A Weekend with the Star Trek: Online Beta.

“Open” beta started this week for the only other MMO that I’ve been following with more then half an eye.  I qualify “open” because unless you were lucky enough to get one of *very* few free beta keys, you had to preorder the game to get into it.  Not too many people are willing to spend $70.00 for a beta.  I did.

Of course it was *after* buying the game, and a multi-hour download,  that I got the first indication that what we were about to see was *not* a version of the game 2 weeks from being released.  For the open Beta a level cap is in place, certain areas are closed, only one (now 2) races were available, and you can only progress to your second ship.  From conversations I’ve had with closed Beta testers, there’s less in the game now then there was in the closed phase.

Be that as it may, its a decent enough game.  It’ll never be a WoW killer, or even a LOTRO wounder.  It’s not going to adversely affect the populations of other MMOs to any degree.  It’s playable, there seems to be a decent storyline, and when more races are added it will be considerably more diverse.

The Good:

I like the setting.  It’s set 30 years after the most recent Next Gen movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, and before Star Trek (2009) in the same timeline as the original series – which means that Vulcan and Romulus are both intact.  During my time in game I’ve met descendents of famous characters – Sulu’s grandson, Tom Paris’ daughter.  I’ve seen ships named for Kirk and McCoy.  Familiar locations abound.

Ship design is true to the canon, even though you’re allowed a great deal of space to customize the design of whatever class ship you own.  I’ve mixed and matched major components (primary hull, nacelles, struts, etc) from 3 designs to achieve a look that I like, that is slightly different then any of the 3 originals.  Same with uniforms – they stick to the Next Gen basic uniform, but customization abounds.  You can spend a great deal of time customizing the look of your character, ship, uniforms.

Space combat is much like any good Star Trek simulator.  It’s not *quite* 3 dimensional – you can’t do a complete loop with your ship – but aside from that there’s lots of space within which to maneuver.

Ground combat can get a bit hectic – every member of the boarding party seems to pick their own target.  I saw mention of a “Focus Fire” button, but I haven’t seen it yet…I checked the keymap and there is a space for something like “attack my target” but you have to manually send the command from chat with a convoluted /command…I assume there is a way to set it to a hotkey, but haven’t found it…and I think that would only tell one of the away team what to do…do I have to tell everyone?

The Less Then Good:

I chose that heading for one reason…I won’t say “the bad:” until post-launch.  Most of the issues I’m going to mention are growing pains and Beta problems.  Since I wasn’t in the closed beta, which saw more of the actual content,  I don’t know if these are issues with the beta that have been cured in later versions, but I have to mention them.

Server Capacity.  OMG.  Open Beta started on the 12th.  This was the first full weekend of open beta, and, as mentioned, most people attempting the beta had to actually buy they game on a preorder to get a key.  This is *not* your typical “cram as many people onto the server as possible and see what breaks” test.  But it sure feels like it.  I was in-game all day on Saturday but was seeing reports in the forums of people having assorted login issues, most which seemed to be capacity related, and sure enough, a later post by a GM relates that they are currently putting a “rush” on ordered hardware, and spending time to balance, tune, and raise population caps.

This is due to launch in 2 weeks.  You’re still playing with the server farms???  Thats ungood,  Later in the evening, the lag was a palpable thing – beam down to the planet, and arrive still in your Starship.  Arrive without the rest of your away team – sometimes they show up a few minutes later.  If you’re on a team you can “request reinforcements” and usually coax them into joining you.

And since I mentioned it.  Teams.  The STO method of encouraging group play?  Don’t ask.  Your “team” setting default to cause you to automatically join an open group – and the default is that any group is open.  Enter an instance that other players are in, and you’re in a group.  Other players enter *your* instance…and you’re in a group.  And leaving the group is no good – you just pick up the next guys that enter.  There are options setting to alter this behavior, but they’re rather non-intuitive, and it’s no easy feat.  While teaming holds some advantages, there are good reasons you might *not* want to be on one.  From my experience, everything in the game scales based on size and level of your team.  For instance, the “Point Counterpoint”  mission,  I was teamed with a friend.  In that mission, you’re beaming back to your ship from an orbiting lab, when you get to the ship your told that “Klingon ships are decloaking”  - right behind you.  With the 2 of us on the team, there was not one thing we could do against those ships – even hitting full impulse the moment we beamed up couldn’t get us clear of the concentrated fire of 3 birds of prey, 2 raptor escorts, and a big dreadnaught.  We actually recruited 3 more people to try to get past this, and got blown out of space without a shot fired (on our part) more then a few times.  Later in the day, after I noticed the scaling, I went back to the same mission – I hadn’t increased in level – and soloed it. *ONE* ship was all that was lying in ambush.  Completing that mission was almost too easy at that point.

And finally… Micro-transactions.  Reading some of the pre-order bonus material, I thought “This game is ripe for selling this stuff in game.”  Preorder bonuses include things like the Star Trek:TOS era uniforms.  2 different emotes.  And sure enough, right under the radar mini-map: “STO Store.”  Nothing in it, at the moment, but it’ll be there.

So far, I’d give it a 6/10.  That’ll go up if the shortcomings that I assume are simply beta glitches are gone on launch day.

RIP Dave Arneson

Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax's co-creator of Dungeon's & Dragons, passed away last night, at age 61, just a shade more then a year after the passing of Gary.

Official report here.

The Dumbing Down of MMO’s

      I’ve been an MMO player since 1998.  Before that I wrote code for a popular “MUD.”  In my first MMO, there were no “classes” of character, no defined advancement paths.  Even learning new magic was a matter of trial and error – spells required components, and those components consisted of certain special items, plants, and a spoken syllable.  The material components, and the order in which they appeared in the spell research tool determined the sound your character would speak.  So if you knew what elements produced a syllable, you could reverse engineer to discover the spell.  But the point was, everyone had to research and learn their spells.  You didn’t buy them from a vendor, or have a trainer add them to your skill list.  You worked for them.  Conversely, if you were an archer, you spent time making arrows and/or learning how to augment those arrows with fire, frost, poison, etc.  Sword jocks were exactly that.  “Me too dumb for words, hit things…”

     During my time there, this wonderful work of art, this magic system was “simplified.”  Spell research was done away with in favour of purchasing spell scrolls from vendors.  3 to 7 mouse clicks per arrow, and their resultant skill checks (including a chance of levelling that skill) was reduced to 1 or 2 clicks per bundle of 250.  All this was “to make the game more accessible…”

     World of Warcraft was perpetrated.  It borrowed heavily from some earlier games, most notably the failed Asheron’s Call 2, and the perennial Everquest – thinks like shining markers over quest NPC’s heads, and a compass to point you directly to the goal of your currently selected quest.  It was dead easy to level mindlessly to the cap without ever bothering to read quest instructions.  But because of it’s pre-existing fan base – all the Blizzard Kiddies from Battlenet – it outsold everything before it by an insane factor, and became the model for success in the MMO industry.

     It is *not* a good game.  There’s very little challenge, there’s no reason to continue to play past the level cap, it’s brainless, easy-mode gaming.  However it *is* “more accessible.”

      While I understand the reasoning behind things like a level cap – you can’t work yourself up to a point where all existing content becomes trivial – I can’t fathom *why* you would build a game that allows the player to hit that cap in less then a year, let alone the month or so that seems to be the preferred number of today’s game designers.  I personally thought that the goal of an MMO was long-term playability, player retention, and earnings-over-time.  New players become long term players when they have a goal to reach.  If they can reach that goal in a month, they turn into the people that cruise the forums everyday whining that there’s no content, no end game, nothing to do past cap, new content doesn’t arrive often or quickly enough, etc.

     My current game of choice is Lord of the Rings Online, for a couple of reasons – of course the first is that I’m a huge fan of the source literature.  Its not necessary to play the game, but if you are already a fan you’ll find yourself saying things like, “Go to Bree?  Hey!  I know how to get there from here…!” before you’ve even explored that far.  The second reason is that I’m also a huge fan of the company making the game, Turbine Games.  I’ve spent a lot of time in their games, and in some cases behind the scenes in their games, beta testing, testing patches, even writing some portions of strat guides, manuals, and magazine articles about them. 

     Like most current MMO’s LOTRO is not a difficult game.  There are no complex systems like the magic or crafting systems I’ve discussed above.  But there are a few features that require the use of some of the grey matter gathering dust in your skull.  One of these is questing.  There is no little arrow on the compass to show you the way to your next quest goal.  The game is based on a rich literary world, described in intricate detail by the author.  And the game continues that tradition – to quest successfully one must actually read, and act on, the text given you by the quest bestower.  If an npc tells you to head to a red tree due west of Celondim, your best bet to find said tree is to go to Celondim, and travel due west from the center of town, while looking for a red tree.  It’ll be there.  Honest.  If you *really* can’t find it  you can ask on the /advice channel.  “Hey!  I can’t find the red tree due west of Celondim.  Any hints?”

     “Yes!  Head due west from Celondim.  You’ll eventually find a red tree…”

     Okay, bad example, but honestly, what else would you expect, asking a silly question like that?  Usually the second or third respondent will tell you something more useful.

     The release notes for the next update of LOTRO are out, and low and behold … the answer to the question above is now, “go into Options and turn on Quest Guide…” and you’ll get a little arrow that points the way.

     The dumbing down continues.  Sad that even Turbine, the company that designed the wonderful magical research system in that game in 1998, feels the need to design games for play by the lowest common denominator. 

Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria. Pt 2

MoM Combat Changes.

By now everyone has heard *something* about the changes that MoM introduces to the combat system. Changes to resistances, changes to stats, changes to Block/Parry/Evade(BPE)scores, and changes in the exact function of armour.

I can hear it already. The screams of "nerf" resounding around the forums by the uneducated, who will take one look at their stats and start posting frantic rants in the LOTRO forums.

Once the hysteria settles and people actually try playing the changes, they'll discover something interesting. Nothing really changed. :-)

When you first look at your stats, you'll see that we now have a rating based system. This is a good thing - more later. You'll also see that when you mouse over the stat, it still reports your percentage value...and that those are about half of what they were pre-Moria. THIS IS NOT A NERF. Let me repeat myself - not a nerf.

Why not?

While it appears that your percentage score are now half of what they were, really what's happened is that what *was* 100% has been raised. 100% of a stat in Moria is equal to 200% of a skill in Shadows of Angmar. It makes more sense if you think in terms of the new rating score system. Assume that in SoA, the highest rating in Agility, Morale, etc. that you could achieve was, say, 500. That number applies to everything in the game, mobs, characters, etc. A rating of 500 was the same as a stat level of 100%.

Note that the ratings numbers I'm using aren't the Moria numbers, just numbers I pulled out of a hat. For purposes of illustration.

Now comes Moria. Obviously, the devs want to make tougher mobs, better items, higher bonuses, etc. They have to use numbers greater then 100% - or ratings like 550, 600, 1000, etc. So, say they made the new highest score for a stat equivalent to a rating of 1000. That gives them 500 more points to award to players as bonuses, level improvements, and the like. A Moria stat score of 1000 is equivalent to 200% of what you could score in SoA. Look at it from the other direction and you'll see that your SoA stat of 25% crit, in Moria terms, is 12.5% They haven't reduced your crit chance against mobs your level - because those mobs resistances have *also* been converted to the new system. They now appear to be half of what they were.

Why change to rating numbers rather then percentages? Because they'd have to go through this same adjustment and screams of nerf every time they put out an expansion. With a rating system, using numbers the size of those they've chosen, means longevity - they can probably go a couple expansions before they even need to think about raising the maximum rating. BPE scores are capped - but those caps can be altered when they change level caps, or as quest rewards, as expansion features, etc. They're not permanently fixed ... just capped.

Just for interest sake ... Another Screenshot. :-)

Here's a better analogy - SoA is a 1 gallon bucket. You have 1 quart of agility. Or 25% of a bucketfull.
Moria is a 2 gallon bucket. You *still* have 1 quart of agility. But now it's 12.5% of a bucketfull.
Mobs in SoA have 1 gallon of armour, resists, buffs, BPE. Or 1 bucketfull.
Those same mobs, in MoM, have 1 gallon of resists, etc...or 50% of a bucket.

There's no functional difference.

So to wrap up, as the cover of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy states: Don't Panic.

Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria. Pt. 1

Ten days and counting.

In 10 days, Mines of Moria, the first expansion pack for Lord of the Rings Online, by Turbine Inc. goes live. I've had the great good fortune to have a pretty solid relationship with Turbine through the years since Asheron's Call was only just starting a beta cycle, and it continues into the Alpha test stage for MoM. I was actually surprised to receive an invitation to the alpha - I've got pretty good contacts around the MMORPG world, and even I didn't know that testing had already started. It was quite a bit sooner then I'd expected. After a truly massive download, I understood why. The expansion is *huge.* I can't even hazard a guess as to how many weeks of development time had already gone into it. There'd been a lot of prattle in the LOTRO forums, mostly by the under-educated, preaching doom and gloom about how free content patches were going to suffer after the announcement of the expansion. I can safely say that the expansion work was started well before the last scheduled free update. It was one of the most polished alpha's I've ever seen, possibly even surpassing that of LOTRO:SoA.

The Mines of Moria Expansion is at least equal in size to the current game when it launched. But that description really doesn't do justice to the fact that this is Moria, in all it's glory - dark, deep, and gloomy. When you look at the flat map of the mines that has been circulated by the gaming mags, you don't relize that it represents depth as well and breadth. Moria has some of the most breathtaking views in the entire game - getting to somewhere like Dolven-View and look down at the orc camp below gives you some hint of the sheer scale of the mines.

Can you see the player character in the picture? Here's a hint, he's glowing...

That alone gives you some hint of how far down I'm looking. :-)

Aside from adding a lot more space to the games playing field, this expansion has allowed the deveolpers to revive at least one feature that was mentioned very early on in the LOTRO development cycle, but which was subsequently cut. Since it was a feature that I was really looking forward to, I'm glad to see it's introduction now. That feature? Item Advancement. In its current form Item Advancement is almost a collage of some of the features that had been planned for LOTRO's initial launch - namely, Item Advancement, a Legacy system of inheritance of properties, socketted weapons, and upgrades to the crafting system.

I'll start off my Item Advancement segment by talking about the one aspect of it that dissappointed me: There are no low level IA items. I think there should have been. Extemely rare, and not of the calibre of later Items, but it should have been available. It's supported in Lore - Sting, for instance, when Bilbo found it, would have been such a low level IA weapon, that eventually, through 2 owners, managed to drive off Shelob.

However, the Powers That Be decided to start them at level 50, and so be it. Your first IA items will start at Item level 1, and they will *very* rapidly progress to 10 and beyond. I'm not going to delve too much into the mechanics of IA items, more into the "Lore" background of them. You'll find that there is a new control panel for your IA weapons. This allows you to track the status of up to 6 IA items - the most you're allowed to own at once. With this panel you can see the "Legacies" of the weapon - Legacies are the "traits" of the weapon. They can be increased by spending item points on them. Legacies include things like DPS, skill bonuses, and special attacks. Reforging a weapon as required every 10 levels can reveal new Legacies. These represent forged in special characteristics of the weapon, so they can't be changed or removed, other then the fact that you can increase their effects through spending item points.

Besides Legacies, each IA weapon has 3 Relic slots, 1 each for Settings, Gems and Runes. Relics can be socketted into an item anytime, and unsocketted any time the item is reforged. If you want to replace a Relic between reforges, you can, but the existing Relic in that slot is destroyed. Relics add things like skill bonus modifiers to your item.

You aquire new relics in basically 2 ways - by deconstructing IA items that you have no use for, or by relic forging - combining 5 relics to produce a number of new relics of a higher tier. There are 8 tiers of relics. This is where inheritance of properties comes in - you deconstruct one legendary weapon, remove it's relics, and the traits represented by those relics can be used on a new IA weapon.

With the upgrades to the crafting system, it will also be possible for crafters to create IA weapons, once they satisfy certain prerequisites in their craft. These are IA items just like those found hunting, they follow the same rules.

This whole system is incredibly complex. Turbine has created instances specifically geared towards supporting IA, they've upgraded crafting to support it. They've created quests that will allow your IA item to gain titles, and creature killing bonuses, as well and different damage types. All in addition to the main Moria storyline. The number of combinations of Legacies, and Relics is staggering - it should be more then simple to customize an item that will be unique from every other of its type. An item that is, truly, your own.

8 days and counting ...