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Alt Souls

I have nothing useful to add to existing reviews of Rift as it stands in beta. It seems to be an evolutionary improvement on existing MMOs, but nothing grabs me by the lapels and says I must play. In the first few rifts I have encountered, I am not seeing the “2.0” part of “PQ 2.0”; the first Defiant rift parallels the first Chaos PQ nicely, down to the boss that dies in less than 10 seconds because every character will see that PQ/rift. If you like the current crop of MMOs and want a better one, Rift is for you. The downside is trying to get all your friends to quit WoW to go play it. I could not even get my friends to play WoW on the same server.

One encouraging thing is how the soul system affects altoholics. I have long been asking for the ability to play multiple classes on the same character. Now I can. If I level-cap four characters, I have access to every possible class and class combination in the game, and I would be able to swap between at least a dozen of them in less than a minute. That is really handy. Most have been referring to souls as talent trees, which they are, but they are also how you cram the usual 8-16 classes into 4 base classes. You even get overlap within those 4, such every base class can fill multiple roles, rather than just having minor varieties on how you deal damage.

: Zubon

From Personal to Civic Value

Increases in personal satisfaction, though, are not all that’s at stake. In terms of social, as opposed to individual, value, we care a lot about how our cognitive surplus gets used. Participating in [crowdsourced crisis information] creates more value for society than participating in [making lolcats]; making and sharing open source software creates value for more people than making and sharing Harry Potter fan fiction. The value from Ushahidi or open source software is more than the sum of the personal satisfactions of the participants; nonparticipants also derive value from the effort. You can think of this scale of value as rising from personal to communal to public to civic.
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One such form is personal sharing, done among otherwise uncoordinated individuals; think ICanHasCheezburger. Another, more involved form is communal sharing, which takes place inside a group of collaborators; think Meetup.com groups for post-partum depression. Then there is public sharing, when a group of collaborators actively wants to create a public resource; think the Apache software project [or Wikipedia]. Finally, civic sharing is when a group is actively trying to transform society; think Pink Chaddi. The spectrum from personal to communal to public to civic describes the degree of value created for participants versus nonparticipants.
— Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus

Our MMO world tends strongly towards communal sharing, where even our public sharing (a wiki for every game) is mostly of value within the community, but see tomorrow’s post about how that value expands.

: Zubon

Scheduling and Potential Apologies

In a very unusual turn of events, I will be offline for most of the next two weeks. In fact, I am already there, having scheduled posts for my absence. I will apologize now if any of them turn out to be really inappropriate due to events that had not happened when I scheduled them. Nice boat.

I have the last of the Cognitive Surplus quotes scheduled. Also apologies to Clay Shirky and his publishers if I have gone beyond fair use. There are lots of good ideas to discuss here. I presume I am helping business more than hurting it, but that’s your call if you want me to take posts down. (The potential irony is noted, yes.)

: Zubon

Annual Safe Driving PSA

I am heading to my usual weekend-long New Year’s LAN party, and while I may no longer work for the state traffic safety office, I want to remind you to drive safely wherever you may be celebrating.

The worst time for alcohol-involved traffic crashes is midnight to 4am on January 1. Having a sober driver is a given, but I recommend celebrating somewhere you can sleep. As you know from your PUGs, you are not the problem, that other guy is, and that other driver lost count after the fourth tequila. Do not be between him and the tree. In case he missed the tree, watch for him in the morning. Your body processes about 1 drink per hour, so many people will be waking up still drunk.

If you are transporting alcohol to or from a party, put it in your trunk. There will be extra police out. You do not want questions about open container laws, and anything with a broken seal is “open.”

And if you are staying home, remember: don’t drink and tank.

: Zubon

Understanding the Meta-Game

Numbers and arithmetic seem to be introduced as arcane games of memorization rather than the useful tools they are. Children are especially in need of math, often being intuitively confused when size and number conflict with value. A nickel is larger than a dime, so you want a nickel, yes? And four pennies would be way more than one little dime, right? Those of you who saw small children in recent gift exchanges understand the perceived value of large blocks of colorful plastic versus tiny devices.

Your barber wants to introduce you to the dumbest kid around. He sees the little boy going by, calls him in, and offers him a simple game. In one hand, the barber has a single, beat-up dollar bill. In the other, he has two shiny quarters. Which does the little boy want? He happily takes the two quarters and goes on his way. The barber laughs uproariously. “I must have done that two dozen times, and that little idiot never learns.”

Later you catch the boy coming out of a candy shop. You ask him why he takes fifty cents instead of a dollar. Surely it cannot be because two (quarters) is more than one (dollar)? “If I take the dollar, the game is over. I must have made twelve dollars off him, and that big idiot never learns.”

: Zubon

joke adapted from

CoX Steam Sale

City of Heroes Going Rogue Complete Collection: $10 on Steam right now. This is the base game and all its expansions, plus an item pack, and it includes a month of game time. This costs less than one month of game time. This is a good deal if you are thinking of trying (or re-visiting) City of Heroes anytime in the next year.

Also Plants vs. Zombies for $4.

: Zubon

Guild Wars Edge of Destiny Review

The second book in the Guild Wars fiction line was officially released yesterday. One can find Edge of Destiny by J. Robert King at most bookstores and e-bookstores. The book was better and worse than Ghosts of Ascalon, and I will get to that. For Guild Wars fans and future Guild Wars 2 players that want a deep background for some of the major NPCs in their Guild Wars 2 personal story, I’d say that this book is worth the read. I think that ultimately the Guild Wars 2 world will be deeper and richer because I read the book.

Okay, now I will try and be spoiler free-ish, but you have to be “spoiled” on one well known fact regarding Guild Wars 2. This book details the formation of the famous guild Destiny’s Edge. The spoiler is… the book also details their separation. Most Guild Wars 2 fans knew this because a large part of Guild Wars 2 will be getting the band back together to rock some dragon face. The “why” is much more interesting, and I will not be spoiling that.

Continue reading Guild Wars Edge of Destiny Review

Buying Skill Ranks

Are we past the point of repeatedly buying the same skill as you level, to get Fire Bolt II, Fire Bolt III, …, Fire Bolt CXVI? Just scale the skills with levels. I understand that having ten versions of each skill gives the illusion of “something new every level,” but you can give rewards that do not mess with your game’s scaling. You can even use a point investment mechanic to get most of the same effect without the annoyance of re-training and adjusting the hotbar.

City of Heroes does this. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ does this (except for passive skills). Warhammer Online does this. Dungeon and Dragons, the basis for all these CRPG mechanics, has been doing this for decades (fireball does 1d6 damage per caster level, capped at 10d6), although not so much in 4th Edition.

Really, we promise to pretend not to notice that our spells do 5% more damage while we are fighting goblins with 5% more hit points. MMO players are used to looking past that. Just stop pretending that Fire Bolt III was a good design decision, and especially do not start calling them Lesser Fire Bolt, Fire Bolt, Improved Fire Bolt, Greater Fire Bolt, Lesser Fire Blast, Fire Blast, …, Supreme Exalted Fire Conflagration… And double-especially do not do that while having all those fire bolts on an alphabetized skill screen with no indication of level order.

: Zubon

Looting

Are we past the point of clicking on bodies? Just put the loot in my inventory. Give me some sort of message, great, but most games do not benefit from the extra step of having me click on a body, bag, etc. Experience goes directly on to my character, cash sometimes goes directly onto my character; just put the loot in my inventory.

City of Heroes does this. Global Agenda does this. Team Fortress 2 does this. Rift does this with rift loot. LotRO skirmishes are half-way there with most rewards appearing in your barter wallet as a quest reward mechanic.

The downside is the question of limited inventory space. What do we do when inventory is full? When we click on bodies, the loot is just there, waiting for us to open some inventory slots. Do we just miss out on loot if we are full? My immediate notions would be:

  • Yes, so watch for the big red FULL alert and the continued red text on your screen.
  • Stop limiting inventory space. That might be a really bad idea in a game with lots of trash loot, which leads to the next step of stop with the trash loot. Alternately, have some sort of genericized system that takes less (server) storage space rather than having dozens of things to remember per item.
  • Have a loot overflow holding area. It would be a buffer that lasts for as long as you are logged on, kind of like buyback at the NPC merchants. As long as you stay online (plus time x, to deal with connection isseus?), your bag is infinitely large, but make sure you decide which items you are keeping/selling before logging off. If your connection is lousy, you will want to check that more often, but then you would have the same issue about corpses de-spawning with your loot still inside, and you would still be checking your inventory just as often with the question, “Which of these am I keeping or trashing?” Be sure to move the epic loot to permanent storage after the boss fight.

Any version would be purely a gameplay abstraction that makes no sense even after the best stories I concocted justifying it in-world, but we already accept inventory mechanics in which 100 metal ingots take up as much space as a ring, bears sometimes carry swords and multiple hides but have only a 50% chance to have one leg or tooth on each corpse, gold bars are worth less than gold coins, and gold coins take up no space. Of course, I usually use ranged attacks. I can already imagine sniping one target in a dangerous group and running, where now I would need to go in if I want the loot from that kill.

: Zubon