tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64545384566739254392024-02-07T01:05:53.983-08:00The Babbling GamerA blog about MMORPGs, single player RPGs, and any other games I happen to play along the way.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-67782562404371695002018-11-27T11:15:00.000-08:002018-11-27T11:15:09.539-08:00NecroZeus: Rise from your grave!<br />
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Me: Yeah, ok, maybe.<br />
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Many years, three kids, and a move from the West coast to the Southeast later, it's time to try my hand at blogging again. Maybe.<br />
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We'll see.<br />
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I'm currently playing (itinerantly): World of Warships, Fortnite (Save the World), Dragon Quest XI, XCom 2 (legacy missions), Star Control: Origins, Battletech, WH40K: Mechanicus, some other odds and ends, and some mobile games.<br />
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Surely out of all that I can find something to write about. If my lords and masters will allow it. Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-27118140659537690722014-01-29T14:40:00.003-08:002014-01-29T14:40:30.152-08:00Complaining about Free ThingsI know that we, as a species, often like to complain. "Oh my back hurts," or "oh that person is so mean" or "oh I've been stabbed, why won't anyone help me?!" Complain complain. Star Trek Online is currently celebrating its 4th anniversary by giving away free stuff to anyone who can be bothered to log in and claim it. Stuff that normally costs real money to acquire.<div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Free ships for all!</td></tr>
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And people are complaining. Sure, the vast majority of players are simply saying thank you and moving on (bravo), but there are still a minority of players that have taken to the forums to complain that the free stuff they've been given for free with no obligations, is not the free stuff they wanted, or as cool as they'd have liked.</div>
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Just . . . stop. Please.</div>
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What is it about human nature that forces some of us to complain about anything, everything, even (especially?) things that simply don't matter at all?</div>
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It's almost as bad as writing a post complaining about people who complain . . . oh . . . wait . . .</div>
Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-44312663147199539142014-01-28T17:07:00.001-08:002014-01-29T14:41:06.297-08:00I want to Dota but I am a NoobYou want to Dota 2, but you're a noob? It's ok, don't be afraid. I've been playing for a while, and I'm still a noob. Thankfully, there are ways to play the game that don't involve being painfully humiliated by your "peers", there aren't really that many jerks out there anyway, and there are a few simple things you can do to avoid total noobness.<br />
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Dota 2 is a MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arena, game. The short definition of a MOBA is a game in which two teams face off on a map with the goal of destroying the opposing team's base. Most of them include non-player creatures (creeps) that move from each side's base to attack the opposing side, and the destruction of said creeps is a primary source of gold and experience for leveling up the player controlled heroes. League of Legends is currently the most famous example of the genre, but the original Defense of the Ancients mod of Warcraft 3 is what got everything started.<br />
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If you've never played before, Dota 2 now offers a fairly solid training course in the game itself. It will familiarize you with the controls and some of the mechanics in a stress-free environment. Play the training levels, it'll help. I wish they'd been there when I was starting.<br />
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I'm going to assume you understand the basics of RPG-like games, of gaining xp, leveling up, earning gold and buying items, etc, and that you know how to start the game, jump into a bot match, and pick a character. With that in mind, I think the single most important thing you need to learn when starting out is the concept of "last hitting".<br />
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Every time an enemy creep dies, if you are close enough to it your hero will gain experience. However, gold is only awarded to the hero that lands the death blow on the creep, or the "last hit". Doing so also gives more experience than just being nearby. So if you get lots of last hits, you will make lots of gold and get lots of experience. If you don't get any last hits, you will make small amounts of experience and no gold at all. Last hits are key.<br />
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What you absolutely do not want to do is wade into a pack of enemy creeps and auto attack until they're all dead. If you're by yourself, you will take a lot of damage. If you have the support of allied creeps, you'll get very few last hits. In the early game, timing is everything. What you actually want to do is follow your allied creeps, allow them to engage the enemy creeps, and when an enemy creep has just a sliver of health left, attack it and get the last hit. If you attack too early and don't kill the creep your creeps will finish it off. If you attack too late, the enemy creep will already be dead. Timing is very important. <br />
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The opposing heroes will be doing the same thing. Rather than just stand around waiting for last hits, you can try to harass the enemy heroes with your abilities. Keeping them low on health will force them away from the creep line, and starve them of vital experience and gold. Note, however, that using your auto-attack (right click) on an enemy hero will cause nearby enemy creeps to switch targets and attack you. Harassing the enemy is important, but you have to be careful.<br />
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Another important thing to keep in mind is hero selection -- some heroes are much harder to play than others. Personally I think ranged heroes are easier when starting out than melee heroes, as you have more time to respond to what the enemy is doing, and tend to stay out of immediate danger. It's also important to know the role of the hero you choose -- many heroes are "carries", designed to dominate the enemy team in the end game, but typically quite weak in the early game. Each team only needs 1 or 2 carries at most. A team with 5 carries is probably in trouble. The Library tab inside Dota 2 defines the roles for each hero. If you're playing by yourself, a carry is fine, the bots will do their best to support you. If you're playing with others, see what they've picked before you pick.<br />
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The other key thing to be aware of is building items. When I first started out I didn't understand that every big item in the game is built from a number of cheaper items. You don't need to save up 5,050 gold for that Bloodstone, you just need to buy each piece that constitutes a Bloodstone, and once you have them all, they transform into a Bloodstone. Never ever ever "save" money for a big item -- you should be buying or upgrading items every chance you get, from small things in the early game, to expensive things from the Secret Shop in the mid to late game. The more items you have, the faster you can earn gold, and the faster you'll get that big item you really want.<br />
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For a detailed schooling, you should read this: <a href="http://www.purgegamers.com/welcome-to-dota-you-suck#.Uub36dLTm71" target="_blank">Welcome to Dota, You suck</a>. It has almost everything you could ever need to know about how to play, in great detail.<br />
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Another great link is the <a href="http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Dota_2_Wiki" target="_blank">Dota 2 wiki</a>, which provides overviews of all the heroes and good tactics to use with them. It also provides detailed explanations of some of the mechanics, such as the difference between Pure damage and Physical damage.<br />
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Learn the game, practice, and before you know it, this could be you!<br />
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No, no, I'm kidding. Don't be that guy, Witch Doctor is only that good with careful video editing . . .Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-6585102023962806222014-01-27T12:17:00.000-08:002014-01-27T12:17:20.246-08:00It's been a long time . . .It's been a long time since I posted anything, and I'll admit I'd pretty much given up on this whole "blogging" thing. Job changes, life changes, lack of free time, lack of motivation, and a bit of a feeling of ennui with the state of gaming.<br />
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I think I'm in a stable work position for the time being at least (I'm on job #5 since 2011), the newest addition to the family is 10 months old and starting to quiet down a bit, and I seem to be slipping into a somewhat typical gaming routine again.<br />
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What am I playing?<br />
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<ul>
<li>Dota 2 is my current "go to" for quick gaming sessions, and I have two friends I dragged into it as well. Despite having nearly 300 hours played, I'm still a relative sucky noob and too cowardly to play against other players. It's a bot life for me. The amazing thing about Dota 2 is that after nearly 300 hours I still learn new things. I'll be posting about Dota 2 for sure.</li>
<li>Star Trek Online is my current relaxing MMO of choice. I'm playing it solo or in random groups, but I love collecting ships and the relatively relaxed pace of the game. My current favorite is a Voth Bastion piloted by my Gorn Engineer.</li>
<li>Guild Wars 2 gets played now and then. The whole living story thing really turned me off the game though. I was really only interested in playing a couple of times a week, but that wasn't enough to keep up with the living story, and once I fell "out of the loop" my interest took a nose dive. I'd love an expansion that opens up Elona or Cantha, with new classes, new mechanics, and new dragon enemies, but supposedly they won't be doing that.</li>
<li>The Banner Saga, Shadowrun Returns, and X-Com: Enemy Within get played in short bursts when I only have one hand free because the other one is holding a sleeping baby. Both are turn based games with lots to offer.</li>
</ul>
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Most of the time though, it's Dota 2. It's simply too accessible, and with at least one friend along for the ride is a lot of fun. Strangely I mostly end up playing MMOs when none of my friends are around . . .</div>
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What am I looking forward to? I'm not sure. I want to like Wildstar, but the action combat has me cautious, as does the over-the-top silly nature of the game. I'm not sure I want to play a cartoon. Everquest Next? Maybe, but there's not enough concrete information yet. Elder Scrolls Online? No thanks. I've never been able to get into any of the Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind -- I doubt ESO will grab me either. I am somewhat hopeful that the Diablo 3 expansion will make Diablo 3 a better game, removal of the auction house was a great start, and a proper weapon and shield type heavy armor fighter is appealing to me too.</div>
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There's surprisingly little on my radar for this year though, so I'm hoping to be surprised.</div>
Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-84906054476968004982012-05-08T14:29:00.001-07:002012-05-08T14:34:23.211-07:00Guild Wars 2 - A Primer, Part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Guild Wars 2 is on the horizon -- not next month, and maybe not the one after that either, but soon. Many people are interested in the game who have no experience with Guild Wars and the rich lore that Arenanet has built up over the past seven years. That's a real shame, as the lore plays a big part in understanding and enjoying Guild Wars 2, and seeing all the ways in which the new game is connected to the old one helps make it feel more like a world and less like "just a game".<br />
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So in this first post I'm going to try (emphasis on try) to give a brief overview of Guild Wars lore from the perspective of the three campaigns plus the expansion, the coming of the Elder Dragons, and where Guild Wars 2 sits in relation to all of this. Note that my knowledge is not encyclopedic, and there are bound to be omissions, errors, and inconsistencies, but it should serve as a reasonable overview for someone new to the game.<br />
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<u><b>Guild Wars Prophecies</b></u><br />
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Guild Wars Prophecies represents the original release version of Guild Wars. The kingdom of Ascalon, on the continent of Tyria, populated by humans, comes under attack by the savage Charr, large feline humanoids with a real hatred for Ascalonians. When humans arrived in Ascalon centuries earlier, they drove the Charr into the mountains. The Charr tribes are broken into four legions - Ash, Blood, Flame, and Iron. Led by the shamans of the Flame Legion, the Charr adopted new gods (the Titans) and were taught powerful fire magic that they used to raze Ascalon. Fiery meteors rained from the heavens and turned Ascalon into a wasteland almost overnight. This became known as The Searing. Although Ascalon lay in ruins, King Adelbern, Prince Rurik, and many citizens were still alive, and the strongest of buildings still stood. The Charr legions were coming, however, and it seemed unlikely Ascalon would survive.<br />
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Prince Rurik advocated retreat to the kingdom of Kryta to let the people of Ascalon survive and recover, and hopefully someday come back to retake their homeland. King Adelbern refused to leave however, or seek succor from his hated rivals in Kryta. Rurik and Adelbern split, with many citizens following Rurik into Kryta (along with the player characters) while the King, most of the army, and many of the remaining citizens stayed to fight for their homes.<br />
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Prince Rurik died crossing the mountains to Kryta, but most of the fleeing Ascalonians survived and were given sanctuary in Kryta in villages between Lion's Arch and Divinity's Reach. The sorceror-king of Orr cast a spell that halted the advance of the Charr towards Orr and Kryta, but the aftershocks of doing so caused the kingdom of Orr to sink into the sea. This event became known as The Cataclysm. The players were then drawn into a battle against the mysterious Mursaat and their human White Mantle pawns, a long series of battles that don't have too much to do with the Guild Wars 2 setting (as far as I know).<br />
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Meanwhile, back in Ascalon, King Adelbern and his forces are losing. The Charr surround Ascalon City and lead a massive assault to end the human occupation forever. Driven mad by desperation and the death of his son, King Adelbern unleashes a terrible curse that kills every Charr for miles around the city . . . and rips the souls from every human in the country, binding them to guard Ascalon from the Charr for eternity. This became known as the Foefire. These Ascalonian ghosts still occupy Ascalon centuries later in Guild Wars 2, and see all living beings who enter Ascalon as invaders to be killed, whether they be Charr, Human, Sylvari, Norn, or Asura.<br />
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<u><b>Guild Wars Nightfall</b></u><br />
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Guild Wars Nightfall is the third campaign in the original Guild Wars, and starts on the continent of Elona, far from the conflicts in Ascalon and Kryta. Most of what happens in Nightfall has little effect on Guild Wars 2 except for it's conclusion -- Spearmarshal Kormir, Commander of the Sunspears, absorbs the remnants of the fallen God of Secrets, Abaddon, and ascends to godhood, becoming Kormir Goddess of Truth.<br />
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Whether in response to this event or something else (I'm not sure), the six human gods retreat from day-to-day interference on Tyria and leave humanity to fend for itself.<br />
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<u><b>Guild Wars Factions</b></u><br />
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Guild Wars Factions is the second campaign in the original Guild Wars, and I'm currently playing through it now so don't have full knowledge of it yet. I'll expand this section after I'm done.<br />
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<u><b>Guild Wars: Eye of the North</b></u><br />
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Eye of the North was the first (and only) "expansion" for Guild Wars, adding a new story and explorable areas onto the Prophecies campaign. Eye of the North does a lot of set up for Guild Wars 2, introducing the Asura and Norn races, as well as spending a lot more time with the Charr and their society. In pre-searing Ascalon, players met a young girl named Gwen. Eye of the North takes place a decade or so later and Gwen has grown into a bitter young woman who hates the Charr for killing her family and destroying her home. She becomes leader of the Ebon Vanguard, a non-aligned military organization dedicated to resisting the Charr. Human history looks on Gwen as one of its great heroes, while the Charr see her as something of a villain. (She was a hero, suck it you furry bastards).<br />
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The expansion campaign involves the emergence of the Destroyers from deep beneath the earth, powerful beings that are driving the Dwarves and the previously unknown Asura from their homes. The players travel all throughout Tyria attempting to enlist the aid of the various races in the battle against the Destroyers, even the Charr.<br />
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As part of this battle the Dwarven race essentially destroys itself, all Dwarves transforming into beings of living stone to be a bulwark against the Destroyers for the rest of Tyria. The Dwarves still live, in a sense, but ceased to be a race as we know it (and is why Dwarves are not a playable race in Guild Wars 2).<br />
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The adventure culminates in a battle with the Great Destroyer, and while the players and transformed dwarves are victorious, it is later revealed that the Great Destroyer was simply a champion of the Elder Dragon Primordus, and a herald of his imminent awakening. The destruction of the Great Destroyer delayed Primordus' awakening for decades, but it was only a temporary victory.<br />
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<u><b>The Elder Dragons</b></u><br />
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In the years between Eye of the North and Guild Wars 2, the Elder Dragons awakened from their slumber and went forth to terrorize the people of the world.<br />
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The first dragon to awaken was Primordus, who claims mastery over fire and stone and drove the Asura from their homes. He still dwells in the depths of Tyria and sends his minions out to conquer all that he can.<br />
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Forty-five years later Jormag woke up, lay claim to the icy north, and drove the Norn from their homes. Many Norn were corrupted by his coming and chose to serve him instead of fight him.<br />
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Fifty-three years after Jormag, Zhaitan rose from the depths of the ocean and brought the lost city of Orr with him along with countless undead minions. Zhaitan's territory has cut Tyria off from Cantha (the setting of Guild Wars Factions).<br />
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Finally, over a century later Kralkatorrik awakened north of the Charr homelands and flew south the to Crystal desert. His passage corrupted everything he passed over, turning it into crystal, even living beings. Those afflicted by his corruption sloughed off their flesh and became living crystal, homicidal minions of Kralkatorrik. Kralkatorrik's territory has cut Tyria off from Elona (the setting of Guild Wars Nightfall).<br />
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Guild Wars 2 starts a couple of decades after the emergence of Kralkatorrik. No mortal army has ever successfully attacked an Elder Dragon. All those that have tried have been slaughtered without mercy. Barring a return of the human gods it's unclear how the dragons could ever be defeated, but this will presumably be the ultimate task of players.<br />
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Good luck . . . I think we'll need it.<br />
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<u><b>Preparing for Guild Wars 2</b></u><br />
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If you're thinking of playing Guild Wars before the release of Guild Wars 2 to learn the lore, the best thing to do would be to play the Prophecies campaign followed by the Eye of the North expansion. If you have time after that, play Nightfall and then Factions. Prophecies and Eye of the North are the key campaigns though, as Guild Wars 2 takes place on Tyria and many of the characters players will encounter are descendents of the NPCs in Guild Wars.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-21989608794100353612012-05-02T09:20:00.002-07:002012-05-02T09:20:58.152-07:00Trying this againSo, finding myself with a little more time on my hands due to yet another job change, and a little more interested in talking about things with games like Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 on the horizon, I'm going to give this whole blogging thing another go.<br />
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My plan for the next few weeks is to focus on Guild Wars 2, provide basic overview information for people unfamiliar with the setting and style of Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2, and then get into some more in-depth analysis of mechanics, pros & cons, and where I hope the game ends up going in the future.<br />
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Plus, I've been working on a personal game design document for a GW2 spin-off (just for fun) that has gotten me delving more deeply into the setting (Arenanet, call me, Kickstarter combo!)<br />
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;)Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-50356098901386276772012-02-07T11:25:00.000-08:002012-02-07T11:25:49.808-08:00HiatusBetween work, family life, and more games than I can shake a stick at, I'm finding I simply don't have time to update this blog very often, and when I do I don't feel terribly inspired.<div>
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So I'm going to put the blog on hiatus for the time being, until my schedule and/or motivation improves.</div>
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So thank you for reading, and hopefully I'll be back eventually.</div>Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-42177296003830265762012-01-31T10:25:00.000-08:002012-01-31T10:25:02.179-08:00Transwarping through Star Trek OnlineAlthough most of my time is still being spent meandering my way through The Old Republic, when I feel the need for a break from blasters and lightsabers I've been exploring the options provided by phasers and photon torpedoes. Yeah, not much of a change thematically, but the gameplay is vastly different as is the structure of the games. I've been dealing with fantasy settings for years, I can handle a glut of sci-fi for a bit.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new Odyssey class, free to everyone during Anniversary event</td></tr>
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Star Trek Online is about to celebrate it's 2nd anniversary (this Friday) and just recently went free to play. I played the game at release . . . briefly. It was interesting, but plodding and ultimately unsatisfying. Some of the systems they had in place just didn't work, or worked in a way that made no sense, or worked sensibly but were worthless. The ship combat was pretty darn good, sort of Pirates of the Burning Sea in space (I LOVED the ship combat in PotBS, but that was the only thing I enjoyed about the game) but the ground combat was an abysmal mess of sluggish controls and slow painful combats that could leave a player wanting to tear their hair out . . . or maybe their eyes. I'd say it was actually worse than Pirates of the Burning Sea ground combat, plus it was buggy as heck (I lost track of the number of times my away team members beamed under the surface of the planet leaving me to try and solo a ground mission).<br />
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After two years of additional development, the game is much improved. I'm not sure that someone logging in for the first time in a long time would immediately recognize all the differences (other than being bombarded with a swarm of system messages and character updates from two years worth of patches), as most of it is actually fairly subtle, but the game just plays a lot better, is far more player friendly, and provides a much smoother gameplay experience overall. Below I'll give a brief overview of each major system.<br />
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<b>Ground Combat:</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgiFd-Ic4D00H00mdYphPTDnum569-V1TMtsR7YkmvCzE7Xdxopo6ohBZ7ZhfcKnwAkOC5-77gle_kuO41KMkQ8TE6_NVRe1UP-3xnYTwZsCsvyoqgG7Qa5QxzuxzAEzbXkavC_keLK5Jt/s1600/shooter_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgiFd-Ic4D00H00mdYphPTDnum569-V1TMtsR7YkmvCzE7Xdxopo6ohBZ7ZhfcKnwAkOC5-77gle_kuO41KMkQ8TE6_NVRe1UP-3xnYTwZsCsvyoqgG7Qa5QxzuxzAEzbXkavC_keLK5Jt/s320/shooter_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sniping in shooter mode</td></tr>
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Ground combat is still a bit of an ugly duckling for<br />
the game, and I still dread missions with lots of ground combat sequences, but it's vastly improved over the release version. Mostly it's just much faster. Enemies seem to have far fewer hit points, or the damage of weapons and special abilities has been increased dramatically. Either way, you can get through the fights quickly and that's great. They finally added the ability to set your basic attack to autofire, an omission that made switching from space to ground combat jerky and disjointed. It's extremely nice to not have to click that button over and over and over and over. Unless, of course, you switch to the new "shooter" mode for ground combat. I've tried it, and it's not bad. It's an over-the-shoulder 3rd person view with a targeting reticle, sort of like Mass Effect. You shoot with a left mouse click, alt-fire with a right mouse click, and melee with a center mouse click. It actually makes the basic shooting combat much more fun, but I found it much harder to use special abilities, so I've generally stuck to the "rpg" mode.<br />
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<b>Space Combat:</b><br />
Space combat is still great, I don't think they've changed it much at all. It's possible they've made low level space battles easier --I'm not really sure as it's possible I just know more about the game and do better now. Of course, that means if you hated it before you're still going to hate it now.<br />
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<b>Skill Gains:</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimTvj8S-fjAlwOBJDsCdjHeB4XR7U2h74qirok8-hRvWGv6eIxPhdffyuhM629-znIwFhLcKhga5P0jX4xMC7kgr5bWBHeHxIQm1e1DyeeOrFtI7cFnlIwxe-q8uGElLGNRAgj7yB7F4g3/s1600/skills.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimTvj8S-fjAlwOBJDsCdjHeB4XR7U2h74qirok8-hRvWGv6eIxPhdffyuhM629-znIwFhLcKhga5P0jX4xMC7kgr5bWBHeHxIQm1e1DyeeOrFtI7cFnlIwxe-q8uGElLGNRAgj7yB7F4g3/s320/skills.png" width="295" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New skill screen</td></tr>
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They've completely revamped the ground and space skills that you spend your skill points on, combining or eliminating categories, clearly marking what the skills do, and providing player characters the ability to train bridge officers with rank 3 combat abilities if they spend enough points in certain skills. For example, rather than having a skill to increase phaser damage, another to increase disrupter damage, a third to increase plasma damage, and so on, there are now two skills -- one to increase energy weapon damage and one to increase projectile (torpedo) weapon damage. You also don't have to choose which type of ship to increase your skills in, you just get better at captaining ships. It makes increasing your combat potential independent of the equipment you find, craft, or buy. You just get better, and that's a great change.<br />
<br />
They've also greatly narrowed the number of ground skills, consolidating things into a few sensible categories. You are now forced to split your point expenditures between space and ground skills (3/4 for space, 1/4 for ground) which prevents you from being an unstoppable monster in space combat that couldn't kill a Klingon blood flea on the ground. Another sensible change.<br />
<br />
<b>Crafting:</b><br />
I have not experimented with the new crafting system, but I know they've completely revamped it at least twice since launch. The launch version of crafting was really quite stupid, so whatever it is now, it has to be better.<br />
<br />
<b>Sector Space:</b><br />
One of my gripes with the launch version of the game was Sector Space, the candy-coated abstraction of interstellar space was nothing short of painful. I understood why they did it, and what they were trying to accomplish, but it grated on the nerves and was extremely immersion breaking. In the current version of the game you can turn the overlay off, and even if you leave it on it's much more subdued than the original version. It's still not what I'd really like to see, but it's an improvement for sure.<br />
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<b>PvE Content:</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisOqJczUL49djmh42wLj_B2AS0pryuE_LbTzPmkVL9Dv4hqmB_Y1nvSdHJIk-escTFSf87UR3HnaSritpAG4NuToQvP8O1sCBcGbfQaVSzAKSLPy20Ua1m0IGFb_cHotDYu6QwHuPrTzst/s1600/STO_season5_screen_mission_4a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisOqJczUL49djmh42wLj_B2AS0pryuE_LbTzPmkVL9Dv4hqmB_Y1nvSdHJIk-escTFSf87UR3HnaSritpAG4NuToQvP8O1sCBcGbfQaVSzAKSLPy20Ua1m0IGFb_cHotDYu6QwHuPrTzst/s320/STO_season5_screen_mission_4a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The missions themselves haven't really changed, but how you get access to them has. There's a whole new interface that pushes content to the player rather than you having to flail about trying to figure out where to go or who to talk to. The main storyline missions are provided in order through this interface, and it can also be used to queue for group PvE or PvP combat. The game also has events that run for an hour starting on the hour, and the current event is detailed on this screen, along with information on how to access it.<br />
<br />
Overall it makes for a much more pleasant leveling experience, and remains useful at the level cap as you can use it to re-run old missions, join task forces, etc.<br />
<br />
<b>The Foundry:</b><br />
Another feature I've yet to use is The Foundry, a tool used by players to create missions for other players much like City of Heroes' Architect. I understand that there are also daily missions with real rewards that involve running Foundry missions (as in Daily: Run Foundry Mission 0/1). Sounds like good stuff, and I'll check it out eventually.<br />
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<b>Free to Play:</b><br />
Obviously the biggest change is the switch to the Free to Play model, and I have to say Star Trek Online probably has the most generous F2P scheme of any game that's made the switch. Free players are not denied any access to any content at all (unlike City of Heroes), or relegated to only playing certain "builds" (unlike Champions Online). Instead, free players are limited to only two characters, have a cap on the amount of credits they can store, smaller inventory, and don't get all the free bridge officers, ships, and duty officers that subscribed players get. However, they can easily get those things using the cash shop, so it really is a case of choosing between "pay as you go" and "all inclusive". Free players are barely second class citizens here, they're simply paying a different way. I can easily continue playing my Vice Admiral character without paying a dime, and not miss out on anything. I can only assume the difference between the Champions Online model a Star Trek Online model are a result of the acquisition by Perfect World Entertainment. I never thought I'd be thanking PWE for anything, but they've overseen a great F2P transition.<br />
<br />
Overall, I think Star Trek Online has come a long way over the past two years. It still isn't a game for everyone, but if you'd thought about trying it, or tried it but didn't quite like it, now is a great time to give it a go. The game is free, and heck, if you log in between February 3rd and 6th, get a character to at least level 5 and run a special mission, you'll get a free ship. Sure you can't pilot it until level 50, but it's still a free ship that would normally cost $10-15 in the store. You can't beat free, right?Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-20234934967150553282012-01-27T15:14:00.000-08:002012-01-27T15:23:28.109-08:00The Nature of MMO GamingA friend of mine recently read <a href="http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/20/narrative-is-not-a-game-mechanic/" target="_blank">this post</a> by Raph Koster. He suggested (perhaps "demanded" would be a better word) that I write a blog post about it, and give my opinion. Well, he's sort of going to get what he asked, but not really, because instead of analyzing and/or discussing Raph's post, I'm going to describe how what Raph wrote (which I agree with, by the way) applies to MMO gaming, and why it clearly illuminates one of the fundamental problems with current MMO design. First up though, I'm going to further discuss "feedback" as described by Raph, and how feedback affects us as gamers. Here is what Raph has to say:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #484848; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Ah, but the feedback for even a trivial action is very important. It matters that we hear the sound when we click the mouse. And should the designer choose, they can make the feedback be hugely disproportionate to the problem solved. Feedback serves the purpose of cueing the user whether or not they are being successful in figuring out the black box. So we provide feedback each time an input is made, and the feedback is intended to help guide the user as to whether they are doing the right thing.</span></blockquote>
In short, feedback is any sort of response that occurs as a result of player action. That could be pressing a button on a mouse to get a "click", tripping a lever in the game and having a door visibly open with an audible rumble, or clicking on the "fireball" icon and killing an enemy. Through this feedback you learn that levers open doors that might be blocking your progress, and fireballs will defeat an opponent that would otherwise kill you. The lever opening a door you can't see or hear would be an example of bad feedback -- you don't know whether your action accomplished anything at all, let alone the thing you were trying to accomplish.<br />
<br />
Game rewards are also a type of feedback (and indeed, as Raph notes feedback is itself a reward), earning experience, gold, items, levels, etc., are all feedback that lets you know you're doing the right thing, but they also serve as rewards that trigger the chemical responses in the brain that react to accomplishments and acquisition (typically dopamine I believe). Leveling up or acquiring that great item you wanted can provide an actual rush, a burst of pleasant chemicals in the brain, albiet one that diminishes with repetition (an issue I will discuss later).<br />
<br />
So what's my point? That you can essentially change Raph's problem --> black box --> feedback paradigm to problem --> black box --> reward. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_KPlGHKsFMVgdNwrjMLvOvnknQWuu51JV4GLViv0nMnfrsIfbNpLOtF9XVtI9omOPz5ZybmKzTt-3LxD14A6CCRsdT69SbV-aSgHKFVcuWG4SPpq2LCHfufKW7QgFDmgb_VvcmyWTRdmH/s1600/narr5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_KPlGHKsFMVgdNwrjMLvOvnknQWuu51JV4GLViv0nMnfrsIfbNpLOtF9XVtI9omOPz5ZybmKzTt-3LxD14A6CCRsdT69SbV-aSgHKFVcuWG4SPpq2LCHfufKW7QgFDmgb_VvcmyWTRdmH/s1600/narr5.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Totally ripped from Raph's post. Please don't SOPA me!</td></tr>
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Sometimes that reward is feedback that you're on the right path, and sometimes that reward is an actual reward, it all depends on the context and scale of the problem --> black box --> reward/feedback. A quest in an MMO consists of multiple levels of these paradigms, everything from "how to get there --> use the griffin --> flight cutscene" and "defeat enemy orc --> use abilities --> xp/loot" to "kill 10 orcs --> repeat defeat enemy orc 10x --> quest reward". Within those are even smaller ones, such as how to use abilities, or how to walk to the griffin. An insane person could draw out a nested diagram showing all the problem interactions and it would be enormous. I'm not that insane, sorry.<br />
<br />
Point, Warsyde, got one? Ok ok, I'm getting to it.<br />
<br />
The point is that there are diminishing returns on the enjoyment of rewards. The more, and bigger, rewards you get, and the faster they come, the less you enjoy any particular reward. Humans have the remarkable ability to become accustomed to almost anything if exposed to it enough. This is part of what makes addiction so dangerous, as an addicted person gradually needs more and more of whatever they're addicted to in order to achieve the same sensations they started with.<br />
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This has two effects. The first is in a game situation like Raph describes:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIcKWsT4y4vsF1_5MLabc6JuQ79DBm0KdxtDY_jR8N5XdfdaqPOgBhRCzef804T9tSuNdWF2VsMiTUkG1hLsiDayG70soWfnhjyJ2H9WcLsQkfhQ0rIp5MsRILExALpoBiDnkUAiD0ESiv/s1600/narr8.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="86" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIcKWsT4y4vsF1_5MLabc6JuQ79DBm0KdxtDY_jR8N5XdfdaqPOgBhRCzef804T9tSuNdWF2VsMiTUkG1hLsiDayG70soWfnhjyJ2H9WcLsQkfhQ0rIp5MsRILExALpoBiDnkUAiD0ESiv/s320/narr8.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Disproportionate feedback</td></tr>
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If the game offers huge feedback all the time, it's likely to rapidly become tiresome as the constant barrage of feedback causes each additional instance to have less impact than the one that came before. Not right away of course, but eventually it would happen. Because so many games are using the model above it's a good thing they're short - a 50 hour game like the one above would burn a player out, but an 8 hour game might be able to get away with it.<br />
<br />
What I'm really interested in though, is how this applies to MMOs. MMOs are games intended to be played for hundreds of hours. They simply, absolutely, cannot use the model above, as the reward structure would result in burned out players wandering off after a week or two at most. Instead, the MMO model looks more like:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5CtTABZpov5hvyau9veyeqnoFHBkNjl-q2nOTS6hF_mmjGpBYOeaLBeoIl1oA5rLmkax088xzUsK4IC5WztV4Bkj0twKujaIID0YsBK3k0ozx6cf4-baqDwXgKVSzQnEm8p19M4ArgF1h/s1600/Rewards1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="61" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5CtTABZpov5hvyau9veyeqnoFHBkNjl-q2nOTS6hF_mmjGpBYOeaLBeoIl1oA5rLmkax088xzUsK4IC5WztV4Bkj0twKujaIID0YsBK3k0ozx6cf4-baqDwXgKVSzQnEm8p19M4ArgF1h/s320/Rewards1.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Large number of small interactions, one large reward</td></tr>
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or</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX8Ab-TIRezlOBnqc4vbBrFmFUP7yWlz0E45zII51sb_l_t2QUVMjxinSLxdRDkyJlHS8aIwoPvY5cwrqEbMxFwQuaXplNlv3mvQ2ceeanZyCNUqsQ4lPCzTOe98fpjZC0GUSgpWPLOssz/s1600/Rewards2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="22" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX8Ab-TIRezlOBnqc4vbBrFmFUP7yWlz0E45zII51sb_l_t2QUVMjxinSLxdRDkyJlHS8aIwoPvY5cwrqEbMxFwQuaXplNlv3mvQ2ceeanZyCNUqsQ4lPCzTOe98fpjZC0GUSgpWPLOssz/s320/Rewards2.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Large number of small interactions, large number of small rewards</td></tr>
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Additionally, you can have a combination of the two that gives small rewards on the way and a big reward at the end. The first method is the Everquest method, the second method is that used by most modern MMOs. Both methods are designed with the intent of keeping you playing for as long as possible. The Everquest model did it by giving you really big rewards (class epic, omg!) for a large number of tasks spread over a long period of time. The more modern method does it by giving you a lot of little rewards, hoping to both keep you going with the rewards while not overstimulating your brain and diminishing your appreciation of the rewards. Both methods only delay the inevitable, but delay it they do. It should be noted that raiding, even modern raiding, essentially follows the EQ model, though World of Warcraft is trying to make raiding fit the second model with their raid finder tool.</div>
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These models combined with how humans react to rewards accurately describes player behaviors in MMOs over the long term, and explains why casual players tend to be the happiest and hardcore players the most likely to burn out. Someone who only plays an MMO for a couple of hours a week is unlikely to become inured to the reward structure as they get rewarded infrequently enough to not build up much resistance. Compare that to a hardcore player who burns through two months worth of content in a week. Not only is he or she now bored with nothing to do, the rewards they accumulated through the course of playing came so hard and fast that additional rewards will trigger almost no response in their brains. At this point, they're either addicted and clamoring for another, bigger fix, or burned out and leave for a new game, or a new hobby entirely.</div>
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Is there a solution to this? For MMOs, I'm not sure that there is. The need to make the games essentially endless means that content needs to be designed a certain way, and excessive activation of reward mechanics is effectively in the hands of the player, the one thing the developer can't control. A game that is perfectly balanced for someone who plays 10 hours a week could quickly bore someone who plays 50 hours a week. It does suggest though, that the greatest potential for long term retention of players could be found by catering actively to the casual player. The biggest issue is attracting the casual player to your game in the first place, as while the hardcore/burned out player will always try something new, the truly casual player is generally happy with what they've got. Blizzard has clearly profited from this as the more casual World of Warcraft became the larger their subscriber base grew, and the fluctuations in their subscriber base can generally be attributed to the more active players leaving for new games and coming back again.</div>
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I think in the long run there will be two types of MMOs - casual MMOs, and niche MMOs. World of Warcraft is very casual friendly, while EVE Online fits a very specific niche. A generic fantasy MMO that is not casual friendly, however, probably doesn't have much long term potential. I'll be interested to see how The Old Republic does in the long term, as the dialogue and cutscenes provide large amounts of feedback for small amounts of input, which suggests players should eventually reach the point where they become bored and skip through the dialog even if they haven't heard it before, but the game is also fairly casual friendly, and those players could consume the content at a slow enough pace that they don't reach the spacebar-spacebar-spacebar stage. Time will tell.</div>Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-8940889100590459412012-01-18T14:10:00.000-08:002012-01-27T08:46:27.773-08:00Ilum PvP ChangeWell, SWTOR patch 1.1 went live today and Ilum PvP has turned out almost exactly as I predicted in my previous post. I really don't know what Bioware was thinking, or how the current implementation managed to go live without anyone stopping to say "hey, you know, this might not work out . . ."<br />
<br />
For those who don't know, the issue arises as a combination of bad design and faction imbalance. They added daily quests that require killing players of the other faction, greatly increased the valor (essentially PvP xp) rewards for killing players of the other faction, and then let the ravening hordes loose without any safeguards in place. What do I mean by that? I mean there are no safe zones in the Republic base on Ilum, so Imperial forces (which greatly outnumber Republic on almost every server) are able to storm into the Republic base and spawn camp Republic players. As you can't choose your respawn point there's no way to regroup unlike in WoW where you could at least ghost run to a different spirit healer. It looks like this:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg96izVMEjx19AGe-7erTpJLOyf5A0ARr1zHqc_m3DtoM1Ccg3W7vnuUcaAgHpz4eQjkUQR3Ngqw58iLTrWd-4pbed0NFKvOy5mndLV29mnmzqr5LfIM2lmfdmbYMfY64gxfwBcdZMQT-z-/s1600/IlumPvP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg96izVMEjx19AGe-7erTpJLOyf5A0ARr1zHqc_m3DtoM1Ccg3W7vnuUcaAgHpz4eQjkUQR3Ngqw58iLTrWd-4pbed0NFKvOy5mndLV29mnmzqr5LfIM2lmfdmbYMfY64gxfwBcdZMQT-z-/s400/IlumPvP.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My god, this looks like fun!</td></tr>
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Republic players are essentially stuck as they get endlessly farmed for valor with no way to fight back and no way to escape. This goes beyond my expected /facepalm into the realm of pure insanity -- how could they set this up without a safe respawn area?! Players eventually figured out a workaround, which is to queue for a Warzone and then use a Fleet pass to get back to the fleet once in the Warzone. That's . . . ridiculous.<br />
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The other issue is that the turrets that are supposed to protect the respawn area are far too weak and, more importantly, actually reward valor when destroyed and then respawn instantly. As a result Imperial players have been rapidly advancing their valor ranks by constantly destroying the instantly respawning turrets. That has got to be a bug, and thus an exploit that will likely result in a valor rollback.<br />
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If you want to brave the mind-numbing insanity of the official forums, you can read about the official response to the whole issue <a href="http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1790513#edit1790513" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Now, I'm not trying to overly bash Bioware here as they've done a lot of good things with SWTOR and I'm really enjoying the game, but some of their design decisions are telegraphing the fact that they're relative greenhorns when it comes to this whole "MMO" thing. I'm sure any schmuck with a computer that's ever PvPed in an MMO could have predicted the result of the Ilum PvP change, yet somehow Bioware missed all the warning signs. I thought Mythic was supposed to be providing input and support for the PvP side of things, but if they are there's no indication of it. WAR had many faults, but spawn camping wasn't something they allowed to happen, certainly not on this scale.<br />
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Admittedly Bioware has really boxed themselves in here. If they make proper safe zones around respawn points then the poor Republic players faced with vast armies of Imperials simply won't come out until they go away. If they don't make proper safe zones, Republic players will simply learn to avoid Ilum like the plague. Either way, Ilum will fail to be a useful game area.<br />
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I think most players would be willing to face impossible odds as long as they had a chance of taking someone down with them, so some sort of buff to the outnumbered side might be the way to go even if it's not enough to turn the tide completely. If you can charge out with a massive buff on your character and knock off a few Imperials before they swarm you down, wouldn't everyone win? The Republic player gets some valor and a feeling of accomplishment, the Imperial players still get to farm valor, they just have to fight harder for it.<br />
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Whatever Bioware does, they're going to have to do it quickly. Players will be making their decision whether to subscribe to the game or not . . . this week. I'm not going anywhere for a while, but plenty of players could quite easily quit over this if Bioware doesn't respond appropriately.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-2277352261030524412012-01-05T14:25:00.000-08:002012-01-05T14:25:14.471-08:00Alarm bells ringingThe "New Year's PvP Update" post on SWTOR.com mentions the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 19px;"> Ilum will also become a major source of Valor. Valor buffs will increase and decrease based on the objectives your faction owns. These buffs increase the amount of Valor you receive per player kill. However they do not give anything in and of themselves, so players will still need to defeat other players for significant Valor rewards. Additionally, daily and weekly missions will require player kills to complete. Player kills for quests and Valor credit will have diminishing returns per player killed. So, the more players that are fighting other players, the better it is for everyone.</span></blockquote>
Am I the only one that reads that and wants to /facepalm at the inanity of the design here? Most servers are imbalanced in population, so one side will typically have an advantage over another in open world PvP. The way they're planning to do Ilum, the side with the advantage will capture all the objectives and then farm the other side for Valor points. The more objectives captured by one side, the more players from that side will flock to the area to get easy Valor points, and the more miserable the experience will be for the underpopulated side. Players will end up learning that if all (or most) of the objectives are held by one side, the best thing they can do is get off Ilum and do something else, and world PvP will die on any servers that don't have a reasonably equal distribution of active players on each side.<br />
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They've got the team behind Dark Age of Camelot working for them and this is what they come up with? In some ways it's similar to DAoC Relics, but without the built in safeguards. Relics provided a PvE bonus, not PvP, so once a side had a majority of the relics they'd run off to PvE, giving the other side a chance to retake them. DAoC was also a three faction game, so population balance could be combated by teaming up, except in extreme cases.<br />
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Now, what should they do instead? I'm not sure (I never said it was an easy problem). The objectives have to provide something to make taking them worth it, need to be designed in such a way that flipping objectives back and forth provides no benefit (no reward "on cap"), also need to be nearly impossible to keep permanently, AND allow an underdog side a chance to participate in a meaningful way.<br />
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Obviously they could go the DAoC route and make the objectives provide a global PvE benefit, but that doesn't feel right, and I'm not convinced players would feel motivated to PvP for PvE benefits in SWTOR. PvE in DAoC was pretty hard and leveling was slow, so PvE bonuses were a big deal. Plus, of course, Darkness Falls. In SWTOR though, a game where you could solo to the level cap? I think people PvPing would want a benefit for themselves, right there and then.<br />
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One possibility would be to leave the bonuses for capturing the objectives the same, but provide some sort of counter benefit to the losing side to prevent it from becoming a Valor point farm fest. One possibility that occurs to me is that when one side starts losing, Force using NPCs spawn in the losing side's base areas and provide a persistent buff to the losing players. The more objectives the enemy controls the bigger this buff gets, giving the losing side a significant combat advantage. If the enemy controls all or most of the objectives the buff should be significant enough to let a numerically inferior group of players have a chance against larger numbers of unbuffed players, possibly leading to them recapturing objectives and pushing the enemy back. At the very least it should allow the losing side to kill off some enemy players before they go down, allowing them to progress and participate despite the unbalanced situation.<br />
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Of course, this has flaws too, namely that it encourages the winning team to NOT capture all the objectives, and as the losing side retakes objectives they become weaker, leading to an eventual stalemate. It gets even worse when sides are evenly matched, as it could quickly become impossible for either side to make much progress without making their opponents too difficult to defeat. That still might be preferable to what Bioware has planned though, I don't know.<br />
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I'm sure there are plenty of people out there with good ideas on how to make open world PvP work, but it doesn't seem to me that Bioware is listening to them right now. PvP Designers need to scrutinize how players will behave in a PvP environment, and take into consideration all the possible factors (such as population imbalance) that could upset their design. Sadly they need to do this pro-actively and aggressively, as testing players will not display the sorts of behaviors that will break their design. Warhammer Online should have taught this lesson -- RvR (PvP) was great during beta, and completely fell apart when the game went live and players all sought out the path of least resistance.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-88827958749728304092012-01-02T12:04:00.000-08:002012-01-05T14:26:01.671-08:00SWTOR's PvE ChallengeIf you can never lose, you can never win.<br />
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This thought occurred to me as I was killing some time with Bejeweled 2 on my phone a few days ago. I decided to try "Endless" mode, not really sure what it was. I certainly didn't expect it to be a mode so easy you can never lose, such that you can endlessly play the game with no risk of having to stop. After a few levels I began to wonder what the point was, and why on earth it bothered to keep score. The score no longer represented skill, it represented time invested, and with no risk of losing it was a fairly meaningless indicator of "winning".<br />
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It didn't take long to see the parallels with MMORPGs. A MMORPG is a game you cannot (with a few exceptions) ever "lose". There's no game over, no "oh crap, that's too hard, I died and have to start over." I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just the way it is. I know some people long for "hardcore" servers (or games) where character death is, in fact, game over. I'm not one of them.<br />
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It does leave MMORPGs clearly in the land of games you can never lose, and as has been noted many times in the past there's no "game over, you've won!" screen in MMO land either. However, it's necessary for a game to provide the feeling that you can win or lose, whether or not that's really true in the larger sense, or you end up with a pointless treadmill like Bejeweled 2's Endless mode. MMORPGs do this by breaking content up in to smaller chunks, and giving you the potential to fail at completing that chunk. You can't lose the game, but you can lose an encounter. This gives the illusion of winning by creating an illusion of loss. A quest is an example, as is a dungeon, a raid, or a PvP battleground. These are all discrete items of content that can be failed within the context of the game without providing a "game over" scenario, yet generate the sense of accomplishment players need to keep playing.<br />
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The chance of a player failing at any given task can be considered the challenge of that task. Quests are almost always a sure bet, unless it's coded in such a way that the player can fail the quest and never get it again. Group content such as dungeons or raids tend to be harder, and PvP in a way is the most challenging of all, as in any fair encounter you are unlikely to win more than 50% of the time (pre-made groups vs. randoms, twinks vs. normals, notwithstanding).<br />
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Tuning the challenge of content, then, is a key part of making an MMO work, not just because players will quit if the game is too hard, but because there will be no sense of winning if the content is too easy. Quest based games such as World of Warcraft tend to have the lowest point of entry for new players, because quest content tends to be easy, and so players can get into the game and get used to things before trying harder content. Unfortunately, the trend seems to be for quest content to stay easy, and in some cases (again, WoW is a good example) quests tend to get even easier as your character levels up and you get better at the game, eventually becoming completely trivial content that most players could complete with their eyes closed. We've just entered Endless mode for MMOs. Mash the buttons and "win".<br />
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One of the reasons I think WoW has suffered in recent times is that the entire leveling experience is "no loss, no win" endless content, and then things get switched up at the endgame such that you can lose, quite brutally, and take your whole group down with you when you try to do the heroic dungeons. Blizzard's response to the outcry against this was to make the heroics easier, but what they really needed to do was make the quest content harder. Making the endgame content easier just results in lowering the sense of accomplishment players have by completing it, thus more rapidly leading players to reach "endless mode" and quit at the pointlessness of it all. The big jump in difficulty between the two modes of play was a serious issue, and while the fix they made was probably the only reasonable one (re-tuning an entire games worth of leveling content vs. endgame dungeons?) it's not going to help the game in the long run.<br />
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This all comes back to my recent experiences in Star Wars: The Old Republic, where it feels like quests are actually getting harder as I level rather than easier. This is good. As my character builds his strength and I improve my skill at playing the game I should be able to handle more difficult tasks, and I have some hope that SWTOR is going to do this, at least some of the time. As an example, last week my Jedi Guardian had a class quest that pitted him against a boss level mob. He had 4 times the hit points I did, and both my character and his companion were defeated 3 times before I found a tactic that worked. It was a challenging battle, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do it at all (lose), yet in the end I managed to do it (win), creating a great sense of satisfaction with the results. Of course, the potential of losing was an illusion, as I could have simply leveled up some more or found some friends and tried again, so I was never in any danger of NEVER completing the quest, but the illusion of losing was still there.<br />
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I had a similar experience last night where a friend and I attempted a Heroic 4 quest (a quest tuned for 4 players) with just the two of us and our two companions. We almost did it, with careful planning and coordination we got most of the way through it, before hitting a wall at the end in the form of a boss with 26,000 hit points. We couldn't beat him, so we "lost", but we'll be back with reinforcements, and I know beating that boss will feel good.<br />
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So far, in my view, SWTOR has "challenge" down better than WoW, though whether that stays true in the long run is yet to be seen, and whether that is actually a winning formula is also unknown. WoW has millions of subscribers, and while there's evidence those subscribers are finally starting to burn out, they've maintained those levels for years and made more money than any other MMORPG in history. It's hard to argue against success, so I'll be curious to see how things sit a few years from now for SWTOR and WoW, and what tack Blizzard takes with their new game, Titan.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-44894848374965227272011-12-27T17:01:00.000-08:002011-12-27T17:02:27.205-08:00In a nutshellI think the easiest way to sum up Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is like so:<br />
<br />
Take Knights of the Old Republic, increase the amount of content by an order of magnitude, add repeatable dungeons, PvP, and the ability to play with your friends, and the result is SWTOR.<br />
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This is not a bad thing. If the comparison is meaningless because you've never played Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR), you should. It's getting a little creaky, but it's still a very fun RPG that drips with the essence of Star Wars. A lot of the stories and characters in SWTOR will make more sense if you've played KotOR.<br />
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I think SWTOR is possibly the best game Bioware has ever made, and I've played every RPG they've made. I've seen plenty of blog posts and reviews out there saying the game sucks, though most of the complaints boil down to "this is not the game for me" rather than "there is something fundamentally wrong with this game".<br />
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If you like Bioware RPGs and you liked WoW, SWTOR has a lot to offer you. If you can't stand the style and gameplay methods used by either of those, then the latest Star Wars game simply isn't going to be for you.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-90364002082490879462011-12-14T14:15:00.000-08:002011-12-14T14:15:05.263-08:00Pondering quests and SWTOR's futureThis will be a bit of a rambling post. Shocking, I know, but bear with me here.<br />
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One of the things I'm really enjoying about Star Wars: The Old Republic is the ability to make choices within a quest. Typically in an MMO you get one choice - to take or decline the quest. Once you've accepted the quest, you have no choice in the way it plays out, you either achieve the required goals or you fail. For example, in WoW I remember this quest on the Horde side where you were tasked with feeding a human prisoner some food infected with the undead plague for the purpose of turning him into a ghoul. It was a fundamentally evil act, and while you could choose not to take the quest, if you took the quest your only option was to kill the poor prisoner, or fail. I hated that quest. The Horde weren't supposed to be evil, yet that quest required I perform an evil act or abandon the quest. Additionally, in the days I took that quest (early in the Vanilla years) I'm not sure it was even possible to abandon a quest.<br />
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In SWTOR, many quests give you a choice further down the line, typically regarding <i>how</i> you complete the quest. To use the WoW example above, SWTOR's version would prompt you with a choice when you got to the prisoner -- feed the prisoner the food, dump it out and say it didn't work, or help the prisoner escape. Whatever you chose, you'd still get some sort of quest completion, and you'd get to do it the way you wanted. Things like that occur a lot in SWTOR, my Bounty Hunter switched sides during several quests and took a reward from his original target. He's also tricked his quest givers a couple of times, pretending to give them what they asked for while actually doing something else. For example, he was tasked with killing a native warrior who had killed a Hutt and bringing back his head. When confronting the warrior my character was given the option to take the head of another warrior that had already been killed and spare the Huttsbane who was, after all, just fighting for the freedom of his people. I accepted, and gave the slimy Hutt a head, but not the one he requested. Quest complete.<br />
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This is the story aspect that is going to make SWTOR stand out from the crowd. It's not that there's voiced dialog for all the quests (although that helps too), but rather than players have choices in many of their quests, choices that change how the quests play out. That also helps replayability, since it means you can take the same quest with a different character, make different choices, and get a different outcome. Is it a huge difference? No, but it provides a solid illusion of player impact, something most MMORPGs sorely lack.<br />
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In other news, Massively.com posted an interview with one of the SWTOR developers today and he had this to say:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">In other MMOs, the team moves on to other games or gets downsized. We've actually kept our team, and we're not working on anything else. It's a little bit different for me. Basically, when I finished with </span><em style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Baldur's Gate</em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">, I went on to </span><em style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Baldur's Gate 2</em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">, then I immediately went to </span><em style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Neverwinter Nights</em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">, then I immediately went to </span><em style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Knights of the Old Republic</em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">. But here I'm finished with </span><em style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SWTOR</em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">, and it's just more </span><em style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SWTOR</em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">. The whole team is that way. We don't have a secret project. It's nothing but new content for </span><em style="background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Old Republic</em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">. We have teams working on new flashpoints; we have teams working on new operations; we have teams working on new game systems and on new space missions.</span></blockquote>If that's true, if the entire SWTOR development team is continuing to work on SWTOR the game should get a lot of content updates over the next year. If they can do that and stay profitable, it could make SWTOR one of the most frequently updated MMORPGs in ages and give it another edge over WoW. Rift updates fairly often, but as many people have noted the nature of the content in those updates is somewhat predictable -- new elemental force trying to invade, special drops from rifts, new daily quests, special loot from a token vendor.<br />
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If Bioware can deliver solid content updates to the game every few months . . . then wow. This game will have serious long term potential: eight classes with unique storylines, choices with permanent impacts on characters, unique companions for each class, PvP, group instances, raids, and substantial ongoing content updates? The first and last items on that list will feed into each other too - you reach the level cap, run out of things to do, so make an alt, and by the time they reach the level cap there are new things for your old character to do, and once you're done with that there are new things for new characters to do, prompting you to create another alt, that hits the level cap in time for new things for your old character to do.<br />
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Pure speculation of course, but the potential is there. Here's hoping.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-68782882202286965112011-12-14T10:10:00.000-08:002011-12-14T10:10:24.622-08:00SWTOR: Seven levels of bounty hunting<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Oi6WUkfpXH_T_vxbReJ6mGjZzUs3Y1eNKzO9vcFMpEGneRrJ-bsJ9Y2pf9aUN0C9yKGkL8kXN5baAf_D97b5XwqeZqOpQIACFcIxYM4RTWy_qX8BrmsbYhRoKLDy156tIQciopA6VKzL/s1600/underarock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Oi6WUkfpXH_T_vxbReJ6mGjZzUs3Y1eNKzO9vcFMpEGneRrJ-bsJ9Y2pf9aUN0C9yKGkL8kXN5baAf_D97b5XwqeZqOpQIACFcIxYM4RTWy_qX8BrmsbYhRoKLDy156tIQciopA6VKzL/s1600/underarock.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Holy cow, there's a new Star Wars MMO?!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Unless you've been living under a rock you probably know the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic is imminent - just next week in fact. Early access for pre-orders has started, and along with piles of other people I got into it yesterday. Due to an unfortunate cancellation of our Tuesday Night Gaming Group I ended up having time to play, so created my Bounty Hunter, joined my guild, and started adventuring.<br />
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I didn't touch any Empire characters during my brief beta stint, and so right away I was struck by just how different the starting experience for a Bounty Hunter is from the Jedi Consular. The entire feel and tone of the setting is different, and appropriately so, although my Bounty Hunter seemed to have to do a lot more talking before getting to the shooting than my Consular did. New Bounty Hunter's arrive on Hutta to try and earn a place in the Great Hunt. If you played the Knights of the Old Republic games you've probably heard of the great hunt - it's a bounty hunting competition the winner of which walks away with fame and fortune. The Mandalorians are pretty into it.<br />
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You arrive on Hutta and make your way to a building where a team of bounty hunters are waiting -- your team. They go on about what a bad ass you are, and indeed, all the conversation options and NPC reactions reflect your status as a bad ass. You are a level 1 bad ass, but it doesn't matter, it works. The fact that I'm playing a hulking Chiss with glowing red eyes doesn't hurt either. Eventually you go out and start collecting bounties. Yes, you're not killing random mobs (not at first anyway), you're killing criminals with bounties on their heads, or their minions. In the first two hours of the game I've taken out several named bounty targets, double crossed several quest givers, crashed the financial accounts of a rival Hutt, and even freed some slaves. What the heck, right? I'm a bad ass. You slaves can go, I don't care.<br />
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So the Bounty Hunter story seems good so far, but how does the class play?<br />
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The Bounty Hunter is the master of combat options, and I'd say the combat style is one of damage and disruption. I was bothered by the fact that Bounty Hunters/Troopers don't seem to pay any heed to blaster fire - Jedi and Sith try to deflect it with lightsabers, and Smugglers/Agents take cover, but Bounty Hunters just stand there and take it. Turns out they don't. A Bounty Hunter's defense is a disruptive offense -- enemies who are on fire, trying to get explosives off them, or getting knocked down by rockets aren't shooting at you, and within your first couple of levels you can do all of those things. Attacking groups of enemies became a thing of beauty as I'd open with an Explosive Dart which would stick to a target and distract them for 3 seconds as they frantically tried to claw it off. The dart would then explode dealing a large amount of damage and knocking all nearby enemies down. All the while I'm taking shots with my blaster, follow with a rocket when they get back up (which knocks them all down again), and finally use Unload on any survivors that have a lot of health. Most of the time I could take out the whole group without them getting more than a couple of shots off.<br />
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I'll admit that even with that I still tend to try and stand behind cover. It doesn't actually do anything of course, but it makes me feel better and lets me believe the combat is making sense. I'll also tend to charge forward, which isn't as insane as it sounds, as the Bounty Hunter has a powerful rocket-assisted punch for melee so opening up with everything you've got and then charging to melee is a good way to deal with powerful targets. Plus, in the real world it's harder to hit a moving target so running also makes me feel like the combat isn't just "stand there and shoot each other in the face with blasters". The fact that so far all non-channeled abilities I have can be used while on the move is a big plus in my book.<br />
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My Bounty Hunter is level 7 and sitting in a Hutt's cantina earning some rest experience. I don't have a companion yet, but have several Heroic 2+ (group areas) to explore, so I'm looking forward to tackling both of those things tonight. So far SWTOR has been the most enjoyable MMORPG experience I've had in years. Time will tell if it's my favorite MMORPG ever, or if the shine wears off as I play more, but either way I'm looking forward to a good ride.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-22440821577942625222011-12-12T12:02:00.000-08:002011-12-12T12:02:24.557-08:00Diablo 3 - Not sure what to thinkAccording to my e-mail invite to the Diablo 3 beta I am free (and even encouraged) to discuss my experiences as much as I like. So I'm going to, starting right now.<br />
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When I received my beta invite late last week I thought Blizzard and/or fate was playing a cruel trick on me, getting me access to one of my most anticipated upcoming games right as SWTOR (another of my most anticipated upcoming games) is about to release. "Oh cruel fate," I railed, "I don't have time to play both!"<br />
After checking the beta out over the weekend though, it's not looking like much of a competition after all.<br />
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I'm going to discuss the good and the bad of my experiences, starting with the good.<br />
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First off, the game runs very smoothly on my moderate spec machine, even with all settings at maximum. Anyone who has ever played a Diablo game is going to be hit with a wave of nostalgia as you first enter the game world as the music and some of the sound effects are straight from the earlier games. Combat is the smooth click-fest you'd expect, and loot is plentiful. Experience seems to accrue at a reasonable rate, but not so fast that you feel like things are whizzing by too quickly. It definitely slows down after level five or so, maybe too much, it's hard to say.<br />
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Some of the new features are really nice, especially the crafting system. Rather than relying wholly on the randomness of drops and vendors, the Blacksmith has a list of recipes for items he can create. The item itself has semi-random stats, but the items are blue quality or better, and you can choose which slot you need an item for. Don't have a helm yet, or only a crappy one? The Blacksmith can make you one, assuming he's learned the right recipe. Crafting is paid for with materials acquired by breaking down magical items into their components along with a small amount of gold. The Blacksmith can be "leveled up" by finding five recipe pages which can be bound into a Tome of Learning. The Tome, along with some crafting materials, can be given to the Blacksmith to level his crafting skill, which in turn unlocks new recipes. It's a nice system that lets you turn junk drops into something useful, and my Wizard has been making good use of it. There are two more crafters in the game, but I haven't encountered them yet.<br />
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I also really like the change to character development that they've made. As you level up you will learn new skills/spells, but you can't just use them willy-nilly. Instead, you have a limited number of skill slots into which you place the selection of skills you want to use. You gain additional skill slots as you level up, starting with one at level 1 and eventually expanding to six. At the lowest levels it feels pretty restrictive as you don't have much to do with only two or three skill slots, especially if you pick a long duration buff as one of your skills. Still, I like the system overall, as it has something of a Guild Wars feel to it, where finding the combination of skills that works for you is more important than cramming every skill you've got onto an expanded skillbar and trying to remember what they all do. It means one level 20 wizard could have an entirely different selection of spells than another -- wizard A might toss magic missiles and arcane orbs, while wizard B electrocutes his foes after freezing them with a frost nova. Most importantly, you can freely re-assign skills by visiting a shrine in town (or at the start of some dungeons) so you can experiment and play around with your build endlessly until you find what you like, rather than making permanent changes that can only be altered with great difficulty.<br />
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Another positive is that for the most part there are no class/attribute restrictions on gear. Certain items are class specific, such as the Demon Hunter cloaks and crossbows, but anyone can wear that suit of plate armor if they are high enough level. That was true in Diablo 2 as well, except in that game your mage would have to meet the strength requirement to wear the high defense armor. In Diablo 3, they can just wear it. This means when you choose your class you're just picking a playstyle, not a role. If you want to be a plate wearing wizard that fights with a sword and shield, you can do that. The stats on that sort of gear probably won't maximize your DPS, but you'll have loads more defense than the wizard using a wand and focus, and you don't have to gimp yourself by stacking strength to achieve it. Good stuff.<br />
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It's not all sunshine and roses though. The beta currently has some pretty severe server issues, which is strange considering the amount of experience Blizzard has in implementing this sort of thing. They've been doing Battle.net for over a decade, and World of Warcraft since 2004. They should be pros at this by now, yet most of the time the beta servers were crashed and I couldn't log in.<br />
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Part of the reason the game plays so smoothly is that the graphics look a bit dated. Diablo 3's prolonged development time is counting against it here, as "modern" graphics pass it by. The in-game graphics are passable, but I have to say the character graphics on the character creation screen (which is significantly more zoomed in than in game) are downright ugly. The spell effects have so far also been pretty lackluster. They're upgrades from Diablo 2 no doubt, but seem fairly flat. I have yet to see anything that makes me go "wow". It's functional, but uninspiring.<br />
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And that, sadly, seems to describe the game quite well - functional but uninspiring. It's a well crafted game with some solid new features, and should be a satisfying experience for any Diablo veteran. A couple of hours into the game though, I found myself getting bored. As I worked my way through the levels of the Cathedral, it really started to remind me of Torchlight, which was a strange thing to note. Torchlight should have been a game in the vein of Diablo, but it's passed its inspiration by and now Diablo 3 is a game in the vein of Torchlight. Outside of the things I mentioned earlier, Torchlight already does most of the "new" things Diablo 3 is doing (such as mobs climbing out of the terrain, secret doors, destructible terrain, etc.) and the three dimensional dungeon levels feel almost identical.<br />
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This isn't really a failing for Diablo 3, I mean Torchlight was a good game and I enjoyed playing it. Plus many of the new things it did are just sensible evolutions for the genre and it would be odd for Diablo 3 to NOT include them. Nevertheless, it gave Diablo 3 a real feeling of sameness, like I'd done all this before and sapped the feeling of "new shiny" from the game very quickly. I know the game is going to ramp up as you go along, and I'm sure it's way more fun when played with friends, but playing the first act solo was a bit of a let down.<br />
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Am I still looking forward to the game? Absolutely. Is the Diablo 3 beta going to compete with my SWTOR playtime? Not a chance.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-34999319329010725832011-12-07T09:06:00.000-08:002011-12-07T09:06:52.349-08:00Moddable GearBefore going any further, you need to go to the SWTOR site and read <a href="http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=717041" target="_blank">this</a>. It's a post by a SWTOR developer detailing the item modification system that exists in Star Wars: The Old Republic. For those not in the know (which included me, btw) some pieces of equipment in the game are moddable, they have empty slots into which an item modification can be placed to give it stats. It's sort of like sockets in other games, but far more central to the functioning of the item. Sockets in other games were more of a bonus than anything, the mod slots in SWTOR gear are vital to them being useful.<br />
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Previously there were two types of moddable gear - gear that had nothing but mod slots, and gear that had some set stats and one mod slot. The most recent patch has apparently removed most of the latter and created more of the former with the intent of making using mods more focused. Since everyone gets some items that are fully custom through class quests we'll all be engaging in the system at least a little bit. As a force user, your first lightsaber is a fully moddable piece of gear.<br />
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I think the system is interesting, and as long as mods aren't too difficult to obtain I think it will offer a viable and fun alternative to the typical gear progression system. The fact that mods can be safely removed from gear is key, as it means really good mods can be saved and used on items you like the look of better, or saved for other items when you find an upgrade that would be better in it's current slot. With similar systems in other games I have frequently agonized over using a really good gem/enchant/whatever for fear of getting an item it would be better on shortly thereafter with no way to undo my choice. A fear that is usually born out too (as was the case with the +40 fire damage gem I slotted on my War in the North character's weapon, argh!).<br />
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The fully customizable items I've seen so far had quite a few slots, 3-4 if I recall. Getting to build your own item with that many choices sounds like fun, and I'm sure it's a system I'll use as much as I can. The fact that crafters can now create armor/weapons that are fully moddable will help. One thing that isn't clear to me though is that it's been stated you could use a fully moddable item from level 1 to the level cap if you wanted simply by updating the mods slotted in it. I'm assuming then there must be a mod that increases the dps of a weapon or the defense on armor? Otherwise I don't see low level custom gear being very useful no matter how good the stat mods on it are. I don't care that the lightsaber I started with has huge bonuses to stats if its base damage is still that of a level 9 item . . .<br />
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Mods can be obtained as loot, as quest rewards, from breaking down equipment, or through crafting. It sounds like a lot of possibilities, and hopefully it will be enough. I suspect the crafting skill that creates mods will be a profitable one overall, as it doesn't sound as useful as crafting your own armor or weapons, but in the end absolutely everyone is going to be using mods at some point. <br />
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I also really liked that if you see an armor drop that looks cool, someone somewhere has the recipe to craft that armor in a fully moddable version. If the system works well enough it will reduce the need for an appearance tab as you can track down the look you want and make the stats work by using mods. I hate looking like a frankenstein's fashion monster in these games, but not so much that I won't wear that piece of ugly armor with awesome stats. Being able to have the best of both worlds is something to look forward to, I just hope the execution is as good as the idea.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-33852520988611747172011-12-07T08:37:00.000-08:002011-12-07T08:37:45.794-08:00Tank EnvyOne of my gaming friends is still playing World of Tanks pretty seriously. Last night before our little group started its weekly session of Lord of the Rings: War in the North (which after a couple of weeks of play I'd still highly recommend as a really fun action-RPG romp if you can play it with friends and avoid the bugs) he was talking about his progress in WoT, and that he was just 8,000 xp away from the IS-7, currently the tank at the top of the Russian heavy tank line. As in a tier 10 tank, as high as you can get in the game.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGfGlEoYizcGw_sshN7PXcBLkBicIDrAH6m0sC_APqHQpEmkLe8FzSIKTDaYId04Pc7BzNsbD4busBSk7xM2Ey0RbJTh1gaETbf02a8IAWexS0lAAbzzKPJeYppzpAnR-64WNBXl5jOk5q/s1600/wot_screenshot_24_jun_2010-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGfGlEoYizcGw_sshN7PXcBLkBicIDrAH6m0sC_APqHQpEmkLe8FzSIKTDaYId04Pc7BzNsbD4busBSk7xM2Ey0RbJTh1gaETbf02a8IAWexS0lAAbzzKPJeYppzpAnR-64WNBXl5jOk5q/s320/wot_screenshot_24_jun_2010-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hello, I'm the IS-7. I'll be your bruiser for the evening.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>He then started talking about his IS-4, and what a fun tank it is and how it really makes all the other heavy tanks he's played feel pretty feeble in comparison. My heavy tank experiences have generally felt pretty feeble, so I couldn't argue with him there. It got me to thinking though -- one of the reasons I started losing interest in WoT was that even though tanks would look like upgrades on paper, when you actually unlocked them and started playing they just weren't much fun, or somehow managed to perform more poorly than the tank before them thanks to being in a higher tier and fighting harder opposition. That happened to me numerous times and left me feeling like I'd wasted all my time building up to the tank in question. It happened with the German tank destroyer line, I got up to tier 5 and went "meh". It happened with the US tank destroyer line, I got up to tier 5 and went "meh". I'd say maybe I have a problem with tank destroyers, but I actually like the Russian tank destroyers. Well, so far. I got up to tier 7 in the US heavy tank tree and was really disappointed by the T29. I have the biggest gun it can mount and still can't seem to kill much. To date I still have superior stats with the T1 Heavy, a tank I thought sucked pretty bad. Apparently not as much as I thought.<br />
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So hearing about my friend's experiences with the IS line of tanks shortly had me drifting into the realm of tank envy. Why did I waste my time with the US heavy tank tree when the Russian one is apparently so much better?! Not that I could do much about it even if I wanted to, my highest Russian tank is only tier 4, a long haul from tier 7 IS. If only I could respec . . .<br />
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Yeah, why can't I respec? One could (quite reasonably) argue that the research tree you progress down is no different than choosing a class in a real MMORPG. If you get halfway to the level cap with a class and decide you don't like it, you're out of luck, you get to start over. Why should WoT be any different? Maybe it shouldn't, maybe the way they're doing it is just fine, though one can't help but think that it also serves to drive sales of premium time and xp transfers, something that likely generates more revenue over time than a respec token would.<br />
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On the other hand, it's not as if we have characters in WoT, it's just a technology tree. There's also the issue that Wargaming.net keeps shifting things around in the trees but doesn't reset where you've spent your xp, which can lead to some odd and/or annoying shifts to your progression. The other thing to consider is that a normal MMORPG offers the possibility of different content if you start a new character. Maybe a new starting zone, new class quests, new abilities, etc. That's not the case in WoT. If you start over to unlock a new tank you'll be doing exactly the same deathmatch maps as you were before, and all tanks have the same "abilities", they just have different stats. You might switch from a slow tank with heavy armor and a big gun to a faster tank with thinner armor and a smaller gun, and doing so will result in a change in your tactics, but it's not as if that T20 can deploy mines while the IS can call in an orbital strike. They all have a single gun of varying capability and drive around on the map shooting at things.<br />
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So should WoT have a way to unspend your xp in order to shift it into new research areas? I don't know, such a system would certainly be controversial (to say the least!) and run the risk of flavor-of-the-month tanks. Nevertheless, if such a system did exist I would almost certainly take advantage of it, even if it cost real money to do so. My time is far more limited than my funds.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-62499799192159765002011-12-05T14:12:00.000-08:002011-12-05T14:12:42.366-08:00SWTOR: A few pet peevesI think my ramblings about SWTOR have overall been quite positive, but I do have a few issues with some of the design decisions they made in the game. They're not really serious issues, so I'd have to classify them as little more than pet peeves.<br />
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The first regards the monsters/npcs out in the world. They just stand there doing nothing. All the time. They don't wander, they don't drift, they have idle animations and that's about it. I thought we were past the age of obvious xp buckets sitting around waiting for someone to tip them over. The humanoids aren't <i>that</i> bad, as their idle animations often involve them doing something, but the animals are terrible. They just stand around and sometimes shuffle their feet, or snort. They don't eat, they don't move, and even the completely passive "critter" variety don't run away when you approach. The game is otherwise quite immersive and technically impressive, so I find it quite jarring to see all these listless animals standing about waiting to starve to death. It's 2011, is that really the best we can do?<br />
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I mentioned it in another post, but the heat seeking blaster bolts really annoy me. It's especially bad since most guns shoot a stream of shots rather than singles (like they mostly did in the movie) so you get this clearly defined arc that bends and twists as the target moves. The flood of shots itself is fairly jarring. How about reducing the number of bolts fired at once and making them travel faster? That would reduce the lunacy significantly. "But then the screen won't be saturated with blaster shots and shiny special effects all the time!" That's kind of the point. If it was good enough for the movies and KotoR, it should be ok here too. Blaster fire should look like blaster fire, this is Star Wars not Ghostbusters.<br />
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I understand they have to make sacrifices in the name of gameplay, but the appearing/disappearing vehicles really bug me. It's one thing in a game like World of Warcraft where you can handwave it away as magic, but there's no magic at play here, and the technology of Star Wars does not include teleportation, solid holograms, or matter replication. Why does that speeder appear out of nowhere, and disappear in a shimmer like a deconstructing hologram? Couldn't they have designed the taxi pads with a hangar that your character goes into then flies out on a vehicles, then flies into another hangar on the other end. The effect would be the same, but the visuals would be more immersive. Or heck, do something that WoW has already done, and have the vehicles sitting out on a landing pad and when you click one you jump in and fly away (leaving another one behind, but it's still an improvement). For personal "mounts" I'd like to see characters activate some sort of comm device and then have the vehicle of choice swoop in from offscreen, then fly off again when done. Darth Maul did it, dammit.<br />
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Why do some classes (Jedi Knight) get to turn in class quests via a communications device, while other classes (Jedi Consular) have to trudge back to base on foot and talk face-to-face? On the one hand I actually liked the interaction the Jedi Consular had with their NPC, it made the story feel more engaging. On the other hand, it took forever to get through the starting area due to all the trudging compared to the Jedi Knight. How about a special "return to NPC" button that will automatically take your character to the appropriate story instance when you're ready to complete it. It can go away when you're higher level and have more transportation options. It's not teleportation, it's . . . I forget the cinematic term for it, but a scene switch in a movie. You're assumed to have made the trudge back on foot, you just don't have to experience it.<br />
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So, anyone else have some pet peeves? I think I've gone on about it long enough myself.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-10714902018767195902011-12-02T11:23:00.000-08:002011-12-02T11:23:32.906-08:00SWTOR: The WoW Killer?Many people are positing that Star Wars: The Old Republic will kill World of Warcraft, that EA-Bioware expects it to kill WoW, and that it will be a complete failure if it doesn't kill WoW. Then there are people arguing the flip side, that SWTOR can't compete with WoW, that WoW will kill SWTOR, and that nothing will ever dethrone WoW.<br />
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To put it simply, I disagree with all of those positions.<br />
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The Old Republic isn't going to kill World of Warcraft, no single game ever will. World of Warcraft is too big, and too many of it's players aren't MMORPG gamers, or even gamers, but rather WoW gamers. They don't play anything other than WoW now, didn't play anything before WoW, and quite possibly won't play anything after WoW. Blizzard's behemoth is going to die though, but it will be the slow death of a thousand cuts as people leave for a multitude of reasons and recruiting replacements gets harder and harder in the face of all the other options out there. SWTOR won't kill WoW, but it will take some of the game's subscribers, and provide viable competition for future recruitment of new subscribers. Kill WoW? No. Wound it? Sure.<br />
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I don't think Bioware expects to dethrone WoW either. After all, they seem to be hoping for a million or so subscribers, which while hefty by most standards is still only a fraction of WoW's subscriber base. Anyone officially with Bioware or EA trying to claim SWTOR will kill WoW is just trying to drum up publicity. Games that seriously claim to be WoW-killers suffer some serious negative publicity when they fail. Yeah, I'm looking at you Warhammer Online. Bears bears bears. Bastards.<br />
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I think the argument that SWTOR can't exist alongside WoW is equally erroneous. If a game like WoW had existed ten years ago, then maybe I'd agree that both games couldn't survive due to WoW's enormous market share. The MMORPG gaming audience has grown dramatically in the last ten years, thanks in large part to the runaway success of WoW, and we know that the number of people currently subscribed to WoW is far far lower than the total number that have ever been subscribed to WoW. This is a huge potential market for the game (past subscribers of WoW) as SWTOR will be immediately familiar and comfortable to older WoW players, while bringing the power of the Star Wars IP to the table. It's not at all hard to imagine SWTOR bringing in a couple of million subscribers without affecting WoW's current subscriber base AT ALL. I think it will take some subscriptions away, I'm just saying it doesn't have to.<br />
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One other thing that I think many people aren't considering when it comes to SWTOR and WoW co-existing is that there's no rule that says people can only subscribe to a single game at a time. This isn't a binary situation, it's not IF SWTOR = TRUE, THEN WOW = FALSE (and vice versa). Consider that the average age of MMORPG gamers has been gradually increasing over the years. The last statistic I recall seeing placed the average age in the 30s, maybe even the 40s. You know what else increases as age increases? Income. Ten years ago most people playing MMORPGs were college students with time but no money, and maintaining a single subscription at a time was probably all most people could do. As the average age of MMORPG gamers increases, the average income of MMORPG gamers can also be expected to increase, and thus the potential to subscribe to two games at a time also increases. <br />
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The downside, of course, is that free time tends to decrease, which would be an argument against multiple subscriptions, except that games like WoW aren't exactly chock full of new content on a weekly basis. Why continue to sub to WoW for six more months until the next content patch when you could switch to SWTOR, then switch back. Not a constant multiple subscription, but over the course of a year it would amount to much the same thing. I can also easily imagine a growing number of gamers with steady incomes electing to play both games in order to maximize their gaming time. Most people I talk to who still play WoW only seriously play it a couple of days a week, and spend the rest of their gaming sessions mucking about killing time. They could very easily be playing SWTOR on those days instead.<br />
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Only time will tell, but I think the market is ripe for another big, successful MMORPG, and SWTOR isn't releasing against a whole lot of competition here. When was the last AAA MMORPG release? When is the next one? They've got a wide open window of opportunity here. I think the market is ready, it's up to Bioware to not drop the ball.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-24757037379862966982011-12-02T10:52:00.000-08:002011-12-02T10:52:58.358-08:00That other SWTOR post . . .Isn't happening. I spent several days scouring my hard drive for all the beta screenshots I took and couldn't find them. Like many others, the screenshot functionality apparently didn't work for me. Since the screenshots were integral to the whole post, the post sort of evaporated with the screenshots.<br />
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I'm not ready (yet) to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon that the virtual item in the CE of the game is required to enable taking screenshots. Rather I suspect the holocam (or whatever it's called) will let you take virtual screenshots that are stored and viewable in-game. I can't believe any non-idiotic developer would completely disable the ability to take screenshots of their game without a virtual item purchased with real money. They'd lose massive amounts of free word-of-mouth advertising if people can't show screenshots to their friends or post them on blogs, facebook, etc.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-21695993996046120952011-11-29T09:12:00.000-08:002011-11-29T09:12:30.750-08:00Star Wars: The Old Republic - ClassesAs I've been trying to convince my friends they really do want to play Star Wars: The Old Republic with me I've been describing certain game systems, features, etc. for them. As long as I'm going to the trouble to spell it out once, I might as well put it here in case anyone else is interested. First up, SWTOR classes.<br />
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There are four base classes on each side (Republic vs. Empire, though we're talking old Republic and Sith Empire, several thousand years before the movies). Each base class has two possible advanced classes that you choose from at level 10. All the classes on each side are rough mirrors of each other, but differ in style and some abilities. For example, the Sith Inquisitor (primary force user) shoots lightning, while the Jedi Consular (Republic equivalent) hurls objects with telekinesis. Same outcome (ranged dps), different method.<br />
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Each advanced class has 3 talent trees, 2 unique to the class and one shared between both advanced classes. Each unique tree focuses on a role, while the shared tree offers general improvements to the class independent of role. The Jedi Sage (advanced class option for Jedi Consular), for example, has a dps tree, a healing tree, and a "balance" tree. The Jedi Shadow (the other option) has a dps tree, a tank tree, and the same "balance" tree. You can respec your talent trees, but as far as I know you cannot respec your advanced class choice.<br />
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Every class has some sort of group buff as a baseline ability, so having at least one of each base class in a group is going to be helpful. The group size is apparently 4, so having one of each base class is going to be ideal. If you have two of one class you won't be able to get all the buffs.<br />
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First a disclaimer -- the information that follows is based on my quick impressions over the beta weekend. It's not datamined information and some facts could be wrong, but it should be close enough for the most part.<br />
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<b>Class breakdown:</b><br />
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<b>Jedi Knight: </b><br />
Your basic lightsaber swinging Jedi. They specialize in melee attacks instead of force abilities, and are the clear "warrior" style archetype. The class mechanic is Focus. Some abilities generate focus, others use it. Starts with 0 focus and focus decays outside of combat. Early abilities include a couple of lightsaber strikes, a "leap into combat" ability, and a pbaoe.<br />
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<ul><li>Jedi Guardian - The tank specialty. Fights with a single lightsaber, gets the ability to wear heavy armor, taunts, and a few iconic force powers like Force Push. Luke was probably a Jedi Guardian. Gets a tank tree and melee dps tree.</li>
<li>Jedi Sentinel - The melee dps specialty. Fights with dual lightsabers, can wear medium armor, has a new mechanic in addition to focus called "concentration" that allows the use of special buffs. Gets a solo dps tree (survival + dps), or a group dps tree (pure dps). Or something like that. The Sentinel's role seems to be pure dps.</li>
</ul><br />
<b>Trooper:</b><br />
Precursor to the clone trooper and stormtrooper. Heavy ranged weapon class with the ability to wear heavy armor and use shield generators. The class mechanic is "energy cells". Abilities use a certain number of energy cells which recharge over time. There are some abilities to instantly recharge cells.<br />
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<ul><li>Commando - The ranged dps specialty. Focuses on heavy weapon usage such as rocket launchers and massive blasters. Gets a dps tree and a healing tree.</li>
<li>Vanguard - The ranged tank specialty. Focuses on shield generator usage and blaster rifles. Gets a ranged dps and a tank tree.</li>
</ul><br />
<b>Jedi Consular:</b><br />
Heavy force using Jedi. Still gets a few lightsaber attacks, but they're pretty basic (still pretty effective though, at least at low level). Can only wear light armor. Mechanic is Force points (mana) but there's only 100 points, so it's more like an energy bar. Early abilities include a pbaoe + knockback and the ability to rip chunks of rock out of the ground and toss it at your target.<br />
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<ul><li>Jedi Sage - Ranged force user. Focuses on force powers from range. Gets upgraded range on all the basic force powers (from 10m to 30m), an increase in Force points from 100 to 500, and learns advanced ranged force abilities. Gets a dps tree and a healing tree.</li>
<li>Jedi Shadow - Melee force user. Focuses on force powers and stealth. Gets a stealth ability (affects your companion too!), a backstab, and a variety of force powers intended for use at short range. Gets a dps tree and a tank tree.</li>
</ul><br />
<b>Smuggler:</b><br />
Han Solo. Well, it is. Mechanic is energy (like a rogue) with a secondary mechanic of "Cover". The Smuggler (and Imperial Agent) are the only classes smart enough to take cover when blaster bolts start flying. It's quite well done, your character literally crouches down behind appropriate world objects, and ranged attacks will hit the cover instead of your character. Enemies can flank you, or melee you to negate the cover bonus. Certain abilities can only be used from cover, and your character will pop out from cover to attack and then duck back down again. At higher levels the Smuggler can use a force field generator to create cover where none is otherwise available.<br />
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<ul><li>Gunslinger - Range damage specialist. Can dual wield blaster pistols and focuses on damage. Gets a range dps/debuff tree, and an aoe/dot dps tree.</li>
<li>Scoundrel - Support/close range specialist. Focuses on fighting from cover or supporting groups. Gets a short range/melee dps tree and a heal tree.</li>
</ul><br />
The Imperial classes are rough mirrors of the Republic ones, so I won't go into much detail, just list them. You'll have the basic idea based on the Republic equivalent.<br />
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<b>Sith Warrior:</b><br />
Empire equivalent to the Jedi Knight. They fight with red lightsabers to let you know how different they are from those pansy Jedi.<br />
<br />
<ul><li>Sith Juggernaut - Tank specialty. Darth Vader was probably a Juggernaut. Gets a tank tree and a dps tree.</li>
<li>Sith Marauder - DPS specialty, equivalent to the Sentinel.</li>
</ul><br />
<b>Bounty Hunter:</b><br />
Empire equivalent to the Trooper, but with more attitude. They also have a reverse mechanic to the Trooper. Where the Trooper starts with a full bar of energy cells, the BH uses "heat" which starts at 0. The Trooper depletes energy cells, and when he runs out can't use abilities. The BH generates heat, and when the bar fills up he can't use abilities. Same idea, but they work in opposite directions.<br />
<br />
<ul><li>Mercenary - Dual wield specialist, fights with dual blaster pistols. Has a dps tree and a healing tree.</li>
<li>Powertech - Gadget specialist, has a dps tree and a tank tree. Think Boba Fett.</li>
</ul><br />
<b>Sith Inquisitor:</b><br />
Empire equivalent of the Consular, they also believe in diplomacy first. Force Lightning is typically their start to negotiations.<br />
<br />
<ul><li>Sith Sorceror - The heavy force user, gets a dps tree and a healing tree.</li>
<li>Sith Assassin - Stealth melee force user, gets a dps tree and a tanking tree.</li>
</ul><br />
<b>Imperial Agent:</b><br />
Empire equivalent to the Smuggler, but quite a bit more martial in nature. Uses the same energy and cover mechanics.<br />
<br />
<ul><li>Sniper - Ranged dps specialty.</li>
<li>Operative - Support specialist, gets a dps tree and a healing tree.</li>
</ul><br />
If you're counting, you'll note that each side has 3 classes that can heal, 3 classes that can tank, and everyone can dps, depending on how you spec. The most versatile base classes are the Trooper, Consular, Bounty Hunter, and Inquisitor, each of which have the ability to tank, heal, or dps (not in the same advanced class though). The Knights and Warriors can only tank or dps, and Smugglers and Agents can only heal or dps.<br />
<br />
I think groups are going to be hard to form until they add in a dual spec ability, though even that might not change much. Companions mean you can solo with whatever build you like and it won't get much harder, you just use a different companion. It won't change the fact that many people don't want the responsibility of being a tank or healer -- it's stressful. I'm perfectly happy to tank or heal for a group of friends, but I despise doing it in pugs. I don't suck THAT bad, I just don't care for the pressure. Having just 2 slots for dps characters means they'll have even more trouble than usual finding groups. Hopefully low level content will be forgiving enough that a Jedi Guardian can tank even if he's specced for DPS, but we'll see.Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-71535742150136596922011-11-28T14:04:00.000-08:002011-11-28T14:04:16.427-08:00SWTOR: Quick ImpressionsLike practically every other MMO gamer out there I played in the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta this weekend. I'll have a bigger post up later this week, but here is some of what I took away from the beta:<br />
<br />
<b>Positive:</b><br />
<br />
<ul><li>The classes tend to be more fun than they sound "on paper". I had no interest in the Smuggler or Jedi Consular until I tried them, and now I have no idea what I'll play at release!</li>
<li>The companions are game-changing as far as the solo experience goes. They aren't your usual pets that either can take hits but do no damage or deal damage but die in seconds. My Jedi Consular's starting companion hit like a mack truck and had more hit points than I did. Suddenly content that was impossible became doable.</li>
<li>The voice dialog is well done, and I don't care what the naysayers say, having a character that not only speaks with a voice but says what I choose for him is a huge immersion bonus. Interactive audio quest info is far more engaging than ye olde wall o' text. And no, EQ2 did not already do this. This is exponentially more voice dialog than EQ2 ever had.</li>
<li>Combat is a lot faster than I expected.</li>
<li>The class quests are pretty cool, and the special story instances work. There's no load time to enter them, sometimes a slight stutter, often completely seamless.</li>
<li>The zones are huge and feel pretty epic. Standing on Coruscant with speeder traffic zipping all around is pretty amazing.</li>
<li>The game is immersive. Despite being a themepark it has a "world-y" feel to it, the game doesn't go out of its way to intrude beyond floating icons over some NPCs, and even those are pretty muted compared to some games.</li>
<li>The cover mechanic used by Smugglers and Agents is something I'd like to see more of. I wish all the characters could do it!</li>
<li>Multiple bind points -- you can quick travel (hearth) to ANY location on the planet you've previously bound to, not just the most recent like in most games. That's a huge plus to moving around. Sadly you can't quick travel to other planets (or if you can, I don't know how).</li>
<li>Fighting 1 - 3 mobs at a time is cool, and SWTOR does it way better than City of Heroes. Combat is just fun, and I didn't mind diverging from my path to take out packs of enemies while on my way somewhere else. In fact, I often had to make myself STOP diverging, or I'd never get to where I was going.</li>
<li>Exploring can pay off, I found a security chest with a nice green item in it off the beaten path.</li>
<li>Sound and graphics -- it's Star Wars, you're not going to mistake it for anything else.</li>
</ul><div><b>Negative:</b></div><div><ul><li>With release looming fast it still has some bugs and quirks, some of which I'm not sure if they're bugs or just really weird design decisions. Case in point, my first companion had a massive Aim stat (used for ranged weapons) but was unable to equip a ranged weapon -- he could only use melee weapons, but had really low strength.</li>
<li>Blaster bolts will follow the target if it moves after you fire. It looks really terrible. I don't mind that happening for magic in other games, or Force powers in this game, or missiles, but blaster bolts aren't guided projectiles. I know they can't "miss" or this would become a twitch game, but I'd rather they graphically miss and statistically hit, then bend around corners and follow fleeing targets. It's easier to suspend my disbelief.</li>
<li>I hope you like running, because this game is going to make you do a LOT of it. Not courier quests (thank god!) just a lot of exploring and running to quest givers and traveling to new areas. Some classes have it worse than others - my Jedi Consular, for instance, had to run back to the Jedi Temple to report in person every time he completed a class quest. Other classes (such as the Trooper and Jedi Knight) get to use a communicator instead.</li>
<li>Global chat needs to be turned off the moment you log in. It's like Barrens chat but without all the class.</li>
<li>I would like to be able to rearrange the UI components (especially the companion window) but couldn't figure out how. I could move the chat box and that was it.</li>
<li>There's not enough quest content at any given level range. You really want to be level 10 by the time you leave the starter planet, but getting there seems to require doing every single quest AND killing as many mobs along the way as you can. That doesn't bode well for the higher levels.</li>
<li>I won't get to play again until it releases, and that sucks.</li>
</ul><div>I am still looking forward to the game, and it's meeting my pretty reasonable expectations. For the most part I'd say it's exceeded my expectations, so that's a nice change. I'd recommend SWTOR to anyone who likes quest oriented, class based, level grinding PvE games -- SWTOR will likely be one of the best games in this genre. I would not recommend SWTOR to anyone who is hates WoW and all games like it -- if this is you, SWTOR is not your game.</div></div>Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-86572497134818286772011-11-23T11:51:00.000-08:002011-11-23T11:53:52.654-08:00Lord of the Rings: War in the North<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_WfKx7_Rv8o0oQ6AiNQfofSgnB4wzwdnNGYKCV5b7_7nvoAXrqY7zX49cu56TK5rhW-ISRvlNspLzuLdIVIuB4tnfwMp9RyZC5odSPm2wblabq-F_ZtgB-uTt6kt-xg_yBi1m6IbuT4hD/s1600/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-War-in-the-North.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_WfKx7_Rv8o0oQ6AiNQfofSgnB4wzwdnNGYKCV5b7_7nvoAXrqY7zX49cu56TK5rhW-ISRvlNspLzuLdIVIuB4tnfwMp9RyZC5odSPm2wblabq-F_ZtgB-uTt6kt-xg_yBi1m6IbuT4hD/s320/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-War-in-the-North.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>On Monday, with Tuesday gaming night fast approaching I found myself looking around for something more interesting to do with the gaming group. Titan Quest had been ok, but felt pretty bland, and while the multiplayer worked ok it didn't really add anything to the game. We just sort of moved along in a little pack and clicked on things until they were dead, and didn't really need to talk or discuss what we were doing because it was all pretty brain dead. So I was interested in finding something a little more exciting, something that really benefited from all three of us playing together. I just happened to stumble across Lord of the Rings: War in the North and saw that it was 1) an action RPG and 2) designed for co-op with 3 players. How extraordinarily convenient. I mentioned it to my friends, and we all took the dive based on the premise alone. Two of us played last night (the third leg of our gaming holy trinity couldn't make it, darn you Mr. Heals!) and overall I walked away moderately impressed, but more importantly, quite satisfied.<br />
<br />
Lord of the Rings: War in the North (WitN) was developed by Snowblind studios, the folks behind a number of similar games, including some decent Dungeons & Dragons action RPGs on the original Xbox. Much like Lord of the Rings Online, players take on the roles of characters that worked behind the scenes during Frodo's death march from the Shire to Mordor. In this case, your group of three characters, a dwarf champion, a human ranger, and an elf loremaster are tasked with running interference against armies of orcs and goblins to prevent them from invading the Shire before Frodo gets out. It looks like we'll be traveling across Middle Earth, meeting famous figures from the book (Aragorn gives you your first quest) while slaughtering minions of Sauron and his lieutenant Agandaur by the hundreds.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFpxNAEM-HiEAVQuHNwas44EqxsZh0WFvspBV6enZrwUAb30Te66pBxh-ERBK0Nh9PjCVIygQ7Z9VuGFJz3qBAUIvNGumw83qRN2RZvXHzWB1iK3mwupG3b7EnuPZW875Q4Im63GW2qYjh/s1600/lord_of_the_rings_war_in_the_north_30116.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFpxNAEM-HiEAVQuHNwas44EqxsZh0WFvspBV6enZrwUAb30Te66pBxh-ERBK0Nh9PjCVIygQ7Z9VuGFJz3qBAUIvNGumw83qRN2RZvXHzWB1iK3mwupG3b7EnuPZW875Q4Im63GW2qYjh/s320/lord_of_the_rings_war_in_the_north_30116.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can't keep us apart. We're like family!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The three characters in the game are set. You can choose which of the three you want to play, but you can't change their names, pick their classes, or anything like that. All three characters must be present in each game (no more, no less) so if you play by yourself, the AI controls the other two characters. If you play co-op, each player picks one of the three characters, with no duplicates allowed. You won't have a group of two dwarves and a ranger. The characters roughly fall into the rolls described by the holy trinity of MMORPGs - tank, dps, healer. The dwarf Champion is the most logical tank, being a heavy melee class with the best armor. The Ranger is the most logical dps character, using a bow and melee weapons to deal damage at any range. The Loremaster is the support class, providing healing, buffing, and some damage as well. That's just at the start though -- each character has a skill tree that you spend points in when leveling up, and it's possible to focus the Champion on ranged dps, the Ranger on tanking, and the Loremaster on dual wield melee dps. The trees are pretty short, but in a game like this any sort of customization is good.<br />
<br />
The thing that struck my friend and I most distinctly was that the game is clearly, obviously, and wonderfully tailored for co-op play. Co-op isn't something tacked on as a necessary feature, the game was designed with co-op in mind. A big example -- all loot in the game is randomly generated for each character and if you find a chest, every character gets to loot the chest and gets a full share of loot from it. There's no competition for loot, and no concerns about taking things that might be better for your buddy over there. Instead, the loot I picked up wouldn't have even existed if I hadn't been playing in my friend's game. When we found things the other player could use, it was easy to trade as well, since you can simply send items from your inventory to any of the other players directly. No dropping things on the ground and hoping they pick up the right thing. The game is intense enough that communication matters, and we were talking far more than we ever did during Titan Quest. Teamwork matters here, and that's a great thing for a co-op game.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZiiON9a8RYwwgoGMbZKh3shbfpx-AkYuUslUlkxL8cx9nSspU8Rcii2a7ifn6xgB54ZrLpFABmZj_K633FMQb60wddeWSoA4D8AnY-2VgsNyCGwQiI6MVR3R_KPIU9VECXlu4LVDz6CSR/s1600/40editsf_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZiiON9a8RYwwgoGMbZKh3shbfpx-AkYuUslUlkxL8cx9nSspU8Rcii2a7ifn6xgB54ZrLpFABmZj_K633FMQb60wddeWSoA4D8AnY-2VgsNyCGwQiI6MVR3R_KPIU9VECXlu4LVDz6CSR/s320/40editsf_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What do you mean you never saw Gandalf do this? What a slacker!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Which brings me to the gameplay itself. It's pretty standard button mashing action RPG fare, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I found it both engaging and relaxing, and really hit the spot for an evening of gaming. Each character has a normal and heavy melee attack, a ranged attack, and a selection of skills from the skill trees. Hitting enemies enough time will make them vulnerable to a critical attack, which if done right will reward you with a fancy finishing move played out in slow motion. It's also possible to do headshots with your ranged attacks for bonus damage. Nothing deep, but solid and fun. The skills are varied and interesting, everything from a "sanctuary" spell cast by the Loremaster that prevents ranged attacks from entering (but not leaving!) to heavy melee aoe strikes by the Champion.<br />
<br />
The graphics are decent, but not exceptional, due no doubt to the game's console pedigree. Dialog is voiced, both for the player characters and the NPCs, and your characters will even do battle shouts or announce skill usage during combat for certain skills. The sound effects and music seemed good, and fit with the Lord of the Rings theme. I don't recall anything glaring like death metal blaring as we charged up a ruined canyon into hordes of exploding goblins.<br />
<br />
All that said the game certainly has some issues. I was playing using an xbox 360 wired controller, so camera control and movement was fluid and easy for me. My friend was using a mouse and keyboard though, and it took some time for him to get used to the sometimes wonky camera movements. The game is clearly a console port, and both the control scheme and user interface reflect that. It's not insurmountable, but it does take some getting used to, and I think the game is probably best played with a game pad. Strangely though, the list of controls in the menu refers only to the mouse and keyboard even if you have a gamepad plugged in, though the in-game tutorials and loading screen tips thankfully report how to do things with the controller. <br />
<br />
The other rather strange issue we had was voice chat. The game apparently has voice chat built in and enabled by default, but has absolutely no settings to control it anywhere in the game at all. We were connected through Skype and when the multiplayer game started my friend's voice started echoing in my headphones, while he was hearing my voice from both his headphones and his computer speakers. We figured out pretty quickly that WitN was providing voice chat and turned off Skype, but the control and quality of the voice service was inferior to that of Skype and we'd have rather stuck with Skype. There was no way to turn it off though, so we were stuck. I'm assuming there must be a .ini file or something we can edit to shut it down.<br />
<br />
Reviews of the game have been pretty luke warm, and if I was playing the game single player I could understand that. I don't doubt it would get repetitive, and the relatively weak story wouldn't keep me going. Co-op though, the game is a lot of fun and deserves a much higher rating than the reviews are giving the game as a whole. If you're interested in WitN, play with some friends to really enjoy the game as it was meant to be played.<br />
<br />
Overall we had a good time and I'm looking forward to playing it again next week. We made it to level 6, but are still in the first area of the game, so playing one night a week WitN could last a couple of months. I think we've finally found a game that we can all enjoy and play together, at least for now. Finally!Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454538456673925439.post-70026530087717075452011-11-22T14:57:00.000-08:002011-11-22T14:57:24.458-08:00Faux F2P<div class="MsoNormal">I’ve played a fair few free to play MMORPGs by now, everything from oddball action fantasy games like Dragon’s Nest to traditional conversions like Lord of the Rings Online. I’ve played games where the cash shop really isn’t necessary, and others where not using items from the cash shop makes playing the game more an adventure in walking on broken glass than a fun, relaxing hobby (my apologies to all you broken-glass-walkers out there, I don’t mean to malign your hobby). I find I am less irritated by games that make cash shop items necessary when the game itself is completely free – no box price, no startup cost, no subscription, just the cash shop. I find I am very irritated by games that make cash shop items necessary when the game itself costs money up front – since most F2P games that started as F2P never charge for the client, I am of course mostly referring to games that have converted from subscription to F2P, or some hybrid thereof.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My City of Heroes account recently converted from VIP to Free, and overall I have to say I am not happy, at all, with the way things have worked out. When Paragon Studios first announced the free to play change (City of Heroes: Freedom) I thought it sounded like a good idea. They made a big deal of the fact that past subscribers would have “premium” accounts rather than just free accounts. In their defense I don’t think they ever detailed what that meant, but nevertheless they implied it was a big deal. My subscription time for City of Heroes clocks in around 40 months. I beta tested the game, I paid full retail at release, I beta tested City of Villains, and bought that at full price too, and picked up Going Rogue the moment it came out. In short, I’ve invested a LOT of money in the game over the years, and that apparently set my expectations a bit high.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The first thing that happened upon converting to a free account was that all my character slots locked. I have characters on three servers – Pinnacle, Virtue, and Freedom. Logging into Virtue I had 2 server slots and 3 global slots available. Checking Pinnacle I had 2 server slots and 3 global slots available. Checking Freedom I had 0 server slots and 0 global slots available – I couldn’t unlock a single character on that server without spending money. Not one. Ooo . . . kay . . . not exactly fair, but I wasn’t that invested in my villain characters anyway.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I went back to Virtue and unlocked the two characters I’ve mostly been playing lately, my level 50 tanker and my level 28 corrupter. I logged in my tanker to see how he was affected and discovered he’d lost access to all his Incarnate abilities. Not only are free players barred from participating in Incarnate Trials, anything you earn while a VIP is lost the moment you stop subscribing. That would be like raiding in Lord of the Rings Online and getting your epics stripped away if you stop paying. There’s also no way to access the Incarnate system without paying a monthly subscription – you can’t unlock the content in the cash shop, it’s subscribe or go home. It left a bit of a dirty taste in my mouth, and I certainly haven’t logged my level 50 in since as he has nothing to do.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then I unlocked my corrupter . . . or rather I tried to. He has the Time Manipulation power set, something he’s been using for the past few months. It turns out the Time Manipulation power set is VIP only so that character was now unplayable . . . unless I cared to jaunt over to the cash shop and plunk down about $10 for the damned thing. I didn’t care to, but I did want to keep playing this character, so I bought some points and finished unlocking him. In my opinion my subscription should have paid for the right to use that powerset, but clearly Paragon Studios doesn’t agree. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I logged my corrupter in, and immediately noticed that my salvage and auction house storage inventory had shrunk considerably. I was now over my inventory limits and had to sell off a bunch of stuff. The salvage inventory was especially tight, and made working with the invention system pretty painful.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I then went to a trainer to adjust the colors of my corrupter’s powers and discovered I couldn’t – free players are denied that feature, which really felt like an unnecessary cosmetic handicap. I tried to access First Ward, a zone I’d been running missions in, only to discover that it was VIP only and I’d have to buy access to it if I wanted to keep going. I did, so I did (using up the last of my Paragon Points).<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By this point I was getting pretty disgusted. As a veteran player who’s sunk hundreds of dollars into CoH I expected I’d be able to go longer than five minutes without getting a ham-handed reminder of the fact that I wasn’t a VIP any more, but that expectation was thoroughly crushed. Everywhere I turned there seemed to be a barrier to entry, and this was with just a few minutes of play! I have to compare that to Lord of the Rings Online, where my existing characters were essentially untouched, and only had to deal with content walls once they’d leveled up enough. Lord of the Rings didn’t strip anything away from my characters when they converted to free, it just demanded payment to access additional content down the line. CoH on the other hand, seems determined to make my characters feel second rate while VIP players enjoy the “real” game.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It turns out that all the “premium” status on that free account means is that you get to keep most (but not all) of the things you’ve actually paid for in the past. So if you bought an expansion, you get to keep access to it. If you bought extra character slots, you get to keep them. If you purchased costume packs, you get to keep those costumes. Wow, I get to keep things I paid for! What a deal!<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can only imagine how severely limiting it must feel to play as a new free player. Almost all the additional systems in the game are blocked. You can’t use the auction house, you can’t use inventions, you can’t access the Architect system, you can only use some of the archetypes and some of the powers, you can’t use a lot of the costume options, etc. They’re not free players, they’re trial accounts.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If I was a new player and tried to play CoH, I’d quickly lose interest and stop. I think that’s probably contributed to why the player population of CoH didn’t spike much with the release of Freedom. Server populations seem roughly the same now as they did before. I’m sure there’s been an uptick, but pretty small compared to the huge boost games like Lord of the Rings Online and DC Universe Online have seen.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The City of Heroes free to play conversion seems very similar to that of Champions Online. To the best of my knowledge Champions hasn’t exactly boomed as a result of the conversion either, and maybe there’s a good reason for that – the Turbine method for converting a subscription game seems to work, the crippled-game-unless-you-pay-through-6000-paygates method does not.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At this point I don’t feel much desire to play CoH as a free game, it’s just annoying. I also don’t feel much desire to subscribe with SWTOR just around the corner. So I suppose I’ll play it just enough to get something out of the money I spent on my corrupter, and that will be that. I think in the end, I wish it had simply stayed a regular subscription game instead of jerking me around with false free to play promises.<o:p></o:p></div>Warsydehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14167250810061082203noreply@blogger.com0