A Christmas Update

I wanted to let you know I am alive, and currently immersed in my Sith Warrior in SWTOR. I will be composing several impressions about the game, including one about how Bioware's launch plans panned out, and they will be posted to ForceJunkies.com, with posts here redirecting you to that site.

I hope your holidays are wonderful, and I will be back in the swing of writing this week. Take care, everyone, and thank you for reading and commenting this past year.

Why Skyrim Flooded the MMORPG Blogs

A post crops up here and there, but for the most part the "Would Skyrim make a Good MMORPG?" posts have died down. It's an excellent game, and I'm not here to poke fun at anyone who spoke about it: On the contrary, I think the sudden interest in it is indicative of a larger issue in the MMORPG market at the moment. But let's briefly examine Skyrim first.

In a nutshell, it is a standard fantasy setting in a wintery climate. In comparison to Oblivion and Morrowind, you can't get more fantasy than "Destined to Slay Dragons." How it accomplished this is by having a variety of "main quests" for various factions with well written stories, a truck load of  miscellaneous quests based entirely on rumors and books you pick up, and then letting you run free and do what you want. I can't recall where the quote is from, but a comment I heard about the game was that it reminded players that games are meant to be played with. Other single player games tell you where you need to go in order to proceed, where Skyrim gives you a country and tells you to have fun.

This you likely knew, but there is one part about that everyone highlights: The freedom. Going into random caves and ruins is fun, despite most of the interiors being copy/pasted and put into different order. It caters to a part of online games that has been neglected for a long time: Giving the world meaning. Exploration has been eschewed in favor of instances and set areas for questing or doing group activities.

I could continue, but bemoaning the loss of the world in MMORPG's is kind of old hat at this point. What I wouldn't give for a game like Star Wars Galaxies with huge worlds that people could create cities in and explore to find fun, iconic locations and secrets. SW:TOR is in Early Access phases and will be launching extremely soon, and it will likely tip the scales in favor of big budget games. That's the mindset I fear: Go Big or Go Home.

Salem has some good prospects for world building, I'm rather excited to see how that turns out. I have my fingers crossed that it gets enough attention to garner copycats. No matter how much we hate the slew of "Me too!" 's that followed WoW, it did quite a bit to work out the flaws of the theme park genre. Blizzard made their competitor's mistakes into their own success. Perhaps on a lesser scale this time, to avoid the mass amount of horror stories that the genre generated from its employees during that time.

I believe it will take some time before 'the world' as a concept re-emerges into the online gaming scene though. The MMO industry is notoriously slow, and we must wait until the players who are dissatisfied move into positions to enact changes in the industry. Until then, I suppose we'll all enjoy the offerings they have to offer. SW:TOR, anyone?

Onlines Worlds, First-Person Shooters and DUST

Combining MMORPG's and Shooters is always a difficult procedure. Striking the right balance between long-term progression and the fast-paced, drop-in and drop-out action of the modern shooter can lead to some disastrous results. DUST is going to be facing these challenges by integrating itself into EVE. I think the best way to figure out how they may accomplish this is by examining other games that have approached this style and see how they did it.

Firstly, let's look at Call of Duty: Black Ops, a game my roommate played much of in college. Playing with friends or dropping into a completely random game, you still were in for short, 10-20 minute matches with fast-paced action an clear objectives. Team Fortress 2 shares this, and will likely be more familiar to PC players, but I chose Black Ops because of their progression system. Besides choosing your weapons and customizing your character, you have three enhancement slots to slot perks in. You can level up these perks by completing certain achievements to get better versions.

So, FPS players are not strangers to any sort of long term progression. But we find ourselves with a problem when we lean to hard on the MMO aspect. Global Agenda, a free-to-play shooter available on Steam, is an example of taking too much from the RPG department. Levels and stats are, in my opinion, not systems many shooter fans want to put up with. Achievements, unlockables and monetary systems are good things to bring in though, and Global Agenda ports this last one well by offering upgraded versions of weapons for tokens earned in game.

Match based gameplay is a tricky one. Specifically, how do you reconcile the battles in EVE with the drop-in and drop-out gameplay? Individual players could be catered to using a mercenaries style system: While a battle is raging, the corporations sponsoring each side could offer a payment for participating. Bonuses could be awarded for achieving certain goals, such as a certain amount of kills or successfully capturing a control point. Battles would be long term, but players could individually pick and choose with contracts to take based on how much money they want to earn and how long they want to play for.

In fact, ISK could form the basis of a tremendous amount of systems for DUST. Contracts could be drawn up with mercenary corporations to pay them to defend or attack, paying a premium for a guarantee on teamwork and skilled combatants. Weapons, vehicles and gear are suddenly opened up into a new market for EVE businessmen, and being able to reliably acquire the supplies you need in order to keep waging a battle could become a concern for corporations as well.

We run into an issue when it comes to the skill system, because even though the 'set it and forget it' style may work for EVE, DUST players may prefer a system that gives them more tangible benefits. EVE players know the worth of a 5% increase in the long term, but FPS players are more likely to wonder why the hell they need to wait a month for that bonus. The official website says that skill points can be earned in-combat or offlines, but CCP could really take a page from CoD in this regard and offer more active bonuses in the form of perks. The skill system would work on a smaller scale, but the perks system really shines for being able to customize your character without giving players too many difficult decisions.

Quick gameplay, money, guns and perks make up a comfortable set of systems that a typical FPS player can enjoy in his game. If they wanted to play an MMO they have many options to do so, but prefer this style of gameplay. The long term battles for planets and long term view that EVE players tend to take in their schemes and actions need to be tempered by a mercenary system that can appeal to FPS players. Though I do not own a PS3 (and pray that they consider a PC version of the title) I'm excited for the possibilities it could bring to the market and will be looking forward to watching this sub-genre evolve whether it fails or succeeds.

Wouldn't it be Cool if...? Mobiles Games and Creativity

I have a friend who plays Words with Friends. This is not a metaphor for me being addicted to this game, I'm too busy trying to catch up with everybody who is playing Skyrim. I'll get there eventually guys.

No, I'm more interested in how its online connectivity works. Your board is saved, and you can essentially play a game over the course of a few days or a week casually.

You know what I wish I could play like that? Final Fantasy Tactics. Or any turn based strategy game. Hell, put Chess on that sucker, that'd be awesome. Fact of the matter is, we don't have enough turn-based strategy games around and the mobile platform is a perfect field to get in on this.

Competitive or versus the computer, the foundation is already in place: Short, meaningful and fun turns that have a larger effect on a battle that can take place over a larger period of time. Fun in short bursts, and in longer play sessions. And with the ability to store saved games either on your phone or iPod or on an online server that you can share with friends, you can play anything from Advance Wars to Civilization on your phone.

Of course, tweaks would have to be made to the system to suit it towards the casual gaming crowd. RPG's would have simplified stats and (in the case of FFT or Ogre Battle style games) very clear job trees. Same goes for civilization trees, though I'm sure a full game of Civilization with enough players could go on for a month or more.As cool as that sounds, perhaps ripping a page from the Civilization Revolution title and shortening the game length would be wise.

Regardless, the groundwork is laid for some potentially entertaining and big name titles. It is at this point in writing the article where I tried to go Google Civilization on Facebook in an attempt to find an example of a company branching out into new mediums with established titles. Instead, I found this. Damn you Civilization, for taking my idea 3 months before I wrote it. And bravo for taking the idea, because I like it a lot and (if I owned a smart phone) I would buy this in a heartbeat. I am disappointed in the lack of multiplayer support, but without any way of not making the games last weeks, I can't really blame them for it.

I'd love to see an Advanced Wars or Ogre Battle style game for the iPad or iPhone though. With my choices for turn-based strategy games wittled down to the Might and Magic series, I'm looking for some company to pull through for the genre.

Other People Ruin My Immersion

Those of you who follow this blog regularly know I am a Roleplayer. Those of you who don't, well, now you know.

I can't say I've been a part of many RP guilds for very long. I believe my longest stint was a year and a half. Pretty long in Internet Time but not so much in the grand scheme of things. I've done a lot of casual RP'ing to say the least, though those terms tend to be incredibly imprecise. I still don't know what constitutes a Heavy RP'er, for example, and I'm sure I could think up some weight related joke to go along with it, but that's not what this post is about.

 Let's start with a little story. I just finished Arkham City yesterday, having spent the past few days with family and my brother's Xbox. Ra's Al Ghul is in the game, and inspired by the great depiction of him that the developers had created, I wanted to make a character in City of Heroes based on that design. A Vigilante who dispenses lethal justice. And a stalker, that works great! He could have some great moral stories...

That is where I stopped. I thought about all the roleplayers I had met, not only in City of Heroes but in every other game, and immediately scrapped my project.

You see, setting up a storyline that involves other people is far more trouble than it is worth. I will admit, this becomes easier when you have a group of friends you know, but even then you have to take into account the player far more than the character. Every step must be planned in such a way that it would not offend or intrude on another person's character. From my experience, people roleplay to immerse themselves in a fantasy world, yet at the same time demand a high level of control over their character's story.

And because of this, roleplayers find themselves unable to trust anyone else to respect the supposed sanctity of their character's story. I have run into people who outright /ignore any character who brings unwanted conflict to their character. Though City of Heroes should be a fantastic ground for roleplayers to create comic book worthy tales, they are unable to do so when pitted against one another. An NPC group must be the target of the heroing/villainy in order for it to reliably work. I am extremely dissapointed that epic rivalries such as Superman and Lex Luthor, and Batman and the Joker cannot arise in RP because the players of those characters would never be spending most of their time arguing rather than allowing something bad happen to their character.

To bring this around to a relevant point for all you non-roleplayers, this is also the reason why Skyrim would make a terrible MMORPG. It's a fantastic world that you can immerse yourself into very easily, but put another person in there and you find yourself losing that immersion. Change nothing about the game except adding other players, and by simple act of people talking you will be jaunted out, forced to examine the game mechanics rather than the story and world, because that is what everyone will be talking about.

I think I'll make that Stalker anyway. But I'll be playing in the game, not in the world like I want to.

Tin Mechanics, Because I'm No Longer in the Cool Club

Yup. I don't own Skyrim. My 15 minutes of being relevant is over, at least until SWTOR releases.

With that, and having worn myself out in the beta this week, I decided to load up an old favorite of mine: Monster Rancher 2. Many moons ago I played the hell out of that game. Never won the final tournament, but I enjoyed the whole raising and combining monsters gig, as well as stealing every CD in the house to see what monsters I would get. My favorite was the pile of goo in camo colors and a bandana you got from the Metal Gear Solid disc.

I rediscovered this game in college, specifically after my roommate decided to play Playstation games while drunk. He ended up making his monster run away after non-stop shooting range practices.

Liquor fueled escapades aren't what this post is about though. My recent thoughts about Salem and permadeath have put the idea of temporary versus permanent progression into my mind. For example, in MR2 the monster you raise only lives for a certain amount of time. Before they pass, you can freeze them and combine them with another monster. If both are sufficiently leveled, you get one that has far better stats than a normal one. Despite this, you still have to train them from youth to adulthood again. You suffer a setback for sure, but it is one that allows you to progress further than you could originally.

Which is why I think developers should capitalize on a reincarnation system in a permadeath styled game. Let's use League of Legends as an example. Each time you enter a match you need to level your hero once again, but the more matches you play the more points you get, and you can spend those on permanent upgrades to your Summoner, which affects every hero you play. Why not apply that to an MMORPG? You have a Soul, which serves as your permanent progression. Equipment and Gold are not carried by this soul, because as everyone knows, you can't take it with you when you die. Yes, you with the gold plated hubcaps. But your actions in "life" can improve your next life.

Gurgthok is an orcish rogue. He is not a very good rogue, because rogues need to be sneaky and Gurgthok is built like a linebacker. Despite this, he gets by on brute force alone and manages to get up to level 15 before he is bludgeoned to death by a group of enemies he over-pulled. Because he wasted his life points, a system used to revive in the field like a normal MMO, he must return as a new character. His life experience brought him a good deal of points to spend on his soul, as well as a few to put into the stats of his new character. Now an axe-swinging Barbarian, Gurgthok has never been happier. He and his axe are married and have three children together.

Souls can serve as a measure of what you have accomplished in your (potentially) many lives and what you can bring to your next character. Perhaps you unlock a trait you can apply to new character, thereby increasing exp gain, or strength, or giving a future class proficiency in something they would not normally have been proficient in. Design it less like a tree and more like a store, where players can pick and choose their own rewards, and add in some unlockable ones by completing special or challenging tasks in the game, and you are in business.

With these changes, raiding and daily quests can be nearly eliminated in favor of a crafting and exploration based game world. Everything is more dangerous now that you can permanently die, yet you still have a measure of progression while doing so. This eliminates one of the major drawbacks of permadeath. I did say one, not all. It would still not be a system for everybody. But I think it would make an excellent compromise.

Target Audiences in Advertising

Everyone is talking about the NDA drop and SWTOR.

I wanna talk about WoW. Because I'm a rebel. Or something.

So, a little tidbit off of MMO Champion from today:

"This Sunday, an all-new World of Warcraft television commercial will debut on CBS during the Chargers-Bears NFL game (kickoff time: 1:15 p.m. PST/4:15 p.m. EST). The ad is set to air sometime during the first half… and when the star of this spot asks, “what’s your game?” you’d best have an answer ready."

 The Cataclysm commercial as well was aired during the Super Bowl. Now, I realize that WoW attracts large audiences who undoubtedly come from diverse backgrounds. But when I think of the target audience for World of Warcraft, I don't think of this:

Those guys don't look ready to raid anything but a keg. But you know what? They may just play WoW.

Last time I talked about target audiences, I talked a bit about the phrase "It's not for you." Many people who keep up with gaming news are aware of Nintendo's infamous declaration that they were no longer targeting gamers with their products. I am curious if WoW is going a similar direction with that. Let's face it: I can't find many bloggers on my blogroll who still play WoW anymore, and if they do (as I mentioned in a previous post) they have to justify it. Sometimes at length, over a series of posts analyzing it to assure people that their experience was, god forbid, actually enjoyable.

Is that the general consensus amongst gamers? Though we have few sources (read: none) to back this claim, many have mentioned that WoW is many people's first MMO's, or even their first games. 12 million could possibly be more than the amount of people who consider themselves gamers in the US alone.

So perhaps Blizzard is no longer attempting to target WoW towards gamers, and instead trying to catch new customers in their nets. They still have Starcraft, Diablo and Titan to cater to their fanbase, which is a far cry more than the subtle middle finger Nintendo is giving us. But why football games? I mean, I understand the superbowl due to the high amount of people who watch it who aren't football fans, but why not the World Cup? Or maybe Shark Week? Hell, even during an episode of Family Guy would work pretty well.

I don't claim to know much about football fans, as I was raised in a household that loved baseball (despite being the odd one out who didn't like sports). So you could say my impressions are fairly minimal. But of the impressions I have, I can't put together WoW and football in many ways. Except maybe the rampant swearing during competitive matches, but that is more of a universal constant.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is this simply Blizzard's attempt to advertise outside the gamer crowd and change WoW's target audience, or is there something about football fans that would make them enjoy orcs?