Smiling on the outside, but on the inside ...

I avoided MMO RPGs until 2009 when the Lord of the Rings Online free trial wore me down. I’d been playing The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion heavily and enjoying it, but I was missing the other-player dynamic from my tabletop gaming years. LOTRO had some of the same visual appeal as Oblivion, with lush landscapes unlike the comic-like caricatures I’d seen in World of Warcraft. Since then I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons Online, Star Trek Online, and Warhammer Online. (WAR is now a Bioware game???) Each game has its good points and bad points, but all MMOs fall flat as RPGs when I think back to my tabletop RPG days. The problem is that MMOs have also ruined tabletop games for me because of something I feel echoed on Critical Hits:

“I strongly believe this is one of the reasons I don’t like D&D 4e very much. I like snappier combat. The longer it takes, the harder it is for me to stay engaged.” – How Economics Ruined My Gaming Joie De Médiocre by Vanir

Tabletop games bog down because human beings need to consider and administer complex combat rules. Computers are just plain better at these kinds of tasks. Doing it in real time is key here; computer-assisted tabletop gaming still feels too slow because people still have to think about the rules to make decisions. It’s part of why I left my last gaming group; one or two combats would take the entire night, even in the faster-playing Warhammer RPG. My frustration grew during these combats as I watched other people start side conversations, go out for a smoke, peruse a book when it wasn’t their turn. The combat couldn’t hold people’s attention; it was a thing to get through rather than enjoy, much like Vanir’s experience with eel skinning in the Critical Hits article.

Of course, MMO combat being so fast and easy creates other problems. First among them is the dependence on kill-ten-rat quests where the numbers are actually in the hundreds; I can’t imagine who many things my LOTRO characters have killed over the years, maybe tens of thousands! Second, death (or defeat in LOTRO terms) is a common occurrence, something acceptable in the video game context but not in a tabletop role-playing one. Third, content like raids must be designed for repeated play, and their challenge is overcome not by clever thinking but by rote memorization of layout, enemies, and combat. The thing that makes computers good at administering combat end up influencing the kind of content games provide because of how quick and easy they make it.

Then there are the other limits of computer-moderated games: static worlds and poorly scripted interaction. MMOs are starting to address the former with phased instances and NPC dialog, but it’s an on-rails experience where the world changes in a predetermined fashion; my actions cannot bring about different results than any other character. That’s part of what undercuts the otherwise excellently-scripted and voice-acted story in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Telling a story well (something we associate with the Bioware brand of video game RPG) is different than role-playing which is collective storytelling. It’s better than the classic wall-of-text approach that games like LOTRO are just starting to move away from, but there’s no we did this together euphoria after a particularly good tabletop session. It’s that most-despised form of tabletop gamestyle, the game on rails; no action you take will change the outcome in the end. Sometimes a good tabletop game can still be on rails because an accomplished game-master can artfully conceal that fact or make it so much fun as not to matter. All MMOs are on rails, and computers don’t have the creativity and the adaptability to artfully conceal the fact.

The Best of Both Worlds: Borg sold separately.

The closest I’ve come to the best of both worlds was Neverwinter Nights. Besides content from the game developer, it included content creation tools and a dungeon-master client. The DM client really set it apart by letting the machine handle the heavy-lifting of combat mechanics but allowing the game-master to change the world around the players. I played in a few NWN persistent worlds including the LOTR-themed Return of Middle Earth; the original module is still available for download from nwvault.ign.com. The events with DMs were that perfect mix of man and machine. GMs also roamed the world all the time, so you never knew if an NPC was actually a GM or an unexpected encounter was spawned just for you. They also lurked and awarded bonus XP when observing good RP; that kept me in character all the time, never being sure if a DM was watching. Unfortunately, creating content is still a difficult process. If you think game developers have it easy, try building a good mission in STO’s foundry. I admire the drive and passion of people generating excellent content for free but especially of those creators of custom persistent worlds in NWN like RoME. Building and running a such a world requires a special skill set along with the time and commitment that grouchy gamers no longer have.

I’m with Vanir in the grouchy gamer category. Each kind of game has in some sense spoiled the other kind for me. The winner in the end is the MMO. Everybody getting older and the world running faster means that getting a group together regularly for a tabletop game is a serious work/management effort. The MMO is even winning out over the pinnacle of massively-single-player games that is The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. I generally solo in MMOs and haven’t been able to stomach being in a guild or kinship for more than a few months at a time, but maybe I get something out of the chance encounter or occasional pick-up group that Skyrim just doesn’t provide. Or maybe it’s something more basic like the MMO formula tapping into my compulsiveness, being a completionist and an altholism. Regardless, I will continue to play MMOs but only wish I were playing tabletop RPGs for the foreseeable future.

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 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.

The D7 battlecruiser from The Original Series and its improved descendent, the K’t'inga class, are my favorite ship designs in all of Star Trek. I can’t imagine a Star Trek game without them, and I wish STO would get some good Klingon starship porn out there.  As much as I love the Discovery and Excalibur so far, I need to see some attractive Klingon ships.

Come on, Cryptic: Give me some sugar Gagh, baby!

Here are the Future Past videos by way of GameStop:

• Star Trek Online: The Future Past, Part 1
• Star Trek Online: The Future Past, Part 2