We Don’t See This Often Around These Parts…

From my front door...

 

From my back door...

Naming Your Ship 2

Sequal to the wildly popular Naming Your Ship.

For the Engineering Techies among you:

List of Mechanical Engineers

List of Aerospace Engineers

List of Engineers

For the Science Nerds among you:

List of Inventors

List of Capital Cities

List of Traditional Star Names

List of Hindu Star Names (Nakshatra)

For the Tactical Genuises among you:

List of Ancient Weapons

List of Medieval Weapons

List of Martial Arts Weapons

List of Military Aircraft

List of Military Commanders

List of Battles

Stunning

So I’m reading this, about the legendary fails in the MMO universe, and smugly noting to myself that Vanguard, as much as we complain about it, isn’t on there, when I click one of the side links regarding the failure of Star Wars Galaxies – a fail to pwn all fails, for those who are blind and clueless about what happened there.

And I see these following statement in the link:

Ms. LaBeff, for instance, said that she had canceled all three of her Galaxies accounts and had joined a new guild in World of Warcraft, another game, with her old Star Wars friends.

And I think, yeah there were some pretty hardcore SW:G people back in the day, like these EVE nuts with their three acounts. [Or not, see comments below]  But then I start the next paragraph, emphasis mine:

“Someone might wonder, well, it’s just a game, what’s the big deal?” said Robert Kruck, 54, an engineer for Motorola who lives in Schaumburg, Ill., who said he had canceled seven of his eight Galaxies accounts.

Holy Ever Lasting Gob Stopper.  Are you kidding me?  That’s $200 a month.  For a game…a GAME…A game.

But wait, there’s more:

“We just feel violated,” said Carolyn R. Hocke, 46, a marketing Web technician for Ministry Medical Group and St. Michael’s Hospital in Stevens Point, Wis. Ms. Hocke said she once had as many as 10 separate Galaxies accounts but has canceled all but one in the last two weeks.

Trust me Carolyn, I feel violated and dirty to boot.  Please tell me none of you are spending that much on an MMO?  Right?  I don’t know what else to say.  Honestly.  WOW.

But then having seen those numbers, I had to laugh at this:

Ms. MacIntyre said Galaxies had lost “significantly more” than the 3 to 5 percent of players who typically leave any online game every month. She said she expected the game to return to its previous subscriber levels in six months…

And we all know it didn’t.  And now we know why – not because the NGE was legendary fail, but because if you piss off the wrong three subscribers, you will lose twenty one accounts.  And trust me, no matter how awesome your advertising campaign is, you aren’t going to boost your numbers by 600% in six months.

If any of you out there has more than three accounts, please post a comment here so I can soundly brow beat you for your insanity.  kthxbye.

Great Posts V + Final STO Open Beta Thoughts

I’m trying to remember the last time a blog post made me laugh out loud.  Its been a long time, if ever.  So deserving of my version of the pat on the back, such as it is, goes to Potshot as he describes the continuing adventures of his crew on the USS Boursalt.   Maybe one day, I too will get to venture forth against the OrionPirates with its brave crew.

***

Meanwhile, over elsewhere, The Ancient Gaming Noob ponders lifetime subs.

I think I’ll be going the one year route myself I think.  The odds of me playing a game more than 16 months are slim (16 months is $240/$15).  EQOA, my first MMO is the only one I’ve ever lasted that long in (over two years).   WoW is a close second (13 mos), and EVE is third (prepaid to 12 mos).  So I know a game I really enjoy will last me a good year.  I know enough from Open Beta to know I’m going to be playing initially more than a month or two, which means I’m willing to take the bet that $10 a month for a year is not a bad deal.   Even if I only play 8 mos, I break even to be honest.

I will say that the enticements for the year and lifetime sub are laughable.  STO does not lend itself to alot of alts, and if the Beta is an indication, you will be getting 3 character slots.  Moving to 5 is…meh.  And the Borg character is a “whatever” moment.  You can easily build such a character without the lifetime sub – several of the characterstics it offers are duplicated elsewhere - same mechanics different fluff – but all anyone but you sees is the mechanics.

I’m still stunned at the hate poured out onto Cryptic.  I wish I had done a year or lifetime for Champions.  I like their design style and thought process.  Hey – don’t worry!  If STO is as bad as those who dislike Cryptic say it will be, I will be joining your ranks shortly…

The upside of the Open Beta was the game itself – its fun, it has some room for RP elements (more important to me than I indicate in my blog I think).   Its very stable as a client, and while it needs more polish, its pretty much ready to go…on the Federation side.

The downside – the Klingon side is a mess of non-existence (I went to five consecutive systems before I found one that worked last night), and the PvP system needs alot of work (though the play itself is fun).   Ground controls are still sluggish in response time.  Bridges are…as Potshot points out so eloquently…not what was hoped for.

In any case, I’m looking forward to Friday.

M-MO?

I get the impression there is a difference of opinion in the community about what constitutes “massive.”  Just how many unique users should be in any given server or universe.

2,000?

5,000?

10,000?

25,000?

50,000?

100,000?

To me the further up that number checklist you go, the more the game becomes anathema to me.   I’m looking for the subtle balance that gives enough people for a full looking and acting world, but without so many people that the auction house gets inflated to “billionaire’s club only” levels.    Enough people that  I can find a decent group, but not so many that I don’t feel like I have a place and a face in the world. 

With newer shard type structures that picture changes too.  I’m not sure if its better or worse in the long run, but it is something different to experiment with.  It allows for the higher numbers while keeping some of the strengths of the smaller numbers.  But I understand that some people don’t like that certain “rooms” of the shard will only accomodate a limited number of players.  I get why you’d want to squeeze 20 people into an area set up and balanced for 5, I honestly do.  We did that alot back in the old days of EQOA.

“Either you’re part of the problem or you’re part of the solution or you’re just part of the landscape.”

~ Sam (Robert DeNiro), Ronin 

 

I like to play with the numbers a little bit sometimes in my head.  When DnD 3rd edition came out, the Gamemasters Manual had a nice town generator in it.  It would even generate, in any given town, how many able bodied milia and how many heroes were a part of the town.  Their rule of thumb was that heroes constituted 1% of the general population.  And of that 1%, not all of them went adventuring, because the more powerful you are, the more ties you have, the larger a niche you have carved for yourself, the more attention it needs, the less time you have to go gallavanting in caves and dungeons and dragon’s lairs.

5,000 people on your server?  5 million in population.  That’s an interesting enough ratio isn’t it?  Generally in towns and things, we don’t even see enough buildings to hold a population as large as the number of players walking around.  And there certainly aren’t enough farms (or at least, farms not covered in angry mobs) to feed them.  Maybe the M- in MMO needs to be balanced a little more by ecology and lore and a little less by server architecture?  What would that look like?  Feel like?  Play like?

And interesting as it is, what about that second part?  The MMO paradigm is that the more powerful you are, the more free time you have to raid places.  For PnP RPG’s, the exact opposite is true.  At best, the top line heroes in some MMO’s might command a castle (Shadowbane, Age of Conan, Everquest II, Darkfall too I assume), but for the most part, all you are really commanding is a room or two in a house.  No servants.  Certainly no militant warriors to fight with you, or relationships with people in places hi and lo to call upon.  I can see where that might be difficult to seed and bring to life in an MMO, where people tend to “cap and trade” quite quickly, and then would spend their time amassing mostly useless sprites and squatting on land to prevent others from climbing the ranks (‘Course, hardcore PvP’ers may be drooling at that opportunity).

But the bottom line is this I think, at least for me, today, in this post:  finding a new iteration, a new adventure, in the world of MMO’s is not going to come from the business end.  Its not going to come from the technological end.  Its going to be an impetus from the lore, from the passion and drive and crazyed, obsessed interest in players doing something different.  And I can’t wait for it to get here.

Unacceptable

Three nights in a row now Star Trek Online’s Open Beta has been down for maintence that lasts between two and four hours.

Open Beta involves no guarentees in terms of play time. But if you can’t keep your game open during peak gaming hours for days on end, you have a problem.

You may not be a doctor Cryptic, but you better fix it, fast.

STO Beta Updates

The Open Beta has been a nice distraction while I wait for T2 guns to finish training (a watched pot never boils right?).  Things have progressed nicely in some areas, but some areas continue to disappoint.

Improved

Login Issues – While there were some tight times during the day Saturday and Monday (since it was a holiday I assume) where you have alot of people logging in simultaneously, but overall the problem has been reduced.  According to the State of the Game address, the standard prediction is for aroudn 10% of OB keys to logged in at any one time.  Apparently that was too low.  This bodes well for the start of the game and the initial push.  After that, it will take more than a good IP to keep the game afloat.

Tool Tips – Slowly but surely, more information is appearing on tool tips and in description text.  I learned, for example, how to set my shipboard weapons to autofire.  That may not sound like much, but setting your rear arc weapons to autofire, for example, leaves you free to concentrate on manuevering and setting up attack patterns for your teammates – which, by the way, is far more important than you think.

It doesn't get any more awesome than this screenie. Admit it.

Not Improved/Worse

Server Lag – I’m not sure if they are cancelling out their hardware gains as the gains allow more people to log in, or it they are in a deeper jam.  My guess is that there will be more people on launch day than there was for Open Beta, and they, at this point, are not prepared to handle that.   The fact that no MMO has ever been ready for launch day doesn’t excuse it – in fact, if you think about it, it kinda makes it worse.

The Grind – I thought it was getting better, but honestly I’m not sure that it is.  I’ve exhausted myself getting to Lt. Cmdr.  (Level 11) – so much so that I have a plaque item to trade in for my brand new ship – and I still haven’t picked it up.  Most of it has to do with adjusting the difficulty of missions.  Several of them now have had me facing off solo against a battleship four levels higher than me.  When I grabbed my brother in to help, it spawned two.  And the spawning parameters, again, seem to stay in place when someone drops group.  This makes the open groups, supposed to be helpful, a pain in the ass.  Once I get a good person or two, I close the group out, and at least once have threatened to boot someone dragging their feet searching for anomalies (harvesting) because it takes all hands on deck to get through some of the enemies.

All well and good...unless this is what greets us on launch day.

Conclusion

Things are still rocky, but again, as many others have echoed, the game shows great promise.  The large fleet actions are going to be killer with a good team.  Ground combat is still fun, and requires tact, if not tactical thought.

I’m amazed at the hate spewed for the sharded large-group instance system that Cryptic employs.  People have hated getting ninja’d by non-instance games, and feeling alone in instanced games both.  Cryptic offers an innovated solution, and people whine even harder than they did about the things that they hated to begin with.  Good job killing innovation gamers!  Now where’s that next WoW clone…

Cross Game Chat!

Wow…maybe everyone knows this already, and I’m the last one on the wagon…but did you know about this:

When I logged into play some Champions today, I got a message:

Your friend “xxxxx” has logged in.

That’s a pretty normal message except that my friend is one I met playing Star Trek Online…not Champions Online.

So I sent him a PM and we talked about it awhile.  He said he was wondering since my name popped up with Wraithblade instead of Teylaria – not a terribly Trek appropriate name.  We ruminated a bit on the pluses and minuses of the concept.

Positive:

Ability to chat with friends even if they are playing something different.

Negative:

No sneaking off to play some other game.

Okay, so, not world shattering revelations.  But it was the best we could come up with in the few minutes before lunch.  Maybe you have some further ruminations, but overall it seemed like a pretty awesome concept.  It also further reinforces what I suggested awhile back – that Cryptic is angling to create something similar to what Sony has in place with their Station Pass. (Note also: Cryptic’s website has pictures of games in development – and they appear to be three or four different different settings there, including modern and fantasy both – and maybe some Cthulhu too).

Interesting times we live in…

A Word of Thanks

I just wanted to drop you all a short note to say thank you.  This site has really taken off in the last couple of weeks, with, as best I can tell from the stat machines, a doubling in the number of page views per day, and a 40% bump in RSS subscribers.

The neat thing for me is that while the launch of STO has certainly helped those numbers, they were climbing even before I got interested and joined up into the Open Beta.  That means it can’t *all* be the internet hype machine!  (-:

So, thank you for your time and your visits!  And a special thank you to my favorite blogs, many of whom have helped with that readership.  Check them out over on that sidebar just to the right, they are good people one and all.

My goal was never to be the biggest and the best, but to invite conversation, and the number of you that have been commenting and discussing here has risen as well, and that is what I enjoy the most.  So hit that “add comment” button frequently, and put in your two cents.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Day 3…what was I saying?

Its been a doozy of a week folks.   I haven’t had more than four hours sleep on any night so far, and I’m about ready to keel over even with the nap I squeezed in yesterday.  So my slightly incoherent thoughts on the STO beta, for the last time this week:

The Bad

Kobayashi Maru – Reports of the “Boldy Go” error demise were greatly exaggerated. Cryptic claimed to have fixed it, but for me it actually got worse.  Before all you had to do was wait 30-60 seconds or activate some sort of NPC script (hail starfleet, etc.) to boot your correct avatar .  Now if you get the error, nothing seems to fix it.  Case in point:

To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub...

 And by sleep here, we mean “sleeping with the fishes.”  No ship avatar means no shields and much lower health, which means a quick death at the hands of a KDF Raptor class Escort and K’Tinga class Battlecruiser.  Not to mention I’m on the fourth arc of the mission, and I can only get back there by respawning in the first arc, exiting the system, and then re-entering the system.  And even if my ship does spawn, I’m dead anyway, because those two ships are Tier 2 and Tier 3 respectively – the instance was balanced for my open group of three – two of whom are now gone.  My own little no-win situation.

You have to balance this with the Open Beta aspect of things, but it is worrying.  This mission is one of the first available Episodes from the Admiral – and usually introductory content is fully bug free and polished by launch.  That its not shows forth a flaw in the system itself.  This may make it easier to fix (one fix helps all the missions) or it may make it harder (there is no good/easy way to fix it at this point).

The Ugly

Awesome I leveled up!  Now I get another +1 bonus to Energy Weapons..woo – STO is already grindy after three days.  I’m a slow leveler, and I play slowly generally, but I have alot of incentive to get through the intro ship and try out some specialized T2 vessels.  But I just am not getting there.  Each mission continues to net you around 200 skill points.  I have over 3500 now and just hit level 7.  According to the tool tips I need another 2500 or so to get to the next Rank and earn my first real ship.  Patrol missions are the worst, as they link about 4 missions together, but only give you one reward.  Hopefully there is some glass roof here I’m about to break through.  That certainly happened with the cash situation – a few Mk.  II drops, if you don’t equip them will next you several thousand credits at a starbase – but that’s the ugly part – I need those drops, especially the ground ones, to keep mission time down by allowing me to die less and and kill faster.  Two solutions here – up the rewards (meh – people alread complain about blowing too fast through content), or get more ships and abilities in the game.  I’m not sure how different stat wise they could be – especially the start ships, which are pretty bare bones as it is – but at least it might give some variation.

Part of this problem is that your only active abilities in the game come from bridge officers, and the number of bridge officers is limited by ship – you’re first ten levels, you have only three maximum – with one to start.  The strength of this should be the ability to swap officers as needed to give you fresh skills.  The downside is that officers need skill points to be effective, and officer points are even more thinly spread than your skill points are.

The Good

Just a feeling Data, just a feeling – STO nails the Star Trek vibe.  I feel like a ship captain, the missions feel like Star Trek episodes, heck I even have a place to type out Captain’s Logs for RP purposes to just for mission notes.  And when I looted my new Phaser Pistols and Body Armor, I’m pretty sure I squeeled like a little girl who finally got her long awaited pony.

No I'm not a woman, I just play one on the internt.

And as always, the bottom line is: is the game fun for me.  And the answer is yes.   I’ll be trying some PvP over the weekend, Federation and Klingon, and will report back Monday.  For the weekend though, I have T2 guns in the oven on EVE, and I finally got my long awaited zombie pets on CO.  And a topic in MMO design I want to tackle…Time for a little break from my star date.