Saturday, August 05, 2023
Friday, August 04, 2023
It's TiPalia time!
On the fourth day of Blaugust 2023... something something something... Tipa shares some thoughts on Palia's closed beta. It's TiPalia time!
Tipa starts out comparing Palia to Free Realms:
"Free Realms, in particular, I miss. Like Gatheryn (which won’t really mean anything because I doubt few ever actually played it), Free Realms was a collection of minigames that were based off popular arcade games and casual PC/Mobile games." - Tipa
Well I happen to be one of the folks that did play Free Realms (see my tagged posts) but I have no idea what Gatheryn is/was. I started skeptical with Free Realms but then enjoyed a few hours before throwing my hands up at the number of times the game asked for a credit card (oh SOE how I miss ragging on you -- little did we know you were just ahead of your time).
Tipa continues to discuss how Palia is less "do anything you want" like Free Realms and more guided as someone would expect from a traditional theme park MMORPG. Players get quests and go about the non-combat equivalent of "kill ten rats" (Palia has no combat outside of hunting creatures like deer).
From the quests players move onto gathering materials to then build various things on their plot. Building things requires materials, blueprints, and time. Lots of time from Tipa's account. As Palia described the game after her initial few hours:
But right now, just a couple hours in, it reminds me most of EverQuest 2’s crafting. You go outside and mine, gather, fish and hunt, then do some crafting.I have some more general thoughts on Palia which I am debating whether to share. Why am I debating? Because I got my closed beta invite this morning so figure I would be best served to actually try it before saying anything further (even though my comments are out there in various places).
Thursday, August 03, 2023
Perilous MMO Tropes
The posts:
First; these are all great bathroom reads. Second; Roger is an amazing blogger. Platitudes out of the way let's get to the tropes.
“The MMO genre is rife with its own set of tropes; recurring themes and motifs that have become established and ubiquitous. All of which are ideal material for a hastily produced, lazily conceived, recurring blog post”.
Death
If there is an MMO trope that encapsulates the history of MMOs it is certainly death mechanics. In Roger's post he covers the history of death in MMORPGs: from the "corpse runs" of early games like Everquest to the modern "Death is now treated as a minor penalty that temporarily inconveniences you." as Roger puts it.
In my older age (40+) I tend to lean towards the modern inconvenience approach and I think it is appropriate for today's market. Every year it seems like a new MMO project gets started talking about the "good ole' days" of corpse runs and death penalties. None of those MMOs end up going anywhere.
Death, as outlined by Roger, is a "means by which to teach the player that they’re doing something wrong and that they need to rethink their strategy." Slapping a penalty on top of that creates friction and friction is what frustrates players. Frustrated players don't stick around to play a game because there is a dozen other games on the market that will better respect their time.
Losing is enough of a penalty for most players. Games would be wise to let us take our lump and get on playing again.
Running All the Way
Running is an MMO trope and like Death it has a history with MMOs. Large worlds and long travel times were a feature in the early days. Now long travel times are just an inconvenience. Roger makes a solid point when looking at single player games.
"Single player games seem to handle travel differently and certainly have some advantages. I envy the fact that a game like Grand Theft Auto V or Red Dead Redemption 2 provide the players with access to public transport."
The answer for MMOs doesn't always have to be to add mounts and "public transport" is a great concept. Some games do it; there were flight paths in World of Warcraft that are the equivalent of Roger's Red Dead Redemption 2 reference "riding the train between towns in RDR2 as it is very restful and highlights for a few minutes the detail of the open world."
Public transport or player-controlled mounts (which are really just faster travel) the key is the same as death: don't add friction. Friction will piss gamers off and they will walk (ha!) from the game. There are too many great games on the market to be bored to death traveling in a game.
"Kill Ten Rats" and Fetch Quests
I almost spit out my coffee when I read this:
"The MMORPG genre is a curious subset of video games. Not only is it predicated on violence against the individual, institutions and “others”, as so many video games are but also species-specific genocide and general mass extinction of fauna and flora."
There is no truer statement to encapsulate what modern MMORPGs expect of their players. Most games are designed around the concept of wiping out entire generations of enemies and then doing it all over again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And... you get the idea: grind!
Some may not know this but Ultima Online launched originally with a model where "mobs" were limited and once killed they didn't just respawn. If a deer was killed and harvest that was it. In addition there was a predator/prey system; kill a rabbit and a wolf goes hungry. Kill the wolf and rabbits could take over the world.
As you may expect it didn't last long. Player's killed everything in sight and the system fell apart to be replaced by the never-ending respawn system that is the norm.
In regards to "kill ten rats" I do have a personal preference. I would like to see game focus more on smaller but more difficult encounters. Leave the "kill waves of enemies in a single blow" to the Path of Exile's of the world. Move away from grinding endless respawns of the same creature. Instead make me work to defeat one enemy and figure out a way to still reward me for trying even if I die.
Wednesday, August 02, 2023
From mastodon.social to gamepad.club
My Mastodon account @heartlessgamer@mastodon.social is now moved to @heartlessgamer@gamepad.club
I am digging this Fediverse thing and being able to move around and keep followers as I go!
Gamer Lady Plays New World
I am happy to say that Amazon has made some significant changes to New World and I’m pleasantly surprised at how much fun I’ve been having.
Gamer Lady is still in the leveling process (level 38) so is not in the end game loops. She is also going through the updated main story quest which she is giving positive nods towards. Personally I didn't like the changed questline as it's very different than the original, but glad to see others enjoying it.
I also have to chuckle a bit as early in the post she explains "you’ll know that inventory management is a big deal for me when it comes to enjoying a game" and then later "The gear drops also feel generous and I’ve been able to pick up and try out every type of weapon in the game as I’ve done quests."
Oh my sweet summer child! Eventually that generosity of drops turns into inventory management hell as in the end game New World drops so much crap that takes up space and has to be dealt with that there is no doubt a number of players that have quit over having to deal with inventory management!
Anyways; Blaugust rolls on. Jump over and say hey to Gamer Lady.
Tuesday, August 01, 2023
On the first day of Blaugust... new bloggers!
On the first day of Blaugust my true love gave to me... a brand new blogger! Part of Blaugust is to encourage other's to get into blogging. So today I rolled the dice and scrolled down the Blaugust "newbie" list to find a participant just getting their feet wet.
That brought me to BogusMeatFactory and their blog The Video Game Obscura. You can read their introduction blog post here. And what do we have here...
So what does an overly optimistic enthusiast that still plays video games breaching forty years old care about?
Yes! Another 40 something game blogger! Welcome to the freaking club BogusMeatFactory.
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