I am ever impressed by how far video games have advanced. 1st-person shooters nowadays hardly bear any resemblance to their great-grand-grand-...-daddy Wolfenstein. I've been playing more "classical" games, with the most recent published game being the graphically unimpressive indy-game Witcher. In other words, I've been living in the gaming backwaters.
Enter Bioshock.
The physics engine is simply amazing. The water looks like water, moves like water, alters light like water. The fire looks like fire, moves like fire, burns like fire. Metals, plastics, plants, lights, all look so real that I imagined I could put my hand through the screen to touch the Bioshock world.
The amount of computation required to run the game must be immense, yet all of it is contained within one single desktop unit.
Furthermore, the atmosphere was quite realistically crafted -- an older era preserved and falling into ruins. Beautiful!
Wish I had more time to play it... :(
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
The Distraction of Ds
Two short things I wanted to discuss today, neither of them really related to each other except for the Sesame Street "begins with D" thing. Oh, and that they're both related to games, of course.
First up, the big Diablo III announcement news. Kill Ten Rats' Ethic made the most classic announcement ever.
I love it. It's hilarious. It can be read in so many ways, and everyone can agree with it. Because it is true. In its own multipronged way.
I finally had some time to go check out the promotional website today. In true Blizzard style, it is beautifully polished with stupendous graphics (meaning both the website and the game.)
Detractors will argue that "Bleh, it's still the same game," and they're absolutely right. It looks true to the formula - isometric view, co-op play that caters to a god-mode complex by allowing one swing of one's sword/spell to massacre 5-8 trash mobs at a time, levels, feat trees and all.
And now I'm wondering if that's really such a bad or tragic thing.
Face it, with Blizzard's reputation and absolute class at polishing up a game until it is ridiculously shiny, who won't predict that this game will be lapped up like hotcakes by millions and millions of people?
For myself, I'm totally getting Diablo 3 this time around. Why?
Because after playing through Diablo 1 and 2, I am fully aware that I do enjoy the playstyle - hell, if Progress Quest can work havoc on my synapses, any other slightly more interactive level-up game will do.
And if it follows its formula true, Diablo 3 will cater to both solo play (an important criteria for me) and co-op play (which is its main draw.)
Therein lies one of the key tenets of the addictive power of the Diablo formula. People to play with. Blizzard's reputation will allow them to hit critical mass of players in short order, and this energy feeds off each other. Lowest common denominator and all.
Catering to a mid-range computer system only increases the possibility that there will be more people to play with. And I can even entertain the hope that there will be real life (ex-)colleagues I know who might be interested, even if there is no guarantee we'll still be working in the same location by the time Diablo 3 comes out.
I also like the art style. It has the characteristic Blizzard coloring (a little bit WoW-like) but because it's a dark fantastic world, there's a distinct lack of blocky cartoony characters and more realistic shapes. Nice eye candy to my subjective POV.
Sure, perhaps it's tragic the way that Hollywood-style sequels seem to be taking over the brilliant pioneer frontier spirit of the ancient internet and old classic PC games. But when you compare the money that indie works of any media are making, to the glitz and glamour of the tried and true, the wisdom of the crowds seem to suggest that they like the lowest common denominator recycled pap, thank you.
And maybe, just maybe, some of it isn't horrible lowest common denominator stuff, but somehow tapping into the wellspring of archetypes and saying something important about humanity's subconscious and common tastes.
After all, we're still playing chess and solitaire after how many thousands of years?
Or what the heck, why even argue about whether there's any inherent value in classic game genres... Does it really matter if rulesets change or remain the same... Aren't they just a good excuse to have fun together with people?
The only time this fails is if the people you're playing with all look up at the same time and collectively say, "this is boring, let's do something else." Just how this happens, I'm not sure though. Worth thinking about for another time.
Conclusion: As long as Blizzard doesn't face an unfortunate mass hysteria of unified boredom after a few days of gameplay, Diablo 3 will be healthy for a long time to come. Plenty of room for content expansions and class additions and so on.
---
The other 'D' distraction is Guild War's impending Dragon Festival.
I'm a complete sucker for in-game events, and I can't quite help but notice that Rollerbeetle Racing is going to be back.
*twitch* *twitch*
Yay.
I guess I'll have to take some time off from Age of Conan next week. Enough to catch the Festival anyways.
Since the times given are all in PST, time for me to translate it to the SG version:
I hope I didn't FUBAR the timing accidentally.
First up, the big Diablo III announcement news. Kill Ten Rats' Ethic made the most classic announcement ever.
I love it. It's hilarious. It can be read in so many ways, and everyone can agree with it. Because it is true. In its own multipronged way.
I finally had some time to go check out the promotional website today. In true Blizzard style, it is beautifully polished with stupendous graphics (meaning both the website and the game.)
Detractors will argue that "Bleh, it's still the same game," and they're absolutely right. It looks true to the formula - isometric view, co-op play that caters to a god-mode complex by allowing one swing of one's sword/spell to massacre 5-8 trash mobs at a time, levels, feat trees and all.
And now I'm wondering if that's really such a bad or tragic thing.
Face it, with Blizzard's reputation and absolute class at polishing up a game until it is ridiculously shiny, who won't predict that this game will be lapped up like hotcakes by millions and millions of people?
For myself, I'm totally getting Diablo 3 this time around. Why?
Because after playing through Diablo 1 and 2, I am fully aware that I do enjoy the playstyle - hell, if Progress Quest can work havoc on my synapses, any other slightly more interactive level-up game will do.
And if it follows its formula true, Diablo 3 will cater to both solo play (an important criteria for me) and co-op play (which is its main draw.)
Therein lies one of the key tenets of the addictive power of the Diablo formula. People to play with. Blizzard's reputation will allow them to hit critical mass of players in short order, and this energy feeds off each other. Lowest common denominator and all.
Catering to a mid-range computer system only increases the possibility that there will be more people to play with. And I can even entertain the hope that there will be real life (ex-)colleagues I know who might be interested, even if there is no guarantee we'll still be working in the same location by the time Diablo 3 comes out.
I also like the art style. It has the characteristic Blizzard coloring (a little bit WoW-like) but because it's a dark fantastic world, there's a distinct lack of blocky cartoony characters and more realistic shapes. Nice eye candy to my subjective POV.
Sure, perhaps it's tragic the way that Hollywood-style sequels seem to be taking over the brilliant pioneer frontier spirit of the ancient internet and old classic PC games. But when you compare the money that indie works of any media are making, to the glitz and glamour of the tried and true, the wisdom of the crowds seem to suggest that they like the lowest common denominator recycled pap, thank you.
And maybe, just maybe, some of it isn't horrible lowest common denominator stuff, but somehow tapping into the wellspring of archetypes and saying something important about humanity's subconscious and common tastes.
After all, we're still playing chess and solitaire after how many thousands of years?
Or what the heck, why even argue about whether there's any inherent value in classic game genres... Does it really matter if rulesets change or remain the same... Aren't they just a good excuse to have fun together with people?
The only time this fails is if the people you're playing with all look up at the same time and collectively say, "this is boring, let's do something else." Just how this happens, I'm not sure though. Worth thinking about for another time.
Conclusion: As long as Blizzard doesn't face an unfortunate mass hysteria of unified boredom after a few days of gameplay, Diablo 3 will be healthy for a long time to come. Plenty of room for content expansions and class additions and so on.
---
The other 'D' distraction is Guild War's impending Dragon Festival.
I'm a complete sucker for in-game events, and I can't quite help but notice that Rollerbeetle Racing is going to be back.
*twitch* *twitch*
Yay.
I guess I'll have to take some time off from Age of Conan next week. Enough to catch the Festival anyways.
Since the times given are all in PST, time for me to translate it to the SG version:
July 4 (Fri) - 3am: Shing Jea Boardwalk, Dragon Arena and Rollerbeetle Races open.
July 4 (Fri) 5 (Sat) 6 (Sun) 7 (Mon)
Mission 1: 7pm 3am, 11am
Mission 2: 11pm 7am, 3pm
Mission 3: 5pm, 11pm 5am, 11am
Mission 4: 7pm, 1am, 7am, 1pm
Mission 5: 4pm, 10pm 4am, 10am
Mission 6: 6pm, 12mid 6am, 12noon
Mission 7: 8pm, 2am 8am, 2pm
July 6 (Sun) - 5pm, 7pm, 9pm, 11pm & July 7 (Mon) - 1am: Finale event
I hope I didn't FUBAR the timing accidentally.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The Ingress of Imperfection
Yeah, so I'm copying Van Hemlock-style titles lately... I like 'em. I'll binge on 'em.
I just finished 3-4 hours of dungeon crawling through my second Age of Conan instance. It's my third PUG (the first two were overland group quests though.)
And I had a pretty nice time all told.
We wiped PLENTY of times, however.
See, the group leader sounded like he knew what he was doing, and wanted to run through a small intervening dungeon to get to our quest dungeon. It was all very well, except about 2-3 members of our 6 man PUG weren't quite quick on the uptake/dodging aggro ability - and that tended to lead to half of the group wiping, over and over.
Eventually, we decided to cut our way through in a nice systematic fashion, and that's when I started to enjoy the whole 'tank sets the pace' sort of system that most MMOs (LOTRO, at least, and I suspect WoW too) seem to have.
Now, I don't consider myself experienced by any means of the word. After all, I missed tanking school in WoW completely, and only had two PUG experiences in LOTRO and intuitive CoX tanking style/tricks to draw on.
And you know me, I'm a perfectionist. I tend to lump all responsibility on myself and approportion blame on "damn, I'm a cruddy tank, I didn't take enough aggro."
(Of course these days, the one exception is if an idiotic DPSer runs ahead, alerts adjacent mobs, draws aggro, and whatever. Met too many of them to feel sorry for 'em or try to save their asses.)
And there were plenty of times when we just plain jane wiped. Adds came. I misjudged the situation and stepped into a two caster + 1 melee fight (casters hurt like HELL in AoC for whatever reason, and tend to melt tanks like deep-frying a Snickers bar). I possibly ran too fast into a fight before the healers could react. The boss mobs' damage were @#)(#$ insane - casters, of course. Unsoweiter.
Yet there were also good times when everything went well. Stuff moved as they were supposed to, smoothly and cleanly. PUGmates expressed a little bit of awe at how I manipulated caster mobs to run forward by simple tagging with a ranged weapon and LOS blocking (whose basic concept is really something every CoX tank worth their salt knows, and nothing uber spectacular.) We had some neat dungeon crawling experiences when we went deeper into the dungeon than anyone in the group had ever been - creeping up some stairs slowly and steadily, into a hall of undead and ending up with a lich lord boss.
But there were also potentially aggravating 'tear one's hair out' experiences too. We all ended up with a serious memory leak bug at one point, necessitating a staggered relogging of the client, and a long wait for everyone to download a ridiculous 50MB update that somehow snuck up on us. We had a boss mob we wanted to kill fall through the floor when we tried to pull him, and when we ran up to him, we got AoE blasted with nary an effort. We had a fairly clueless healer - which I started suspecting when she kept accidentally stepping into mob aggro radii and necessitating me yank them off with great difficulty - and really had sneaking confirmation of when our second healer quit (bedtime) and my hitpoint bar plummeted beyond my ability to rescue with potions. We had aggro rip right off me and into various people - mostly the healers. I admit to being ocassionally lazy and body-pulling (and body-pulling in AoC tends to have a 50% chance of slipping right past my grasp and into a healer). We had frequent rezes of one random person in the party because when faced with multiple melees and a spellcaster, I tended to just bite my tongue and not go after the spellcaster and just sacrifice someone in order to make sure the melee died first, we had no off-tanks for me to designate that sort of caster tie-up role, and I totally couldn't trust my healers to keep me alive through that much damage. We ended the night with a failed attempt at a hard boss, because even though it was suggested by a teammate or two that we hit a weak boss first before the hard boss, the group leader said, let's hit the hard boss, and I just ran into the hard boss - abruptly, perhaps. And yeah, we wiped quite significantly.
There's still an odd nagging suspicion in the back of my mind wondering whether everyone enjoyed the experience or left angry and frustrated.
It's the old perfectionism at work. A soft voice that gibbers, "But when you're tanking (or leading), everything should go perfectly well. Everyone should have a superduper winning experience and be blissfully happy and love to be around you, cos your runs are guaranteed successful and an easy appeal to their greed for loot/eq/glory, etc."
Fortunately, it's only a soft voice now. Lyc is nobody. I have the -hope- that people will like his tanking enough to call him back and ask him to tank, and the -fear- that I suck so much crap that no one will ask him to group ever again and may be burning his name into an idiot blacklist, but I'm trying not to let either feeling get in the way of my present enjoyment.
I'm starting to slowly realize (or at least slowly convince myself) that it's ok to fail, and ok to have total wipes in a PUG. Or even in a raid. After all, I'm reading about WoW raids, and they have such a contingency plan as 'raid wipe recovery' being a necessary role in itself.
That maybe it's ok that things didn't go perfectly smoothly as planned or desired. That one should be grateful for the times when things DID go smooth as butter and enjoy it.
That maybe other people have much lower standards or even zero expectations about what a perfect run should be, and that they were having fun regardless. After all, they could be newbies and ignorant.
That if they really were in total agony and frustration that things sucked so badly, they would probably never group again with a PUG (either choosing to solo or remain with their closeted guild) and naturally self-select themselves out of the PUG candidate pool, meaning I wouldn't have to worry about ever seeing them again or what they thought of me.
(After all, I don't have the time to do something hardcore like raiding full-time enough for them to approve of me, nor the inclination to use voice to the extent that such people would like.)
Not to mention, they would have probably quit in a hurry much sooner than 3 hours later. Which meant the PUG we had was satisfactory enough that people held out hope that things could go well enough.
And that all of this is part of my own learning experience of how to work as a group to do 3D-graphical instances instead of 2D-text runs. So it is reasonable to stumble and fall down, and that these are probably the nicest of times when you're not picky about what you expect because you don't really know how people -should- or -ought- to be playing anyway, or you don't really care that people aren't playing to maximum efficiency.
I know that I am conquering the greed instinct because I'm not really uber concerned about what kind of loot is being dropped - it's an ugly sort of feeling and leads to so much guild/group drama which I could do very much without.
I just need to keep working on my tendency to stress out when faced with imperfection. And enjoy waffling around with people.
---
Oddly enough, with friends, I don't mind putting on a casual imperfect face and laughing any mistakes off and generally putzing around nonseriously. It's outsiders, the public, the other people that I feel this odd need to impress and look perfect to.
I wonder if it's my upbringing...my perfectionistic mom who would always nag about missing a 1 percent mark off an exam and warn never to wash dirty linen in public, that one should always put on this perfect face to non-family outsiders.
Sighs. Very well could be.
Still, nurture can be conquered by rational or Zen thought. So I shall continue to work on allowing imperfections to mar my game without freaking out over it.
I just finished 3-4 hours of dungeon crawling through my second Age of Conan instance. It's my third PUG (the first two were overland group quests though.)
And I had a pretty nice time all told.
We wiped PLENTY of times, however.
See, the group leader sounded like he knew what he was doing, and wanted to run through a small intervening dungeon to get to our quest dungeon. It was all very well, except about 2-3 members of our 6 man PUG weren't quite quick on the uptake/dodging aggro ability - and that tended to lead to half of the group wiping, over and over.
Eventually, we decided to cut our way through in a nice systematic fashion, and that's when I started to enjoy the whole 'tank sets the pace' sort of system that most MMOs (LOTRO, at least, and I suspect WoW too) seem to have.
Now, I don't consider myself experienced by any means of the word. After all, I missed tanking school in WoW completely, and only had two PUG experiences in LOTRO and intuitive CoX tanking style/tricks to draw on.
And you know me, I'm a perfectionist. I tend to lump all responsibility on myself and approportion blame on "damn, I'm a cruddy tank, I didn't take enough aggro."
(Of course these days, the one exception is if an idiotic DPSer runs ahead, alerts adjacent mobs, draws aggro, and whatever. Met too many of them to feel sorry for 'em or try to save their asses.)
And there were plenty of times when we just plain jane wiped. Adds came. I misjudged the situation and stepped into a two caster + 1 melee fight (casters hurt like HELL in AoC for whatever reason, and tend to melt tanks like deep-frying a Snickers bar). I possibly ran too fast into a fight before the healers could react. The boss mobs' damage were @#)(#$ insane - casters, of course. Unsoweiter.
Yet there were also good times when everything went well. Stuff moved as they were supposed to, smoothly and cleanly. PUGmates expressed a little bit of awe at how I manipulated caster mobs to run forward by simple tagging with a ranged weapon and LOS blocking (whose basic concept is really something every CoX tank worth their salt knows, and nothing uber spectacular.) We had some neat dungeon crawling experiences when we went deeper into the dungeon than anyone in the group had ever been - creeping up some stairs slowly and steadily, into a hall of undead and ending up with a lich lord boss.
But there were also potentially aggravating 'tear one's hair out' experiences too. We all ended up with a serious memory leak bug at one point, necessitating a staggered relogging of the client, and a long wait for everyone to download a ridiculous 50MB update that somehow snuck up on us. We had a boss mob we wanted to kill fall through the floor when we tried to pull him, and when we ran up to him, we got AoE blasted with nary an effort. We had a fairly clueless healer - which I started suspecting when she kept accidentally stepping into mob aggro radii and necessitating me yank them off with great difficulty - and really had sneaking confirmation of when our second healer quit (bedtime) and my hitpoint bar plummeted beyond my ability to rescue with potions. We had aggro rip right off me and into various people - mostly the healers. I admit to being ocassionally lazy and body-pulling (and body-pulling in AoC tends to have a 50% chance of slipping right past my grasp and into a healer). We had frequent rezes of one random person in the party because when faced with multiple melees and a spellcaster, I tended to just bite my tongue and not go after the spellcaster and just sacrifice someone in order to make sure the melee died first, we had no off-tanks for me to designate that sort of caster tie-up role, and I totally couldn't trust my healers to keep me alive through that much damage. We ended the night with a failed attempt at a hard boss, because even though it was suggested by a teammate or two that we hit a weak boss first before the hard boss, the group leader said, let's hit the hard boss, and I just ran into the hard boss - abruptly, perhaps. And yeah, we wiped quite significantly.
There's still an odd nagging suspicion in the back of my mind wondering whether everyone enjoyed the experience or left angry and frustrated.
It's the old perfectionism at work. A soft voice that gibbers, "But when you're tanking (or leading), everything should go perfectly well. Everyone should have a superduper winning experience and be blissfully happy and love to be around you, cos your runs are guaranteed successful and an easy appeal to their greed for loot/eq/glory, etc."
Fortunately, it's only a soft voice now. Lyc is nobody. I have the -hope- that people will like his tanking enough to call him back and ask him to tank, and the -fear- that I suck so much crap that no one will ask him to group ever again and may be burning his name into an idiot blacklist, but I'm trying not to let either feeling get in the way of my present enjoyment.
I'm starting to slowly realize (or at least slowly convince myself) that it's ok to fail, and ok to have total wipes in a PUG. Or even in a raid. After all, I'm reading about WoW raids, and they have such a contingency plan as 'raid wipe recovery' being a necessary role in itself.
That maybe it's ok that things didn't go perfectly smoothly as planned or desired. That one should be grateful for the times when things DID go smooth as butter and enjoy it.
That maybe other people have much lower standards or even zero expectations about what a perfect run should be, and that they were having fun regardless. After all, they could be newbies and ignorant.
That if they really were in total agony and frustration that things sucked so badly, they would probably never group again with a PUG (either choosing to solo or remain with their closeted guild) and naturally self-select themselves out of the PUG candidate pool, meaning I wouldn't have to worry about ever seeing them again or what they thought of me.
(After all, I don't have the time to do something hardcore like raiding full-time enough for them to approve of me, nor the inclination to use voice to the extent that such people would like.)
Not to mention, they would have probably quit in a hurry much sooner than 3 hours later. Which meant the PUG we had was satisfactory enough that people held out hope that things could go well enough.
And that all of this is part of my own learning experience of how to work as a group to do 3D-graphical instances instead of 2D-text runs. So it is reasonable to stumble and fall down, and that these are probably the nicest of times when you're not picky about what you expect because you don't really know how people -should- or -ought- to be playing anyway, or you don't really care that people aren't playing to maximum efficiency.
I know that I am conquering the greed instinct because I'm not really uber concerned about what kind of loot is being dropped - it's an ugly sort of feeling and leads to so much guild/group drama which I could do very much without.
I just need to keep working on my tendency to stress out when faced with imperfection. And enjoy waffling around with people.
---
Oddly enough, with friends, I don't mind putting on a casual imperfect face and laughing any mistakes off and generally putzing around nonseriously. It's outsiders, the public, the other people that I feel this odd need to impress and look perfect to.
I wonder if it's my upbringing...my perfectionistic mom who would always nag about missing a 1 percent mark off an exam and warn never to wash dirty linen in public, that one should always put on this perfect face to non-family outsiders.
Sighs. Very well could be.
Still, nurture can be conquered by rational or Zen thought. So I shall continue to work on allowing imperfections to mar my game without freaking out over it.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Sameness of Sequels
Maybe Spore has the right idea.
Maybe it's way past time to have a different type of game altogether, rather than just clever, preferably novel spins on already existing genres.
Maybe not. Who knows. I'm not sure Spore is really that different from existing god games either. Just on a grander scale of achievement. Like all the games that are turning up lately.
Thing is, I'm playing a lot of good games right now. They're all technically excellent in their own way. But I can't help feel like I've grokked the pattern. Already.
An RTS game is going to involve building up some armies, teching up a tech tree of some kind, and then running said armies around a map either capturing points or burninating the opposing forces' armies/buildings. These days, RTS games will also multiple factions with different playstyles, and a satisfactory story replete with cutscenes in between each map setup.
An RPG involves levels and gaining xp to get better skills. The xp tends to flow by doing various quests or beating on living things. If you're creative, games like Mass Effect also award xp for talking to people and poking around 'exploring' by clicking on things to collect an update for one's codex aka encyclopedic deed log. Again, a good singleplayer game of this ilk tends to split up the interactive action bits with cinematic storytelling (often voice-acted cutscenes) and dialogue options (sometimes with meaningful significant choices, and oftentimes falling short of the mark.)
An FPS involves spinning around looking at very high class graphics with mouselook, and normally shooting most of the moving objects with a crosshair in the center of one's screen. A lot of the better games also involve good pacing between action and suspense/storytelling (also done with cutscenes.)
A god-game or citybuilding strategy game involves being the controller from above, manipulating a civilization or faction into conquest of some sort (military, technological, cultural or otherwise). It also tends to involve the construction of a lot of buildings/cities that give increasing reward, and teching up to greater and greater power, not to mention a lot of "next turn" clicking. Some of them are real-time based too, of course, and copy things from the RTS branch.
An adventure game involves moving a player character avatar around a bunch of maps/room locations, pixel-hunting for things to click or otherwise examining objects deeply for revealed story clues. Sometimes there are conversations with NPCs very similar to the style of RPGs, or objects are used on each other to create progress down the particular 'quest'/puzzle. Storytelling and cutscenes are also used. For some, real time plays a factor, for others, it is all turn-based and may not matter.
A 'sandbox' game tends to be done in an RPG style, with either the illusion of choice, or an open area for players to choose their own actions and see the programmed consequences of it.
A racing game is exactly that. Race a car around the track and win. By whatever rules were set. Ditto other sports games with rules.
Hybrid games tend to take a bunch of concepts from all of the above and mush them up. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
I'm starting to wonder if there's any point playing these games if we already know most of their basic mechanics.
I suppose you could argue that the story and setting and lore is unique, and therefore it is an immersive pleasure - just like you can narrow down most stories to 36 plots or other such archetypal patterns, in book or movie form - but one still chooses to experience it for the emotional reward of immersing oneself in the story.
Yet one of the reasons why I'm suddenly into rhythm games (Patapon, Dance Online) is that it is suddenly a whole new different set of mechanics to learn and master. Slightly more action arcade-like in its roots.
The Final Fantasy series is also quite classic for varying its combat/magic mechanics greatly between sequels, so that there is suddenly an entirely new system (materia, cards, whatever) to learn.
And I admit to being quite disturbed that the recent spate of 'good' games have all been sort of amalgamating with each other into a sort of diku representation of an RPG with 'good' story.
Heck, even the tabletop version of D&D is suddenly embracing MMO-like roles of tank, melee DPS, healer and what not... I hope 'tank and spank' 'holy trinity' and/or 'heals while fighting' doesn't become the common denominator of all games.
It just seems like in their effort to be something for everyone, to offer everyone a choice on how they like to play a certain game... they are all running full tilt down the road of being exactly the same.
Maybe it's way past time to have a different type of game altogether, rather than just clever, preferably novel spins on already existing genres.
Maybe not. Who knows. I'm not sure Spore is really that different from existing god games either. Just on a grander scale of achievement. Like all the games that are turning up lately.
Thing is, I'm playing a lot of good games right now. They're all technically excellent in their own way. But I can't help feel like I've grokked the pattern. Already.
An RTS game is going to involve building up some armies, teching up a tech tree of some kind, and then running said armies around a map either capturing points or burninating the opposing forces' armies/buildings. These days, RTS games will also multiple factions with different playstyles, and a satisfactory story replete with cutscenes in between each map setup.
An RPG involves levels and gaining xp to get better skills. The xp tends to flow by doing various quests or beating on living things. If you're creative, games like Mass Effect also award xp for talking to people and poking around 'exploring' by clicking on things to collect an update for one's codex aka encyclopedic deed log. Again, a good singleplayer game of this ilk tends to split up the interactive action bits with cinematic storytelling (often voice-acted cutscenes) and dialogue options (sometimes with meaningful significant choices, and oftentimes falling short of the mark.)
An FPS involves spinning around looking at very high class graphics with mouselook, and normally shooting most of the moving objects with a crosshair in the center of one's screen. A lot of the better games also involve good pacing between action and suspense/storytelling (also done with cutscenes.)
A god-game or citybuilding strategy game involves being the controller from above, manipulating a civilization or faction into conquest of some sort (military, technological, cultural or otherwise). It also tends to involve the construction of a lot of buildings/cities that give increasing reward, and teching up to greater and greater power, not to mention a lot of "next turn" clicking. Some of them are real-time based too, of course, and copy things from the RTS branch.
An adventure game involves moving a player character avatar around a bunch of maps/room locations, pixel-hunting for things to click or otherwise examining objects deeply for revealed story clues. Sometimes there are conversations with NPCs very similar to the style of RPGs, or objects are used on each other to create progress down the particular 'quest'/puzzle. Storytelling and cutscenes are also used. For some, real time plays a factor, for others, it is all turn-based and may not matter.
A 'sandbox' game tends to be done in an RPG style, with either the illusion of choice, or an open area for players to choose their own actions and see the programmed consequences of it.
A racing game is exactly that. Race a car around the track and win. By whatever rules were set. Ditto other sports games with rules.
Hybrid games tend to take a bunch of concepts from all of the above and mush them up. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
I'm starting to wonder if there's any point playing these games if we already know most of their basic mechanics.
I suppose you could argue that the story and setting and lore is unique, and therefore it is an immersive pleasure - just like you can narrow down most stories to 36 plots or other such archetypal patterns, in book or movie form - but one still chooses to experience it for the emotional reward of immersing oneself in the story.
Yet one of the reasons why I'm suddenly into rhythm games (Patapon, Dance Online) is that it is suddenly a whole new different set of mechanics to learn and master. Slightly more action arcade-like in its roots.
The Final Fantasy series is also quite classic for varying its combat/magic mechanics greatly between sequels, so that there is suddenly an entirely new system (materia, cards, whatever) to learn.
And I admit to being quite disturbed that the recent spate of 'good' games have all been sort of amalgamating with each other into a sort of diku representation of an RPG with 'good' story.
Heck, even the tabletop version of D&D is suddenly embracing MMO-like roles of tank, melee DPS, healer and what not... I hope 'tank and spank' 'holy trinity' and/or 'heals while fighting' doesn't become the common denominator of all games.
It just seems like in their effort to be something for everyone, to offer everyone a choice on how they like to play a certain game... they are all running full tilt down the road of being exactly the same.
Too Much Game, Not Much Time
Bleh. Feeling more than a little spaced out. I've been pulling a few near all-nighters lately, ever since picking up Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed for the PC. The odd part of it is that the enormous choice in games is having a sort of diffuse effect on interest in any specific game.
MMO-wise, CoX is on hiatus. I am perfectly ok with that. I'm still content to give them my $15 a month because I want to both support future development and the vet awards. That's fine, it's not really pinging on my guilt radar.
(Except that I really should check on about 4 alts' auction house sales and maybe pull some valuables out of there before the 60 days fubars my hoarded LOTGs. Right. One todo list thing to complete, and that's it for CoX.)
I'm restless regarding LOTRO and GW. I like both games. Enough to casually play them, now and again. Each fulfills a little something in my player motivations list. And I enjoy the lore and story background of each game. I also like the regular non-asinine updates.
I do wish I could invest more time into both, but going hardcore into them means some pretty tough grinds and ignoring everything else for that period of time. And I'm not willing to do that. Yet. Maybe sometime in the future. As of now though, it just means that I wonder if I'm getting my money's worth out of them.
Still, the money's already invested in GW, so it's a foregone conclusion. There's just the guilt factor there that says, dammit, you have Nightfall and EoTN, why aren't you playing it? Right now?
LOTRO, I don't know. I like Turbine's updates. I don't really begrudge them the $9.99. That's like, less than $20 SGD. I can forgo a) a restaurant meal a month or b) movie ticket and popcorn x 2 or c) a music CD, unsoweiter, and pay it without blinking.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just have chosen the lifetime subscription and not have to worry about it. Still, there's research that suggests a monthly subscription fee system actually creates a trickling reminder to appreciate and get one's money's worth out of something. And $120 every year is not a big deal, and is more valuable for Turbine in the long run, and more valuable for me in that I reserve the capability to vote with my feet and leave should they make a change in design that I deplore.
Again, it's just the "hey, you're paying for it, why the hell aren't you playing it right now, all the time?" thought getting in the way.
And we move right on down to the next MMO on the block. Age of Conan. I definitely don't begrudge them their US $15. I'm still liking the choppity combat action. I'm making progress. I like the quests and lore on the whole. The bugs can be annoying, but I have confidence that they are fixing things at an acceptable rate, and the game will be very good in a couple 3-6 months' time. I'm fine with accepting this future trade-off for the new MMO smell factor, which makes my worlds' populated with people, and still fresh and exciting to many.
The problem? I'm evidently not playing the game fast enough. :/ If I was just soloing along my merry way, I would have no issue with this. I'm seeing about 30-40% of my guild race along up to 60, 70 and max level 80 though. (And me still stuck at lvl 56.) Why am I concerned? Because I want to do raids. Exploratory ones, if possible. I don't really want to end up in an already-explored grind-for-loot exercise. Sheesh. And obviously, the moment 24 people hit max level, the leaders will start organizing the first few guild raids. Already, some of the max level ones are casting about joining PUG raids and what not.
Alas, I do actually work. So by the time I get back from work, I only have a limited amount of playtime. Two days out of those five are out of commission, thanks to Funcon's "marvellous" scheme of arranging regular updates "out of peak hours" (read: US prime time, NOT aussie prime time, even though I'm playing on an ostensibly Oceanic server). The only reason why I'm not hopping mad about that is that each update is patching quests that I was stuck and bugged at, so I deal with the 7pm-12 midnight server down notices...
I'm not the worse off. I'm stuck right about the average, to above median levels. Lots of people in the guild sub-40 and below. But some of those could be alts, and some of those might just not be interested in raiding. It's all the others on top that I have to 'compete' with. Heh. The ironic thing is, I don't even care about the gear. I just really want to be there when they're finding out what to do.
And I can't do that unless I'm significantly higher in level, and there's no acceptable way I can possibly achieve that. I'm certainly not going to pay anyone to power level me, and I'm not even in favor of powerleveling myself with farming mobs and repeatable daily quests. Because what is the damn point of racing to raid if you're not going to experience the rest of the game either? I just evidently need to play AoC for 8-14 hours a day, and that's not possible either if I want to be able to AFFORD my games and my computer. :)
Sighs. Therefore I must sadly assume that seeing an exploratory raid is possibly out of the picture for the first few zones, and experience that sort of thing when new raids come out and we happen to be all max level already. Conclusion: play through AoC at normal comfortable pace, and what happens, happens.
Still, one can't help but feel if we pushed just a little harder, we might improve our chances of 'acceptance' into raid opportunities and what not. I put that word in quotes because I mislike what it implies. I really do not want to fall into the trap of having my self-esteem predicated on someone else's approval. (As an aside, I note the interesting use of the word 'we' in the preceding sentence. It's like subconsciously assuming that both me, the player, and Lycaeus, the character, exist and we, working in tandem as a sort of avatar, can achieve something.)
Scary slippery slope, all the same.
What has just greased this damn slope, or rather, put caltrops in its path, or maybe both at the same time, is my purchase of above-mentioned singleplayer games. (And more, I have two RTS games waiting in the wings, the latest Dawn of War expansion and Battle for Middle-Earth.)
Amusingly, both are console ports, and rather cinematic action RPGs. Ah, how I've missed story-based games. And they look effing good too, since they were meant for the Xbox360 and are now supertweaked for PC graphics. Besides having to wait six months or more for them to turn up as a port, everything else justifies my choice of spiffing up a PC over buying a console.
Anything buggy tends to be worked out. Graphics are better. Higher resolutions if yer PC is capable. Owning a usb gamepad means that all control options are available. If the game happens to play better with a gamepad, I can do that. (Assassin's Creed is like that.) If the game has exceptional keyboard and mouse support, voila, we got it covered. (Sniping and other such FPS aiming is SOOOOO much easier with a real mouse than a crappy analog stick on a gamepad.)
Assassin's Creed has an interesting gimmick. You're actually playing someone in modern times experiencing his past ancestor's memory as an assassin in that era of Templars and crusades in Jerusalem. It neatly explains away things like your HUD and accesing save/load games as part of the memory accessing machine.
It's been temporarily set aside for the king of story games, aka Bioware. I like Mass Effect. It's kinda like Knights of the Old Republic without the Star Wars. (And since I loathe Star Wars, it is much improved in the process.)
They've done wonders with branching possibilities here. It wouldn't be a Bioware game if character creation didn't affect your later story experience. Significant choices include male or female (romance options with either a female/male human and a mono-gendered alien), birthplace (spaceborn, colonist, or earthborn, affecting some dialogue options and NPC reactions), and psychological profile (very simplistic but quite archetypal: sole survivor of a traumatic experience, war hero, ruthless efficient 'end-justifies-the-means,' which again affects dialogue and NPC reactions.)
Classes are split up into 3 pure options: combat specialist, tech specialist, and biotics specialist (read: telepathic/telekinesis 'magic' abilities), and 3 hyrbid options,: combat/tech, tech/biotic, combat/biotic.
Each given an MMO-like spin: The soldier (combat specialist) is a straight up melee tank/brute with an assault rifle, the vanguard (combat/biotic) is melee DPS (aka the shotgun), the adept (biotic specialist) is like a pistol mage with damage and crowd control, others mix in some messing around with first aid (omg, healz) and debuff/utility (mostly tech) and the new-age ranger (hem, sorry, the infiltrator) is the combat/tech who gets to mess around with sniper rifles.
I can see replaying Mass Effect to be quite appealing. Character customization is also quite good, with a variety of faces, though a bit limited in the sense of being hard to create a particular desired look. Should I pull the chin slider forward or back? Does shrinking or expanding this nose make me look fugly? There was a conscious decision to only allow hairstyles that fit into a military helmet, and have a look that befitted someone in the military and so on.
So I'm a tide disappointed that I can't quite recreate my homebrewed characters as I imagined them - guess I'll have to wait for All Points Bulletin to see if their creator is any more powerful - but it hits the important aspects close enough. Like hand grenades, horseshoes and all that.
The power of Mass Effect is apparently to support other options beside being all-good and all-bad, unlike KOTOR. I believe that experience'll have to wait for my third playthrough. I'm already having enough fun recreating Astral (goody-goody Paragon, Earthborn Sole Survivor - Adept - keeps getting killed, oddly enough. So squishy. But so potentially powerful if only I could get some levels on her) and Carla (end-justifies-the-means don't-fuck-with-me Ruthless Spacer - Infiltrator - who is having a blast one-shot-sniping-things from safe and fary away).
The cinematic storytelling style is pretty good. Makes you feel like you're in a movie. Dialogue options tend to let you choose nasty or nice options, but everything is all voice-acted and quite fun to experience. Best feeling so far: Achieving an important milestone in game, thus inheriting a ship and getting to make this dramatic Babylon 5-like speech to the entire crew, with uplifting music and all. And yes, you pick the speech options.
The downer is that saving while in combat is prohibited. So if you get massacred at a set point, you get to play through ad nauseam the buildup cutscenes before getting to the combat - where you get horribly brutally killed again.
(So I forgot to put any points into basic body armor. I'm a bloody mage, I'm supposed to be squishy. Getting sniped and one-hit-killed is NOT fun though. And I couldn't help but think that the sandbox play let me pick a option that I was -not- ready for in terms of level. It took 23 tries or more to get out of that particular ambush grave. On the bright side, I probably totally mastered tactical combat with that set piece battle. Take cover here. Don't get blown apart by scenery. Don't get close to the damn tankmage NPC who has a nasty habit of charging like a bull if all his support is destroyed or if he gets too low in hitpoints, and hiding behind cover otherwise. Tell stupid squadmates to move to cover at those locations or watch them get sniped to death. And there was still an element of luck in my squad AI managing to engage the tankmage NPC and draw him out into the open where we FINALLY took him down without dying ourselves.)
This game is the reason I've been stopping playing Age of Conan at 1-2am and promptly losing sleep to it until 4am or longer. Bah.
Still I'll have to admit that it's getting a bit...samey.
More on this in the next post.
MMO-wise, CoX is on hiatus. I am perfectly ok with that. I'm still content to give them my $15 a month because I want to both support future development and the vet awards. That's fine, it's not really pinging on my guilt radar.
(Except that I really should check on about 4 alts' auction house sales and maybe pull some valuables out of there before the 60 days fubars my hoarded LOTGs. Right. One todo list thing to complete, and that's it for CoX.)
I'm restless regarding LOTRO and GW. I like both games. Enough to casually play them, now and again. Each fulfills a little something in my player motivations list. And I enjoy the lore and story background of each game. I also like the regular non-asinine updates.
I do wish I could invest more time into both, but going hardcore into them means some pretty tough grinds and ignoring everything else for that period of time. And I'm not willing to do that. Yet. Maybe sometime in the future. As of now though, it just means that I wonder if I'm getting my money's worth out of them.
Still, the money's already invested in GW, so it's a foregone conclusion. There's just the guilt factor there that says, dammit, you have Nightfall and EoTN, why aren't you playing it? Right now?
LOTRO, I don't know. I like Turbine's updates. I don't really begrudge them the $9.99. That's like, less than $20 SGD. I can forgo a) a restaurant meal a month or b) movie ticket and popcorn x 2 or c) a music CD, unsoweiter, and pay it without blinking.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just have chosen the lifetime subscription and not have to worry about it. Still, there's research that suggests a monthly subscription fee system actually creates a trickling reminder to appreciate and get one's money's worth out of something. And $120 every year is not a big deal, and is more valuable for Turbine in the long run, and more valuable for me in that I reserve the capability to vote with my feet and leave should they make a change in design that I deplore.
Again, it's just the "hey, you're paying for it, why the hell aren't you playing it right now, all the time?" thought getting in the way.
And we move right on down to the next MMO on the block. Age of Conan. I definitely don't begrudge them their US $15. I'm still liking the choppity combat action. I'm making progress. I like the quests and lore on the whole. The bugs can be annoying, but I have confidence that they are fixing things at an acceptable rate, and the game will be very good in a couple 3-6 months' time. I'm fine with accepting this future trade-off for the new MMO smell factor, which makes my worlds' populated with people, and still fresh and exciting to many.
The problem? I'm evidently not playing the game fast enough. :/ If I was just soloing along my merry way, I would have no issue with this. I'm seeing about 30-40% of my guild race along up to 60, 70 and max level 80 though. (And me still stuck at lvl 56.) Why am I concerned? Because I want to do raids. Exploratory ones, if possible. I don't really want to end up in an already-explored grind-for-loot exercise. Sheesh. And obviously, the moment 24 people hit max level, the leaders will start organizing the first few guild raids. Already, some of the max level ones are casting about joining PUG raids and what not.
Alas, I do actually work. So by the time I get back from work, I only have a limited amount of playtime. Two days out of those five are out of commission, thanks to Funcon's "marvellous" scheme of arranging regular updates "out of peak hours" (read: US prime time, NOT aussie prime time, even though I'm playing on an ostensibly Oceanic server). The only reason why I'm not hopping mad about that is that each update is patching quests that I was stuck and bugged at, so I deal with the 7pm-12 midnight server down notices...
I'm not the worse off. I'm stuck right about the average, to above median levels. Lots of people in the guild sub-40 and below. But some of those could be alts, and some of those might just not be interested in raiding. It's all the others on top that I have to 'compete' with. Heh. The ironic thing is, I don't even care about the gear. I just really want to be there when they're finding out what to do.
And I can't do that unless I'm significantly higher in level, and there's no acceptable way I can possibly achieve that. I'm certainly not going to pay anyone to power level me, and I'm not even in favor of powerleveling myself with farming mobs and repeatable daily quests. Because what is the damn point of racing to raid if you're not going to experience the rest of the game either? I just evidently need to play AoC for 8-14 hours a day, and that's not possible either if I want to be able to AFFORD my games and my computer. :)
Sighs. Therefore I must sadly assume that seeing an exploratory raid is possibly out of the picture for the first few zones, and experience that sort of thing when new raids come out and we happen to be all max level already. Conclusion: play through AoC at normal comfortable pace, and what happens, happens.
Still, one can't help but feel if we pushed just a little harder, we might improve our chances of 'acceptance' into raid opportunities and what not. I put that word in quotes because I mislike what it implies. I really do not want to fall into the trap of having my self-esteem predicated on someone else's approval. (As an aside, I note the interesting use of the word 'we' in the preceding sentence. It's like subconsciously assuming that both me, the player, and Lycaeus, the character, exist and we, working in tandem as a sort of avatar, can achieve something.)
Scary slippery slope, all the same.
What has just greased this damn slope, or rather, put caltrops in its path, or maybe both at the same time, is my purchase of above-mentioned singleplayer games. (And more, I have two RTS games waiting in the wings, the latest Dawn of War expansion and Battle for Middle-Earth.)
Amusingly, both are console ports, and rather cinematic action RPGs. Ah, how I've missed story-based games. And they look effing good too, since they were meant for the Xbox360 and are now supertweaked for PC graphics. Besides having to wait six months or more for them to turn up as a port, everything else justifies my choice of spiffing up a PC over buying a console.
Anything buggy tends to be worked out. Graphics are better. Higher resolutions if yer PC is capable. Owning a usb gamepad means that all control options are available. If the game happens to play better with a gamepad, I can do that. (Assassin's Creed is like that.) If the game has exceptional keyboard and mouse support, voila, we got it covered. (Sniping and other such FPS aiming is SOOOOO much easier with a real mouse than a crappy analog stick on a gamepad.)
Assassin's Creed has an interesting gimmick. You're actually playing someone in modern times experiencing his past ancestor's memory as an assassin in that era of Templars and crusades in Jerusalem. It neatly explains away things like your HUD and accesing save/load games as part of the memory accessing machine.
It's been temporarily set aside for the king of story games, aka Bioware. I like Mass Effect. It's kinda like Knights of the Old Republic without the Star Wars. (And since I loathe Star Wars, it is much improved in the process.)
They've done wonders with branching possibilities here. It wouldn't be a Bioware game if character creation didn't affect your later story experience. Significant choices include male or female (romance options with either a female/male human and a mono-gendered alien), birthplace (spaceborn, colonist, or earthborn, affecting some dialogue options and NPC reactions), and psychological profile (very simplistic but quite archetypal: sole survivor of a traumatic experience, war hero, ruthless efficient 'end-justifies-the-means,' which again affects dialogue and NPC reactions.)
Classes are split up into 3 pure options: combat specialist, tech specialist, and biotics specialist (read: telepathic/telekinesis 'magic' abilities), and 3 hyrbid options,: combat/tech, tech/biotic, combat/biotic.
Each given an MMO-like spin: The soldier (combat specialist) is a straight up melee tank/brute with an assault rifle, the vanguard (combat/biotic) is melee DPS (aka the shotgun), the adept (biotic specialist) is like a pistol mage with damage and crowd control, others mix in some messing around with first aid (omg, healz) and debuff/utility (mostly tech) and the new-age ranger (hem, sorry, the infiltrator) is the combat/tech who gets to mess around with sniper rifles.
I can see replaying Mass Effect to be quite appealing. Character customization is also quite good, with a variety of faces, though a bit limited in the sense of being hard to create a particular desired look. Should I pull the chin slider forward or back? Does shrinking or expanding this nose make me look fugly? There was a conscious decision to only allow hairstyles that fit into a military helmet, and have a look that befitted someone in the military and so on.
So I'm a tide disappointed that I can't quite recreate my homebrewed characters as I imagined them - guess I'll have to wait for All Points Bulletin to see if their creator is any more powerful - but it hits the important aspects close enough. Like hand grenades, horseshoes and all that.
The power of Mass Effect is apparently to support other options beside being all-good and all-bad, unlike KOTOR. I believe that experience'll have to wait for my third playthrough. I'm already having enough fun recreating Astral (goody-goody Paragon, Earthborn Sole Survivor - Adept - keeps getting killed, oddly enough. So squishy. But so potentially powerful if only I could get some levels on her) and Carla (end-justifies-the-means don't-fuck-with-me Ruthless Spacer - Infiltrator - who is having a blast one-shot-sniping-things from safe and fary away).
The cinematic storytelling style is pretty good. Makes you feel like you're in a movie. Dialogue options tend to let you choose nasty or nice options, but everything is all voice-acted and quite fun to experience. Best feeling so far: Achieving an important milestone in game, thus inheriting a ship and getting to make this dramatic Babylon 5-like speech to the entire crew, with uplifting music and all. And yes, you pick the speech options.
The downer is that saving while in combat is prohibited. So if you get massacred at a set point, you get to play through ad nauseam the buildup cutscenes before getting to the combat - where you get horribly brutally killed again.
(So I forgot to put any points into basic body armor. I'm a bloody mage, I'm supposed to be squishy. Getting sniped and one-hit-killed is NOT fun though. And I couldn't help but think that the sandbox play let me pick a option that I was -not- ready for in terms of level. It took 23 tries or more to get out of that particular ambush grave. On the bright side, I probably totally mastered tactical combat with that set piece battle. Take cover here. Don't get blown apart by scenery. Don't get close to the damn tankmage NPC who has a nasty habit of charging like a bull if all his support is destroyed or if he gets too low in hitpoints, and hiding behind cover otherwise. Tell stupid squadmates to move to cover at those locations or watch them get sniped to death. And there was still an element of luck in my squad AI managing to engage the tankmage NPC and draw him out into the open where we FINALLY took him down without dying ourselves.)
This game is the reason I've been stopping playing Age of Conan at 1-2am and promptly losing sleep to it until 4am or longer. Bah.
Still I'll have to admit that it's getting a bit...samey.
More on this in the next post.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Darkstar One is Missing
Can't find the CD anywhere. That's somewhat of a bummer because I have been nostalgic for a bit of spaceship flying and shooting down enemy craft action.
It's probably buried somewhere deep under piles of junk, which means I have to clean up said piles of junk before I even get close to an attempt at finding it again. Crud.
I tried two other space-type games, but it's not quite the same deal.
Space Rangers 2: Legend of the Dominators has a cute name, but I really haven't figured out how to play it. It's astoundingly "old-school" yet weird-school. A lot of text to read when you dock here and there. Weird mini-games of RTS planetary invasions and 2D half-real time, half turn-based spaceship shooting, plus standard space trade cargo-hauling.
And ludricrously tough on normal difficulty. I had visions of rogue-likes as I got blown up by pirates x2 (while doing the 'tutorial' missions), attacked and destroyed by other races' ships who didn't like me (when I chose to be a pirate, trying to fly to a planet where the next story mission was, which was conveniently hostile with said unfriendly ships circling it), and blown up by a pirate yet again when I tried a more mercantile choice of career.
I am getting the sneaking suspicion that I should stop with the MMO mindset of being led around by the nose, following the exclamation marks, and build myself up independently BEFORE following some of the tutorial/story missions.
After all, if I cannot adapt to this, then I am no better than those fools who cry that AoC has no level 30-40+ quest content because they cannot even find the zone. Oh noes, there are no railroads pulling me by the hand to the next zone to travel to. God forbid I actually use the world map, akin to the MUD-like "areas" command, which has all the zones with clearly labeled level ranges.
But that'll be an attempt for another day because I am tired of perma-death.
On other space news, I sat down to install Galatic Civilizations II, which was mysteriously missing from my home desktops. Must have installed on the laptop and forgotten about it, methinks.
While there is no "climb in the cockpit and blow 'em up" action, I can at least design some neat looking ships, and play the "one more turn" Civilization-type of game.
The one problem with Gal Civ is that there really aren't enough inhabitable planets. In Civilization, you could make your own damn cities 3 spaces apart, thankee, and thus colonize the entire map.
Here, you're stuck with a stellar map that was generated for you, and there are only one or two worth inhabiting planets per solar system.
So there is this mad intitial 10-20 turn rush to colonize as many planets as you can conceivably grab - take note that there's a limit to how many colony ships you can produce, since your population is not that high to begin with, and you take people from your pop to stock colony ships.
Then you settle down to some slow city (erm, planet building) where getting the first factories take endless amounts of turns (50 weeks), researching what you can, plotting world (galaxy) domination while counting the amount of tech tiers you need to even conceivably wage universal war effectively.
The one light in the dark was negotiating with other races, where my Yor Collective (neutral-evil sentient robot dominion FTW) got kicks out of negotiating research trades - only my peaceful domestic researches for all manner of profitable research, war footing or otherwise.
I dunno. Everytime I play a Civ type of game, my approach is to build up to quick brutal war to subsume a few lesser civilizations, building up my empire and then hunker down, guard my conquests and basically out-tech and out-culture everyone else, just to rub it in.
On normal mode anyhow, it's too easy to win via a military conquest (been there, done that) and diplomatic or cultural type victories don't feel as rewarding (yay, I talked to people, clicked some options, and now they all wanna please me or be like me?). I figure diplomacy/cultural respect comes from being an all-powerful technologically superior empire anyhow. (Hem, now where did -that- idea come from?! Surely there are no real world analogs. *cough*)
However, the tech tree for GalCiv 2 is mind-boggling. There are three different types of weaponry - beam weapons, mass drivers, and missiles, and three different types of defences for them, with looong branches of improvements to each. You have space travel drives to research (to increase your speed), support systems (to increase your range), sensors (to see stuff), miniaturization (to fit more stuff on yer ships), and hull improvements (to have more space to fit stuff on yer ships.)
And that's just for your military ships. On the war front you also have improvements to starbases (attack and defences), planetary invasion and defence options, unsoweiter.
Then on the peaceful domestic side, you have the standard things like banking improvements to up yer economy, farm improvements to up yer population, embassies to up yer diplomacy, lab improvements to up yer research, cultural improvements to up yer culture (duh), different government regimes and goodness knows what else.
This adds up to massive amounts of "next turn" clicking while staring at your already overproducing planets (who can't build any equivalent of converting stuff to economy, durn) and watching your overproducing starports churn out 'constructor' ships (it's that or lie fallow), and then manually moving said constructor ships out to every next three squares to build starbases (of which there are military, economic and cultural types), and keep moving those constructors to upgrade them.
And yet, being careful enough not to push too hard on the cultural improvements because what if I accidentally outculture my last two surviving opponents - then I will have no one left to witness my technological glory, and no more game, either.
Oh well, it's a change from MMO'ing, I guess.
It's probably buried somewhere deep under piles of junk, which means I have to clean up said piles of junk before I even get close to an attempt at finding it again. Crud.
I tried two other space-type games, but it's not quite the same deal.
Space Rangers 2: Legend of the Dominators has a cute name, but I really haven't figured out how to play it. It's astoundingly "old-school" yet weird-school. A lot of text to read when you dock here and there. Weird mini-games of RTS planetary invasions and 2D half-real time, half turn-based spaceship shooting, plus standard space trade cargo-hauling.
And ludricrously tough on normal difficulty. I had visions of rogue-likes as I got blown up by pirates x2 (while doing the 'tutorial' missions), attacked and destroyed by other races' ships who didn't like me (when I chose to be a pirate, trying to fly to a planet where the next story mission was, which was conveniently hostile with said unfriendly ships circling it), and blown up by a pirate yet again when I tried a more mercantile choice of career.
I am getting the sneaking suspicion that I should stop with the MMO mindset of being led around by the nose, following the exclamation marks, and build myself up independently BEFORE following some of the tutorial/story missions.
After all, if I cannot adapt to this, then I am no better than those fools who cry that AoC has no level 30-40+ quest content because they cannot even find the zone. Oh noes, there are no railroads pulling me by the hand to the next zone to travel to. God forbid I actually use the world map, akin to the MUD-like "areas" command, which has all the zones with clearly labeled level ranges.
But that'll be an attempt for another day because I am tired of perma-death.
On other space news, I sat down to install Galatic Civilizations II, which was mysteriously missing from my home desktops. Must have installed on the laptop and forgotten about it, methinks.
While there is no "climb in the cockpit and blow 'em up" action, I can at least design some neat looking ships, and play the "one more turn" Civilization-type of game.
The one problem with Gal Civ is that there really aren't enough inhabitable planets. In Civilization, you could make your own damn cities 3 spaces apart, thankee, and thus colonize the entire map.
Here, you're stuck with a stellar map that was generated for you, and there are only one or two worth inhabiting planets per solar system.
So there is this mad intitial 10-20 turn rush to colonize as many planets as you can conceivably grab - take note that there's a limit to how many colony ships you can produce, since your population is not that high to begin with, and you take people from your pop to stock colony ships.
Then you settle down to some slow city (erm, planet building) where getting the first factories take endless amounts of turns (50 weeks), researching what you can, plotting world (galaxy) domination while counting the amount of tech tiers you need to even conceivably wage universal war effectively.
The one light in the dark was negotiating with other races, where my Yor Collective (neutral-evil sentient robot dominion FTW) got kicks out of negotiating research trades - only my peaceful domestic researches for all manner of profitable research, war footing or otherwise.
I dunno. Everytime I play a Civ type of game, my approach is to build up to quick brutal war to subsume a few lesser civilizations, building up my empire and then hunker down, guard my conquests and basically out-tech and out-culture everyone else, just to rub it in.
On normal mode anyhow, it's too easy to win via a military conquest (been there, done that) and diplomatic or cultural type victories don't feel as rewarding (yay, I talked to people, clicked some options, and now they all wanna please me or be like me?). I figure diplomacy/cultural respect comes from being an all-powerful technologically superior empire anyhow. (Hem, now where did -that- idea come from?! Surely there are no real world analogs. *cough*)
However, the tech tree for GalCiv 2 is mind-boggling. There are three different types of weaponry - beam weapons, mass drivers, and missiles, and three different types of defences for them, with looong branches of improvements to each. You have space travel drives to research (to increase your speed), support systems (to increase your range), sensors (to see stuff), miniaturization (to fit more stuff on yer ships), and hull improvements (to have more space to fit stuff on yer ships.)
And that's just for your military ships. On the war front you also have improvements to starbases (attack and defences), planetary invasion and defence options, unsoweiter.
Then on the peaceful domestic side, you have the standard things like banking improvements to up yer economy, farm improvements to up yer population, embassies to up yer diplomacy, lab improvements to up yer research, cultural improvements to up yer culture (duh), different government regimes and goodness knows what else.
This adds up to massive amounts of "next turn" clicking while staring at your already overproducing planets (who can't build any equivalent of converting stuff to economy, durn) and watching your overproducing starports churn out 'constructor' ships (it's that or lie fallow), and then manually moving said constructor ships out to every next three squares to build starbases (of which there are military, economic and cultural types), and keep moving those constructors to upgrade them.
And yet, being careful enough not to push too hard on the cultural improvements because what if I accidentally outculture my last two surviving opponents - then I will have no one left to witness my technological glory, and no more game, either.
Oh well, it's a change from MMO'ing, I guess.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, June 09, 2008
Varying Competencies, or Just Varying Interests?
A lot of times I wonder if I regularly applied hours of concentration to my work, like I do sometimes on virtual reality (i.e. games), whether I would be as good in my work as I am in VR. Group play in a MUD or MMO tends to force periods of concentration to the exclusion of other things. Is there some way to apply this into my work?
For a lot of people, work is something they do so they can make money to pursue their interests. It's unfortunate -- spending such a large part of your life on something you don't enjoy -- but not everyone can work doing something they like. They might think "trying to find a more intense manner of working" a crazy concept.
But I like my work and I want to be good at it. My problem is an inability to put in intense periods concentration in it, which I think has to be key to being good at something. I'm not sure why, but I get easily distracted. Someone walks by. Checking the email. Getting a drink. Random administrative stuff. "Organidling".
Or could it be that I just enjoy gaming so much more than work?
Or could it even be, that gaming is actually a lot easier than work -- easier to feed the 'achiever rush'? Easier concepts, easier numbers?
But how come I can remember the values (up to 2 decimal places) of various game powers / effects, but I have difficulty remembering a single set of primitive equations? .... Disturbing.
Could it be the time when I engage in the various activities, too? I am a night person, so playing a game at night, just before bedtime, is more conducive to learning? Perhaps I should play in the morning and work at night then?
But above all...how do I make myself focus, when I should be working?
* * *
One interesting thing I noticed is that making my computer generate random noises helps me stay focused. Check out http://eblong.com/zarf/boodler/index.html
Unfortunately, my sound doesn't seem to work with my linux installation. Only the PC sound works, and I don't want to play weird noises from my computer into my entire little lab.
For a lot of people, work is something they do so they can make money to pursue their interests. It's unfortunate -- spending such a large part of your life on something you don't enjoy -- but not everyone can work doing something they like. They might think "trying to find a more intense manner of working" a crazy concept.
But I like my work and I want to be good at it. My problem is an inability to put in intense periods concentration in it, which I think has to be key to being good at something. I'm not sure why, but I get easily distracted. Someone walks by. Checking the email. Getting a drink. Random administrative stuff. "Organidling".
Or could it be that I just enjoy gaming so much more than work?
Or could it even be, that gaming is actually a lot easier than work -- easier to feed the 'achiever rush'? Easier concepts, easier numbers?
But how come I can remember the values (up to 2 decimal places) of various game powers / effects, but I have difficulty remembering a single set of primitive equations? .... Disturbing.
Could it be the time when I engage in the various activities, too? I am a night person, so playing a game at night, just before bedtime, is more conducive to learning? Perhaps I should play in the morning and work at night then?
But above all...how do I make myself focus, when I should be working?
* * *
One interesting thing I noticed is that making my computer generate random noises helps me stay focused. Check out http://eblong.com/zarf/boodler/index.html
Unfortunately, my sound doesn't seem to work with my linux installation. Only the PC sound works, and I don't want to play weird noises from my computer into my entire little lab.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Semi-Reversible Decomposition I
401st post on this blog.
Insomnia.
Must be caffeine overload.
2 cups of cheapo milk tea, 1 cup of the classiest iced mocha ever, 2.5 cups of 'organic ' white tea the day before last + 1 cup of home-brewed peach-mango Lipton tea with maple syrup yesterday.
Now feeding in intervals 3+ cups of water into system. Just in case.
Also 1.5 levels on Age of Conan.
And I cleaned my clothes closet. Wardrobe. Whatever. And reorganized it.
Feels good to have finally done something one has been intending to do for the past, oh, 2 years and counting? Since whenever I moved into this place anyway.
Or maybe it's just the caffeine withdrawal buzz.
Insomnia.
Must be caffeine overload.
2 cups of cheapo milk tea, 1 cup of the classiest iced mocha ever, 2.5 cups of 'organic ' white tea the day before last + 1 cup of home-brewed peach-mango Lipton tea with maple syrup yesterday.
Now feeding in intervals 3+ cups of water into system. Just in case.
Also 1.5 levels on Age of Conan.
And I cleaned my clothes closet. Wardrobe. Whatever. And reorganized it.
Feels good to have finally done something one has been intending to do for the past, oh, 2 years and counting? Since whenever I moved into this place anyway.
Or maybe it's just the caffeine withdrawal buzz.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Festering Rot IV
*sighs*
Alright, I spent 40 mins typing out a diplomatic but frustrated email to my boss, pointing out the current problems with the scheduling system and constructively suggesting tweaks. That's about all I can do at the moment.
Fortunately, I have a LOT of day offs / leave days in my ammunition box, so any time I get uber pissed off with the scheduling, I am still able to create my own breaks by just applying for leave and going away. That tends to point out very painfully the flaws in the current schedule, as the schedulers will then have to fire-fight and create a new schedule anyway.
But it's certainly one of the small things that adds up to a little 'ticking clock' in my mind, that asks if I want to leave for good and find a new job.
Call me a pessimist, but I also wonder how much good that will do. I suspect that anywhere there are people, we will have issues with scheduling, unfair distribution of work, office politics, and plain lazy-asshattedness.
After all, it's probably not just a Singaporean or bureaucratic thing - could be that private business companies that have these problems tend to fail and go bust and naturally select themselves out with rapid speed, or linger on like stagnant bad apples.
I figure if Dilbert is so popular, such problems must be widespread for so many people to see the humor in it...
---
Anyhow, back to a festering rot observation that's a little closer to home.
I feel like I'm falling into a festering rot routine myself. Of boring adult mundanity.
Wake in morning. Go to work. Come back home. Turn computer on. Surf web. Play MMO (do quest; fight monster; gain xp; level up; repeat). Watch TV occasionally. Tell self that one should: exercise, read, do something about hobby interests, clean room, declutter belongings, do filing, cook something new, do something different. Rationalize that one has no time. Feel tired and exhausted. Fall asleep.
All I'm missing is - Find husband. Marry. Live in domestic disharmony. Have children. Take care of kids. End up with even less time but more rationalizations. Walk around with dead soul until death.
*shudder*
This has to stop. Here and now. Somehow.
How? :(
Alright, I spent 40 mins typing out a diplomatic but frustrated email to my boss, pointing out the current problems with the scheduling system and constructively suggesting tweaks. That's about all I can do at the moment.
Fortunately, I have a LOT of day offs / leave days in my ammunition box, so any time I get uber pissed off with the scheduling, I am still able to create my own breaks by just applying for leave and going away. That tends to point out very painfully the flaws in the current schedule, as the schedulers will then have to fire-fight and create a new schedule anyway.
But it's certainly one of the small things that adds up to a little 'ticking clock' in my mind, that asks if I want to leave for good and find a new job.
Call me a pessimist, but I also wonder how much good that will do. I suspect that anywhere there are people, we will have issues with scheduling, unfair distribution of work, office politics, and plain lazy-asshattedness.
After all, it's probably not just a Singaporean or bureaucratic thing - could be that private business companies that have these problems tend to fail and go bust and naturally select themselves out with rapid speed, or linger on like stagnant bad apples.
I figure if Dilbert is so popular, such problems must be widespread for so many people to see the humor in it...
---
Anyhow, back to a festering rot observation that's a little closer to home.
I feel like I'm falling into a festering rot routine myself. Of boring adult mundanity.
Wake in morning. Go to work. Come back home. Turn computer on. Surf web. Play MMO (do quest; fight monster; gain xp; level up; repeat). Watch TV occasionally. Tell self that one should: exercise, read, do something about hobby interests, clean room, declutter belongings, do filing, cook something new, do something different. Rationalize that one has no time. Feel tired and exhausted. Fall asleep.
All I'm missing is - Find husband. Marry. Live in domestic disharmony. Have children. Take care of kids. End up with even less time but more rationalizations. Walk around with dead soul until death.
*shudder*
This has to stop. Here and now. Somehow.
How? :(
Festering Rot III
I've been intending to blog about this for a day or two now, but it took reading my email from home this morning to really push my indignant buttons and encourage me to blow off steam this way.
We have a weekly schedule arranged by some admin staff, assigning various people to shows and classes and so on. Now there have always been issues with this system, especially with disproportionate assignments because the admin staff are too lazy (or have no time or don't care) to distribute work equally/fairly.
Sure, it's not an easy task because different educators have different competencies. Some of us can't do a physics class, and vice versa with a biology class.
So the admin staff have fallen into a comfortable rut of "overload the same overloaded people, copy and paste the same educators for the same things, and wait for complaints and the bosses to tell them how to rearrange people before lifting a finger to change the schedule."
They tried to change this by specifically hiring a new person to handle the schedule. But the SAME FUCKING THING is happening. Again. And it's always the same excuses. "Oh, no time to do this properly. Sorry, didn't notice. You didn't tell me such and such."
And it's ludricrous. These admin staff don't have a clue what's involved in the classes and shows. They don't know who's suitable or not. They are just shuffling names around.
I hit the last straw today. I've been "conveniently" assigned to do all the DNA classes, morning and afternoon, for 6 days running. That's 6 hours per day. Meanwhile, another person who can also take DNA classes is assigned to do one show (that takes 30 minutes, let's stretch it and say 1 hour) and assist with another show (also 30 minutes, let's stretch it for another hour) everyday.
How can anyone look at that and not figure out something seems wrong? Obviously, the admin staff don't give a shit. We're just names. Not people. Probably paid more than them too, so why not hit back a little?
The icing on the cake is that my supervisor had already emailed the two people a week ago to let them know I would be taking two days off this week.
Somehow, mysteriously, they have overlooked that email (must have been too early in the past for them), and left me assigned to taking 6 hours classes. On the days I am not even coming in for work.
I think I need to invest the time to figure out a new system of scheduling. Maybe we should just leave it up to the educators to voluntarily sort out the work themselves. After all, we would be obliged to have better give and take when negotiating workload among colleagues, than getting ridiculously assigned by people who don't care anyway in the interests of "objectivity."
We have a weekly schedule arranged by some admin staff, assigning various people to shows and classes and so on. Now there have always been issues with this system, especially with disproportionate assignments because the admin staff are too lazy (or have no time or don't care) to distribute work equally/fairly.
Sure, it's not an easy task because different educators have different competencies. Some of us can't do a physics class, and vice versa with a biology class.
So the admin staff have fallen into a comfortable rut of "overload the same overloaded people, copy and paste the same educators for the same things, and wait for complaints and the bosses to tell them how to rearrange people before lifting a finger to change the schedule."
They tried to change this by specifically hiring a new person to handle the schedule. But the SAME FUCKING THING is happening. Again. And it's always the same excuses. "Oh, no time to do this properly. Sorry, didn't notice. You didn't tell me such and such."
And it's ludricrous. These admin staff don't have a clue what's involved in the classes and shows. They don't know who's suitable or not. They are just shuffling names around.
I hit the last straw today. I've been "conveniently" assigned to do all the DNA classes, morning and afternoon, for 6 days running. That's 6 hours per day. Meanwhile, another person who can also take DNA classes is assigned to do one show (that takes 30 minutes, let's stretch it and say 1 hour) and assist with another show (also 30 minutes, let's stretch it for another hour) everyday.
How can anyone look at that and not figure out something seems wrong? Obviously, the admin staff don't give a shit. We're just names. Not people. Probably paid more than them too, so why not hit back a little?
The icing on the cake is that my supervisor had already emailed the two people a week ago to let them know I would be taking two days off this week.
Somehow, mysteriously, they have overlooked that email (must have been too early in the past for them), and left me assigned to taking 6 hours classes. On the days I am not even coming in for work.
I think I need to invest the time to figure out a new system of scheduling. Maybe we should just leave it up to the educators to voluntarily sort out the work themselves. After all, we would be obliged to have better give and take when negotiating workload among colleagues, than getting ridiculously assigned by people who don't care anyway in the interests of "objectivity."
Monday, June 02, 2008
Elite vs Egalitarian
Egalitarian vs Elite
I12 has come and gone, but the issue seemed like a non-issue. After playing
with MIDs to create 'dream builds' of the proliferated powersets, I found that
I simply could not be bothered to level those builds. It felt like more of the
same thing despite the change in powersets -- newspaper, level, new power...
repeat ad nauseam. Even the VEATs seem rather prosaic, with clones of powers
from other powersets, rather than the unique play mechanics of, say, a
warshade.
(This, plus the fact that internet costs 40 baht/hour in Thailand, has rapidly
killed my interest in the game.)
It isn't "devs suck" or "Dooom!". The game will probably be fun again after a
hiatus. The fact is that firstly, developers can only come up with so much
content so fast, and secondly, they are essentially limited in the type of
content they can come up with.
The first problem is the fact-of-"game" every gamer has to face. Players will
go through content faster than it is being developed.
The second problem is more limiting. Is it a case of a lack of developer
imagination, a limitation in code technology, or a more fundamental barrier
of game principle? The fact that we see new mission objectives every update
suggest that the developers are neither lacking in imagination (too severely,
anyway) nor reached a glass ceiling the limitations of code.
One thing to be said for the developers is that they are sneaky. Teams of
controllers steamrolling STF? Make the ITF mobs difficult to control (makes
it worse for dominators though, because controllers actually lean more on their
secondaries during 'epic' content.) /rads run wild? Make the ITF boss mobs
immune to debuffs (nevermind that /TAs and /Storms were never wanted for STF.)
Big bag of hps destroyed by throwing everything at said bag? Romulus and his
triumvirate of Nictus. An easy fight once I got the unofficial role of keeping
Rommy asleep while everyone beat up the Nictus -- it should be interesting to
see if the Nictus themselves can be slept.
Still, something falls short. At first, I wondered if it is because the
developers aren't getting how certain powersets actually play. Then, I start
to wonder if they do get it, but they are simply entrapped by game principle.
How does one may content that is both challenging and egalitarian? I find that
game content that is challenging often demands specialisation and coordination.
Specialisation and coordination flies in the face of egalitarianism.
Let's take RoD. When you fight Seth, you take a bunch of thieves, each
specialised to be Seth-killers (high hp, good saves, etc.) Now and then some
people throw in another class for fun, but if five clerics can't kill Seth,
people don't scream "it's not fair". Of course, RoD fights tend to be rather
homogeneous, so RoD hasn't got it right either (one tank and seven hitters
isn't right). Hamidon sounds like it demands both specialisation and
coordination, but I don't really like 50-man events, and Hamidon is an anomaly,
where people did not complain about "all my scrapper does is stand around while
the controllers hold", or whatever the current situation is.
Now, the CoX motto is "no AT or powerset is needed". If you have AVs that cannot
be debuffed, very soon you have some extremely loud and whiny debuffers (such
as a certain cold/ice corrupter) spamming feedback with how broken and unfair
the encounter is. Of course, the reverse situation of certain ATs/powersets
being marginalised in various game encounters has been the norm since time
immemorial, but those encounters were placed under the aegis of "epic content".
How do you divide epic content from normal content? Why even have epic content
in a game that doesn't support it? Right now the most epic thing you can do is
farm behemoths with a spines/fire for magic salvage and purple recipes. Let's
just ditch this "epic content" excuse and focus on the game principle.
The game principle of CoX, "no AT or powerset is needed" fundamentally makes it
difficult to create challenging content. Now, not only must the encounter be
resolvable in a certain way, but it must be resolvable in every other way, as
many ways as a cat can look at it. If every player in the team is replaceable,
how can individual players feel that their specialised actions or play skills
are being stretched and tested?
This is the fundamental barrier to CoX content.
On the other hand, if we ditch this principle, then the game might well become
a City of Clones, as if the population of ill/rads and fire/kins isn't skyhigh
now. And the game would become a bore if it ever reached the state of WoW
high-end raiding, where everyone of a certain role has a certain build and
certain macros to run powers in cycles that are mathematically proven to be the
most effective.
Perhaps player-designed content will bring new challenging encounters, if the
designer is flexible enough. The problem will be sifting out the interesting
missions from the mass of spectacularly bad ones.
I12 has come and gone, but the issue seemed like a non-issue. After playing
with MIDs to create 'dream builds' of the proliferated powersets, I found that
I simply could not be bothered to level those builds. It felt like more of the
same thing despite the change in powersets -- newspaper, level, new power...
repeat ad nauseam. Even the VEATs seem rather prosaic, with clones of powers
from other powersets, rather than the unique play mechanics of, say, a
warshade.
(This, plus the fact that internet costs 40 baht/hour in Thailand, has rapidly
killed my interest in the game.)
It isn't "devs suck" or "Dooom!". The game will probably be fun again after a
hiatus. The fact is that firstly, developers can only come up with so much
content so fast, and secondly, they are essentially limited in the type of
content they can come up with.
The first problem is the fact-of-"game" every gamer has to face. Players will
go through content faster than it is being developed.
The second problem is more limiting. Is it a case of a lack of developer
imagination, a limitation in code technology, or a more fundamental barrier
of game principle? The fact that we see new mission objectives every update
suggest that the developers are neither lacking in imagination (too severely,
anyway) nor reached a glass ceiling the limitations of code.
One thing to be said for the developers is that they are sneaky. Teams of
controllers steamrolling STF? Make the ITF mobs difficult to control (makes
it worse for dominators though, because controllers actually lean more on their
secondaries during 'epic' content.) /rads run wild? Make the ITF boss mobs
immune to debuffs (nevermind that /TAs and /Storms were never wanted for STF.)
Big bag of hps destroyed by throwing everything at said bag? Romulus and his
triumvirate of Nictus. An easy fight once I got the unofficial role of keeping
Rommy asleep while everyone beat up the Nictus -- it should be interesting to
see if the Nictus themselves can be slept.
Still, something falls short. At first, I wondered if it is because the
developers aren't getting how certain powersets actually play. Then, I start
to wonder if they do get it, but they are simply entrapped by game principle.
How does one may content that is both challenging and egalitarian? I find that
game content that is challenging often demands specialisation and coordination.
Specialisation and coordination flies in the face of egalitarianism.
Let's take RoD. When you fight Seth, you take a bunch of thieves, each
specialised to be Seth-killers (high hp, good saves, etc.) Now and then some
people throw in another class for fun, but if five clerics can't kill Seth,
people don't scream "it's not fair". Of course, RoD fights tend to be rather
homogeneous, so RoD hasn't got it right either (one tank and seven hitters
isn't right). Hamidon sounds like it demands both specialisation and
coordination, but I don't really like 50-man events, and Hamidon is an anomaly,
where people did not complain about "all my scrapper does is stand around while
the controllers hold", or whatever the current situation is.
Now, the CoX motto is "no AT or powerset is needed". If you have AVs that cannot
be debuffed, very soon you have some extremely loud and whiny debuffers (such
as a certain cold/ice corrupter) spamming feedback with how broken and unfair
the encounter is. Of course, the reverse situation of certain ATs/powersets
being marginalised in various game encounters has been the norm since time
immemorial, but those encounters were placed under the aegis of "epic content".
How do you divide epic content from normal content? Why even have epic content
in a game that doesn't support it? Right now the most epic thing you can do is
farm behemoths with a spines/fire for magic salvage and purple recipes. Let's
just ditch this "epic content" excuse and focus on the game principle.
The game principle of CoX, "no AT or powerset is needed" fundamentally makes it
difficult to create challenging content. Now, not only must the encounter be
resolvable in a certain way, but it must be resolvable in every other way, as
many ways as a cat can look at it. If every player in the team is replaceable,
how can individual players feel that their specialised actions or play skills
are being stretched and tested?
This is the fundamental barrier to CoX content.
On the other hand, if we ditch this principle, then the game might well become
a City of Clones, as if the population of ill/rads and fire/kins isn't skyhigh
now. And the game would become a bore if it ever reached the state of WoW
high-end raiding, where everyone of a certain role has a certain build and
certain macros to run powers in cycles that are mathematically proven to be the
most effective.
Perhaps player-designed content will bring new challenging encounters, if the
designer is flexible enough. The problem will be sifting out the interesting
missions from the mass of spectacularly bad ones.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Nice Touches
A lot of people are rushing right through Age of Conan, on a dikuMUD-inspired achievement grind to the top.
I wonder how many people are actually pausing to notice some really nice touches.
The attempts at natural behavior AI and spawn positions for animal beasts impress me. So much more normal to see two wolves feeding on a dead deer, rather than in equally spaced out intervals. I saw a lion pride crossing the desert sands (male, female and cubs).
These beasts can roam a fairly large circle (human sentries too), so waiting for them to space out is a valid gameplay tactic. And sometimes if they don't, then it leads to interesting tactics (can I survive all of them, can I hit one and run and string out the pack, etc...)
Different species will sometimes attack each other. Though this can lead to oddly amusing situations. (I watched a lvl 26 wild boar one-hit gore a lvl 1 bunny to death. Must have been in a bad mood. :P)
Nice logical scenic touches abound. Here's the magical version of hydroponics, inside a hermit witch's cave.
The path to her cave is also amazingly well hidden, despite a waypoint system. Heading straight for the mark on your map will bump you into tall mountain ranges, and it takes some exploring before you find your way in. A number of people end up asking for help, but it's nice to reprise the Explorer/Trivia hound role and be the one in the know.
Speaking of Explorer roles, the gathering nodes are not marked on a map. This could be because the game's still buggy, but it opens up a tremendous niche reward for Explorers to find them.
One serendipitious touch: the map system in Age of Conan is superlatively excellent. You can zoom into various magnifications of views ala Google Maps, on both the main map and the radar window. (Oh, how I loathed the too small LOTRO radar.) And to top it off, you are able to add Map Markers with captions to note various spots of interest.
As far as I know, these map markers are just in some simple xml file, so it is absolutely possible to share markers with people. And also suggests you can have a near unlimited amount of map markers.
Yep, so lazy people who hate mapping will just proceed to download something that shows them every spot of interest on the map. Nothing new. Websites like this have sprung up all over the intarweb, but now you can have an in-game reference too. Which has to be convenient.
For an obstinate explorer like me, this is a godsend. Now I can make my own marks. I'm spotting gathering nodes by eye and marking my own maps. Some day I'll compare them to the internet ones and see if there's any I missed and vice versa.
Besides gathering nodes, I'm using the map marker system to take note of hidden quest locations. Age of Conan has sneakily hidden items on walls, in dead end alleys, out in the wilderness that end up as quests. Now these are things someone following the yellow exclamation marks are never going to find.
I'm also finding that talking to various unmarked NPCs also yields a number of quests. I suspect this is bugged. NPCs should be showing yellow exclamation marks. But what the hey, extra Explorer reward for now.
Discovering rez points across the map also give a nice and presentable xp bonus. About 1/2 to 1/3 that of an ordinary quest.
And I had serious flashbacks to nostalgic mud days when I visited an inn to turn in a quest, and ended up staying for ten minutes to listen to NPC chatter. Various NPCs were gossiping about the storyline of the zone, and the Troubadour chanting his songs just stopped me in my tracks.
Troubadour: My next tale is, The Ghost Kings.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching; the midnight knows their tread,
Troubadour: From the distant, stealthy planets of the dim, unstable dead;
Troubadour: There are whisperings on the night-winds and the shuddering stars have fled.
Troubadour: A ghostly trumpet echoes from a barren mountainhead;
Troubadour: Through the fen the wandering witch-lights gleam like phantom arrows sped;
Troubadour: There is silence in the valleys and the moon is rising red.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching down the ages' dusty maze;
Troubadour: The unseen feet are tramping through the moonlight's pallid haze,
Troubadour: Down the hollow clanging stairways of a million yesterdays.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching, where the vague moon-vapor creeps,
Troubadour: While the night-wind to their coming, like a thund'rous herald sweeps;
Troubadour: They are clad in ancient grandeur, but the world, unheeding, sleeps.
Troubadour: Hear now the tale of a cursed man, doomed to walk in dark places. The tale of "The Singer in the Mist".
Troubadour: At birth a witch laid on me monstrous spells, And I have trod strange highroads all my days,
Troubadour: Turning my feet to gray, unholy ways. I grope for stems of broken asphodels;
Troubadour: High on the rims of bare, fiend-haunted fells, I follow cloven tracks that lie ablaze;
Troubadour: And ghosts have led me through the moonlight's haze, To talk with demons in the granite hells.
Troubadour: Seas crash upon dragon-guarded shores, Bursting in crimson moons of burning spray,
Troubadour: And iron castles open to me their doors, And serpent-women lure with harp and lay.
Troubadour: The misty waves shake now to phantom oars -- Seek not for me; I sail to meet the day.
Surprisingly nice writing for NPC text that few people might ever listen to. I halted screeching from my routine quest-running, and settled down to watch my chat scroll by.
On googling, it seemed to be the poetry of R. E. Howard himself. Which is still a damn nice touch to put it in game.
Visually, Age of Conan is still stunning. The amount of effort put into the art, and animation is mind boggling. Even the basest of enemies look fantastic. Makes me want to upgrade my video card again, cos it probably looks much better than I can see.
Mantis-man. Thri-keen cousins?
Blood defiler demon. Sorta see-throughish with veins. Didn't turn off my UI. Kinda was getting hit at the time.
Bosses are sized to heroic scale too. So they turn up more gigantic than surrounding mobs. Makes for really great imagery.
Big honker of a Yeti.
I had to climb up a tremendous cliffside just to get to them. Very cool. Death animation on killing the first one made me laugh out loud. They just stop. And pause. Leaning on their club. For a while. Staring at you. Then the message gets through that they are dead... They proceed to tip over, ramrod straight like a felled tree. THUD.
No jerky LOTRO animation complaints here. Age of Conan pwns in its combat and death animations, especially when you add on all the fatality possibilities.
Oh, and I still totally in love with the verticality of their zones. The amazing thing is, you look down and you know you can get there. It's absolutely reachable.
I wonder how many people are actually pausing to notice some really nice touches.
The attempts at natural behavior AI and spawn positions for animal beasts impress me. So much more normal to see two wolves feeding on a dead deer, rather than in equally spaced out intervals. I saw a lion pride crossing the desert sands (male, female and cubs).
These beasts can roam a fairly large circle (human sentries too), so waiting for them to space out is a valid gameplay tactic. And sometimes if they don't, then it leads to interesting tactics (can I survive all of them, can I hit one and run and string out the pack, etc...)
Different species will sometimes attack each other. Though this can lead to oddly amusing situations. (I watched a lvl 26 wild boar one-hit gore a lvl 1 bunny to death. Must have been in a bad mood. :P)
Nice logical scenic touches abound. Here's the magical version of hydroponics, inside a hermit witch's cave.
The path to her cave is also amazingly well hidden, despite a waypoint system. Heading straight for the mark on your map will bump you into tall mountain ranges, and it takes some exploring before you find your way in. A number of people end up asking for help, but it's nice to reprise the Explorer/Trivia hound role and be the one in the know.
Speaking of Explorer roles, the gathering nodes are not marked on a map. This could be because the game's still buggy, but it opens up a tremendous niche reward for Explorers to find them.
One serendipitious touch: the map system in Age of Conan is superlatively excellent. You can zoom into various magnifications of views ala Google Maps, on both the main map and the radar window. (Oh, how I loathed the too small LOTRO radar.) And to top it off, you are able to add Map Markers with captions to note various spots of interest.
As far as I know, these map markers are just in some simple xml file, so it is absolutely possible to share markers with people. And also suggests you can have a near unlimited amount of map markers.
Yep, so lazy people who hate mapping will just proceed to download something that shows them every spot of interest on the map. Nothing new. Websites like this have sprung up all over the intarweb, but now you can have an in-game reference too. Which has to be convenient.
For an obstinate explorer like me, this is a godsend. Now I can make my own marks. I'm spotting gathering nodes by eye and marking my own maps. Some day I'll compare them to the internet ones and see if there's any I missed and vice versa.
Besides gathering nodes, I'm using the map marker system to take note of hidden quest locations. Age of Conan has sneakily hidden items on walls, in dead end alleys, out in the wilderness that end up as quests. Now these are things someone following the yellow exclamation marks are never going to find.
I'm also finding that talking to various unmarked NPCs also yields a number of quests. I suspect this is bugged. NPCs should be showing yellow exclamation marks. But what the hey, extra Explorer reward for now.
Discovering rez points across the map also give a nice and presentable xp bonus. About 1/2 to 1/3 that of an ordinary quest.
And I had serious flashbacks to nostalgic mud days when I visited an inn to turn in a quest, and ended up staying for ten minutes to listen to NPC chatter. Various NPCs were gossiping about the storyline of the zone, and the Troubadour chanting his songs just stopped me in my tracks.
Troubadour: My next tale is, The Ghost Kings.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching; the midnight knows their tread,
Troubadour: From the distant, stealthy planets of the dim, unstable dead;
Troubadour: There are whisperings on the night-winds and the shuddering stars have fled.
Troubadour: A ghostly trumpet echoes from a barren mountainhead;
Troubadour: Through the fen the wandering witch-lights gleam like phantom arrows sped;
Troubadour: There is silence in the valleys and the moon is rising red.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching down the ages' dusty maze;
Troubadour: The unseen feet are tramping through the moonlight's pallid haze,
Troubadour: Down the hollow clanging stairways of a million yesterdays.
Troubadour: The ghost kings are marching, where the vague moon-vapor creeps,
Troubadour: While the night-wind to their coming, like a thund'rous herald sweeps;
Troubadour: They are clad in ancient grandeur, but the world, unheeding, sleeps.
Troubadour: Hear now the tale of a cursed man, doomed to walk in dark places. The tale of "The Singer in the Mist".
Troubadour: At birth a witch laid on me monstrous spells, And I have trod strange highroads all my days,
Troubadour: Turning my feet to gray, unholy ways. I grope for stems of broken asphodels;
Troubadour: High on the rims of bare, fiend-haunted fells, I follow cloven tracks that lie ablaze;
Troubadour: And ghosts have led me through the moonlight's haze, To talk with demons in the granite hells.
Troubadour: Seas crash upon dragon-guarded shores, Bursting in crimson moons of burning spray,
Troubadour: And iron castles open to me their doors, And serpent-women lure with harp and lay.
Troubadour: The misty waves shake now to phantom oars -- Seek not for me; I sail to meet the day.
Surprisingly nice writing for NPC text that few people might ever listen to. I halted screeching from my routine quest-running, and settled down to watch my chat scroll by.
On googling, it seemed to be the poetry of R. E. Howard himself. Which is still a damn nice touch to put it in game.
Visually, Age of Conan is still stunning. The amount of effort put into the art, and animation is mind boggling. Even the basest of enemies look fantastic. Makes me want to upgrade my video card again, cos it probably looks much better than I can see.
Bosses are sized to heroic scale too. So they turn up more gigantic than surrounding mobs. Makes for really great imagery.
I had to climb up a tremendous cliffside just to get to them. Very cool. Death animation on killing the first one made me laugh out loud. They just stop. And pause. Leaning on their club. For a while. Staring at you. Then the message gets through that they are dead... They proceed to tip over, ramrod straight like a felled tree. THUD.
No jerky LOTRO animation complaints here. Age of Conan pwns in its combat and death animations, especially when you add on all the fatality possibilities.
Oh, and I still totally in love with the verticality of their zones. The amazing thing is, you look down and you know you can get there. It's absolutely reachable.
