Yay, Kill 10 Rats! Yay!?

The Kill Ten Rats (KTR) quest is a staple of MMOs.  Well, actually, most games when you get right down to it.  It is so named because early MMOs had newbie players tasked with something trivial, like killing 10 rats.  The format doesn’t change as you level up, either, only the rats are now goblins, or orcs, or whatever nasty critter is nearby.

TOR has a near perfect implementation of the KTR.  Almost all of TORs KTR quests are offered in the form of bonus quests.  They are completely optional.  Furthermore, most of them get completed as you work on the main objective.  So 90% of the time you complete the quest before you’re really aware you had it.  As for the other 10% of the time you’re either so close to completing that it’s hardly a hardship to hunt down the last group or two of mobs or, if you’re not close to completing it, you can just blow it off.

Wait… what!?

Star Wars: The Old Republic has been released.  I have been playing heavily since the first minutes of early access. In 2 words, lovin’ it!  TOR is not without its problems, all minor and not really worth mentioning.  What Bioware set out to achieve they did in spades.  That being the story they are so famous for.

When I create characters in MMOs I need to have some basic character concept in my head.  I can’t get into the character nor the game without even having some notion of who my character is.  Even if there’s absolutely no expression of those personalities and motivations inside the game I still need to have it in my mind.

TOR isn’t the first MMO where some portions of these characters can manifest.  The basic personality peeks out from choices in weapons, powers and gear.  TOR is most certainly the first where my characters truly feel completely different.  It stems from the conversation choices as well as consequences that come with them.  My male gunslinger, Resolute, responds to conversations differently than my vanguard, Kristn.

Because of this two days ago something happened in TOR which has never happened in the 12 years I have been playing MMOs.  I was doing some solo missions on Alderaan with Resolute.  I was presented with a choice I could not answer.

Up to this point my concept of Resolute lent itself to quick answers and has resulted in a mostly light side character.  Chase all the skirts (but not the kilts), bad critters must die, slavers are bad critters, show him the money, mouth off to authority to knock’em down a peg.

This one choice was clear on what was light side and what was dark side but I never made choices based solely in those terms.  One choice took him out of the conflict, one that wasn’t his and saved a dozen lives.  The other was to tell the bad guy to piss off and start blasting.

Both choices were well within Resolute’s character.  So, for the first time in an MMO is sat and stared at a choice and had to really, truly think, “What do I do?”

SWTOR, MMOs & Expectations

Now that the SWTOR NDA has been lifted there have been a rash of posts with people giving their thoughts on the game, giving reviews and just getting information out there.  Through all of this there has been one common strain of posts which are critical of SWTOR.  The prime example being this blog post from Josh at Twenty Sided.

There are many factual problems with his post that I could tackle, but I won’t.  The problem isn’t how accurate or inaccurate his post is but rather that the foundation upon which it rests is flawed.  Josh (and many others like him) attack SWTOR by attacking the conventions of the genre in which it occupies.  Their problem is not with the game, but the genre.  That being traditional, hot-key based, theme park MMOs (referred to as HKTP here on out).  World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Everquest 2, City of Heroes, Anarchy Online are all examples of this genre of game.

Now, I get that people might not like hot-key theme park MMOs.  I hardly feel that every gamer is going to love every genre of game.  I certainly don’t and I’ve been gaming since ASCII graphics were high-tech.  It’s ok that they don’t like that style of game.

However, I don’t think it is ok that they pick up a game which has was always billed as a hot-key theme park MMO and then judge it poorly because it was anything but.  But this is precisely what this strain of criticisms do.  Notice the constant harping on being WoW in space, or pointing out the kill ten rats and delivery quest tropes, or how the combat has the same type of attacks as other hot-key based MMOs.  Those aren’t criticisms of TOR but of the genre itself.

This isn’t limited to TOR.  This is a common issue raised with every new HKTP MMO.  What strikes me as odd is that only in the MMO genre does this criticism arise.  In no other genre of video game are criticisms of the game sticking to closely to the conventions of the genre levied.  In fact, the exact opposite often occurs!  If an FPS or RTS were to be released with core mechanics which were radically different than what had been seen in those genres prior chances are they would be harshly criticized for doing so.

Look, I can’t stand RTS games. Ever since Dune 2 I have never found an RTS game I can stand to play. I have many times railed against the mechanics of the RTS genre. But I have never would I ever presume to pick up an RTS, play it, then proceed to say that it was a bad game because it was exactly what it billed itself to be, an RTS game!

It boils down to people having some odd expectation that every MMO should be ground breaking, revolutionary and break with convention.  Facts are, most MMOs won’t.  Most video games don’t.  The gaming public expects this from other genres, it’s time they expect it from the MMO genre as well and simply do what I, and they, do when they hit a style of game they don’t like.  Don’t play it.

More Rift Thoughts

A month ago I decided to give Rift retail a try.  My main, Athnamas the mage, is closing in on 50.  In fact she is 2 bars from 49 as of this writing.  I think at this point I have given Rift a fair shake.  So lately things have been bothering me.  Something just below the surface of Rift.  I mean the game plays well and some of the visuals are stunning.  But I think Trion missed the mark because they are missing the details.  Here are a few examples of what I mean.

The landscapes can be visually pleasing when viewed from a distance.  But up close they are lackluster.  The ground detail is lacking.  Large swaths of area just there.  Sure, Freemarch seems to have a good bit of ground clutter but some areas of Stillmoor are little more than bland textures on the landscape.

This lack of detail also shows in quests.  The grouping is nice.  Even though the quest log only holds 25 I’ve never really felt limited because the quests are handed out, 3-5 at a time, from one quest hub and generally to one area.  But they are bland variations of kill x of y.  The epitome of this inattention to detail in quests came from one quest late in Stillmoor where you’re supposed to face off against your darker side.  In fact there’s an achievement for it, “Mirror, Mirror”.  What I had expected was to face off against a mob which appeared in similar gear as my toon.  What I got was a mob which amounts to little more than a floating black blob.  One that has been used in the past several zones!

The armor progression through the levels is lacking.  In outfitting, one of the few professions I have taken, the difference between one set of armor and the next is often a slight different in color.  In fact some of the highest level greens (46-48) share the same art with the 2nd level of greens!  Trion added in a wardrobe tab with 4 different slots.  There’s little need as I doubt most people would get past one look that strikes them.  No doubt it is repeated several times.

Even the UI is not without its problems.  Powers can be cast on Target’s Target, macros cannot.  So what is a perfectly viable way of controlling the plethora of powers in single player becomes a bother in groups.

Finally, the combat seems bland.  My character feels overpowered, immensely so.  I have to really be asleep at the keyboard to get killed by anything short of an elite.  Meanwhile the dungeons I have been in thus far have proven to be of the horrible schlock Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King foisted upon us.  IE, tank holds all mobs everyone AoEs, rinse, repeat.  When I am DPSing in a dungeon I literally have 2 powers I cast out of the ~20 I have on my bars.  An insta-cast, non-channeled AoE followed by a channeled AoE.

Several months ago I posted my thoughts from Beta.  They boiled down to Souls giving out too many powers with too much duplication and that rifts would soon become a chore.  Do I still think that after a month of solid play?  Somewhat and definitely.

As I later wrote I think Rift’s souls are supposed to give you a superset of powers from which you carve out your own style of effects and sequences as expressed by power choice and macros.  I like that Trion is willing to tweak the nose of the holy trinity.  Rogue tanks, mage healers?  Yup, completed a dungeon with just that combination.  I think it could use some serious refinement both in UI elements if not the base system itself.

Rifts, however, became just what I thought they would.  Chores.  This is especially true with precursor of the second live event.  One of the dailies we get requires 40 of a particular item.  Those items can only drop from rifts and footholds of the appropriate type.  Closing a minor rift taken through all stages yields 4 of that item.  Closing a minor rift without extra stages yields 2.  So, as a mainly solo player right now, to get 40 I have to close 20 rifts solo.  It wouldn’t be so bad except that rifts, once you’ve seen about 10 of them, really have nothing new to offer.  They are hardly as dynamic as they are billed to be.  They are just another type of spawn.  That’s it.  They pretty much all boil down to “kill x of y” 6 times with, oh, 4 of those on a timer.

Granted, most dailies can become chore-like over time.  But Trion is doubling down on the Rift mechanic.  With the 1.3 update we now get new crafting dailies which, dundundunnnnnn, we have to open special rifts and then close them!  We get a new mechanic which lets us see alternate timelines which, dundundunnnnnnn, are rifts!  Sitting on the cusp of the solo end game all I see are rifts in my future and it is depressing.

A Rift Realization

Well, I’m really digging myself a hole in Rift.  After abandoning my low-20s cleric for a Necrolock mage I got her to the low-40s.  Then I decided to make a warrior and rogue to reserve my preferred names for each.  I ended up spending a lot of time on the warrior because, really, I’m a melee player at heart.

As part of my messing around with my warrior I delved into Rift’s rather tepid macro system.  The warrior souls I’ve chosen are chock full of reactions and cooldown powers, each I would prefer to use in different situations but there are some priorities I’d like to maintain.  In the end I have several buttons which now have 2-3 powers bound to them in a specific sequence.

Now, for some reason I decided to log into my cleric.  I thought I’d never really want to play her again.  But now I approached her with the macro-fu experience gained from my warrior.  It clicked.  After about fifteen minutes of playing to reacquaint myself with the cleric powers I decided on two macros.  A few minutes later I had taken her 12 buttons and consolidated them down to 4.  Only two of those are single-power buttons.  Amazingly I was able to fit 3 reactions and 3 cooldown powers, along with my basic attack, into a single button.

I have complained before about the shear number of powers available to the souls.  I think this might be what Trion intends for these characters.  For players to take those powers and overload the buttons to prioritize powers as they see fit.  Kind of like the sequences in Aion only custom made by the players.

As a programmer I really don’t have a problem with delving into macros like this.  They’re exceptionally simple concepts to grasp.  But I can’t help but think there’s a better way to do this.  Why don’t they have a GUI to set up these priorities?  I can see being able to open up a dialog which has slots and simply drag/dropping the powers you want into those slots in the sequence you want them to cast.  I think if they did that, provided some visual, non-progammer gamers would be better able to understand and manipulate their game to suit their taste.

10 Reasons To Be Interested In Guild Wars 2

No, not my video but a great overview of what GW2 is trying to achieve.  They’re trying to break the mold.  To review the systems that we have come to consider standard and pull the essence from them which is fun while leaving the cruft behind.  To address oddities based on the conventions we’ve let fester for the better part of a decade.  To do all that and make it look damn sexy to boot!

I have been nominally following SWTOR’s progress via MMOGC‘s musings upon Bioware’s weekly updates.  As I mentioned before, I just can’t seem to muster much enthusiasm for what is ostensibly one of most beloved fictional universes from my childhood.  But GW2 videos like this just get me every time.  SWTOR will come in its own time.  GW2 cannot come soon enough.

Leveling Speed, Content Viability, & End Game Gear Grinds

OTG‘s Rift section has had a lively discussion about end game gear grinds.  At one point one of my fellow OTGers, Cirric, commented,

If it slows down progression then thats a good thing, it will allow content to be viable for a lot longer.

Somehow a soapbox appeared under my fiend and I opined the following in response.

This. This right here is the crux of the issue. Game companies have traded in one grind for another at the behest of the players. Pardon me as I pull out the curmudgeonly “Back in my day” hat for a crowd that I know is mostly older than me but…

Back when I started MMOs it was with Asheron’s Call. Level cap when I started wasn’t 45 or 50 or even 85. It was 128. By the mid-60s time between levels could be measured in weeks, not hours. On top of that there was no level cap on when you gained XP from any particular mob. If the mob was under your level you just gained less XP so it eventually it was no longer viable as a source of leveling. But since you always got some XP you never, ever, felt cheated running lower level stuff to help out the lowbies because at least you got something.

I played AC for about 5 years. I never saw cap. Hell, I never saw my level reach triple digits. Now, granted, I quit in the middle and deleted my toons (rookie move, let me tell you) so I might have been able to cap out eventually. So let’s say my best was about level 80 in 2.5 years.

Think on that for a second. 2/3rds of the way to cap in the time it took WoW to birth two expansions with two level cap increases. Blizzard (as with the majority of other MMO companies) aims to have cap hit from their current base in 2 weeks. That means 1-60 in vanilla WoW, 2 weeks. 60-70 in BC? 2 weeks. 70-80 in WLK? 2 weeks. On top of that as they pushed the cap higher they lowered the time to level on the low end. So it isn’t 6-weeks to cap now, it is closer to 4.

I learned early on that the lower level dungeons, neat as they may be, weren’t worth doing. In fact we had this discussion on Graybriar’s /g just yesterday. Someone got the achievement for regular and expert FC at the same time. Someone else commented, “You never did FC before?” I pointed out it was easy to do in this game because you’re often only at level for a dungeon for, at most, 2-3 days.

My main didn’t hit IT until she was over level and did so on a run with a level 50 baby sitter. DsM? Overlevel and 2 level 50 baby sitters. The gear got used for a few hours and then runebroken. It literally made no difference whether I went or not. The only problem is that I have no idea how to do those instances properly because I did them in a setting that provided 0 challenge, 0 incentive to learn and 0 chance of failure!

I really dislike this trend because here’s another fun fact. Asheron’s Call is still available to play right now. It started back in 1999. 12 years later it is still open for business. MMO companies are planning on caps being hit in 2 weeks in a genre which, historically, if they make it past the first year or two they will have a game that goes on for 5 to 10 years. That is patently stupid!

They need to extend the leveling path, not contract it. They need to pay as much attention to content at all levels as they do at “end game” because there is no end game; hello, the game doesn’t end! Above all modern MMOs need to take notes from AC and CoH. Both, in their own way, make it viable and challenging for people with high end toons to take a break from the high end content. To revisit older content without trampling all over it. To get something out of the experience so people who didn’t play in the first 2 months of the game aren’t left with piss-poor options of going through what low level content there is at level with level appropriate groups. Finally it means that the gear obtained from those early instances actually lasts longer than it takes to obtain it!

… crap, how’d that soapbox get there!?