I Hear Voices

Posted on by

There are quite a few topics on the blogosphere about immersion.  Syp has reached an uncanny valley, Zubon has a crush,  Bhagpuss finds it distracting and  Nosy decides what avatar to play based on their voice.

I don’t have perfect pitch but I have an ear for accents.  I can place most people on a map from just a few sentences and regional dialects are a hidden passion of mine.  Part of this is that I can recognize a base voice using an accent, which makes me kind of bored of Jennifer Hale.  She does some good work, don’t get me wrong, but she can only deliver a specific type of character.  I mean, don’t go asking Kristen Stewart to do anything but pout, right?

On the plus side, there are some voice actors who are amazing at delivering piss poor lines. Brad Dourif has to be at the top of that scale, simply in his method of delivery.  Dishonored might not have the best script or lines but damn if the people behind the faces aren’t giving it their all.

I should write a list of all the memorable voice acting bits I’ve come across.  Jon Irenicus from Baldur’s Gate 2 would likely be #1.

Size Matters

Posted on by

Rift Giant

Just don’t tell anyone! (zing!).

Rift has this thing where it plays with scale, more so now in the expansion.  There are two portions to this statement.  First is in the zone layout, where there are simply no real dead spots.  You aren’t so much running from place to place as you are running through things to get to other things.  Whereas most themeparks have you running on an empty path ( or flying there), Rift forces you to run through piles of enemies (or nearbouts) to get to the next hub.  This makes the world feel larger because it takes longer to get somewhere.

The second portion of the scale issue is in enemy variety.  I’ve fought dragons and bone golems to wolves and small birds.  There is a diversity in all enemies, which is a good thing in a game that so focuses on a realistic setting.  Compare to WoW or TOR, where everything has a bright cartoon feel and is easily distinguishable, Rift needs some method to have things stand out.  The original game did this with enemy diversity but not so much size.  Storm Legion has you taking on massive enemies  just often enough to make you feel powerful but not so often than the little guys seem inconsequential to your power.

It’s an interesting balance.

 

ADD is Good

Posted on by

Let’s say it’s taking me about 5-6 hours per level in Rift and that’s if I concentrate.  I find it extremely difficult to set myself up on a goal and continue to completion before something else catches my eye.  The eye catches are the following:

  • harvesting nodes:  I get to one, see another, see another, etc…
  • carnage quests: these are kill X quests that start when you kill the first enemy type.  There are 20-40 per zone from what I’ve seen
  • main quests: there are only 3-4 active at any given time, sometimes only 1.  It’s the driver to move through the zone often
  • rifts: these pop up (or I summon them) for a 5 minute battle.
  • random quests: these come from drops or items on the ground, they make you move around the map.
  • protect from invasions: at specific spots on the map are hubs that you use to defend against invasions.  sort of like rifts but without the quest mechanics.
  • artifacts: the shiny white spots that you collect to fill out, uh, collections
  • achievements: sometimes you just see a weird spot and know there’s an achievement, like jumping from waterfalls
  • exploration: the vistas look amazing. I like to find the highest point around and look around

All of these are happening all the time.  It makes it hard to just do one thing and then get to the next, as most themeparks do.  WoW and TOR are these types of games.  I remember doing 85 to 90 recently and I think there were a dozen choices total that I had to make.  I make more than a dozen choices per hour in Rift.

Though the content isn’t necessarily innovative, it makes it continually fresh because it’s given out in various types and amounts.  It sure does make the time much more fun than it could be and let’s Trion make leveling take as long as it does.  Now to go smash some giant bone golems.

What A Dollar Gets You

Posted on by

Syp has a good post on the F2P change for SWTOR.  The main argument is against the two main models of F2P – one that lets people play for free with add-ons paid for cash and another that provides huge restrictions and essentially works as a limited trial.

Rohan has a nice breakdown of the F2P components that bears repeating, where the main ones include:

  • Box
  • Access
  • Content
  • Cosmetic
  • Convenience
  • Power

The box is simple, access too.  Content can be pieced out, as Turbine does pretty well with DDO and LOTRO.  Cosmetic is the way for most Cryptic games, including most super hero variants.  Convenience speeds up portions of the game that are clearly tedious.  Faster mounts, bigger bags, experience potions et al.  Power is the most controversial but the most prominent in the F2P world of Asia.

TOR is clearly using Access, Cosmetic and Convenience as the main drivers for cash.  Content is simply much too expensive for TOR to sell piecemeal, what with the full voice over costs and high production values.  Power isn’t an option either as the pusback on this model in western games can destroy a game.

You are paying for access to raids and PvP and whatnot but the general agreement is that these portions are a much better value in other games.  The convenience issue is an interesting one.  There is no real challenge in TOR, at any given point.  1-50 can be completed, if slowly, for absolutely zero dollars.  For 20$, much less than anyone would pay for a box copy of a AAA single player game, gets you enough unlocks to may the game very playable.

Once you hit level 50 though, then it’s much less about convenience or access.  Nearly every single aspect of the game at that point is locked behind cash doors.  You need to pay to do anything, use the AH, truly craft or customize your character.  Heck, you need to pay to equip items.

Right now, you can buy KOTOR2 for 10$ (on sale for half for a few days), a game dating from nearly 8 years ago or you can pay 0 dollars for KOTOR3 that’s 1 year old.  If you only wanted the Single Player experience, I would say “good deal”.  If you’re looking for the social experience, I would say that the F2P option isn’t an option at all, subscription is the only way to go.

This essentially means that TOR is offering a free trial from 1-50, with the option to buy perks along the way.  Once you hit 50 though, it’s a subscription game like any other.

MMO Legacy

Posted on by

IGN articles interest me more for their ideas than their content.  There is a clear disconnect between their reviewers thoughts and the material that is posted on the site.  The gents are smart and thoughtful but the reviews (Colin especially here) are clear shills for vendors.  Their entertainment (movies/tv) sections are different though since the entire basis of that medium is subjective.  Not everyone likes Michael Bay and a review won’t help you decide the value.  What they do provide is ancillary material for people to comment on, like this LOTRO Legacy article, which posits that the series as whole changed the way cinema moved from that point forward.

The thing about MMOs that drastically alter them from any other entertainment format is that they are fluid.  You can say that King Kong did X to cinema because of when it was made.  Same with XCOM.  You can’t say EQ is a benchmark  because that benchmark no longer exists.  You can say it was a pathfinder or trailblazer or some such, but every MMO has evolved from its humble beginnings to something else.

Take EQ’s raiding scene.  When it launched, it was a zerg-fest and content was balanced against maxing out the zone population.  They eventually put caps on the amount of people raiding, which helped with balance issues.  Everytime they tried to bring the number down, in order to further provide some semblance of balance, the community resisted with massive outcry.  EQ’s inability to innovate internally is the main driver for the development of EQ2.  While at a high level, they operate under the same concepts, EQ2 is clearly a different take on the “Vision(tm)”.  Which part of EQ’s raiding scene will be legacy?

WoW’s leveling method used to focus on spending 8 or so days from 1 to 60, focused primarily on grinding with a few quests thrown in.  BC cut the leveling time down a fair amount and increased the amount of quests – you barely needed to grind at all.  LK and on, leveling was a small hurdle and everything was 100% quests.   Today’s leveling experience is but a shell for the end game, providing cut scenes throughout.  It’s practically on auto-drive.  Which part of leveling will be legacy?

Star Wars Galaxies is two games in one.  It launched as a PvE sandbox then was rebooted after a short while to be a PvE themepark with some sandbox elements.  People will always remember the NGE.  Few remember the Beast Handlers or the perma-death Jedi.

MMOs are reflective of the time, more of a zeitgeist than an actual thoughtful game.  WoW today could never have succeeded when it launched just like WoW of 8 years ago would be a massive failure today.  What MMO’s have left as a legacy is the popularization of gaming, the breakout of the “geek” mold.  No game made today will be able to succeed without some multiplayer online component.  The actual mechanics – phasing, raiding, crafting, grouping, collecting, automated tools – are all by-products of this need to break down social barriers and achieve mainstream success.   The true legacy is that we are now able to share gaming experiences with new and old friends, under nearly any terms we can come up with.  That’s a pretty good legacy.

Public Transport

Posted on by

I take public transport to and from work. It gives me time to prepare for the day and relax after a rough one. It also gives you a chance to think quite a bit.

The bus is a lot like a themepark MMO. You get on at the stop, the bus has a determined route and you get off. You can do certain things while on the bus but you’re not free to do anything. The bus is made in a generic fashion to get as many people on board, make them “comfortable” and take them on a ride. A network of buses can get you from point A to point B without stress. Mostly.

Now the bus isn’t perfect. You are stuck with their timetable. You’re stuck with sitting next to some special people. You aren’t going to be picked up and dropped off where you want either. But it does offer a cost effective way to meet a need.

Themepark MMOs are just like that. Generic enough to get enough people to be sustainable yet flexible enough to differentiate between the solo experience and the group experience.

If taking the bus makes you mad then perhaps a themepark isn’t your cup of tea.

Expansions Are Fun

Posted on by

So I’m a week into Storm Legion now and it got me thinking, what exactly is it about an expansion that tickles my feathers.  I really like having to learn something new.  This obviously precludes the argument of something NEW to do.  I can assure you that simply extending the content without some new mechanic doesn’t interest me in the least.  Horse Armor is not an expansion.

WoW’s expansions have typically added some new mechanic to the game.  Heroic dungeons came in BC, Lich King added phasing but changed grouping mechanics, Cataclysm added zero to the game and Pandaria added pet battles.  From a class perspective, I’ve played a Rogue in that game since launch.  I’ve see only minor changes for the most part, with a couple large swings along the road – such as the introduction of Mutilate.  Still, from Lich King to Pandaria, the Rogue has been practically identical.  That’s over 5 years ago and the playstyle has been more or less identical – all the expansions have essentially added more of the same.

I haven’t actively played EvE for any stretch of time but a few of the expansions over the years, the largest certainly the transfer of NPC stations to player-owned.  EQ and EQ2 have added plenty of mechanics over the years – mercenaries and AA top the list somewhat here.

Rift is 18 months old and 1 expansion in.  Classes were practically re-written from top to bottom a few weeks back to the point where my ability to play a given soul is technically different while being strategically the same.  My Shaman still uses melee attacks to deal damage but it much more thought based now then the previous macro-heavy build.  They also added the Alternate Advancement feature a few patches back, which gives a horizontal progress to top level players.  The new “no tagging” combat model allows for less griefing but perhaps more bad sport (simply hit once and run away).  I’ve yet to run any new dungeon or heroic raid but from what I can tell, they are under the same model as previous – if perhaps less reliance on resists.  Dimensions are certainly new and wow, I’m having fun there.

Expansions should feel different but familiar.  They shouldn’t just be-reskins of previous content.  The only way that sort of stuff works is in PvP games, where the content is delivered by the players.  PvE games need horizontal progress to feel different and give people something to do.  If you’re simply re-hashing what’s been done, then you’re in for a rough ride.

Public Service Announcement

Posted on by

Steam is having it’s fall sale right now.  The flash sales are solid buys, if you can get in on time.  The real meat today is getting XCOM or Terraria for an absolute steal.

If you’ve yet to try XCOM, it really should be on your list for the future.  I expect it to pick up a couple Game of the Year awards.

What’s in a Name

Posted on by

What is an MMO? I think when we talk about this particular topic the definition itself becomes personal and very subjective. At a basic level, the wording must mean something though. Massively. Multiplayer. Online.

Massive doesn’t have an objective definition and is completely relative. What one person thinks is big could be small to another. At the highest possible level, we can infer than massive means big. So let’s say that Massive, in this case, is when you compare to the typical games. A typical game has enough content to last 12-20 hours. A massive game would require content that extends beyond that time. While you could play Solitaire for years (who hasn’t), you wouldn’t call that massive. The content needs to provide diversity. Counter Strike might have the same basic elements but the randomness of other players increases the content value.

Multiplayer is very objective. Either you can play with other people or you can’t. Pretty much every game on the market today has multiplayer. If the actions of one can affect the other, than it’s multiplayer. Simple enough.
Online is also objective. Either you need a network connection or you do not. If you don’t need to be online (or a LAN) then it’s not online. Co-op on a console is not online.

Using these terms we can come down to some agreement on what games should be considered MMOs, if their primary mechanics fit into the three criteria. EvE, Rift, WoW, LOTRO, DDO and the rest in that genre are certainly MMOs. Call of Duty has that primary focus, even if there’s a single player component. Minecraft is the same.

Some games do straddle the line though. Assassin’s Creed has MMO components but it isn’t primarily focused on those 3 attributes (certainly not the massive portion). Mass Effect, Uncharted don’t either. Diablo 3 might sink hundreds of hours but the content is the same throughout and the people around you don’t affect that. If I said that you needed to connect online to play Final Fantasy X, you could easily argue that it is much more massive than Diablo 3.

Looking into a crystal ball we can see some patterns emerge in gaming as a whole. The Multiplayer and Online portions are pretty much going to be the norm from this point forward. The kicker is in the Massive portion. Skyrim is massive. Batman is not. Most indie platforms are unable to be massive – unless they have procedurally generated content (Rogue-like games come to mind).

In the end though, what difference does it make if D3 is an MMO or not? Do all of a sudden all future MMOs have to follow that game? Is it easier to compare D3 to WoW or EvE to WoW? Do you even want to? Games today are more than simple statements. Games are experiences and experiences are personal.