good view and watched the battle unfold.

Making a judgment call on when the battle was at its peak, I swam across to the closest grave and again began the looting. I then made the mistake of killing a disconnected player (the allure of plate was too strong…), which drew the attention of a mage in the area, who started throwing fireballs at me. I ran towards the water and lost the mage, but sadly the island I swam to had a group of five waiting and I was brought down. Greed kills indeed.

Scroaching is far from an honorable act, but its part of Darkfall tradition and a good change of pace from normal PvE/PvP. Its low risk (other than time), high reward, allows you to see larger PvP battles play out, and gives you a bit of a rush as you sneak around and try to avoid any attention.

Tonight OTG has our own siege, and I’m sure random scroachers will be in attendance.

Posted in Darkfall Online, PvP | 8 Comments

Xbox One supercut

Posted on May 22, 2013 by SynCaine

This had me laughing pretty hard.

 

Posted in Console Gaming | 7 Comments

DF:UW – Newbie perspective

Posted on May 20, 2013 by SynCaine

My guess is most of you did not catch MJ from Massively live streaming a little over an hour of her DF:UW experience a few days ago. It’s not exactly appointment viewing given the length, but it’s actually rather interesting from a “my god, that’s how people approach this game” perspective.

In terms of attitude I think MJ is in a good place. She knows she is playing something a bit out of her league, but rather than just slogging through it she is making the most of her time and actually going out and finding the fun. I think way too many gamers today just stand still and expect the fun to find them, and that’s just not how something like DF:UW works, so good on her for that.

But yikes is she bad. And I don’t just mean “lulz that aim” bad, but just from a basic gaming standpoint bad. When fighting ogres she continually uses exploding arrow at point blank range, hurting herself. Now yes, in most MMOs you can’t hurt yourself with your own AOE, so it’s forgivable to initially make the mistake. But not noticing you are taking damage after the 10th time? Or even picking up on the fact that the ‘hit sound’ when you land a shot is exactly that and tells you whether you connected or not (during the video she assumes she missed a few times, even though the ‘hit’ sound played). It makes me wonder if she is the exception, or a representative of the average gamer?

Learning how to play the game aside (and she will hopefully learn a lot once she joins a clan), it was also interesting to see how she viewed different situations. At one point a party member spawns a mount for her to ride, but she misses that in chat (forgivable given DF:UW chat system), and spends a few minutes wondering if she should take the mount or not, as perhaps a potential thief might dance back and forth deciding whether to steal something. It’s a funny situation, given how common mounts are and that you can, of course, always get off and give the mount to someone else.

The same goes for looting items and such. She loots a few pieces of gear off the ogres, yet does not equip them. Even the bows she receives from her party members she does not correctly equip until (accidentally) later. Small things, but again an interesting look into how others play the game. From a dev’s perspective, do you try to help someone like MJ have an easier time with the game, or do you go to the other extreme and address top 5% player concerns about class balance and UI micro-tweaking? In many ways it’s an impossible decision.

Between the actions in the video and MJs commentary on them, I think the biggest thing the video shows is just how different DF:UW is compared to what many view as a ‘normal’ MMO (WoW basically). And I don’t mean different on the large scale, like full loot PvP and such, but the thousands of little things that add up. As someone who has been around such games for many years, a lot of the differences in DF:UW are normal to me, and hence I have troubling seeing how anyone could look at some of the details and come to the wrong conclusion. MJ’s video did a really good job of bringing such things to the forefront for me.

Looking forward to see the progress she makes once she has some clan support. Should be interesting, and a great example of why joining a clan in DF:UW is a basic requirement for anyone new to the game.

Posted in Darkfall Online, Mass Media, MMO design | 18 Comments