Thinking more about how TES Online can work or tank over the weekend leaves me with a few ideas.  First is that this is Zenimax’ call for an online game and that Bethesda’s strengths are practically polar opposites to BioWares.

I played some Fallout 3 and New Vegas on the weekend since Skyrim was still fresh in my mind, just to have another kick at what makes these games work.  If you were hyper-critical, you would say they are buggy, poorly written, trope-filled, sky-reaching games.  Yet they are games that gamers love to play.  Compare with the BioWare staple that have cohesive games, with solid gameplay and story.  BioWare sells you an interactive movie and Bethesda gives you a box of crayons and some paper.

It’s the idea that you as a company, can provide tools to gamers to do what they want.  There are very few sandbox games (Grand Theft being a hybrid) that garner any wide-spread attention and when someone takes a solid kick at the can, people stand up to notice.  Sure, melee might be poorly implemented in Skyrim and Fallout but the tools that surround that mechanic are interesting and diverse.  An optimal player has just as much chance of finishing the game as a randomly selected one but the path to the end is full of different detours.

I guess it’s sort of like walking down a short hallway full of doors with various locks.  Each lock requires a different key (be it time, sex, morality or skills) and they are completely optional.  You can see the goal from the start too – or at least you think you can.  These little side adventures may or may not have an impact on the final goal, up to you to find out.  You can even go back to a previously visited door to see what, if anything, has changed.  Maybe this time, since you’re wearing a magical hat, the people inside will be zombies.  Who knows?

All this comes to mean that Bethesda’s strength is in the hero journey motif.  Not in prescribing what the actual journey is but giving you the tools and the goal and pushing you out the door.  New Vegas is a great game because Bethesda built a solid toolkit for Obsidian.  Obsidian simply changed the locked doors and the final goal but the tools it had to make it all were already there.

In MMO terms, the hero journey is the boilerplate for fantasy games.  You are a little guy, gain power and kill the big baddy.  The game never ends though, just like Bethesda’s games.  The kicker here is the tools.  The tools in a single player game are meant to balance single player power versus the world.  You can set the difficulty of a lock to a single person but when 10 show up at the door at the same time, how do you make it different for everyone yet allow them to play together?  How do you use your thieving ability to open a house, steal some items, poison the owner and get back out when there are 50 other people in the house too?

The tools are meant for a single person on a single journey.  How Bethesda can reproduce an open-world sandbox, with a balanced set of tools is the real question.  Time will tell if they can capture the spirit of their games while throwing thousands of people together.

Tickerdoodles, Edler Scrolls is making a 3 faction PvP MMO!  I have mixed feelings here.

First, I’ve played all the Elder Scrolls from the shareware back in the 90s through Daggerfall, Morrowing, Oblivion and Skyrim.  All told, I think I have somewhere close to 1000 hours in all the series.   I think only Civilization comes close to that number.

The games have always been designed for single player sandbox adventuring.  Independent leveling, expansive worlds, great story and lots of nooks and crannies.  There’s just always something to do and usually your decision at point X has an impact at point Y, making the game have some replay value.  Though in honesty, you’re better off just working on one aspect, then moving on to another with the same character.  It’s more fun seeing people recognize you all over.

The hiccup I have here is that the last successful sandbox MMO was Ultima Online and that was nearly 15 years ago.  Expansions later ruined a fair part of it for me.  The last good 3 faction MMO was Dark Age of Camelot, a 10+ year old game and again, the Atlantis patch ruined it for me.  The risk here is absolutely immense and to be honest, the fantasy MMO has been done to death.  Heck, the core idea of MMOs, keeping people together, goes against everything that Elder Scrolls has prescribed in the past – a single hero with a party.

This doesn’t even begin to talk about the power creep that exists in single player MMOs.  At the end of Skyrim I was taking on dragons in a few hits, blasting entire armies out of existence.  This is why I have such a problem with TOR – you’re a great hero, near invincible, but there’s a thousand more around you.

On the flipside, it would be cool to have some multiplayer aspect to the Elder Scrolls – allowing some sharing of exploits in a giant world.  There were many times where my brother and I would chat about Skyrim and the other would go “wow, that sounds frigging cool”.  The “awe” factor is simply crazy in those games and sharing that would be awesome.

Some mechanics would move over well though: guilds, player housing, dungeon instances (random!), crafting, exploration, travel.  Heck, most of them were lined out in the Elder Scrolls games in the first place!

With some healthy skepticism I am awaiting further news.  At this point I say we have another 2 years before anything possibly launches.  The MMO landscape is still too volatile and it’s in their best interests to simply wait it out and polish what they have.  Oh, and give me Fallout 4.

As most gamers know, Diablo 3 will be launching with a Real Money Auction House (RMAH).  You’ll be able to sell and buy items, with real money, in game.  What was unknown until now was the cost of doing business.

All wearable items (armor, weapons, etc..) will come with a 1$ transaction fee.  Commodities will cost 15% of the value per transaction.  It will also cost you 15% of the value when you post.  Finally, when moving money to a 3rd party (like PayPal) will again charge 15%.  Oh, and you can only post 10 auctions at any given time.

This essentially puts a bottom on the entire market where people will put a value on their time.  Let’s say you want minimum wage of 6$ per hour or about 50$ a day.  You need to make 5$ per transaction profit, so you need to sell items at $7 and commodities at $6.50 per stack – or thereabouts.

Now as much as this seems like a good deal, you have to figure if people are going to pay $7 for a shield or for a gem.  So if you sell everything you “make” $50 but it also cost you $15 to make it.  Undercutting by a few pennies will be required but that just means that the next person to post increases your odds of not selling and you’re still out of pocket.

This isn’t EBay where there is great diversity and little competition on the actual items.  The actual posting fees are fixed too.  Blizzard is going to make a killing on this and people are going to make pennies – if that.

I finished Legend of Grimrock last night.  Took about a week but I’d push the number of hours near 20.  It has been a long while since I’ve been so engrossed in a single player, closed-end RPG.  Like Icewind Dale/Baldur’s Gate era.  Skyrim/Fallout don’t count since they are open-ended and are, in my opinion, a form of PC crack.

Regardless!  Grimrock has its faults as some have pointed out.  Combat is more of a dance than the typical stand-and-smash affair that some are used to.  It can get boring for some when the combat is 1v1 but anyone in combat past floor 9 cannot call combat boring.  The last boss is the most insane boss fight since Ninja Gaiden.  You know how Deus Ex had absolutely stupid boss fights that broke face from the rest of the game?  Grimrock has a unique boss, with a unique mechanic that is thematically relevant and not out of place.  Plus, it’s damn cool.

If I did have a gripe to give it would be that you don’t level up enough.  I mean, it’s comparable to the power you gain while in a typical D&D campaign if not a bit more – I finished near level 12 – but when you get 4 points per level, have access to 6 skills and each reaches a max of 50, you’re barely scratching the surface of customization.  I don’t want to walk around like a god but my 2 warriors were practically identical in terms of stats even though I tried to split them up.

There are additional balance issues that work into this leveling paradigm.  Weapon skills aren’t different enough other than speed.  Magic is cumbersome until you really invest into a given skill.  Weight Management is more akin to food management.  There are only 9 types of monsters (excluding the last boss), though they are all quite different.  It’s impossible to backstab as you can’t sneak, invalidating one complete skill tree (except for the points that let you attack from range with melee).  Ranged attacks are much too weak – even with skill points.  Yet the game isn’t about optimization – it’s about trial and error.  You never reach a point where any of these factors impedes you from progress.  Compared to the MMO world, that’s saying something.

The best part – and for this I think everyone who plays will agree – is the puzzles.  Each floor has 7-10 different puzzles and rarely do they repeat. Some need you to be in the dark, others you need to move in certain patterns, others you need to carefully navigate teleports.  Everyone feels novel and when you complete one, you feel a sense of accomplishment.  This “sectioning” of the floors provides the same “encounter” feeling from the D&D campaign.  Bite size pieces that don’t completely overwhelm you with a dozen options.  The designers on this facet deserve a huge pat on the back.

All said and done if you haven’t played this game you’re doing yourself a great disservice.  It’s one of the best RPGs I have played in many years.

Talking to my brother the other day, I realized I hadn’t used my Wii in about 2 years, my 360 in well over a year and sparsely use my PS3.  Even my PC games are limited (though I play them more for the mobility).

Here’s a list of the PS3 games I’ve played in the last 12 months.

• Uncharted 3
• Batman: Arkham City
• Infamous 2
• Deus Ex

The kicker is that they all came out within 30 days of each other.  I did get Skyrim on my PC (the bugs on consoles and lack of mods is annoying) but other than that, I can’t think of another PS3 game I would want.  I dislike FPS games and CoD is one of the worst offenders.  I won’t by any more EA games, so Mass Effect is off the table.  Kingdoms of Amalur is an EA game too and sounds pretty good but it’s cut.

I’m left with indy games and MMOs.  SWTOR was a breath of fresh air while leveling and then tried to compete in a saturated market at max level.  Rift is solid.  WoW has some crack thing going for it, where everything just works.  Grimrock is crazy solid fun.  Remanum has a nice market game (and I love numbers).  There just seems to be less to look forward to, though perhaps it’s just nostalgia.

Good Old Games has made a lot of money off me, simply because the games there are almost all AAA quality, take hours to complete and really contrast the crap that we have to wade through these days.  Odd that I look forward to the past.

I’ve been reading quite a lot about nostalgia in regards to older RPG games.  The thing about nostalgia is that it’s quite often seen with rose colored glasses.  See any recent MMO launch being compared to WoW at launch for a great example.

Still, there is something to be said about older games.  XCOM is still one of the best games (if not the best) I have ever played and I played it again a couple years ago with the same dread turning corners.  FF6 (or 3 here) is my absolute favorite Final Fantasy.  I played that for hundreds of hours over the years.  Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana are right next to it, with the former on my DS and iPhone.  Look at today’s RPGs though and most are forgettable.  In an age where MMOs rule the RPG market, the single player versions feel like they need to sell games to everyone, when they actually disappoint everyone.

Dragon Age: Origins,  Bioware’s first 3D foray into the D&D realm, was met with great reviews, a lot of sales and happy fans.  Sure, there were pacing issues but on the whole, the system worked rather well.  Dragon Age 2, taking a more action-oriented approach, alienated critics and fans and sold poorly (compared to the first).  It was a dumbed down approach, rushed out the gate and made to appeal to a wider audience.  Which it didn’t.

FFXII was a drastic break from X.  It was practically an MMO in terms of mechanics and that threw a lot of people off.  It was a dance rather than a strategy.  FFXIII was a joke of “press A to win” with pure MMO roles.  The days of everyone attacking, using the proper abilities at the right time seem to be gone.  Either you’re a tank (literally taunting the enemy), a healer or some other niche role.  There’s no strategy there, the game is cake.

When I look back to the classics very few western games make the cut.  Ultima is one, though only the middle of the pack.  It was less about numbers and more about choices, which in the end, is exactly what an RPG should be about.  Fallout is another one, where the balance between combat and dialogue was perfect.  Baldur’s Gate is another example but that’s 100% D&D, not a true IP.

Japanese games though, wow.  Grinding comes out of that country but something happened during the 90s to smooth the curve.    If I compare The Dark Spire’s encounter rate (1/5 steps) and the need to grind to move on next to Chrono Cross’ open-ended, easy play style there’s a huge difference.  Then again, the Dark Spire (or Dragon Quest I guess) is less about the story and more about the fights.  The Chrono series has always had a great balance between what’s happening outside and inside of combat.  Pacing of it all just seems to make the experience enjoyable.  Your choices matter.  You had a vested interest in your characters, who all had multiple dimensions of depth.

If you’ve played FF6, try and explain Terra’s character and progression.  Then, compare that to Lightning in FF13.  Heck, Robo in Chrono Trigger has more exposition than Balthier in FF12 – all without voice overs or cutscenes.

Today’s RPGs are RPGs in title only.  In the end, there’s not much difference between the latest Batman game and World of Warcraft – mechanically.  You learn a dance, repeat that dance, win the game.  Except Batman has a decent story, defined success criteria and a reward for completing something other than yet another mountain to climb.

There’s something to be said for the simple mechanics of older games.  I didn’t need a 30 second cutscene to show me how powerful my characters were.  Beating a boss 6 times your size, just scraping by, learning a new methods of combat was super rewarding.  If I was to play only that I can see how I would get bored at some point, which explains the MMO fatigue to a degree.

The classics are classics for a reason – they are good if not great games.  They make you want to come back time and again.  The things they have in common are magic and when you find it, you remember it and cherish it.  Maybe we have to go through more rocks today to find those diamonds but when we do, boy does it put a smile on my face.

It’s no secret I love RPGs.  There’s just something about the numbers and the randomness that’s attractive.  Plus, the instant save/reload to try that damn enemy once more and beat that RNG!

I think the oldschool aspect – not seeing your character, the 4 directions of movement, pure numbers, hard difficulty – really simplifies the RPG down to it’s basics.  Dark Spire scratched my itch a few years back on the DS and that was truly a D&D RPG with all the limits you’d expect.  Nice and portable, brutally hard, complicated mechanics.  I loved every minute of the pain.

Legend of Grimrock  is a PC game that came out today and though it isn’t as hardcore in terms of lack of detail it makes up in oodles of atmosphere.  You can hear that spider crawling around you but you can’t see it.  Checking every wall for a secret nook.  Avoiding the rampaging troll at the last second.   There’s no town and no vendor.  Just you and the never ending floors.  A neat take on magic is that you need to select glyphs to cast a spell but you need to learn the spell first from a scroll.  It slows down magic casting a bit but since magic ALWAYS hits, its a pretty powerful thing to manage.

There are only fighters, mages and rogues and you’re set in a 2×2 formation, with the front 2 taking all attacks until one dies.  You have 4 races, with humans the jack of all trades, minotaurs the tanks/beefs, lizardmen as the rogues and insectoids as mages.  You get 4 skill points per level and get to invest into one of 6 linear skill trees (with a cap of 50 per).  Spend enough points, unlock new stats, benefits, resists or abilities.  There’s a certain amount of planning needed for each role, which is a blast.

Traps, hidden switches, teleports – fun stuff to make the levels different.  Even though the levels look familiar, there’s always something to push you forward.  A minor goal of unlocking a door or solving a puzzle splits the zone into smaller pockets, making it a series of adventures rather than a slosh through endless enemies.

It’s too bad more companies don’t do something as simple and effective as Grimrock.  I’m getting tired of the action adventure/rpg mishmash, with just a drop of RPG.  The basics can be hardcore, oldschool but still a lot of fun.  More please!