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[Rift] Social Work

My last post exploring a phenomenon I saw in Rift created a swath of great comments that cross a broad spectrum of ideals. The issue was how evidential of, well, anything is the post-event public group scatter. My favorite was from coppertopper who said that the phenomenon was like “a comedic aside on a system that works so well, the only thing to pick on is no one stays around for a group hug after the event is finished.”

There is an interesting prejudice with what is required to “be social” in an MMO. “Social” at its base is activity in a group. Driving a car on a crowded freeway is a social activity. I can’t selfishly do what I want. I have to respond to other people. It doesn’t seem social since all the other people are hidden behind a ton of metal and plastic, but we are all acting as a group. We know that if we all follow the rules and remain within set social boundaries, we will all get to work more efficiently.

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[GW2] PAX Chat With Jeff Grubb

I had just introduced myself to a legend. Jeff Grubb was one of the first ArenaNet devs I started talking to at the NCSoft Meet and Greet at PAX East. He recognized my name, and I apologized for being a thorn in his side ever-seeking answers to the deep lore of Guild Wars. It was just that this man had helped build a world so deep and mysterious that lore-delvers, like myself, were constantly trying to make sense of it all. This was not the first world he had touched, as Grubb had helped build many of the most famous Dungeons and Dragons worlds. Like all the ArenaNet developers I would meet that night he bled enthusiasm, his infectious laugh hinted at the fact he kept lore secrets that would drive Cthulhu mad, and it was apparent that, like the man said, Grubb contained multitudes.

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[Rift] The Scatter of Shame

Melmoth over at KIASA analogizes the open-grouping system in Rift with some comedic situations. For as far as I have gone in Rift, I tend to disagree. I have yet to feel that my “personal” game space has been invaded. Yet, there is a personal downside. Let’s call it the scatter of shame. Going off Melmoth’s last situation involving his wife and many partners, there is another moment where everybody is finished with Melmoth’s wife and the party is over. People still have to run by Melmoth, scamper down the hallway, and jet out of Melmoth’s house. Everybody tries to do it without looking at each other (or Melmoth). No one seems to want to bond or mention that they just partied together and there may be other similar events going on elsewhere.

It’s like a race to see who can exit the raid the fastest. I still think this is another symptom of the solitary events. Perhaps if events fed into one another in a more elegant way, people would forge bonds more similarly to a dungeon crawl than a pity group to share a slow-spawning quest mob. It actually occurs in invasions as well because after a rift is closed half the raid might go one way, another quarter might decide to head to the main hub, and the rest decide to all go bio. They might forget to leave so when I finally hit the next event destination half of the raid has wasted space. It’s just easier to leave the public raid right away and rejoin close to the event.

Trion Worlds next grouping mechanic will be a way to form a group, but I really hope they start taking note of ways to keep a group together post-event. Then again this all might just belong in the personal preference bin. I’m not sure. System flaw or subjective flack?

–Ravious

 

To Create and Destroy

Games, even violent ones, frequently create situations where it is easier to create than destroy. Well, no, it is easier to delete a level-capped character than to build one, but in the normal course of MMO play, even your most destructive actions tend to build rather than destroy.

In the modern parlance, “RPG” means “character advancement.” This is what you are building. While your actions on-screen involve stabbing things and setting them on fire, everyone you kill gets better within 120 seconds while the experience you gain is permanent (outside old-school EQ). You earn money faster than you can reasonably burn it, and some games include character advancement while you sleep.

Are there any in-game actions that would actually harm Azeroth? You could hack the servers, you could reduce Blizzard’s revenue by being enough of a jerk to drive away players, but could you actually destroy Stormwind, defeat the Horde, or even permanently kill a single wolf? The worst you can do is throw away your own advancement or impede others’ in limited ways.

Everywhere else in your life, building is hard. Left alone, things fall apart. Reality is a treadmill, where your house and body need maintenance just to avoid getting worse. Bullets are cheaper and more effective than equipment for keeping them out of people. Kipple accumulates. It can be pleasant to pretend that things out of sight remain as they were instead of atrophying and decaying.

: Zubon

[Rift] A Lock of Genius

SynCaine spoke on this already, but the “coin lock” feature is seriously a “duh” moment. I definitely appreciate the fact that I can log on to my Rift account from any computer to play, but seriously. Basically, if the account logs in from, say for a completely random country chosen at random, China then the account will go in to locked mode, which does makes it so funds/materials cannot be liquidated and characters cannot be deleted. Tampering down the accessibility just a little for a significant trade off of having increased account safety is well worth it. It appears that players are getting the “coin lock” feature in the update for Rift today. I already did this with Steam’s version, Steam Guard, and I am really glad that the PC gaming industry giant is also helping to lead this change.

Blizzard’s authentication device was cool, but Trion Worlds is also working on another way to authenticate using text messaging or a mobile phone app. They really are working hard for subscription fees. I hope future games, especially ones already dedicated to having mobile phone apps, take note.

–Ravious

[GW2] PAX Chats on Mechanics and Crafting

Jon Peters (“Pepperjack”) and Jonathan Sharp (“Chaplan”) gave me so much information, my simple sheet of paper with a few questions looks like five different people wrote across the page as fast as possible. There are arrows, sideways sentences, boxed off areas, and I’m not sure it will even all be able to be translated here. Whereas other developers at the NCSoft Meet and Greet at PAX East represented the content, lore, or art departments. These guys represented all things mechanics. With that there was one dominant theme in my talks with Peters and Sharp, they are still iterating on nearly every mechanical feature in Guild Wars 2. It is important to keep in mind that even things fans “know” now because of the demo, interviews, or official articles might be obsolete on launch.

I’ll give an example, at the outset, with the vitality attribute. With a blog article on the newly condensed attributes, many fans were unhappy with vitality. Toughness seemed like the cool attribute reducing the damage per hit, but vitality simply gave more health. Peters said that a necromancer, for instance, is still going to love vitality because it synergizes so well with their skills and Death Shroud. Yet, they understand that vitality might need a twist, similar to how the precision attribute garners crit effects. If toughness is the straightforward “reduce damage,” and vitality gets that twist, then the pair will more closely mirror power vs. precision. This is not to say that vitality will definitely change, but it is important to note that even the most basic mechanics are still being viewed with a careful eye.

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[Rift] Gloam-covered

I have moved on from the first zone in Rift, and I am about half-way through Gloamwood. The game is still fun, but things changed so rapidly. I am not sure how to perceive the future. Just over the mountains is a bustling, event-filled forest filled with animal tears and sunlight. In my neck of the woods, there is gloom and the occasional mid-20’s refugee, like myself.

The zone population has plummeted. After the first zone the drive to get back with the herd must be insatiable. After spending a few hours in Gloamwood, my biggest public group has been three people. I have not seen an invasion, and I am constantly trying to take down footholds on my own. We all pretend not to see that major death rift looming over the central town with its elite mobs.

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[GW2] PAX East Dev Asides

I talked to so many ArenaNet developers at PAX East. Sadly there were a few I did not get to, but the ones I did talk to were more than happy to discuss their job. I would like to thank all the developers again. Anyway, this post is dedicated to all those discussions I had. There will be two other posts regarding lore and specific mechanics, but this one is for all the other tidbits. Fair warning: I don’t have anything exclusive, mind-blowing, I-can’t-believe-you-got-a-dev-to-say-that, but these tidbits are interesting enough for me. I hope you enjoy.

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Your Name Here

Setting aside content-based restrictions, how do and should games implement names? That is, what text can you enter into that field?

Options here include whether the game allows spaces, numbers, punctuation, or other special characters such as letters not used in that language, smilies and hearts in the character map but not on standard keyboards, etc. The issues of which letters/characters to allow will vary by language, and spaces and punctuation affect the chat system.

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[GW2] Demo Thoughts

This was it. I was at the opening of the NCSoft Meet and Greet party at PAX East 2011, and I would be playing Guild Wars 2 for the first time ever. After this there would be no going back. I was almost unsure how to tackle the demo. Some players were going to go in like data miners and suck as much marrow from the demo’s bones as they could. Others would try and explore to the farthest reaches the demo would allow. Others would just play, perhaps not realizing how deep the rabbit hole went. Should I go in as a journalist, as a fan, as a player? Should I watch the cinematics I had already seen? Should I carefully choose my character’s set up? I had no idea as I clicked the “start demo” button.

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