Author Archives: Asmiroth

Knight of the Old Republic Free

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See what I did there?  We’re a couple months away from SWTOR going F2P but we have more info about it now!

You get absolutely everything good about the game for free.  The story, the classes, the companions, the art.  You get what is arguably the best Star Wars game in 10 years for absolutely zero dollars.

What you do pay for is the MMO portion, the part that is pretty bad.  You pay for quick travel, you pay for purple item, you pay for bag space, you pay for crafting, you pay for PvP, you pay for dungeons, you pay for raids.  We don’t know how much, but it’s more than zero.

There’s still missing details on what exactly gets unlocked for the P2P players.  I personally cannot see why people would pay cash for a great game with crappy MMO components piece meal.  Either people will sub or they will play for free.  Hopefully we get more details down the road.

That being said, for anyone who has not had the change, KOTOR3 will be launching in a couple months.  FOR FREE.

Themepark Levels

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There’s a growing trend for themeparks to avoid the idea of character levels.  Ultima Online has this same mechanic and it was one of the first out of the gate.  EQ came along and took the D&D model of levels and that seems to have somehow become the themepark standard.  There’s a bit of a shift now though.  TSW has no direct levels tied to the character, simply levels tied to skill useage.  GW2 uses levels but doesn’t gate content behind it, it simply levels the content around you (a-la Oblivion I guess).

TOR certainly has a disconnect between leveling and story.  The “openess” of previous BioWare games (minus DA2, ugh) was apparently cut on the floor in order to allow players to stay together.  Other than the personal stories, which account for maybe 10% of all content, there was nothing keeping you on a planet past the artificial level barrier.  RIFT has the same mechanic for moving forward but you can easily move down levels with the mentoring ability.

WoW is the odd one out.  Keen covers some points and there are some good counterpoints. You can argue that content and levels are two separate items.  I do understand the gating mechanic of levels in a game with 100 buttons.  If I gave you all of them to start, you’d have no idea how to play.  If I gave you everything to start, then you’d burn out on raids/dungeons.  The actual content is pretty decent but how do you pace content reward? There are over 10,000 quests in the game.  That’s a ridiculous number.

If themeparks were to remove levels, you’d still need some gating mechanism to extend playtime and get people used to systems.  If I bought a level 90 Druid it would take me a couple hours to gear them up to heroic dungeon levels. If I played a Druid from 1-90, it would take me a few weeks to get to the same place (if not more).

That being said, how in the world Blizzard thinks than John Smith is going to pick up WoW today and go through 90 levels to play with their friends is ridiculous.  I’m leveling a monk in full heirloom gear (45% exp boost), with 20% from the guild bonus and with 50% from the daily monk quest.  I’ve been leveling for 5 days now, having 7 years of experience in the game too, and I’m still not even finished the LK content.  I still need to do Cataclysm and then MoP.  Once I’m there, the content from 1-89 is practically irrelevant.

Real themeparks are about all the rides.  Sure, there are rides where you have to be “this tall” to get on, but I don’t know of any that say “you’re too tall”.  Rift makes previous content relevant through artifacts, quests, achievements, pets and mentoring. WoW makes previous content relevant through achievements (x quests complete) and pet battles.  WoW’s dungeons and raids previous to an expansion pack (say Stonecore) are 100% empty.

It would certainly be fun to have access to all dungeons at max level and at an optional scaleable level.

 

 

Bags and the Problem with Space

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Inventory space is a problem in all games.  Either you can only have 2 guns, or 10 slots or 100.  Most F2P games take advantage of this space issue and charge you real money to increase the size.  It’s obviously a balancing issue where the dev needs to have enough space for moderate use while not making it so big that their databases crash from billions of items stored.

When WoW started, you had 5 bag slots with a maximum of 16 per slot.  Banks gave you 32, plus 6 bag slots for a rather large amount of gold.  Today, you can get bags with 26-32 slots, which pretty much doubles the storage that existed previously.  RIFT also offers multiple bag sizes but they’re still in Vanilla mode, so we haven’t seen the explosion, if at all.  EvE has this problem too, but it’s combated by increasing your ship storage size (which is offset by reducing offense/defense).

A possible solution for the themepark crowd is the exchange and trade-up.  Where each WoW expansion typically adds 2-10 new tiers of commodities –  and MoP has added a stupid amount with cooking – you really are stuck with each character holding on to items, then mailing them across to players who can use them.  What I suggest is a shared commodities bag.  When I’m out and about and collect a piece of Turtle meat, who says my Shaman needs it?  Perhaps my Rogue is the cook.  If I was able to put items into an exchange pile, that all characters had access to, I would be saving on space.  Many games do this today in the Action RPG sphere  – D3 and Torchlight 2 shared stashes come to mind.  Heck, WoW and Rift and all of them do it with a Guild Bank already.  People have been forming 2 man guilds for years for the group storage.  By sharing the commodities, I am reducing the individual slot requirement by the number of characters I have.  Win.

The second option is the trade up.  Inscription is a PERFECT example for this.  You need to carry a solid dozen inks, milled from dozens of herbs in order to make glyphs.  The trade up system already exists here where you trade 1 type of ink for another.  This exact same model could be used for other tradeskills and not necessarily on a 1:1 basis.  Maybe 5 gold bars gives me 1 truesilver.

A final solution is the elimination of grey items or, like RIFT, the addition of a “sell all crap” button to the game.  The entire purpose of these items is to bloat bags and to be traded for cash.  If you go the first route, simply change the RNG to give a cash bonus when a grey item should drop.  If you go the latter, I know half my bags would empty in a second.

Increasing bag size is a temporary solution.  The problem is that there is too much stuff that people collect in their travels.

 

Social Climate

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A bit of a deviation today, turning once again to the social climate of gaming.  I’ve been gaming for nearly 30 years now and across all that time there has been a definite progress in terms of social interaction and stigma.  We’re currently in a time where it’s “cool” to be geeky but not yet cool enough to game.  It’s getting better mind you.  When I first started writing guides/selling items online, people looked at my like I was a weirdo.  Nowdays, people simply talk to me about what I write.  I’ve been at parties where complete strangers walk up to me and talk about it, simply from reference.  There really isn’t much more to be said about this particular point as it’s generational.  Give it another 10-20 years and gaming will become more popular than sports (if it isn’t already).

My point for this post is the social interaction that exists within gaming culture.   This is no different than any sub-culture’s social growth in most respects.  It starts small, with a dedicated group and similar (if not identical) interests.  If you like to roleplay in real life, then the odds of you finding kindred spirits at a LARPing event are rather high.  In essence, you need two things: common interests and opportunity.

Transcribe that to gaming.  In the early days of BBS, the player pool was miniscule and the interests common.  You could make friends rather easily.  The first MMOs came out and with a lack of competition, again, simple to make social pairings.  In UO, I ran the largest anti-PK group on the server and made good friends with most of the PKs.  Vanilla WoW had server limitation, so that at the top end of any server, you had a pool of perhaps 100 players.  It was rather easy to make groups.  As the game moved forward and “casualized” the content, more and more people fit into that player pool.  Borders broke down and LFD/LFR came into play.  Now, when you play the game, you have better odds of finding a bad with 1000 gold than seeing the same person 2 days in a row.  The player pool has been massively diluted.

This is one reason why the more niche games have a better social grasp on their players.  The games serve a specific need – which attracts a specific individual.  Since those are smaller groupings, it’s somewhat easier to make the social connection.  EvE is a superb example of how a game goes from social-hive to wild-west.  Over 80% of the player base never touches the social aspect of the game (minus the core mechanics of the game).  However, EvE is still partially controlled by the original player base, through the CSM.  Where WoW is categorically aimed at a different market than launch, EvE is headed in the exact same direction as day 1.

There’s an additional topic on about how EvE’s social atmosphere is actually negative and WoW’s is a positive one from a psychological aspect.  By keeping a small social group that never changes, you become isolated and xenophobic.  WoW’s idea to expose all players to all sorts of different social stimuli is a net positive for social integration.  How both of these games actually integrate these ideas through game mechanics is a completely different topic.

Social Repercussions

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What happens when someone can say something online that they would never say in person?  What if they couldn’t say that in person or face legal consequences?

In Canada we have free speech up until the point of hate speech.  You can say pretty much anything unless it causes direct harm to a group of individual.  The US 1st amendment is a bit different in that you can say pretty much anything to anyone, with no consequence.  In the EU in general, there are laws to combat this sort of behavior.  You can be a bully if you want but if you get caught, jail time.  We don’t have that in North America.  (I realize some people don’t think we need those laws.  I prefer to think that in terms of social reform, the countries that have been around ~1500 years longer have a better grasp.  The US is especially divided, making it a rather poor example as a whole.)

Back to the online presence.  A few people are aware of the GIF Theory.  A simple theory in that given anonymity to everyone can lead to bad things.  WoW tried to combat this with their RealID fisco a few years back, where you could only post with your real name.  The irony is that would have led to more harassment that it would have prevented.  No word of a lie, WoW random groups can be cesspits of society.  F2P games, League of Legends in particular, has the same problem.  Random groups of people, with no investment and low odds of meeting each other again, have no restrictions on behavior.  Heck, play any XBOX Live game.

The UK comes into the news spotlight from time to time for giving forum trollers prison sentences.  Not a lot, only a few weeks, but it’s enough deterrent to make people think twice.  Imagine explaining to your employer that you have to go away for 3-4 weeks.  I rather like this model as the punishment is social and economical but with restrictions.  Having 4chan or reddit go after someone (which they’ve done multiple times) usually means a destroyed business and personal life.  Rarely do they go after anyone where there is legal precedent.  Nearly all the time, it’s someone in the US that has done something asinine.  Sometimes they get it wrong though, and that’s where I have issue.  The person being targeted has no escape or recourse to recoup the losses.

I think that the current responsibility for managing this problem is within the hands of game developers.  They aren’t selling a singular experience, they are selling a group experience.  It’ll take 1 company to put in some system (LoL is trying) that curbs this activity and then the rest will be liable to do the same.  Heck, the majority of privacy changes that Facebook has had to implement are because of Canadian law.

Sooner or later, the legal systems across the world will catch up.  The internet and games as a whole, will have to mature.

 

Missing Best RPGs

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This links up to the previous comments on best RPGs.  I was thinking about it a bit more, while watching kids movies of all things, and two more came to mind.

First up is the Dark Cloud series, notably the second one.

This was an interesting series as it required quite a bit of playthrough to complete.  You needed to rebuild your towns, players and buildings at a time.  You also needed to build your gear up over time.  This required components, sub levels, transformation and piles of grinding.  I think this would make a great MMORPG in a group setting.  LOTRO sort of used this with Legendary Items, Istaria with their towns.  Sadly, the series wasn’t expanded but I think the spiritual successor will be Wildstar.

 

Second is Eternal Sonata.

This is an odd one certainly.  This RPG follows the real world music composer Chopin and uses some typical RPG standards with a few twists.  Chopin died at a pretty young age and this fantasy take on his life is one of the most interesting RPG stories I have ever played – no tropes here.  Combat is a decent mix of tactical and action, using light and dark (from shadows) to power your moves.  This dynamic battlefield makes for some cool battles.  Well worth trying out to any RPG fan.

 

There are certainly other RPGs that fit on this list.  As I come across more, I’ll definitely refer them here.

When You're Missing an Act

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A 4 part play in 3 parts is an odd play. It’s sort of like Lord of the Rings without The Two Towers.  Either you simply miss the opportunity to grow the story or the story simply ends in the middle of the growth.  XCOM feels that way.

I finished the game in about 20 hours, under a fairly casual pace.  I do have the experience of the previous XCOM to guide me as well as a good understanding of strategic games.  I would guess most people who want to blow through it to do so in about 15 hours, those who take their time might want to go for 30. Slight spoilers ahead.

There are 3 main missions in the game. First to collect a specific alien, second to infiltrate a specific area and finally, the enemy stronghold.  It can take time between them as there’s as you need to live-capture some folks, which can be quite tricky.  Anyhow, the enemy presence gets stronger, better enemies and whatnot.  You get stronger.  The “story” as it is, moves along at a decent pace. When you get access to the final mission, you don’t think it’s the final mission.  You think, awesome, this story is getting bigger.  The actual in-game cinematics reference this multiple times.  Even the last cut-scene is a massive opening for a sequel.

And this unfortunate.  There is certainly closure to the story but at such a quick pace (1 mission out of ~70 I took) that you blink and you miss it.  I want more.  I need more.  I’d like to see some new enemies, so different enemy tactics (the last ones are damn cool), so extension to the story (follow them to their base/planet/dimension).

In the end, I am not so much disappointed as I am hungry for more.  There’s a great opportunity here to add more and I’ll be the first in line with my wallet to take a piece.

The Challenge of Turtleing

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Games tend to come in two flavours – strategic and reactive.  There’s a saying that says the best laid plans go to crud once the first shot is fired but there’s still always the need for a plan.

MMOs have a basic strategic element.  You are given a finite toolset and resources to accomplish a task.  You might not know what that task is exactly but you have an idea of what the enemy toolset is.  The challenge in PvE combat is learning the pattern of that enemy toolset.  Since the penalty for failure is time, there’s no real need to develop great reaction skills.  PvP games however, the penalty for a loss is an equal loss of power/prestige, reaction skills are important.  Think of the FPS games like Call of Duty.  It’s next to impossible to properly guess what the enemy is going to use but a strong clan is going to wipe up nearly all competition.

XCOM follows the adage from above.  You can plan as much as you want but if the enemy decides to through 3 mutons, 2 berserkers, a cyberdisk and 6 thin men at you, at once, your plans are out the window.  The game is paused though, so you do have time to think of a strategy but your odds are drastically diminished.

When you are entering an unknown area you turtle – ie take the most defensive position possible to survive while analyzing the enemy’s attacks.  Some games penalize this, some are neutral but a few actually reward the playstyle.  XCOM’s Overwatch ability, where you sacrifice movement in order to take a reaction shot on any nearby enemy, allows you to play in a defensive mode while shooting. Other than grenade launching enemies, your best bet is usually to find cover, wait a turn, then use 1 guy to explore for enemies, find them, then bring them back to the trap.  It’s Super Effective!

Then you get missions where you have to be offensive.  The Terror missions task you to save civilians from enemies.  You need to move through the map, find them, save them, and not die from the enemies trying to murder everyone.  This is a challenge as most enemies take 2-3 shots to kill while your guys die in 1-2.  The bomb diffusing mission is altogether different.  You have X amount of turns to move across a map or the mission fails.  You can gain more turns along the way by disabling power sources but again, you have to expose yourself to massive enemy numbers.  My recent example had my 6 guys against 18 Thin Men.  Who spit AE poison and when they die, release AE poison clouds – which you have to move through to get to the end of the map.

I find this a good mix though, as most missions are defensive and you get the odd offensive minded one thrown in to mix it up.   Plus it’s always fun to mind crush someone from outside of grenade distance.

The WoW Rogue Dilemma

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My first WoW character was a Rogue.  Asmiroth was created 15 minutes after the first servers went up and was my main all through Cataclysm.  I saw the highs of Lich King and the lows of Vanilla/BC.  The playstyle was a direct rip from the Assassin in D3 and one of the first classes the game made available in beta.  It was so set in stone that it had the same talent tree from beta to BC.  All that to say the following.

The Rogue’s time is over.  Monks are the way forward.

WoW Insider covers some of the points for me.

Right now, Rogues have increased group stealth going for them for Challenge Modes.   Other than that, there’s next to no reason to play them.

  • Monks have better mobility
  • Monks have a more fluid combat style (see the Insider article)
  • Monks deal better burst damage
  • Monks can swap targets (points are per monk, not target)
  • Monks have better defensive options
  • Monks can heal themselves and others
  • Monks have an AE rotation
  • Monks can spec to Healer or Tank or DPS

I remember hearing about the monk a whole while ago and thinking “I hope they address Rogue issues”.  The difference between a Cataclysm launch Rogue and a MoP Rogue is next to nothing.  Still use poisons, still use auto-attack, still energy starved, still need to ramp up damage, still stuck on single targets.

It’s a sad day but today, I hang up my daggers and put on my claws.

Where the Aliens Have Names

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I always find it interesting to play a game with no-name protagonists.  XCOM’s generic (though customizable) platoon of soldiers never say much, don’t interact with you and can die at a whim.  Still, they somehow manage to become a part of you – more so than the CO, Doctor and Engineer do at any rate.  You’re not so much the commander of the squad as the squad itself, which is certainly entertaining.

Now I’m a decent chunk in, when compared to other games, and feel I can weigh in some opinions.  First, the Tutorial is great but then sets you up for a massive challenge based on the limited choices.  Best bet, run the Tutorial, then restart a new game.  Second, and this is a personal thing, but save often.  This game might list RNG numbers (say 60% chance) but it is never RNG.  I reloaded a saved game 5 times in a row and made the same 17% shot, 5 times in a row.  This is cool in that is prevents you from saving and reloading to get a percentage to work but also a pain if you know that 5 of your guys are going to miss the shotgun-to-the-face attack on the enemy.

The pace of combat is interesting as well.  Things start off easy enough, then suddenly ramp up to fighting 3-6 enemies at once.  Moving a single square too much can unleash holy hell upon your squad, especially if it’s your last guy for the turn.  More often, it’s worth ending a turn with 6 guys around a door so that the next turn, one guy can open it with 5 others backing him up with guns.  Or, you could get a grenade lobbed and kill all your guys in 1 shot.  Your pick!

If I do have a gripe, and I always do, it’s in the balance between research and engineering.  The former only has a cost in time, not in power.  1 research guy can do everything you need, it will just take time.  The latter has a cost in time, power and resources.  Building a gun requires X engineers, Y materials.  Building a sattelite takes 20 days, no matter what.  Upgrading your base may need 60 engineers!  This essentially means you never need to build a lab, if you prioritize your research properly.  You do need to build workshops and link them.  Not only does this increase your engineer count but also massively discounts whatever you decide to build.

A final gripe, and one I had with the original, is that by the time you can train in Psi combat, your best guys are more than likely going to be crap at Psi, so you have to re-train a whole new set.  It feels really weird to take your colonel and say “Well, I know you did 30 missions, but Joe-Bob there, when he’s not picking his nose, he can open that can of soup with his mind.  See ya!” It’s a rather massive disconnect in gameplay.  I was kind of hoping I could train them in Psi, even if that meant benching them for a month.

All in all, this is a “just one more turn” kind of game, where 5 minutes can turn into 1AM in the blink of an eye.