Category: General

General

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38 Studios

I am pleased to present the first comprehensive look at 38 Studio’s upcoming MMO code-named Project Copernicus. Thank you to Steve Danuser and Ryan Schwayder for sharing this with us, via their blogs.

I have to admit that I took the bad news about 38 Studio’s difficult financial situation this week rather hard.  I have been following this game since before the company was even formed, when Curt was talking about his desire to build something great, something he could be proud of and something he would enjoy playing after he retired from baseball.   When two of my favorite MMO bloggers and game designers, Steve and Ryan, joined the team, and then Salvatore, McFarlene, Rolsten the names kept coming…  I was excited.

The single greatest moment in my blogging career was related to 38 Studios and Copernicus.  In 2007 I wrote here at Kill Ten Rats about the game, and Curt Schilling stopped by to chat.   Curt is a hero of mine.  He is a legend in my hometown, a devoted husband and father, a pillar in every community he has lived, a vocal advocate for many worthy causes, and above all he is a gamer.   A sports giant that I can identify with on a personal level, and one who has proven himself to be an honest, honorable winner.

To read the troubling issues that Curt and the team at 38 Studios are going through right now, is heartbreaking.   I don’t know what will happen, but I hope for the best.  I want to play the Amalur MMO.  Keep fighting guys, give us a world we can fall in love with.

If you build it, we will come.

~Cyndre

[Eve] Fickle Wormholes

The past few weeks have been a series of ups and downs in Wormhole Space.  We had a string of really good spawns at the beginning of the month and are now in something of a slump with regards to new Cosmic Signatures…

It can be very frustrating to log on, scan the home system and the surrounding constellations, and realize that there is almost nothing you can feasibly do that will be of any significant benefit.   On a positive note, the last payout was a whopping $348,000,000 ISK so we are really getting good at milking the spawns we do get.   Now if we can figure out how to make content more consistent, though I think we all already know the inevitable answer… move to a bigger Wormhole with a 2nd WH Static.   If only we were ready for it, but we will be soon.

~Cyndre

Other Funding Sources

The latest news on Copernicus is not good. Reason comments. Recent successes on Kickstarter led to discussion of the inevitable project that is not an utter fraud but just the normal well-intentioned vaporware (or a released but lousy game). Rhode Island’s loan guarantee is the potential equivalent of a $75 contribution from every citizen, except that they pay only if the project never ships.

: Zubon

[GW2] Searches I Did Not Think Would Work on Google

“guild wars 2 guilds”
Yes, it takes you to the page you want on the wiki. Even “guild wars 2 guild” gets you the desired link on the first page of results. That is, if the page you want is how guild mechanics will work in GW2. If you wanted a list of Guild Wars 2 guilds, I don’t think that really exists yet.

: Zubon

Not Caring About Alex Mercer

I’m a big advocate for awesome tutorials, because you’d better spend some time on the part of the game that every single player will see. I picked up Prototype on sale some while ago, booted it up recently, and found myself distressingly uninterested in an opening that went with too much awesome per unit of grounding. It either needs less grounding, so that awesome/grounding approaches infinity, or I need a reason to care about what is going on.

If you haven’t played, Prototype starts in medias res. This is apparently a month after the start of the game, to which you will flash back in a moment. This is a nice version of a common approach: show the player the things this character will be able to do by the late game, then take them away so that you can have an early game. Some games have you de-powered, robbed, etc.; Prototype instead has its opening at the end of the story, like the Odyssey or Twilight. This creates a gameplay problem and a story problem.

The gameplay problem is that you can already do everything and have massive powers that the game helpfully switches for you and explains. As the player, you are basically in a visual novel where you click to slaughter people and crush tanks. You do not know enough to have strategy or tactics, so you follow the indicators, watch things explode as you click them, and maybe eat some people. As a player, I am not invested in “click to advance.” Alex Mercer apparently just needs me to provide some motive power for his killing spree.

The story problem is that there is enough to imply that the game wants you to care but not enough to actually make you care. Hey, tutorial, very first introduction, I get that. But you are sent to murder dozens of people before being given much reason to except that they are cartoonishly evil (and shooting at you). There is a conflict here, but the role I have been handed is that of a mass-murderer who is attacking the military and may get bonuses for picking off civilians as collateral damage. Some games address this by using monsters and robots so that you are not murdering innocent people as a form of character introduction; Prototype goes with giving the humans faceless masks and having a cut scene where they murder the innocent, too. Must be a local custom. Other games take the opposite tack: do not even pretend to have a plot, just go straight to the bloodshed. No context, no moral standing, just mindless violence. Completely amoral works much better than poorly sketched black and very dark gray morality. Part of black and grey morality is that you must make the villains worse than the protagonist; if the player quickly pulls ahead of the villains in terms of pointless bloodshed, you really have created a murder simulator.

Of course, that seems to be the point of Prototype.

: Zubon

M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse Winner

It was not easy to narrow down to a group of 20 finalists for the M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse Giveaway, but I managed. For the record, these are the top 20 I selected: Adam, atx, Teer, Syl, Jasen, Bloodchild, Amarok, Daniel, Masael255, Cody, mbp, Sg McManus, Robbie, Kemica, James, CrashBomber, Brian J, Defarious, Alex Goresch and Chris.

I will now roll my twenty-sided polyhedral die and the winner is…

Continue reading M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse Winner

Newbie Blogger Initiative – Cowboy Up

Syp at BioBreak is doing the Good Work, and not just in real life. He is working hard on a project called the Newbie Blogger Initative to support would-be bloggers find their legs all the quicker. It’s no secret that good intentions drive people to create blogs every day… a few posts later, and the blog is as good as dead. Most are lucky to have a dozen hits before death.

There’s a lot of questions, and the good veterans of the ‘sphere have already put forth a huge amount of thoughts on the subject. I want to start at the origin. Well not really, the answer to “Why blog?” should just be “to write”. Yet, there are a lot of questions as to whether we are journalists. One idiotic court has already decided mostly we aren’t, and are therefore less protected by the First Amendment than some paycheck’d writer-brethren. I don’t know whether we count as journalists, but I do know this…

We are goddamn cowboys.

Continue reading Newbie Blogger Initiative – Cowboy Up

Default Appearances

Developers: use the character creation screen to show off the characters at different stages of their careers and in different activities. Instead of having one character model on screen, have three: one in the default starter outfit, one in a mid-game or cosmetic outfit, and one in your most splendid endgame gear. They all rotate when you click and drag. Give each of them different weapons, so you can show off the warrior with an axe, hammer, and sword & shield. Then have an “animate” button that puts them into a dance. This will let you show off your character animations and demonstrate how the character looks in motion. Have a choreographed skirmish between the three: baby ranger sends his/her pet in to fight while level 30 ranger is setting a trap and endgame ranger is using a fiery attack volley.

This will give your players a better idea of what they are getting into. It shows the growth of the hero over time and gives the player something to look forward to. It will give your art team a chance to show off a bit and not force them into picking one paper doll to show off each class, although it will significantly increase the work required if you are using a different outfit for each race/sex/class combination (you already have the newbie outfit, so pick one that looks good for most at mid/end, vary it on a case-by-case basis). It also lets you show each class in simple, sexy, and badass versions so that you can appeal to multiple audiences and avoid the kind of accusations that have been flying about the MMO blogosphere this week. This is how she looks in skull-covered black plate mail and this is how she looks in midriff-baring armor.

: Zubon

I swear I have seen a version of this before, but I cannot place it. Guild Wars 2 seems to approximate it by showing off the characters in spectacular armor then switching them to newbie gear once you actually pick, which feels like a bait and switch. (In terms of that hero’s journey, the human/norn female rogue apparently becomes less modest over time.)

Default Appearance

There is nothing wrong with having stripperific outfits in game. Many people like them. Just don’t make them the default option. I logged into the GW2 beta, and of all the female norn default appearances, only the engineer has invented the “covered midriff.” We justified half-naked norn by their tendency to turn into bears, so they can’t be encased in metal … except that the men are. The human women seem to be a good mix, mostly with reasonable outfits, although we have the Asian lass in the orange bikini with some sort of metal exoskeleton floating around her. Except for the mesmer, the rest are great, classically stylish. (The charr look silly, clothed, but silly. The furred race uses more cloth than the giants?)

If people really like the stripper outfits that much, put them in the cash shop. This benefits your bottom line and your first impressions. League of Legends had people lined up to demand the chance to pay for a bunnygirl outfit for Riven. I have no idea how much money Riot made off that, but it seems like a wise business decision. Give people pants for free. Make them pay to take them off.

: Zubon