• 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.

Oh, Internet, I love you.

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.

This time around, the mechanics don’t seem as disruptive. Gambits feel more intuitive; they allow for flexibility that I don’t associate with meat shields like guardians. My attempt at a dwarf guardian was almost as big a failure as the hobbit warden: It took too long to kill things! Wardens don’t seem to have that problem. They also feel more forgiving than champions at lower levels by having a ranged attack for pulling and self-healing for the aftermath of an overly-ambitious impulse. I’m still worried about memorizing all those gambits since I plan to give at least equal time to the latest reroll of my elven runekeeper, Banhorn, but I think I’ve conquered my carcerariphobia–for now.

It’s probably no coincidence that I’m settling down with the two Moria classes. In the early levels at least, they feel more flexible, inventive, fun to play than the original LOTRO classes. Both classes appear to be a good compromise between versatility for grouping and solo viability; I’d like to fellowship more but not become stranded on a leveling plateau if I can’t find groups. In fact, I joined a runekeeper in Limael’s Vinyard tonight. The runekeeper wasn’t particularly aggressive about healing or DPS, but we meshed well enough that Aelondwe brazenly waded into the midst of the goblins. The classes complemented each other, and I wouldn’t mind a regular pairing with a runekeeper. It’s ironic that Aelondwe and Banhorn would make a great duo.

Some of the web chatter about wardens that got me curious  …

• LOTRO Reporter’s Wardens grabbing all the attention
• CSTM’s Poll: Soloing Class

http://my.lotro.com/_tags/feed

This RSS feed is like the new “Player News” widget on the my.lotro homepage but much more powerful. Finding great blogs–especially new ones not yet featured by Turbine–isn’t just luck anymore. Making it easy to discover blogs is a huge missing piece to making my.lotro a vital online community, and that just got easier.

Not sure what RSS is or how to use it? It’s a way for websites to publish a list of what’s new, and it allows special programs called RSS readers to bring what’s new directly to you. Some browsers and email programs support it, but the Google Reader website is my favorite tool by far. It works everywhere, including on my iStone iPhone.  Check out this video for the best jargon-free explanation on the web:

RSS in Plain English

I wouldn’t know about this feed if not for the Blogmoot–despite being an RSS junkie and vocal advocate of the technology. That’s why our Blogger Manifesto includes publicizing and enhancing features like this. Want to help shape the my.lotro blogging community? Blog about it: I’ll be watching the feed for you!

For more on the Blogmoot:

• The Great Blogmoot!
• Minutes of the Spring Blogger Gathering 2010
• Blogger Manifesto: What we want from Turbine

The Nuts-and-Bolts Problem

The real problem is level-based systems define hit points as a function of level. The underlying mechanics simply don’t mesh with real-life experience: A 60th level character can’t actually survive being stabbed with a dagger 60 more times than a 1st level character nor survive a fall from 60 times as high. No metaphor is going to be able to rationalize such things.

In tabletop games like Call of Cthulhu that aren’t level-based, hit points are a funtion of attributes. That means the character’s maximum hit points don’t change significantly through gameplay. The consequence is that every combat includes a high risk of death; a critical hit could kill a character with a single hit. This works in CoC because combat is infrequent.

Computer RPGs (MMOs particularly) depend on combat much more than table-top games. I kill more mobs in an average LOTRO session than any of my tabletop characters did in a year of gameplay. The statistical consequence of all that combat is defeat goes from a probability (< 1) on the tabletop to a frequency (> 1) in MMOs over a character’s lifetime. Since LOTR lore does not allow any kind of resurrection, the health metaphor ends up being immersion-breaking in a much more fundamental, undeniable way. Hit points cannot be health because defeat cannot be death; the result is more arcade game than role-playing game.

The Hearts-and-Minds Problem

Most computer games use the health metaphor, so most gamers are more comfortable with it by introduction and repetition. Health gets grandfathered under the collective “willing suspension of disbelief” needed to start playing these games in the first place. Morale conflicts with the internally-consistent model everybody’s already accepted. It’s natural on purely cognitive grounds for morale to break immersion for people who have been habituated to health.

Unfortunately Turbine applied the metaphor inconsistently as pointed out in the Wave and blog comments. The developers and writers are products of earlier games too; they are working at odds with their own habituated internal models. Beyond text and labels, the combat animations themselves conspire against the morale metaphor. They show attacks connecting every time, not just for the (ahem) killing blow. In the morale metaphor, all attacks except the last should be near hits, blocks, parries, etc.

Such inconsistencies exacerbate a perception problem around the semantics of morale. Adarel and others liken the effects of defeat to “being sad”, something game mechanics like hope and dread reinforce. My war-gaming history frames (breaking) morale differently; it’s the point where a unit loses cohesion, routs, and flees the battle. After all, few historical battles resulted in the complete destruction of one side. Unfortunately for Turbine, metaphors are creatures of context. They may have chosen one that their audience won’t accept outside of old-timers like me who know if from other contexts.

What Would Yoda Do?

Putting Turbine’s continuity issues aside, I find the morale metaphor much more satisfying because it better explains the vast difference between 1st and 60th level characters without violating my common sense understanding of the real world. It’s not the best one, however. Consider the hybrid route many class/level tabletop games took when moving from the fantasy setting to something more modern (and fatal) like this quote from WotC’s Star Wars RPG core rulebook:

Hit points [...] represent two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a graze or near miss. As you become more experienced, you become more adept at parrying strikes, dodging attacks, and rolling with blows [...] but all this effort slowly wears you down. Rather than try to keep track of the difference between attacks and how much phsyical injury you take, hit points are an abstract measure of your total ability to survive damage.

This and other d20-based games are the literal descendants of the game where hit points first evolved: Dungeons and Dragons. Tabletop games have struggled with the metaphorical mismatch of health and hit points for years, preferring to hybridize it with combat abstraction. If LOTRO represents a similar evolution in the MMO space, I suspect future ludologists will only study it through the fossil record. Leaving hit points as an abstraction and concentrating more on playing or creating content for games seems a better survival strategy than working to make it really stick.

Links:

LotrO & Tolkien: Morale and the Absence of Death – Good or Bad? — Google Wave

Morale in LOTRO — Anti-immersive? by Adarel on LOTRO Reporter

Star Trek Online

Fleets are the guilds of Star Trek Online. The guys over on mmojunkies.tv mentioned in STO Radio podcast 1.4 that fleets would have seven customizable ranks. They’ve even put up their choices and logo for Nova Fleet already.

Googling around, it looks like fleets are popping up all over the place. I don’t know if this is normal for other MMOs that haven’t launched yet, but it doesn’t surprise me. Star Wars: The Old Republic might have a larger, more passionate (i.e., fanboy) base than Star Trek, but there is an inherent structure and deep lore to the Trek universe–beyond just its military ranking–that makes such organizing easier and more contextually relevant.

If I were designing a fleet, I’d go in a different direction than STO Radio and base it on modern naval organization. The game isn’t released, and I’m not in the closed beta (yet … cough, cough) so none of this factors in how privileges relate to ranks, but here goes:

Like the modern navy, I don’t envision static arrangements of ships into flotillas, squadrons, etc. Fleet rank may imply authority when grouping with individual rank breaking ties. Of course I would expect consensus to overrule simple rank based on player skills and the challenges at hand.

I just get more excited every moment I think about this game coming out. My usual goal of moderating expectation is completely out the airlock! Please, Cryptic, do not disappoint!