/sigh

The Dev Tracker at the SOE boards has been altered to include the community relations posts, now, too.  All hail Kiara, Queen of Spam!  No one shall be free!

EDIT — okay, okay!  I’ll try to be nice … ahem … it’s quite clear she is passionate about her job.  Emphasis on passionate.

You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

There’s a LOT of … I don’t think it could rightly be called “discussion” … happening at the SOE boards.  Scanning through the class forums, I notice a trend that the majority of disgruntled posting is coming from two distinct areas, with a third one looming.  The first area is the fighter classes (of course), the second area is the mage classes (if you play a mage other than an enchanter this should not surprise you), and the third, unbelievably, is the scout forums.

So what are they all whining about?  Here’s the rundown of the bigger ones …

Well, as you might expect, what else?  Their impending shrinking e-peens (or in the case of mages, their already shriveled ones).

Fighter and scouts are basically mad about the same thing, although they are coming at it from different angles: a loss of ability to show up on the parse.  I’ll look at fighters first.

Fighters are using the upcoming hate changes as, essentially, their sounding board for all of their grievances, justified or not.  (In most cases, as with all forums, NOTHING is justified in any of the posts, just a lot of whhiiiiiinnne.)

• The biggest underlying torrent is that they can no longer DPS while also tanking.

Well you know what? TOUGH FUCKING SHIT. I can’t tank at all, and I certainly can’t DPS when a mob is beating on me … so your ability to currently do BOTH at the same time IS overpowered and it DOES detract from other players’ enjoyment.  In my opinion, this change has been a long time coming, and is way overdue.  No class should wear plate and put out more DPS than the so-called DPS classes.

The only fighters who have any cause to genuinely feel they are unfairly altered is the bruiser and monk classes, who bring relatively little to groups as it is, and should rely on DPS for their bread, so to say.  The rest of them need to sit down and shut up.

Now let’s move on to the scouts.

• Bards — seem pretty docile to begin with and have more or less resigned themselves to the fact that their current status as a DPS class is a fluke and it was only a matter of time before it was addressed.  However other scouts are up in arms.
• Assassins are complaining that they are going to lose their hate transfer and therefore won’t be able to DPS.  Well, DUH.  That’s the idea, I think.  You can’t just dump out 17k and not have to run major risk.  You aren’t really being touched otherwise and you still are the  favored class, so consider yourselves lucky!
• Rangers are complaining that they feel useless because bards do high DPS and yet bring more utility.  Also addressed by the impending changes as bards will not be where they are if procs are reduced.
• Brigands complain about anything and always have.  It’s like a prerequisite of the brigand class to be emo bitches who /ragequit or /sadquit at the drop of a hat when things don’t go their way.  They’ve been way overpowered for way too long, YEARS actually.
• Swashies want to know how they are going to control their aggro … umm … hate to break it to ya … but you know … do what warlocks have had to do since 2005 … throttle?

Okay mages … whoo boy …

Mages are really pretty quiet (amazingly, as I think we’d resigned ourselves to being underpowered and non-survivable a long time ago) with one big, giant, huge exception — the fact that none of us bring anything to the table other than damage and yet we are ALL being outparsed by enchanters who are THE premier, ultimate utility classes of this game.  It’s a very similar complaint whether you are a conjuror, a warlock, a necromancer, or a wizard and its right up the line of what some scouts are upset with in regards to bards: you can’t have your cake and eat it too!  You can scan through those four class forums and see — literally — the same exact complaint threads in every one of them.

I posted quite some time ago that no one needed to be nerfed in order for all of this to be fixed … simply increase the base damage of sorcerers across the board, a significant amount that would put us up next to Assassins and Rangers in raids.  Problem solved and no one feels nerfed.  Increase mob HP — yes, yes, I know, this was the very problem that resulted in LU 13, but sometimes the best solution IS the simple one — so fights don’t feel trivial … and be done with all this crazy hassle that’s arisen.

But that isn’t going to happen so instead we are going to have nerfs — deserved ones, I’ll be honest.  I think that most enchanters are well aware they are totally overpowered.  When your enchanter thinks he’s DPS and refuses to actually do the things he should be doing, like giving certain classes their utility buffs in favor of buffing other classes to his own advantage, or actually mezzing (gasp, omg, MEZZING, wth is that!?  I’m supposed to mezz!?) adds in a zone like Guk 3, you have a problem!  Yet this is exactly what’s happening … because fighters are so overpowered, and bards are so overpowered, the enchanters just turn into DPS, and in turn that pisses off all the other actual DPS classes, making a majority of them feel completely — and rightly — useless.

Bottom line is — all of these complaints — on ALL sides, stem from an overpowering of the plate wearing classes and the utility classes.  Unfortunately, things have gotten so out of whack, that this has become the EXPECTATION on the part of these classes … and now that SOE is trying to actually rebalance things … people are, naturally, getting pissy and downright nasty!

All I can say is … you can’t have your cake, and eat it, too.  So get ready.  Because things will change whether you like it or not, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.

PC Gaming: Dead? Or Happily Occupied?

There’s a lot of blurbs the past year or 2 about how PC gaming is dead, there’s no money to be had, piracy is too rampant, companies don’t want to take on the risk of development for an uncertain platform, yada yada yada.

This is interesting, because PC’s currently have a mainstream market penetration greater than any console — almost everyone has a PC or laptop.  Including: businessmen, housewives, the elderly, even young children.  Families don’t just use one PC – many of them have a PC in the living room, 2 laptops for mom and dad, and computers for the kids.  And these aren’t even gaming families!  Gamers, as we know, may hoard old PC equipment in far greater numbers, for some strange fear that our Compy486 may be needed 20 years from now.

So it’s interesting that despite the mainstream penetration of PC’s … we continue to hear about how PC gaming is dead or dying, and stores like Best Buy continue to downsize their PC title catalog.

But here’s the real question … is it that PC gaming is truly dead ?  OR … are we all just very, VERY happily occupied with the game we currently play.

Case 1.  The Sims.
Okay.  If you haven’t heard of the Sims you must have been living in an underground bunker for the past 10 years.  The original Sims game came out in 1998, spawned about 10 explansions and a slew of “Stuff” packs … then in 2004 it’s sequel was released and has had much the same success.  The Sims is the number one all-time highest selling franchise, ever, in any video game format, on any system.  You can probably credit the Sims for introducing bored, technologically disinclined, or even challenged, housewives all over America and Europe to modern PC gaming.  You can also cite the Sims as the reason your wife suddenly has developed a far more refined sense of decor and insists on beige marble with matching tile and towels,  as well as your own vague uneasiness about ’settling’ for the simple recliner from WalMart or the ‘Super Deluxe Mega Fatman’ from Joe’s Private and Expensive Furniture.  Millions upon millions of people still play the Sims — as evidened by the fact that Best Buy now carries and entire BAY of strictly Sims products !  So it’s no wonder these millions of people aren’t playing something else!  When you’ve got something that you know and love … why give it up?

Case 2.  Counter Strike / Half Life / Team Fortress / Unreal Tournament(s) / so on and on …
These games and their multiple spin offs have been around forever.  And yet they are STILL talked about when people mention FPS.  They are still widely played, widely used, widely discussed.  They appeal most of all to a certain type of e-peen FPS gamer – the one that actually cares about benchmarks, mostly, and the fact that a score of  7809 is infinitely worth $8000 vs. that $1500 machine that only score 5788 (you know who you are) … but whatever the reason, people are still logging in, still having tournaments and those weird things called LAN parties (truly the epitome of geekdom, truly).  This means … that, no, they aren’t going out and buying Crysis or Bioshock … at least not right away.

Case 3.  World of Warcraft (and other MMO’s)
I certainly don’t need to say anything here.
MMO’s are the biggest, largest time sinks of all and this is the hugest, massivest daddy on MMO Street.  It’s quite doubtful that anyone truly invested in WoW could ever bother to make time for ANYthing else, game-wise.  And the same goes for other MMO’s that people are devoted to.  Mine happens to be EQ2.  I’ve –tried– to make time for Warhammer, WoW, Guild Wards, City of Heroes, LOTRO, and on … but really?  The time just ain’t there.  I work a full time job, and when I get home, I like to eat, surf the internet, do necessary and relaxing things like take a shower and a nap, read, maybe watch a movie, occassionally even talk on the phone (my god, the telephone!?) to important people … I mean all of that lazy time doesn’t leave much room left over for ONE MMO … let alone two or more!  So while I see a lot of stuff I think looks hot for the PC … I generally avoid it, knowing that it will be money spent that I never actually get around to utilizing.

Bottom line is … I don’t think PC gaming is dead at all.  Sites like Newegg prove that, if anything, PC gaming is more in the consciousness of the people than it has ever been before.  And hardware is finally becoming more accessible.  I DO think, however, that game developers need to slow down on the idea that they can push out tons of games each year and sell lots of all of them … THAT concept IS dead.  If anything, we’ve seen that to make a truly great game capable of making its money back, you either need some cheap, ingenius ideas (hello Nintendo; hello Freeware browser games), or you need a LOT of cash investment up front (hello MMO’s that take 7 years to develop).

Most interesting of all is that we are seeing almost something like what the radio business went through … the death of the mega-companies in favor of more streaming, accessible, free-2-play content.  It’s almost full circle back to the days of Ultima Underworld, when games were developed by gamers, cheap, fast, and yet, somehow, unbelievably fun.  Fortunately video games as a whole industry are booming in a time when everything else went into a slump …

There is one thing to say about MMO’s and video games in general … it’s DIRT CHEAP entertainment!  For hundreds, thousands, of hours … literally less than pennies per hour.  In the time of recession when people drop their phone contracts, expensive cable options, don’t go to see movies, and don’t go out to eat as often, and don’t spend time shopping … there needs to be SOMEthing occupying all of their time!  Games are much more interactive, and MMO’s especially can be quite social, particularly when families get involved and actually play online together (but that’s a whole nuther post for another day!)

I have no words.

People will complain about ANYTHING these days … AND feel like they are entitled to have it fixed!

Complaining that the mobs you used to be able to backstab 3 times in under ten seconds now turn too fast for you to do so?

Really?  I mean really.

The BEST part of it is that when Rothgar actually SAYS that it is NOT a bug and will NOT be fixed … people come back and say “So is it going tio be fixed or not!?”  (Cue the tinker toys being thrown across the room and the sound of a 2 year old screaming and kicking.)

Good god.  Get over it.  You’ve been on easymode for a year.  Now, you can do to root, slow, and stun just like the rest of us!

Other threads with stupid complaints:

Why there shouldn’t be mounted travel in Lavastorm This one just takes the cake for absolute stupidest thing to complain about that I’ve read all week.  Again I’ll say it:  Really?  I mean really.

Why damage procs shouldn’t be changed *This one ranks as one of the most Stupid-Filled™ threads ever.*  I swear it’s like all of EQ2 playersbase has completely forgotten that some things should actually be hard.  And epic mobs are one of them.  Not every little mom and pop guild should be able to clear the Palace, or take down Zarrakon, for god’s sake!  The vast majority of guild’s couldn’t have hoped to clear Ahket Aten when DoF came out … I don’t see why people feel so entitled to be able to kill every epic in the game, these past two years.

And just so you don’t all have cows while holding up bloody chunks of dead horse meat … NO … the proc changes are NOT happening.  Yet.  They are being “re-evaluated.”  Which just kind of makes me more disgusted.  Some vocal fanboys scream out that they will quit the game, and a change that might have finally balanced certain overpowered classes gets put on hold.  Ugh.

Through the Looking Glass

Someone over at Massively edited this SOE logo.  Unfortunately I can’t take credit for the genius.

And by the way, SOE is hiring a new lead designer for a new project.

Polish those resumes!

What a Vermin Raid Looks Like

This beautiful artwork courtesy of Dvara.

Champions Online

Yes, I am currently beta-testing it.

No I cannot say ANYTHING about it beyond that.  So don’t ask.

However, there is a fun tool that is available to the public, featuring actual characters made by beta-testers.

RATE MY CHAMPION

Is a tool that works like “Hot-or-Not” where you rate the various Champions that players have created.

Check it out!

The Relationship Between Developers, Fansites, Community, and Players

Over the time I’ve been playing MMO’s (aside from EQ2 I’ve also invested time in World of Warcraft, City of Villains, Lord of the Rings Online, Tabula Rasa, Warhammer Online, and numerous beta other beta tests), one thing that has become apparent to me is the continuing, increasing trend of top-level interaction between devlopers (collectively the producers, designers, artists, and service folk) of any given MMO, and the playerbase.

From the top-end perspective, you have the game producers.  People like, to use EQ2 as an example, Gallenite or Froech or Kirstie.  Even, on rare occassion — but not so rarely that people don’t know who he is — John Smedly, himself.  These folks, be they SOE employees, or any official persons from any of the other listed games, they communicate through a number of avenues, ranging from official forums (EQ2 and LOTRO) unofficial fansite forums (Warhammer); corporate blogs, personal blogs (see the links on the right).  Larger MMO populations, like WoW, may have more developer posts overall, but due to the sheer volume of comments left by players, seem somehow less personal than the smaller MMO games like EQ2 or LOTRO, where it seems developers may know some players on a first name (or at least, first-handle) basis!

On the player end, then, you’ve got a mass of outlets: first among those are the news-based, fan-operated websites, mainly comprised of a news blog or other type of feed, and a forum community.  More recently “forums” and “news” have melded into what I call ‘commentary content blogs’ — blog sites where people write editorials (like this one, for example) about things, and then others can post their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and so forth, without a strict requirement to register or sign-up, etc.   You also have more official, less personal places; think Allakhazam, EQ2i, those sorts of sites.  This phenomenon of interaction between the game-makers and the game-players is not relegated to just one MMO.  Every MMO I’ve listed has a strong developer-player connection.  (With the exception of Tabula Rasa – which is closed – but DID have such a link, as well.)

An interesting thing to make note of is the way connections form, in the Digital Age, between official persons, and unofficial persons.  The gaming industry is FULL, absolutely FULL, of designers who got their start not because of the high-tech degree they had — but because of their ideas and the people they knew.  This isn’t so different from other industries — most people will say that they obtained their dream job (or even their current job, be it a dream job or not) through a combination of skill, ingenuity, and networking.  The difference in the gaming industry is that ideas are counted more highly, innovation is counted more highly, than in some other sectors.  (Before someone jumps on this single statement, let me make it clear that I am well aware that the gaming industry has its fair share of corporate maneuvering and politics, just like any other.  But at the end of the day this is a business built on creativity and ingenuity, and that is NOT the norm in the business world.)

MMO’s especially seem to have a unique foothold in the gaming world.  Firstly, they are worlds built on the single premise of INTERACTION.  That in itself means that from the outset, people have a certain expectation of give-and-take.  Gone are the days when gamers simply sat at home and wished for this or that change … nowadays people take to their blogs, their websites, their forums, and they MAKE themselves heard.  (Boy do they ever!  And some more loudly than others.)

But where does the real connection happen?  And how?

EQ2 is the game I’ve spent the most time in.  I have been an active subscriber logging in daily since November 13th, 2004.  Launch weekend, if I recall, or just after.  I’ve been posting on the forums that entire time.  I’ve shared PM’s (albeit very rarely) directly with developers, both past and present, and I’ve spent a lot of time answering questions from the Newbie board to the Warlock board to the Tech Support board, and everywhere in between.  Not to mention my own guild’s website, discussing gameplay elements like grouping, raiding, and overall aspects of EQ2.

That being the case, I can honestly say that the relationship between developer and player is a slow, strange, and sometimes volatile beast.  Players truly have a love/hate relationship with developers — and I am sure the feeling is mutual.  One day you log in and see an official post that discusses a change you love, and you shower them with praise.  The next day, something you hate … and you make it known.  On the developer side of things, one day you come in to find that some small change you made turned out to be a huge boon on the favor-meter; the next day, you make a change thinking people will love that just as much … and you get crap thrown at you from all sides, with players acting like the proverbial monkeys at the zoo.  Sometimes, the explosions are so fantastic that the fallout goes on for months, maybe even years.  Anyone remember the “funeral incident” in WoW?

Beyond all of the drama and back-and-forth, though, is the very real notion that players can now affect the way their games are made, ultimately bring the phrase “armchair designer” to life.  This is perhaps, to me, the single most interesting social development in the gaming industry of the past few years.  I can say firsthand that even 3 years ago, there was nowhwere NEAR the amount of player-developer interaction as there is now.  Not even close.  Not even comparable!  Sure, now and then someone would chime in … but not as it is, now.  And not just in EQ2 — all over, in general, more and more, designers seem to be listening to the people who play their games.

This is, in my opinion, a very, very fine line – a sharp, SHARP double-edged sword, if you will.

Firstly, there are some PROS to listening to (and implementing) what your players want:

• - a more lively and passionate community, probably more likely to support your game, both in word of mouth and in pocketbook, for longer durations than they might otherwise were there less interaction happening
• - an experience which empowers the player, making them feel as if they aren’t just “one in a million” but are actually contributing to the world they inhabit, ultimately ‘leaving their mark’ (this is an extremely powerful reason, and is also attached to a number of other psychological reasons why people play MMO’s, in my opinion, but that’s a thread for another time.)
• - a better overall game* — when the ideas actually work, and people like them, everyone wins

… and then there are some CONS to listening to the playerbase:

• - bitterness and fallout when players feel neglected, ignored, or denied: this can then lead to negative press via the aforementioned blogs, fansites, and such — and in the MMO world, word of mouth is KING.  K-I-N-G.  We’ve all seen the truth to that with Age of Conan, and to a lesser degree, Warhammer Online.  Or on the opposite end of the spectrum — World of Warcraft.
• - a muddled vision of the game: listen too closely or too often rely on your players ideas, and suddenly you’ve got a game that has a patchwork-quilt sort of feel to it, a hodgepodge of excellent, great, good, not-so-good, bad, and downright terrible gameplay implementations that occur aws a result of too many “Yes men” and not enough independent thought.  (For the record, I feel like this is one of the risks currently being taken in EQ2 – a little bit too much faith is put into the playerbase, and nowhere is this more evident than in the ongoing class balancing which is a direct result of some classes clamoring for more of what they think they should be, and not enough originality in the ideas actually being implemented.  Instead of further diversifying class roles, many of them are now simply shades of eachother – muddled DPS tiers, muddled tank tiers, muddled utility tiers, as opposed to clearly defined roles.  Despite what players say they MAY want, my experience tells me otherwise: player psychology dictates the desire for defined roles, NOT gray areas.)
• - a worse overall game* — when ideas are not implemented in a good fashion due to the above, designers lose respect, thereby losing perceived power, (and perception can count for quite a bit in an MMO community) and ultimately, lose subscriptions

So what right?  Should players be given so much weight?  Should developers rule with iron fists?

The answer HAS to be NO, to BOTH points.

Why?  Because you truly NEED a give-and-take, compromising attitude in the world of MMO’s.

If you want your MMO to be SUCCESSFUL, you better be prepared to do two things, above all else: LISTEN to your players, and SPEND a LOT of time actually DEVELOPING the ideas that your players give you.  Let’s go to the dictionary to remind ourselves what the word DEVELOP actually means!

de⋅vel⋅op

–verb (used with object)

1.	to bring out the capabilities or possibilities of; bring to a more advanced or effective state.

2.	to cause to grow or expand.

3.	to elaborate or expand in detail.

4.	to bring into being or activity; generate; evolve.

New LoN Lewts … Sweet as Always, But is it Bittersweet?

There’s no doubt about it … the LoN loots have always been way cooler than most of the stuff you can obtain through normal avenues in the game.  (Although in the interest of fair statements, I will say that the coolness-factor of a lot of in-game loot has really amped up over the past two years, as well.)

The latest batch of Loot Cards from the “Against the Void” set are pretty much cooler than a lot we’ve seen so far.  Items I personally would pay good platinum for include the ruby-set pauldron, the fiery dire bear, and – most of all – the Grasp of Anashti bauble and the Wings of Shadow.  After all – what proper warlock wouldn’t want a void-enhanced figure complete with black wings?

At times, though, I have to ask the question: should virtual trading card loot be so awesome?

Signatures

Signatures do not appear on the Official SOE EQ2 boards as of 2.11.09

Most likely some strange bug.

Just putting it out there.