Seamless server transition

/start of being a tight ass MMO game company

So you created a character on a different server to your friend and now you want to swap so that you can play together? I'm sorry, but that's going to cost you! Changing servers is expensive... didn't you know? At a technical level we have to change one field in the database. That's expensive work... so that will be $25.

What do you mean your server is at a low population and you want to change because it's ruining your gaming experience? $25!

You're sick of being ganked on a PvP server and now you want to swap to a PvE server?? Oh... that's too bad. $25 please...

/end of being a tight ass MMO game company

/start rant

You get my point. The greatest con job in the history of MMO gaming would have to be charging for character transfers. There is no reason why the whole process of transferring a character from one server to another can't be automated and made seamless so that a player can move from one server to the next without a cost or hassle. So why do companies like Blizzard and Mythic charge for the service? Well there are in fact a couple of reasons, but the main one is more $$. I can't actually think of any downsides to allowing players to migrate around servers freely, aside from potential overcrowding. Beats under population in my books.

I think it's funny that Mythic wants to charge for character server transfers when they are having so many server population issues. I also think it's funny that they copied the con job from Blizzard and expect to get away with it (actually they probably will). I suppose they have to earn a few extra bucks on the side...

ArenaNet have already announced that Guild Wars 2 will have seamless server transitions for characters built in as core functionality. No costs involved. It will work similar to changing district at the moment, except you will change server. There are no hassles with conflicting character names because names are unique across all of GW2. They achieve this by enforcing something called a 'last name' for your characters upon creation. Incredibly this allows for more than one person to have the same first name for their character... who would have thought it possible? Not Blizzard and not Mythic, that's for sure.

/end rant

WAR: Switching modes

I play an Archmage, and one of the biggest annoyances is having to swap armor, weapons and tactics every time I want to go from damage to healing mode (and vice versa). I wanted two buttons, one that said 'Healing Mode' and one that said 'Damage Mode'. I wanted to click either button and all my items and tactics would instantly be set for that mode. Was it too much to ask?

I looked around for an addon that would do this but the closest I could find was ClosetGoblin, which only really fulfilled half my requirement. So I did a bit or research and it turns out I could do the rest with some clever macro ninjoring. Now I have my two buttons and it is the greatest thing ever. It's so handy that I can't imagine playing without them. I figured that there must be others out there that shared the same pain as me, so here's the steps I took to create the 'mode buttons':

1. Download the ClosetGoblin addon from Curse (you will also need LibSlash).
2. Install both addons and then fire up WAR.
3. Open the Closet Goblin window by typing the following command into chat:
   
   /cg show
   
   
4. Create and set up two (or more) Closet Goblin sets (may require a lot of item shuffling):
   
   I used 'Heal' and 'Dmg' as names, but you can call them anything you like.
5. Open the main menu (press 'esc') and click 'Macros':
   
   
6. Select one of the empty macro spaces and choose an icon and enter a name for your macro (e.g. 'Healing Mode').
7. Enter the following into the 'Macro Text' section:
   
   /script TacticsEditor.OnSetMenuSelectionChanged(1) ClosetGoblin.ActivateSet("Heal")
   
   Note: there is no line break used in the above script. Replace the highlighted text with the number of the tactics set you wish to use and the name of the set from ClosetGoblin:
   
   
   
8. Now click 'save' and drag the macro icon onto your skill bar:
   
   
9. Repeat steps 6 to 8 for each mode button you wish to create.

You can now use the buttons (while not in combat) to quickly swap between whatever item sets and tactics you like. This trick will work for any class, not just the Archmage. You might be a tank with 'Tank Mode' and 'Damage Mode'. The time and hassle saved in the long run is well worth it. Ahh.. sooo much better... ;)

How important are levels in our MMOs?

I started to reply to syncaine's recent post but as usual it ballooned out, so I am just going to paste it here. Paraphrase: syncaine debates the pros and cons of having levels in MMOs, and is undecided.

You definitely have to gradually introduce people to their class. Starting off with 2 skills and acquiring them as your brain can handle them, rather than lumping you with everything all in one go, is a must. This is by necessity an exponential progression - we can handle several things to start with, but need a bit more time each level to adjust to our new set of skills before progressing to the next level.

However, leveling is boring once there is too much time in between levels, as there are no new shinies to play with. The exponential feature really starts to kick in (and suck) in terms of time investment at a certain point. It also starts to suck because the developers simply run out of ideas for what your new skills can do.

They solve this by either
a) letting you advance an entire other skill tree concurrently. This carries the risk of having more and more overpowered combinations of skills, and also provides the character with too many options to choose from at a given time; or
b) make use of "power creep", ie give you a skill that does 10% more damage, which is really meaningless because they simply gave the monsters 10% more HP in the next area
c) give you crap skills that nobody would ever use (of course people still use them, because they sound cool or something. This ruins their game experience (makes them suck), and my game experience (makes my group suck).

The main reason that leveling sucks though, is that the farther down the leveling path you get, the less and less likely it is that you're going to be able to group with a given player, which presents a major barrier to grouping. Which is the whole point of an MMO in the first place.

So, I think the leveling process should stop at a certain point. This point is where you are no longer gaining new, useful functionality after leveling up. The leveling process should take long enough that you get used to all your skills, but not so long that it starts to drag.

After this point, progressing through the game should be rewarded horizontally, and with fluff. ie, players unlock more and more respec options, as well as cool titles, emotes, armor/weapons, housing, etc, to stroke their e-peens with. I think Guild Wars struck a good balance in all these ways.

However, syncaine didn't like Guild Wars. This could be because
a) He is an MMO hampster on the great MMO hamster wheel.
b) There are no elves/orcs etc. Many people find this subconsciously unacceptable.
c) Most likely: there was no persistent world to run around in. The towns are like lobbies to group up with people, and then everything is instanced.

I'd say like I usually do that Guild Wars 2 will save us all since it will have much more persistence, however, I found out recently there's talk of the level cap being 100, or *possibly limitless*, which is of course epic fail /facepalm.

Another cool system was found in Eve. In this game smaller (cheaper) ships are more agile, and so the very large ships can't hit them. This allows "noobs" with small ships to contribute in battles in ways that the people in larger (more "advanced") ships can not, allowing everyone to play together. The game definitely makes use of horizontal progression - a different ship is like a different respec. The only problem is of course the time-based skill grind. If they removed this and turned it into a fantasy game, I would be very happy.

However, this conflicts with the bottom line, which is of course making the most money out of the game. As long as we see developers ruled by this notion, our games are going to continue to suck.

The real Gwen?

ArenaNet recently held a Guild Wars Halloween art competition, which appeared to be very popular. I didn't actually enter it myself, as my somewhat sub-par design skills leave a lot to be desired, but I still enjoy checking out all the different entries. This year's winner went to a girl, who has done an extraordinary job at looking like the in-game character Gwen:


Here is a screen shot I took from the in-game Gwen:


The attention to detail is unbelievable.. right down to the flower clip in the hair! Very very cool. She also used a an awesome RP name for the entry: 'Aurora Astralis'. Damn.... I think I'm in love ;) I wonder if the outfit cost 150 cloth, 25 linen and 5 platinum? Glad she (and who ever helped) won it, as it was well deserved.

PvE > PvP?

Tobold certainly has a knack for producing topics that are likely to ellicit a lot of comments. I must adopt this feature in my blog.

In this entry (I paraphrase) Tobold tells us how WoW is king, WoW is PvE, therefore PvE is much more popular (4 times apparently) than PvP.

It's true that games that are predominantly PvE have more of the market share at the moment. But this doesn't mean that people prefer PvP to PvE. There are a lot of reasons for the relative successes of various titles, not the least of which is the amount of bugs on release. Age of Conan, for instance, had massive performance issues limiting its accessibility, and many ridiculous bugs (males > females, just in case you didn't know). We could just as easily look at the market today and conduct an equally insightful analysis that games that runs smooth are more popular than games that crash (gasp).

Additionally, a lot of the games that are labelled as PvP are nothing but massive grindfests and/or gankfests, such as Lineage or Eve.

It seems obvious that the PvP games are an evolutionary step or two behind PvE games in terms of being friendly to casual players, not sacrificing the enjoyment of many for the fun of a few, etc. As well as the fact that it's the less popular developers that have traditionally pushed the PvP genre, so that they don't have to compete directly with the market leaders.

And now, to switch things around a bit, I'd now like to defend something about PvE that Tobold stated:

"Perfect PvE means continuous advancement of your character in power, be that in level or gear. Perfect PvP requires characters being not too far from each other in power level, so that factors like skill and organization have a chance to influence the battle"

ERGH. Really? Perfect PvE *in an MMO* for me is zero advancement in power with instead the opening up of more versatile options to choose from. Reasons: Focus is put on tactics and teamwork, no grinding, no barriers preventing players from playing with each other, no barriers preventing players from experiencing content.

Single player games are a different story (I heart single player leveling), but the current MMO PvE sucks because it stops us from playing with each other.

Bringing quests back to the 1990 level

This was prompted by this article. Syp says that real quest text has become a thing of the past, and rightly so.

I loved quests in old school RPG's. Give me a quest in something like Baldur's Gate and I would leap to it. Freeing slaves, vanquishing a mean old ogre at the bottom of a dungeon, finding a crazy old wizard that last ingredient in his magic machine of doom, stealing a rare item from a guarded museum at night, slaying a mighty dragon, solving a murder... usually with some plot twist thrown in to keep you on your toes. These were the glory days of RPG's in the freaking 90's man.

So what do these old school quests have over the mindless click fests that are the modern day MMO quests?

1) Something changes in the game world - yes, we'd need a lot of tech for this to happen in an MMO, but I hope we're all still optimistic that someone can do it.
2) No floating icons or points marked on a compass - you *have* to read it if you want to know what to do (yes, this would increase the required maturity level somewhat to play the game... yes, this would be a good thing)
3) Quests take longer, which cuts down on the amount of quests the writers need to write, and allows them to contain more story than the usual kill ten rats.

I can think of only one way to have MMO quests continue in their current state and for people to actually know what the quest they're doing is about, and to follow the plot of the game in general:

Picture in picture!

Seriously, why can't I have a little talking head of the NPC when I get within range (no clicking) who gives me some initial babble. If I like the sound of it, I click accept, and then while I'm running on my way to kill those ten rats, since I'll likely be bored anyway, I can entertain myself by just listening to some voice acting for the quest. And, if the developers really want to go all out, they could show a little machinima that illustrates what the guy is talking about. Like, a little movie of the bandit leader making off with the princess, or whatever.

Doesn't waste any of my time, and makes the quest more interesting because I've got something to do during my travel time. Let me pause and rewind the dialogue, and of course view the text, and replay the mini cutscene whenever I want later (Tome of Knowledge should come with video playback right? It's a freaking magic book, if Harry Potter can do it...)

It's kind of a band-aid solution, and I'd prefer to see quests like they did back in the old days, but I'll take anything at this point!

Staying a step ahead

I'd like to propose a game design theorem here. I'm sure it's been stated in one form or another before, but I've really come to realise the truth of it over the last couple of weeks. The theorem is:

Players will try their hardest to make your game suck.

Or, alternately:

Players are like "fun" lemmings walking towards a cliff, and developers need to stop us from hurling ourselves into the abyss of failure.

Players don't WANT to play a shitty game. They don't WANT to ruin their own fun. But they will. Let's take the flavor of the month at the moment, ie WAR. As players, we:

1) Only start exploring all the avenues open to us once hitting the level cap
2) Play scenarios almost exclusively even though we drooled over keep sieges before release
3) Play the same god damn scenario all the time, because it gives us the most points
4) Refuse to learn how to actually win at the scenarios
5) When actually in open RvR, actively make plans to avoid the other team, attacking undefended objectives and keeps. This turns it into an easy PvE raid.
6) Use ridiculous magnet tricks to wtfpwn people with AoE.
7) Use any abilities through keep doors... why can my rune-etched axe connect with 4 guys on the battering ram when I'm behind a door? How can a magnet ability suck players through a solid object? For real.

We will do all this to ourselves and more given the chance. The only thing that can stop us from walking off that cliff is the developers. They need to predict the idiotic things that we will do, and they need to recognise the things that they failed to predict, and they need to fix them! Eg:

1) Make it faster to get to cap. People are bitching about not being able to play with each other. That's because we're all strung out in levels. People don't want to spend time "having fun" because they don't think it's the "real game" until they get to the end. Just let us all get there already so we can play together.
2) Make open RvR as accessible as scenarios. Yes, this means a really simple UI tool that pairs you up with other players that want to open RvR! Regardless of which character they're on, which region, or what they're currently doing.
3) Make it only possible to "Join All" when you enter the scenario queue, and fix your randomiser.
4) Before being allowed to queue for each scenario, make players run a single player once-off instance vs NPC bots that they can't beat unless they have a rudimentary understanding of the map.
5) Give bonuses for keep capture in particular areas in the lower tiers, to force players to run into each other more.
6) Nerf stupid magnet crap... limit the number of players who can be affected to, *maybe*, 3. Or just change the ability altogether, it's ridiculous.
7) Don't let abilities work through walls at all, it doesn't make any sense.

In summary Mythic, help us. We're stupid (but not as stupid as you if you don't help us).