Kill Ten Rats

Some times, devs just know things:

The only place where I find a very broad approach useful is in convenience of play. What is a player’s overall tolerance for inconvenience and delay of any sort? In that one regard I do tend to think in terms of casual and hardcore I suppose. A hardcore player will put up with less refined UI, buggier content, long travel times, and other things that basically delay or degrade the play experience. A casual player will quit after fairly little irritation of that sort.

Vastin knows a lot of things.

–Ravious
how deep the rabbit hole goes

Zubon many times has reminded MMO players that in “their” epic story to become a hero, well… you aren’t.  This position is debatable (and has been debated).  Regardless, we can assume for the sake of this post that making the player feel like a unique hero in a game-spanning story is quite difficult.  What if the player was not actually supposed to be the hero in the first place?  Could the writers create a story, where the player was merely a cog in the grand workings of the world AND also make the story meaningful?  My position is that “yes, with skilled writers this is possible.”

Continue reading Persignifficult (A Reminder Revisited)

The Top 10 Reasons to go to Fan Faire 2009…

10) Las Vegas!!
9) Antonia Bayle & Firona Vie in your pictures.
8) Tournaments, Live Quests, and Prizes!  Oh My!
7) After hours fun in the Legends Lounge.
6) Late night LON and SWG TCG!.
5) Meeting your game’s Developers!
4) Meeting your in-game friends, in real life!
3) Brenlo singing Karaoke.

2) SMED singing Karaoke!
1) The Pink T-Shirt contest at the Banquet hosted by Brenlo!

Top Ten reaons to NOT go to Fan Faire:

10) It’s in Vegas!  Which means there’s dozens of places cooler than Fan Faire within walking distance.  You can’t even use the excuse “There’s nothing better to do” when at Fan Faire
9) You’ll be embarrassed when your friends find out you have pictures of yourself standing next to Firona Vie in your camera phone.
8) The “prizes” you get for live quests will suck so bad that you’ll cry.
7) Late at night, you’ll wonder why you thought it was a good idea to spend 200$ on a plane ticket, 150$ on a room and 89$ on an MMO faire, just so you can hear hype about upcoming updates 15 minutes before the people on the forums.
6) You’re still crying about the “Delux Sarlac Trash Can” and  “Improved Junk-loot Flower” prizes you got back in #8 of this list.
5) Playing a virtual card game like LON TCG and SWG TCG in their computer lab will make you feel more lonley than if you had just sat in your hotel room alone.
4) Everyone on the forums who said they will be there, won’t.
3) Brenlo singing Karaoke.  You’ll want your 10 minutes back.

2) SMED singing Karaoke!  When asked for another encore of “Achy Breaky Heart”, Smed will say yes.
1) The Pink T-Shirt contest.

Game 1: unreliable servers, up right now, but freezing and giving me rollbacks.
Game 2: in beta, should stay there.
Game 3: in beta, will probably still need that NDA even after it launches.
Game 4: account servers will not let me log in to give them money, nor will they send me a password reset e-mail.

I’m going to bed.

: Zubon

I recently said in a kin-chat in Lotro how much I love the new Quest Guide that points me to where I need to go for each quest.  No more looking things up with google!

One of the people in kin-chat responded by saying, “That thing is for stupid babies, too lazy to read”.  I could sense an argument brewing in chat, so I quickly said, “Yeah babies like me! :)” in kin chat.  No one had any place to rush to my defense, and no one had any place to argue against the use of the quest guide.

What exactly gets people in Lotro so fussy about the addition of this quest guide?  The little arrows pointing you towards your goal goal are completely optional, and disabled by default.  Really, I think it’s the principle of the thing, more than the thing itself.  Quest guides make tasks like “Find treasure x” or “Hunt down mob y” much easier.  Newbies want things easier so they can rush to the high-end content, but old-timers want the game to be as hard today as the day it was made.

One of my kin mates took six months to reach level 50 in Lotro.  I took a little over six weeks.   Sure, he wasn’t the fastest leveler back then, but the speed at which I’ve gained levels has actually made his accomplishment seem trival.  The quest-guide, in combonation with the xp-curve readjustment, has left many old-timers feeling bitter.  To them, an all-too-easy game is getting even easier all the time.  And you know what?  They’re right.

The starting areas for Dwarves and Elves recieved a revamp in the last update.  New quests were added which enabled you to cherry-pick only the easiest and fastest quests on which to level.  New travel routes were added, which allowed someone to easily reach other starting areas for even more selective-questing.

New areas have opened with tons of quests.  Not only can you cherry-pick your solo quests, you can cherry-pick entire zones.  Want to skip the Barrow Downs?  Fine.  Don’t think you want to try Fornost?  No problem!  Don’t feel like setting foot in Angmar?  Just go somewhere else.

The truth is, the game is much easier than it once was.  But that’s unavoidable.  If there’s a new area, then it’s going to help someone level easier.  If there’s new raids and new loot, it’s going to make someone’s character stronger.  If the level cap is raised, it’s going to make old raids trivially easy. As these games progress, they get easier.  That’s just the way it is.  The alternative is that we go without new content.

The thing to remember, if you’re an old timer, is that the new folk are not stupid.  We know it was hard to reach the cap before they put in Evendim.  We realize that 24 level 50’s used to wipe at Helegrod.  We know someone had to find out everything the hard way before it was posted on Allakhazam.  You’ll just have to be satisfied that we newbies are still interested in your tales about “The old days”.

They are hired in young, generally in their late teens and early twenties. They are energetic and excited about getting paid to do something they really enjoy (and probably have been doing on a small scale for years without pay). They tend to have more experience than you’d think, less than they think, and hopefully are able to take direction well.

In those early years, they are worked hard. As much as you can get out of them, as soon as you can get it, before they realize this is not as glamorous as they thought. Yes, even the ones who heard about the working conditions were still being a bit optimistic. Make sure to have the appropriate chemical stimulants on hand to let them keep going to the limits of youthful endurance. Until they get burned out, these are the best years to work them until they are dry.

They will get burned out soon. The disillusionment process can be traumatic, and many try to hide it because they cannot admit it was a losing decision. They will keep going, pushing those hours, hitting those stimulants hard. If you look back in a few years, you will see how their bodies have changed, not from aging, but from the work itself.

Eventually, both aging and the work catch up to them. In any other industry, they would still be young, but here you can see how used up they are. Now is the time to cast them off for the next crop, and there always is a next crop of eager young things who want to take their places, and will do so cheap.

A few survive this process. They are the old hands you sometimes see around, increasingly as names rather than faces. They become producers, running the shops that employee that next crop. Some of them join the cycle of exploitation, knowing exactly what illusions the young ones enter with. Others think there must be a better, more humane and sustainable way to do this work, and they found their own projects with better conditions. This latter group seems less visible and prosperous, although more outspoken.

: Zubon