On Rift's future

So this weekend has been the last, but largest beta test for Star Wars: The Old Republic. For anyone left who hasn't already been in the beta and wishes to, this was the last and most open chance to do so before the game launches in December.

Has this weekend been a taste of things to come for Rift?

Massively has been running a regular themed column for each MMO accessing the possible impact of SW:TOR on its population and how many will be lured away. Will they return or be gone for good?

This week was Rift's turn and the article makes some fairly balanced points but i feel it misses the biggest factor on any MMO's retention of subs and that is the community and social experience in game. For many players this starts and is largely made up of your guild. Whether you're a social guild providing a supportive, friendly guild atmosphere with players willing to help others, or a guild at the bleeding edge of content needing 20 players available to raid several nights a week, guilds can live and then die very quickly if you lose a even a small percentage of the players.

And its really the power of crowds. For many there wasn't even a choice for your first MMO. It was obviously going to be WoW because that's what everyone played, right? No matter the quality of any other MMO on the market. If Rift does suffer such a hemorrhaging of players to such a noticable effect that it impedes gameplay such as failing to complete zone events or decimating the number of guilds on each shard able to field 20 players for a raid to such an extent, will i be tempted to jump ship to SW:TOR, despite my almost complete lack of interest in that game?

If that's where everyone else is, then maybe, yes. For one thing, the key to maintaining online only friendships with people you meet through things like MMOs is the shared experience. Once you lose that, its easy to drift apart, and is it wrong to value your friendships over game enjoyment. In fact, maybe its better to play a rather flawed MMO that perhaps constantly disappoints you, but able to share your frustrations with your friends, than play one that is supposedly a better game experience, but no one to share it with?

I certainly can't ditch Rift entirely for Skyrim for instance, but as an MMO i would prefer to stick with Rift rather than jump to SW:TOR. The 1.6 update has actually been quite good fun. Ember Isle has many great features. New Invasion events, almost endless dailies, long quest chains and the increased xp rewards, coupled with a new World event giving players plenty of new content to consume.

But i fear no matter what Trion do that there are a certain number of players that will jump no matter what, and like with my 'social' guild once a few leave there is a snowball effect, leaving both the guild and Rift itself a shell of what it was once was.

On Rift,1.6 and how Skyrim ruined it for me

So the EU servers received the 1.6 Ember Isle - Ashes of History update early on Thursday morning. Being so heavily immersed in Skyrim right now has left me rather underwhelmed about the whole patch and I haven't given Rift as much time as I normally would with such an update.

Some reasons are more straightforward. For one I'd already seen Ember Isle on the Playtesters Server so there was not much to discover, only the rather mechanical box ticking of getting my character back up to where i was on PTS. Exploration achievement? check. Dancing on Mailboxes achievement? check (Loving the irony of that one Trion, "You are not in Azeroth anymore..." hmm really?).

The storyline quests in themselves are still much the same. The mobs might have more health which is a welcome challenge, but despite really making an effort to stop and read each quest, I lost interest in whatever plotline was trying to be created and ended up back to the usual 'click click click, accept accept accept...check map...run to the yellow circled areas...which mobs? Okay, kill 10 of those. Done, next?'

The warrior tanking souls have been reworked. I'm not much of a theorycrafter, especially where tanking is concerned where if my theory meets the reality of 'not enough threat' then the result will be several sad pandas. So with a broken soloing spec and outdated tanking specs my warrior alt will be on haitus until the Warrior forums collectively decide the best new specs. Even it wasn't, the desire to repeat this content over again on an alt is really not there any more.

And I think this has just been compounded by Skyrim.

Perhaps i should have avoided the PTS, but the difference between exploring in Rift and Skyrim just illustrates the superficial nature of MMOs like Rift. Exploration in Rift involves uncovering grey areas of the map until there are no more. What you might find is are some circles on the map indicating quests. Some are one time things, others being dailies. My emotional reaction to any of it was virtually non-existent. Comments like, 'oh, big rock' 'oh, that looks nice', 'ah a Guardian outpost, will need to path around some of these mobs' or 'ah another daily, I'll do that later'.

In Skyrim there is both a genuine sense of danger in traveling around on foot and a true sense of adventure just in poking around, and exploring the world. Who knows whats in the cave and what it will lead too. In Rift you know that the cave will have mobs of a certain variety and if there's anything at the end of it, perhaps you should have picked up the relevant quest first, otherwise you'll have to come back and kill all the same mobs again.

I've accepted what Rift isn't, or at least tried to reconcile with it. Yes there is no immersion, no real sense of adventure, but as a themepark raiding endgame MMO I think it is very good. But always its comes down to numbers, collecting badges and currencies and pursuing progression of your character through gear. You do dailies for the 50th time not because its fun, but for the reward, the Best in Slot rune, or ten more achievement points.

There is character progression in Skyrim, but it is not there to be gamed or min/maxed. Mobs will scale to your level so its simply about choosing how you wish to play your character, and whether to specialize, or spread your skills in order to be able to try different approaches. I've read of players completing the main questline at level 20 whereas others are level 30 and not halfway progressed along this storyline. Whether you take on the final boss (I'm assuming there will be a final showdown) at level 20 or 30, there will be a scaled challenge to suit your chosen path.

On reading other blogs I rather despair at attempts to game it. On the one hand i feel as if i'm perhaps unintelligently playing the game and should be pushing and pulling at it to extract all the failings and intricacies. On the other, it saddens me that they seem to be unable to enjoy it for what is it. I have determined to avoid all spoilers, to make character progression secondary to the plot and (i think) have been playing it as intended and the result has been that I've had and continue to have so maybe memorable experiences in this game.

So as i said in my previous entry, I play Skyrim to progress the plot rather than my character and i wonder if ever an MMO could do the same. Star Wars is reputed to have strong storylines. However each storyline will naturally have some kind of ending, yet it is an MMO and Bioware will want you to carry on playing its game. What will you be left with? I fear the answer will be a rather dated and insipid 'Wow in space'.

Perhaps these things can never be reconciled, a persistent world with motivation to resubscribe through a constantly evolving, personal storyline providing an immersive experience. Maybe the 'personal story' in Guild Wars 2 will be it. I hope so, but I'm not putting any faith in it as yet.

On Skyrim awesomeness

No reason for this other than to post some pics of my further adventures in Skyrim....

<<<<< Visual Spoilers - You have been warned >>>>>



So the Greybeards finally let me climb the mountain to see their leader, providing me with another awesome shout in the process. And it turns out he's...A Dragon. Who'd a thunk it. This conversation went on for a good half hour, but for me, proof of immersion and power of the storyline that my eyes didn't just glaze over when it comes to the lore and a bit of exposition.

I don't just kill random dragons, but it has to be said, its becoming a fairly regular occurrence.



And with the chance for screenshots like this, I'm not complaining. Lydia my housecarl doing a fine job here, her arrows still visible in his side.



A Harry Potteresque interlude at the College of Winterhold.



But even in the college we're not safe from dragon attack....



Oh hello...what's this..?
Absolutely gorgeous landscape and sunset by the way..



"So, how's the mammoth business these days? Helloo...? No?" He's a giant of few words.



Argh, another frickin dragon... ok Mr, its 1 v. 5, how do you like those odds?



Toasty.



Thanks Mr Giant dude. Sorry about your mammoths by the way...



Killing bandits beneath the aurora borealis.



Has he seen me yet..?



Ext. Outside a cave.

Lydia: Oh, a cave. I wonder what's inside...

Int. Inside a cave.

Lydia: I don't like the look of this.

Me either... very scary moment further in.

and lastly,



So much awesome going on in this shot. Kiting this dragon up the hill in search of cover and vantage points for my bow we barrel into a random bear. Who is Vuljotnaak? He bought it like all the others (with a little help from the bear) but I'm not sure of his significance as yet.

So there we are. I'm level 15 and have a mountain of main and side quests. This game is still amazing and exciting me at every turn. I'm driven to progress the plot rather than my character which is just such a nice break from MMOs where its always the opposite and I'm blissfully unaware of how far into the game I am. So despite all the complaints (my thoughts largely echoed through the blogosphere), its still very much a 5 star game for me.

Happy adventuring Dovakhin....

On what's wrong with Skyrim

Metacritic has Skyrim at 96/100 and the broadsheets give it gushing 5 star reviews. Despite this, in the blogosphere many commentators have concentrated on its faults. Nils in particular using two posts to outline the many issues that detract from his enjoyment of the game, yet in his third stating that Skyrim could be possibly the best RPG of the last ten years.

Can a game perceived as this good, really have this many problems and still be worthy of 5 stars? And does one overriding positive factor outweigh all the negatives?

So lets go through those negatives in the order of the most jarring as i have found them. (applies to the PC version)

1. Its a lazy port from the console.

The menu system is designed for console controllers and is not particularly intuitive or optimized for PC users. Whether its my grounding in MMO's expecting certain ways of doing things, but Bethesda failed to take advantage of the mouse and keyboard. The default mouse sensitivity is also set to a bizarre setting and actually persists in the initial game launch menus. Buried in the manual is a way to hotkey different favourite items, but the default settings expects you to turn the combat in game into a series of events broken by the pause button as you switch from ranged to melee, or stop to drink a healing potion mid-fight.

2. Animations, glitches and jumping.

I personally cannot believe they allowed the game to be released with such a poorly done jumping mechanic. Whether you can jump up onto something in front of you is a complete lottery, more often than not landing on the side of it, then slowly sliding back down. This has lead me to a general strategy of running, hammering the jump key and shouting at the screen to scale anything in game. The jumping animation itself is also woeful, feeling more like you've temporarily strapped a jet-pack to yourself as you slide, knees bent about against the scenery.

3. Skilling up, gaming it and leveling to become weaker.

Is this an issue? Its easy not to be aware of it with no real stats or numbers floating up screen a la MMOs. It seems the only reason to level up, being as it is unavoidable is make sure as you level that your ability to kill monsters increases with it.

I'm still on the fence on this issue. Its not as if most MMOs handle this particularly well either. In Wow or Rift, a linear questing path gives you on level mobs where the actual difficulty of mob killing never really changes. You become strong enough to kill the next set of monsters.

Of course where Rift and Wow often get this wrong is in allowing you to outlevel the content and then have the player choose to either skip quests to keep to the experience/hr sweetspot or continue to clear content that becomes increasingly too easy.
In Skyrim it appears that there is no way to make a particular quest easier. (other than to restart on an easier difficulty setting) If you find yourself stuck in a dungeon, abandon it for now, level up some more and come back, you'll only find that the mobs have leveled with you. You could concentrate on leveling something combat orientated, but this would still affect your overall level and this appears to be the scaling on which the mobs are based.

4. Stilted NPCs, 'ask a stupid question' dialogue.

Bethesda seem to have created animations for NPCs when walking around, but as soon as you stop them to talk or they talk amongst themselves they become like statues with only lip movement actually indicating who is speaking. I actually spent a large proportion of time in dialogue with three hooded characters talking to the wrong acolyte instead of the leader by mistake, until i realized the second expressionless figure was who i should be looking at.

Its very easy too, to pan the camera to an NPC to initiate conversations and have them spend the next few minutes talking to the back of your head. Its a shame in both these areas that they didn't create more animations and gestures while in conversation and a simple auto-adjusting rotation to have the player talk face to face with the NPC, but i don't perceive this as game breaking.

On the 'ask a stupid' question issue. You at least often have the choice of responses and i personally accept this as a limitation of the genre.

5. Inventory management issues.

Unlike many MMO's which give mobs a loot table from which to generate items for loot, their clothes often being mysteriously unlootable. Every humanoid npc will cough up their full set of armor, weapons, coins and potions and its very easy to hit your burden threshold. This happens right at the start of the game if you loot everything on the way out of Helgen. The first time you'll have to sell any of it is a walk to Riverwood. Often in game I've found myself trying to knockout a bunch of similarly located quests and having to throw away valuable loot in order to carry on, being miles away from a trader. There aren't many general traders either, unlike in Wow where any vendor/trainer/landlord will buy all of your junk no matter what it is, most vendors will only trade items of the type that they sell. Is this annoying? Yes. Game breaking? No. Immersion breaking? Definitely not.

And i think this is key.
None of these faults break immersion. The open world exploration, the not knowing what you will come across and the temptation to then go and explore it. The sheer beauty of the landscape (its almost impossible to take a bad screenshot). The immersion you feel in your character and the world...If you're coming from an MMO like Wow or Rift these things are what's been missing if you've ever felt that nagging dissatisfaction. It is something i've always felt playing Rift. The lack of desire to read quest texts because frankly it adds nothing to the experience compared to knowing the reason for every quest in Skyrim.

The rewards for exploration compared to the on rails leveling path. Ok in Rift there are mountain cairns to find, but these simply play out as just another quest to be done at the optimum time for the level of the reward and this linearity persists all the way to level cap and beyond.

The music. Compared to Rift's synthesised short attempts to create atmosphere, the music in Skyrim is lush, memorable and evocative. A comparison of the two games shows just how important music is to game immersion. I feel virtually no immersion in Rift. The only zone where i even begin to feel it is in Silverwood where some of the music matches the setting and you for once have the feeling of a fantasy world to discover and enjoy.

So, with Bethesda managing to get these key things right. The things that many MMO players have been crying out for in their themepark, Big mac and fries, empty calorie MMOs, this much in itself is worth five stars, regardless of any faults. In fact i wonder just how many more faults this game could have before i could stop loving it?

On Skyrim, first impressions

In a word, wow. I am very impressed with this game. For me its living up to its hype. Not without a few reservations here and there but this is a hugely impressive, immersive RPG.

Quests come thick and fast and the player is free to do whatever they desire and can be both rewarded or punished for experimentation.

Upon seeing a horse outside an inn just outside the city walls, i choose to risk hopping onto it and quickly riding off with it, i was stopped by a guard and challenged to either come quietly or die for my troubles. Well as i was mounted and he wasn't, as quick getaway seemed in order and dodging arrows I rode off, looking backward for my pursuer only to go over the edge of a cliff and kill my poor steed.

Later, given the task of killing the leader of a bandit camp, i was stealthing around the perimeter pondering the best way to take down the guards, when behind me, to my rather embarrassing lack of awareness appeared two giant Mammoths. Aha! with a shot from my bow in the mammoth's general direction, some back pedalling towards the camp as they charged, followed by darting behind a rock, i was able to watch and smile as the Mammoths made short work of the bandits, allowing me to venture inside.

Fun times.

Some Q&A's based on pre-release concerns.

Motion sickness?

Not really. It is something that can affect me in games with first person view, but most of my time was spent in 3rd person, only moving into FPV for combat.

Ugly avatars?

No, the character creation process is pretty extensive allowing you to adjust many facial parameters, skin tones for different parts of the face, markings, tattoos etc.

well, see for yourself, this is my effort: Kali the Nord ,Dealer of Death...

On Skyrim, one day to go...

So Skyrim will hopefully be dropping through my mailbox tomorrow (no later than 1pm)...

What race to play though...

The basic gameplay choices appear to be between your Mage / Rogue / Warrior archetypal abilities with the various starting racial traits providing benefits in varying degrees to each.

Although a player will specialize through their actions in game it appears to be important to pick the right race for the style of gameplay that appeals to you the most. There's nothing stopping you playing a more magicka leaning race as a sword n' board slugger of course, but the game is so huge that whichever character you settle on you'd better me happy with for the next 300hrs of gameplay. At least as a 'main'. How far the game lends itself to alts and replayability remains to be seen.

So a quick rough and ready summation of the races.

Altmer: Strong mage feel.
Bosmer : poison and disease resistance - ranged and thiefy
Dunmer: appears to hybrid between magic and some stealthing abilities, perhaps masters of illusion.
Breton: Magic and healing
Imperial: Sword n Board, tanky
Nord: Damage dealing warrior
Redguard: ranged and one handed, feels a little hybridy.
Argonian: stealthy, thiefy
Khajiit: stealthy, ranged and thiefy.
Orc: warriors, berserkers.

It appears Altmer would be the best choice for strongly favouring magic, with Breton being an alternative. Rogues are spoilt for choice between Bosmer, Argonian, Khajiit and Dunmer, with the melee choices being between degrees of attack and defense.

Personally i'm split between a High Elf Altmer and a Nord. Rogues have always been a 3rd or 4th alt for me in MMO's although stealthy takedowns are always fun.

From the screenshots so far of the races, i must admit that most don't look all that visually appealing, if undeniably in keeping with the overall graphical feel of the game. Perhaps this is not so much of an issue given the game is designed to be played from the first person perspective. 3rd person will still be an option though and one i will probably make use of, if only for some relief from the 'floaty' hands effect that tends to plaque first person perspectives.

Anyway, happy Skyriming (!) tomorrow. I will post some screenshots and initial impressions if i can tear myself away from it.

On what i'll be blogging about

Just a fairly short post to give a little history and what i'm planning to blog about now and in the future.

My current MMO is Rift and will probably make up the majority of posts until....

Skyrim releases on 11/11/11 and which i'm planning to delve into and attempt to 'finish'. Thats if its now actually even possible for me to play single player RPGs without the MMO bit. (hint. failed to finish Mass Effect 2).

Diablo III! ah yes. Very much looking forward to this and hoping 'early' 2012 actually means what it says. Which class i will choose to level up first currently changing on a daily basis. Today: Monk... no, Demon Hunter...

Planning to actually avoid SW:TOR as all indications to me point to either a huge flop, or at best something fairly short-lived. Not particularly invested in the Star Wars IP and the prospect of spending rather a lot of money on what looks to be, lets be honest 'Wow in space'. Of course one can change one's mind, and the critical mass if people playing a game is a very powerful thing. But i remain to be convinced.

Guild Wars 2...'when its ready'. An MMO which looks to be genuinely pushing some things forward. It could replace Rift for me but trying to keep my expectations in check.

Wow. I've recently knocked together a trial account and have been spend a few minutes here and there leveling up various alts in the starter zones. I left Wow just prior to Cataclysm (mainly for personal reasons of spending too much time in it) My distaste for the revamped Azeroth was clear though, and being very much on the 'achiever' end of the spectrum, seeing so many of my achievements wiped off the board both a) grated and b) rather starkly illuminated the whole hamster wheel, pointlessness of it.

However time has past and many of these zones are simply 'new' rather than 'different'. And its interesting to note the changes and to be honest, kiddification (is that a word?) of the content. I'm vaguely tempted to invest more time in it, but also very much aware of the time sinking commitment it would inevitably become (lets do the 25 exalted reps achievement again!) I've also noted the fact of in neither of these starter zone experiences have i had the opportunity to speak to another player (Blizzard now instead provide a helpful companion NPC saying 'hey player, its this way to the giant ! on your map,' for all your interaction needs) and i can imagine this may be the case now all the way to level cap.

Anyway not to get into Wow too much and abuse the concept of 'short post'. I've also had a look into World of Tanks and may post something on that if i can get into it a little more (two matches, one swift death, the other a game crash)

Mainly, although i know this is not particularly original content and the insights will not be all that novel, i have been desiring to actually put my thoughts down coherently, and to speak in paragraphs, rather than sentences, as it were. And well, dear reader (single/plural/imaginary...) if no one reads it, then it is at least a dear diary and one can always look back and laugh, or despair...

On progression and a social guild hemorrhaging raiders

So tonight was cool. One of those nights where all the dramas and difficulties of raiding pale into the background and remind you why you bother.

In the new raiding guild that i've moved my 'main' to we tackled Greenscale's Blight, getting to 4/5 with the big cuddly Greenscale himself down to 11% before calling it a night. The 1st and 3rd bosses were downed on the first attempt and the 2nd on the 2nd ;) all to much cheering and joyous celebration.

In some ways GSB is actually easier than the ten man slivers, and certainly more enjoyable in many aspects. Always nice as well to have found a use for all 5 of my specs in one raid, going from Cabalist aoe on trash, to Shammy melee DPS, to hybrid ranged healing and pure MT healing.

After the raid tho, i switched to an alt and got chatting to the GM of my 'old' guild and found out that two more members had quit the guild in search of raiding opportunities elsewhere. Even as we were talking another member announced on the guild channel that he too was doing the same and waved bye bye.

After our previous GM had decided it was time to go, his decision also swayed mine in deciding to also look elsewhere for 20man raids figuring like he did, that our guild would never achieve the critical mass that it takes to get 20 members online and raid ready of a night.

I also bought another guild member with me into the test raid i ran with my new guild and they also decided to join. (for him personally, a good decision i think given his obvious ability beyond the average of our current members. (This is something that i want to talk about more in depth in a separate post)).

All in all, we lost 4 in the last week or so, including me and another 3 tonight, all from a guild that was often struggling to have enough players to raid the 10mans, let alone the 20s.

In chatting to the GM i struggled to think what to say, knowing that i was also a part of this exodus. Everyone who leaves guilds for this reason, will use the same line: 'all my alts are staying, so i'm not going forever...'
I'm trying myself to make that an actuality, rather than a throwaway sop to your friends you've decided to dessert, but its very hard to balance being in separate guilds (something that GW2 will have an interesting take on, allowing multiple guild memberships on the same alt).

Perhaps this was an inevitable occurrence for a 'social' guild. where once players decide to start raiding, the differences come to light and those who enjoy and then desire progression have to decide whether they're prepared to wait and attempt to gear up more players, or see it as unlikely to ever happen and look elsewhere. And then once a few players leave, they see the raid night's progression going backwards and even more struggles just to get 10 players online to raid and their departure then must be pretty much assured.

Tanking duty will now fall to the GM and probably myself on my warrior alt, and although we're both competent enough for it i don't think its particularly something either of us wanted. Him doing it because he's GM, me as i don't want to lose this guild and if they are going to raid, then i should be taking part in it. And as a tank, knowing the encounters we should at least give the runs a fighting chance of some success.

I don't know what the answer is for social guild. But building it up again with new members (of which there are plenty of levelers who will inevitably hit level cap very soon in Rift) and then, like allowing birds to fly the nest, do we expect them inevitably to fly away once they've been weened on the beginner 10mans? Or turning your guild into something its not, just to run raids every night because after all, what else is there to do?