The Two Minute Look at STO

As seen on my FB wall:

this is where i was disappointed with STO and where i hope it will go as I know this is a longer term design thing.

to me, Star Trek is about three things, and I list them in order of what I feel is important: exploration, creativity (here, meaning creative choices), action.

STO definitely has some measure of action, it is combat oriented.

There’s some exploration, but it’s very structured. The random quest generator is okay in this area but not enough. I think EVE actually does a really good job with exploration. You’ve skills and probes, which you triangulate in space and then let them do the work for you. It becomes a really interesting mini-game that can be, at times, a little frustrating. Wormhole space expands the play area tremendously. Would wormholes work in STO? maybe not, but definitely probing and exploring would. And it would fit the IP perfectly.

Creativity. I would love more opportunities to make choices with meaning in the game that have consequences. For example, let’s say a station on some planet is being blockaded by a race of ugly guys. The game could make some suggestions for me. Attack them in space. Beam down and do something nefarious to their plans. Bribe them with trilithium. Based on skill or something, the option would have a consequence. What if I’m a shitty diplomat, and I try the bribe option. I would have a low chance of success. If I fail, how will the ugly guys respond? This is actually something I’d really like to see in games in general, but I think it would really expand STO’s capabilities really nicely.

A secondary thing to creativity would be a real crafting system. But one in which I can experiment. Perhaps improve my drives, or create a new product that has some use to someone. I like collecting, and many players do as well, but giving it to some NPC on some distant sector doesn’t cut it. The current design for crafting is a really strong indicator that Atari forced Cryptic to cut corners.

Action. I’d like to see politics, treaties between differing groups, conquerable space, etc. The ability to set up stations, that kind of thing. That’s very EVE as well, but it fits with the IP and from EVE we know it’s doable and brings a whole different measure of fun to the game. And players who don’t want to be involved in that don’t have to be.

Two Second Comparison of EVE Online and Star Trek Online

EVE ships are better than Star Trek Online ships because they don’t all look the same and are smart enough to handle proper shields. Flying around in circles to protect your weak spot while it heals really is NOT an interesting mechanic or play strategy. It’s boring, annoying, and a fun deterrent.

The Sims Online as Social Networking Game Inspiration?

I made an off-the-cuff comment a short while ago regarding both The Sims Online and the current crop of social networking games that is now making me scratch my head and say hmmm…

Consider social networking games. Many of them require a lot of similar behaviors pioneered by The Sims Online, such as going to another person’s cafe (as an example) and picking up trash and chasing out dancing penguins.

I’m not describing The Sims Online in the above quote, but rather what we do now in many social networking games, by the way.

I only beta tested The Sims Online, so my experiences with the game are very limited and so what follows is based on what my friends (some of whom wound up sticking with The Sims Online once it launched) and I did during beta.

The game was very similar to The Sims, where you’d have a house that you’d buy and place stuff in. You would go around to other houses of other players and socialize and use objects to help your avatar gain in skill and earn money. This is an extremely basic overview of the game and how it related to player interactivity.

Now consider the many social networking games such as the ‘Ville and ‘City games out on the social networking sites. You have your own area of the game in which you build and do stuff. Then you visit friends, where you can go an aid them in limited means. Doing so well earn you cash and some experience points. Granted, in these types of social networking games you are limited in what you can do (usually limited to just pressing an “okay” button), but the fundamentals are there.

Is it fair to say that The Sims Online inspired some of the design choices of some of the most popular social networking games out there today? I don’t know, but there is a very strong similarity in design.

Asheron’s Call Turns 10

I was a bit too lazy to post this to 2BG:

WESTWOOD, MA. – November 2, 2009 – Turbine, Inc. announced today that its award-winning title, Asheron’s Call® (AC) has entered its 10th year of operation. Launched on November 2, 1999, AC immediately set the standard for online immersion, storytelling, and worldwide live event capability. As one of the original Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPG), AC is a fully developed world – complete with a deep history, committed community, and compelling ongoing storyline. Turbine will celebrate this major milestone by running live events throughout the day that will bring back some of the most loved (and feared) signature lore characters and villains of its rich 10-year history.

“Asheron’s Call has served as the foundation on which Turbine was built,” said Craig Alexander, Vice President of Product Development of Turbine. “For a decade, AC has represented one of the industry’s most consistent and well-loved franchises further demonstrating the longevity and quality of Turbine’s persistent worlds.”

Launched in 1999, AC is a critically acclaimed massively multiplayer online role-playing game that draws together thousands of players within an evolving and dynamic persistent world. With an exciting ever-evolving storyline, thrilling adventures, quests, and frequent content updates, AC immerses players in an intense role-playing environment. An extensive system of formal Allegiances and player influence greatly enhances social interaction within the game. AC has received several awards over its 10-year history including being ranked #27 of Gamespy’s Top 50 games of all time. For more information, please visit http://ac.turbine.com.

Asheron’s Call was my second MMO. I chose it simply because I was able to play in the beta. I had actually gotten into the fourth EverQuest beta round, but because EQ didn’t like my video card, I wound up with a nice coaster (these were the days when game devs would mail you a copy of their beta because most everyone was still on dialup). My first MMO was Ultima Online, and while I wasn’t looking for a replacement for that game I, like many early MMO players, was curious about this relatively market that was starting to grow.

AC was the smaller of the first three, and another fantasy-based MMORPG, something the market is still overwhelmingly in favor of (designer-wise, at least). It was my first ever real 3D-engine game, I think, on the PC, so I was very easily impressed. Monsters named after Matt Drudge were my favorite, but the most important design aspect ever was in AC:

Asheron’s Call had the fez, the most important piece of headwear ever designed in the entire universe. Fezes were native to the Gharu’ndin, a race in Dereth, and so I immediately and always played one (sup, Tafiq al-Jafar!).

Initially I was drawn to AC’s unique magic system, which included a personal taper. You had to actually learn what components made which spell, which I found fascinating. I spent a lot of money failing at trial and error magic sessions, and I wish more MMOs included this type of design in their games.

An aspect of AC that is still unique, but one that I didn’t take part in was Allegiances. Allegiances were the guilds of AC, and they were very much a pyramid scheme. Vassals swore to patrons, who received a small portion of the XP their vassals earned. To this day I still get a kick out of this design.

One of the things that endeared me to Turbine was their stance towards bugs. There was a nasty bug that they accidentally introduced into the game; I forget what it was or what it did. But the producer came out and said something akin to, you know what, we made this error, and it’s not necessarily fair of us to completely punish players for abusing this error (within reason). That a game developer pretty much admitted to fucking up, which was unique then (and to a certain extent, unique now) was ballsy, and impressive, and I’ve never forgotten that after all these years, even if the details are very much hazy.

Asheron’s Call was never hugely popular. It was third behind EverQuest and Ultima Online back in the day. In fact, the authors of Dungeons and Dreamers simply ignored its existence, electing instead to put Dark Age of Camelot in its place, a game that was released two years after AC hit the market. Turbine wound up splitting from Microsoft, AC‘s original publisher, and failed with Asheron’s Call 2, where I think you could have played drudges as a race. Turbine has done okay over the last ten years, and Asheron’s Call still chugs along despite its age. I did wind up returning a year or two ago, and quit after 6 days… World of Warcraft spoiled me. But I’ll always remember Dereth fondly.

Happy birthday, old friend!

Wait… what?

Promotion for Champions Online‘s next in-game event. It begins, eventually.

Champions Online has 1 million characters

Worlds In Motion reported recently that Cryptic’s Champions Online has at least 1 million characters under its superhero tool belt:

Online game maker Cryptic Studios said its most recent MMORPG, the Atari-published Champions Online, has garnered over 1 million created superhero characters, but the size of the subscriber base is unclear.

Unclear? Hrm.

I sent this news item to Siam, the owner and managing editor of The MMOGamer. Because I’m bad at math, I asked him to do it for me:

You should do math. How many characters can one account have, then half that, and divide that by one million =P

His response?

Max 8 per account. 1 000 000 / 4 = 250 000

That number does seem a bit high, 250,000. I would half that again, maybe a little more. Then I would multiply it all by the number of players who named their characters after famous comic heroes times .045035893845083405 and divide it by some other arbitrary number that I just made up.

I’m honestly not too surprised to find that there’s a million superheros created in Champions. The character creation/development is so complicated, that I’m sure that, like me, many players are rerolling, trying to find something that will get them passed level 20.

I still am playing the game, for what it’s worth.

Making right out of wrong

I previously took issue with the way Cryptic failed to handle a major server issue in a timely manner with its Champions Online property. They announced today that they will be giving players one free retcon (opportunity to do a character redesign) with the launch of their Blood Moon Rising event at the end of this month:

Due to this weekend’s server issues, we’ll be granting a free Retcon to all players when Blood Moon goes live on Tuesday, October 27th. Keep in mind that free Retcons do not stack, so players who have not used their previous free Retcon before tomorrow morning’s maintenance will not receive a new one. Also note that free Retcons do not impact purchased ones in any way. Owning a purchased Retcon will not prevent you from receiving a free one. We appreciate your patience this past weekend, and we can’t wait to see you in Blood Moon!

As a player, I love free stuff. Any time I can get free stuff from a game developer I’m a happy camper, and with the difficulty in designing a Champions character that is effective down the road, getting a free retcon is a bonus. But, there’s also the cynical part of me that says that they’re just bribing me because I was pissed off at them. I was. They are. Free retcons for everybody!

How not to not handle issues

Okay, it was a Saturday night when this happened, but still. As MMO developers, we all know that it’s important to keep our services running as close to 24/7 as possible, even on patch and expansion days. Our players want to play, and we want them to. I would hope.

I’m already iffy on Cryptic’s Champion’s Online, their second superhero-themed MMO. I’ve played their City of Heroes/City of Villains, now owned by NCSoft, for a couple of years and enjoyed it. Champions? Not so much. Granted, the game is still very much new, so there’s a whole lot of balancing that needs to be done to the game. As it stands, I’m stuck on level 19 with a fire character who can’t seem to do much except die. A lot.

Anyway, I was playing Saturday, or rather: I wanted to play Saturday. It was the afternoon, several hours after my early morning playing session, and I decided to pop in again and see if I could get far with a new character I created. Only I couldn’t log in. It took about 20 minutes for the character selection screen to display, and then another 10 or so for the map server to pop up. I simply assumed, at first, that the problem was with my connection, or even hardware. But later that evening, when I tried several more times, I popped onto the forums to see if others were having the same issue.

Tons of players were having the same issue I was. Not only that, at the time of this screenshot, the problem had been going on for over four hours. I can only imagine that either CO‘s community team is off over the weekend, or maybe their CS didn’t notice that their login server was shot to shit. All sorts of bells and whistles should have gone off within, say, 15 minutes of the problem making itself known. To be honest, I don’t know if any did, or didn’t. But what I do know is that on a busy Saturday night, players couldn’t play a game, and it took almost five hours before the game’s developer communicated with its players that there was an issue, and they were trying to resolve it.

They did wind up taking the server down, doing whatever magic operations at Cryptic does, and gave players a two hour downtime window. But they got the problem resolved within an hour, and heroes began cleaning the streets of Millennium City soon after.

Always keep your community informed. Even if it’s just a “we’re looking into reports” post. Otherwise you lose the trust of your players, and losing trust means losing subscribers, and no one wants that.

Where have all the PvPers gone?

Waaaaa *cough*

There’s a tremendous amount of talk in both the media and the innerWebs about how much of a disaster Warhammer Online is. Prior to its launch, WAR generated a lot of interest, both from MMO addicts as well as your usual Warhammer gamer. Of particular interest was how WAR would fare towards knocking down World of Warcraft, the world leader in MMO customer acquisition. Oh, and the whole Realm v Realm PvP design stuffage they were bringing to the table. (The Mark Jacobs leaving Mythic/EA won’t be part of this discussion. You can go here to read all about it). Thanks to having EA as a publisher, expectations were extremely high, many boxes were shipped and sold, hundreds of thousands of accounts were created, and hundreds of servers set up and taken to the masses for squig loving. As it stands now, WAR is considered lucky to have 300,000 active accounts, whereas the game that I work for is seen as a success story for having the same number six years after launch. Expectations are a bitch, man.

In general, I am not a PvPer, with the exception of some time as pencils in Battlefield 2 and 2142. Many games are fairly hardcore when it comes to PvP, and in my long history as an MMO gamer I’ve pretty much stuck to the PvE is where to be mould. I’ve always been the kind of gamer who makes an easy victim, who is always afraid of losing my toys, and who will always wind up with man jizz in my face afterwards, cleaning myself off with the ruined tatters of a bloodstained cloak or something (and no, I don’t RP either =P). This changed to a degree when I got BF2. I learned to enjoy the adreneline rush of the play in a structured environment where I was expected to be shot at by other players, and I was expected to shoot back. I was as good as my mouse was steady. When World of Warcraft released battlegrounds, I checked it out and had a lot of fun, despite being told I was a moron for wielding a shield (how else was I going to stop spellcasters from casting?!). What attracted me was the fact that battlegrounds are closed environments specific to PvP. Death was only important within that realm; my regular gaming could go on as scheduled without fear of getting my ass kicked while killing a boar. You still won’t see me on a PvP-specific server ever, however. I’m still loving the PvE too much in any game for that.

Which brings us to WAR with its Realm v Realm and scenario content (there are other types of PvP, but I’ve not yet enjoyed them). Each map has a specific area dedicated to PvP. If you enter the area and stay for ten seconds, you’re PvP flagged. If you fire off one of the cannons at warcamps you are also automatically flagged for RvR PvP. There are some missions that you can do in these locations (usually to check out a flag (PvE in a PvP environment!) or kill “x” number of players), but mostly it’s a capture-the-flag kind of thing. You can also siege keeps and stuff. I think every game should have some sort of gameplay where hot oil is dropped upon you while you’re battering down a keep door.

Scenarios are very much like battlegrounds: instanced PvP maps with different objectives. Each tier (there are four per race) has three scenarios. These are generally limited to time or point wins: you get a certain number of minutes to win with the most points; your side can also win if they get 500 points before time is up. These maps are generally quick, filled with a lot of death, and a tremendous amount of fun. They are also excellent XP earners, and if you gain enough RP you can purchase some rather excellent weapons, armor and accessories.

Public Quests (aka PQs) are also a rather interesting addition to the game. PQs are in public spaces with a number of different goals that need to be completed in a certain period of time. As you progress in each chapter (which usually has several PQs assigned to them), you gain influence points. IPs have three tiers wherein you can acquire excellent loot as a reward for participating in that chapter’s PQ’s. If you successfully complete the PQ, you and those who participated are rewarded with a loot bag, the quality of which depends upon your level of participation in the PQ.

I spent a good amount of this weekend playing WAR. In addition to running missions, I wound up mostly soloing PQ’s for influence points. Every once in a while another person would show up, which would piss me off because I was farming for IP so I could claim phat loot. While farming, I waited in queue for scenarios, first in tier two, then tier three. I played about 15 hours this weekend. That’s a lot of IP. And ZERO scenarios. Not one. I spent 15 hours, mostly during what should be American weekend prime time, with not one scenario played.

I don’t think this is how WAR’s designers meant for the game to be played. PQs are meant to be played with other players. Scenarios as well. Here I was geared towards playing with others, something I am not at all known for (ironically, considering I’m an MMO player), and I spent the weekend soloing against my will. Even Altdorf was a ghost town.

My friend RJO pointed out that there are probably a lot of players checking out the new Land of the Dead map. This is probably true, however, there were still a handful of players such as myself not getting boners over Zandri. WAR is also most probably going through the beginnings of the traditional summer slump, when players are out of college and into their pools and parental narcotics stashes.

There is also a rumor that WAR will close down more servers in order to get the populations closer.

Regardless, where have all the PvPers gone?

I Don’t Choose You, Pikachu!

Don't keep your Pokémon in Poké Balls too long!

The InnerWebs were abuzz yesterday with news that there was not going to be neither an online nor massively multiplayer version of Pokémon. In an interview with What They Play, series director Junichi Masuda said:

“At this point, we’re not thinking of going in that direction. Trading is a core concept of Pokémon. So when you’re trading, you meet with a friend and decide which one you want and which one they want. I would like to emphasize real-world communication. You don’t see each other online.”

The interview comes on the heals of the newest Pokémon Nintendo DS release Pokémon Platinum. Where Diamond/Pearl, the last set of Pokéemon games to be released, was suppossed to be the “ultimate” Pokémon game, Masuda calls Platinum the “evolved version of Diamond and Pearl [...] it is more like a sibling.” Regular Pokémon players, of course, will know that Platinum will play just like all the others, with tweaks here and there further perfecting the famed franchise formula. Which is why I, too, must play Platinum. I never actually catch all of the Pokémon, but I do seem to catch all of the games.

I can actually visualize an online version of Pokémon. Perhaps a Magic the Pokémon Online, where players trade and battle with their virtual-life Pokécard Pokédecks. Collect ‘em All Online could be a new revenue stream in the ever-growing tide of Poképroducts. 40-year old overweight American male Pokéfreaks can battle royal with 7-year old Japanese female Pokédaemonesses while a/s/l’ing some sting cop at the local precinct. I think this could really work!

But would a Pokémon Online MMO? Are there enough IP elements to actually sustain that type of game for the long run? Certainly there is the element of collection, a huge component in MMO gaming. Entire skill trees can be designed around the myriad abbilities and moves. Leveling is a key element for many MMOs, and certainly a key element of Pokémon, especially when it comes to Pokévolution. Player-versus-player and Player-versus-environment (either via grass battles or trainers), role-playing, adventure, discovery… yes, I do think a Pokémon MMO would have some potential. Players could mix and match their Poké Ball-held Pokémon, perhaps create their own new creatures through mating at the, uh, perverted nursery that I would probably design into this game.

The more I think about it, the more I can see Pokémon Online as a doable product, and the more I wish they’d reconsider. I am almost 40, you know.