This is part of my Dynamic World series of ideas. The basic concept is that NPC 'fluff' dialogue will change and respond to events that happen in the world. This is done via the Rumor Mill. Rumors are created by the system when significant events occur, be they player actions, NPC actions or Gm triggered events. These rumors are seeded amongst appropriate, nearby NPCs and then have a chance to propagate throughout the land.
Some NPCs, of course, will be more likely to keep up with all the rumors (Innkeepers for example, or that beggar who does nothing but wander the streets all day) while others will ignore them completely.
Each NPC would have a limit to the number of rumors they would know at any time, and they would also have a prevalance towards cetain types of rumors (IE, merchants would be more interested in bandit activity and finds of new resources whereas farmers would be concerned with wolves attacking their animals or bugs ravaging their crops). Rumors would generally be spread along trade routes, be it via boat, pack mule or foot. And there would also be a chance that rumors don't spread to the next town for whatever reason.
It would also be neat to add a "Telephone Game" feature to the Rumor Mill, allowing for some rumors to change as they pass from mouth to mouth. The mechanics of this would be difficult and problematic to implement though.
Rumors themselves would be flagged for importance on a local, regional and world level. If Bob the Knight clears out a den of wolves near the town, that would be of interest locally, but probably not much beyond that. However, if Bob slew the great Fire Dragon who had been terrorizing the mountain villages for generations, that would be an event worthy of worldwide renown. Rumors would also have a persistence rating. Driving off the wolves would only be noteworthy for a short amount of time. But the victory over the dragon would be spoken of for many years to come!
Rumors would also have the added effect of making famous/infamous players known to NPCs, even if they've never set eyes on each other. If everyone knows that you were the one who slew the dragon, then you'll receive praise and adulation as you travel. On the flip side, if you're infamous for the butchering of small farming villages, then you might find yourself persona non grata in the entire region, forcing you to travel halfway around the world to find a city where they don't know your name and reputation.
This would also allow players some insight into local events while they are travelling. Talk to the innkeeper or other gabby NPCs to get info about whats going on.
NPCs would also have rumors about each other. Everyone in the village would know that the local blacksmith was horribly wounded recently and is unable to perform any blacksmithing duties. Smart players might see this as an opportunity to ply their own blacksmith skill to earn some extra cash, and possibly the appreciation of the local citizens, which in turn might foment a new rumor concerning the new blacksmith that recently arrived in town! Or there might be rumors about a local mage recently acquiring a Book of Demonic Summoning which in turn triggers dynamic quests from locals who want the book destroyed, or wish to acquire it for their own shady purposes!
This also ties in with another of my required, MMO Core Concepts, Every Action has Consequences. But rather than having some mystical, overarching reputation that is automatically and instantly known worldwide, NPCs would spread the words of your deeds in a semi-fluid manner, furthering the goal of a dynamic, changing world that responds to player actions in a meaningful manner.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
LotR: First Impressions (minor)
Lord of the Rings is now live, but I hopped onto their open beta a couple of weeks ago. But, for uncertain reasons, the game didn't really catch my attention. There just didnt seem to be much that was different or unique.
I played a Dwarf Champion up to level 10, then spent a couple of hours as a Warg in Monster Play.
Gameplay is pretty standard. Get quests, press buttons, drop new abilities into hotbar slots, gain levels and gold. The quest icons would often be obscured by the NPCs name.
One cool feature that was definitely different and welcome, is the ability to gain titles and special abilities based on your activities. Kill a bunch of Goblins and get the title Goblin Slayer. Kill enough and maybe you'll get access to a trait that will help you kill them faster. Use a certain ability or spell often? Then you'll likely learn end up learning how to do it better! It's a nice way to combine a level system with a pseudo-skill system.
And of course, there's the much talked about, Monster Play. Monster Play started off interesting, but, once you actually start looking around, it's just a bunch more of the same type collection and kill quests. Though I do admit that I had a lot of fun the first time I snuck into the hobbit-town as a Warg and ambushed gardeners on the outskirts of town and collected their cute little hairy feet as tribute to the Dark Lord! Not long after I arrived, two orcs showed up and proceeded to pillage in a more direct fashion. It felt good to be bad! But otherwise, this mode also didn't keep my attention. I joined a raid one time, but it turned out to be against a bunch of NPCs, and the organization of it was exceedingly slow, so I left. In the few hours I spent as a monster, I didn't see a single 'good' player. Since it was still beta, I imagine that there simply weren't many characters capable of reaching the Monster Play zone, much less surviving for long. However, this does highlight a potentially troubling issue. If no human opponents show up, Monster Play will turn out to be incredibly boring. It's also unfortunate that Monster Play is restricted to a single zone. If LoTR gains enough followers, I wouldnt be surprised to see extra Monster Play zones opening up.
All of the standard features are there. Mail, Auction System, crafting, instancing, etc. It felt very polished and ready for release, unlike many other MMOs. But of those systems, I didn't really notice anything new or innovative that would draw me in.
One thing that I've come to the conclusion on recently, is that I really like the cartoonish graphics for my fantasy games a lot better than the pseudo-realistic ones. Everything seems a lot sharper and easier to look at in Warcraft as opposed to Vanguard and LotR. So while the LotR graphcis were beautiful to look at (and MUCH easier on my mchaine than Vanguard), it just didn't feel right. Of course, I didnt get a chance to see much of the world. Just the early dwarf zones and the monster play zone. I'm sure there are plenty of breathtaking, panoramic vistas to be found.
Anyway, not much hard info about the game, as I didn't really play as much as I had planned, thus the (minor) in the title. But, that sort of says something in of itself I guess.
I played a Dwarf Champion up to level 10, then spent a couple of hours as a Warg in Monster Play.
Gameplay is pretty standard. Get quests, press buttons, drop new abilities into hotbar slots, gain levels and gold. The quest icons would often be obscured by the NPCs name.
One cool feature that was definitely different and welcome, is the ability to gain titles and special abilities based on your activities. Kill a bunch of Goblins and get the title Goblin Slayer. Kill enough and maybe you'll get access to a trait that will help you kill them faster. Use a certain ability or spell often? Then you'll likely learn end up learning how to do it better! It's a nice way to combine a level system with a pseudo-skill system.
And of course, there's the much talked about, Monster Play. Monster Play started off interesting, but, once you actually start looking around, it's just a bunch more of the same type collection and kill quests. Though I do admit that I had a lot of fun the first time I snuck into the hobbit-town as a Warg and ambushed gardeners on the outskirts of town and collected their cute little hairy feet as tribute to the Dark Lord! Not long after I arrived, two orcs showed up and proceeded to pillage in a more direct fashion. It felt good to be bad! But otherwise, this mode also didn't keep my attention. I joined a raid one time, but it turned out to be against a bunch of NPCs, and the organization of it was exceedingly slow, so I left. In the few hours I spent as a monster, I didn't see a single 'good' player. Since it was still beta, I imagine that there simply weren't many characters capable of reaching the Monster Play zone, much less surviving for long. However, this does highlight a potentially troubling issue. If no human opponents show up, Monster Play will turn out to be incredibly boring. It's also unfortunate that Monster Play is restricted to a single zone. If LoTR gains enough followers, I wouldnt be surprised to see extra Monster Play zones opening up.
All of the standard features are there. Mail, Auction System, crafting, instancing, etc. It felt very polished and ready for release, unlike many other MMOs. But of those systems, I didn't really notice anything new or innovative that would draw me in.
One thing that I've come to the conclusion on recently, is that I really like the cartoonish graphics for my fantasy games a lot better than the pseudo-realistic ones. Everything seems a lot sharper and easier to look at in Warcraft as opposed to Vanguard and LotR. So while the LotR graphcis were beautiful to look at (and MUCH easier on my mchaine than Vanguard), it just didn't feel right. Of course, I didnt get a chance to see much of the world. Just the early dwarf zones and the monster play zone. I'm sure there are plenty of breathtaking, panoramic vistas to be found.
Anyway, not much hard info about the game, as I didn't really play as much as I had planned, thus the (minor) in the title. But, that sort of says something in of itself I guess.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Minor MMO Idea #3: Player Created Artifacts
When reading fantasy books, one aspect I always find fascinating is when they speak of great and powerful items that were created from the Tears of a Goddess by Amazing-Guy, the famous Mage-Smith, who laboured for four days and nights, harnessing the power of the enslaved Fire God BurnEmAll and quenched the blades in snow carried by ten virgin brides!
I've thought that it would be a really cool idea to have these sorts of things doable in an MMO by the players. But the HOW of it always stymied me. No matter how difficult you make the learning of the recipe, or how obscure and rare the ingredients are, the player-base will always grind it out to create as many copies of the same artifact as they can. Sulfuron's Hammer, in WoW is an excellent example. Sure, the first one was a big deal. But it didn't take long before you saw one, or even more, in every single battleground match! And thus does epic fantasy vanish into the nether.
Then, an idea hit me. Rather than hard-coding in the artifacts themselves, let's just code in a framework for how artifacts are created, and let the players fill in the gaps... in a limited manner of course...
This concept revolves around the idea of Inspirations. These would be given out very sparingly, and only to crafters who have reached the pinnacle of their profession, or near to it. I don't quite have the details of that part worked out, but perhaps a fixed number is given when the character becomes a Grand Master, or perhaps they accumulate slowly over time, or maybe they have a small chance of being acquired when a craftsman makes an especially wondrous creation.
Then, these Inspirations can be used on the corpse of a named or otherwise very special creature. Or maybe even on an ultra-rare resource. When used, the crafter is given a pseudo-random special item type (Blood of, Tears of, Essence of, etc) that is tied to the creature/object it was acquired from. This special item will be flagged with attributes based on the skills, special abilities and such of its parent object.
The crafting interface would then allow this special, artifact-resource to be added to any regular creation. So if they player wanted to make an Artifact-quality chair, they could. More likely they would use to it imbue armor and weapons, though I could also see extending its uses to larger constructions such as buildings and ships!
This system allows players to create unique artifacts in a meaningful way. They get to choose how, when and why to use their Inspirations, and then they get to choose how, when and why to incorporate those inspirations into a fabulous, one-of-a-kind creation that will be written about in the history books!
I've thought that it would be a really cool idea to have these sorts of things doable in an MMO by the players. But the HOW of it always stymied me. No matter how difficult you make the learning of the recipe, or how obscure and rare the ingredients are, the player-base will always grind it out to create as many copies of the same artifact as they can. Sulfuron's Hammer, in WoW is an excellent example. Sure, the first one was a big deal. But it didn't take long before you saw one, or even more, in every single battleground match! And thus does epic fantasy vanish into the nether.
Then, an idea hit me. Rather than hard-coding in the artifacts themselves, let's just code in a framework for how artifacts are created, and let the players fill in the gaps... in a limited manner of course...
This concept revolves around the idea of Inspirations. These would be given out very sparingly, and only to crafters who have reached the pinnacle of their profession, or near to it. I don't quite have the details of that part worked out, but perhaps a fixed number is given when the character becomes a Grand Master, or perhaps they accumulate slowly over time, or maybe they have a small chance of being acquired when a craftsman makes an especially wondrous creation.
Then, these Inspirations can be used on the corpse of a named or otherwise very special creature. Or maybe even on an ultra-rare resource. When used, the crafter is given a pseudo-random special item type (Blood of, Tears of, Essence of, etc) that is tied to the creature/object it was acquired from. This special item will be flagged with attributes based on the skills, special abilities and such of its parent object.
The crafting interface would then allow this special, artifact-resource to be added to any regular creation. So if they player wanted to make an Artifact-quality chair, they could. More likely they would use to it imbue armor and weapons, though I could also see extending its uses to larger constructions such as buildings and ships!
For example, suppose a player used an Inspiration on Gorgofen, the infamous Black Dragon whose spittle could eat through even the toughest armor. They receive a special ingredient, called Essence of Gorgofen. This essence would take some of the attributes from Gorgofen (dragon, acid-breath, etc). Then, when the player adds this special essence to something they are crafting, that item will be appropriately imbued with these traits (this is the framework), flagged as an artifact and the player would have a chance to name it.
This system allows players to create unique artifacts in a meaningful way. They get to choose how, when and why to use their Inspirations, and then they get to choose how, when and why to incorporate those inspirations into a fabulous, one-of-a-kind creation that will be written about in the history books!
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Minor MMO Idea #2: Using Mounts in Combat
So I was thinking about mounted combat and a came up with a simple idea. Just add a few special mount abilities that the player would have access to while mounted.
Basically, the mount would function like a pseudo-pet. They wouldnt act autonomously, but instead, while the player was mounted, they would get access to special abilities/attacks. These could even be flavored based on the type of mount. For example, a wolf might get a powerful bite ability to attack melee opponents with and a leap ability that allows for an extra-long jump. A horse might get a rear-oriented kick and a charge ability.
Of course, it would have to be balanced in some way so that it wasn't always advantageous to fight while mounted, but it would be an interesting and simple way to allow mounted combat.
Basically, the mount would function like a pseudo-pet. They wouldnt act autonomously, but instead, while the player was mounted, they would get access to special abilities/attacks. These could even be flavored based on the type of mount. For example, a wolf might get a powerful bite ability to attack melee opponents with and a leap ability that allows for an extra-long jump. A horse might get a rear-oriented kick and a charge ability.
Of course, it would have to be balanced in some way so that it wasn't always advantageous to fight while mounted, but it would be an interesting and simple way to allow mounted combat.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Minor MMO Idea #1: More Intricate Dyeing Options
And by dyeing I'm referring to the skill of adding color to an object. Some games have this option, but many games don't. The most common reason I've seen is that they don't want players to mess with their carefully crafted artwork. But this is obviosuly something that the players desire. Just look at the number of complaints on the WoW forums about the color choices for some of the raid armor!
Here's how to do it right, and better.
First off, as you're designing the textures, they need to be layered in a consistent manner. That way, when you implement the 'dye armor' feature, you can specify which layer gets dyed, and thus have more control over how the players affect your artwork. Secondly, allow multiple layers to be dyed independently. This would allow the players to do things such as give the armor a 'wash' (altering the color of the grooves), 'overbrush' (color the peaks) or 'stain' (alter the basic color of the armor). You could even go so far as to allow color layering (IE, the current color affects the results of your dye job) to give the players even more subtle nuances about how their armor looks.
Not only would this provide simple customization options with little overhead to the company, but I could also see an in-game economy springing up around the Dying profession as some players would have much more interest and skill in creating nice looking outfits.
One disclaimer. Don't give players access to a pure black dye option. It just looks like crap.
Here's how to do it right, and better.
First off, as you're designing the textures, they need to be layered in a consistent manner. That way, when you implement the 'dye armor' feature, you can specify which layer gets dyed, and thus have more control over how the players affect your artwork. Secondly, allow multiple layers to be dyed independently. This would allow the players to do things such as give the armor a 'wash' (altering the color of the grooves), 'overbrush' (color the peaks) or 'stain' (alter the basic color of the armor). You could even go so far as to allow color layering (IE, the current color affects the results of your dye job) to give the players even more subtle nuances about how their armor looks.
Not only would this provide simple customization options with little overhead to the company, but I could also see an in-game economy springing up around the Dying profession as some players would have much more interest and skill in creating nice looking outfits.
One disclaimer. Don't give players access to a pure black dye option. It just looks like crap.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Ach! Zombies!
The tension was unbearable. It hung over the fire station like a thick London fog, blurring the senses until distinguishing reality from nightmare was near impossible. Of course, reality had become a nightmare, so there was little distinction to be had. Aazh paced nervously back and forth. His crewmates sat playing cards, sweating lightly in the stale, putrid air, pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary. But Aazh couldn't wait any longer for help that may or may not arrive. Claustrophobia was setting in.
His crewmates didn't understand. They held to hope like a drowning man clings to a scrap of driftwood. But there was no power, little food, and no radio contact. The living dead wandered the streets, tearing ravenously on any unfortunates who passed their way, and making occasional half-hearted attempts to break down the barricades. Aazh felt like he was going to explode. The time had come. Grabbing his trusty axe and a pair of wire-cutters, Aazh slipped out through a side door, carefully pushing it fully closed as he left. No reason to bring misery to those poor fools inside. They would find their own form of misery soon enough.
The streets were eerily deserted. A few dead bodies were scattered about, but no sign of life; or un-life for that matter. Sticking to the eaves and shadows, Aazh made his way down the street. Most of the buildings seemed to be heavily fortified, and if there were any survivors inside, they were likely crazy enough to attack him if he tried to make an opening in the barricades. Outside of the nearby rail station he saw one of them. The slack-jawed look. The red eyes. The awkward gait. And the cavernous mouth that seemed big enough to swallow him whole. Letting out a subdued growl, Aazh hefted his axe and swung viciously at this once-human monstrosity. But the overload of adrenaline pumping through his body and his frayed nerves got the better of him. His swings were wild, and off the mark. Trembling with fury, fatigue and suppressed fear, Aazh fled. The creature pursued, but it had trouble navigating the debris-clogged streets, and Aazh soon found himself alone again.
He continued his wanderings, skirting wide around any undead he saw, and finally stumbling into a junkyard. The rows of rusty automobiles were surprisingly comforting, but could easily hold danger as well. Aazh quickly looked through the small shack at the front of the lot, and found a Louisville slugger that had seen better days, but could still be used to good effect. Clutching it to his chest, he headed west. If he could just get to the edge of town...
The tension was simply unbearable.
=======================
So the above story was written to sum up my first day of playing Urban Dead, a neat little web-based zombie MMO. That's right, zombies! Basically, take Dawn of the Living Dead (or whichever movie it was where they were stuck in the mall) and make it into an MMO!
It's all text-based, and pretty simple to play, but since there are no NPCs (players take the role of both humans and zombies, and their characters can potentially change sides several times as they get infected and cured), the interactions with the other players are what really makes the game. The game is turn-based, with each character getting a certain number of action points that they can use per day. The survivors try to scrounge up weapons, medkits and other goods while barricading themselves against the zombie hordes, while the zombies... well... act like zombies; tearing down the barricades, eating brains and generally causing havoc!
A very interesting though simple concept. It's not an overly in-depth game (I don't see myself still playing it two years from now), but its setting and setup allow for the players' imaginations to take hold and run from there (and it really does feel like you're in a zombie movie at times). There have been sieges at malls involving hundreds of players on both sides, groups formed to achieve certain goals, radios tuned to broadcast important information about zombie activity and all sorts of other interesting interactions that seem to only arise from these sort of open-ended, sandbox-type games.
So I recommend checking it out. It's free and an amusing diversion that won't ever take up hours of your day.
His crewmates didn't understand. They held to hope like a drowning man clings to a scrap of driftwood. But there was no power, little food, and no radio contact. The living dead wandered the streets, tearing ravenously on any unfortunates who passed their way, and making occasional half-hearted attempts to break down the barricades. Aazh felt like he was going to explode. The time had come. Grabbing his trusty axe and a pair of wire-cutters, Aazh slipped out through a side door, carefully pushing it fully closed as he left. No reason to bring misery to those poor fools inside. They would find their own form of misery soon enough.
The streets were eerily deserted. A few dead bodies were scattered about, but no sign of life; or un-life for that matter. Sticking to the eaves and shadows, Aazh made his way down the street. Most of the buildings seemed to be heavily fortified, and if there were any survivors inside, they were likely crazy enough to attack him if he tried to make an opening in the barricades. Outside of the nearby rail station he saw one of them. The slack-jawed look. The red eyes. The awkward gait. And the cavernous mouth that seemed big enough to swallow him whole. Letting out a subdued growl, Aazh hefted his axe and swung viciously at this once-human monstrosity. But the overload of adrenaline pumping through his body and his frayed nerves got the better of him. His swings were wild, and off the mark. Trembling with fury, fatigue and suppressed fear, Aazh fled. The creature pursued, but it had trouble navigating the debris-clogged streets, and Aazh soon found himself alone again.
He continued his wanderings, skirting wide around any undead he saw, and finally stumbling into a junkyard. The rows of rusty automobiles were surprisingly comforting, but could easily hold danger as well. Aazh quickly looked through the small shack at the front of the lot, and found a Louisville slugger that had seen better days, but could still be used to good effect. Clutching it to his chest, he headed west. If he could just get to the edge of town...
The tension was simply unbearable.
=======================
So the above story was written to sum up my first day of playing Urban Dead, a neat little web-based zombie MMO. That's right, zombies! Basically, take Dawn of the Living Dead (or whichever movie it was where they were stuck in the mall) and make it into an MMO!
It's all text-based, and pretty simple to play, but since there are no NPCs (players take the role of both humans and zombies, and their characters can potentially change sides several times as they get infected and cured), the interactions with the other players are what really makes the game. The game is turn-based, with each character getting a certain number of action points that they can use per day. The survivors try to scrounge up weapons, medkits and other goods while barricading themselves against the zombie hordes, while the zombies... well... act like zombies; tearing down the barricades, eating brains and generally causing havoc!
A very interesting though simple concept. It's not an overly in-depth game (I don't see myself still playing it two years from now), but its setting and setup allow for the players' imaginations to take hold and run from there (and it really does feel like you're in a zombie movie at times). There have been sieges at malls involving hundreds of players on both sides, groups formed to achieve certain goals, radios tuned to broadcast important information about zombie activity and all sorts of other interesting interactions that seem to only arise from these sort of open-ended, sandbox-type games.
So I recommend checking it out. It's free and an amusing diversion that won't ever take up hours of your day.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Learn to Improvise (We Don't Need No Stinkin' Mages)
So this rant stems from the outcry that has come up over Blizzard's new Armory feature (which I think it just plain awesome by the way). Lots of people across the WoW community are bitching about 'lack of privacy', but once you look at the reasoning presented by these complainers, the main issue seems to be a sense of worry about how their character might be perceived by their guildmates. Especially concerning talent builds. What an extremely silly thing to get upset about. If your guild is so anal and unimaginative that they demand that you spend your talent points in a certain way, then you need to find a new guild (unless that sort of thing doesn't bother you).
Are these guildmates really so set in their rut that they cant figure out how to use an arms warrior or shadow priest effectively?! This brings back memories of the early days of Shadowclan in WoW. For those unfamiliar with Shadowclan, we are an orc-only guild (recently, we began to allow trolls with restrictive guidelines). In the early days of the game, as the guild began to hit the upper dungeons, there was much debate about allowing other races into our orc-only guild, with some claiming that we could never do many of the dungeons with an orc-only group. If I recall correctly, this first came up in regards to the Lycaeum in Blackrock Depths (the place with the massive dwarf armies that respawn every 30 seconds).
"You must have a mage," they cried, "Otherwise its impossible!"
Nope. We did it. Many times. Sometimes with warlock help, sometimes sneaky rogue attacks, and other times with just quick-moving, coordinated firepower! Then it was said that LBRS would be too hard. Done. Then UBRS. Done... one time with only 8 orcs. Five orc Dire Maul tribute run? Done. Stratholme? Done. Scholomance. Done? Epic Dreadsteed quest? Done. Epic Shaman hat quest? Done. We never had the numbers to try Molten Core, and the smaller raids weren't released until a large portion of our guild had already left WoW for other pursuits. I'm sure there are plenty of naysayers that will claim the raids would have been impossible with an orc-only group, but, we'll never really know for sure at this point.
This is one problem with class-based games. Players get stuck in this single-path mentality and refuse to escape it (or can't due to overly restrictive game mechanics that make their class choice a cookie cutter mold). This has also limited the skill-based games, because players aren't able to think outside the box and dont know what to do with themselves when presented with an open skill tree. The entry barrier that Eve suffers is a great example. It's obvious that many MMO players need some sort of guidance, especially those who are new to the genre, but locking players into a cookie-cutter mold (even if there are two dozen varieties of cookie shapes), just doesnt cut it for me in the MMO theater.
This rant may seem a little hypocritical, as Shadowclan requires that all players in the guild play an orc, but, in comparison to many WoW guilds, thats a very small requirement. We have no class requirements, no talent specifications that must be adhered to, no equipment expectations, etc, etc. So we're sort of the anti-anal-rentitive-raiding guild. We'll take four warriors and an enhancement-spec shaman into a dungeon and find a way to emerge victorious.
So what am I bitching about? I'm not complaining about the class system itself (thats a rant for another day). WoW actually does a decent job of using the talent trees to allow players to customize their characters so that they are all a little bit different. I'm bitching about the types of players who can't think for themselves or use some creativity to come up with a solution that doesnt require a friend to remold their character. Learning to work together and to play off each others strengths as well as shore up weaknesses is relatively easy to do and much more fun for everyone involved.
Are these guildmates really so set in their rut that they cant figure out how to use an arms warrior or shadow priest effectively?! This brings back memories of the early days of Shadowclan in WoW. For those unfamiliar with Shadowclan, we are an orc-only guild (recently, we began to allow trolls with restrictive guidelines). In the early days of the game, as the guild began to hit the upper dungeons, there was much debate about allowing other races into our orc-only guild, with some claiming that we could never do many of the dungeons with an orc-only group. If I recall correctly, this first came up in regards to the Lycaeum in Blackrock Depths (the place with the massive dwarf armies that respawn every 30 seconds).
"You must have a mage," they cried, "Otherwise its impossible!"
Nope. We did it. Many times. Sometimes with warlock help, sometimes sneaky rogue attacks, and other times with just quick-moving, coordinated firepower! Then it was said that LBRS would be too hard. Done. Then UBRS. Done... one time with only 8 orcs. Five orc Dire Maul tribute run? Done. Stratholme? Done. Scholomance. Done? Epic Dreadsteed quest? Done. Epic Shaman hat quest? Done. We never had the numbers to try Molten Core, and the smaller raids weren't released until a large portion of our guild had already left WoW for other pursuits. I'm sure there are plenty of naysayers that will claim the raids would have been impossible with an orc-only group, but, we'll never really know for sure at this point.
This is one problem with class-based games. Players get stuck in this single-path mentality and refuse to escape it (or can't due to overly restrictive game mechanics that make their class choice a cookie cutter mold). This has also limited the skill-based games, because players aren't able to think outside the box and dont know what to do with themselves when presented with an open skill tree. The entry barrier that Eve suffers is a great example. It's obvious that many MMO players need some sort of guidance, especially those who are new to the genre, but locking players into a cookie-cutter mold (even if there are two dozen varieties of cookie shapes), just doesnt cut it for me in the MMO theater.
This rant may seem a little hypocritical, as Shadowclan requires that all players in the guild play an orc, but, in comparison to many WoW guilds, thats a very small requirement. We have no class requirements, no talent specifications that must be adhered to, no equipment expectations, etc, etc. So we're sort of the anti-anal-rentitive-raiding guild. We'll take four warriors and an enhancement-spec shaman into a dungeon and find a way to emerge victorious.
So what am I bitching about? I'm not complaining about the class system itself (thats a rant for another day). WoW actually does a decent job of using the talent trees to allow players to customize their characters so that they are all a little bit different. I'm bitching about the types of players who can't think for themselves or use some creativity to come up with a solution that doesnt require a friend to remold their character. Learning to work together and to play off each others strengths as well as shore up weaknesses is relatively easy to do and much more fun for everyone involved.
Friday, February 23, 2007
MMO Core Concept #2: Dynamic NPCs
This is one of those ideas that has been floating around in my head for some time. But this comment on the Broken Toys blog caught my attention because it put an interesting twist on the concept.
Dynamic NPCs are ones who interpret and react to player actions as well as those of other NPCs. There's really two parts to this. On one side, you have the various town-type NPCs; shopkeepers, quest-givers, blacksmith, etc etc. On the other, you have the mob-type NPCs; orcs, dragons, rats and all that sort of goodness. For brevity, this post will focus on the town-type NPCs and leave the mobs for another day.
I've always thought that it would be interesting if NPCs actually reacted to what was going on around them. If they could know what was happening in their local area (or on a larger area if they are the type of NPC that would care about such things) and alter their routines based on that knowledge.
There are several layers to this possibility. The first would simply be location. NPCs would migrate and set up home/shop based on their fears/desires and how the local enviroment plays into those feelings. A jeweler, for example, probably wouldnt make a very good living in a small, farming village. They would likely look for a larger city with a stable economy and plenty of wealthy potential customers. And this also ties in with the comment I linked to earlier.
TPRJones mentioned the possibility of NPCs responding to wars based from, around or in their towns. People tend to flee warzones, and the NPCs shouldnt be any different. Is the town under siege? Those NPCs who formerly farmed the now-ravaged countryside would now want to move someone safer. Or perhaps they even change, turning into beggars and thieves since they can't make an honest living anymore and
This could even be developed into a meta-game feature, where player-towns compete to make their city more advantageous for NPCs, thus drawing them away from other nearby towns.
Eventually, player-towns would come to represent the guilds controlling the town. Is the guild focused on a safe, posperous enviroment? Then the town will attract merchants, entertainers, nobles and the like. Or is the guild warlike, building defensive structures and constantly warring with their neighbors? Well then you might find more mercenaries and drifters looking to take advanatge of the wartime market. Or do the players even go so far as to kill every immigrant that shows up in their town? They'll soon find their village shunned by all NPCs. Or maybe they only kill the elves, resulting in a town populated by everyone except the elf-types.
I would even take this a step farther, and have the town's appearance change as well. Do the players in the town randomly kill NPCs and offer sacrafices to demon gods? Well then, the town will probably start looking more sinister and become more rundown, populated by crazed fanatics, the destitute and desperate, and perhaps even a few unholy minions lurking about in the shadows. Is your town full of do-gooders who uphold the virtues of justice, compassion and truth? Then the town becomes more shiny and airy, sparkling across the vista so that it can be seen by riders from miles away. The streets are immaculate, the poor and lame are well taken care of and every NPC greets you with a heartfelt salutation.
Another layer to this concept would be related to quests/jobs and shopkeeper supplies. Has a rancher been losing a lot of their livestock to wolves on the edge of town? Maybe they'll try to hire players to take care of the wolf population. And the local innkeeper will start charging more for food as the supply of meat dwindles. Then, once the wolves have been cleared out, the rancher no longer needs to hire players for that job, but maybe they have need of someone to deliver their overabundance of meat to the next town.
An important part to making this all work would be to give NPCs some longevity, so that they aren't killed on a daily basis by the more psychopathic players. But thats a different discussion.
Dynamic town-NPCs would not only make the world seem more alive and fluid, but it would force players to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. Shopkeepers for player towns wouldnt just be the drag and drop variety. Certainly there should be options for players to hire NPCs to populate their towns, but ultimately, player actions in-game will determine how successful your town will be.
Dynamic NPCs are ones who interpret and react to player actions as well as those of other NPCs. There's really two parts to this. On one side, you have the various town-type NPCs; shopkeepers, quest-givers, blacksmith, etc etc. On the other, you have the mob-type NPCs; orcs, dragons, rats and all that sort of goodness. For brevity, this post will focus on the town-type NPCs and leave the mobs for another day.
I've always thought that it would be interesting if NPCs actually reacted to what was going on around them. If they could know what was happening in their local area (or on a larger area if they are the type of NPC that would care about such things) and alter their routines based on that knowledge.
There are several layers to this possibility. The first would simply be location. NPCs would migrate and set up home/shop based on their fears/desires and how the local enviroment plays into those feelings. A jeweler, for example, probably wouldnt make a very good living in a small, farming village. They would likely look for a larger city with a stable economy and plenty of wealthy potential customers. And this also ties in with the comment I linked to earlier.
TPRJones mentioned the possibility of NPCs responding to wars based from, around or in their towns. People tend to flee warzones, and the NPCs shouldnt be any different. Is the town under siege? Those NPCs who formerly farmed the now-ravaged countryside would now want to move someone safer. Or perhaps they even change, turning into beggars and thieves since they can't make an honest living anymore and
This could even be developed into a meta-game feature, where player-towns compete to make their city more advantageous for NPCs, thus drawing them away from other nearby towns.
Eventually, player-towns would come to represent the guilds controlling the town. Is the guild focused on a safe, posperous enviroment? Then the town will attract merchants, entertainers, nobles and the like. Or is the guild warlike, building defensive structures and constantly warring with their neighbors? Well then you might find more mercenaries and drifters looking to take advanatge of the wartime market. Or do the players even go so far as to kill every immigrant that shows up in their town? They'll soon find their village shunned by all NPCs. Or maybe they only kill the elves, resulting in a town populated by everyone except the elf-types.
I would even take this a step farther, and have the town's appearance change as well. Do the players in the town randomly kill NPCs and offer sacrafices to demon gods? Well then, the town will probably start looking more sinister and become more rundown, populated by crazed fanatics, the destitute and desperate, and perhaps even a few unholy minions lurking about in the shadows. Is your town full of do-gooders who uphold the virtues of justice, compassion and truth? Then the town becomes more shiny and airy, sparkling across the vista so that it can be seen by riders from miles away. The streets are immaculate, the poor and lame are well taken care of and every NPC greets you with a heartfelt salutation.
Another layer to this concept would be related to quests/jobs and shopkeeper supplies. Has a rancher been losing a lot of their livestock to wolves on the edge of town? Maybe they'll try to hire players to take care of the wolf population. And the local innkeeper will start charging more for food as the supply of meat dwindles. Then, once the wolves have been cleared out, the rancher no longer needs to hire players for that job, but maybe they have need of someone to deliver their overabundance of meat to the next town.
An important part to making this all work would be to give NPCs some longevity, so that they aren't killed on a daily basis by the more psychopathic players. But thats a different discussion.
Dynamic town-NPCs would not only make the world seem more alive and fluid, but it would force players to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. Shopkeepers for player towns wouldnt just be the drag and drop variety. Certainly there should be options for players to hire NPCs to populate their towns, but ultimately, player actions in-game will determine how successful your town will be.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The Horrors of Open PvP
PvP. One subject that is frequently discussed and argued about in the MMO world. It makes developers nervous, sends victms into fits, is associated with 'grief-play', and even gets an article about it in a print magazine.
But I'm here to discuss someplace even darker, where few companies dare tread... open PvP. Basically, this means that anyone can be attacked anywhere. No artifical limitations that magically prevent combat in certain areas. No PvP 'flags' to turn on and off. Once you enter the gameworld, you have the potential to be killed anywhere at anytime.
Many, if not a large majority, of the MMO playerbase cringes at the thought of an open PvP system. And rightfully so. Griefers have made their presence felt in all games that support any form of PvP, and even in games that don't. The life of a griefer knows no bounds. And therein lies the rub! Griefers aren't an outgrowth of the PvP systems. They're there all the time, lurking in the shadows, just waiting to steal your kill or resource, block a doorway, cover the ground with profane drawings, on any of a myriad of creative harassment they can come up with. But players mistakenly associate these pariahs of online gaming with PvP.
The problem isn't in the PvP concept itself. Rather the problem stems from that group of players who enjoy having power over others at any cost, and the PvP systems that dont prepare for this sort of playstyle (or focus on it exclusively, to the detriment of everyone else).
Open PvP doesn't have to be the death-knell for an MMO (I think Eve Online has proved that already). I've actually found that players tend to be a lot more polite and respectful in open PvP enviroments. In general terms at least. You'll have the jerks who always find their way into these open, online enviroments, no matter what the system. But when there are potential, immediate reprecussions for being a jerk, people tend to be on better behaviour.
It is also an excellent tool for promoting strong communities. Nothing brings people closer together better than a strong external threat.
I think there are a few key features that would be vitally important to supporting a fun, open PvP enviroment.
1) No 'con' system for players. If you don't instantly know how strong another player is, you're much less likely to attack them without reason.
2) No levels. At least not as they are currently implemented in MMOs. Levels inherently create huge imbalances between players and are a very arbitrary and non-intuitive system.
3) Territorial control.
a)Bind players to an area. If a player has to travel far to grief someone outside their guild or circle of friends, they're less likely to make the effort. Especially if they get sent back home after they are defeated.
b) Give players the ability to control order in their towns via guards, banishment, black marks etc.
4) Relatively quick power gain. And once you hit that diminishing returns curve, power gains come more from adding new tricks to your arsenal rather than making your old tricks uber.
5) Create opportunities for meaningful PvP. The more reasons players have for engaging in PvP over useful objectives, the less likely it is that they will be preying on the new and weak.
Certainly, it's not an feature you can just throw in. It takes a lot of careful forethought and balancing. But it also opens up a lot of vistas that are currently locked behind instance portals or shuffled off into an obscure region of the world.
But I'm here to discuss someplace even darker, where few companies dare tread... open PvP. Basically, this means that anyone can be attacked anywhere. No artifical limitations that magically prevent combat in certain areas. No PvP 'flags' to turn on and off. Once you enter the gameworld, you have the potential to be killed anywhere at anytime.
Many, if not a large majority, of the MMO playerbase cringes at the thought of an open PvP system. And rightfully so. Griefers have made their presence felt in all games that support any form of PvP, and even in games that don't. The life of a griefer knows no bounds. And therein lies the rub! Griefers aren't an outgrowth of the PvP systems. They're there all the time, lurking in the shadows, just waiting to steal your kill or resource, block a doorway, cover the ground with profane drawings, on any of a myriad of creative harassment they can come up with. But players mistakenly associate these pariahs of online gaming with PvP.
The problem isn't in the PvP concept itself. Rather the problem stems from that group of players who enjoy having power over others at any cost, and the PvP systems that dont prepare for this sort of playstyle (or focus on it exclusively, to the detriment of everyone else).
Open PvP doesn't have to be the death-knell for an MMO (I think Eve Online has proved that already). I've actually found that players tend to be a lot more polite and respectful in open PvP enviroments. In general terms at least. You'll have the jerks who always find their way into these open, online enviroments, no matter what the system. But when there are potential, immediate reprecussions for being a jerk, people tend to be on better behaviour.
It is also an excellent tool for promoting strong communities. Nothing brings people closer together better than a strong external threat.
I think there are a few key features that would be vitally important to supporting a fun, open PvP enviroment.
1) No 'con' system for players. If you don't instantly know how strong another player is, you're much less likely to attack them without reason.
2) No levels. At least not as they are currently implemented in MMOs. Levels inherently create huge imbalances between players and are a very arbitrary and non-intuitive system.
3) Territorial control.
a)Bind players to an area. If a player has to travel far to grief someone outside their guild or circle of friends, they're less likely to make the effort. Especially if they get sent back home after they are defeated.
b) Give players the ability to control order in their towns via guards, banishment, black marks etc.
4) Relatively quick power gain. And once you hit that diminishing returns curve, power gains come more from adding new tricks to your arsenal rather than making your old tricks uber.
5) Create opportunities for meaningful PvP. The more reasons players have for engaging in PvP over useful objectives, the less likely it is that they will be preying on the new and weak.
Certainly, it's not an feature you can just throw in. It takes a lot of careful forethought and balancing. But it also opens up a lot of vistas that are currently locked behind instance portals or shuffled off into an obscure region of the world.
Monday, February 05, 2007
One of the Many Perils of the Level-Based MMO
As I was browsing a few blogs this morning, I came across this post talking about what a ghost town Ironforge has become since the release of the Burning Crusade.
And really, it's not just the old world. Even Hellfire Penninsula has seen a major population drop. Gone are those exciting, chaotic first few days as everyone poured through the portal and unleashed their pent-up aggression on the unsuspecting demons and orcs of the land. There was an almost visible aura of energy and excitement in the zone. Now it's reduced to just a small, scattered population, and the initial flood of players has mostly outleveled the zone and spread out amongst the rest of the Outlands.
And as for Azeroth, the high-level zones are just eerily empty. I spent some time in the Eastern Plaguelands and Silithus recently, and I saw a total of one other character in each zone!
This, IMO, is one of the biggest flaws with a level-based game... the level-based segregation that comes with it. Especially when you organize your adventuring areas along level lines as well. This is a major community-breaking 'feature' that is only exacerbated by the expansion of the level cap.
I'm hoping that the next MMO I play isn't so divided and that I have a chance to hangout, adventure and have fun with new characters as well as old.
And really, it's not just the old world. Even Hellfire Penninsula has seen a major population drop. Gone are those exciting, chaotic first few days as everyone poured through the portal and unleashed their pent-up aggression on the unsuspecting demons and orcs of the land. There was an almost visible aura of energy and excitement in the zone. Now it's reduced to just a small, scattered population, and the initial flood of players has mostly outleveled the zone and spread out amongst the rest of the Outlands.
And as for Azeroth, the high-level zones are just eerily empty. I spent some time in the Eastern Plaguelands and Silithus recently, and I saw a total of one other character in each zone!
This, IMO, is one of the biggest flaws with a level-based game... the level-based segregation that comes with it. Especially when you organize your adventuring areas along level lines as well. This is a major community-breaking 'feature' that is only exacerbated by the expansion of the level cap.
I'm hoping that the next MMO I play isn't so divided and that I have a chance to hangout, adventure and have fun with new characters as well as old.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Burning Crusade Impressions Part II
It's been over a week now so I thought I should update my initial impressions of WoW's big expansion, The Burning Crusade.
First of, I discovered that the fel orc bombing run is repeatable just for fun!
Crafting is actually useful. Upon talking to the blacksmith in Thrallmar, I was immediately given several new recipes for items that some of my guildmates could use! You can actually make items for your level. In the old days of Azeroth, it was pretty much impossible to stay ahead of the curve for the various professions. I was always making items that were 5+ levels below me. Meanwhile in the Outlands, I have a recipe for several nice, level 65 weapons... and I'm only level 64.
I initially gave their big 'world PvP' feature a bad grade because the players were just running around trading towers rather than actually fighting over them (at least in Hellfire Penninsula). This still seems to be the norm for the most part, but if you can get a small group together and choose to defend or contest the alliance for control, there can be quite a bit of fun PvP. A few Shadowclan did just this over the weekend, and after a little over an hour, I had 80-something marks to spend and ~700 honor as well. You don't get experience or reputation, but it's a hell of a lot more fun! Not only did we control the Broken Hill tower for quite a bit, but we also exerted our dominance over the main Alliance road out of Honor Hold, annoying many Alliance players until we were finally overwhelmed. But still, this only happened because we decided to break the pattern that everyone else had settled into.
There is an odd sort of tension hanging over many of the hunting grounds, but for the most part, everyone levels peacefully together. Though sometimes, the tension can break out into battle at the flash of poorly-timed AoE, and then, just as quickly, return to a standoffish neutrality.
Quests are plentiful. I constantly have a full quest log and purposefully avoid some outposts so that I can stay focused in one area at a time. Unfortunately, the fun quick quests of Hellfire Penninsula seem to give way once you hit Zangamar. Then we're back to the same old random-drop collection quests and the chained, run-back-and-forth kill quests. But I do find the zone itself interesting, and the fact that I have four different towns to get jobs from should keep me busy for a while.
The graphics are just outstanding. Warcraft does such a great job of making everything colorful and larger than life. If you get a chance to stop for a moment and look around, do it. Coilfagn Reservoir looks very ominous when gazing at it from across the lake. And the streamer effects in the sky always make me stop and look twice.
I haven't done any Jewelcrafting, but I am interested in the whole socketing gems feature. Unfortunately, I've only acquired two items so far that have sockets (I had to sell one socketable helm because it looked so awful I would have been embarassed wearing it).
So I upgrade my initial grade to a A minus. I'm having fun so far, and am thoroughly enjoying my adventures and explanations of the new lands. I'm reminded of the first few months of WoW when it was originally released. Hellfire Penninsula was incredibly engaging those first few days. And I think a lot of that was due to the sheer number of players running around. There was an electricity in the air and it really felt like something big was happening. But already the veneer is beginning to wear a little thin. Everything is basically the same. Despite the sheer amount of combat involving Hellfire Citadel, the Hand of Kargath repeatedly spawns in the same spot to be repeatedly killed by the players. No excursions are ever sent out from the Citadel. Nothing really happens that lasts for more than a few moments. So I'm still holding onto my reservations about the end-game. I fear that once I hit 70, the game will return to what it was before the expansion release... little more than a repetitive honor and faction grind.
First of, I discovered that the fel orc bombing run is repeatable just for fun!
Crafting is actually useful. Upon talking to the blacksmith in Thrallmar, I was immediately given several new recipes for items that some of my guildmates could use! You can actually make items for your level. In the old days of Azeroth, it was pretty much impossible to stay ahead of the curve for the various professions. I was always making items that were 5+ levels below me. Meanwhile in the Outlands, I have a recipe for several nice, level 65 weapons... and I'm only level 64.
I initially gave their big 'world PvP' feature a bad grade because the players were just running around trading towers rather than actually fighting over them (at least in Hellfire Penninsula). This still seems to be the norm for the most part, but if you can get a small group together and choose to defend or contest the alliance for control, there can be quite a bit of fun PvP. A few Shadowclan did just this over the weekend, and after a little over an hour, I had 80-something marks to spend and ~700 honor as well. You don't get experience or reputation, but it's a hell of a lot more fun! Not only did we control the Broken Hill tower for quite a bit, but we also exerted our dominance over the main Alliance road out of Honor Hold, annoying many Alliance players until we were finally overwhelmed. But still, this only happened because we decided to break the pattern that everyone else had settled into.
There is an odd sort of tension hanging over many of the hunting grounds, but for the most part, everyone levels peacefully together. Though sometimes, the tension can break out into battle at the flash of poorly-timed AoE, and then, just as quickly, return to a standoffish neutrality.
Quests are plentiful. I constantly have a full quest log and purposefully avoid some outposts so that I can stay focused in one area at a time. Unfortunately, the fun quick quests of Hellfire Penninsula seem to give way once you hit Zangamar. Then we're back to the same old random-drop collection quests and the chained, run-back-and-forth kill quests. But I do find the zone itself interesting, and the fact that I have four different towns to get jobs from should keep me busy for a while.
The graphics are just outstanding. Warcraft does such a great job of making everything colorful and larger than life. If you get a chance to stop for a moment and look around, do it. Coilfagn Reservoir looks very ominous when gazing at it from across the lake. And the streamer effects in the sky always make me stop and look twice.
I haven't done any Jewelcrafting, but I am interested in the whole socketing gems feature. Unfortunately, I've only acquired two items so far that have sockets (I had to sell one socketable helm because it looked so awful I would have been embarassed wearing it).
So I upgrade my initial grade to a A minus. I'm having fun so far, and am thoroughly enjoying my adventures and explanations of the new lands. I'm reminded of the first few months of WoW when it was originally released. Hellfire Penninsula was incredibly engaging those first few days. And I think a lot of that was due to the sheer number of players running around. There was an electricity in the air and it really felt like something big was happening. But already the veneer is beginning to wear a little thin. Everything is basically the same. Despite the sheer amount of combat involving Hellfire Citadel, the Hand of Kargath repeatedly spawns in the same spot to be repeatedly killed by the players. No excursions are ever sent out from the Citadel. Nothing really happens that lasts for more than a few moments. So I'm still holding onto my reservations about the end-game. I fear that once I hit 70, the game will return to what it was before the expansion release... little more than a repetitive honor and faction grind.
Friday, January 19, 2007
MMO Core Concept #1: Labor Points - Harvesting of a Different Color
What are labor points? Labor points are numbers that represent an individual character's ability to directly affect the game world. Players can use their labour points to contribute to the building of infrastructure, to assist in production and for destructive purposes as well. Each character starts with a certain number. Additional points are gained slowly over real-time, whether a character is logged in or not. The total number of points that can be accumulated is capped at some arbitrary number.
My overall concept for this system includes several other layers such as skills, hired NPCs, varied building sizes, trade routes and other good stuff that would interact with the Labor Points System in a meaningful way. But, in order to keep things simple and focused, I'll be foregoing discussion of those at this time to keep this essay as basic as I can.
Lets start with the first use for these points, building infrastructure. A player or guild decides to construct a harvesting building, a lumber camp for example. Using whatever method the game offers, they lay the unfinished camp down. Whether the building requires resources or not is irrelevant for this feature, so we'll assume that it doesn't, just to make things a little simpler. However, it does require labor to build. Players click on the unfinished building and choose how many of their available labour points they wish to contribute (I would also require a 'building' skill and have the skill level factor into how effective their labour points are for this task, but that idea is also unneccesary and adds another layer of complexity that I'll gloss over for now). Once the required number of labor points have been contributed, by any number of players, a timer starts. Once the timer is complete, the building is done and production can begin.
Now that the lumber mill is up and running players can choose to contribute their labor points to harvest raw materials, logs in this example. For each labor point, X number of logs are produced. Also, players can choose to contribute labor points to convert the logs into boards, which can then be taken to a carpentry shop and used in other buildings or projects. There would be a cap on the amount of logs that can be produced on a daily basis based on the number of trees in the general area (a lumber mill in the middle of an open plain would not be very productive).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, labor points are also used to destroy buildings. This may be players wanting to tear down their own buildings, or it may be a hostile act against an enemy. To prevent players from arriving at someone's town late at night and tearing everything down before the next morning, there would have to be some artificial limitations on how players use their labor points for destruction. Perhaps a heavy stamina penalty or a hard-coded limit on the amount of destruction a building can receive over time.
The reasoning behind using the labor points for two diametrically opposed actions should be relatively obvious. It's meant to force players to make a choice. They can either use their available labor to assist in building and growing their community, or they can use it for aggresion and destruction; or even some sort of combination of the two. But there will be decisions to make. And those choices have an effect on the world. If your guild is spending all of their labor on tearing down enemy fortifications, then production suffers and perhaps they won't have enough supplies or be able to replace broken items. If your town puts all of their labor into production and town growth, then perhaps a neighbour will start to encroach on your lands by building towers and other fortifications. If you don't take some effort away from production to tear down these intrusions, you might suddenly find that your borders have shrunk.
How will you deal with the issue of mule characters?
Thinking about this question, I would actually say that it's a non-issue. If players have characters whose sole purpose in life is to accumulate labor points, thats fine. The total amount that could be accumulated would be kept relatively small (perhaps a week's worth) and various mechanics could be put in to place to encourage players to skill-up these 'mule' characters so that they are more effective, at which point the line between played character and mule begins to blur. My initial thought would be to have character skills tie in to how effective their labor points are used. A character who is a Master Lumberjack would get more bang per labor point at a Lumber Mill than would a character who has little or no Lumberjacking skill.
In summary, this system is designed to allow players to harvest raw materials, but to also limit the amount of raw materials that can be produced in any given time. It shifts the focus of harvesting towards guilds and communities (since they will be more likely to have the available resources to build camps) while still allowing individual players to have an effect and be able to contribute directly in a meaningful way.
My overall concept for this system includes several other layers such as skills, hired NPCs, varied building sizes, trade routes and other good stuff that would interact with the Labor Points System in a meaningful way. But, in order to keep things simple and focused, I'll be foregoing discussion of those at this time to keep this essay as basic as I can.
Lets start with the first use for these points, building infrastructure. A player or guild decides to construct a harvesting building, a lumber camp for example. Using whatever method the game offers, they lay the unfinished camp down. Whether the building requires resources or not is irrelevant for this feature, so we'll assume that it doesn't, just to make things a little simpler. However, it does require labor to build. Players click on the unfinished building and choose how many of their available labour points they wish to contribute (I would also require a 'building' skill and have the skill level factor into how effective their labour points are for this task, but that idea is also unneccesary and adds another layer of complexity that I'll gloss over for now). Once the required number of labor points have been contributed, by any number of players, a timer starts. Once the timer is complete, the building is done and production can begin.
Now that the lumber mill is up and running players can choose to contribute their labor points to harvest raw materials, logs in this example. For each labor point, X number of logs are produced. Also, players can choose to contribute labor points to convert the logs into boards, which can then be taken to a carpentry shop and used in other buildings or projects. There would be a cap on the amount of logs that can be produced on a daily basis based on the number of trees in the general area (a lumber mill in the middle of an open plain would not be very productive).
On the opposite end of the spectrum, labor points are also used to destroy buildings. This may be players wanting to tear down their own buildings, or it may be a hostile act against an enemy. To prevent players from arriving at someone's town late at night and tearing everything down before the next morning, there would have to be some artificial limitations on how players use their labor points for destruction. Perhaps a heavy stamina penalty or a hard-coded limit on the amount of destruction a building can receive over time.
The reasoning behind using the labor points for two diametrically opposed actions should be relatively obvious. It's meant to force players to make a choice. They can either use their available labor to assist in building and growing their community, or they can use it for aggresion and destruction; or even some sort of combination of the two. But there will be decisions to make. And those choices have an effect on the world. If your guild is spending all of their labor on tearing down enemy fortifications, then production suffers and perhaps they won't have enough supplies or be able to replace broken items. If your town puts all of their labor into production and town growth, then perhaps a neighbour will start to encroach on your lands by building towers and other fortifications. If you don't take some effort away from production to tear down these intrusions, you might suddenly find that your borders have shrunk.
How will you deal with the issue of mule characters?
Thinking about this question, I would actually say that it's a non-issue. If players have characters whose sole purpose in life is to accumulate labor points, thats fine. The total amount that could be accumulated would be kept relatively small (perhaps a week's worth) and various mechanics could be put in to place to encourage players to skill-up these 'mule' characters so that they are more effective, at which point the line between played character and mule begins to blur. My initial thought would be to have character skills tie in to how effective their labor points are used. A character who is a Master Lumberjack would get more bang per labor point at a Lumber Mill than would a character who has little or no Lumberjacking skill.
In summary, this system is designed to allow players to harvest raw materials, but to also limit the amount of raw materials that can be produced in any given time. It shifts the focus of harvesting towards guilds and communities (since they will be more likely to have the available resources to build camps) while still allowing individual players to have an effect and be able to contribute directly in a meaningful way.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
The Burning Crusade: Initial Impressions
Like millions of other people around the world, I went out and bought World of Warcraft's expansion, The Burning Crusade and Tuesday and eagerly installed it, anxiously awaiting my chance to explore the Outlands. After four hours on Tuesday night and three hours last night, here are my initial impressions.
Getting into the Outlands is easy enough. Just go the the Blasted Lands and run through the portal (though be sure to grab the quest from the guy in the middle of the camp on the Azeroth-side beforehand). Once through, you're on the steps of a most impressive looking portal and down below, a continuous fight wages against very large demons. The flight master is right there and will fly you to the appropriate city where lots of quests and profession trainers await. I was a little annoyed that the guards in Thrallmar don’t give out directions around the town. Luckily, the place isn't that big. The lag outside of Thrallmar was horrendous that first night, but, to my surprise, the servers stayed up and once you got away from the mass numbers of players, it pretty much disappeared. Grade: B+
The quests are plentiful and relatively easy. And aside from the standard kill, collect, deliver fare, there is one particularly fun quest which has you fly bombing runs on a wyvern, destroying a large encampment of Fel orcs. I would redo that quest just for fun if I could! Faction and experience accumulate quickly. Without really focusing on advancement and spending some time just exploring, I'm 2/3 of the way to level 61 and about 1/4 of the way to being honored with Thrallmar (the first Horde city in the Outlands). The rewards are nice, and if I didn't already have a bunch of PvP epics, I would definitely be using some of the rewards as upgrades. Gold is also plentiful. I've made at least 50 gold already, and that includes spending over 20 gold to upgrade my professions. Grade: A
But one area that Blizzard seems to have failed miserably in again is world PvP. At least as far as Hellfire Peninsula is concerned. On paper, their plan looks great! The Horde and Alliance towns are just a stone's throw from each other. Both sides have quests to kill the orcs separating the two factions and both also have quests to cross to the other side and destroy siege engines owned by the opposition. Meanwhile, just a short ride away, lie three towers, all in close proximity to each other, that players can take control of, similar to the towers in the Eastern Plaguelands. However, it just doesn’t work. The Horde and Alliance pretty much ignore each other as both sides run around destroying each others catapults and cannons. The tower fights rarely involve an actual fight. For the most part, everyone runs around in one big group, taking control of each tower one at a time as their supposed foes do the same... but at different towers. The times where I've tried to engage the enemy resulted in my quick death at the hands of 10 allies while the rest of the Horde rides off to the next tower. And this is on a PvP server!
I think the main problem extends from the fact that holding a tower is worth nothing. Capturing it checks off one requirement for a repeatable quest that nets you tokens. These tokens are then used to buy various goodies. So there's really little point to fighting over control of a tower. You only get a bonus if your side controls all three, which rarely happens for any extended amount of time. The bonus is minimal, and the manpower required to maintain control of all three towers (the towers are relatively large and control switches quickly) is staggering! Good concepts in theory, but not enough thought was put into what the players would want (which is items). Controlling the towers or killing the enemy doesn't give any items. But running around like a herd of lemmings, avoiding any combat that’s not overwhelmingly in your favor does. Grade: D-
I didn't get much chance to explore any other zones, though I did make the run through the Marsh to Shattrath City. It proved to be an easy trek (as long as you stay on the roads), though I found that the Scryer Inn wasn't given me any rested state bonus. It looks like they have similar tower PvP objectives in every zone, and vendors that hand out items for collecting the appropriate tokens. I hope that PvP in the other zones is more engaging than Hellfire Peninsula. I also have only been in Hellfire Ramparts briefly (just long enough to make one attempt at each of the last two bosses), but it seems to have a nice layout and from what I understand, is a relatively quick instance. I look forward to trying it again soon.
Overall, the expansion has brought a much-needed breath of fresh air to WoW. The excitement that I had two years ago has returned and I'm looking forward to mining new and exotic minerals, discovering new and exotic place and killing new and exotic creatures! The PvP aspects have been less than adequate, but, I really shouldn't have expected much given WoW's history. New items are plentiful and most seem to have a lot of stat bonuses. I haven't had a chance to socket any gems, but I am eagerly eying the various options I see on the vendors.
Only time will tell if The Burning Crusade really changes the game, or, if ultimately, it's just variations on the same themes and grows stale quickly. But in the meantime, I'll be enjoying the time that everything is new and not worrying about rushing through the content or levels.
First Impressions Overall Grade: B+
Getting into the Outlands is easy enough. Just go the the Blasted Lands and run through the portal (though be sure to grab the quest from the guy in the middle of the camp on the Azeroth-side beforehand). Once through, you're on the steps of a most impressive looking portal and down below, a continuous fight wages against very large demons. The flight master is right there and will fly you to the appropriate city where lots of quests and profession trainers await. I was a little annoyed that the guards in Thrallmar don’t give out directions around the town. Luckily, the place isn't that big. The lag outside of Thrallmar was horrendous that first night, but, to my surprise, the servers stayed up and once you got away from the mass numbers of players, it pretty much disappeared. Grade: B+
The quests are plentiful and relatively easy. And aside from the standard kill, collect, deliver fare, there is one particularly fun quest which has you fly bombing runs on a wyvern, destroying a large encampment of Fel orcs. I would redo that quest just for fun if I could! Faction and experience accumulate quickly. Without really focusing on advancement and spending some time just exploring, I'm 2/3 of the way to level 61 and about 1/4 of the way to being honored with Thrallmar (the first Horde city in the Outlands). The rewards are nice, and if I didn't already have a bunch of PvP epics, I would definitely be using some of the rewards as upgrades. Gold is also plentiful. I've made at least 50 gold already, and that includes spending over 20 gold to upgrade my professions. Grade: A
But one area that Blizzard seems to have failed miserably in again is world PvP. At least as far as Hellfire Peninsula is concerned. On paper, their plan looks great! The Horde and Alliance towns are just a stone's throw from each other. Both sides have quests to kill the orcs separating the two factions and both also have quests to cross to the other side and destroy siege engines owned by the opposition. Meanwhile, just a short ride away, lie three towers, all in close proximity to each other, that players can take control of, similar to the towers in the Eastern Plaguelands. However, it just doesn’t work. The Horde and Alliance pretty much ignore each other as both sides run around destroying each others catapults and cannons. The tower fights rarely involve an actual fight. For the most part, everyone runs around in one big group, taking control of each tower one at a time as their supposed foes do the same... but at different towers. The times where I've tried to engage the enemy resulted in my quick death at the hands of 10 allies while the rest of the Horde rides off to the next tower. And this is on a PvP server!
I think the main problem extends from the fact that holding a tower is worth nothing. Capturing it checks off one requirement for a repeatable quest that nets you tokens. These tokens are then used to buy various goodies. So there's really little point to fighting over control of a tower. You only get a bonus if your side controls all three, which rarely happens for any extended amount of time. The bonus is minimal, and the manpower required to maintain control of all three towers (the towers are relatively large and control switches quickly) is staggering! Good concepts in theory, but not enough thought was put into what the players would want (which is items). Controlling the towers or killing the enemy doesn't give any items. But running around like a herd of lemmings, avoiding any combat that’s not overwhelmingly in your favor does. Grade: D-
I didn't get much chance to explore any other zones, though I did make the run through the Marsh to Shattrath City. It proved to be an easy trek (as long as you stay on the roads), though I found that the Scryer Inn wasn't given me any rested state bonus. It looks like they have similar tower PvP objectives in every zone, and vendors that hand out items for collecting the appropriate tokens. I hope that PvP in the other zones is more engaging than Hellfire Peninsula. I also have only been in Hellfire Ramparts briefly (just long enough to make one attempt at each of the last two bosses), but it seems to have a nice layout and from what I understand, is a relatively quick instance. I look forward to trying it again soon.
Overall, the expansion has brought a much-needed breath of fresh air to WoW. The excitement that I had two years ago has returned and I'm looking forward to mining new and exotic minerals, discovering new and exotic place and killing new and exotic creatures! The PvP aspects have been less than adequate, but, I really shouldn't have expected much given WoW's history. New items are plentiful and most seem to have a lot of stat bonuses. I haven't had a chance to socket any gems, but I am eagerly eying the various options I see on the vendors.
Only time will tell if The Burning Crusade really changes the game, or, if ultimately, it's just variations on the same themes and grows stale quickly. But in the meantime, I'll be enjoying the time that everything is new and not worrying about rushing through the content or levels.
First Impressions Overall Grade: B+
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Vanguard Beta: Initial Thoughts
So I had the chance to check out the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes beta this weekend. I alloted myself 10 hours of /played time to get a feel for the game, and I wanted to check out the diplomacy and crafting features in particular.Here are my initial thoughts.
I began by choosing to play a Dark Elf Necromancer. Character customization options are very detailed. But, having 20 different sliders for facial features seems extraneous when you almost never see anyone's face closeup anyway. While it can be fun to completely customize a character down to the length of their eyebrows, this is not a selling point for me. In my mind, character customization should focus more on the larger look (City of Heroes did an excellent job on this part). And there are plenty of options for this as well such as altering height and body mass. But after some cursory poking around, I chose a name, made my character and jumped in-game.
First off, I immediately noticed that the graphics would be an issue. I dont have a top of the line system, but its more then enough for WoW with all the bells and whistles on. I turned the graphic settings down and still had a lot of video lag and stutter. Waving grass looks nice, but if it's slowing me down, I want to be able to turn it off. So I was a bit dissappointed with the video options. This alone would likely keep me from buying the game.
But, it was definitely playable, so I began my adventures with a quest to kill ten slaves. Adventuring seemed pretty standard. Quests were along the lines of kill, collect and deliver. Spells and attacks were also pretty standard fare. One interesting thing I did notice is that my pet (an abomination), had a button to let me manage it's 'grafts'. I never saw anything that explained what this is, but I assume that at some point I would be able to create specialized upgrades for him. Being able to customize your pets is always nice. I died a few times once I got to the tougher mobs, but I never had to do a corpse run (those dont start until level 7). I did hear from various players yelling across the zone that you can choose to pay money at an altar to have your corpse brought to you. Seems like a decent compromise to me.
I found the crafting interface and options interesting, but I couldnt figure out how to actually pursue a crafting profession that interested me. The Artifice trainer only offered me a total of 3 recipes at level 6 (and only listed a handful of others for higher levels), and of the various taskmasters, only one offered any tasks, and those were all about making wooden frames and oars other such stuff I had little interest in. I dont know what these things are used for or why I'm making them. Initial skill gains were quick, but, by the time I hit crafting level 5, it felt like a grind with nothing interesting to work on and no signs of it getting any more interesting in the near future. I also noticed on the crafting supply vendor that there were a number of tools that I couldnt use, but could find no explanation as to why I wasnt able to use them. I managed to get the necessary raw materials to make 2 out of 3 of my personal recipes, but, after one succesful attempt, I was proclaimed 'master' of that recipe and could no longer learn from it. I found this a little frustrating as I was a bit tired of making wooden frames and had purposefully gone out to gather materials that I could craft with. And also, there was no indication in my recipe list that these recipes had been 'mastered'. So I was left with the choice of continuing to make quartz gems that gave no skill gain and for which I had no use, or continuing to do a series of endlessly repeating tasks to gain skill. Not very encouraging.
The little random events that can happen during the crafting process are a nifty addition, but they also tend to get repetitive rather quickly. And crafting is not for those who are worried about carpal tunnel syndrome. Each item crafted took a good 30-40 clicks to make! Considering that the work orders with the best rewards ask for 5 of an item... thats a lot of mouse clicking for a few copper! It wouldn't be a big deal if each and every crafted item were important. But work order items simply vanish into the void and I didnt really get the feeling that personally crafted items will be that important either (but I could be wrong since I haven't been given the opportunity to really make much of anything). I love that they've gone beyond the simple-minded concept of 'collect ingredients, push create button' style of crafting. But overall, I think that the system doesnt go far enough to make crafting fun or interesting over the long-term. Perhaps if I was able to move on to a larger town more options would open up, but at crafting and adventuring level six, I have no breadcrumbs to lead me anywhere else, and doing more taskmaster work orders is much more of a grind that I'm willing to pursue at the moment.
Diplomacy is one of their more innovative features. It's basically a little mini-game within the game. Kind of like a Collectible Card Game in many ways. You collect various abilities (cards), build your strategy (deck) using 5 of those abilities and then match your strategy against your opponent, choosing when to play abiliites. Each ability you play has effects on your various point pools, which then allows you to play more useful cards. The first diplomacy encounters are pretty easy, but as you progress it does require some strategy and forethought. I found that I would often have to change my available abilities for each match, which required some tactical planning. But the interface was a bit awkward. I couldnt close my deck without opening my abilities book for some reason. Often, as I tried to drag an ability from my strategy deck I would end up dragging the whole deck instead, and dropping abiliites onto the deck usually required two attempts (this may be an additional issue with the lack of mouse sensitivity). The diplomacy quests felt very linear, and after the 3rd or 4th one, I simply stopped reading the text beyond finding out who I had to talk to next. I had hoped that I would have some choices in how I dealt with my diplomacy options that actually had an effect on the quest results. No such luck. So while it's fun and different, I still feel like I'm on an amusement park ride, just going with the flow and unable to make any signifigant choices.
Bugs were a problem. I had several weird interface issues that basically forced me to logout and back in to keep playing. And sometimes I would find my view forced to first person suddenly and I would have to struggle to get it back to 3rd person. But, the worst one came last night. I had finally managed to get the two harvesting skills I wanted (you have one primary and one secondary, but nowhere could I tell which was which so I accidentally replaced the wrong one twice before I figured out what was going on) and I went out to gather some plants and rocks. However, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, all of my harvesting gear suddenly turned red (meaning that I cant use it) and I could no longer do any harvesting! Logging out and quitting the game had no effect. I paged a GM who responded promptly. Unfortunately, he said he didnt know why it was happening and he also had no tools to try and attempt to fix the problem. So i guess this character will just be unable to harvest. :{
Mouselook was very kludgy. I couldnt turn the camera more than 90 degrees without lifting my mouse off the pad, even with mouse sensitivity turned all the way to max. I find this particularly frustrating, as the lack of peripheral vision in MMOs always bothers me, so I like to be able to quickly and easily look around me.
And finally, as Lifebane said, the timing of their release just seems an odd decision. Attempting to go head-to-head with the Burning Crusade is just a recipe for low sales. Especially given how much press BC has been getting (it was Yahoo's headline story on Sunday, and I also noticed that Best Buy had a huge ad for it in their advertisement in the paper). Vanguard has some interesting features, but seems to lack polish (especially on the various interfaces) and is not newbie-friendly at all. I consider myself a serious gamer and a veteran MMO player, but the explanation of the diplomacy and crafting interfaces was confusing and seemed to not proceed in a logical manner to me. I ended up just kind of muddling my way through it.
Final totals for this character: level 6 Necromancer, level 6 crafter, 26 skill in diplomacy and 30-something skill in harvesting.
I know it's been the trend for a long time to release MMOs well before they are ready for mass consumption, but one day, some company somewhere will learn from past mistakes others have made. Apparently Sigil is not that one.
At some point before the open beta ends, I will likely try to create an Orc Warrior/Smith (same as the character I play in WoW), skipping the diplomacy game completely, and see if my experience varies with my newfound knowledge of the basics of gameplay.
I began by choosing to play a Dark Elf Necromancer. Character customization options are very detailed. But, having 20 different sliders for facial features seems extraneous when you almost never see anyone's face closeup anyway. While it can be fun to completely customize a character down to the length of their eyebrows, this is not a selling point for me. In my mind, character customization should focus more on the larger look (City of Heroes did an excellent job on this part). And there are plenty of options for this as well such as altering height and body mass. But after some cursory poking around, I chose a name, made my character and jumped in-game.
First off, I immediately noticed that the graphics would be an issue. I dont have a top of the line system, but its more then enough for WoW with all the bells and whistles on. I turned the graphic settings down and still had a lot of video lag and stutter. Waving grass looks nice, but if it's slowing me down, I want to be able to turn it off. So I was a bit dissappointed with the video options. This alone would likely keep me from buying the game.
But, it was definitely playable, so I began my adventures with a quest to kill ten slaves. Adventuring seemed pretty standard. Quests were along the lines of kill, collect and deliver. Spells and attacks were also pretty standard fare. One interesting thing I did notice is that my pet (an abomination), had a button to let me manage it's 'grafts'. I never saw anything that explained what this is, but I assume that at some point I would be able to create specialized upgrades for him. Being able to customize your pets is always nice. I died a few times once I got to the tougher mobs, but I never had to do a corpse run (those dont start until level 7). I did hear from various players yelling across the zone that you can choose to pay money at an altar to have your corpse brought to you. Seems like a decent compromise to me.
I found the crafting interface and options interesting, but I couldnt figure out how to actually pursue a crafting profession that interested me. The Artifice trainer only offered me a total of 3 recipes at level 6 (and only listed a handful of others for higher levels), and of the various taskmasters, only one offered any tasks, and those were all about making wooden frames and oars other such stuff I had little interest in. I dont know what these things are used for or why I'm making them. Initial skill gains were quick, but, by the time I hit crafting level 5, it felt like a grind with nothing interesting to work on and no signs of it getting any more interesting in the near future. I also noticed on the crafting supply vendor that there were a number of tools that I couldnt use, but could find no explanation as to why I wasnt able to use them. I managed to get the necessary raw materials to make 2 out of 3 of my personal recipes, but, after one succesful attempt, I was proclaimed 'master' of that recipe and could no longer learn from it. I found this a little frustrating as I was a bit tired of making wooden frames and had purposefully gone out to gather materials that I could craft with. And also, there was no indication in my recipe list that these recipes had been 'mastered'. So I was left with the choice of continuing to make quartz gems that gave no skill gain and for which I had no use, or continuing to do a series of endlessly repeating tasks to gain skill. Not very encouraging.
The little random events that can happen during the crafting process are a nifty addition, but they also tend to get repetitive rather quickly. And crafting is not for those who are worried about carpal tunnel syndrome. Each item crafted took a good 30-40 clicks to make! Considering that the work orders with the best rewards ask for 5 of an item... thats a lot of mouse clicking for a few copper! It wouldn't be a big deal if each and every crafted item were important. But work order items simply vanish into the void and I didnt really get the feeling that personally crafted items will be that important either (but I could be wrong since I haven't been given the opportunity to really make much of anything). I love that they've gone beyond the simple-minded concept of 'collect ingredients, push create button' style of crafting. But overall, I think that the system doesnt go far enough to make crafting fun or interesting over the long-term. Perhaps if I was able to move on to a larger town more options would open up, but at crafting and adventuring level six, I have no breadcrumbs to lead me anywhere else, and doing more taskmaster work orders is much more of a grind that I'm willing to pursue at the moment.
Diplomacy is one of their more innovative features. It's basically a little mini-game within the game. Kind of like a Collectible Card Game in many ways. You collect various abilities (cards), build your strategy (deck) using 5 of those abilities and then match your strategy against your opponent, choosing when to play abiliites. Each ability you play has effects on your various point pools, which then allows you to play more useful cards. The first diplomacy encounters are pretty easy, but as you progress it does require some strategy and forethought. I found that I would often have to change my available abilities for each match, which required some tactical planning. But the interface was a bit awkward. I couldnt close my deck without opening my abilities book for some reason. Often, as I tried to drag an ability from my strategy deck I would end up dragging the whole deck instead, and dropping abiliites onto the deck usually required two attempts (this may be an additional issue with the lack of mouse sensitivity). The diplomacy quests felt very linear, and after the 3rd or 4th one, I simply stopped reading the text beyond finding out who I had to talk to next. I had hoped that I would have some choices in how I dealt with my diplomacy options that actually had an effect on the quest results. No such luck. So while it's fun and different, I still feel like I'm on an amusement park ride, just going with the flow and unable to make any signifigant choices.
Bugs were a problem. I had several weird interface issues that basically forced me to logout and back in to keep playing. And sometimes I would find my view forced to first person suddenly and I would have to struggle to get it back to 3rd person. But, the worst one came last night. I had finally managed to get the two harvesting skills I wanted (you have one primary and one secondary, but nowhere could I tell which was which so I accidentally replaced the wrong one twice before I figured out what was going on) and I went out to gather some plants and rocks. However, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, all of my harvesting gear suddenly turned red (meaning that I cant use it) and I could no longer do any harvesting! Logging out and quitting the game had no effect. I paged a GM who responded promptly. Unfortunately, he said he didnt know why it was happening and he also had no tools to try and attempt to fix the problem. So i guess this character will just be unable to harvest. :{
Mouselook was very kludgy. I couldnt turn the camera more than 90 degrees without lifting my mouse off the pad, even with mouse sensitivity turned all the way to max. I find this particularly frustrating, as the lack of peripheral vision in MMOs always bothers me, so I like to be able to quickly and easily look around me.
And finally, as Lifebane said, the timing of their release just seems an odd decision. Attempting to go head-to-head with the Burning Crusade is just a recipe for low sales. Especially given how much press BC has been getting (it was Yahoo's headline story on Sunday, and I also noticed that Best Buy had a huge ad for it in their advertisement in the paper). Vanguard has some interesting features, but seems to lack polish (especially on the various interfaces) and is not newbie-friendly at all. I consider myself a serious gamer and a veteran MMO player, but the explanation of the diplomacy and crafting interfaces was confusing and seemed to not proceed in a logical manner to me. I ended up just kind of muddling my way through it.
Final totals for this character: level 6 Necromancer, level 6 crafter, 26 skill in diplomacy and 30-something skill in harvesting.
I know it's been the trend for a long time to release MMOs well before they are ready for mass consumption, but one day, some company somewhere will learn from past mistakes others have made. Apparently Sigil is not that one.
At some point before the open beta ends, I will likely try to create an Orc Warrior/Smith (same as the character I play in WoW), skipping the diplomacy game completely, and see if my experience varies with my newfound knowledge of the basics of gameplay.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
MMOs for the New Year
It's the beginning of a new year, I havent posted anything new here in a couple of weeks, and though I have lots of fragments floating around, nothing coherent is ready. So, to keep some fresh content flowing without devolving into commenting on my
personal life, I've decided to make a brief list of upcoming MMOs that I hope to see this year.
Darkfall - This one is at the top of my list because their goals and ideas pretty closely mirror a lot of the core concepts I'm interested in seeing in an MMO. Player-owned towns, open PvP, skill-based system,
playable orcs, no floating names, just to name a few. Unfortunately, this game has been in development for quite some time. Many people seem to think that this automatically makes it vaporware, but to me, it means they're taking times to do things right. When, if ever, this game is released is unknown, but I'm hoping that it at least starts up a serious beta test sometime this year.
Warhammer Online - This will be a definite WoW replacement for me (though hopefully I won't still be playing WoW by the time this game makes it to the shelves). WoW-type interface with a PvP focus. Sounds good to me! And Warhammer's history is so rich and interesting. I hope they can infuse the game with some of that backstory and character. But at the very least, I'm definitely looking forward to bashing in some stuntie heads, cutting off their beards and sacking their cities!
Pirates of the Burning Sea - Ship to ship combat. Full player crafting. Town ownership. All set amidst the turbluent seas. This game has the potential to be the Eve Online of the pirate era.
Age of Conan - I'm a little leary of the twitch-oriented combat. Lag already causes enough issues with the standard MMO combat model and I'm scared to see how it affects combat in Conan. I've only been following this peripherally, so I dont know a lot of details, but I do remember reading something about keep ownership and sieges along with some other interesting goodies (bar brawls!)
That's all that I can think of offhand without looking up a list of upcoming games. Which ones catch your attention and why?
personal life, I've decided to make a brief list of upcoming MMOs that I hope to see this year.
Darkfall - This one is at the top of my list because their goals and ideas pretty closely mirror a lot of the core concepts I'm interested in seeing in an MMO. Player-owned towns, open PvP, skill-based system,
playable orcs, no floating names, just to name a few. Unfortunately, this game has been in development for quite some time. Many people seem to think that this automatically makes it vaporware, but to me, it means they're taking times to do things right. When, if ever, this game is released is unknown, but I'm hoping that it at least starts up a serious beta test sometime this year.
Warhammer Online - This will be a definite WoW replacement for me (though hopefully I won't still be playing WoW by the time this game makes it to the shelves). WoW-type interface with a PvP focus. Sounds good to me! And Warhammer's history is so rich and interesting. I hope they can infuse the game with some of that backstory and character. But at the very least, I'm definitely looking forward to bashing in some stuntie heads, cutting off their beards and sacking their cities!
Pirates of the Burning Sea - Ship to ship combat. Full player crafting. Town ownership. All set amidst the turbluent seas. This game has the potential to be the Eve Online of the pirate era.
Age of Conan - I'm a little leary of the twitch-oriented combat. Lag already causes enough issues with the standard MMO combat model and I'm scared to see how it affects combat in Conan. I've only been following this peripherally, so I dont know a lot of details, but I do remember reading something about keep ownership and sieges along with some other interesting goodies (bar brawls!)
That's all that I can think of offhand without looking up a list of upcoming games. Which ones catch your attention and why?
Friday, December 15, 2006
Removing Focus from the Experience Grind
Psychochild's Weekend Design Challenge for today talks about how MMOs these days seem to focus on the monster-bashing grind style of gameplay. The question is, how can MMOs get away from this relatively rote, boring and overused concept.
First off, MMOs should be skill oriented rather than level oriented. Secondly, character progression should not be directly tied to monster-bashing. Eve Online does an excellent job of breaking the mold with their skill system.
If players are slaughtering a camp of orcs, there should be a reason for it. Not simply a desire to reach the next level and gain one point of strength. Perhaps the orcs are raiding a nearby town and the merchants hire adventurers to take care of them. Or, perhaps the orcs have accumulated a good amount of treasure from their raids and the players want to take it from them. Or, perhaps the player simply wants to be a hero and prove that they can walk in and single-handedly defeat an entire orc tribe. These are all valid reasons. 'I need two bubbles to ding' is not.
The MMO obsession with experience gain needs to evolve. Gameplay, roleplaying and purposeful actions that have a cause and effect should instead be the focus. And this will never happen while players are encouraged to count their experience points like misers with a penny jar.
First off, MMOs should be skill oriented rather than level oriented. Secondly, character progression should not be directly tied to monster-bashing. Eve Online does an excellent job of breaking the mold with their skill system.
If players are slaughtering a camp of orcs, there should be a reason for it. Not simply a desire to reach the next level and gain one point of strength. Perhaps the orcs are raiding a nearby town and the merchants hire adventurers to take care of them. Or, perhaps the orcs have accumulated a good amount of treasure from their raids and the players want to take it from them. Or, perhaps the player simply wants to be a hero and prove that they can walk in and single-handedly defeat an entire orc tribe. These are all valid reasons. 'I need two bubbles to ding' is not.
The MMO obsession with experience gain needs to evolve. Gameplay, roleplaying and purposeful actions that have a cause and effect should instead be the focus. And this will never happen while players are encouraged to count their experience points like misers with a penny jar.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Radical MMO Idea #1: No Numeric Stat Display
Simple idea. Players just don't get any numeric stats about their character. At most they would have some sort of generic statement along the lines of 'You look Very Strong.' Players can get a general estimate of how they measure up to other characters via various competitions, duels and other such in-game feats. No numberical stat values displayed in-game at all. No, 'You gain 1 Agility' or 'Your skill in Basketweaving increases by 0.1' or any such overt, spreadsheet-encouraging nonsense.
Your character is defined by their actions, not by an in-game spreadsheet. If the players find some way to reverse-engineer their stats, that's fine, but the game won't support them in such endeavours, nor will it cater to the number-crunching crowd.
[Cross-posted this on the MMO Roundtable forum here]
Your character is defined by their actions, not by an in-game spreadsheet. If the players find some way to reverse-engineer their stats, that's fine, but the game won't support them in such endeavours, nor will it cater to the number-crunching crowd.
[Cross-posted this on the MMO Roundtable forum here]
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Bursting of the MMO Bubble
Pretty much everyone remembers the big dot-com bust that happened a few years ago. Everyone wanted to jump on the Internet bandwagon, investors threw money around like Mardi Gras beads and all the young techinical folk lived the high-life. But few of these Internet companies actually produced anything useful, companies went bankrupt and the bottom fell out of the market.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the resurgence of the industry. What's different this time? The difference is that instead of simply tossing together a slick website and expecting people to throw money at you for nothing, service, content and community have become the focus. First you deliver something useful / informative / entertaining... then the money rolls in. Sites such as YouTube and Flickr are excellent examples. They provide a great, free service, that provides an incredible amount of content to anyone who wants to browse through it, and in turn, an online community is created and supported. In the previous dot-com days, a wesbite with half the features would have tried to charge fees for this sort of thing. This is what the Internet was meant to be, not some guy who wants to make several 'competing' websites to sell tires (I actually worked briefly for someone who was doing exactly this!)
How does this relate to MMOs? Well basically, we're in the burst bubble period of MMOs. There were a few big hits, they got some decent media attention, and suddenly, there were thousands of companies throwing together craptastic games and expecting the public to pay for them! The public answered by sending many into bankruptcy. Too many for me to name here. Half-baked derivatives, shoddy game and interface systems, lack of features and content and such brought these games to their knees... and rightfully so.
So is the MMO industry ready for Phase II? One where the community is the focus rather than the publishers? I certainly hope so. It looks like a lot of interesting games are on the horizon. We'll just have to see if they take the time to deliver a content-laden, community-oriented game, or if they instead push out yet another unfinished MMO onto the already bloated market.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the resurgence of the industry. What's different this time? The difference is that instead of simply tossing together a slick website and expecting people to throw money at you for nothing, service, content and community have become the focus. First you deliver something useful / informative / entertaining... then the money rolls in. Sites such as YouTube and Flickr are excellent examples. They provide a great, free service, that provides an incredible amount of content to anyone who wants to browse through it, and in turn, an online community is created and supported. In the previous dot-com days, a wesbite with half the features would have tried to charge fees for this sort of thing. This is what the Internet was meant to be, not some guy who wants to make several 'competing' websites to sell tires (I actually worked briefly for someone who was doing exactly this!)
How does this relate to MMOs? Well basically, we're in the burst bubble period of MMOs. There were a few big hits, they got some decent media attention, and suddenly, there were thousands of companies throwing together craptastic games and expecting the public to pay for them! The public answered by sending many into bankruptcy. Too many for me to name here. Half-baked derivatives, shoddy game and interface systems, lack of features and content and such brought these games to their knees... and rightfully so.
So is the MMO industry ready for Phase II? One where the community is the focus rather than the publishers? I certainly hope so. It looks like a lot of interesting games are on the horizon. We'll just have to see if they take the time to deliver a content-laden, community-oriented game, or if they instead push out yet another unfinished MMO onto the already bloated market.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Economy and Inflation in MMOs
There was a post the other day on Kill Ten Rats discussing MMO economy and the rampant inflation that seems inevitable in today's games.
The problems stems from the fact that you can't have an economy with an infinitely open source and sink for goods and gold. There needs to be some sort of a mostly-closed enviroment (though, of course, it's always wise to leave options open for outside manipulation in case things start going wrong). Those gold coins dont make themselves. For every stack of gold coins added to the world, there needs to be a chunk of gold ore or a gold goblet that was melted down to create those coins. For every sword that's made, a plowshare or something equivalent should be removed from the world. And, once the sword is made, it goes somewhere. Either into the hand of a player or an NPC.
NPC vendors shouldnt just buy everything a player owns and then toss the items into the limitless void. Items should either be available for resale to other players or NPCs, gathering dust in a storeroom (where it can later be retrieved or stolen) or be broken down and used to create other items.
The concept of a semi-closed self-sustaining economy goes hand in hand with the idea of Logical Loot. If Mobs are dropping gold coins and Gloves of God-Spanking from their butts, any attempt at an economy is immediately thrown out the window. Instead you have simply created a whack-a-mole vending machine with infinite resources, and a player economy that will end up suffering from a rampant level of inflation that makes post-war Germany seem like a stable system.
But monster drops arent the only key to creating such a system. The resource harvesting and crafting systems have to work together as well. If you're going to have unlimited harvestable resources, then there needs to be a throttle on them to keep players from constantly flooding the market. Practicing your crafting skills shouldnt result in a lot of useless bracers or other items (anyone remember walking through the woods in UO an finding piles of bookcases sitting around?)
I think that the concept of attempting to balance gold fountains against gold sinks has proven that it wont work effectively. So its time for MMO developers to start thinking in new directions if they want to avoid the uber-inflation that is rampant in pretty much every MMO. And the first step of that is creating a cause and effect, sensical, self-sustaining economic system. Not an easy task. But it is needed if we want to move beyond the amusement park ride type MMOs.
The problems stems from the fact that you can't have an economy with an infinitely open source and sink for goods and gold. There needs to be some sort of a mostly-closed enviroment (though, of course, it's always wise to leave options open for outside manipulation in case things start going wrong). Those gold coins dont make themselves. For every stack of gold coins added to the world, there needs to be a chunk of gold ore or a gold goblet that was melted down to create those coins. For every sword that's made, a plowshare or something equivalent should be removed from the world. And, once the sword is made, it goes somewhere. Either into the hand of a player or an NPC.
NPC vendors shouldnt just buy everything a player owns and then toss the items into the limitless void. Items should either be available for resale to other players or NPCs, gathering dust in a storeroom (where it can later be retrieved or stolen) or be broken down and used to create other items.
The concept of a semi-closed self-sustaining economy goes hand in hand with the idea of Logical Loot. If Mobs are dropping gold coins and Gloves of God-Spanking from their butts, any attempt at an economy is immediately thrown out the window. Instead you have simply created a whack-a-mole vending machine with infinite resources, and a player economy that will end up suffering from a rampant level of inflation that makes post-war Germany seem like a stable system.
But monster drops arent the only key to creating such a system. The resource harvesting and crafting systems have to work together as well. If you're going to have unlimited harvestable resources, then there needs to be a throttle on them to keep players from constantly flooding the market. Practicing your crafting skills shouldnt result in a lot of useless bracers or other items (anyone remember walking through the woods in UO an finding piles of bookcases sitting around?)
I think that the concept of attempting to balance gold fountains against gold sinks has proven that it wont work effectively. So its time for MMO developers to start thinking in new directions if they want to avoid the uber-inflation that is rampant in pretty much every MMO. And the first step of that is creating a cause and effect, sensical, self-sustaining economic system. Not an easy task. But it is needed if we want to move beyond the amusement park ride type MMOs.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Lack of Community in WoW
So I play MMOs with a guild called Shadowclan. We've been in existence since the early days of UO and have since participated in many other MMOs together and we're a very solid, tight-knit group. But, for some reason, we can't seem to keep a large number of members active in WoW. I was mulling over this problem recently and came to the conclusion that WoW not only lacks any community tools or support, but also, simply by its design, greatly hinders any community development beyond the hardcore raiding guilds.
When you join a guild in WoW, the only things you get are another chat channel, a guild tabard (which is hardly noticable on any of the character models) and a guild tag over your head! There is no guild hall, no uniforms or clothing/armor customization. Huge gaps in the crafting patterns available make it so that guild crafters have minimal use and the separation of players by zone/level leaves little opportunity for face to face interactions.
In fact, the players are so severly segregated by levels, that really the only chance to form strong bonds comes when everyone gets to level 60 and you can start hitting the high-end instances together. Unfortunately for Shadowclan, we're not really a raiding guild.
But the hardcore raiding guilds have their own issues. Squabbles over loot, players coming on going on a regular basis, membership restrictions based on class balance, and often, huge schisms amongst the guild members that usually results in a split, merger or complete abandonment of the guild entirely! Some raiding guilds manage to hold things together better than others, but for the most part, it's an extremely dysfunctional community.
Sadly, this lack of a coomunity feeling has led to my guild gradually dying off in WoW despite several resurgences and even an attempt at an entirely different guild concept (The Cog on The Venture Co. server). I expect another resurgence for Burning Crusade (and maybe even a small one for the new honor system), but given that Blizzard shows no interest in promoting and supporting community and player tools, I don't think that Shadowclan will exist in WoW in the near future with all of the upcoming MMOs next year.
I think WoW is too far involved in itself to make any signifigant changes along these lines, but, for the purpose of discussion and thought, here is one simple way I would go about trying to foster a greater community feeling in WoW.
1. Expand crafting. And I'm not simply talking about adding in more level 60+ epic weapons. The lower levels are really where the crafting system is lacking. For example, I'm an axesmith. Yet, for some reason, I can make a level 18 two-handed axe and a level 39 two-handed axe, but nothing in-between! That's a 21 level gap where my specialty is completely useless (not that either of those axes require a specialty). If I'm an Artisan Axesmith, I should be able to make all sorts of axes for all levels and classes. Same goes for every other profession. Alchemy and Enchanting are better covered, but they could all use some help.
I don't have any other suggestions off the top of my head. The very limited amount of player interaction and world interaction within the game creates a difficult barrier to overcome. Feel free to chime in if you have any comments and/or other ideas!
When you join a guild in WoW, the only things you get are another chat channel, a guild tabard (which is hardly noticable on any of the character models) and a guild tag over your head! There is no guild hall, no uniforms or clothing/armor customization. Huge gaps in the crafting patterns available make it so that guild crafters have minimal use and the separation of players by zone/level leaves little opportunity for face to face interactions.
In fact, the players are so severly segregated by levels, that really the only chance to form strong bonds comes when everyone gets to level 60 and you can start hitting the high-end instances together. Unfortunately for Shadowclan, we're not really a raiding guild.
But the hardcore raiding guilds have their own issues. Squabbles over loot, players coming on going on a regular basis, membership restrictions based on class balance, and often, huge schisms amongst the guild members that usually results in a split, merger or complete abandonment of the guild entirely! Some raiding guilds manage to hold things together better than others, but for the most part, it's an extremely dysfunctional community.
Sadly, this lack of a coomunity feeling has led to my guild gradually dying off in WoW despite several resurgences and even an attempt at an entirely different guild concept (The Cog on The Venture Co. server). I expect another resurgence for Burning Crusade (and maybe even a small one for the new honor system), but given that Blizzard shows no interest in promoting and supporting community and player tools, I don't think that Shadowclan will exist in WoW in the near future with all of the upcoming MMOs next year.
I think WoW is too far involved in itself to make any signifigant changes along these lines, but, for the purpose of discussion and thought, here is one simple way I would go about trying to foster a greater community feeling in WoW.
1. Expand crafting. And I'm not simply talking about adding in more level 60+ epic weapons. The lower levels are really where the crafting system is lacking. For example, I'm an axesmith. Yet, for some reason, I can make a level 18 two-handed axe and a level 39 two-handed axe, but nothing in-between! That's a 21 level gap where my specialty is completely useless (not that either of those axes require a specialty). If I'm an Artisan Axesmith, I should be able to make all sorts of axes for all levels and classes. Same goes for every other profession. Alchemy and Enchanting are better covered, but they could all use some help.
I don't have any other suggestions off the top of my head. The very limited amount of player interaction and world interaction within the game creates a difficult barrier to overcome. Feel free to chime in if you have any comments and/or other ideas!
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