Turbine selling non-cosmetic armor in their store rekindles the gear controversy.

I’d been thinking about this from the game design perspective recently, and I wrote this response to a recent post in the LOTRO forums where Ronigard asks, “Is LOTRO about gear?”:

The question is perhaps too vague; LOTRO is “about” different things to different people. So let me rephrase the question: Is character differentiation and optimization in LOTRO about gear? The answer there is yes.

Beyond selecting class and race, the player has no control of character development at the skills level. Every rune-keeper by end-game has the same set of skills as does every guardian, champion, hunter, etc. The same is true with base attributes. Every paid subscriber also has the same number of trait slots. There is no character differentiation from leveling up, nor are there any irrevocable decisions like allocating a limited pool of skill points or choosing an advanced class.

By end-game, your character’s base primary attribute will be around 100. The gear elitists say that a primary attribute needs to be over 1000 for raiding–that’s ten times more than the intrinsic value from the character. It requires a combination of gear and traits to do that. Improving skills–their duration, effect, power costs–comes from class traits and is what differentiates my rune-keeper from another; i.e., I can drop a stone at any attunement because I have two healing traits equipped, but my friend can’t because he’s totally fire-traited. To build a competitive, optimized, and (functionally) unique character is an exercise in gear and traits.

And traits really are gear. Everybody can get every trait, and through deeds and the store max them out. You can swap them out at any time using a Bard. That’s gear-like behavior, not class-like behavior.

Why is gear less important for solo content? Solo content in LOTRO is relatively easy by design, and there’s so much of it that very few players are dealing with on-level (white) or higher-level mobs. Having old gear and low traits isn’t a big deal because of that relative ease and the significant effects of the level differential between character and mob.

Why is gear more important for group content? Group content (skirmishes, instances, raids) is designed to be harder, has ways to make it even harder (i.e., tiers), and tends to be run closer to level. The increased difficulty requires better gear overall, but it also requires players to be more effective, so customizing gear to your particular role within the group, tactics, and playstyle becomes more important too.

I would guess that Turbine’s design goal here was to eliminate the need for respeccing characters. Everything that differentiates your character from another of the same class is equippable. Skill-based games I’ve played like Star Trek Online have to provide ways to rebuild an existing character because of mistakes made during level-up or to allow players access to new playstyles without grinding through a whole new character–and potentially choosing to play a new game instead of that grind. MMOs seem very reluctant to lock players into decisions they make beyond initial character generation, 800-pound gorilla excepted.

So I think it’s not only that LOTRO is “about” gear (and traits), but that it’s a very specific design goal by Turbine to make sure players have immediate and flexible choices about what makes their characters functionally unique.

• The much-debated Instance Finder goes live with update five, and daily skirmishes go away. Will the 50% bonus rewards lure players enough to spin the wheel and run random instances? Along with Instance Finder comes a much-needed simplification of game currencies.
• Plugin manager: No more mistyping and saying “;load” to confused bystanders!  It’s laying the groundwork for better integration with things like support for plug-in defined options panels. Hopefully the next (sooner) update will help address the basic problems of discovery and updating that prevent me from using more plug-ins.
• Another quality-of-life improvement is “Track Nearby Quests”. It was a little hard to find the feature on Bullroarer, and it had some issues if your tracker already included deeds, but it worked enough to cut down on some of the headless-chicken running around that a full quest log entails.
• Reputation gets the streamline treatment that Turbine’s been big on lately. It looks good on paper, but it wasn’t on my to-do list for Bullroarer testing.
• Cooks can now craft coffee, although it’s Tier 7 and not likely to grace my inventory anytime soon. How can I get to level cap if I can only make coffee at level cap???
• The much-changed Champion and Minstrel classes get the most attention, and it’s hard to say if the Warden updates will address the community’s problems since RoI. Rune-keepers are not mentioned at all. Hmm.

I asked amidst the roar of trolls if they could clarify when it will happen and how it will affect existing characters before launch since some posts indicate they aren’t sure yet. I might want to start with an alt if those options won’t be available to characters or companions created before they add SGRAs. In a game where choices have consequences, I definitely need to curb my natural inclination to reroll characters or create armies of alts.

A cooler approach to SWTOR at launch might not be a bad thing regardless. STO’s radical changes in the first six months did much to diminish my enthusiasm and enjoyment. There’s no lack of competition for my attention with LOTRO’s Isengard expansion weeks aways and the time-wasting juggernaut of Elder Scrolls: Skyrim due in November. Keeping a little distance and thinking of it as still in beta after launch might prevent SWTOR from becoming another STO-like disappointment.

LINK: STAR WARS: The Old Republic – Official statement on same gender romance arcs in STAR WARS: The Old Republic

Oh, Internet, I love you.

Sweet dreams: don't let the STO bugs bite.

I haven’t been playing Star Trek Online much lately, and what time I have spent has been marred by bugs new and old. From bugs in recent special events to those around for months–and even since beta, this growing infestation is sucking the fun out of the game for me. Consider these cases:

Cryptic recently hyped its remastered episodes in a week-long event.  One of those episodes, Stranded in Space, was remastered months ago and had a laundry list of bugs from the minor, like the double engine trails on the Azura, to the infuriating, like the security accolade mission consistently breaking in multiplayer runs.  None of these bugs were fixed for the special event. Cryptic really should fix content before they spotlight it like that; otherwise, they end up spotlighting the bugs more than the content.

One of the new rewards for playing Stranded In Space is a device that calls a freighter providing access to mail, bank, etc.  I played the mission, got the reward, and tried it. Nice. I played some more and swapped it back into a device slot–an annoyance which hints at a kludged implementation.  The countdown was still on 4 hours.  OK, maybe it has to stay slotted to count down.  I left it in the slot and played more: still 4 hours on the countdown.  I reported it as a bug and got back the boilerplate “this is a known problem and please be patient”. An advertised feature in a small release should not be that difficult to deliver correctly.

This week’s sale is 50% off extra slots, including extra bridge officer slots. There happens to be another months-old bug where the extra slots don’t increase your maximum number of slots correctly, so you stop gaining slots as you approach level cap.  After three frustrating tickets later, I got no resolution like a goodwill refund for something being broken that I bought with real money. Now they’re featuring it on the store, and it’s still broken. And there’s no warning that it’s bugged and may not work for some players.

Cryptic broke the interaction between cloaking devices and dialog boxes in January 2011, probably by adding some special features to one of the Romulan featured episodes [Serious Cloak Bug thread, STO Forums]. If you’re cloaked or using Mask Energy Signature and you respond to a dialog box, you decloak. Cryptic’s FUD on the issue is that fixing it requires fixing every single interaction in the game.  Huh? They caused the bug my changing a base mechanic for a feature episode mission.  They aren’t willing to break or recode that one episode now to fix a bug that affects the entire game.

Beyond just concentrating on quality and bug fixing, Cryptic could spend some time to get their bug tracking and reporting system fully working. The bug system now appears to do a search for similar bugs before activating the submit button, but I’ve reported the same bug many times over months and never seen my earlier bug reports. There’s no way to browse the bugs database to see what’s broken, how many times it’s been reported, if any root-cause analysis has been done, or when the bug is likely to be addressed.

I have been on both sides of this problem in my professional life, and a well-run issue tracker that lets people see what problems there are and when they’re likely to get fixed is a big factor in building trust between developers and users. The fabled Cryptic transparency only includes new and fun things; they are particularly silent and ineffective on the less glamourous front of admitting and fixing mistakes.

Fixing the problem requires decoupling this hard relationship between rank and level, something I’ve proposed many times [Devs - this whole 'Rank' situation is getting absurd..., Posts 53 and 55].  Here’s an updated version of what I last posted to the forums.

Re-characterize level as Officer Efficiency Rating. It’s a number and unbounded; that eliminates all the “exhaust the names list” problems that most proposals just delay, not solve. It’s lore friendly; e.g., the TNG bridge crew is often either doing or dodging crew evaluations. It also ties nicely to item level requirements (i.e., “You must be XXX to use this item”) since you’d only give the best/most dangerous equipment to the most capable officers–which is not necessarily highest-ranking.

Players unlock rank titles at OER’s 1, 2, 10, 20, 30, and 40 for ENS, LTJG, LT, LCDR, CDR, and CAPT. Rank title is like the current achievement title but separate. Players can choose to set their current rank to whatever titles they have unlocked, giving RPers in particular a level of control they often ask for. Players would have an option to allow auto-assigning new ranks on level-up for those who don’t want to be bothered; I’d probably default that to “on” so new behavior matches current behavior as closely as possible. Rank title would have a separate toggle like achievement title for overhead display.

Bridge Officers would use the same system, but their rank title unlocks would be at 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 instead. I originally didn’t have BOFFs as Captains, but if you check out the command leadership section of USS Enterprise (CVN 65),  both Captain and XO hold the rank of Captain.

Membership in a fleet also unlocks rank titles at different fleet levels. The default rank progression would be Fleet Commander (or Acting Fleet Captain for fleets using rank 1 as a probationary positon), Fleet Captain, Commodore (or Rear Admiral LH), Rear Admiral (or Rear Admiral UH), Vice Admiral, Admiral, Fleet Admiral. Personally, I like Commodore and hate the LH/UH designations, but others feel strongly against Commodore; this approach can satisfy both camps.

So why has Cryptic ignored this issue? Dstahl’s position is that it’s too much work because of the number of dialog and item text changes required [You won't get away with this, Rear Admiral, Lower Half!, Post 51]. I think this is just a worse-case scenario meant to dissuade further unrest, and I’ve suggested ways to minimize and spread out the effort [Devs - this whole 'Rank' situation is getting absurd..., Post 51]. Given Cryptic’s similar rationalization and lack of action on a game-wide bug they introduced in the Romulan featured episode [Serious Cloaking Bug, Post 159], I doubt we’ll see any change in their position, and that attitude is partly why I’m on indefinite STO hiatus.

Orion’s Page - Blog Archive - Champion Proposal: Final Stages

My first LOTRO character was a champion based on a character from a LOTR-based NWN persistent world. Gameplay with that champion (rolled two years ago this month) felt a little lethargic and uninteresting compared to my eventual love, the runekeeper. I’ve dabbled with champions since then and liked what I’ve seen in changes to the class and overall combat engine.

From Orion’s latest post, this update to the champion class will be significant.  I’m not a big enough champion nerd to appreciate subtle changes in how skills and stances relate, but a few things stand out:  no more shields, no fervor penalty for two-handing, and far fewer on-defeat skills. That last one is big for me as a solo; I don’t get to use on-defeat skills as much wandering around alone.

My sense is this champion tune-up is on par with or bigger than what the runekeeper got a few months ago. Some of those runekeeper changes didn’t stand out in the dev diaries but ended up being fantastic; i.e., Master of Writs. Pairing solid posts like Orion’s with Turbine’s usually-well-delivered updates has me eager to roll a new champion and see how it feels when the time comes.

I’m not so eager for STO Season 4 and the Duty Roster System: Cryptic’s having problems in the discussion and delivery departments lately, and they’d do well to take a few pages from Turbine’s book. Turbine’s communications with the LOTRO community are more measured and better timed. It may help that the LOTRO community seems better behaved but no less passionate: their forums suffer less from heat/noise–except for those trash-talking PvMP forums, of course.

It also helps that forums.lotro.com supports RSS feeds to get around the heat, noise, and overload that trying to stay on top of STO’s forums inflicts on me.  Hint, hint.

I’ve played STO enough to scratch off the veneer of Star Trek and see too much of the generic MMO RPG beneath. LOTRO and STO got my attention and my cash because of the intellectual property, not because I like MMOs.  Although the massively-multiplayer aspects can be fun sometimes, they’ve also been immersion-breaking, road-blocking, distracting, and even discouraging.  It feels like these games have all the limits of a computer-based game with none of the advantages of a real multi-player (tabletop) RPG.

It’s not clear what Atari divesting itself of Cryptic Studios means for the developer of STO.  Word in the forums is “business as usual” of course.  For me, I have to wonder if the game will last long enough to reach the break-even point for my lifetime subscription–especially given months of hiatus I’ve taken since launch. It seemed like an easy bet with such a big IP back then. Oh well.

I may pop into STO and LOTRO for a few hours here and there, but I’ll probably devote most of my game time to single-player games: a heavily modded The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Portals 1 & 2, and either Mass Effect or Dragon Age to psych me up for the  MMORPG that might be more RPG than MMO: Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Here’s hoping!

The Dreaded Giant Spider from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I found it through a Kotaku article that includes some other great shots. The best part of the article isn’t the amazing pictures or even the fact that this endless-waster-of-time is getting closer to release. It’s the comments.  About spiders. About really hating spiders.

If you ever thought a video game could not touch some deep human emotion, fear of spiders in this case, you were very, very wrong!

New Skyrim Shots Feature Orcs, Cat-People, And The Dreaded Giant Spider — Kotaku.com

The big news for the Foundry is wrapper missions like dailies that will direct players to select highly-rated Foundry missions.  These wrappers will provide rewards, the lack of which was a topic in Fleet Vent last night. Cryptic can tailor the reward to the captain (emblems being mentioned specifically) and prevent the exploit fest that would have happened if authors controlled mission rewards.  On the other side of the editor, authors with highly-rated missions may get more project slots. Both are excellent ideas to reward using what I feel is one of STO’s most unique features compared to other MMOs. Letting authors sell missions on the C-Store won’t happen soon, but the idea is out there.

Craig Zinkievich is back at Cryptic as COO.  I share Chris and Jeremy’s guarded reaction to the news. To be fair, some of the good things happening now in STO must have started under Zinc’s watch. He just wasn’t around for the credit.  On the other hand, behavioral patterns can quickly and unconsciously resurface when former colleagues are reintroduced into the groups they’d left. The STO team has definitely grown since Zinc departed; I hope his return doesn’t revive bad habits or past policies that the new STO team–and community–have grown beyond.

The Klingons will get plenty of attention in Season Four: Qo’noS is getting more of a redesign than an ESD-style make-over. That includes the Klingon Academy as the mechanics and culture bootcamp for players choosing to start their STO experience as Klingons. The new leveling progression will refer players to featured episodes, and it will include Klingon retellings (prequels and sequels, not shovel-ware faction swaps) of Starfleet missions with Klingon tie-ins; e.g., Saturday’s Child an Kuvah’magh.

The Duty Roster system may need a new name given the inevitable effect “duty” has on post-Beavis-and-Butthead geeks like the STOked guys. More seriously, it worries me to hear Stahl refer to it as being like a trading card game, something I’ve never liked for its mechanics or pusher-like card rarity marketing scheme. I’m also not happy to hear that the active roster will be linked to captains instead of ships. I understand Jeremy’s relief at not having to reallocate rosters when changing ships given the agony of bridge officers, abilities, equipment, and power trays that is switching ships. However, it’s another step to making starships less like characters themselves and more just hollow shells filled with “stuff” by excluding them from the duty roster system.  I proposed on the forums [ My Longish Proposal, Begging Heretic, Heretic Responds] and still hope to see workspaces or bays on ships that complement the duty roster system and reflect the ship’s inherent mission (sci, tac, eng).

Taking this with the latest Ask Cryptic and Engineering Report paints a picture of a game that’s growing from a developer with ambition.  Personally, I think somebody should take away Obama’s Secret Transparency Award and give it to Stahl instead.