Looks Matter

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I remember playing WoW during the Burning Crusade and thinking “These guys sure know how to make clowns look powerful”.

When Rift launched, it didn’t come with a Wardrobe out the gate but it did have dyes.  A patch or two in, Wardrobes were put in so that you could have up to 6 “looks”.  At the time, this was to help with the costume pieces that were around.  When it came to actual in-game gear, the look was pretty decent, if I do say so.  It was pretty hard to look like a goof, but it was still possible.

Rift Clean Look

Snazzy

As you can see in this picture, I took the time to make a decent looking character and save the look.  No matter the extra gear I got, I had a solid picture and it was relatively easy to make.  I can assure you that doing so in WoW, even today, is next to impossible.  It’s like 100 monkeys through bananas at the wall.  Probably because there are no dyes.  And less polygons.

Back to Rift.  I was never really paying attention to the new models, as I liked my current look.  I guess that’s a bad thing for the devs?  Anyways, here’s what I look like without a costume active.

Rift Look 2

Conan Smash!

Is this what the devs are trying for?  I look like a cross between a Conan and Mad Max.  I mean, it’s better than any clown look but it’s still pretty bad.

Guess I’ll keep my costume for a little while longer.

New Site

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Clearly my previous site was having performance issues.  Last night it took over 15 seconds to load this site and that had been going on for over a month.  I wasn’t on any free service either, it was ~100$ a year.

My provider, iPower asked me to make a few changes.  After about 12 ticket exchanges, the answer I finally had was that I was on a shared infrastructure and if I wan’t good service, I had to pay 100$ per month to get on a dedicated VM. That is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of in my life.  I had been with them for about 5 years now and up until that message, I would have recommended them to others.  Today though, we’re in 2012 and everyone should be on a service managed VM.  It probably didn’t help their case that I work with that stuff on a daily basis.

So here I am, hosted by WordPress (it made sense since I used the program already) and we’ll see how this works out.

Working Theory

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Here’s my theory, and catch me if I’m wrong.  The typical gamer is easy to please on the short term, hard to please long term.  Halo, CoD, Batman – pretty much any console game has a ROI period of a few months at best.  Rarely are any played past the 1 year mark.  MMOs on the other hand, typically only get into the black after the first year.

While I love Rocksteady’s Batman series (really, it’s amazing), I can’t see myself playing it 4-8 hours a week for a year.  Only RPGs ever reach that height of game time and that’s due to massive grinding (I have over 200 hours in FFX over many years).  This is one main reason many games now have RPG elements – not so much for the customization but for the stretch in longevity.  If CoD had no gated content with multiplayer, there would be a whole lot less players after month 2.

So, MMOs require some RPG element to gate content and stretch out the life of the game.   Any game that does not do this, that gives access to everything on day 1, goes out of business on day 2.

MMOs need to make that RPG experience both rewarding in terms of goal but rewarding in terms of activity.  FPS games do this well through bite size pieces of adrenaline – combat lasts 10-30 seconds at a time but there’s always a risk of dying.  Hackers/cheaters break this experience though, so you do have massive bans from time to time.  Typical PvP MMO don’t have cheaters, they have system abusers/exploiters.  When you’re not beaten by skill but by some mechanical fluke, you’re less likely to continue to engage.  UO failed to address this issue properly and lost a lot of people because of it.  EvE has problems with this as well, since it’s a mob mentality.  When it’s 100 vs 2, then there’s not much fun there.  EQ took away the PvE zerg strategy because of this.  Really good PvP is not static and each experience has enough nuances to make it different from the pervious.  It also makes you a better player.  Bad PvP has you mashing all your buttons.  The rewards are certainly motivating but the actual ACT is motivating as well.  There should always be something new as you’re working against 100K+ brains.

PvE content in general needs a risk/reward system as well.  If you never have the chance of losing something, then the actual act is meaningless and only the goal is a reward.  You then pick the most efficient route to get to that reward.  Once you have it, then there’s zero reason to participate again.  Eg: why go run a dungeon again if you have all the loot? Achievements were an attempt to solve this problem, especially those that say “stand on one leg and talk like a chicken while surviving the dragon’s breath”.  It made you experience the content in a different light.  Still, once complete, why bother?

Good PvE has you gaining skill and situational awareness.  You should encounter different pieces of PvE abilities and be able to adapt on the fly to counter them. You can mess up a couple times but too often and you’re cooked.  Bad PvE has you pressing the exact same buttons over and over again.  The catch here is that there’s going to be a point where you’ve learned all you can and the devs can’t think of anything new as you’re working against 50+ brains.

A quality experience is defined by the journey and not so much the outcome.  We could all say we’re going to take a trip to Vegas and back but how we get there and what we do once we’re there will give us vastly different experiences.

Not a Metaphor at All

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Let’s say you’re looking at the vehicle market, trying to get in as a seller.  You notice that trucks are by far the largest return on your investment – half the components of a traditional car after all.  You say to yourself “that must be easy, I’ve driven a truck”.  You run around piling up some investors.  Let’s say you end up with $200 million, all with a pretty picture of a truck.

Next is the design phase.  You go and buy a couple trucks, pull them apart to see the pieces.  You copy as much as you can but change the overall aesthetic design.  You start early production and testing.  The people who are testing your truck are people you know and likely people who are willing to give you a break.  Best-case sort of thing.

You know there are a few issues but your deadline is coming along and you decide that they are minor enough that you can fix them in the next release. Launch day is here, there are massive line ups.  People think “wow, that looks cool” or “hey, I’m bored of my truck, let’s try this new one”.  You put up adds with words like “revolutionary” or “cutting edge” – even though it’s a clear copy + paste from what’s already out there.

A couple weeks go by.  Those minor defects that weren’t a huge problem now are a massive PR problem with 2 million people driving your truck.  All of a sudden, once the truck hits 30,000 kms, the steering wheel locks up.  The innovative wipers only wipe ¼ of the windshield.  The engine has trouble pulling even a half load, since you didn’t understand the mechanics of it.  You have a nice looking truck but once people start using it, they notice a lack of attention to detail and long term testing.  Your innovative pillar is a set of fuzzy dice that people are continuously trying to get out of their sphere of vision.

What do you do to get your money back?  Discounts.  Massive discounts.  Maybe even sell the truck at a loss then sell the parts they need (say seatbelts) for a premium.  Maybe you break even, maybe you don’t.

Is that the end of the truck market?  The end of you?  The end of simple straight up sales?

 

Now That's New

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Leveling in Rift takes a while.  I think there were more 90s after day 1 than there are level 60s after nearly a week, in terms of proportion.  I’m 51 and 3/4 or so, after about 2 hours.

I started in Cape Jule and moving to the next zone everything is level 53.  So I hoped by into my magic gate and tried the second zone.  I modified my soul (for what seems like the 20th time in 4 days) to something that allows me to do some AE killing more effectively and you know, survive those darn attacks.  Working out pretty well.

I mentioned in an earlier post about the quest breakdown in SL.  Everything that isn’t a story quest seems to reward either cash or a new type of currency.  This currency is used to buy Adventurer gear.  This stuff is upgradeable with tokens you buy with more of that currency.  I’ve been a fan of interlinked systems for some time, especially when you have multiple paths to achieve a given goal.  You can get these currencies from pretty much any PvE activity, outside of crafting.  It fits solo players, group players, rift hunters or guilds.

At this pace, I don’t think I’ll be hitting 60 for another few weeks, maybe not until the 1 month mark.  Think about that for a second.  When is the last time you played an MMO where you didn’t hit max level before your first month was over?

Hats off Trion.

Rift Take 2

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Yesterday was working against me for some MMO time.  I got home exhausted, took care of the squirts and when I finally had a chance to get into Rift, I got a message that the servers were coming down for some maintenance.  Argh.  I was able to log back in near midnight while the youngest one needed a drink.

A few important notes though.  There are two new continents that are each as big, or bigger, than the original world.  The original world had a good pace of content from 1-50, with no real “dead” zones.  Compare this to WoW and quite a few useless zones (Blasted Lands, Azshara, Thousand Needles, Desolace and quite a few more), Rift seems to have a knack of putting in relevant content for their zones.  I would say the time to get to 50 back then was decent – a couple weeks of effort.  TOR took me under 24 hours of play time.  My WoW monk did 1-90 in under 2 days played (albeit with heirlooms).

I’m a few hours in now, less than 50% into the first level (of 10) and have just had piles of experience from different sources jump in.  Let’s count the ways of getting experience:

  • Complete a quest-giver quest
  • Complete an item pick up quest
  • Complete a loot pick up quest
  • Complete a “wild” quest based on kills
  • Complete a Rift
  • Complete an Invasion
  • Complete an Instant Adventure
  • Complete a dungeon
  • Complete world PvP
  • Complete a battleground
  • Kill something

All of these items assume from the start that you’re in a cooperative game.  Where Wilhelm talks about the problems of questing in EQ2, they pretty much do not exist in Rift.  I’ve rarely seen a time where I was not grouped and didn’t have the “join group” button above the screen.  Doing so has tremendous advantages.

Most enemies are of the Ember Isle difficulty, meaning that if you have a fresh 50, you’re going to have trouble here.  Grouping makes that easy.  Some quests need you to kill 20 or more enemies.  Grouping cuts that number down really fast and you’re getting experience for those kills even if you aren’t swinging the club.  Invasions are all over the place and are likely to kill you alone, groups help.  Groups aren’t silent either – there always seems to be some chat going on in a relatively friendly place.

I missed this place.

Gating Content

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I’ve talked about this a few times in the past but it would appear that Blizzard is unable to address the issue with any level of clarity.  From an MMO design perspective, gating is good.  Gating is the proverbial carrot on the stick to get people to log back in again and again.  Gating can be done with time, skill, money… nearly any variable you can think of.  Typically though, the MMO factor is time.

You want to kill the toughest boss?  You need to put in the time to learn the pattern and get the gear to beat him.  You want that special mount?  Grind that faction baby!  You want that unique pet?  Grind out pet battles!

The issue isn’t the fact that there’s a carrot, it’s the type of carrot for the type of horse.  To assume that all carrots are made the same when your game has 10 million players is lunacy.  I know it’s not design by democracy but it’s also not design by hubris either.

Faction gain is currently gated behind not only a time mechanic but a system mechanic as well.  The fact that you are limited to 8 quests a day and that it will take 20 days of quests to reach your goal is one issue.  The fact that those 8 quests can take 90 minutes (damn Goat Steaks) is another one completely.

Putting the 20 day gate in front of a character (not a player) isn’t a huge deal.  It is a large design swing decision from the past 4 years though.   Putting 6 of those gates in front of the player at the same time forces the player to choose which one is a priority.  The hiccup is that they can get those 6 done in 20 days OR they can take up to 120 days to get them all done.  That is a massive variance.  And that’s per character.  Bob forbid you have 2 or more (say one is a pure DPS).   Oh, I forgot to mention that the currency used to buy the rewards for capping out faction doesn’t come from gaining faction?  It comes from running dungeons?  Kind of important.

The system mechanics are another hurdle.  While one faction might be simple (Cloud Serpent comes to mind) others are simply stupid.  Extremely low drop rates, heavy hitting enemies that can kill a fresh 90 in a few hits, fast (and slow) spawns, thick enemy groups and crazy competition make many faction quests a chore to move through.  Anyone who’s done the Goat Steaks quest for the Tillers has probably found the worst quest in all of Panda-land.  Now, it isn’t that these quests are hard that’s the problem, it’s the aggregate effect of it all.  6 hard quests a day is doable.  50 is not.

Finally, there’s the entire principle of putting a dungeon/gear carrot in a non-dungeon/gear process, while still requiring the dungeon process.  Let’s not forget that you can’t simply pick a faction to get all your rewards, you actually need to get them all.

As individual systems, each has value and design importance.  The issue is in the aggregate impact on players.  It’s like a group of people sat in a room, divvied up the various components, designed in isolation and then patched it all together.  There lacks the cohesive vision we’ve come to expect from Blizzard (mind you D3 follows this trend) and that is distressing from a company that traditionally could do no wrong.

It's a Storm Alright

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A few gigs of download and Storm Legion is up and running.

Rift Storm Legion

Now, you might not like the art style of Rift and that’s cool but you have to admit that being able to see a vista and actually visit  the places you can see is cool.

As with all expansion launches, there are service issues.  What there isn’t is server queues, which is awesome.  What there is, is lag, which is sad.

I tried dimensions quickly and I think I’m going to be spending a lot of time tweaking mine.  It’s nice that you have a selection of dimensions rather than a single setting for everyone.  Good call.  The toolset is solid as well.

The third nicest part is the auto-looting of cash.  Drops are typically garbage and unless you want to harvest a creature (skin, herbs, whatever) there isn’t much need to loot.  What is awesome is killing and getting the cash deposited directly into your bags.  Great!

The second nicest part, for me, is the organic questing.   You still see ! around but you only get 1-2 quests at a time.  Otherwise, you need to actually go out in the world and pick up the quests naturally.  Either by killing an enemy and unlocking the quest or picking up a specific item.  This is such a different model than WoW/EQ that I’m quite taken aback.

The nicest is the open tagging system.  Now, imagine your typical tagging system where the first person gets the loot.  Imagine that being the only thing the first attacker gets.  Everyone else gets exp and quest credit, even if not grouped.  You need to kill 20 beasts?  Kill anything that you see, along with the random people around you.  Even better, press the auto-group button on the top of your screen to keep moving along.

I’m only a couple hours in but dang if I’m not having a blast.

What's in an Expansion?

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Gamespy has a quick article with guesses about the D3 expansion.

Here’s my list of what will be in it versus what should be in it.

In

  • Act 5.  As long as Act 3.
  • Set in Mount Arreat again (or some other location we’ve seen before)
  • Hunting for Adria
  • New class – melee/casting hybrid.  Likely the druid
  • Level boost (10) and a few new skills per class
  • New crafting mechanic that has some purpose.  Rune-like enchants.
  • New item art, serving no in-game purpose

What should be in:

  • Randomized maps
  • Mode that doesn’t allow AH and has ladder
  • Companion quests
  • A social voting system to catch botters/hackers.

Knowing who is running the show, I’m not holding my breath.  D3 was certainly profitable but I doubt Blizz is calling it a success.  The RMAH experiment was a success in practical terms.  They now know how it works and how it interacts with the game.  Clearly it was a “buy to win” mode since launch.  The game also released about 6 months early, from the sheer amount of bugs in game at launch.  A profitable lessons learned event.  Can’t be mad about that I supose.

TESO Video

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The Elder Scrolls Online – Gameplay Video.

TESO has a new video out explaining the high level goals of the game.

Of note, they are going for an instanced mega server.  This is smart move and why any game today doesn’t go this route is lunacy.  +1

Combat has traditionally been garbage for the Elder Scrolls and Bethesda games in general.  I’m not sure if this is an active system (only hit when in cross-hairs) or passive (soft target).  It sounds the former, which only Tera has ever done well.  Smart if it works though.  +1

Zones will be phased based on past accomplishments, from the werewolf bit I saw. I can’t see how this will work without phasing when you have multiple players.  Also not sure how you would interact with real people and NPCs if all towns are phased.

Character customization seems limited.  Everyone looks grey.  Sure, you get dark grey and light grey, but everyone is grey. In a game series where player colors are muted in order to make the world stand out, I’m not sure how this will work with hundreds of people around you, especially PvP.

Character progression though sounds neat.  4 basic classes (solider, rogue, mage, healer it seems).  Skill sets seem dependent on outfits though, sort of like The Secret World.  If you’re a dagger player you’ll have a different skill set than if you were using a bow.  Neat.  I’m not sure if the game is skill based or not, which I would think it has to be in some fashion.  How stats interact with equipment should be interesting to see.  TESO games are traditionally stat-less but skill heavy.  You don’t find a sword of +10, you find a sword that absorbs hit points.  Think of UO I guess.

The end game seems the traditionally fare of dungeons and raids.  Ho-hum.  PvP looks like its trying to follow the old DAoC model of realm vs realm vs realm.  I have seen many companies try to get this to work, I’ve only ever seen 1 do it right.  Balancing PvP and PvE is impossible, it’s just a fact.  Where TESO puts their eggs will matter here.  I vouch for PvE since Bethesda has ZERO PvP experience.

 

There are a lot of good ideas here but then again, we’ve heard them all before.  The difference here is that the game is due in less than a year and mechanics are being discussed instead of content (TOR).  Is TESO going to bring enough new to the table to keep people around?  It depends solely on their ability to make players feel like they have an investment.