Challenge Me

One of the common trends in MMO's is the simplification of the solo game.  Of course, it is all being done in the name of accessibility.  The challenge, and I use that word loosely, is put behind the velvet rope of group play.   As someone who enjoys the solo game, this ends up making a lot of games just not fun for me. 

My definition of challenge is simply having to think.  In many PvE games, very little thinking is required to get to the level cap.  Sure there might be a lot going on which appears to add complexity, but usually it is completely superfluous.  I want the decisions I make to actually matter.  I'd also like to have to prepare for a battle.  

Crafting is a lot of fun, until you realize it is not necessary.  It may shave 1 second off of the battle, but it isn't needed to actually defeat your enemy.  It's nice to get a ton of abilities, but what is the point if you really only need two or three of them?  Again it usually comes down to making the fight shorter.

Story is usually what makes PvE bearable to me, but what happens when the actual gameplay is not challenging?  You set out to defeat a great evil, and he dies in 5 seconds to a couple abilities.  That doesn't really match up with the idea of a heroic story. 

There are a number of games which do try and give their solo players and challenge.  Star Trek Online, for example, has difficulty sliders which affect all of their combat.  Raising this actually made me feel like my choices mattered.  Lord of the Rings has skirmishes which allow you to adjust their difficulty.  Sadly, that does not apply to their epic quest-line.   

One common suggestion is to seek out higher level content.  I find that it usually doesn't help, it is either still easy or impossible.  Combat formulas in most MMO's end up preventing you from really doing anything to a monster who is X amount of levels higher than you. 

I've done group content in my time, including some raiding.  I never actually found it challenging, instead it was just tedious.  Dealing with other players is hit or miss, and most group content is just following a script anyway. Besides, I just don't have the time to do that anymore. 

Is it too much to ask for some challenging solo content?  That's why I enjoy PvP games like Warhammer Online and League of Legends.  I still think there is a place in my gaming life for PvE though, I just need it to be interesting.  

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Classy

Just because it's the apocalypse doesn't mean you have to wear those instruments of death and destruction.  Fallen Earth announced a new bonus when you purchase the game which is sure to get you looks around the canyon.

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Progressive MMO Design

::Enable Armchair Game Designer Mode.::

Problem. The current design of many PvE MMO's is getting tired and boring. It usually goes something like this: Level to cap, Raid Treadmill, repeat. As other have said, it is essentially 2 games. It also has the side effect of mudflation and trivializing of old content.

Solution. Traditional MMO's have a progression, but it is all back-loaded in their raid treadmill. Instead, I think the progression should be dispersed throughout the game. To accomplish that, my MMO would used "staged releases."

Let's use WoW as an example. When they launched, they had 60 levels and a raid. Naturally, many wanted to get to the raid and sped through. Seems to be human nature.

What is a staged release? My design would only have the game launch with the starting areas and maybe another zone. Then, 2 - 3 weeks later another zone would open. A few weeks after that, another.

Lets say Westfall is the highest level zone at launch (for the Alliance). Deadmines would still be there, but now it would be the end game dungeon/raid for a length of time. It should be available in 5 or 10 man versions. All dungeons and raids would have their time as the end game instance.

Over a year period you would dole out the content one chunk at a time. An 'epic' story would be crafted to guide players to the new zones/frontiers. After a year, expansion pack time and you continue the trend.

As the game is released in stages, new players should be able to catch up pretty easily. A mentoring system would be required and would also help keep older instances alive. More on how to non-trivialize them later.

Pitfalls. In order to keep players from getting bored, horizontal content would be very important. The game would need Achievements, Crafting and Collections. At every stage, more of that horizontal content would be added. It should be enough to keep the 'average' person busy until the next stage.

Itemization may be an issue as the raids would be spread out and not at the level cap. My solution to that is tokens and level adjustments. All dungeons/raids would drop tokens (in addition to loot) to players of the appropriate level. These can be traded in for gear and such.

EQ2 will be introducing a level-reduction system, so you can lower yourself to make content more meaningful. That would work great here, so you can go back and run old instances and get the tokens to spend on new gear. Hopefully this will keep many of the old dungeons/raids alive for a long time.

Conclusion. Players love new content, but it is not easy to keep up with the demand. Using a Staged progression, a MMO will always seem new and dynamic as there is not long to wait for something new. Gone would be the days of sitting at the level cap running that raid treadmill. With this design you would constantly be progressing while keeping the old content useful.

::Disengage Armchair Game Designer Mode::

Well, that is my MMO design idea. I'm sure it has some flaws, but it sounds fun to me and I'm not even a big PvE person.

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I am a stingy gamer

It's true, when it comes to stuff in games I am stingy. Take limited use items as an example. I never use them. Instead I stuff them in the closet to be used 'someday.' In WAR I have yet to use those neat Axe siege weapons. They've been in my inventory for months, but the time has never been right. Same goes for the items I got from the Collectors Edition, never used them.

It isn't just items, the same goes for long cooldown skills. Anything more than a minute and I rarely use it. I remember in WoW, my warrior had a bunch of long cooldown skills. They were rarely ever used. It isn't like they cost me anything, I just always felt I may need them more later on.

Am I the only one suffering from this condition in games? I just hate the idea of being without these items and skills, even though I never actually use them. They say a weapon unused is a useless weapon... which sounds right. For some reason, I can't bring myself to use them.

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On the level

Are experience levels a necessary part of the RPG formula? This is a question that came out of a post I made about wanting a Tier 4-only version of WAR. It was said that without levels it would just be a FPS. I agree that is the case if there are no levels (levels can also be skill points) at all, but what about the traditional experience levels we have grown to love and hate?

The purpose of experience levels is to give a feeling of progression and in many cases to help tune difficulty. They come from a time before MMO's but have lived on in many of today's games. However, I now see them as more of a barrier than anything else.

Imagine a pen and paper DnD group. Would they exclude people from playing with them because their character was too low of a level? Would the GM tell him (or her) to go grind out a few levels and then they could participate? I've never played in a DnD group, so I'm not sure. It doesn't seem likely though. That could be the case with larger more official groups, but a group of friends?

There are many kinds of levels, not just the tyrant experience level. WAR has a renown level system, EQ2 has AA points, LoTRO has Legendary Items and so on. There are a myriad of ways to advance your character without separating them across levels.

In games like Eve Online and Darkfall you can play the heart of the game a few minutes after creating your character. You may not be very effective, but you can at least participate in some fashion. Even 0.0 space holding alliances need tacklers (which new players can do) in Eve.

That is what I'd like to see in WAR and other up and coming games. Let people play together and let them enjoy the meat of the game from the start. Use levels to allow progression and character customization but not to act as an artificial barrier between your players.

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MMO Security

One of the hot WAR topics recently is a certain program that allows cheating. I will not be giving it free advertising, so lets call it Program X. Using Program X, a player can do funky things like fly around, teleport and other such things. Cheating programs are nothing new to MMO's, but this is the first big one for Warhammer.

Disclaimer: I have not inspected Program X, as I don't want it on my system at all. However, I do have experience with software protection.

Right now a whole lot of people are clamoring for Mythic to fix it, as they should be doing. Because Mythic won't discuss it (I wouldn't if I were them), maybe I can shed some light on what is going on.

The first step would be to reverse engineer Program X and figure out exactly what it is doing. This is not very difficult, but it will be time consuming. It is easy to spend weeks on this task, especially if the author included obfuscation. Mythic probably doesn't keep this expertise on hand, so someone either has to learn it or they have to bring in a consultant.

Program X is likely reading and writing to the WAR client's memory. This is a common thing to do for any malicious program and not limited to game security. The author had to do a bunch of reverse engineering of his own (which is against the EULA and possibly DMCA) to figure out where to make adjustments.

Once he has the locations, he can change the memory (RAM) as the game runs. Many MMO's do a lot of boundary checking in the client. By altering memory, those checks can be bypassed. Most of Program X's features are movement bugs, which involves boundary checking.

That is pretty much the How and why of Program X. Now for the fun part, how do you 'fix' this? Sadly, it is not easy. There are several possible methods.

Move checks to the server. Counting on the security of the client is a losing proposition. A malicious user will be able to bypass nearly everything on the client given enough time. Boundary checks could be moved to the server side. However, this comes at a rather large performance cost.

Encryption and Checksums. Using cryptography, you can encrypt or take checksums of memory to verify they have not been altered. This comes with a performance cost. Also, it is likely to be bypassed given enough time and effort.

Drivers. Operating System drivers operate at a higher level than programs and can be used to protect them. You are probably familiar with DRM's use. No one likes drivers added to their system. They can cause all sorts of stability issues. They are also not foolproof either.

Blizzard's Method. WoW battles with this problem all the time. Part of their solution is the Warden. Basically, the Warden will watch every process on your system looking for bad things. Does it have any business looking at what else you are running? That is something for you to decide. However, this system is not foolproof either.

PunkBuster. See Warden.

Sadly, this is a never ending battle for MMO's. Once Program X no longer works, its author will update it so it does, and the cycle begins again.

Hopefully this article has shed some light into the issues that Mythic (and other companies) is likely dealing with.

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If you could reroll...

Q: If you had the one-time choice (in any MMO) to switch your class with another, retaining level and similar equipment, would you? If so, what change you would make?

For me, it would be my WoW Warrior. As much as I like Titans Grip and their tanking, I would trade him for a Paladin. They are just so much more versatile with their healing options.

In WAR, I am pretty happy with my Engineer.

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Atlantica Online

I had been reading about Atlantica Online (AO) over at Hardcore Casual for some time now. I finally reached the threshold where I had to give it a try. AO is a free to play MMO which does use microtransactions to pay the bills. There are a couple things you should know about me first:

• I do not like anime and most JRPG style games.
• I do like party based RPGs, where I can build and arm my team.

So right off the bat AO is conflicting for me. It is very influenced by Anime/JRPG games, but it is also party based with a lot of flexibility. I reached Level 10 and here are my thoughts:

Graphics. The battle graphics are decent and quite workable. The world graphics are not very good looking at all. It feels unfinished. I remember looking out on the ocean and seeing the squared edge of the world, apparently this one is flat and looks like a tile.

Sound. Not sure the best way to describe the sounds in the game. I am going to go with Anime and Street Fighter influenced. Not really what I am looking for in a game. The music was decent though, at least the techno/rock thing they had going.

Combat. This was very refreshing. It reminded me of Final Fantasy type combat. I did enjoy this part of the game, it makes a great change to the normal MMO combat.

UI. The User Interface is pretty awful in my opinion. It is unintuitive, clunk and ugly.

Party. Like I said, I do enjoy making a team and arming them for my playstyle. AO does this pretty well. For example, my party consisted of 3 Swordsmen with shields, who manned the front-line while I (Cannon class) and an Archer stayed on the rear line. Enemies would have to go through my tanks to get to my ranged folks in the back.

Crafting/Enchanting. This is another nice part of the game. I can use a lot of what I loot. If I get 2 shields, I can combine them to make a better shield. It does make the whole loot aspect much more interesting than the standard MMO model.

Grind. Syncaine was not kidding when he said this game was all about grind. That is not a problem if the activities are fun. AO does have a lot of things going on to help avoid the grind feeling.

AO has a lot of good aspects, but not enough to keep me playing. The style, clunky UI and the fact I am busy with other games force me to pass on it. I really like some of the ideas in the game. I would be interested in a polished Western version with a subscription.

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Free vs Paid Expansions

Is there anything more exciting than new MMO content? Maybe, but for this blog post, no. Most often this new content comes to us via expansions. Sometimes they are free, sometimes they need to be paid for. Each MMO has its own idea of how this should be done. For this post, content additions and expansions are roughly equal.

On the free side you have games like Eve, Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes/Villains. They tend to release new content, at decent intervals, for just the cost of the subscription. SWG recently released the Battle for Hoth and an Appearance Tab system. CoX put out Issue 13, which had many improvements.

If you added up all of the free content those games release for a year, would it add up to a paid expansion? I think in many cases it would, but then you would have to add in the fact that you had to wait. Free expansions allow for more additions, quicker which means a more dynamic game.

On the pay side, you have games like WoW and Everquest. These games do put out free content upgrades too, but usually they are few and far between (I am looking at you WoW). When they do put out a paid expansion, it is usually packed full of content and worth the wait. The downside is that paid expansions can be slow to hit the marketplace.

Finally there is the hybrid, like Lord of the Rings Online. They put out free content updates (Book 13 ) pretty regularly and a rather large paid expansion (Mines of Moria).

As far as WAR goes, we will have to wait and see what approach they take. I think it will be a hybrid, but I can't recall where I heard that. They have released 2 new careers so far and have plans to release another two soon. These were cut from launch, but are free content none the less. I can't wait to hear their ideas for a paid expansion.

What kind of expansion do you prefer?

I would have to go for LoRTO. It seems that they are giving their customers the best of both worlds in terms of content. I really do like the free updates, however, I suspect a paid expansion can be very healthy for a game. Maybe it is just psychological, but the expectations are higher when shelling out extra money, regardless of the amount of free content they have been releasing.

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Wormhole Opening?

I am a big fan of Stargate and Stargate SG-1. Stargate Atlantis, on the other hand, I think was awful. It has terrible characters, with the exception of McKay of course, and a bad plot. Anyhow, this post isn't about the awfulness of Atlantis.

Stargate Worlds is a MMO based in the Stargate universe. When I first heard about this I was skeptical about how viable it would be. I still am, but I keep an eye on it. In the latest newsletter they announced that closed beta would be starting up in a week or two. So it looks like Stargate Worlds is coming in the near future.

The basic idea behind the game is you can me Human, Asguard, Jaffa or Goa'uld. There are combat classes, and non-combat focused classes. That makes Stargate Worlds a but different from most MMO's out there. Combat in the game is focused on tactics (i.e. cover) rather than the normal huge health bars and mitigation.

Puzzle type minigames will also be involved, to represent how Daniel Jackson sometimes gets them out of jams. I am not sure how it will work out, but kudos to trying something new to freshen the genre.

They released a video about their new flamethrower here. it is a bit humorous, so check it out. For more info check out the wiki. I did apply to closed beta (not using my blogs info), although I never win drawings so I doubt I will get in.

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I've got the power

"It's gettin' it's gettin' it's gettin' kinda hectic" - The Power, Snap

I do not play play City of Heroe's/City of Villains much (Ardua does though!). I really like the concept of the game, but I just cannot bring myself to do the PvE grind to the level cap. Not the games fault, just a phase I am going through.

I could not help take interest in the upcoming content release, Issue 13: Architect. The gist of it is:

"Using an intuitive interface similar to the game’s detailed Character Creator, players can create missions from the ground up. Players will determine details ranging from environments, mission objectives, and enemies, to written fiction and character dialogue, giving their stories nearly infinite depth and personalisation."

It is basically player made quests. It is one of the most awesome things I have seen go into a major MMO. There are many creative folks who play MMO's who will take this kind of tool and run with it.

This only other similar system I know of was the SWG Storyteller system. It is very neat in its own right, but was not friendly towards other people participating as quests. This looks like a leap ahead, which is great to hear. Hopefully this will advance user-created content in the MMO industry.

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