Sandbox Vistas II: Leaving Istaria

This is a short post.

Let me just say that, I like Istaria. I think I could get past the required pacing change, and would even enjoy “slowing down” my expectations and taking up a bit more of a grind in exchange for being able to set my own goals and so on. I could even get past the fact that the roleplaying server has players with the creativity of a head of cabbage, and thus can’t seem to play anything *but* dragons.

And who, I might add, ignore people. I ran through the starter village naked just to see if I would provoke a response from the gathered dragons…nope.

And, I can easily handle the dated graphics, because I’m not a graphics guy. I’ll play 8 bit games all day long and be perfectly happy.

But when you send me on a starter quest to gather wild boar snouts, and *forty* dead boars later, I have *one* snout, that is not a problem with design philosophy, that is a problem that should not exist in an eight year old game.

Sorry Vitrium, that’s a deal breaker for me. Onto the next vista…

Not sure which one though. Thoughts? Wurm Online or Ryzom or Xyson or something else?

Sandbox Vistas I: Visiting Istaria

So, at the urging of Ben and Flosch, I am undertaking an odyssey to explore some obscure sandbox games.  First up on the list is one that I’ve been curious about for some time, a game called Istaria.  Istaria has just recently (last December) celebrated its 9th year in existence.  That in and of itself is nothing to sneeze about.  Originally entitled “Horizons” the game had an ambitious development goal of a fully PvE game with an automated AI enemy that would actively oppose players and player settlements in a never ending conflict.  As you can imagine, this was difficult to implement, so it was scaled back to something more static in nature.

Currently the game is rolling along nicely with a standard and RP server, though I gather from the forums that the population of the RP server is fractured and at times contentious, in addition to being lower than the one on the regular server.  So naturally, I signed up there.

The two week trial account allows three character slots among any of the diverse races, though after some time delving in the outdated wiki and in the community, I decided to start with a human character and try a dragon character later down the line.  And boy am I glad I did.   Why?

Truth.

I kid you not.  You can not swing a dead rat in this game without hitting five dragons.  The moment I exited the mystic portal from the tutorial island onto the live server itself, I was awash in dragons.  I’ve seen perhaps twenty or thirty players in the game thus far, and all but two of them have been dragons.

In fact, it occurred to me that, had I been really role-playing, my poor little character would have seen the dragons all lying around the starter village, screamed, turned around, ran right back into the mystic portal, and lived out his immortal life in the relative peace and quiet of that great utopia.

No idea who this guy is. Google image search ftw.

So, I’ve been spending a lot of time outside the village itself.  Where I’m alone with the baby pigs, and hatchling spiders, tiny grass beetles, skeletal warriors, aand OH MY GOD GIANT WOLVES AND MUMMIFIED REANIMATORS.

Yeah, basically there are two types of mobs thus far.  Those that you can kill, albeit with a large investment of time but little worry.  And there are creatures that will kick your ass into the ground without a second thought.  And telling them apart is almost impossible.   I was a level 8, and I was grinding level 5 and 6 skeletons (and boy was it a grind…) when a level 9 mummy thing wandered into the fight.   This guy is on a wide loop for his AI path, and I hadn’t seen him before.  But he was only a bit ahead of me, so I didn’t worry about it.  Until his first shot took 15% of my health.   And his second, another 15%.  And meanwhile, I was doing 3% a shot off of his.  It got ugly fast.  Fortunately, death is about as inconsequential in Istaria as any MMO, albeit they have cooler and more interactive ways to remove the death penalty, which I like.

You may think so far that I have not liked Istaria, but that’s not quite true.  I have enjoyed it a lot, and intend to keep at it for the remaining week or so of my two week trial at least.  The class/school system is great, keeping a familiar vibe going on in character creation and building, while allowing you to tweak your character in a way normally reserved to skill based systems.  The crafting is deep and gets deeper the more you get into it.    Harvesting is a bit of a chore, but there’s enough RP channels out there to keep you entertained, and on top of that, as an older game, Istaria runs fine in windowed mode, allowing you to browse and harvest at the same time.

Anyway, we’ll see where this takes us.  I may do another post on Istaria, or I may move on to some of the other options out there, like Wurm Online (which looks…complicated) or Xyson (where technology is rare or nonexistent…yet there is a screenshot with a car sitting in it…).   And hopefully Dawntide will come back up in the interim as well.   So my posting will be kinda…sandbox.  Heh.

Ever Wondered How Video Games Are Made?

Watch one being made live this weekend, an “FPS with a steampunk of Ancient Egypt theme” as it was explained to me!

 

And since its being done for charity by the good people at Mojams (and Wolfire it looks like), throw a few bucks in the hat!

World of Tanks Introducing Matchmaker Improvements

Two of the things that always seem to vex players of World of  Tanks are the matchmaker (probably everyone’s number 1 gripe!) and trying to earn enough money in the upper tiers.   The new Q&A does a great job of handling questions about both of these, and explaining some of the developers thought process behind them.   First up is the Matchmaker updates that are long overdue, and in the next post we will explore the issues with making enough credits to actually *play* your high tier tanks.

 

The Match maker is a complicated issue that is being addressed.  Players would like to see both more even battles, (less 15-0), balanced artillery with a maximum number in a game, scouts being available in only those battles that artillery are present, platoon balance, not constantly being put in the lowest tiers in a battle, and the spread of the tiers. This all needs to be done without taking a long time to find you a match.

 

This sums up the whole problem in a nutshell.  The reality that the WoT crew doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge though is that people are willing to wait for a match.  Heck, I wait an upwards of 5 minutes for areas to load in TOR, thanks to its crappy optimization, I’m more than willing to wait 60 seconds for a match in WoT.  I say that because its rare to wait more than 15 seconds for a match right now, and often as soon as you hit the battle button, you are dropped immediately into place.

 

While complicated, the first version of this new Match Maker should be available around the 7.2 timeframe. It will take into account many of the above listed issues that players have brought up. The one thing that will be absent is a hard 3 tier spread.

  

While this is on the surface good news, its kind of a silver bullet as well.   A “hard 3 tier spread” means limiting matches to nothing more than three tiers of tanks at a time.  For example, one of the most enjoyable matches in the game now is one of the battles the matchmaker will created that involves only tanks from tiers 3, 4 , and 5.   So Stuarts and Luchs will face Mark IV‘s and Shermans, which is difficult, but not impossible.  As it stands now though, there are matches that commonly occur where those same Mark IV’s and Shermans can end up in battle against Pershings and IS-3‘s.  Now as you can imagine, that kind of stuff happened in real life…and it was about as fun as it ends up being in the game.  However, the reason is that its not *all* about tiers.

 

The Match Maker does not use tiers as a determination, but instead assigns “weights” to each vehicle or vehicle type. It will try to create fun and balanced matches with vehicles that are available at the time. It will no longer immediately assign you to the first available battle you are qualified for, but rather hold your tank and make it available to several matches that are gathering players. This will add the flexibility of generating better matches.

 

Well, to start off, this is something of a lie.  Tiers do form the basis of how matches are made.  Then weights are assigned that modify the tier into the full calculations used (since obviously a tier 5 heavy and a tier 5 light are not the same thing).  Holding the tank will increase time, but as we’ve already said, since the time at this point is negligible its a worthwhile exchange.

 

You may still see some matches with wide tier spreads; however you may also see more matches with lower tier spreads, including some that may only contain one tier. Much of this will depend on server population and the population distribution at the time you enter the queue. The matchmaker will have a better chance to deal with lower populations as it will take a little time to find better matches. If the population is so low, or badly distributed that it can’t find a “perfect” match it will also have the ability to launch with less than 15 players on a side, if it feels it offers a fair match and waiting additional time may not allow for finding the needed players to fill the rosters.

So overall this change to the matchmaker is a large step towards filling the community’s desires. It is also something that can be continued to be improved and balanced. 

 

This is good news.  The only downside to sub 15 tank matches is that there is a less potential earnings for those involved.  But, given that those matches will be more balanced, there will be more opposing tanks that a player can actually do damage too, and so the actual earning will probably be higher.

Overall, this is a good improvement.  Trading time for flexibility, and allowing some variations in matchmaking should be good.  Now the matchmaker will not just throw your mid-tier medium tank into a match of all high-tier heavies to balance out some artificial equation, it will hold and check for other potential matches and determine a “best fit.”   Doesn’t mean you won’t get into those lopsided matches still, but it should be a more rare occurrence.

Why do I have nothing to say about TOR?

I have struggled with this thought for some weeks now.  Normally at this point, I’d be writing regularly about my travels and travails, or at least posting progress updates.  But I’m doing none of that.  And I have no desire or impetus to write about TOR, despite the fact that I’m playing it a couple of times a week, much as I was doing with Rift.

Contrast that with my seemingly endless posting about EVE, all of which was happening side by side with my play time.

I’m not sure what to make of all of that, just pointing it out.  It also applies to World of Tanks as well, though I had just assumed it was because a series of PvP matches would seem to leave little to write about, and thus my few posts have been limited to commentary on updates or particular tanks.  But now it strikes me that the disease might be more widespread than that.

Have I lost interest in writing about gaming?  Or is it just that certain games and events lend themselves more readily to blogging?

Coolest. Video. Ever.

Disney: The New Privacy Invasion Villain?

So I got a letter today soliciting me for a donation.  A donation to the National WW2 Museum in New Orleans, LA.  Not unusual, in and of itself.  I do have a subscription to a WW2 History magazine, and have for years now.  And I’m sure the internet has worked its usual “track the cookie” magic and put two and two together.   The only problem is that the letter didn’t actually come for me.  It had my address, sure enough, but it was addressed to my daughter.  Who is  eight.

 

And I know how that came to pass.

 

See, years ago, on a whim, my brother and I begin a project of always slightly varying the information we filled out for companies and registrations.  Then we would see what came back to us with what particular errors and be able to trace who sold our information to whom.  Not that we could do much about it, really, but it was interesting always to see the tangled web it wove.  For example, for a long time, a particular magazine I got came in my name, but with a different middle initial.  Which is how I had filled out the registration for a forum website that was supposed to not sell your information to anyone.  Needless to say, I cancelled my membership there and changed my passwords, just to be on the safe side.  Nowadays I don’t do that anymore – there’s just too much spam to care.  But I do still look at everything that comes in pretty closely for old patterns.

 

So, long story short, only one place has my information but my daughter’s name.  And that would be the Disney Website.  See, a few years ago, she wanted to play Pixie Hollow, because it was an MMO like Daddy plays.  And for whatever reason, when I filled it out (fear of losing my mancard?) when I created the account, I used her name instead of my own.

 

Now, I have no idea whether Disney intentionally sold our stuff or not, but that’s a pretty big deal.  Especially considering their privacy policy says that nobody outside of the Disney Family of Companies can have your info.  So now I’m curious.  I also have a separate account for me these days, not for Pixie Hollow, but for ESPN Fantasy Football.  All things considered, seems like they would have sent me one first.  If they had, who knows, maybe they would have gotten some of my money.

The Game of Thrones Has A Hold On Me!

No, not the TV show, which I disliked (yes, I know…a quick informal survey of “everyone else” has already educated me that I was the only one that didn’t like it), or the book series, which I found well-written, but never quite hooked me in.  I mean the board game from Fantasy Flight.

Every six months or so I get a chance to sit down with some friends and family for a game night.  Last time it was the Mansion of Madness, and before that more Cthulhu goodness, and before that some Twilight Imperium.  As much as we enjoyed TI, it ended up being just too much for us to handle…too many  rules, too much time to finish in an evening.  We had looked for awhile at the Conan Board Game, but for one reason or another I never picked it up.

Enter my brother with thise Game of Thrones business.  It was like the third set of everything for Goldilocks as far as I’m concerned.  The time to play was – just right.  The complexity/ease of the rules was – just right.  The ability to maintain interest and attention was – just right.

We played a four player game with a small house rule that my brother had developed in previous play sessions elsewhere – we blocked off the ports and VP territories in the south end of the continent.  Otherwise the game takes a predictable path of the northern powers allying and running south before the southern powers can steamroll the NPC garrisons and claim victory without virtue of diplomacy or even meaningful battle.  That is the one and only weakness of the game as far as I could tell, though with six players the balance should not be an issue.  We also used the random deck for battles, just to add some spice to life, and I can’t imagine playing without it to be honest.  That extra element of uncertainty adds charm to the battles and to the selection of your commander card.

That's me in the lower right of the board (click to enlarge)

Which brings me to what I loved about it.  The random events are great, forcing players to think on their feet and forcing interaction and diplomacy at a basic level.  The battles themselves are fantastic.  The additional of leader cards to the standard “army strength” notion gives excellent flavor to the individual houses and creates an “ebb and flow” to the movement around the map.

In other words, the game has a nice balance of picking a strategy and requiring players to adapt on the fly to things outside their control.  At no time did I feel like the random events were too constricting – rather they often provided double edged opportunities.  And most of my strategy revolved not around knowing the rules like the back of my hand (or military power for that matter), but rather from playing my opponent directly – their motives and tendencies.

And perhaps it is that last part which makes the game so great.  In that, the game mirrors the book in a beautiful way.  A game of thrones indeed, and a worthy bearer of the name.

The PvE Sandbox; or how PvP is ruining my MMO’s one by one.

Does it exist?  And if so where can I find it?  That mythical game with no PvP.

 

I am reading over at The Ancient Gaming Noob about how Rift is now traveling invariably down the same path that crashed Warhammer and Fallen Earth.  That is, turning your MMORPG into an a  competitive 3rd person whack-a-skill-watch-the-dps-meter-and-create-some-macros paradise.  Granted, Rift is not there yet, because they haven’t, say…changed their entire damage and armor mechanic because it wasn’t good for PvP, or scaled their XP progression primarily around how many matches it would take to cap level.  But its the beginnings of those paths.

 

I’m beginning to wonder if its a foregone conclusion for any MMO that decides to saddle itself with the burden of PvP.  Its like a cancer that eats away at the heart of the game.  I wonder how many developer hours are wasted on balancing and fine tuning classes/skills/macros/3rd party support that could instead be used to generate new content.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-PvP, or World of Tanks would not loom large in my life.  Nor would I have spent as long as I did in EVE.  But the games I play for PvE content always seemed to be subjugated for some bizarre PvP dominance, as it that were the lifeblood of the games players.   And perhaps it is, which leads me, for yet another reason, to ask the question about the PvE sandbox.  Even TOR does not seem immune to its effects, as the earliest indications of patch 1.1.2 indicate.

 

Just for once, I’d like to see some PvP players crying a developer said “no” to their desired changes on the reasoning that it would disrupt the rest of the game world who are playing (::gasp::) an MMO.