Friday, May 30, 2008

Chaging Times

Why should you change a good thing? To make more money!

Well that is the theory.

Next week, Wizards of the Coast will be releasing the new 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. I am a bit older than the original D&D. And I have played them all in some form or another. Since 3rd Edition came out about eight years ago, I have played quite a bit of it and made quite a few new friends. Though I think 90% of all my friends have been though gaming (directly or indirectly.)

The current version of D&D (aka 3.5) is fairly stable game. For a Table Top game, stable means that you can play the game with rules as written without much confusion. Many of the RPGs in my collection have requires some level of house rules to address mechanical problems or inconsistencies with the core mechanic. Earlier editions of D&D required quiet a few. House rules that address flavor (ie, in my world no one can be an Elf) don't factor into the stability of the game.

But it has suffered like any online RPG over the past 8 years. First there was some power creep as the various class books were added to "enhance" the options to character. Then there was sort of a reset when they released 3.5 in 2003. For the most part that was just a big clean up of the first three years. There were changes but for the most part you did not have to relearn everything.

Then over the past 5 years, more "builder books" were published that added more and more options. As more of these options were included more prone the system was for extreme over-powered characters. Some these options devalued some of the core aspects of the game. But since this is a table top, game a DM could easily limit the available options for their campaign.

I had the good fortune to be a play tester for 4th Edition. (I think I can say that now since my name is up on the Wizard's site.) And with out getting into details it is a playable game. Like all games it has its quirks, but for the most part I did enjoy myself. However this game is a radical change from 3rd (and previous) editions in terms of how it plays. This has lead to a Coal Miner's Debate among my local circle on "Is 4th Edition D&D?"

In away I am very much reminded of Star Wars Galaxies. There was the original game. The first major revamp call the Combat Upgrade, and then finally the redo the whole game from a classless system to a level-based system with the New Game Experience. On its own the current version of SWG is a decent game. It is just a completely different game.

Unlike SWG:NGE, 4th Edition D&D will do well. It is a good game. New gamers don't care about the history of D&D. They want a playable and fun game. And over time the majority of 3rd Players will succumb the lure of the new siren's call. In fact it is kind of brilliant for Wizards. There will be a steady selling of the core rule books over the next few years while players slowly change.

Personally, I am happy enough to enjoy a good afternoon/evening around the table playing with my friends. As long as the system does not get in way of the fun, I don't care what I play.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Taking a Break and Going Retro

Recently I decided to tinker with my desktop system and upgrade it to Vista. Now I already work with Vista at work and my new laptop also is running Vista. Needless to say I kind of like it. Unfortunately I had to do a complete re-install and not an upgrade (not big loss, I did back up the important bits first.) Though I am running into a bit of a snag. For some reason I have yet to get the OS to see that I now have 4 GB of memory. It only shows 2GB.

On top of that, I just got a pair of Mini-Dachshund puppies. (One is mine, the other is my GF's) So for now the desktop system is turned off and I will work on it later when I don't have to keep an eagle eye over two very active puppies.

This means I am on my laptop for gaming. I can sit in the living room and watch the puppies while on the computer. As it turns out, my laptop, which I just bought, is at least as good as my desktop system for gaming. I just don't like being cramped up on the keyboard.

Now I have a nice 32" LCD HDTV. So I was thinking of getting a console system for the living room. But with the recent laptop purchase and new puppies, I need to conserve cash for a bit. But wait! New laptop has HDMI out and I have a spare cable. Plug-Plug, Click-Click and suddenly I had a 32" monitor on my laptop. Unfortunately the couch is further away then the cable can reach.

So a quick run to Best Buy and I get myself a wireless XBox controller. Plug-Plug, Click-Click and now I have a hacked together XBox. I have a few games in my stash that were cross released to PC and XBox, like Oblivion. However my Oblivion DVD is scratched so I can not load the game on the laptop.

Quick aside: Even if the game was cross developed for XBox and PC it does not mean the PC version will natively support an XBox Controller. So you will need a intermediate program. So far I like the Pinnacle Game Profiler.

So now I am going into the bargain bin and see what I can find. A while back I got a subscription to Fileplanet (long before the Conan Beta) and it turns out I qualified for a few free games though their HitPoints system . So I downloaded a few to give them a whirl.

The first was Sherlock Holmes: The Awakening. This is a fairly simple puzzle adventure game. Nice to play and I was able to get my Xbox Controller to work with it. It was good to getting used to moving with the controller. However I miss creating my own character.

Next up is Deus Ex: Invisible War. I played most of the original Deus Ex when it first came out. I liked the mix of FPS and RPG. It was also a good story and should kept me interested for a while. It took awhile to get running on Vista since it was made a while back, but it was just setting up permissions and compatibilities. Though I need to tune the controller a bit more.

Lastly, I got Myst III, but I will save that till later. Much like Sherlock Holmes, I know that it is a puzzle/adventure game. I would need to have a walkthough handy when I get frustrated with a puzzle.

There are a few games on my Radar as well. First is Mass Effect from Bioware. A XBox to PC conversion. But Bioware makes very fun CRPGs. And later this year....Fallout 3. I fell in love with Fallout 1 and 2. So I hope it lives up to the hype. Granted it is a completely different set of developers, but so far it looks good.

So time to curl up on the couch. Wrangle puppies and play some old fashion CRPGs and Adventure games.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Crime and Punishment

One of my issues with most PvP in Online RPGs is the concept of The Gank. In short it is when the attacker has such overwhelming odds that the victim has no chance of winning. In addition, most of the time the Gankers suffer no retribution for their actions. Effectively this is similar to assault and battery in the real world. It is a criminal action with in the context of the game.

Now to be a bit clear, there are two basic types of Gank.

First, there is the Exploit Gank. This is doing something outside the intention of the game design in order to hinder the victim from responding. In Ultima Online you could set up a trap such that the victim would have to load in 1000's of objects to his client thus freezing them in place. During that forced lag, the ganker attacks the victim.

On the other end is the fairly general Ambush Gank. Either a lone powerful character is out sniping victims, or a gang is out terrorizing people, it is all about the same. You over power the opponent so much that it is no challenge at all. This also include those who wait and watch one group of people fight then go in and attack the winners while they are still damaged and weakened.

There is the hybrid Spwan/Load-in Gank. This is similar but not as bad as the exploit gank. The idea here is that there is time between when your character loads in to a new area that the character is there but your client is not ready to respond. From a design perspective, all that is needed is some level of immunity timer to cover that difference. This does not prevent the Ambush Gank, the victim is at least in control of his character before the attack begins. This type of ganking may or may not be an exploit depending on what the developers have done to allow the victim time to respond.

Exploits need to be addressed by the developers themselves to limit the ability to cause such lagging by the players and to punish via account suspension and removal any and all perpetrators of this activity. Using tactics outside the scope of the game world should be punished out side the game world.

Non-exploit ganking should be allowed to happen with in the game to a certain extent. A weaker character or potential victim should be able to have a few options to avoid or run away. In the case of a Spawn camp, the victim should have a window of opportunity to get away before the attackers close in. This should not be guaranteed, but still possible.

But what about in-game consequences for ganking?

Ultima Online had a feature that if you attacked and killed too many people you would be flagged as a murderer. EVE has it that you loose security status and eventually hunted out of some areas of the game. The basic idea is that the more "criminal" you become the more Kill on sight you become in NPC controlled areas.

There are two flaws with this. Death in most games is really just a minor annoyance. Anything that you would lose is replace in a matter of some time. The "good" criminals know how to hedge their losses such that the recovery time is negligible. Death is all the same in most games. So being KoS or even Hunted is just a mild annoyance. To be a punishment, the death as a result of being a criminal has to be more severe than a normal death in the game.

The other flaw is that it punishes the character and not the player. It is still very easy for the player to create another character to take care of any business in areas that the flagged character can not get to. So aside from another minor inconvenience, there isn't any lasting limitations. Any punishment placed on the character is bypassed by the player changing characters. There is very little stopping on character having a host of alts terrorizing the world but never enough by any one of them to get serious in-game sanctions.

In order to get around this, developers and players have to give up the idea of independent alts on an account. There are things that you share among all your characters. For example, you have a global player/account based criminal record. On the flip side you should be freely able to move goods and items between your characters. This will not stop multi-account players, but at least they have to pay something extra.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

That new game feel

It has only been out for just over a week, but I doubt I will be playing Age of Conan for while, if at all. Fortunately Funcom offered the early access along with ten days of play before I had to enter my retail key. I still have my per-order box and key, but I have not activated yet. Maybe later.

So why not?

Very simple. I was not sucked in to the game.

I am a very intensive gamer. With most new games, I will spend a good day or two just playing the game. Now being a responsible adult, I put this in my calendar and make sure that for the first 48 hours I am free of other obligations. In fact I go so far as to inform my significant other of these periods of non-availability. Now a days, this happens about twice a year.

So Conan comes out. I was in the Early Access so I had the opportunity to play during the pre-opening weekend. Granted the servers were down for a good portion of that so I did not get to play. Then when I did set aside time, I just did not care to play for more than two or three hours. (If my client stayed up that long)

But for some reason I was just not drawn in to the game. Sure the combat is different and the graphics are nice, but it is already feeling like most other MMOs out there. Right now there is only leveling and some PvP. And since PvP is unfortunately level based, you must level in order to be competitive.

If I am going to play a level based game again, I don't want to think about what I need to do in order to level. I just want to go and "play" the game and let the leveling happen in the background. I still want to level and get more powerful, but I am not always playing the game to level.

For what ever reason I am already worried about how to level quickly and not just playing the game.

For the record, I don't think Warhammer will be any better in this regard. I might find it more interesting since I have more knowledge of the Warhammer universe than Conan. But how long can newer games hide the leveling from me?

Friday, May 23, 2008

The Mythical End-Game of MMOs

When EQ first came out there was no formal concept of a Raid. It was all about just enjoying playing the game and getting more powerful to see more wonderful things in the world. Getting to level 50 was a real long term goal.

And it was almost a year before the first great dragon of Norath was finally defeated.

Then it happened. Enough people got to level 50 that the crys for "what's next" were heard. In response the first few real Multi-Group areas (aka Raids) came to light. No instead of needing 6 players, you now need 24 max level players to take on these zones. So these zones were designed to be "impossible" but give enough gamers enough time they will break anything you put in the game. And thus the "End-Game" was born.

Suddenly, the game became a race to level 50 so that your character could participate in these raids. The leisurely journey though Norath was gone. And almost every MMO since then has been built on the idea that leveling was just something to do to get to the "real" game itself.

Now lets go back and forward at the same time. Ultima Online and Asheron's Call never succumbed to the Curse of the End-Game. Ultima Online did not have a formal end game. The power difference between a noob and a fully spec'ed out character was not too great. After maybe a few hours to get your skills up to a basic level, you were only limited by your own fear.

AC Just had more levels. And even then after a certain point the levels had less and less meaning. But you did not have to be max level in order to go anywhere. Two characters of different level could still work together and be productive.

So get rid of the race to max level by getting rid of the concept of the "End-Game." Players should be able to participate at any level. For example, in the pre-CU Star Wars Galaxies, you could start taking a part in the Galactic Civil War after getting a few skills for your character. You did not have to be a Master to be a threat on the battlefield.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Stepping into the Fire: PvP

This Saturday, Age of Conan opens up. For the first time I will be starting a new game with my main on a PvP server by choice. I don't count Ultima Online or EVE in this since there was no option otherwise. This is going to be interesting as I only kind of know two other people but I have been accepted in to guild before the game starts this weekend. So I have some social group to work with.

I have never been much for PvP in the past. Mostly because I tend to go off and play on my own. And in most PvP worlds loners die often. Having one or two other players guarding each other makes your survivability much higher.

But to be honest, there is nothing like the thrill of a fight with an equivalent player. When there is some sense of loss then the game gets exciting. Now for me, this does not have to be an actual fight. I have done my fair share of blockade running in EVE. It takes planning, intelligence and some quick reactions to make it though some of the more interesting gate camps. I was playing the mouse in a game of cat and mouse.

But Conan will be the first game where I intend to play a more aggressive role. In EVE and UO I spent my time as a industrialist/crafter.

Currently I have one major concern for Conan. How will the developers deal with Spawn Camping. Will there be an area of safety around resurrection points and gate in spots? Spawning is a game imposed mechanic and I don't want to have to die because of a technical issue.

This is one area I think EVE made some good choices. Camping a gate in EVE was fairly common. It was not a guaranteed gank all the time. If you prepared yourself correctly you could sneak though. However there were different types of gate camp set-ups which required slightly different counters. And if you did set yourself up to counter everything, then you may be sacrificing some other function (ie speed or cargo.)

So there are other ways then straight immunity at spawn points. I am curious to see what Age of Conan does.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Introduction and Applogies

I am not a game designer by trade. Not anywhere in the slightest. I know a few personally and I sort of envy their jobs. If I could afford to cut my salary in half and go back about 10 years, I would consider it.

I am however a gamer geek of many years. My older brothers had the good old Blue Box Dungeons and Dragons set, and I took to the game like a fish to water. What better for a creative nerdy kid to explore is passion. It allowed me to create my stories in my mind, yet there were mechanical rules that satisfied my engineering side for structure.

This blog is combination editorial, review, and technical theory articles. Basically it is a journey of the games that I am playing as well as some reflections on games that I have played. This will not be limited to just computer games, but table top as well. Although my main passion is Role-Playing Games, I will talk about other genres.