MMORPG Musings

My Second Take at LotRO

2010-11-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

Free to play?

I've been searching for a new game to play for quite some time. I got bored with WoW a long time ago and started looking around, I tried several F2P games, went back to FFXI a couple times, WAR, STO, etc...a long time ago I also tried Lord of the Rings Online. I downloaded the free trial which I think was only the low quality version (they offer bother a low quality and high quality version of the game) and started playing but was quickly turned off by the graphics, the gameplay, pretty much everything.

Just recently, though, I tried out the new F2P model for the game and I actually found myself enjoying it - for a time, at least. I made a captain of the race of man and played him for a bit...I actually enjoy the combat mechanics on him, he's pretty fun to play. Unfortunately at around 10 I got bored with the quests. They are rather bland. Which is sad too because they started out pretty good, running around with strider and being scared to death by a black rider. You even get to save a small town from brainwashed brigands. Past that first bit, though, it's really just boring.

I'm working through it, though. The game is still somewhat interesting but then I get to a quest that sends me halfway accross a rather large map, on foot, to a guy who (the quest says) might give me a horse. I show up only to find out that not only am I 10 level too soon for a horse but I have to buy the training with turbine points. Now I'm bummed that I didn't get a horse and wondering if I'll get enough turbine points by that time so on the way back I decide to sell off some junk i've accumulated (limited bag space, ya know...gotta pay turbine points for them too) only to realize the auction house can only be used if you buy auction slots with turbine points.

Seriously Turbine, not only am I put off by the volume of things I would have to purchase but do you really have to name the currency after yourself? Long story short, I doubt I'll be playing this for long...it's not really F2P and I don't want to pay for it.

FFXIV: The Great Disappointment

2010-11-10T16:22:00.000-08:00

Failure

To commemorate my first post here in about a year I thought I'd post about the biggest MMO disappointment of my year: FFXIV. By this time everyone knows what the problems are in FFXIV but I'm so disappointed with Square Enix that I have to voice them now that I plan on getting back to writing.

It's such a shame to feel so excited about a game and to get let down time and time again. I was invited into the closed beta a month or so prior to it's release and was greeted by a lovely little world. The graphics were great, the story was interesting and I was back into a Final Fantasy world. I thought nothing could go wrong. Unfortunately things could go wrong. In fact, they were so wrong I was sad for a while. This wonderful game was plagued by a poor UI that worked horribly with a keyboard and mouse and some functions were not working with a gamepad. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. My biggest problems were the artificial limits placed on the players, especially those for quests. When I first started playing past the introductory quests I noticed you could only have 8 quests at a time and only 4 of them could be for combat. This was the extent of content for a full 48 hour period. You did the combat quests in about 20-30 minutes and then had nothing to do but try out the crafting quests. That's all fine and dandy but I want to play the way I want to play, don't force me into something I don't want to do.

Well, this is just the closed beta, after all, I told myself. Surely they'll fix things by open beta. Unfortunately they didn't. The last time I played was a few days into the open beta...I was just too disgusted because there was just nothing to do. I'm not going to pay $15 a month for shoddy UI and little content and for certain I'm not going to grind like they expect us to.

What everyone should take from the failure that is FFXIV is the fact that artificial barriers that limits your play time or style are not acceptable. Make a game and let us play it...if not I wont pay for it, no matter what name is attached to it.

Crafting Done Well

2009-12-16T18:22:00.000-08:00

So we've seen the bad things of five games' crafting system, now we can see some of the good things.

WoW - There are a few things I really enjoy about the WoW crafting system. First among the list is its simplicity as I love simple things. No point in getting to complex just for complexities sake. The WoW system is easy to use and easy to understand with a good UI that lets you find what you want to craft as much or as little as you need in just a couple clicks. Another boon to the system is the fact that it has so many humorous things in them. You have cooking items that make you big or small, engineers can build motorcycles or airplanes, tailors and leatherworkers can make holiday clothing or suits and dresses...there's just a bunch of crazy stuff you can do that really have no impact on the game but it's those little things that just make you laugh or giggle or chortle or whatever it is you do when amused. Finally Blizz has managed, finally to make each craft useful to you personally. Each craft has something that lets you add an enchantment or something to boost the stats of an item that doesn't get enchanted in other ways. Like the shoulder inscriptions for scribes, ring enchants for enchanters, armor kits that boost stats in various areas for leatherworkers, etc. There's a lot of good in the WoW crafting system.

WAR - Customization. I love the idea of not having set recipes but being able to customize your potions and such according to the ingredients you place in there. If you want the potion to last longer add this or if you want it to be more potent add that...stuff like that give me the warm and fuzzies inside. Customization whenever possible is best.

FFXI - The quality of items is a good idea. There's a chance with each time you craft that the item you are crafting will be +1 or in other words, the stats will be better. If it is something that doesn't come in a higher quality you simply make more with each craft. The FFXI crafting system also has more crafts than most other games such as woodworking, bonecrafting and goldsmithing and not only that but you can level ALL of the crafts to at least level 60 with one of those crafts to level 100. Or, I think, if you want you can level four crafts to 70 but I don't think anyone does that. Some good ideas with this game.

My brain is getting a little bit fuzzy at this point so I'll leave it at that. These are great ideas for crafting that could potentially be combined to make a good crafting system.

Crafting Done Poorly

2009-12-09T15:45:00.001-08:00

I, by no means, am an expert on all MMOs. I've only played a handful of them (well, maybe a bit more than a handful) and bothered with crafting in even less but I know what I like, I generally know what I like it and, for the most part, what I like everyone else likes. Let's start with what I don't like first, though, and move on from there.

WoW - Triviality. Blizz has been working on that for a while and has been getting better but for the most part everything you craft is worthless, even the best items you can craft are quickly replaced. While that makes sense with a game that updates its gear so frequently it still trivializes crafting. The only crafts that are immune are alchemy, enchanting and, now, inscription (though to a lesser extent) as they are all unique in that there is no other way to gain the benefits of those crafts. Inscription is plagued with the low cost of the majority of its wares which means whatever you make is pretty much worthless.
FFXI - Grind. If there is anything grindy in this digital world it is the FFXI crafting system. The way you level crafting in FFXI is through pure, unadulterated grind. First, most of the items you need to craft in order to level are useless...and I mean utterly useless. You're most likely going to sell it all to a vendor. Then you have to deal with the fact that not every time you craft something will you level up. In addition to that you have a chance of failing your craft and losing the materials you were using. There are several other problems to the FFXI crafting system though. Such as unknown recipes and interdependencies. There is no crafting list or spells or recipe to use in FFXI. When originally playing the game you had to divine the correct amount of ingredients, what crystal to use and what level you need (not only the primary crafting level but many items have interdependencies where you need to level another craft in order to get the item you want) from the NPCs around the crafting area.
WAR - Poor Design. Before release the crafting system was one of those selling points for the game. Mythic hyped up the fact that there were no need for "recipes" but that you can mix and match various ingredients and get different results. I actually like the idea and I'll get to that later but they utterly destroyed the system by poor design and incompletion. The main problem in my mind was the supporting professions. Normally in a game you have a main profession that makes stuff and a supporting profession that gathers whatever it you need to make the stuff with. Well from what I can tell not everything is available through the supporting professions which normally would be ok with me but you need to run through hoops and attend the public quests to get some of the stuff you need. I'd even be ok with that if whatever you got from the PQs were special but they weren't...just normal stuff you need. Not only that but some main professions required items from multiple support professions and even one of those support professions needed items from the others. It was just a poor design intended to make your guild members interdependent on one another but nobody likes that...it's just a bother. And then you have the fact that they didn't even bother to make the staple professions like blacksmith and tailor.
EVE Online - Complication. I have to admit I haven't even tried to understand the EVE Online crafting system. I know that blueprints are involved and that you can research them and copy them and manufacture what is on the blueprint but I just don't get the whole blueprint origin thing...This could be due to one of my learning disabilities though (I don't actually have a learning disability but that's what I call it). If I can't understand the reasoning behind something I usually can't understand the thing itself so sometimes I find myself asking someone things that they don't really care about and often times don't know to find out the answer...anyway...moving on. The system makes no sense to me either because it is way too simple (and rather contrived if it's what I am thinking) or way too complicated. Either way I don't much like it.
Allods Online - I know this is still in beta...I never did bother to read any agreement so I'm not exactly sure if I'm under a NDA but I'll just say that the system doesn't make sense and is too restrictive. Plus you have to do a ton of stuff in order to get a second profession and they don't tell you that so you might run up to a tailor, like I did, and learn how to become a tailor and then run up to the accompanying gathering profession (forget the name) and find out that you can't learn it. Now your stuck with a profession you can't change and can't use unless you buy a ton of materials. Oh, and this game also (as far as I can tell) has a chance that you'll fail a craft and lose materials.

When Microtransactions Are Appropriate

2009-12-04T12:07:00.000-08:00

Most, if not all, free MMOs offer a system of microtransactions where you can purchase in-game items and services with real money. It makes sense in free games because, after all, where else would a free MMO get money for their efforts? Recently, though we have heard rumors and seen evidences that some of the up-and-coming pay to play MMOs might have microtransactions such as Star Wars: The Old Republic and Final Fantasy XIV. It raises the question: if I have to pay for certain items what on earth are my monthly payments for? Most gamers don't like microtransactions in the first place...creating a system that requires microtransactions and a monthly payment would definitely turn off a number of players. So when are microtransactions appropriate for a game and how should they be implemented?

The consensus is microtransactions are a no-no for pay to play games. We already pay monthly for the game, don't be greedy. Microtransactions, in my opinion, can ruin a game. It automatically means there won't be an equal playing field. It also makes us question the company involved. If other MMOs can make money from just monthly payments what on earth does that mean about the company that use microtransactions as well? Either they are screwing us over or they don't know how to run their company. Take World of Warcraft as an example. Not only does Blizzard offer the normal updates but they go out of their way to make interesting holidays and events full of vanity items, foods, gear, pets, mounts. The only thing Blizzard charges extra for is name changes, server changes and race changes.

There may be instances where real money traded for game money might be warranted, though. EVE Online has managed to do it quite flawlessly. However, this sort of transaction can only be done in very specific circumstances...I wont go into the details but just let it be known EVE Online is probably the only game it would work with. So, microtransaction could work in a p2p game but ultimately it's a bad idea to even think about and inadvisable to try. Leave this sort of thing to free to play games.

Class Balance

2009-11-18T12:51:00.001-08:00

I have often thought developers go about balancing their classes wrong. Take Mythic for example and the way they have been attempting to balance Warhammer Online. Their method of balancing is for some classes to be stronger than other classes, sort of like a cycle. I forget how it is exactly but healer > tank > melee damage > ranged damage > healer is the general idea. I really think it's hard to think of things that way and try to balance. And it's obvious that it's not working since there are huge balance problems in WAR.

Blizzard, on the other hand, I don't think has any plan on balancing really. They balance as one class falls out of balance. I think it works better than the WAR method but it still doesn't work well. I have never really understood why companies don't do a 1 vs 1 approach to balance.

I say that the best way to balance is to pit one class against another. If one dies before the other you still need to balance. If, however, they die at about the same time you'll know the classes are balanced. This would mean if you had a pure damage dealer and put him up against a tank their damage, mitigation and health would all factor into a 1:1 ratio. Same thing goes for a tank verses a healer but this time you would have to factor in the heals of the healer.

I think it could even make the whole process of balancing easier since we are basically talking about mathematics here with the ratios. You could easily figure out exactly what scaling you would need for all classes' gear, spells, stats, etc...for the entire game by just making sure all of the ratios are exactly right. It would also make tuning dungeons and raids easy since you would know exactly what is expected from the players at a certain level.

At any rate, I think it's a good way of balancing. In the end the only differences you would have is skill, how quickly you can think, how clever your tactics are.

Multiple Servers vs Single Server

2009-11-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

Most MMOs spread their subscribers out through a number of servers to decrease lag and to limit the number of people in one area. Too many people in most games just causes problems. Some games such as EVE have just one server so everyone playing the game can play together. It takes a certain type of game to make the single server platform work. It seems to be a popular method in games based around space ships as Star Trek Online is going the single server route as well and I think I remember a few others with the same plan.

I sometimes have the idea that a single server might be the best way to go. I just like the idea of having a massive amount of people on a single server. I think it's a bit more realistic and would lend itself to better immersive qualities. The problem is there would need to be many redundancies in order to make it work in a normal game. Try placing 10 million players on a single wow server and just imagine how many people would be running around Ironforge and Dalaran. Imagine the first day of the game when you have 100,000 people trying to do their quests in Mulgore. You would need a larger world to fit everyone comfortably.

That's another reason why I like the idea. MMO worlds are far too small these days; they need more content, more and bigger cities. Larger zones and continents with more to do in them. I think creating more single server MMOs would lead to them becoming more massive.

Weapon and Armor Creator/Editor

2009-11-16T10:23:00.000-08:00

Now for my idea of this gear creator. My idea creates an ideal method for better customization while still being able to keep an iconic look for a class specific armor such as you see in games like FFXI, WoW, WAR and pretty much most MMOs that have specific classes.

My idea is two tiered (or more...haven't thought it all the way through yet) first is the creation of weapons and armors. Think of it in terms of a character creator that you might see in various games. For a weaponsmith you'd be able to create varying types of weapons and customize them in various ways. As an example let's say you want to create a big two handed sword. You would get a number of options much like in character creation (eyes, hair, hair color, scars, jewelry) such as length and width, shape (serrations, curves, etc), hilts, and varying runes or other decorations. Everything would have sliders to adjust the size to exactly what you want. The same thing would go for armors.

The second aspect would be the modification of armor. You don't get as many choices when you modify armor as it keeps the general aspects of certain armors but it lets you customize weapons and armors just enough to make you unique.

Dark Knight: A Class Done Right

2009-11-16T09:43:00.000-08:00

Again, I know this topic will get me crucified not only in the WoW community for liking the DK (the bane of the WoW universe) but by the MMO community in general for using WoW in a sentence that doesn't include the words hate, horrible, bad, childish or other visceral words...but I don't care because I really believe what I'm saying here.

The DK I believe is an example of the perfect class, or as close to perfect as you can get, at least. My reasoning for this is because it not only is highly customizable but iconic, both of which I consider crucial in a class. The reason for these two being so important is because in order for a player to form any sort of bond (basically, you need to like what you play) you need to identify with it, you need to like the way it looks, like the way it plays, like the personality that comes with it and you need to be able to bend it to your own style. The easy part was making the Death Knight iconic as it was a crucial part of a popular series of games, it was already established. The hard part came with making it flexible to your will and style of play.

In case you didn't know, WoW gives its classes three talent trees that are used to customize your character, usually in three different ways. With the DK, though, the customization didn't stop with the Blood, Frost and Unholy talent trees. Within each tree you had varying ways of customization, now somewhat diminished due to a number of nerfs to bring the DK more in line with other classes. All of the trees have various ways of filling the rolls the DK can fill, tank and melee dps.

Customization

2009-11-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

People are strange and MMO players a bit stranger. We seem to want to be integrated into a group yet still keep our individuality, our uniqueness. Due to limitations on time and money on MMOs they tend to lean more towards integration and often lack any individual customization. Most MMOs offer little to no customization yet every time something moves towards customization the people rejoice. This is key to the future of MMOs, in my opinion.

People want to do things their own way and in their own time so customization should really be a major part of every aspect of an MMO, from UI and combat to gear and character customization. Many games excel in certain areas of customization but none seems to have captured every aspect of it. This is how a game should customize:

UI - People's minds work in different ways which means some might consider a screen full of action bars and skill buttons to be a great benefit while others would consider it clutter. The UI should be fully customizable. I think WoW does this fairly well by allowing third parties to create addons that radically change the UI. Granted, it would be better if Blizzard itself did this but it's brilliant to tap the potential of programmers out there. Also, lets not confuse WoW's gameplay (namely that of threat meters) with the UI...they are separate issues so don't complain about one while talking about the other.
Combat - There's nothing better than a game that let's you choose the best way to play. I am actually not keen on the type of games that have no classes but let you choose skills. I think there needs to be some structure but a lot of play within the boundaries of the classes. I'm a big fan of hybrid classes and think the best game would be one where every class would have two rolls to play but not only stop there but each roll should have various ways to go about the job. I know people are going to hate me for using WoW as an example again but they got a lot of things right (why else do you think they have 10 million subscribers?) but I guarantee you'll hate me when I bring up the Dark Knight, the newest class brought to WoW. When first introduced I considered it a perfect class. Granted, it was way overpowered compared to the other classes but Blizzard got it right when they made it. The reason why I say this is because it was a hybrid class that had several ways of accomplishing it's dual roles. Like all WoW classes it has three talent trees that make gameplay different, sometimes radically. Within each talent tree you have the capability to deal damage and tank with varying styles of combat and various emphases. I'll go more in depth in another post but I'll just reemphasize that the DK is the perfect class in terms of customization.
Gear - This is a touchy issue as it's hard to strike a balance between individuality and epic looking gear, both of which people like. FFXI had an interesting form of customization where you needed various different types of gear for all of your ablities/spells. However, this didn't really create any sort of individuality since everyone had to get that gear in order to best perform those spells. In fact, FFXI is probably best known for everyone looking exactly the same. There is almost no variations in gear when leveling and while the artifact armor was entirely iconic and adored by all it was still woefully stale when you see everyone wandering around in exactly the same thing. WoW didn't fare much better, even with it's varying raid gears as usually everyone had the same gear at the same points in their raiding careers. Many games recently are using dyes to give people the ability to customize at least the color of their armor. I seem to remember one game, forget which though I think it's a f2p game, that lets you transfer the stats from one piece of armor to another. I think there is an interesting way to blend all of the ideas together and integrate crafting into the mix. Create a weapon and armor editor in the game, much like many games have character creator with a lot of different options. I'll describe this more in another post.
Character Customization - To be honest, this is one of the times I don't really care much about customization. I don't really look closely at characters as I'm more preoccupied about other things, however, it's important to a lot of people. At the same time it isn't to a lot of others and they don't really want to be bothered with it. I suggest there be a scaler option at the character creation screen that lets you choose the amount of customization you want. It will scale between a less involved form of character customization such as you see in FFXI where you basically choose size and one of a limited number of characters of various hairstyles and colors. On the other end of the spectrum you could have something like that of Aion where you have a scale for each attribute and can literally spend hours choosing. There could be a few options in between those two extremes like be able to choose between a hairstyles and colors, size, facial build...various other things.
Crafting - Warhammer Online had a brilliant idea for crafting that was very loose and highly customizable, unfortunately it was poorly designed and implemented and also fairly limited in it's scope. Add to that my idea of a weapon and armor editor and you'd have a pretty good design for a crafting system.
Mini Games - I think every MMORPG needs a number of mini games that allow you to customize your gameplay given your amount of time available. Gladiatorial games, chess games, card games, and various other types of gameplay would be a nice way to spend your time when waiting for something. Also, PvP can fit in this category...or PvE, depending on what the game's emphasis is on.