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[TSW] Stunned Soliloquies

It doesn’t take long to realize that virtually all missions in The Secret World begin with the NPC mission giver talking to… someone. These are not dialogues where the character is involved. My character, still a noob to this shadow world, just watches in stunned silence. I like the “art” of these NPC soliloquies brushing the canvas of the mission to come. It is the poetry of horror. I like it better that my character (somewhat looking like me, much to my daughters’ delight) seems to have the mixed emotion of “what the flock?” and “tell me more!”

TheSecretWhat

Keep it coming, Funcom.

–Ravious

MMO Skill Levels

I’ve been re-introducing myself to The Secret World since their Issue 6 update. I have been burning through the Savage Coast with righteous fury following some build I didn’t understand. Understanding builds are critical in The Secret World because the game is difficult enough that it will punish players with slapdash loadouts.

I personally hate making builds in any game. I don’t mind tweaking them, but I am just not of the build-making mentality. So after feeling that I liked blood magic in the pick-a-weapon area, I found what I thought was a decent build for that based on affliction/penetration. It sucks. It doesn’t feel right, and I did more digging and… Continue reading MMO Skill Levels

Of Three-Monthers

About a decade into the MMO genre, we have started seriously discussing MMO tourism and have settled on the idiom of a “three-monther,” which implies how long you will stick with that game. Of course, as in most online game blogging, Jessica Mulligan wrote about it years ago in Biting the Hand: the four-month point was where games either died or took off. I am wondering about Sturgeon’s Revelation: a game you can happily play for years is an outlier, and most games you play for a few months then move on.

My college gamer friends almost perfectly followed that pattern. Single-player games you typically played through once and put away, and multiplayer games lasted almost exactly three months. An expansion pack could buy you another three months, so there were two three-month stretches for the original StarCraft. Asheron’s Call? Three months. Several Age of Empires games? Three months each. I think one of the Monster Rancher games was stretched to three months as people experimented with builds, strategies, and CDs that yielded special monsters. Our group skewed RTS, but I think that speaks to the consistency of the time frame.

The longest lasting game was Settlers of Catan. That never gets old, even with multiple games per night: extreme outlier. We played some pen and paper games. How often did we shake up campaigns or change game masters? Every three months or so.

The structure of American academic life lends itself towards that, and the large number of student gamers contributes to trends. Semesters last about four months, so you have a couple weeks to settle in, your group plays, and then you have a large break for exams and vacation. It is a natural stopping point; your momentum is spent, so switching to something new is easier. If you are not a student, you might be a parent to students, and their schedules affect yours. If neither, there is probably still some seasonal variability to your life, peaks of business or of outdoor activity. Our planet is conducive to three-monthers.

: Zubon

Rebalancing

Continuing with the random flash games, Kingdoms CCG recently did rebalancing. “The goal was to remove the tiers and the associated power gap between Heroes to create a much more versatile and interesting meta game and battle experience.” This means that the free heroes got better and the heroes you might have bought with the RMT currency were nerfed. On some changes, you might argue about whether it was a “nerf,” but it was definitely a significant change, like turning an AE buff into a stronger single-target buff. Oh, and “The Hero Trade In program will no longer be available after this update.”

League of Legends does this sort of thing, but so far only with a few of its dozens of champions, and there will be a few with similar functions, and it is rare to completely change the role of a champion. Also, you probably bought most of your champions with the in-game currency rather than the RMT currency. Also also, they did not explicitly establish tiers of champions, make the higher tiers more expensive, and then eliminate the tiers.

While I have played some Kingdoms CCG, I don’t really have skin in the game. I had a tier 3 hero, but I used the RMT currency you receive free in-game. The rebalancing included resetting all achievements, and earning them now awards some of that RMT currency, and they removed grind, and they added free rotating heroes like the LoL champions, so this is an almost unalloyed good for me in the game, except for needing to grind achievements to unlock things I already had access to and changing my favorite hero’s abilities into something I like less.

But that is a heck of a thing to do to players who are your revenue source. How do you expect people to trust you enough to spend money after you do something like that? It’s like a tiny little NGE.

: Zubon

[TSW] Good Business in Cairo

The Secret World is my backburner MMO. When I need a refreshing change of pace in MMOs, it’s where I head. I’ll be honest; it took me by surprise that I became really excited for their newest update: The Last Train to Cairo. I haven’t even been to Egypt yet in the game. But, I really hope Funcom continues to be able to drop updates this way.

The buy-the-box / buy-the-content model is just so good. Funcom presents their episodic updates available for purchase perfectly. Members get early access, a bunch of free stuff, and hey enough free points to buy the entire Issue. I think this is a great move. Players can go the bargain route and carefully apportion out their points, or go the easy route and become a member for the month. I like that. It’s smart. I like when MMO devs offer smart options on ways for me to give them money. Continue reading [TSW] Good Business in Cairo

Reader-less Google

It was not a good morning to wake up to news that an online tool I rely on every day was being put to rest a few days before my birthday. On July 1st, Google Reader is going to be shut down. Syp and the commentators at Bio Break already have said everything I could, but I feel the need to echo it in some sense.

I rely on this integrated tool. Yes, I realize there are decent alternatives, but I have used Reader as part of my Google suite of tools. I have amazing brand loyalty because of these tools. I feel Google is harming this brand far more by shutting this down and pissing off many internet vocal people rather than jut getting some menial data and keeping Reader open.

I guess I have a few months to find a better RSS home.

–Ravious

75% of the industry’s problems…

… in one package, that’s Sim City 5. To wit:

– Overpromise
– Underdeliver (bordering on flat out fraud)
– We still buy a lacking product

It should be put in a time capsule and buried for the benefit of future historians. Sure, a mix of these three issues are common in most games, but SC5 is pretty much close to the ideal. Or as close as we got in years.

(Edit: changed the 4 to a 5, because apparently I can’t tell the difference. Numbers are hard!)

[GW2] In Spite of Community Pressures

Bhagpuss believes Guild Wars 2 is pretty lively from all the open world activities. I agree. I’ve been seeing more and more people running around the open world. There’s another stick-of-measurement to watch. Oh sure, we can all be beguiled by the entrancing smile of Colin as he says numbers are still rising post-launch…. Sigh. Oh. Right. Carry on then. There is also a lot to be said about community tools as an activity meter.

Community tools feel necessary in MMOs, and lively MMOs seem to have lively communities. The movements in the hive eventually produce tools you never knew you couldn’t live without. Guild Wars 2 is still missing a lot of MMO features usually taken for granted, and yet out of the chaos of an MMO community comes spontaneous triumphs. In the words of somebody “you can’t stop progress”. Continue reading [GW2] In Spite of Community Pressures

I Get Press Releases

I have before me an e-mail announcing open beta starting for a game this week. Clicking to their website, a winged woman in most of a bikini is hovering immediately to the left of the game’s name. Immediately to the left of their tagline is another woman who could not afford an entire halter top; she is blowing kisses at the screen, with an animated heart floating from her lips. Someone has reliably informed them that English is written left-to-right, so placing the boobs just to the left of your text makes it a sort of capitalization.

Still classier than the game advertising “one click to a Roman orgy!”

: Zubon

Against Covetousness

I have been playing Dawn of the Dragons, because having just one energy mechanic game at a time is less than gaming. The actual gameplay of any of these tends to be low, but in combination they can be entertaining.

Dawn of the Dragons has lots and lots of items, because grind and cash shop. The crafting tab is where much of the rubber meets the road: a fight has a chance to drop a trophy, and combine trophies to get an item, then combine items and trophies to get better items. They have these for different maps, for raids, for events, for raid events, and so on for three years of development. There are five tabs for crafting, and the longest list has a progress bar dozens of screens high. That is a lot of scrolling to see everything.

This is to be expected after years of development. Following MMOs as I do, I am used to entering at the beginning. Sure, your game may have 1000 achievements, items, or raids, but you started earning them during the pre-order head start. You naturally earned most of the new ones while trying each update, so you have a subset of Things To Do that probably covers 10% of the list, and you know which part of it is relevant to your character. And then you have the new player who must do/get all the things! He joins your guild and asks every five minutes how to get X. It is essential that he gets X as soon as possible, and it is tragically unfair if X was event-related and is available only seasonally or (horror of horrors) not at all anymore.

This is my first time walking into that situation in a long time. It is pleasantly inuring. I occasionally see those new folks (but mostly people with levels in the four-digit range), and I occasionally ask something (but I can type it into Google as fast as I can type it into chat), but mostly I am just enjoying coasting. I got some newbie tips, I am accumulating some things that do who knows what, and I am working in no particular direction except up. If I keep playing, I will someday join those players in the higher digits, and I could start caring and planning. But really? That overwhelming list is somewhat comforting. I would need a lot of time to refill the energy bar to reach a lot of that content. I would need to play for months or more to see events repeat. It helps to get past the false sense of achievement.

: Zubon