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Alts as Travel Management

The epic quest chain likes to have a central contact who sends you to all corners of Middle-earth. And back. And out and back again. You go from A to B to A to C to B to A to D to A to somewhat near A to A to B to A to… I am getting used to paying large amounts of silver for slow horse rides, now that I am leveling up non-Hunters, but some places do not have stables. Your map back to A has a one-hour cooldown.

I deal with this by having alts. Log on a character, play until you run out of convenient travel options, then move to the next. If my gaming session is long enough, and it often is, I can cycle back to earlier characters to do a few more steps in the quest chain. If I am feeling really ambitious, I can map them all home before work, so they will be there with minty fresh timers when I get home.

Completely destructive of immersion, flow, grouping, and social interaction? Sure, but when the game would otherwise insert a 12-minute travel break (actual time from Rivendell to Echad Dunann on a stable horse), it is not much worse to round that up to an hour and play another character, which might be more fun than waiting on a horse. You can clear dread similarly.

: Zubon

Turbine’s Recent Technical Record

  • Release Volume Two, Book Seven, a content-light patch that breaks, among other things, pet and enemy pathing in several zones, placing some targets in permanent anti-exploit mode.
  • Add a more reliable way to get Second Age legendary items. Between the test and live servers, change the reward table so that it is less reliable.
  • Let players complete a quest 20,000 times per server to unlock a new raid. Never put it on the public test server, open it with broken lockout timers, and shut it down within twelve hours.
  • Release the Spring Festival. Shut down the horse race within twelve hours.
  • Launch a “welcome back weekend” so that more players can see these. Start a log-in queue.
  • Their web sites and other games were unexpectedly down for an extra twenty hours or so, but eh, that happens during a datacenter move.
  • Realease an April Fool’s event. Shut it down within twelve hours.

There are many good things mixed in here, like a pretty zone and a very successful Spring Festival maze. But you do not say, “Most of the links in this chain are adequately strong.”

: Zubon

Update: and now log-in issues, which render the rest moot. Good communication on that issue, though.

Why your game turns me off

Because it might work with other people. But me? I’m old, weathered and sometimes cynical, and I can see right through your paltry deceptions. I’ve seen a lot, and that lot includes people just like you, trying to pull the same stunts you’re pulling. As a developer, of course it’s expected of you to piss off your playerbase. It’s implicit in the unspoken sort of “social contract” between you and your players. But… you’re not supposed to piss them off too much. When you do, you’ve gone to the other end and people are gonna start to, well… you know, not play your game.

You still do make games for people to play them, don’t you? Good. Since we’re on the same page, here’s a few sure fire ways of turning me off your game. Not that you have to cater to me by doing the opposite, of course. To the contrary, feel free to use this as a roadmap to deliberately make sure I won’t play your game. Or at least that I won’t play it with a smile. Up to you.

Continue reading Why your game turns me off

New Garriott MMO in Spaaaaaaace!

With my recent street cred soaring after two interviews with people in the industry, I decided to cold call Richard Garriott to discuss his ticket for another chance to become a space tourist, I mean astronaut, another MMO.  I had to listen for half an hour about his trip in to space, and it did not get interesting until he brought up his contraband story.  Garriott told me how strict the Russians were at space camp (“not like NASA, where Tang flows like wine”), and that he had to smuggle aboard one of his favorite books, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, in a most uncomfortable crevasse.  However, once in space what could they do?  Kick him out? So, one day while he was using the vacu-pooper and reading the book, he saw an old piece of the space station float by out of the spaceship’s window.  This space junk, he said was his revelation to a critical, unoccupied niche in MMO gaming.

I was thoroughly confused by this point as Garriott threw around astronaut lingo like I was one of his comrades, and I asked him how Neuromancer tied in because I was at least semi-familiar with the book.  He cited two of the plot-rearing heroes in the book Aerol and Maelcum.  They lived in peace away from the “system” down below while enjoying their space-rastafarian lifestyle.  He said he was taking much of his basis from EVE’s drug trade gameplay, but instead of a covert-ops-keep-hidden-from-security gameplay, it would be more like sharing the new stuff in your hippy commune.  Garriott booted up the current build.  He said all he had created so far was his avatar (“Da Genahrall”) and the inside of his “tug” (I think he meant spaceship).  Garriott was then silent over the phone for about ten minutes, which was fine because my two year old had just startled in the Witch in Left 4 Dead and we had to deal with that.

Finally breaking the silence, I asked Garriott about further gameplay (namely, if there would be any), and he said that with the first round of capital infusions he was working on creating an AI that could create “righteous dubs” and inedible-art bento boxes.  When that money was gone, he would send some of the bento boxes to the investors in order to gain another capital infusion.  Garriott said the MMO would eventually focus on living in space as a free spirit, scavenging through space debris, playing a complex game of red paper clip, and spending hours floating around listening to “da ‘Mute.”  (I asked him multiple times to repeat this, and I swear this is what he said.)  Eventually, with the successful MMO he would once again buy himself in to space, and leave the new MMO far behind.  The pizza guy finally came, and I quickly wished him well while hanging up the phone.  Time to put another notch on my belt.

–Ravious
dealin’ wi’ th’ darkness, mon

In Further Praise of PUGs

Another virtue of pick-up groups is that many are better than my guild groups. My kinship, while a fun bunch, is not a great late-game guild. We have horrific wipes on bosses that I beat with PUGs the day before, and it can be tiring when half the group needs an explanation for every significant fight. We have a great many level 60s these days, but I doubt we could field a team to raid The Watcher.

One advantage of joining many PUGs is that I learn different ways of approaching fights. I can learn from people who have done it before, and I get experiments with many group types. I am the bee, flitting from PUG to PUG, cross-pollinating before heading back for honey time.

I recall my first guild trip through the Sixteenth Hall. Two people had never been there. Two enjoyed it and ran it frequently. The last member and I ran it frequently with PUGs. The moment that stood out was just before the second boss. For those who have not done it, there are two identical rooms, each with a wheel to turn, each with a large group of elite enemies, each with a bunch of ground objects that spawn more enemies. The guild plan seems to have been sending someone on a suicide run to get each wheel, rezzing afterwards. I did not even ask before starting my standard PUG plan: AE root, the ones immune to root come, we fight them around the corner (away from rooted archers), finish off the rest, and avoid the ground objects when getting the wheel.

This is not to say that I have learned nothing from the guild. They are very good at Skumfil’s hard mode, granted again with a two-suicide plan to make the rest of it easier. But I wonder at times if I might be happier with a group that actually puts things on farm mode.

: Zubon

Guild Wars, On Death

I see comments here and on the general Guild Wars forums about the MMO being “dead.”  The game will, as far as we know, have no further commercial updates, such as their three campaigns and one expansion.  However, with ArenaNet still selling units (over 200,00 between 9/08 and 12/08), heading towards a whopping 6,000,000 units sold likely sometime this year, and the Guild Wars Live Team feverishly adding updates and content to the game.  It is far from being proclaimed “dead.”

Continue reading Guild Wars, On Death

In Praise of PUGs

Most of my pick-up groups have been rather good. I have clearer memories of the horrid ones, but my non-guild groups almost never fail to accomplish their objectives, and few have really serious problems along the way. The problem is that the good groups blend together: teams succeed similarly, but each fails in its own unique way.

Continue reading In Praise of PUGs

Annoyance

I’m running Volume One, Book Ten on my Minstrel. You know when is a really lousy time to add small group content? Immediately after a forced solo instance. You know where is a really lousy place to add small group content? On three different points around Lake Evendim, for which there is no faster means of travel than swimming across a freaking lake.

Bringing your players together through shared adversity annoyance?

: Zubon

Turbine’s Fail-ikul

To be clear, I hate the name of this post, but it kind of wrote itself.  Can’t argue with that.  The new lair raid for Volume 2, Book 7 is unlocked on many, if not all, the servers now in Lord of the Rings Online, and the gate crashed open the wrong way, on many accounts.

First, the design.  I think that the monster turtle in Filikul was supposed to be designed as a kind of tank-swap.  The raid boss, Nornuan, hits with an unremovable DoT on the player it is attacking.  The trick is to not let this DoT stack because every time it does it does more damage over time and the duration refreshes.  By having multiple tanks the DoT will not get to the point where the damage cannot be healed through.  There is also a “time limit” DoT that the raid boss applies to all the players.  This latter also-unremovable DoT keeps stacking until it cannot be outhealed and the raid wipes.  It seems like an okay base design, but the raid is basically a DPS fest.  A raid full of hunters and champions, with maybe a token healer, is all that is needed.  Without massive DPS, the party will just wipe from the “time limit” DoT.

Second, the bugs.  The loot from this raid is pretty nice.  There are First Age weapons, radiance gear coins, and a pretty nice trophy.  If working, the short raid can be done once per week.  The raid lock was not working properly, and the raid went on ultra-farm mode with people burning through the turtle every 5-10 minutes.  Saturday night became the night of First Age fun.  Turbine locked the raid on Sunday pending a bug fix.

Finally, is the sinking feeling that this raid was hurriedly designed and not really tested.  The classes that were less desired, are still less desired, and the current “gods” of Middle Earth, the hunters, the champions. and now the runekeepers, are all the more desired in group play.  It is very unfortunate that Turbine is going this direction for their high-level dungeons.  All the tricks and shticks of the utility classes are being ignored, and even the holy trinity has had two of its corners sanded down.  Lore-masters, I feel your pain.

–Ravious
cowabunga