TREMBLING HAND

10 Reasons Why Day Z Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:09:00 +0000

I died in a supermarket yesterday. It was precipitated by a few key factors.

The first was my desperate search for more tins of life-giving franks and beans; I was down to my last couple of tins, and it’s always prudent to have some on hand to stave off the ever-gnawing hunger and restore blood levels after a scrap with the walking dead.

The second was simply my carelessness; supermarkets are a veritable post-apocalyptic treasure trove of tinned food, ammunition, medical supplies and survival equipment. It’s only natural that they’re a magnet for the few remaining survivors.

I normally scout them meticulously before approaching, peering through my precious (supermarket-acquired) binoculars from under cover of scrub well outside of town. Any movement that isn’t of the shambling zombie variety, and I hightail it outta there. This time, I took a cursory look and bounded right in, hoping speed would make up for thoroughness. It didn’t.

The third is the ruthless bastard in said supermarket who shot me in the face on sight; if supermarkets are a treasure trove, a fellow survivor’s backpack is a portable goldmine. And besides a dearth of franks and beans, mine was just that.

Survival in Day Z is a funny game. And I was about to start over from scratch. Again.

If you haven’t heard, Day Z is a zombie horror survival mod created for ArmA 2. It’s ruthless, uncompromising, and possibly the most important development in both first-person shooters and MMOs in a mighty long while. Here’s 10 reasons why.

1) It breaks all the right conventions

You start as a nearly blank slate: no story, no quests, no map, a puny weapon and enough food to last a couple of hours. And you’re dropped into an expansive hostile landscape (225 sq km, to be precise), the sea lapping at your ankles and nothing but forest and deserted towns in front of you. Deserted except for the zombies and other survivors, that is.

You’re not there to save the world. You're no Will Smith on a quest to cure the infection, if that's what it is. You’re no hero. You're in it just to survive, to cling to life with the odds stacked against you.

In Day Z, a single shot can kill. A single noisy misstep in a town can kill. Running out of food or water can kill. Even the ladders can be deadly (although that’s going to be fixed soon...).

The genius is precisely in the fact that the game is so lethal. And when you die – and you will – you have to start as a blank slate once again.

2) The game is hardcore

A lot of people shy away from hardcore. And a lot of games do too. Probably because of the fear or disappointment upon dying and facing the prospect of starting from scratch. Sure, it sucks. But that high cost of failure makes each and every success that bit more sweet.

But Day Z trumps this problem with another of its triumphs:

3) Everything is part of the game

In most shooters, the game is in the shooting. Oh, there might be a bit in deciding which gun to use, or which position to occupy. But between shooting is just filler to get you to more shooting.

In many MMOs the game is the progression. Oh there might be a bit of fighting in between, but that often devolves into grinding just to ding the next level/unlock the next achievement.

In Day Z you can run an entire two hour session without letting off a shot, and it can be a gripping gaming experience. You can go backwards in power over that time, and it’s still a rewarding gaming experience. Your first hour is as engaging as your final hour.

This is because everything in the game is the game.

Travelling isn’t just about getting from hub A to quest B, it’s about getting your bearings without help from a map (unless you happen to find one). It’s about constantly looking around yourself to spot zombies and bandits (i.e. other survivors turned murderous).

Combat isn’t entered into by choice – at least most of the time. It’s a deadly necessity. Open fire too close to a clutch of zombies, and you’ll quickly be swamped. Open fire on another survivor and you’d better hope you drop them fast, because even a flesh wound can leave you bleeding, in shock and slipping into unconsciousness at the most inopportune moments due to loss of blood.

Scrounging for loot isn’t just about getting a bigger weapon or fancy night vision goggles – although they’re both a boon. It’s about scraping together enough to survive. That moment when you have a hunting knife, hatchet and matches, and know you can now subsist in the wilderness, rather than risking zombie-infested towns, by killing, gutting and carving up animals, starting a fire, and cooking nutritious food, is a milestone. Losing them hurts.

4) PvP is real

You don’t PvP because you want abstract points to exchange for arbitrary rewards in a made-up battlefield. You PvP because you’re starving to death and you desperately need food, or there’s someone else starving to death who’s trying to take yours. Or you PvP because you’re a heartless bandit preying on other survivors just for the thrills.

In fact, the PvP is so core that you soon realise that the zombies aren’t your main opponent. They’re merely a troublesome hurdle to overcome in terms of securing necessary supplies; they only spawn around buildings, and that’s the only place loot is found.

Zombies also add a spanner to PvP by restricting your ability to move and make a racket in towns, which is one of the places you’re most likely to stumble upon a bandit or opportunistically murderous survivor.

This makes Day Z no run-and-gun shooter. It’s more akin to a sneaky shooter, with a lot more sneak-and-run-away than shoot.

5) The psychology

In this hostile world, teaming up aids survival. But it’s also a recipe for being backstabbed and having your hard-earned meds and sniper rifle snatched from your corpse.

The temptation to shoot rather than aid is strong, and that’s no accident.

You soon learn that when you’re starting out, you have nothing to lose. And when you’re all geared up, you have everything to lose. Together that means everyone is potentially a threat. Get double-crossed a couple of times, and you soon become hardened to gunning down other survivors "just in case."

Bandits are bastards. But it’s only a matter of time before you contemplate committing your first murder, no matter how principled you are. It takes a remarkable game to turn your typical ‘good’ gamer into everything they hate.

6) Hotspots

Loot isn’t arbitrarily scattered throughout the world. There are concentrations at known, and intuitive, locations. Cities, airports, military bases, crashed chopper sites – they act like honeypots, luring in every survivor hoping to ditch their rusty farmhouse (not to mention zombie-attractingly loud) Lee Enfield for a silenced M4 carbine.

And, of course, where survivors gather, so too do bandits.

This not only makes PvP meaningful, but it remarkably concentrates the PvP population in key spots across a breathtakingly large landscape. And it does so without any of the contrivances we’re used to in MMOs, like instances, battlefields or scenarios.

7) Perpetual rewards

Most MMOs have cottoned on to the phenomenon of intermittent rewards. If you get a trinket every fourth time you press a button, you soon get bored. But if you get a string of small trinkets every 2-10 presses, and a big trinket every 10-50, you’re hooked. Every press could be a big winner. Most are small winners. Some give nothing, but the next could be the one...

Day Z does it too, but it does it by feeding you just enough to keep you alive (most of the time), and just enough to make you think you might be able to weather the bandits at the military base for a quick loot run. It’s not about shiny, it’s about that flicker of hope when you finally find a map and can reckon your location and plan your approaches. It’s that gasp when you get a semi-automatic sniper rifle, hence removing you from proximity of your enemy, thus raising your chances of survival.

It’s constantly rewarding because you’re never sure if the next loot pile will sure up your chances of survival. You get this sense of progression even though...

8) There are no levels

As you do acquire improved equipment and weapons, you become more dangerous and hardy. But a single well-placed round from the starter Makarov pistol can still drop you. Even a flesh wound can cause serious blood loss, thus draining colour from the world and causing fits of unconsciousness.

No matter how well equipped you are, you’re constantly on guard. No longer do you wade through a territory bolstered by the knowledge that the grey mobs there can’t harm you. You stalk woods, scanning the horizon, ducking into scrub to check your map, skirting towns and carefully observing far off survivors until you feel it's safe to progress. Travel in an MMO has never been so tense or rewarding.

9) The world makes sense

Unlike most MMOs, the world just makes sense. Things do what you expect them to do. Have an empty canteen? Walk up to a water pump or a dam and fill it. Have matches and a pile of wood? Start a fire and warm yourself (getting too cold can kill too) and cook some meat.

Get shot? There are no health packs. You need to steadily regenerate heath through eating (restores 1.7% per tin, or 6.7% per cooked steak). Lose too much blood? You need a blood transfusion from another player – but can you trust them?

Have an empty tin can in your inventory? Throw it to distract zombies while you scrounge for full tins.

Barns have hunting rifles. Supermarkets have tinned food and hardware. Hospitals have medical supplies. Military bases have serious weapons and ammo. Day is bright. Night is terrifyingly dark. Flares light a patch of ground, but also attract unwanted attention.

You don’t need to learn the tropes of the game in order to understand the world, because it just makes sense.

10) It’s hard

But it’s one of the most rewarding gaming experiences you'll likely ever have.

It’s only in alpha, but I eagerly anticipate its further development, and its eventual porting to ArmA 3 when it comes out.

And I’m even more eagerly anticipating how the industry reacts to this masterpiece of gaming.

NOTE: I prefer to play on the servers hosted by Australian and NZ ArmA mob, AusARMA, which are fast, as stable as can be (given it's an alpha mod) and well maintained. If you appreciate their servers too, support them with a PayPal donation to keep their servers up and running.

Immersion Isn't Dead, It's Waving

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Raph Koster thinks immersion isn't a core game virtue. He said so. In this post. And may others have flapped their arms about in protest. Now it's my turn.

First, Raph's argument, which goes something like this: he used to love immersion, and by the telling, it seems deep down he still does; but immersion isn't considered essential to games any more; this is because games aren't made for dreamers but for the mainstream; and the mainstream skim across the surface of their game rather than wade in up to their nipples; they watch stats, they receive IMs, they are always aware they're playing a game; so immersion is now a niche style, not core.

Now, I'm not 100% sure whether Koster is being descriptive or prescriptive. If he's only saying that games these days aren't terribly immersive, well that's one thing. And it could be true to some degree, but probably not to the extent he's claiming. At least, not the games I play. (Who the hell knows what kind of stuff people play on consoles. I don't cavort with those types.)

But the PC stuff I play is immersive. Sure, it's gamey. Sure, I keep track of numbers. Sure, I use offline character builders and min-max. But the world is still important to me. The sense that I'm someone/something else makes a good game system into a great game.

Take my long term staple, City of Heroes. One of the things I love about that game is it satisfies the numbers nerd in my as well as the dreamer. And the community is cool with that. There is no end to forum posts debating which powersets are optimal in certain situations. But all someone has to say is they've chosen gimped powerset X because of concept, and everyone steps away from their keyboard with a polite nod. Because concept - and letting oneself become immersed in the dream of playing some role - is important. At least it is in City of Heroes.

But Koster is right about many games - particularly many MMOs - these days. My time in the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta was frustrated by niggling doubts that my freshly minted jedi probably wouldn't go on a murderous rampage of the local indigenous population just because they're a little touchy at us stomping all over their territory. But, you know, xp doesn't grow on trees. It's pilfered from corpses. Even for jedi, evidently.

But it just didn't sit right with me - and this is from a game that is apparently all about immersive story, even if outside of the cut scenes you're constantly reminded you're playing a game that just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe, not the other way around. That's one reason I haven't bought the game.

Still, there's probably some self selection going on with my choice of games, because I feel the same way Koster does about the likes of D&D Basic Set. That said, D&D is very gamey, but it also facilitates immersion if you're in to that kind of thing. Not that I ever dressed up to play. I swear.

But if Koster is being prescriptive - if he's saying that immersion ought not be a core game virtue - well, I think he's wrong. And I say that as an avowed core game pluralist.

There's not one flavour of gamer in the world today. And even a single individual can have varying proclivities from one day, or one hour, to the next. Some dig immersion. Some dig Tetris. Some dig playing Tetris only if it's couched in rescuing a princess from and evil pineapple, or something. And there's nothing wrong with that.

That said, I'm going to interpret Koster charitably, and suggest he is only being descriptive. But he underestimates the diversity of gamers and the ebb and flow of the games industry. Certainly wargames, simulations, adventure games and Roguelikes aren't as common as they used to be - except for the fact they are.

The last few years has seen an explosion in PC gaming, particularly in niche and indy spaces. Sure, Call of Warfare and Star Wars: The Old Republic gets most of the press, but so do Adam Sandler films and reality TV. Doesn't mean there aren't hearty audiences out there who yearn to spend their hard earned on something a little more... elevating. A little more immersive.

There are many ways games can be, and immersive is one. In fact, immersion is a core game value, just not the only one.

The Tension Between Apperance and Stats

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:14:00 +0000

It's a perennial problem in MMOs: the tension between appearance and stats. You set off the party poppers and release the streamers when you level, then punch the wall when you have to give up that slick sword/rifle/breastplate for something that was rejected from a Dr Seuss storyboard.

I vividly remember - and "vivid" is the key word - a point in my old WoW Paladin's progression, somewhere in the teen levels, that I referred to as the 'Mardi Gras Paladin'. He knew what was righteous and just, and he was willing to be flamboyant about it. Every hue of the rainbow, mismatched by a colour blind clown. But, oh the stats! That said, I couldn't level fast enough to get myself some armour that befitted my dour internal monologue, and to avoid the increasing number of furtive glances I was receiving from elves.

Several MMOs have responded to this conundrum by offering coloured dyes or second cosmetic gear slots or, in the case of Star Wars: The Old Republic, by offering slottable gear that allows you to upgrade it as you level, leaving its appearance fixed.

But what I don't understand is why so few have implemented the simplest of all solutions: detach stats from appearance entirely.

It's so straightforward, it's laughable.

Just give players a range of cosmetic options, but let them slot items and enhancements with stats appropriate to their level - and keep the two at a apart.

The range of customisability could also vary. Each item could either have several cosmetic options, or players have a global range of choices regardless of what they equip. And if you want to keep a sense of progression, or allow players to visually telegraph to others their power and level, then simply expand or unlock new cosmetic options as they level. Low levels get the basics, higher levels get more slick options, with others unlocked by completing tasks in the world.

Certain items could be unique or rare, and these could unlock one or more visual options. This could help prevent everyone running around with the coolest-looking stuff - although I don't think that's actually likely given the natural variation people will have in what they think is 'cool.'

My favourite go-to MMO that has already been a pioneer in this area (even before WoW launched...) is City of Heroes. Its character creator is legendary. Players have thousands of cosmetic options from the outset. As they level they can unlock new costume items, such as capes and auras or custom weapons, and even unlock entire costume slots.

Enhancements are purely stat-based, and don't affect appearance. And it doesn't seem to perturb anyone at all that their character looks basically the same throughout the game. In fact, the consistency is a plus for me and probably many others.

Certainly, high level characters are still identifiable through their unlocked items (although this is eroding somewhat now that CoH is F2P and many of these items are purchasable at low level). But it seems in the trade-off between people changing in appearance as they level and them being able to look how they want clearly favours the latter.

So detach stats from appearance, or link them only loosely, and much of the gripe about out-levelling cool gear disappears. My Paladin, and those around him, would have been thankful had that been in WoW in 2005.

MMOs Aren't Made For Us Any More

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:52:00 +0000

In a galaxy all too near, there's a great deal of chatter about the meaning of Star Wars: The Old Republic - it's meaning for the genre, for the industry and for us. And lot of that chatter is negative.

One of the themes that keeps cropping up in this communal existential reflection is that SW:TOR is, at its core, not a terribly good MMO.

The game mechanics are dull, with them being basically lifted from World of Warcraft before WoW was 'fixed.' The mechanics even appear to be fundamentally broken (or 'fully busted' as we might say down here). The middle M in MMO seems to have been de-emphasised in place of making a cracking MSPO. The longevity of the game has been cast into doubt, which is a bummer for a game predicated on keeping people subscribed for months on end, as has its ability to continually add new content given the cost of additional voice acting.

But there's one point that has been fundamentally overlooked by the League of Extraordinary MMO Bloggers:

MMOs aren't made for us any more.

Most of us who muster enough enthusiasm to blog about games are likely to be long term committed gamers. But we're not the core audience any more, at least, not for the likes EA (who, I suspect, hates us as much as the SyFy Channel hates nerds), not in this $56 billion dollar industry where we represent only a small fraction of the market.

MMOs, along with most 'mainstream' games, are made with a new breed of 'casual' gamer in mind. Now, I'm not entirely sure the term implies they don't play very much. It's entirely plausible that they play a lot - if you include Angry Birds, FarmVille and a bit of Wii time into the mix. They might even be 'hardcore' if you include time spent railroading through the Call of Warfare franchises on their PlayStation 360s..

But they're 'casual' in the sense that they're drawn to games that are easily accessible, easily understood and easily played, with plenty of dopamine bursts when they hit an achievement milestone.

This doesn't mean the games have to be mindlessly simple, only barely mindlessly accessible, and certainly not overly 'complex.' They don't want to learn rules, or be forced to reflect on the mechanics of the game in order to succeed at it. By and large, they want to respond to surface cues about how to behave and be rewarded when they do.

In many ways WoW is an exception in this sense. WoW exemplifies the kind of game that runs deep but which is still thoroughly enjoyable if you skim over the surface. And by the time you reach the end-game, you found you're 'hardcore' by default, as you've been so comprehensively trained in the mechanics and tropes that they're second nature. But that's an extraordinary case caused by a serendipitous confluence of game mechanics and timing - hence it's obscene success.

But MMOs these days are not made for those of us who seek a deep, rich experience. They're made for people who want a fun time that isn't too taxing. And, WoW aside, you only get out of a game what you're willing to put in. Thus, because these MMOs don't demand you to put much in, there's only so much they can possibly deliver.

And this shortfall in delivery - particularly in gameplay terms - is what is prompting the furrowed brows and concerned mutterings in the MMO blogging community.

Let's take classes as a paradigm example of this phenomenon. Early MMOs allowed a tremendous amount of diversity in classes and specialisations. Ultima Online and EVE, amongst others, employed skill-based 'classes,' while City of Heroes has many thousands of possible permutations of primary and secondary skill sets across its ten core (and four 'elite') archetypes. Even those with class systems, such as EverQuest, had more options on the table than the likes of SW:TOR at launch, with its two factions and four mirrored classes and total of eight specialisations.

But now the rigid class system is as ubiquitous as the theme park. While classes are easier to comprehend, they're also far more restrictive than skills-based systems. That makes them ideal for 'casual' gamers. But less interesting for us.

And I can't see this trend reversing any time soon. Sure, there will be niche releases from small and indi developers who seek to cater to a more old school audience. But major releases - which includes big IP like Star Wars - will inevitably be 'casualised' and drained of much of the goodness that old school gamers like us seek.

So, our mistake has been to assume that because we were here at the beginning, and we've been commenting, critiquing and offering suggestions on how to make MMOs even better (for us) ever since, that the industry gives the blunt end of a rat about out opinions or preferences.

They just don't care about us any more.

It's sad to admit, but I fear it's true. And it doesn't mean we can't continue to voice our opinions about what we'd like to see - maybe somewhere out there a smart publisher will realise that the old school MMO gamers represent a serious chunk of people, even if we're not a majority of the overall market, and they'll develop something for us.

But until then, we're only in for more disappointment.

Story Is About More Than Talking NPCs

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:09:00 +0000

The spiders - if that's what they were; they did have multiple spindly legs and a menacing stare - were as big as landspeeders. And they were everywhere scuttling, scuttling, scuttling. Somehow I had found myself lost in the wilderness of Naboo, after dark, surrounded by the SUVs of 'spiders.'

I picked my way through the chest-high grass, working towards a distant city about which I'd heard, but never set eyes upon. It was nestled in the hills somewhere in the south, so when I reached the overgrown foothills, I felt some relief that I might soon find the haven of civilisation. Somewhere, hopefully, devoid of 'spiders.'

Until then, I picked my way through long grass, occasionally dropping prone and painstakingly positioning myself to line up a single killing shot from my blaster rifle to drop a 'spider' that I was unable to skirt without alerting his 'friends.'

But then I got really lost.

The foothills went on and on, thick with woods and occasionally punctuated by an automated ore extractor - one of the only signs of humanoid enterprise in this endless wilderness.

I was starting to feel alone.

But then I saw it. The dull glimmer of artificial light on a low hill just ahead. Could it be friendly? Out here, it was unlikely. It's doubtful a 'spider' had mastered fire, which means it's more likely a bandit. Or a Rebel camp. And Rebels don't like Imperial snipers terribly much.

I approached, tentatively.

As I got closer, peering through haze and billowing ferns, I could see it was humanoid, motionless, kneeling on the ground with its head lowered. I paused, waiting to see if he or she'd move. He did.

He stood, and turned to face me.

"Greetings," he said, so unexpectedly that I twitched, flicking my mouse around and probably entertaining him with an impromptu pirouette.

Regaining my composure, I returned the greeting.

He beckoned me over. Asked how I was. What I was doing so far out in the unpopulated wilderness. I was wondering the same thing about him.

He explained he was a Teräs Käsi master, and he would come out here into the hills to meditate. Clearly, he wasn't afraid of the 'spiders.'

We got to chatting about his discipline. In a world where the Jedi were perceived to represent the peak of spiritual and martial perfection, he followed a different path, no less rigorous and no less steeped in philosophy. And no less deadly. Particularly to Jedi, which the martial art had been invented to counter.

I found myself strangely at ease with this peaceful warrior. He gave me valuable information about the local area, places to avoid, the nearest outposts of civilisation. And he gave me a gift - a blaster that was useless to him, but a rich windfall for me.

I left him as he settled back down to meditate, oblivious - or maybe mindful - of the otherwise hostile wildlife around him. I finally made it to a nearby town, deserted in the night, and called for a shuttle ride back to the capital - back to civilisation.

And this was an experience that only I had. One of countless unique experiences had by players of Star Wars Galaxies.

Now, remind me: why is it that everyone is saying Star Wars: The Old Republic is an MMO unparalleled when it comes to story? And this just because it has a lot of talking in it?

I suspect Dave might agree that notion this somehow misses the point.

The Problem with Open World PvP

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:08:00 +0000

In fact, the problem with MMO open world PvP is basically a core problem with MMORPGs themselves: the levelling system.

Now, I'm all for advancement systems in games. (Not that I necessarily think advancement is essential to role-playing games, yet somehow advancement and xp have become paradigmatic of the genre.) But the problem emerges when there's an added layer of abstraction over advancement, namely: levels.

Improving one's skills and abilities is one thing. But then having this arbitrary 'level' that inflates your effectiveness against opponents of a lower level is just bizarre. It seems to be a vestige of the precursor to advancement-based RPGs, namely D&D. With each new level you get more hitpoints, and often more ToHit as well. And then you get minimum level gear to further inflate one's effectiveness.

This means a lower levelled opponent is faced by a triple whammy: not only do you have more abilities, but you're also intrinsically tougher, harder to hit and more accurate with your own attacks, and you have more powerful equipment. As such, in a fight between two individuals with the exact same abilities, except where one is a higher level, it'll be the higher level who will, ceteris paribus, win.

In MMOs, this isn't such a problem in controlled PvP regions, where players can be level shifted to the same level. But it's a bastard in open world PvP, where you can easily run into someone of a substantially higher level than you.

And you get this bizarre phenomenon where one player is just unbeatable to the other. Not that MMOs are out to emulate reality, but this is a particularly unreal situation, where one individual poses absolutely no threat to another. And then there's ganking.

All this is on top of the other manifold difficulties in balancing PvP - but that's another issue, and one where I don't expect to see perfect balance. But adding level differences into the mix just seems to complicate things with no significant benefit.

How to fix it? Well, we could dispense with levels - at least of the arbitrary stat- and hitpoint-inflating type. Peg advancement to improvements in skills or the acquisition of new abilities etc. Someone with more experience might have clear advantages in their abilities, but they wouldn't automatically have more hitpoints and be harder to hit, excepting abilities that improve those traits. And their equipment needn't be more effective either.

I know... I know... Many people cherish the rush of levelling so they can equip that Bastard Sword of Illegitimacy +24, and not pegging equipment to level would take that burst of dopamine away. Sure, it would mean changing the system such that equipment wasn't the great differentiator of power, or adjusting it so it was pegged to other things rather than an arbitrary level. Not everyone will like that. But I'm fine with it. FPSs with progression don't seem to have problems figuring this out - you don't see assault rifles +4, for example, but you do have unlocks.

But in lieu of MMORPGs seeing the light and abandoning levels, at least make PvP level-neutral. So two opponents automatically see each other as the same level, and have the same intrinsic effectiveness, regardless of their 'real' level disparity. This way, a higher level player will have an advantage, but the lower level player will still pose some level of threat.

Not only would this make open world PvP more balanced, but it'd also make it more interesting. You'd no longer wander certain areas with a hubristic swagger, while skulking through others petrified of bumping into anyone.

If PvP was more like this - more like Team Fortress 2 balancing - then I might sign up to more PvP servers. As it is, the experience of being helplessly ganked by a higher level opponent, or the distaste at the thought I'd be expected to gank a lower level opponent, just drive me away from PvP servers. How about you?

SWTOR Beta Impressions: Bring Back SWG

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:56:00 +0000

Playing the beta of Star Wars: The Old Republic makes me want to play Star Wars Galaxies. That probably says as much about me as about the respective games. But it says something else too: MMOs have changed, and not everyone is happy with the direction in which they've gone.

Virtually all MMOs today, and certainly the vast majority released in the last few years, are the theme park ride exemplified by World of Warcraft. But the themepark MMO is a strange beast, no less so simply because it's become ubiquitous.

The big difference between a theme park and a sandbox MMO is the theme park attempts to give you a personal narrative in shared world. It tries to make you feel as if you're somehow instrumental, nay pivotal, to the major events and the history of the world.

Theme parks try to deceive you into thinking all the other players around you are just bit parts, whereas in the back of your mind you really know that the game is whispering in their ears too, lying to them too, telling them they're special, just like it's lying to you.

It's always been an immersion-breaker for me. And it astounds me that it doesn't jar other people as well. It was while politely queuing to kill the boss in the dungeons under Tortage that I blew a fuse and walked away from Age of Conan.

Yet SW:TOR pushes this strange phenomenon to new heights. SW:TOR is a single player MMO.

Oh sure, there is teaming. Sure there's PvP and warzones. But the teaming so far has been either redundant when you're running your solo or story quests, or it's artificially forced when the quest demands two or more people to complete. This is arse backwards. Teaming should be encouraged from the bottom up, not placed in front of you as a barrier to overcome.

And the PvP and warzones aren't any different from a multiplayer non-MMO, like Team Fortress 2 or a dozen others - with some stats and item improvements thrown in.

I grant I haven't delved deep into the game during the limited time in the beta, but so far the experience feels... isolating. Please, someone tell me it changes at higher levels. Not that I'm likely to get there.

All of this makes the fact you're logging into a shared world somewhat strange. Why do it? Why not play SW:TOR offline? The experience wouldn't be very different - except it would make you feel important because there aren't 50 other bounty hunters storming the Hutt's palace, hovering around the same objectives that you are.

MMOs used to be predicated on offering an open persistent world to explore. You'd live in that world. The world would organically offer you things to do and challenges to overcome. You were one of many, and you had to really work to be noticed as someone important. And not everyone disliked that.

I find the disingenuousness of theme park MMOs to be grating. They assume I have such cripplingly low self esteem that I need to consider myself the universe's saviour in order to muster up the motivation to drag myself out of bed to play.

Sure, some will seek that out. Some will want to be Luke Skywalker or Boba Fett. But many will be happy being Wedge Antilles or 4-LOM.

Playing in SW:TOR so far has felt constricting. The world feels small. There's no sense of space. Or of a real world ticking along outside - a world that is filled with wondrous unknowns for me to discover.

The world also doesn't make sense. By level 10 I've massacred at least 500 other people, and it's considered by-the-by. NPCs stand around scratching their arses while asking me to go off and push buttons, flip switches and murder 25 people on their behalf. Then they ask the same thing of the next boob who walks past. Yet I dare not decline their inane demands for my labour for I know they will muster a pair of armoured boots for me upon my return. I'm that debased: I murder scores of people for footwear.

The opening cinematic for SW:TOR is very impressive. Yet it doesn't even remotely resemble the game that follows. In the whoosh-bang of the cinematic, a single blaster bolt or sweep of a lightsaber drops a foe. Yet I routinely shrug off a dozen blaster bolts from each opponent while I reciprocate with a bombardment of missiles and blaster fire.

What's more disappointing than us being passed off this aberrant abstraction of reality as if it were believable is that most of us do find it believable. We've normalised the absurd.

Like how everyone now believes explosions are all big balls of flame because that's what Hollywood has taught us. Gamers have come to accept that it's natural to have to shoot or cleave someone 10 times in order for them to blink an eye, let alone fall down.

I've blown a fuse. Games are unreal. And that's OK, as long as they don't pretend they are real. And theme park MMOs have plumbed a new depth of unreality and cynical conceit with SW:TOR.

When I picture the Star Wars universe in my mind, I picture something that could so readily be a breathtaking MMO. It'd be a universe of strange worlds with vying political factions and mega corporations competing with underworld organisations. It'd be filled with corrupt officials looming over hard working folk trying to eke a living, while daring smugglers run blockades and pirates and criminal gangs hijack passing vessels. There'd be the mysteries of the force (not a dozen jedi standing by a shop terminal with their lightsabers idly lit) alongside gritty 'used' technology.

I'd like to be in that world. Take sides or just work for number one. To try to survive, and maybe even seek fame and fortune.

That game sounds a lot like Star Wars Galaxies, but even SWG missed the mark on a bunch of points. But that game is nothing like my experience of SW:TOR.

I don't doubt that SW:TOR will do well. But I do doubt it'll do as well as BioWare hopes. Or that it'll achieve anything near WoW numbers.

I even question whether it'll recoup the $80-odd million it has cost to develop - a cost that is so high because BioWare bizarrely banked on making its point of different voice acting. Not innovating gameplay. Not more worlds to explore. But voice acting. A relatively minor feature of single player games, let alone RPGs and MMOs, where players routinely skip even five seconds of dialogue because listening means not earning XP.

I can only hope that the theme park is exhausted in the eyes of players and developers, and that some innovation will be injected into the MMO sphere. But then again... I've been saying that for years.

Why Skyrim is Overrated

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:11:00 +0000

Skyrim currently has a score of 95% on metacritic. With a score like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was nearly a flawless game.

It's not. It has deep and tiresome flaws.

So, two problems: Skyrim is flawed; and the many games sites that rushed out early reviews with ~95% scores are run by gutless and/or witless journalists.

First, what's wrong with Skyrim.

The intro is clumsy, poorly written, confusing in parts and unskippable.

The game is riddled with bugs, many minor but deeply irritating, some major (like many CTDs). Although this is almost par for the course for the Elder Scrolls series. Doesn't make it any less disappointing.

The graphics are problematic. Oh, you'd never guess from reading the gushing reviews. But there are deep and abiding problems with the graphics.

Shadows, for one, are dreadful. Even on ultra settings, they appear blocky and pixellated. You have to get involved in some pretty serious .ini file editing, guided by the experimentation of a thousand irritated gamers, to fix the blocky shadows.

It turns out the solution is to radically diminish the view distance of shadows. So it's a trade-off: blocky but pervasive, or sharp with no shadows in the distance. I went for the latter. Oh, and you can't switch them off and be done with it.

The textures also look inexplicably like they've been lifted from Daggerfall up close. Many look incredible from a distance, but approach snow-covered rock up close, and it snaps you straight out of the game world.

Oh, and the interface is gut wrenchingly bad on the PC. This shows why. The perks menu is one of the nicest looking dysfunctional UIs I've ever seen. It's tedious.

Given one of the most popular mods is a UI fix, it's amazing the Skyrim team created an even more console-oriented interface.

I want to enjoy Skyrim. But I'm going to have to wait until some of these things are fixed before I delve too deeply into the game. Let's hope a combination of concerted patching (which, I hope, takes precedence over DLC) and modding fixes these things soon.

And lets hope some in the games media actually deign to critically review Skyrim at some point.

STO's Three Mistakes

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:05:00 +0000

Cryptic made only three mistakes with Star Trek Online. But they're doozies, each.

The first I've already touched on: Star Trek Online isn't actually a Star Trek MMO. At least, not all of Star Trek. It's a Starfleet combat game coupled to an incongruously simplistic squad-based ground combat game.

As such, calling it Star Trek Online is almost equivalent to false advertising. And it sucked more than one long-lived and prospering player in. Here's one chap's signature on the forums:

I know MMOs are all about conflict, combat and all that glorious stuff but in my opinion STAR TREK, as a franchise, deserves to be treated more thoroughly and faithfully than simpleminded combat! - LordOfPit

And cobbling 'diplomatic corps' missions into a combat game is like adding crafting to Call of Duty IX (or whatever they're up to).

That's mistake number one.

The second mistake is that Cryptic forgot to make the game interesting. It is, by almost any account, incredibly dull. In terms of environments, atmosphere, use of the source material and most importantly, gameplay.

Space combat - and if STO has a hallmark, it would be this - is less interesting than even that offered by the venerable Starfleet Command series. You fly around, autofiring your phasers/disruptors and popping the odd special ability from time to time - albeit with gut wrenching repetition. It's made even worse by how horribly easy it is.

Ground combat is worse still. You have two base attacks, one or two extras, then the odd special. Positioning your bridge officers strategically is cumbersome, so you typically set them all in one spot then move to flank your enemies yourself. With monotonous repetition. Except it's inexplicably harder. Only more dull.

It seems Cryptic mistook complexity in gameplay to mean having a complicated game mechanic - the convolutions of how skills, bridge officers, consoles, devices etc interact are almost inscrutably counter-intuitive.

And the amount of information offered through tooltips is so numbingly simplistic that you often have little real idea of what impact a particular skill choice has. Without the forums and STO Wiki, I would have been making decisions almost entirely in the dark.

Most of the thinking time is in configuring your ship and your bridge officers. Then the rest is click, press, repeat, gah.

Complexity doesn't mean a lot of moving parts beneath the surface. It can mean only a few moving parts, but they interact in complex ways; there are only six different pieces in chess, but a billion squillion possible moves blah blah. In STO there are a lot of moving parts, but they interact in amazingly boring ways.

Teaming would make it more enjoyable, and STO isn't as appalling as many other MMOs in this regard, but there's still a lot of repetitive scanning and shooting. Perhaps it improves at higher levels, with different classes playing significantly different roles. But through Lieutenant Commander, you pretty much fly around blasting stuff no matter what class you are. And I didn't have the interest to push to Commander and beyond.

So yeah, second problem: STO is a tiresomely uninspired game.

Third problem is the Cryptic store is offensive. It's been said before. And it's all true. The Cryptic store is an insult to those who paid money to play this game.

Quite how Cryptic could have thought it was going to be accepted for it to charge players extra to play the full game it beyond even the reckoning of a Vulcan. It's just offensive.

Every time I see an option in-game that suggests I buy a new uniform or a new ship class, I feel like Cryptic is laughing at me. And that offends.

So yeah, just three mistakes. Otherwise the game is great.

Starfleet Online

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:14:00 +0000

Conjecture: if Star Trek Online was called Starfleet Online, there would have been less than 0.4 as much controversy over it when it launched.

I just fired up STO the other day. I happened to pick it up at once of those Steam bargain bin sales at a discount that would make a Ferengi blanch (can they blanch?), and figured I'd, um, beam up now that it's been traversing the warp trails for over 12 month.

Yep, that's enough Trek references.

One thing I did notice is that it's not actually Star Trek Online. When one sees the title, one expects certain things. One expects a game that resembles the TV show, and presents the player with similar scenarios and challenges as that faced by Kirk and Picard (and the other lesser captains).

But it doesn't. It kinda tries, but more in a post-hoc sense. It's really just Starfleet Command in MMO with some third-person ground combat thrown in because, well, Cryptic had the engine lying around so why not?

And there's nothing wrong with that - if it was called Starfleet Online, that is. But they called it Star Trek Online. Twits.

It'd be like if X-Wing was called Star Wars. Or Call of Duty was called Global Peace and Conflict Simulator.

If it was Starfleet Online then Cryptic wouldn't have had to bother with the diplomatic missions. They're only there because people got the impression the game was all about Star Trek. But it's not. It's about parts of Star Trek.

Anyway, gonna traipse around sector space for a while and see how many klingons I can vaporise, all the while trying not to think that a diplomatic option, or a clever deception, might not have been the more appropriate solution than impulsing in photons blazing.

Starfleet Online. That's what I'm playing.

World of Tanks: The Good, The Bad and the Grind

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:55:00 +0000

I once vowed I'd never have a post title bastardising The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. But I also promised myself never to wage a land war in Russia. Yet, here I am, trundling over the steppes in my trusty Sturmgeschütz III, plugging away at other hapless tracked denizens of World of Tanks, so what the hey.

After a couple of weeks of surveying the battlefield of the open beta from my cupola, I'm ready to proffer an observation: it's got good bits, solid rolled steel bits that deflect even a tungsten-cored 88mm shell.

But it's also got its shot traps. Those niggling design flaws that, when struck, leave you bustling for the hatch to escape the inferno erupting from your ammo rack.

There's still time for the plucky engineers to rectify the flaws and have some startlingly slick and deadly panzer roll off the production line. But if previous experience with betas is anything to go by, not much beyond some balance tweaks and a few bug fixes are due. The gearbox might not snap quite so quickly, and the turret might rotate a few degrees faster, but the shot traps will remain.

One wonders how long I can keep up the tank metaphor. At least until I reach Moscow.

So here are my more detailed impression:

The good:

1) Overall polished feel with terrific attention to detail. The graphics, the interface, the tank models are all superb

It's the little things, like the logs in a log cabin are rough hewn, and they don't all line up. And the big things, like easy skinning support (although it'd be nice to see skinning handled in-game rather than by overwriting files in Explorer).

The interface is built for team PvP. You can click on the map, causing that sector to blink for all players. It's quicker and easier than typing a message. And the chat is easy, although the messages disappear from view awfully fast, so if you're scrambling out of the sights of a Russian KV-1 and you miss the message, it's gone forever.

2) The compromise between history/sim and action is excellent

I love tank sims, but they're not the kind of thing you can jump in to and start blasting away. WoT is, and that's great news even for tank grognards.

It might not model things like visibility realistically, but it's accessible yet still maintaining a level of satisfaction for the tank-nerd that is verging on criminal.

That said, the open beta only includes 15-a-side random PvP, with tanks from any of the three nationalities - US, Germany, Russia - going head-to-head, so history is somewhat out the window when your hunkering down in your Hetzer alongside a SU-76 in ambush of a Tiger and T-34.

I'm reliably informed there will be historical modes in the final release, and I eagerly anticipate the details of how they work.

3) Maps are perfectly sized for quick battles

Although this is not to say there's no scope for larger maps for dedicated missions.

Maps and terrain are also generally excellent. Maps are asymmetrical, but they rarely feel as though one team has an intrinsic terrain advantage. Most maps have multiple routes through to the opposition end-zone, where you can capture their Christmas tree (?!) and win the map - that's if you choose not to try to knock them all out instead.

The bad:

1) The match-making system

The match-making system, which tallies the mojo of each tank and distributes them on either side for each battle is, well, bonkers.

The tanks each belong to a tier, which appears to roughly relate to the date of development of the tank and its potency. So the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger, while it was released relatively early in the war, is bumped down to tier 7 with the Jagdpanther, which rolled out only towards the end of the war.

But the matching system is prone to put a humble tier-4 Hetzer up against a hulking tier 8 IS-3. It can make for infuriatingly play.

This facet also isn't to be understated. The psychology of fairness is potent. And the impression that a game is not giving you an opportunity to perform, with the odds stacked against you, is effectively ushering you out the door to the Quit button.

Many a time I'd lie in wait with my fully-upgraded Stug III and land a perfect shot on a opposing heavy tank - only to ding it for 10% of its health. At which point, almost as an afterthought, it would swing its turret in my general direction while I'm trying to scramble out of the way, and would shrug me off with a single shot from its unfeasibly long wang-like cannon.

2) Tank destroyers are at a disadvantage

Historically, tank destroyers - i.e. tanks without turrets - were an inexpensive alternative to turreted tanks. Turrets are complex, and they also raise the profile of a tank. A hull with a gun sticking out of it is harder to see, and a smaller chassis can pack a bigger wang than a turret.
But, as a compromise, they often had less armour, particularly on the sides.

Their roll was to be mobile anti-tank guns. Lie in wait, shoot at range, hopefully knock out their target in one or two shots, then relocate. It all hinges on having a whopping great gun and an ability to strike a knock-out blow in a single hit.

In WoT, tank destroyers are effectively weak tanks. Sure, you get larger calibre guns at a lower tier than with tanks, but the match making system ensures this is a trivial advantage. The relative short ranges of engagements, along with the generally high speed of most medium and heavy tanks, and the fundamental hit point system mean it's almost impossible for a tank destroyer to knock out an opposing tank in one, or even two, shots. And by the third, they're toast, either from direct retaliatory fire or by the tank simply driving around the tank destroyer and keeping out of its narrow gun traverse. A single hit to the tracks, a nuisance for a turreted tank, is a death knell for a tank destroyer.

Pity, because my inexplicable penchant for underdogs (exemplified by my love of the Y-Wing) means I have a fondness of tank destroyers. But in WoT, my penchant became my albatross. Even with upgrades - all tanks have upgradable engines, tracks, turrets, guns and radios - didn't make me feel I was as capable as a same-tier tank.

3) The controls

WASD - had the Allies only known you could run a tank on four keys... And it works. But...

W is forward, S is reverse. While moving forward or stationary, A is left, D right. However, when reversing, A is right, and D left.

This means you can be traversing left, then realise you need to back up a bit, hit S, and suddenly you're traversing right.

The number of times I was killed in my hapless tank destroyer because I pulled out into the open instead of backing into cover...

And you can't remap the keys. There are even heated discussion on the forum - discussions that startlingly miss the point - that talk about how real tanks shuffle around on their two tracks, and how the current controls are not unrealistic. Dick to realism, while I'm sitting in front of a keyboard and not in the cockpit of a 50 tonne monster, then I want an intuitive keyboard interface.

4) AFKers

Each match earns you experience points and credits. The former allow you to unlock upgrades to your tank. The latter buys the upgrades, as well as new tanks.

XP is slow to earn (see below), but one way to do it is to automate clicking Join Battle, then hitting ESC after 15 mins and repeating. You enter the battle, sit around, probably lose, and pick up a trickle of xp and credits. All while watching telly or sleeping.

It's galling. As a team PvP game, any dead weight is felt. This must be fixed.

6) Historical battles

While the beta is all random battles, I look forward to more historical battles. Apparently this mode is coming in the final release, but I haven't heard much about it yet.

Fixing a date range and/or tier would be great. Currently, the high-tier battles with lumbering behemoths slugging away isn't as much fun as more dynamic mobile battles with a diversity of tanks and tank types.

There are also a lot of rare and experimental tanks and mods in game, and this can make the game feel alien to the WWII setting. A historical setting, with only historical tanks, would be a boon for history buffs.

7) Historical mode

Similar to above, I hope there'll be a historical mode that dramatically reduces tank hit-points, reduces gun accuracy and makes module damage non-repairable. Not everyone will like it, but many will enjoy the challenge of more cautious play that encourages closer team work and more historical tactics.

The ugly

1) The grind part I

I'm not sure why WoT is considered an MMO. It's no more MMO than Team Fortress 2. But one trope it does share with MMOs is the grind - and it's disappointing to see the worst of MMOs brought into WoT.

If the intention is to encourage people to play the game for as long as possible, then make the game fun, and people will play. People play TF2 or Counter-Strike without a grind keeping them attached.

2) The grind part II

I understand the merits of the XP system, and encouraging people to work their way up tiers, but the XP requirements are prohibitive in many cases.

If I want to play a Tiger in the heavy tank roll, yet have to play through several tanks I'm not interested in, or I don't like their dynamics, I'll lose interest and never make it.

Some MMOs keep players by forcing them to invest in their one main character. Others, like City of Heroes, keep them by giving them a slew of alts and offering a diverse play experience with each one.

WoT should be more like the latter than the former. As a tank nut, I want to play tanks from all nationalities, and in all classes and tiers. I'll jump between them, and vary my style depending on my mood.

The grind, however, presents a huge barrier to that, particularly if I have to play through tanks I don't like. And I'll be forced to invest in a single tree for a long period, and risk burning out or losing interest.

3) The grind part III

The current system also forces you to invest in one tree, with few options to branch to other trees half way down. If you decide you're not happy with TDs, the prospect of grinding another tree from the top is dispiriting.

Lower XP requirements (like 1/3 or less the current amounts) and more branching from one tree to the next will encourage people to experiment, invest in diverse trees, learn different rolls, and keep them engaged with the game.

War's End

WoT is exciting. I haven't played a WWII tank game I really enjoyed since the quirky Panzer Elite, or perhaps Combat Mission II. It's fun, it's accessible, it looks great and bugger me if it isn't filled with TANKS. What's not to love?

That said, I'm teetering. It's free-to-play, so it's easy to sample. But investing could be a stretch. Particularly if XP gain while on a premium account is still heart-achingly slow.

I can only hope that they loosen things up a bit when it comes to progression. And tighten things up when it comes to balance, controls and some of the tank specs - particularly tank destroyers.

But ultimately, it's a WORLD OF TANKS. Man, makes me want to blitzkrieg just thinking about it.

Future of PC Gaming Won't be Crowdsourcing

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:06:00 +0000

Marc Merrill, president of Riot Games, reckons in the future, PC game developers will ask gamers what they want before they make it, and then make what they want. And, presumably, he believes this will lead to better games.

Two things: he's right and he's wrong - both in the worst possible ways.

The right: that developers will seek out gamers' preferences opinions and seek to cater to them. But they do this already. There's nothing revolutionary about this concept.

The wrong: we don't need smarter gamers telling developers what to make, we need smarter developers making better games. It's not rocket science. But it might take some to start developing games.

I do see the subscribe-through-development model, so successfully employed by Minecraft and Mount&Blade, growing - but only for indie developers. It's a terrific way for developers with shallow pockets to garner interest in their potential fare and generate enough revenue to deliver it.

But I'm sure if these small developers had the cash to make the game they wanted, they'd just make it. The subscribe-through-development model is sought out of necessity, not choice.

And I do see community involvement increasingly meaning interacting with the actual players of the game (although this happens already with many games through forums, community reps etc) rather than through a proxy of the players via focus groups and market research.

But if Merrill thinks more chit chat with the players is what will wrench mainstream PC games from the glossy Hollywood wafer thin fluff they are today into being more interesting, more innovative and more, well, 'gamey' games, then he's wrong.

The shift to multimillion dollar budgets, with all the big expectations and big risk aversion that goes with it, is the prime force shaping mainstream PC games today. And, like Hollywood, that's unlikely to change any time soon. And, like the film industry, there'll always be a struggling indie industry that will be the true pioneers.

The big developers can talk like indies all they want - as Hollywood tries to talk indie all the time - but it's just fluff.

And throwing out to the community to ask what they enjoy and what they don't will only lead to a horrific drag to the middle, where one-size-fits-none, and truly interesting niche games get squashed by washed-out derivative garbage.

Ultimately, nothing beats a smart developer with good ideas and the guts to turn them into a game. No-one's saying that's easy, but in the same way that was the past of PC gaming, so too is it the future.

A multiplayer game about building things with cubes

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 21:14:00 +0000

Cubelands. Oh, don't look so surprised. It was bound to happen.

Legend makes legendary speech about legendary mag

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 13:04:00 +0000

It starts like this:

When I was given this award last year, I was stunned, as, I’m sure, most of you would have been. Only a complete twat actually considers themselves to be a “legend,” and being called so by your peers is genuinely very flattering. Despite the accolade, though, I don’t consider myself to be a legend at all. Let’s be honest; raising head and shoulders above the majority of this room isn’t exactly fucking difficult, is it? The criteria by which I won the award appeared to be, “Nice lad. Knows where to put a comma. Bit of a cunt. Smoked crack on press trips.” Legend. One in a million.

The rest is here.

No Such Thing as a F2P Lunch

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:04:00 +0000

Two weeks ago, the Lord of the Rings films were on telly. I promptly didn't watch them - because they were the theatrical releases, and were riddled with ads. But I did stick in my (ad free) extended edition DVDs and devour them.

I then noticed LotrO was going F2P a week later. Chance? Or coincidence? I don't care. I was keen to show Sauron how I would have foiled his nefarious plot to conquer Middle Earth and elevate the standard of living of orcs. The fiend.

Thus did I fire up LotRO again after a three year hiatus. I was actually excited. For about an hour.

First impression: the game looks passingly pretty but dreadfully dated - and it's only three years old! It also has that Turbine blandness - a certain brownness around the edges, movement animations that lack grace and sword swings that lack inertia. It's not bad, per se, and there is the odd location that is rather picturesque - the Shire is rendered so charmingly that I now intend to retire there - but it lacks the idiosyncratic style of something like WoW (not so idiosyncratic now that it's been copied ad nauseam) or the splendour of something like Oblivion. It doesn't even have bump mapping, for crap's sake.

The game itself has clearly benefited from three years of polish, patches and preparation for F2P. The new Warden class is fairly enjoyable - the mechanic of layering combinations of three basic moves to unlock gambits that do anything from stuns to self heals adds a tactical element that mixes up combat a bit. A bit.

One of my main criticisms of LotRO has always been that it's so damn vanilla. If it were a single player game, it would be laughed off stage for its simplistic combat, cookie cutter quests and non-existent AI. And as an MMO, it really has little that encourages persistent teaming. Most of the quests - at least up until level 20 - are solo, and the odd 'fellowship' that does form lasts for an even shorter time than the Fellowship, often one quest, then it's off to respective quest givers or to level. Makes me feel like I'm winding up for a long, lonely walk to Mordor.

For someone used to City of Heroes, where the teaming is effortless and fruitful (by design), playing a solo-MMO feels like wandering through Luna Park (Coney Island?) alone.

One thing that I think hurts teaming prospects is the time it takes to get anywhere. Mounts still take a while to acquire - although not as long as some games - but they're still not that fast. And so-called fast travel still has you ride the road between your two destinations. That's just rude time wasting. Sure, in the original game it chewed up game time, and now it encourages you to fork out for a mount, but it's unacceptable and harms the greater game. If travel were quicker - like, you know, in City of Heroes - teams could quest, and the go level/sell stuff, and be back in a jiffy. As is stands, most aren't willing to wait 10 minutes for all that to happen between quests - understandably enough.

The F2P elements are cleverly integrated - there's enough free stuff to make the game playable, at least at lower levels, but the lack of quality of life factors, like storage space and auction house slots, puts the pinch on pretty quickly.

Offering Turbine Points - the Turbine store currency - as quest and deed rewards is a cheeky touch, as it familiarises you with the store and make purchasing points that much easier. (Although, for those looking for the best way to milk the F2P, this Massively article gives some good tips, and links through to a great levelling guide on mmorsel.)

Hey, given I'm not paying a monthly sub, I'll keep it installed, and probably fire it up from time to time. But with the prospect of more vanilla solo MMO questing - kill x boars, find/click glowie, deliver y to z - with only infrequent teaming, and a generally uninspired game mechanic (and absolutely no AI; how can MMOs still get away with zero AI?...), I don't know how often I'll venture into Middle Earth.

Frankly - and this will come as no surprise - I'm well and truly burnt out with the current themepark MMO formula. I was burnt out three years ago when I first cancelled my LotRO sub three months after launch. I await a new generation of MMOs - ones with more interesting game mechanics, that reward and encourage effortless teaming, that have bloody AI (why don't MMOs have an AI director?). Although I may be waiting for a while. The next crop, including Secret World and Star Wars: The Old Republic look as vanilla as ever, except with a few tweaks around the edges. Yawn.

It stuns me that City of Heroes/Villains still leads the way in innovation and gameplay in so many areas - and it launched before WoW...

One bit of praise I have for LotRO is the community. On the Landroval server, almost everyone is polite, and you even see punctuation in global chat. It's astounding. Bravo.

Right Back at Ya, Mr Chick

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:55:00 +0000

Here's the skinny. Stardock's Elemental is having a hard launch. Some people aren't happy, especially some of the folks on Tom Chick's Quarter to Three.

Stardock's Brad Wardell essentially said that if you don't like it don't buy it (and has since apologised).

PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun wrote about it.

Then Chick said something like this:

No kidding. Fuck you, Tom Francis at PC Gamer and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun for treating my forum that way. I have to come up with material for a daily blog also. I know what a challenge it can be, but I don't lift informal comments out of context to be provocative. Did you guys also post how graciously Brad received some similarly harsh comments I'd made the previous day in the same goddamn thread? Will you post how graciously Brad has apologized to Ben?

As if there isn't plenty to write about Elemental without digging up one line from a long and varied exchange!

Again, fuck you, Petadact and Quintin Smith at Rock Paper Shotgun. Assholes. Go Kotaku from someone else's forum.

Let's put aside the fact that PC Gamer and RPS are well within their rights to quote from Chick's forum. It's public information, in the public interest, and certainly quoted in context. And let's also put aside the odd statement relating to Wardell's forum comment being 'informal' (in Chickland, journalists only quote from 'formal' events that have been given the nod by the person who happens to preside over the event.)

Instead, let's take a look at Chick's behaviour. In particular, let's look at his comments about Trembling Hand's Tim Dean's post on women in gaming. It starts like this:

Tim Dean at the blog Trembling Hand has written what is likely to be one of the year's most clueless editorials. And I say this even though the year is young.

Go read Chick's full post here. Given that he so completely misrepresents Tim's post, the only defense I can make is to read the full article here.

I could wrap this up with a reference to pots and kettles being of a similar shade of black, but that's the wrong analogy. Chick either has exceptionally poor reading comprehension skills or he's guilty of a far greater sin than what he's levelling at RPS or PC Gamer.

What a Dungeons & Dragons MMO Isn't

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:29:00 +0000

It isn't what Cryptic is planning to make. Cryptic looks to be pulling a, well, Cryptic, on D&D by producing a not-quite-MMO that is a bare bones conversion of the pen-and-paper game for the pixellated screen.

According to Cryptic arch wizard, Jack Emmert, Neverwinter will include only the most basic classes: Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Ranger, Cleric. That's skipping Paladin, Warlock and Warlord, which are even present in the basic 4E rulebook.

Not only that but the game will include only 'Heroic' tiers, with paragon paths and epic destinies included later - i.e. in all likelihood paid-for expansions.

Races are also limited to three: Human, Elf and Dwarf - absent are Dragonborn, Eladrin, Half-Elf, Halfling and Tiefling, not to mention those in the supplements.

Call me cynical, but this smacks of Cryptic's approach to Star Trek Online: include only the bare minimum, lure players in on the back of the franchise, and then up-sell them with premium content down the track (or even at launch). It could take 12 months just to include the basic content in the core 4E rulebooks.

And as D&D has always has been about options and customisability, this just doesn't live up to what a 4E D&D game should be. Certainly, D&D under the stewardship of the Wizards of the Coast, is all about basic core content and paid-for expansions, in the form of supplements. But even in 4E, which is arguably the most restrictive D&D system since Basic, the core Player's Manual allows a plethora of mix-and-match options between races, classes, powers, paragon paths, epic destinies. Then you have WotC's trademark library of supplements to add into the mix.

Neverwinter, by contrast, will be a D&D 4E Basic half-MMO. It might be fun, for what it is. But the expectation machine - fuelled by the inkling of the first 4E D&D MMO - will in all likelihood lead to a disillusionment trough the likes of which haven't been seen since the launch of STO.

Sad, really. I'd love to see a comprehensive 4E game, either MMO or single player, especially since 4E is basically a pen-and-paper MMO already. But this... especially with Cryptic behind it, has me thoroughly underwhelmed.

Although, as Dave put it to me recently: "Cryptic's stock (Roper or not) is so low for me that it's only up from here."

A Tale in Game Theory

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:01:00 +0000

Tobold has an interesting post on the competitive shenanigans going on over at A Tale in the Desert, and how even without combat, there can be fierce rivalry going on, and even a form of kill stealing.

Essentially, there's a 'test' where you're required to build an obelisk of a certain minimum out of common materials. Do that and you pass. But there's another angle to the test which pits you into competition with your fellow players.

But to "pass" the Test of the Obelisk and "win", you need to build the highest obelisk in the region, and have it remain the highest obelisk for a virtual week, 56 hours of real time. If somebody builds a higher one during that time, you have to start over.

What's interesting about this is that there are two ways that you can go about 'winning' this competitive challenge. First is to just build a bloody big obelisk. However, doing so clearly makes it very challenging - and expensive in terms of materials - for other players to 'win'.

An alternate strategy is to cooperate with your fellow players in such a way as it makes it possible for you all to 'win' relatively cheaply:

Everybody not interested in winning build height 7 obelisks. The first person in the queue builds a height 8 obelisk, everybody else patiently waits 56 hours for him to pass the test, then the next person in the queue builds a height 9 obelisk, and so on.

However - and here's the rub - clearly going down this cooperative route leaves open the possibility of someone ignoring the queue and building a larger obelisk and winning at the cooperators' expense.

This, folks, is a textbook Prisoner's Dilemma straight out of game theory - a favourite science explored on this blog.

In the Prisoner's Dilemma two players have an opportunity to cooperate for mutual benefit. However, if one cooperates and the other chooses to 'ninja', or 'defect', then the ninja gets a large reward and the cooperator suffers a large cost - the 'sucker's payoff'.

The trick is that even though both players will benefit if they cooperate, there's always the temptation to get a greater reward at your fellow player's expense. And since both players are thinking the same way, and neither wants to get the sucker's payoff, the both tend to defect, which means a lesser reward than if they had cooperated.

This, in game theory nerd speak, is called the Nash equilibrium, named after John Nash (whom you might remember from A Beautiful Mind).

A large part of game theory is figuring out ways to get both parties to cooperate for mutual benefit without things slipping down towards the Nash equilibrium. And, clearly, the machinations going on over at A Tale in the Desert are trying to solve the very same problem.

Some might find designing the game such that 'ninja-ing' is an option is poor design. On the contrary, it's brilliant design. It forces people to figure out a solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma socially rather than having the challenge built into the game in such a way as anyone can overcome it if they just know the tricks. It forces creativity, intelligence and social interaction.

The good news is that there are ways of solving the Prisoner's Dilemma. The old social contract is one - although this requires that such a contract is enforceable, i.e. there is a way that other players can collectively punish a defector (thus increasing the cost of defection and making cooperation a preferable alternative - that's why we have fines and prisons in the real world).

Another solution comes from philosopher Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan - a sovereign entity that holds ultimate power over each citizen/player and can punish defection. Creating a Leviathan that can perform this task is no easy feat - in a game or in the political world. (Here's a hint as to why: even if such a Leviathan can enforce cooperation between subjects, how can the subjects trust that the Leviathan won't abuse it's ultimate power and 'defect' against the subjects and engage in corruption - i.e. the subjects effectively enter into a new Prisoner's Dilemma with the Leviathan ad infinitum.)

Good game design doesn't just mean static problems to be solved - adding the game theory element and making the problem dynamic by putting other players into the equation can actually create something far greater and more challenging.

Kudos to A Tale in the Desert for continuing to pioneer creative and innovative gameplay, even if it does mean the odd sucker's payoff in the process.

Retreading the Path

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:54:00 +0000

You might recall The Path, a game that made a lot of people angry. These were the kind of people who, when referring to The Path being a game, put quotes around 'game', as if to say it was pretending to be a game. You know the type. I wasn't one of those people.

Well, the game keeps on buzzing. Check out Tale of Tales' post mortem, which says things like this:

We've never really spoken much about the Wolves. Inspirations for Wolf characters... I couldn't even explain it. Every girl has her wolf, no? I tried categorizing every boyfriend I ever had into one of these archetypes. Not that I believed "all men" are one way; more, it's about the way I had experienced them, and the relationship I'd had, or that I'd wished had been...

In all cases we did not want to make typical male game characters that looked like they would overpower the girls. No, the wolves need to be ordinary -- thus to raise a question in the player's mind about who is exactly in control of the encounters in the forest. We made up stories about each one of these characters, how and why they need each other, and what that meeting does to the endgame.

Then there's The Path blog, which is like a scrapbook of design ideas -- for games or otherwise.

And then we have the forums, where the community does things like this:

Great to see The Path still kicking along.

Alien Swarm: It's an Ol' Fashioned Bug Hunt

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:33:00 +0000

Alien Swarm now available free on Steam. Get it.

It's like Aliens and Starship Troopers met in a bar, had a chat, got along really well, had a few more drinks, had some laughs, went back to Space Hulk's place, finished off a bottle of port and woke up in the same bed, forever changed. You know the story.

Read Rock, Paper, Shotgun's take on it here.

How Dungeons Are Made

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:30:00 +0000

A couple of years ago (that long?) I wrote about Tony Dowler's fabulous pen-and-paper dungeon-making storytelling system, How to Host a Dungeon. It's the kind of thing that screams out for attention -- it's a seed that, should it be appropriately fertilised and cared for, would develop into something profound.

Sure, that sounds pretty obtuse, especially if you've not given it a go -- and let's face it, you probably never will. So here's a video of HtHaD in action, which might stir the brain juices.

Via Play This Thing.

Five Ways to Identify a Next Generation MMO

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:08:00 +0000

MMOs are tired, unoriginal, yadda yadda. We all want to progress the medium, blah, blah. We've all heard it, we've all said it, and many of us have our hopes pinned on Star Wars: The Old Republic as the first Next Generation MMO that will turn the corner on this tired medium. But will it?

Seraphina Brennan over at Massively has a refreshingly honest take home message on TOR inspired by her hands-on:

So, in short, don't get yourself super hyped about this game. It's not amazingly innovative or a complete genre changer. It's not re-inventing the wheel, but it is taking that wheel and giving it the gold plating it needs.

She remarks that TOR's gameplay is slick, but the mechanics come from the ~~WoW~~ MMO Book of Dos and Don'ts. Sure the story and instancing are nice, but at the end of the day, the single most important element when it comes to characterising an MMO in terms of play experience is the game mechanic; if it involves levels, hit points, cooldowns, loot, toe-to-toe fights of attrition, health packs, etc, then it's more of the same. And TOR is more of the same.

So how does one identify a true Next Generation MMO? I know these kinds of lists are a dime a dozen, but given we're yet to see any significant progression in MMOs to date, clearly they bear reinforcing. At least until enough gamers start demanding them, then developers might start listening. Who knows, TOR still has some development time left...

Here are a few telltale signs that your MMO is Next Gen:

1) The mobs are smart
"Smart" doesn't mean "hard". It means they react in ways that are less unbelievable than today's mobs, who are known to wander randomly until someone takes one step too far inside their personal space and then fly off the handle. Next Generation mobs will be at location x for a reason, they won't mindlessly attack until defeated but will employ tactics, teamwork, and will vary their approach from one mob to the next. Variety. Can you imagine?

2) The engine is smart
Left4Dead was one of the most innovative games to be released in years. Largely, this was due to the AI Director. This wheel has now been invented, so any future MMO that has static spawn points or randomly placed mobs, and that doesn't react to the players' presence is not a Next Generation MMO. Imagine, entering a lair and it's eerily quiet for the first stretch, then you're swamped by minions followed by a tough boss or two, then a special mob targets your healer, forcing you to react, then it goes quiet again, then more specials try to split the team, then you're swamped again. And that's just a basic quest. Why not?

3) There is no grinding
The game can be long, it can be hard, it can involve wading through thousands of mobs, but it can't be repetitive or meaningless. That's the hallmark of grind. Combat should be for a purpose. Combat should be a means not and end. You never saw Aragorn, or Wolverine, or Luke Skywalker plough through mobs for the heck of it. The mobs were an obstacle to be overcome on the way to a broader goal. If I'm forced to kill as the only way to improve my skills, well, imagine if the world was like that. Imagine how much blood would be on the hands of the average five star general...

4) The players matter
No more quests where we endure mortal peril to defeat the Villain and retrieve the MacGuffin and save the kingdom/city/planet, only to have that Villain standing outside that same cave/base/space station, wielding said MacGuffin, five minutes later. This is not to say everything need be sandbox, but the illusion of agency needs to be better engineered than this. If a kingdom is in peril, it should really be in peril. And we should really be able to do something about it. And if we fail, it should have real consequences. But that failure should not be a setback for us, but should impact the world.

5) Variety, surprise and rewarding exploration
The game should be always interesting, always presenting new surprises, not just a static unchanging landscape. Imagine a world where there randomly appear instanced lairs. Some have a scattering of easy mobs. Some feature a rare boss. Or harbour prisoners to be released. All provide rewards, some more than others. What better way to encourage exploration than to give explorers rewards for actually discovering something. Sure, you can stick to the beaten path, but wander off the path and dangers - and riches - await.

And, I'm sure there are countless more ways that MMOs can finally be seen to grow up and wear long pants. It's not a new medium any more. Single player games have evolved, and now MMOs are overdue. But I haven't stuck with a new MMO for more than a month in the past couple of years because they're all the same game. What's worse, some of them aren't even as good as existing MMOs. I hold some hope for TOR, but by the sounds of it, even that's not going to actually innovate. But that doesn't mean someone else won't. Do we need Valve to enter the space, maybe?...

Games: everything is connected

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:02:00 +0000

Steven Leckart's visualisation of how genres, puzzles, codes and theories interconnect is pretty neat. I'm not totally convinced by the links, and I would love to see more granularity, but it's a good conversation starter.

Download the superduper high-res version here. (Via an old Wired story.)

How Do You Choose Your Class?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:39:00 +0000

How do you choose the class you're going to play in an MMO or RPG? What do you look for? And how confident are you when you start that you're going to stick with that class?

I know I agonise over the decision over what class to play before plunging in. I know what I like, and more importantly, what I don't like. But I inevitably lack confidence that my first choice will see me through. Why? Because, beyond the inevitable tank/dps/heal triumverate, it's bloody hard to predict each class's lifestyle, say, 20 levels in. And that's when it really matters, because by that point, turning back can be a make or break decision for the game as a whole - pick a class that shits you at 20, and even if there's another class that looks appealing, it's terribly easy to just give up and try another game altogether.

And I can't count the number of MMOs where I've launched four or five characters to level 10 or so, just to sample their style, only to go back to square one and begin the game, like, 10 days later. Why, oh why, should it take me 10 days to run through what is effectively a tutorial, burning through low-level content repeatedly until it's worn thin by the time I really want to start the game? It's nuts.

I don't think MMOs help us terribly much with making this crucial class decision, either. Sure, there's usually some flavour text, or maybe an indication of where it sits on the tank/dps/heal triangle. Sometimes a single sentence describing combat style. But rarely do you get a hint of the total lifestyle.

Why do I keep using this word? It's the only word I can think of that encompasses the entire spectrum of gameplay that makes up your experience of a class. It's not just your abilities, but the kinds of equipment you seek and use, the role you play in a team, your approach to combat and the attitude you bring to the game. Even out of combat, I'd suggest tanks and rogues (or equivalents) look at the game world differently - they walk with a different swagger.

And I want to know, as early as possible, how I'm going to look at the game world at level 20 and beyond. I most certainly don't want to wait until level 20.

For mine, I like classes that are not one-dimensional, which usually rules out specialists and tilts me towards hybrids and utility classes. There's a compromise in that, but the last thing I want is to get to level 60 and find I'm doing the exact same thing in every situation I face. Yawn. As such, I prefer situational powers and reactive powers rather than always-on toggles and repetitive attack sequences.

Damage is also important, though. I mean, I've played a WoW Paladin up to 60 in the early days, and crap that was mind numbing - all the while watching rogues slip past and kill three mobs in the time I could drop one. Never again. Not to say I don't like tanks or defensive classes, particularly when there's aggro to manage in a reactive and dynamic way. But the damage output was unacceptably low. Still, how was I to know at level 6 what it would be like at 60?

Perhaps MMOs (and RPGs) should provide more information at character creation - not just flavour text, but something that gives a better insight into how that class approaches the game at higher levels. It could be a scaling system - like the one below - or it could be descriptive text, or even a series of short videos showing a mid-level player and some of the tricks and abilities they use.

I certainly don't know of any MMOs that currently give this level of detail, at least not in-game. I regularly find myself scrolling through pages and pages on forums looking not for stats on a particular class, but for stories about gameplay experiences that might give a hint of what it's like to play that class after the early levels. And I continually wonder why this crucial information isn't in the game itself.

One possibility - an easier and cheaper one than demonstrative videos - is a scaling system, which might give a hint as to how the class plays. Maybe with some categories like this:

Damage output

Survivability
Soloability
Support
Diversity
Flexibility
Utility

They wouldn't necessarily have to be rated out of 10 - even saying low/medium/high/situational might be useful. Or a few sentences of text for each one. I know that some classes are probably too complex to fit in to such a simplified abstract metric, like classes where damage output is dependent on DoTs or stacking debuffs rather than sheer volume of DPS. Still, there's nothing stopping the MMO from going into more detail for those who want it.

Might mean less repetition of that carefully crafted low-level zone the devs created - you know, the one you play through a dozen times to the point where you can't stand the sight of those rats/wolves/aliens (I'm looking at *you* Champions...).

Bad News for Those Hoping Secret World Might be Different

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:06:00 +0000

From IGN:

IGN: What kind of MMO is The Secret World? How would you define it?

Ragnar Tornquist: If you've played an MMORPG before, you'll know your way around The Secret World from the get-go. You create a character, join a secret society, and go out into the world to do missions and kick demon ass for experience and loot. We're not out to reinvent the wheel completely. But we're mixing things up quite a bit, both with our role-playing system – which is skill based and level-less – and with our combat, which is very fast-paced and action-packed. And, of course, with the setting and the story. The Secret World takes place in the modern day real world, and players are called upon to fight in the coming war against evil. Dark days are coming and those with the power to stand up and fight must do so – or our world will fall into an eternal night. [my italics]

So what we're looking at here is just-another-MMO. Not the creepy and intriguing game presented in the early screenshots. Sigh.

We have "missions", so that likely means theme park design rather than a dynamic world that generates its own challenges.

We have "experience" and "loot", so there's your motivation to play. Not the desire to explore or reveal any actual 'secrets'.

We have "very fast-paced and action-packed" combat, which seems incongruous with the imagery released up until now, which hinted at something more subtle and interesting; more about survival than hunting.

I hope all MMO designers give this thread a good read and have a long hard look at themselves, what their assumptions are about MMO design and realise that MMO gamers don't want to play the same game over and over again with slight variations around the edges.

I mean, that fact is hardly a secret.