Author: Zubon

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Gender Differences at Terra Nova

Dmitri Williams at Terra Nova links to their latest paper exploring the EQ2 data. The highlights are not terribly surprising. One notable is that men play more on average, but the hardcore women are more hardcore. This will not surprise anyone with a female guild leader.

Dmitri’s highlights note the higher percentage of females reporting bisexuality, although not the higher percentage of men reporting homosexuality; the total not-straight percentages are about the same. That is consistent with the demographics I recall, although he notes the female reporting rate as higher than the general population. I wonder the extent to which these are factors of reporting or of the underlying population. In every online community I know, women discussing bisexuality receive quite a bit of positive attention; men, not so much. There could also be an age factor there.

: Zubon

Instance Quests

Unheralded, Turbine solved a technical issue very neatly. (I may need some sort of conditional tense there, because some things break under pressure, but let’s assume it keeps working.) When you enter an instance, one or more quests pop up on the quest tracker, without your having talked to an NPC. Nothing fancy there, but let me explain the problems solved.

First, this is how you see hard mode in dungeons. Continue reading Instance Quests

Our Favorite Bugs: Skirmish Edition

One skirmish never launched [update: launched the day I posted this] and one was shut down due to unforeseen problems. I have not seen an explicit statement, but it sounds like the Survival skirmish shut down because you could stealth and just stand there while enemies accumulated, unable to find you. I miss all the fun exploits.

But no, the best bug so far is that the healing soldiers do not heal. This is not to say that they just stand there, which does happen at times, but rather that their healing abilities are not actually healing. Instead, they deal negative damage to you. What is the difference? First, your damage mitigation applies to negative damage, so Guardians in heavy armor might get only half the healing. Second, healing buffs do not apply to negative damage, so you get no benefit from traiting your soldier for better healing, your equipment that increases incoming healing, or even the healing soldier’s healing buff.

While this is not an official “known issue,” because why would you put something like that on the list where your players can find out about it, it has been acknowledged and may be fixed someday.

: Zubon

Pro tip: If you want to farm skirmish marks and don’t need the xp, and who does with all the quests available, lower the skirmish level. You may lose 10% of the marks, but you finish in half the time.

Follow-up to Yesterday

  • “Gay” as an insult, and the common slur variations, is not acceptable behavior in polite society. If you need an explanation why, the line for the remedial course in being a member of humanity starts over there. One questions the degree to which the internet is polite society, because “gay” as an insult, and more often the slur variations, are very common online. Somehow, boys and many men have yet to realize that talking about gay men a lot is the wrong way to project an identity of heterosexual masculinity. Of course, if you tell them they are compensating for their own insecurities, they try harder, which is no good.
  • As usual, I go to Language Log on linguistic issues. First, we have the use-mention distinction, which is that referring to someone else’s use of a term does not imply that we are using it ourselves, only mentioning that use. This will include fictional characters, where we reconstruct the problem. If you were offended by this comic or this sketch, you missed the point. Poe’s Law may ring ever true, but we bring attention to folly to mock it, not to endorse it.
  • Second on the linguistic front, we have taboo avoidance. Some things we avoid even mentioning except obliquely. So yesterday I avoided both f-words that are so commonly paired. I recommend that last link as the inspiration for the phrasing “homosexual in a derogatory sense”: I think the implied insult looks vapid and absurd when made explicit.
  • The picture of the internet toughguy is incomplete without the homophobia.
  • We the majority do not get to dictate to the minority what they are allowed to be offended by. When physical gay-bashing stops, we can talk about being too sensitive to verbal gay-bashing. Complementarily, we are not limited by whoever in the room claims to be most offended, and subjects of discourse are not off-limits because someone says so. You can be a jerk in either direction. Don’t.
  • Still my favorite forum mod quote, from the D&D boards: “[[Do not use the word ‘gay’ as a derogatory term. (There is no conceivable way that getting someone pregnant is ‘gay’ in the literal, non-insulting sense.)]]”

: Zubon

Internet Toughguy

Regarding recent so-called “player-versus-player” activity:

While you may have technically gotten a “kill” from me, I would like to point out that I was lagging at the time, and possibly AFK and/or typing a message to someone. I should further note that, even under these imbalanced conditions, you felt it necessary to bring several of your “friends” with you, as you could not do this on your own. I believe that your availing yourself of this further exploit demonstrates the fundamental weakness of your character and that of all the players on your team.

I might go on to note that you are, in fact, lame, and most likely homosexual in a derogatory sense. This is demonstrated by your number of kills, which indicates either that you are a new player below my consideration or someone who spends far too much time playing and only accumulates such a body count through wasting endless hours in an unskillful manner. In either case, your lack of ability is clearly demonstrated in this instance. I feel it incumbent upon me to point out the superiority of my genitals to yours, and upon further investigation, I have some observations to make upon your mother’s.

I find it entirely inappropriate for you to be carrying on in this manner about what is, to one of my wisdom and experience, a minor affair that should surely have been dismissed by now. Your inability to admit your error in this circumstance further demonstrates your personal failings, and by association those of the other members of your team. Not, I should hasten to add, that the other players on my team are any better, as I constantly need to carry them through my Herculean efforts. At any rate, I have not heard either of your previous comments, as I already have you on ignore, because you clearly have nothing further of value to add to this discussion of your personal shortcomings. Surely, you would be too cowardly to say such things if you were within my grasp, instead of hidden safely behind your monitor. We shall add this posturing to your list of deficiencies.

In summary, if I may re-iterate, your mother. Yours in fellowship,

: Zubon

Blue Bar Bye-Bye

or: “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Brown Bar”

I have this felt need to level exclusively while under rested xp. Otherwise, it feels like I am throwing away free experience points that I could get for doing exactly the same activities.

The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ lets you spend destiny points (earned by leveling, PvMP, and some quests) to refill a bit of your blue (rested xp) bar. I did that fairly frequently in my original push towards 50, as I was playing often enough to keep that bar around its minimum. Leveling in Mines of Moriaâ„¢, that was not an issue, because the blue bar capped while I took several months off, and it is difficult to burn through the whole thing without playing 24/7 (or 28/6).

Logging into Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢, I did not start with much blue bar. Perhaps I should have stayed logged off for a week before launch. As I emptied it in the first night, I reflexively opened the destiny points window and gave it a couple of shots. Then I realized: this makes no gorram sense. It is not as though I am in a big hurry to reach level 65. Even if I were, paying for a little more blue bar perhaps shaves hours off my leveling time, maybe a night or two of normal play. I have an entire year to gain 5 levels, and I expect to play far more hours at level 65 than getting there. And getting there early just means being slightly stronger when I start on the content I will be repeating for months if I really am that excited about playing.

If I really am that obsessed with playing under rested xp, I have alts. I have a Minstrel nearing the old level cap, and I have a baby Burglar who devastates skirmishes with his archer soldier. The new content will not be less new to me if I see it a week later, and they might have some bugs worked out if I see it a month later.

Viva le leveling whenever I get around to it!

: Zubon

Muscle March

I don’t know that I can top Woot’s description: “All I want for Christmas is some frantic digital homoeroticism.” You know, the MMO blogosphere was burning up all week with discussion of solo versus group and instances versus shared worlds and all kinds of things. Here we have a small group game that is certainly not set in ersatz Tolkien-land. If playing Rock Band feels a bit awkward for you, why not Muscle March at your next (office?) party?

: Zubon

A Request From Your Fellow LotRO Players

Please run a few skirmishes solo. Please read the little page the tutorial gave you about traiting your soldier.

We are all very excited about the new toy, and I understand that you want to jump right in with the skirmishes. And big groups are better, right? But when we have a full raid and two-thirds of the soldiers are fresh from the tutorial, those are effectively level 30-40 players in our level 60+ group. That is not a problem on the normal fights, but for anything hard, you’ll notice that the raid is getting crushed.

This is an issue that will work itself out in a few weeks. You can help work it out faster by doing your part. Thank you.

: Zubon

City of Skirmishes

I know that I see everything through the prism of City of Heroes lately, but can you look at the new LotRO skirmishes and NOT see City of Heroes missions? City of Heroes was not the first to make the randomized, instanced content on a standard template, but I think they did it most whole-heartedly, and I am going with this because it is the one I know best.

Skirmishes are instanced quests that have a standard template with some randomized elements. They are a series of encounters that you could think of as fight units. One unit of combat for a solo character is two normal enemies or one normal and two swarm-class. Scale that up for larger groups as you add signatures, elites, and more of them. You select these enemies from a standard menu, say a dozen groups and a few enemy variations in each group, attaching a prefix to designate how tough each one is. So your first fight is against one hale wolf and two weak wolves, then two hale bandit captains, then one hale bandit captain and one hale bandit archer, etc. The skirmish sends random fight units against you until it reaches the appropriate number of them for that fight, then sends the boss.

Continue reading City of Skirmishes

Super-Sidekicking

Phedre reminded me that City of Heroes continues to be far more awesome than whatever it is the rest of us are playing, not only having five years of experience with features that too few games are stealing, but also continuing to create solutions to problems in the basic MMO model that work.

Issue 16 added “Super-Sidekicking.” You are probably familiar with City of Heroes as the trend-setter that has driven other games to implement some version of side-kicking: let one player function as if he were the same level as his friend, keeping his current suite of abilities but with level-appropriate numbers attached. City of Heroes has taken this to the next level: everyone on the team is now always the same level. Levels are no longer any barrier to playing with your friends. Join up, pick a mission, and you are all the right level for that mission. This also solves the old problem of power-leveling, because you cannot soak up experience at the minimum level: you are now the same level as everyone else, so might as well pitch in. Your level 2 character still has just the few powers with no enhancements, but your base numbers are just as good as the big boys, or you can get them to all visit your level for some newbie missions.

The particulars of this solution are tied to CoH’s heavily instanced structure, which makes this function more easily. Still, very few MMOs have no instancing these days, and there must be something more your game could be doing to bring you closer to where your friends are playing. The next step for Turbine’s new skirmishes?

: Zubon