Category: Lord of the Rings Online

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Beauty in Simplicity

I am glad that forthcoming MMOs are stepping back from the precipice of the uncanny valley– a revulsion to the near real.  Quite a few upcoming MMOs are hedging towards stylized graphics, ala Team Fortress 2 or dare I say World of Warcraft, which are also less taxing on system requirements than photo realistic styles.  The stylized feel for things also gives the MMO artists another opportunity in creating some artistic moments through simplicity.

Wizard 101, for example, is a very graphics light game.  It doesn’t have huge polygon counts or untold amounts of shaders, but it does have style.  It’s simple and clean, filled with teenage wizardry, and fairly evocative spells.  Even in the age of Aion and Crysis, Wizard 101 still has some moments that made me appreciate the artistic direction.  The spells are the obvious choice, but I want to focus on the level design.

In my play through Wizard City and Kroktopia most of the PvE zones have been a street or street-like tomb with buildings and props off to the side.  There is the occasional tree or sarcophagus, but the space is not really much for looking.  Most of it is actually rather mundane.  It really just sets the atmosphere.  However, in nearly each zone the level artists made sure to add a stop and stare moment.  In Wizard City it might be a portion of the zone torn asunder with pieces magically floating in the distance, or deep below in Kroktopian tombs it might be a cave with a quiet lightning storm below the skinny stalagmites the wizards stand on.  I do not think that these moments would be so evocative without the simplistic baseline the rest of the zone portrays.

Lord of the Rings Online, on the other hand, is debateably one of the most beautiful and atmospheric MMOs.  Yet, how many vistas and painstaking creations get lost in the clutter.  I was very excited to walk in to the Prancing Pony for the first time as a young lad.  I stepped through the door, saw Butterbur, and was thereafter sensually overwhelmed.   There were patron NPCs, “roleplayers,” countless tables, a fireplace, things on the wall, maybe even wooden or antler-built chandeliers.  I focused on the thing with the quest icon above its head.  Any stop and stare moment was completely lost in the business of the place.

The most picturesque moments on Lord of the Rings Online, for me, have been the interplay between the sky and the distant landscapes, or a night upon Amon Raith, or finding a quiet fishing hole.  The more active the environment whether through props or moving players or NPCs, the less stunning it becomes.

I have great respect for the artistic minds that create levels above and beyond mere game design.  The whole zone becomes a type of symphony having many active allegro and vivace moments that come from movement, combat, and realistic business, but I think it is equally important to have a holding coda as well.  The base tempo for each zone will definitely affect the spikes in either direction.

–Ravious
obliged to be industrious

Now what?

Before Book 8 went live, I kept pushing my kin mates to take a stab at 16th hall or Dark Delving to see about getting me the 5th piece of radiance I so desperately needed to fight the watcher. I felt like I would miss out on exploring the new raid with the kin if I didn’t. I was worried they would do it until it was boring and I would be left behind.

Eventually, I did get that 5th piece of radiance armor on my Runekeeper, as well as two +15 pieces of radiance armor. But I haven’t seen the new raid yet. My kinship just doesn’t have enough radiance or confidence to attempt the new raid. We all still need the +20 radiance pieces from the watcher before attempting the new raid. Each week we to the watcher to spend three hours getting wiped.

The tactics we use are the same as those that have been posted and seen on youtube. The characters who go to the Watcher raid are all decked out with the rare drops from the instances and radiance armor. We all have the best food, potions, traits, tokens and scrolls. These are some of the most skilled players I’ve ever played with in any game. Yet every time we try it, some people die half-way through the fight and everything falls apart.

I wanted to get to the new content so badly, but I don’t think my kinship will ever see it. Now what?

A Six Sigma Response?

Sanya Weathers at Eating Bees wrote in her seminal piece on the five things that will tank your community ‘(4) if you are a community manager that is ignoring the eighteen whiners on the boards ignoring them will hurt the community when all eighteen of them are saying the same thing.  You are the one who is wrong, not them.’  But, what is ‘not ignoring?’

There are a few shades of response a community manager or a developer can write, and unfortunately the most common seems to be something along the lines of “your concerns are noted, and have been passed along or considered.”  In my opinion, as a player, this response is only marginally better than being ignored.  I don’t understand why the responder does not employ one of the most basic of management techniques: active listening.  Repeat the players’ concerns in a condensed, polite manner, and some of the most acidic of criticizers will melt.  “Hey, this dude is on our side.”  Shocker, I know.  Plus, many community managers have to digest and reiterate player concerns to the developers anyway; might as well double-dip on the work already done.

Orion, a developer for Lord of the Rings Online, did just this in his most recent blog post.  He reiterated in a condensed version the complaints about hard mode/radiance gear/radiance gating in a few short paragraphs.  My kinship went bananas.  One of the guild leaders wrote “if he told us after [the active listening response] that it was ‘working as intended,’ I would’ve still been happy because they understand our problem.”  Well of course.  They have understood our problem all along.  Certainly there are varying levels of detail in the response, and I would submit that the more detail in the response that mirrors the actual complaint the more soothed the savage beasts will be.  Active listening in a super-condensed manner might not give the full result.

–Ravious
till Max said “be still”

The Problem, In a Nutshell

Melmoth discusses:

Look, if I fight wolves in the dwarf starter area, and I kill the requisite hundred and fifty thousand million of them for the Wolf-Slaughterer title, it’s fair to say that I’m pretty good at killing wolves, some might say that I am accomplished if not a little genocidal. Therefore, if I then go to another area, further afield than where one might find a new character normally, I should not find super wolves, ten times the power of a normal wolf, who have but to look at me in a slightly disapproving manner for all my armour to jettison from my body and my skeleton to explode out of my skin and bury itself five feet under the ground. I am a wolf slayer! Look! You gave me a bloody title to acknowledge the fact that I spent a lot of time killing wolves, why can I not kill these wolves? ‘Oh’, say the developers, ‘but these are different wolves’. Different how exactly? Were they privately educated? Have members of their number graduated from Sandhurst? Did they train at Hereford in the use of special tactics and weapons?

The epic journey from pig to pig I comment with this image. That’s basically the state of things. The only thing keeping you from leveling on boars from 1 to the cap is that you must complete some quests to get access to zones, like exiting the newbie instance or the faction grind to get into Lothlorien, where the level 61 pigs are. You did not think of “access to higher-level pigs” as one of the benefits of that elf faction, eh? You haven’t even seen the edges of the box you’re trying to think outside of.

I pull this example from The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢, but it is almost universal. My Dark Age of Camelot (Albion) character could do just the same, from piglets to rooters with some zombie pigs in between. I have killed the same goblin 100,000 times, with him in a variety of hats and colors.

: Zubon

Another Dip Test

Sometimes people make pretty quick judgments.  A dip test.  That’s why the starting areas, quests, music, etc. of an MMO have to be polished to near-blinding.  What about a dip test for the game in the middle?  Many times gamers lie awake at night – not “tired” –  thinking about games.  There is some amount of activation energy required to roll out of bed, log on, and play in a way where it was meaningful to roll out of bed in the first place.  A midnight dip test.

I was also not “tired” the other night, and I wanted some quick MMO play to calm my furied mind.  Wizard 101 was the easy choice.  I could log on, warp close to a play area of choice and run there in under a minute, and log off within a 15 minute time span.  I opted, actually, to play the mini-games to refill my potions and see how high a level I could get.  Games like Wizard 101, Puzzle Pirates, and Guild Wars rule at this quick guilt-free amount of play where activities that occur are meaningful. Continue reading Another Dip Test

Orion on Emergent Gameplay

While many are still splashing the ripples from the Twixt or Myers or whoever’s attempt to explain sociological emergence in a one-sided, four-colored narrative, Orion – one of the developers for Lord of the Rings Online – put up an excellent post discussing emergent gameplay on his blog.  He discusses how all exploits start with emergent gameplay and uses the Mines of Moria instance, the Grand Stair as an example. It’s well worth a read.

–Ravious
first principles, clarice. simplicity

EDIT: Linked to Orion’s post as originally intended, not my comment.

I couldn’t kick him

My kinship wanted to do the turtle raid. We didn’t have enough people to do it without inviting people from outside the kin. One of the people we picked up was a guardian. The first thing we noticed about this guardian was his health pool. My squishy little runekeeper had the same amount of health as he did. An inspection of his traits revealed that he had terrible equipment. Many of the things he was wearing were quest rewards in dire need of replacement. His virtues had such gems as “Charity 9” and “Wisdom 4”. He also didn’t have his traits set up to hold agro.

My kin-mates were complaining about the guy on our teamspeak server before we started, but we went with him anyway. During the battle he had the attention of the turtle for about half the time. He just couldn’t hold agro. When the turtle was down to about 50k health, we wiped. I’ve seen turtle raids before, and if you wipe when it has 50k left, you’re in trouble.

Continue reading I couldn’t kick him

Need before Greed

Today I joined a pickup group for the Forges with my Runekeeper. It was a pretty good group. We all kept re-doing the instance so that each person in the group could get the desired item at the end. Most of the time, the person who just won the roll says “thanks for the group” and leaves. So I felt pretty good about the group.

One of our members was a Lore-master who would always switch to their level 48 Captain for the last chest. They had asked if this was OK before starting, and our leader had told him it was fine. It was on our fourth run that a second age Captain’s weapon dropped. The leader of the group gave it to the level 60 Captain in the group without putting it up for a roll.

He said, “I think you’ll agree that this should go to the other Captain, because you can’t use it yet.”

I could hardly believe my eyes. The whole point of our Lore-master attending was so that he could bring his level 48 into the group and roll for the equipment. He was getting his equipment ahead of time so that he’d already have good gear when he reached a higher level. The level 48 Captain just said that he couldn’t argue with a group leader, and left the group. Then he logged off.

Continue reading Need before Greed

Simple Graphics for Simple Minds

Setting things on fire in-game is satisfying to a degree that is psychologically worrisome. The implementation, however, is important.

One thing I really enjoy in Team Fortress 2 is playing a Pyro. When you light someone up, they really are on fire, and it covers the entire character model. They yell for help, announcing that they are on fire. If there is water on the map, they may go diving off the edge. If you get a kill, the body will smolder on the ground. Nothing messes up an enemy charge like lighting up a few people, who instinctively go looking for health in a way that simple bullets cannot cause.

Contrast this with your MMO. What happens when you hit an enemy with an elemental effect? Most of the time, it seems, you can have an animation during the casting time and for a second or so later. You can have someone on fire from a half-dozen sources, and they just have a string of debuff/DoT icons. Stacking DoTs is still a good thing, but is a far cry from the panicked shouts of ogres.

Some do this a bit better, or do for certain effects. Some of the City of Heroes control graphics are great. Lock your enemy in a block of ice, boulder, or sphere of electricity. Have little ice cubes fall off a slowed target. Great. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢’s Red Maid gets a great graphic on her immobilize, with red specters rising from the bloodied waters to hold you in place. Does your game do anything like this well, where an ongoing effect has a highly satisfying ongoing visual? Let us know.

It would be nice to see them scale, from a low-level singe to a high-level pyre. I am not sure how well that works for all energy attacks. I can see frost scaling from a blue tint from a low-level slow to a giant ice cube. I would need to think about some of the others.

: Zubon