Oh great… no pressure now!

I was just catching up on all of the blogs I follow and have been ignoring for the past week or so.  Imagine my surprise when I visit BioBreak and Syp’s most recent post was the results of the Newbie Initiative Poll… and somehow I managed to win!

I really didn’t think I had a chance at all and I’m extremely grateful to all those who voted for this blog and I guess more people get my brand of humor than I thought!  To all of the other nominated blogs… you got robbed…. plain and simple.  Of course I checked out the other nominees and I had it narrowed down to two of your in my mind… and I was a distant 7th place as far as I was concerned.

I feel slightly bad for my wife.  When she heard me yell from the other room, she came to see what was going on.  I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to show her any of my posts (actually, she stumbled upon it due to one of my Twitter posts… oops).  I think she only read a few posts and she of course said that they were very good (of course, I ignore any compliments of that nature from her… she is contractually obligated to inflate my ego when necessary).  I did catch a quick look on her face that I can only translate as “Great… now he really thinks he’s funny… now I’ll never get him to shut up!”  All true, I’m afraid.

In summary, thank you all, and thanks again Sir Syp!  Hopefully I’ll be able to keep amusing a few of you… although this has been the hardest post I’ve ever written… normally, I don’t really edit myself so much… more words pooped on a page.  Now I’m having to re-read and re-write to make sure I can live up to the Humerous title… no pressure, really.

Why I don’t play Foundry missions nearly enough

So for those of you who have no idea what the Foundry is, here is a quick primer.  Star Trek Online has a toolset to let you create your own missions.  Want to fight an oncoming wave of borg?  Bam, create it.  Want to recreate an epic space battle from DS9?  Bam, create it.  Want to import a bunch of X-Wings and Imperial Star Destroyers and have an epic glorious battle to find out which franchise would actually win in a space battle?  Bam, yeah… no way in hell.  

There are tons of really cool things that people have created in the Foundry.  Myself, I’ve dabbled a bit here and there but never really spent enough time to figure out what is going on.  I love reading fan fiction and the Foundry should be a no-brainer for me to love and enjoy, right?  Yeah, not so much.

So why don’t I play them do you ask?  It’s simple.  I’m a spoiler little prick.  Every time I sit down and start playing a Foundry mission I ask myself the question “What’s in it for me?”  And the answer is… just about nothing.  There’s a wrapper mission out there that lets you play 3 Foundry missions for a small reward.  I understand that they can’t make the rewards better for the wrapper mission due to all of the people who made “console clicker” missions that only take five seconds to complete.

I don’t have a ton of gaming time.  When I do sit down to game, I want to make some progress.  Whether that be leveling a character, getting a few quests done towards some goal, or running an instance with a group.  If I spend an hour running a Foundry mission, while I may get a fantastic story (notice I said “may”) I also might just waste a precious hour of my gaming time on a meh mission with next to no rewards.

I’m not going to pretend like I have some glorious plan to fix it either.  That’s why Cryptic is the developer and I’m just the stupid gamer that they keep trying to nickle and dime to death.  Oops.. there’s that Lock Box irritating I’ve been missing for a couple weeks.  

Yeah, still a little cranky about the old boxes that lock.  Still haven’t bought any keys for ANY of the lockboxes and I have a lifetime sub so I could even spend my “free” C-Store point on them if I wanted to.  Would I like to fly around in the Ferengi ship?  Oh hell yeah!  But I’m not going to monetarily support the lock box ripoff just to get the new shiny.  If only more people wouldn’t whine about the lock boxes at the same time they are swiping their credit cards… Cryptic or more likely Perfect World would have gotten the message and stuck with selling us things on the C-Store directly.

Anyways, to sub it all up:  I wish there was a way to get rewarded for the time I want to spend in the Foundry… and lock boxes are the devil!

 

Thanks to the Sypster

It has been a busy busy weekend for me.  I was blessed to be invited to be part of the wedding party for one of my oldest friends.  Let me rephrase that…  he’s not an old guy or anything like that.  We have managed to be friends for roughly 28 years and we are both 32.  So he’s put up with my shennanigans for a very long time.  So I came home and decided to catch up on my Google Reader feed… until I realized that I have added a bunch of NBI blogs over the past month and ya’ll went post crazy so I quickly scrapped that idea.

So sitting here, slightlyish hung over and very tired from the long day yesterday I toyed with the idea of posting an article and quickly scraped that idea as well… that is until I saw a comment elsewhere that made me realize that Mr Syp (hehe) had nominated this blog as most humerous blog as part of his NBI Awards!

Holy crap that’s cool.  Now I know my readership isn’t super high yet, especially since I took a slackhiatus from posting for a week in the middle of NBI so I have no illusions about actually winning.  And to be quite honest, I think that all of the other nominated blogs are far more amusing than my own.  I was just honored to be nominated and very grateful for the nod at all.

I wanted to thank Syp publicly for all he has done (well, as publicly as my little blog is at the moment).  I was first exposed to Syp when he was a guest on Casual Stroll to Mordor and continued to listen to him when he joined forces with Dodge to make the Too Long Didn’t Listen Podcast.  They are both some of the most entertaining podcasters that I regularly listen to and if you haven’t listened to the podcast, I HIGHLY recommend you give it a listen.

When Syp posted the original NBI recruitment post, I thought it would be fun, but I also wasn’t sure if  I wanted to put myself out there.  I have wanted to start a blog on several occasions, mostly to help hone my writing skills.  I’m a bit of a loner when it comes to MMO’s and while I might visit sites on a regular basis I rarely comment or make my presence known.  I have been trying to break myself of this even before I started blogging but I thought that starting a blog might be the way to force me outside of my protective bubble just a little bit.

If Syp hadn’t spearheaded this Initiative I don’t think I would have ever started on my own.  Having established blogs and other fellow bloggers to spread traffic around has been a fantastic thing.  The first few posts were so difficult to get out since I would look at my stats and see readers in the single digits.  But once the ball got rolling, I would post and hit double digits within minutes.  It is a great feeling and I’m hoping that I am able to stick with it.  Regardless of whether I manage to hang or not, I think that there are many more fabulous blogs now going and the little community we have started growing is amazing.  I can’t wait to see what else everyone posts and am looking forward to getting to know some of you better.

Once again Syp, Thank you very much for leading the charge and helping to organize this Initiative.  It has been a wonderful thing for myself and the entire gaming blogger community.

My FrankenMMO

Wow… the idea seemed so easy when I first thought about it but it quickly went all over the place. I guess this MMO creating business isn’t quite as easy as I thought!  Ok, so here’s what I have been able to throw together so far.

Setting: I would probably have my FrankenMMO be in a Scifi Western setting similar to Firefly. Yeah I know, I’m cheating since there’s no Firefly MMO (yet, or maybe ever) but this is my idea so I can break rules as I see fit. I would love to take the basic story of Rift and adapt it to Scifi. Some giant planet of ancient evil attacks and conquers your world. After mining your planet to the point were massive earthquakes are literally tearing your planet apart, they leave to find another planet to ravage. Just before the world ends, you get sent back 5 years in the past before the evil Unicronians attacked (name subject to change).

Your mission will be to use the time you have to make allies, discover technology, build ships, etc to defend your world before the attack comes.

Races: I’ve never been a big fan of racial abilities in games. I want to play a race because of their background or the way they look, not because using them as a tank will give me an extra 1% chance to block or some other minor stat. While this is a very minor boost, many people assume that if you do not play the “optimal” character with the “optimal” spec that you suck. So to combat that, all races would be equal. Except for elves… they would start with -5 to all stats. I would have to include the Charr from GW2 since they look so different than what I’ve seen elsewhere. And I would also create an undead race that would actually be an undead version of each of the available races for variety (similar to what WoW almost did very early in development).

Space Combat: The space combat would be like Star Trek Onlines, but would allow for more of a Z-Axis for Death from Above type maneuvers. Ship Loadout would be closer to an Eve Online setup though. I have always felt like STO’s ship loadout felt very high level and some of the equipment types are difficult to sort through (I’m looking at you deflector dishes!) Weapons throughout the ship could be configured like turrets or minions to follow orders you set. Fire at will would allow them to target anything around no matter what.

Cloaking devices? Yes please. And while cloaking would break target locks, manually firing weapons would still hit a cloaked ship and do massive damage.

Ground Combat: Semi First Person shooter similar to Star Trek Online but with the Dynamic Event system that GW2 is using. Many planets in the galaxy to explore with a different story on each planet. Explore planets, asteroids, space stations, etc. Maybe even some mech combat for fun. Combat would be vertical up to a point. One of the most fun I’ve had in any MMO was playing a guy that had a power that did a little damage and knocked people back with a gust of wind. I would run up and punch some baddie in the face and then run or super jump up to the top of a building. When the baddie and his friends got up there, I’d blast them with my wind blast and knock them off the building… and they’d take severe damage from the fall. MUST INCLUDE THIS!

Systems to “borrow: Skirmish system from Lord of the Rings Online – fun instanced missions and instead of building of a skirmish soldier, you would be building up your fleet of allies.

Companion system from Star War: The Old Republic could mix in to the skirmish system as well to allow the same companions and their ships to accompany you on other missions. Missions would scale depending on the number of allies you bring.

Lottery System: From Lotro and Dungeons and Dragons online, consider it stolen.

Duty Officer System from STO: However, I would include an app for Android, IPhone, and maybe even a plain webpage interface for accessing parts of the game from work! 🙂

Housing similar to Everquest 2’s housing.  I have found it to be the most flexible and well rounded housing system I have seen so far.

Legendary Weapons: Sort of like Lotro… but far less grindy.

Crafting: Crafting is difficult because I’ve rarely seen it done well. Normally by the time you can actually afford to craft something, you are 5-10 levels past it. May instead of swapping gear, all gear will be roughly equal and just look cosmetically different (similar to Guild Wars) but then you craft or obtain gems to add +52 to pointy ear hatred.

Foundry: Player created missions… yes please. Would develop a way to reward people for playing missions better than currently available in STO. I want to play more Foundry missions but it’s hard to take the time when there is no gains for time spent short of a cool story.

Challenge: Frankenstein your own MMO

So I had an interesting idea that I’ve been thinking about for all of 5 minutes now:

If you could take piece parts from different MMO’s and smash them all together to form one giant Voltron of an MMO…

What would the setting be?  Fantasy? Scifi?  Both?

What would you do?

What classes would you have?

What races would you have?  Borgified-My-Little-Ponies?

What systems would you “borrow” and how would you change them?

How long until you would completely gut the combat and give the players the New Game Experience they really want? Too soon?

Nerd Time Update

The past few weeks have been rather busy between work and the always fun projects around the house. The little bit of time I’ve had has been split between Diablo 3, Mass Effect 2, and Guild Wars the first.

Diablo 3

I’ve had a ton of fun so far. I got several characters to Act 2 and finally finished Normal difficulty on my Barbarian. Supposed to play Nightmare with a friend but scheduling has been hard to do so far. So much fun to leap in to the middle of a pile of enemies and just cleave them all to death.

Originally I was saving gear for other characters so most of them were in blues which felt fairly powerful. Then I discovered how cheap some of the yellow Rares are on the Auction House. I think I spent something like 12k on my Barbarian and suddenly he was covered in yellows and his Damage went from 53.4 to 118.2 at level 20. Needless to say, I started mowing through the game at that point. Almost felt like cheating… but it was SO much fun.

Mass Effect 2

Yes, I said 2… not 3. Recently there was a “sale” on Bioware points or whatever they call them. It wasn’t an official sale, but several people mentioned that if you bought points it would allow you to buy the highest point bundle for the price of the 2nd highest bundle. Seeing how these NEVER go on sale for PC, this was the best time to stock up on stupid points. I’m a big fan of the Mass Effect series and had recently picked up ME3 on sale (of course).

I decided that I wanted to grab all of the ME2 DLC and play through the story so I could prepare myself for ME3. I’m kind of hoping that I can time my play through of ME3 so that they’ll have the “new” ending DLC out by then. I’ve avoided spoilers or reading a whole lot of anything ME3 related, but I know there’s some outcry over the abrupt ending. Beats me, but I guess I’ll find out soon.

I really haven’t spent a ton of time with this game really. I’ll play a little bit here and there to get a chunk of DLC out of the way, but then I won’t play again for a few days.

Dungeons and Dragons

Yeah… I’m that guy. I’m part of a static group along with some really fun guys. I just haven’t managed to show up in several weeks and my character is lacking a level or two. 0 play time in this game and I need to set aside Guild Wars a bit just to catch up.

Guild Wars (the first, not the new shiny 2)

I am actually killing myself with this game. I actually enjoy my Diablo 3/Mass Effect playtime more than Guild Wars by far. However, I really want to get 30/50 in my Hall of Monuments. I also recently found out that they are planning on putting a system in so that the items given from your Hall of Monuments will be transmuted for free! Maybe I missed that before but I think it is an awesome thing for them to do for their fans.

Currently I’m at 13/50 but I’m getting there. I have finished all of the campaigns as well as Eye of the North. I’ve managed to save a fair bit of money, and I plan on trying to farm most of the things I need myself. Should be interesting to see if I can finish 30/50 prior to the release of Guild Wars 2. I know that they aren’t planning on limiting people from getting further HoM unlocks after GW2 comes out… but I think I’ll be a little too busy with GW2 to go back and care.

Time to play me some lottery!

I love winning things. Who doesn’t? If you go to either DDO or LOTRO’s websites, there are lottery widgets that you can use to enter frequent lotteries and win things. Simple as that. Some of the things you win are items that are only available in the store and other items that are obtainable and useful in game.

I haven’t logged in to actually play LOTRO in probably about a month. I just haven’t been motivated to slog through Moria on my Captain anymore, especially since I heard about the planned revamp coming with Update 7. Now notice I said that I haven’t logged in to actually play in about a month. I’ve still logged in at least once a week to collect and lottery winnings on my characters. So for effectively nothing, Turbine has “convinced” me to log in to two games at least once a week.

So not I have started wondering why more companies don’t pillage this idea and use it themselves. Sure it might cost a little bit to develop, but for the F2P market, getting people to login is half the battle. Once they have logged in, there’s a good chance that they might play “just one mission” or start talking to a friend in their guild.

So what about it Cryptic? How about making that system in STO and calling it “Replicator Accidents” and have the replicator make some oddball console or even a Lobi crystal or a Lockbox key. Fan goodwill, check. Pretty darn cheap to make, check. Encourage people to login which is the biggest goal in a F2P game, check.

Just don’t put Lockboxes in the Lotteries… I have plenty already, thanks.

<Insert Diablo 3 Rant Here>

Ok, it’s time for a mini-rant.  And this isn’t going to be about the fact that the servers don’t work and I can barely play without getting kicked off.  

This is about the lack of built-in voice chat.  They’ve had it “working”  in WoW for years now.  It may not be the best voice chat around but it is much more convenient than Skype, Ventrillo or Mumble, especially when playing in a public game.  I don’t want Mr. AzzHat-L33T-McGee to have my Skype info and I don’t currently have a rented Vent or Mumble server of my own to use.  Text chat is a pain and I’l rather keep my hand on my mouse to avoid avoiding carpal tunnel!  

So let me get this straight Blizzard, You want me to deal with always-on DRM that causes me to have to replay entire levels again because you didn’t know Diable 3 was going to be this big… and you can’t even do us a solid by including voice chat?

/Gets off soapbox and returns to D3

 

 

To Beta or not to Beta?

One of the interesting things about blogging is that you start to examine your own habits looking for something that might make a semi-entertaining article.  One of the really odd things that I find myself doing is getting super excited about a new game.  This is frothing at the mouth, insane email account checking, reading every scrap of info I can about the newest bestest thing ever….

Then I finally get the email… I’m in beta.   WOOHOO!  Best day EVER!  I rush home from work, impatiently download the client and maybe wait a few days if it’s one of the ever more popular weekend only events.  I’ll jump in and play a little bit to see if I like it.  Once I play enough to realize that  will in fact be playing this game, I then play a bunch of different classes for a few levels to see which I like the best.

All sounds pretty normal I bet.  I would assume that most of you are right there with me so far.  But then I do what is possibly the oddest thing of all… I stop playing beta.

Wait?  You do what?!?!!  Why would you stop playing something you are SOOOO excited for?  Two Reasons.

1. I don’t want to ruin the story or get burned out on the game at all.  I want it to be exciting when it is actually released.

2. I don’t want to waste my time on characters and progress that is just going to get wiped at the end of beta.

I always like to feel like I’m making progress.  Play a game for an hour, little higher level or little closer to whatever goal I’ve set for myself.  Progress that is just going to get flushed down the NDA toilet to Mordor?  No thanks.  I’ve decided to buy your little game now and will be back when I can actually make some progress.

The only exception to this rule I really have ever made is with Star Trek Online.  When they were transitioning to F2P they made it available on their Tribble test server for anyone who had a subscription to play.  I really wanted it to succeed so I jumped on to test for bugs.  They also had several rewards that they gave people for testing.  I don’t remember all of the exact level bands, but they gave several GOOD rewards for leveling up and beating on the content.

So the real question that game developers should be asking themselves if they really want people to test their games is “What can we give the players?”  I little “I Beta Tested The Heck Outta Those Pandas” title just isn’t going to cut it.  My time is precious… give me something cool.  Maybe it’s only a cosmetic.  Maybe it’s a little xp boost to get past the lower levels I’ve just tested 15 times.  Maybe it’s one of the devs coming to my house to clean my bathroom in a wookie suit.

(unless they are female, then I’m thinking the Harley Quinn costume from the Batman video games… all open for discussion).

So what would make you more likely to sink some serious time into a Beta?

Why I Refuse to Subscribe

I used to play WoW… there… I’ve admitted it.  I enjoyed playing and would play for hours on end whenever I had time.  I had a group of Real Life friends who would get together and beat our heads against the old Burning Crusade Elite dungeons which were HARD.  Then Wraith of the Licking King came out and skill went out the window.  No more “sheep that, stun that, kill this guy first” plans.  Every fight turned into “I’m going to run into the middle of everything… and everyone nuke it all down!”  Some nights I would almost fall asleep hitting 2…..2…..2…..3…..1…..2…..2…..<snore>

The big problem I had is that since I was paying 15 bucks a month to play this game I felt obligated to play it whenever I had time.  The problem is that I have a lot of games that pull me in different directions.  If I start playing Super Dragon Effect 3: Special Skyrim Edition and ignore playing a subscription game for a few weeks, the guilt of paying will eventually force me to play it again.

Fast forward a few years and suddenly a few less popular games go Free 2 Play.  I think the first F2P game that really sucked me in was Lord of the Rings Online.  I had played it years before and couldn’t justify the monthly subscription cost.  But not I could drop a little cash, buy the content I wanted and never lose it.  Over the course of a few months, I managed to buy ALL of the content for somewhere around what I would have paid for 3 months of subscriptions!  SCORE!  Now I can stop playing for a few months and know that whenever I feel the bug again, I can go play it and everything will be just as I left it, including all the quest packs I just bought for a hefty percentage off!

I love sales… as a matter of fact, games should have MORE sales.  All of the content in LOTRO, on sale.  Bought points in STO, on sale.  Almost every single stupid 300-some-odd game I own on Steam… on sale.  Just a couple of weeks ago I was gushing (<sigh> yes, I gush once in awhile) to my wife about buying something or other on Steam for $5 that would have cost $50 just a few months ago.  In mid sentence I saw the look… THAT look… the EXACT same one I give her when she’s talking about the new pair of shoes she found that were only a few bucks.  I guess we all have our bad habits.

I don’t mind paying for things in game.  I recently bought some points in Star Trek Online even though I have a Lifetime Membership and get 400 points per month already.  I like the game and want to support it financially when I can.  However, I also tried the trial of Star Wars: The Old Republic.  If that was a F2P game, I would play it.  I certainly know the IP and it seems like a great Single Player MMO.  That being said, I refuse to pay $40 for the box (cheapest I’ve seen it at) and then continue paying 15 smackers per month to play it.

Now on the other side of the coin, I am not afraid to purchase a game and spend money.  I recently bought both Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2.  While Diablo isn’t technically an MMO, it’s close enough in my book.  Both games have upfront costs, but then you aren’t required to pay anything else.  I love it.  Are there other F2P games that I’ve downloaded and only played for a few minutes and deleted because it wasn’t what I was looking for?  Sure.  There are others that I have downloaded and paid a few bucks here or there for stuff while playing but never stuck around long term.  The big difference is that I wouldn’t have played ANY of the F2P download only games if they weren’t F2P but they at least got me to look and a few of them got some cash from me.

At this point in my life, I don’t see myself ever paying a monthly subscription again.  Maybe that will change.  Maybe it won’t.  For now, I’m quite content playing the mess of F2P or BuytheBoxandPlay4Free games like Diablo 3/Guild Wars 2.