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Guild Wars – Those Meddling Players

Many players are getting used to the new dailies in Guild Wars, especially the PvP-based daily.  With the two PvE-based dailies, they cannot go on insta-farm mode because of the need to have the mission or explorable area unlocked.  Players cannot just create new characters and attack the mission or boss.  The PvP-based daily allows for insta-farming because players can create new PvP characters in order to redo the quest as many times as they want.

Now the balance lies in the fact that with PvE-based quests, players can complete the daily Zaishen Challenge by using heroes and henchmen and normally PvP-based quests require grouping up with active players, which would feasibly slow down the farming of the PvP-based daily.  The outlier is Hero Battles, which pits one player and three AI-controlled Heroes against another player and three more Heroes, because the only other player needed is the competition.  In a game that touts skill over time played as a banner (and in a perfect world) this would not be a problem… except when devs create “long term” goals that require players to do a lot of dailies, player-driven efficiency kicks in.  (Whether you want to call repeating the varied and different Zaishen Challenges “grind” is too subjective for this post, but the argument is noted.)

Continue reading Guild Wars – Those Meddling Players

Creative Anger

I’m in a rut. I could definitely use some intellectual stimulation, and I also need to work out some deep-seated anger issues through a creative outlet. So I’m going to design a game on paper. Of course, by ‘design a game’ I mean ‘just write down the design’, and by ‘paper’ I mean this very lovely blog of ours.

I’m thinking about dispensing the whole thing in chapters, as the ideas come along, so as to not crash the net with a wall of text. It could also be a good opportunity for our distinguished readership to chime in and express their likes and dislikes about the thing as I go along. Given my history (and luck) I’ll get a ton of bad comments, but the odd thumb up is bound to slip through, which makes it all worthwhile. Somehow. It would also give me a chance to defend “design decisions” against a live audience, and not just the wife whom I suspect is tired of hearing me elaborate about game theory, cuadruple-guessing player motivations and why “Diku” would be an awesome baby girl name in 20 years.

Chapter 1 will come “when it’s done”.

Congratulations, Kendricke

Kendricke, friend of of Kill Ten Rats, guild leader, blogger, and Clockwork Gamer, is now an Associate Producer at Activision. Despite our most popular post of the year, we congratulate him. He is taking a break from the porn star life to see how the other side of the equation shapes up.

Let us know how that works out, especially since that’s the title I’d be aiming for if I ever try to enter the industry.

: Zubon

level haters

People in Star Wars Galaxies today say, “I hate levels.  Remember SWG when it launched?  It didn’t have levels.”

No, they don’t hate levels.  They just hate being told their level is too low.  SWG just hid the levels from them and called them “skill boxes”.  The fact that they called their levels skill boxes isn’t what they liked.  They liked the fact that a newbie character could get a pistol from a friend and join a 20 person group to do what was essentially the “end-game” on the first day they played.  They enjoyed the fact that they could team up with a buddy and take down a master bounty hunter with newbie characters.  They never were told that “your level is too low” and they never felt that they had to level.

As much as people hate levels, they love levels too.  In Lotro, there are class-traits, race traits, virtues, reputation and equipment to all work on when you’re tired of leveling.  But guess what?  All that stuff has levels too.  You have to kill something many times for your character to get a bit stronger.  It’s just packaged in such a way that it doesn’t look like leveling.

The levels are a necessary addition to any MMO.  Without levels, what purpose is there in doing any activity more than once?  If you want me to kill hundreds of trolls in the Misty Mountains, then I need to see my XP bar moving towards the next level, or my deed bar moving up to the next virtue, or silver adding up to the next gold, or my legendary weapon bar moving up to it’s next level, or my reputation bar moving uptowards kindred.

(My)Last Word on Free Realms Launch

While I hadn’t planned to post more on the subject, I was contacted earlier today by SOE in regards to my post. We talked through the elements I raised like rational people and I came out of it feeling like they are going to launch with eyes on the road. While I still hold that it’s too early to launch the product yet, and I won’t be signing myself or my kids up for it to start with, I was happy to spend some time talking through the plan rather than simply being told “You’re crazy, get over it.” I sincerely wish them goodwill on their launch.

Also, since I’m taking the most heat over one element, let me be completely clear – the price right now, at release, is $4 for 10 cards for their TCG, which was the element of the game I enjoyed the most (which is likely why the high cost I saw mentioned in several places bothered me the most).

12 zones by Christmas

What’s the future of Lotro?  We now know that Lotro will have some kind of “continuation of the epic story line” for book 8 in June, and later in the year we should see Dol Guldor, a level cap-increase, and a paid expansion.  The expansion is rumored to be “Riders of Rohan” for several reasons, but mainly because ridersofrohan.com redirects to lotro.com.  But when it comes down to it, saying we’ll get something including Rohan is about as vague as telling a player that we currently have some place that includes Angmar.  There’s no reason to think that an expansion called “Riders of Rohan” could only include Rohan.

 

I’m expecting some zones to come in free chapter updates, but for the most part I’m expecting the world to be expanded as part of an expansion.  The Moria expansion alone is reportedly 35% as large as all the other areas put together in terms of land-mass. The next expansion has been in development since before Moria launched, which means the same philosophy that planned Moria’s 12 zones was also used to plan a similar number of zones for the Rhovanion expansion.

 

What zones am I expecting with this expansion?  Well lets look at the map of Rhovanion:

They only label zones they will add...
They only label zones they will add...

http://www.orderofbane.com/Files/Rhovanion_map.jpg

 

The folks at Turbine don’t want to have to bother making a map twice.  If they are planning to add an area that will be visible on the Rhovanion map, then they are going to label it and put a little graphic under the label.  The Gladden Fields for example has little flowers under it.  That means we’re getting Gladden Fields.  The Wilderland is clearly marked on the map.  And although I think that would make a boring area, we must be getting it as a zone because they made sure to make it so clearly.  By contrast, Isengard is not even mentioned on the map.  As cool an area as Isengard might make, I doubt we’ll ever see it.  Perhaps allowing us to attack Isengard before the fellowship arrived would be too lore-breaking.

 

So here’s my prediction for 12 zones we’ll see by the end of the year: 

  1. Dul Guldor (Free update)
  2. Fangorn North
  3. Fangorn South
  4. The Brown Lands
  5. Emyn Muil
  6. Rohan East
  7. Rohan West
  8. Rohan South
  9. Dagorlad
  10. Wilderland
  11. The Wold
  12.  Gladden Fields (Free update)

 

Strategic Class Selection

Being a rare class is a loot boon in the Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ raiding environment. Tell me if you are seeing something similar/different in your game/server.

First, understand that (at least on our server) raid loot is awarded by a standard need/greed roll. I know of guilds that use DKP and such for their guild raids, but the game is very supportive of casual raiding, so I have never been on a raid that used anything other than need/greed (with master looter enabled). This does give an under-equipped character greater rewards for raiding, but no one seems to care much. Even if there were DKP, how many would you need to spend in competition with your guild’s other level 60 Warden?

We noticed that we had a dozen level 60s on last night, so we called in impromptu turtle raid. Our team make-up was rather good without much fiddling, despite what looks like a ridiculous class balance: we had 6 Hunters, 2 Minstrels, 2 Burglars, 1 Guardian, and 1 Champion. For the non-LOTRO players, the turtle raid calls for tank rotation due to a stacking, incurable DoT, and the easiest way to do that is with a Burglar’s Enrage ability, which makes the enemy attack at random. That makes everyone a mini-tank, spreads the damage, and makes it a race between your DPS versus growing damage-over-time. The ideal team would probably be 10 Rune-keepers, 1 Burglar (for Enrage), and 1 Loremaster (for fire damage debuffs).

As one of the 6 Hunters (before dropping to let a Captain join), I realized that my odds of getting loot were not great: 1/9 that any item is for Hunters, then 1/6 that I get it. Hunters are the most popular class, so every group of six for every raid will have at least one Hunter. Minstrels have a similar problem, caused by their necessity rather than their popularity. Meanwhile, if you came to our raid with one of the other seven classes, only a Burglar would have needed to roll to take home his/her class’s First Age weapon. I have not checked how the raid turned out, but that was a greed roll if the drop was for 1/3 of the classes.

A similar factor explains why Hunter items are always ridiculously expensive on the Auction House. For every person who needs a good Warden javelin, three need a good Hunter bow.

: Zubon

More on Free Realms

Despite the blogs and posters claiming otherwise, I did not hate Free Realms. In fact, I had high hopes for it, and at least two potential customers for it. Just to prove that, as well as flesh out my review some more, I’m going to give a quick 5 pros and cons of Free Realms. My goal here is to make sure that if someone is listening to me for advice on how they are spending their gaming dollars that they have a full picture.
Continue reading More on Free Realms

Oz Does Free Realms Beta

For the past few weeks I’ve been heavily playing Sony’s new MMORPG offering, Free Realms. I’ve been working on a review for here for a while, but had refrained on posting it until I had confirmation that the NDA was lifted. Tonight, while wandering through the forums, I read that they lifted the NDA on April 22nd, although they really didn’t make a lot of noise about it. I also found out that they are now going to launch on this Tuesday the 28th, after just under two weeks of a single round of closed beta. I was stunned, and can only imagine that the people behind the Vanguard launch are making the decisions. That said, what follows is a review from the prospective of both a long time gamer who has played nearly every MMORPG that has come down the pike, including beta testing launched and shelved products, and also a father of a pair of pre-teens, who are clearly this game’s target market. If you’re not interested in the long breakdown, here’s a one sentence summary:

Ever wonder what the child of ToonTown and Everquest would be? Wonder no more.
Continue reading Oz Does Free Realms Beta