"There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into"
- Robert Heinlein, Methuselah's Children
I will likely watch Cloud Atlas. I do enjoy expansive, possibly surrealist imagery. However, I think I'll forego my usual determination to read the book before I watch the adaptation. It's simply not likely to be worth the trouble.
I am citing the same creeping dread I felt before I saw Prometheus (and the irony of the two titles is not lost on me) regarding the religious overtones of the concept. While Hollywood is one of the least religious places that's ever existed - seriously, crosses are not better displayed on a lavish pillow of silicone - they can smell money, and the great Earthican public will pay through the nose for the hollow delusions of religious indoctrination. Hollywood's emanations largely blow in the wind broken by public opinion.
Now, this may seem somewhat hypocritical from someone who spends his time in escapist fantasies. I love mythology. There is almost endless artistic value in the myriad supernatural shapes birthed by human imagination in its desperate search for meaning and reassurance. This does not extend however to an acceptance of the idiotic, slavish, sheepish, primitive premise of divinity as a real foundation for any system of thought. There is a difference between promoting the human spirit or the spiritus sancti. There is a difference between the humanist exploration of the moral possibilities of a supernatural taint to the natural - and outright swallowing the communion wafer.
There was a quite recent time when we still seemed capable of telling the difference. Some years back, after his crowd-pleasing (and me-pleasing) success as Wolverine in the X-Men movies, Hugh Jackman starred in an excellent romance drama fantasy flick titled The Fountain, replete with religious imagery both occidental, oriental and... I dunno, I think martian? It details a fight against mortality itself, in three different time periods by the same two characters, one active one passive. This notion of lovers meeting in various reincarnations and situations across history is hardly new in literature. Superficially, it is the same basic setup as Cloud Atlas.
However, the bits of advertising I've seen of Cloud Atlas paint a fairly conventional religious image of immortality, of a 'soul' being beaten into a god-pleasing shape by external forces. The Fountain's protagonist on the other hand transcends his nature through personal choice. He rages against the dying of the light. He would pluck the fruit of the tree of life not as some pre-ordained action or a paltry reward for genuflecting and paying his church dues but as the act of a sentient being which recognizes that without sentience there is no value and the value created by sentience stands above the limitations of taboos. When he finally surrenders himself he does so not at the whim of a tribal patron god or even a generalized pantheistic deity but because of his re-evaluation of the natural order of things. Though it may even be interpreted as simple defeat before the implacable force of entropy, one thing it is not is kow-towing before brainless superstition.
I am perhaps unduly troubled by Cloud Atlas' theistic leanings because I've recently watched Life of Pi, another display of fantastic imagery mostly revolving around mortality. All three movies have good directors. As pieces of cinema history, they are all worth keeping at the very least for the, well, cinematography. Good art may sometimes promote bad ideas however and nothing excuses the glorification of blind faith shown by Pi all throughout the story. Yes, it is true that gods sometimes make better stories than the drab reality of human exploitation of other humans but one is no substitute for the other. Insanity is not sanity. No matter how terrible the events of Pi's life, his retreat into the self-delusion of divine purpose should be treated as what it is: a mental illness. Greater than all his losses is the loss of self, the loss of his own potential in his need for external justifications for his experiences. A man who could have tempered himself through his trials into a diamond mind like the hero in The Fountain is instead allowed to rot to hollowness, the better to echo the mumblings and chantings of religious puppet-masters.
I started this post with a quote. It refers to an event in Methuselah's Children where human explorers find a planet which professes to house an honest-to-goodness deity. When one of the travellers attempts to pay the holy being a visit however it drives him insane, a la Cthulhu. The quote comes much later, at the end of the book when the hero declares his intent to revisit the planet someday centuries hence when he has grown like unto a god himself and barge in on that unknowable deity to demand satisfaction. This is the appropriate attitude to have even if we do ever run across something we think might be a god. If we are small, let us grow, if we are weak let's strengthen ourselves. There is no knowledge which cannot be set to reason and if our capacity for reason is not yet great enough to grasp all knowledge, cowering beneath the safety-blanket of blind belief represents inexcusable backsliding. You are a mind, your self is your own reality, the totality of subjective existence. If you are dull, sharpen yourself, if you are carbon, contract to diamond, if you are a snowflake, become an avalanche.
If you are mortal, become immortal. Buy yourself some time until you can poke your nose into that room with the un-knowable god.
_______________________
addendum: My fears concerning Cloud Atlas were eventually proven false.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Monday, March 25, 2013
My MMManifesto
Here it is at last: the summary of my vision of a persistent world, a truly massive multiplayer game. Though i may add side notes in the future, i'm finally ready to compile what i've been saying for years. Details may vary depending on budget, setting, game engine limitations or other specifics, but these are the ground rules. Games are not to be considered MMOs if they fail to live up to this list.
Points 1-8 are must-haves. 9-12 are simply major improvements.
1. The world is the game.
The one feature which sets a persistent world apart from smaller FPS, RTS or RPGs is the persistent world itself and it is that feature which must be exploited to its fullest potential. All other components must be re-interpreted in terms of their influence on the landscape. The draw of a persistent world is taking part in the developing story of the conflicts and advancements of a community of thousands of players, not individual self-aggrandizement. The focus must be taken off performing tasks for immediate reward and shifted onto further goals requiring interaction. The various individual player actions like killing each other, harvesting resources, crafting or killing monsters should have no reward in themselves, but should only be useful in creating a place in the game world for that player.
Components which are treated as separate minigames traditionally must be made to interact. In its simplest form, this is interdependency: combatants must be dependent on gear made by crafters who must be dependent on resource gatherers who must depend on protection from combatants. All player activity must occupy the same game world. There should be almost no 'safe-zones' for resource gathering and no instantly joining PvP arenas from anywhere in the game world. The goal is a network of player communities, tribes, clans or guilds which have an actual presence on the game map, each controlling a smaller or larger portion of it. Between these there can be room for soloers, tourists, bandits and vagrants, but those can only have meaning once stable communities form.
Teleportation and instancing should be heavily restricted. It should be used only as a last resort to keep players from getting stuck somewhere, a 'return' spell to the only safe zone, the starter city, or maybe to one single destination of the player's choice. Everything in the game, quest locations, objects or players, must have an actual presence in it, interacting with other components. Players hunting monsters should be able to get killed by other players. Monsters should interfere when they hear sounds of combat nearby. Objects should have weight/bulk limitations and require players to actively transport them across the map. The landscape itself should have some degree of mutability susceptible to player influence whether in the form of building houses and entire cities, depopulating or deforesting whole regions, or simply blowing a crater into the game map.
2. No treadmill.
A persistent world should not include any mechanics which artificially delay or prevent participation in the events of that world. First off, this means no exponential character advancement. A top-skill, top-geared character should be no more than a degree of magnitude stronger than a starter character and the target power difference between relatively new and relatively well-developed characters should be closer to two-fold. They should be able to cooperate in mutually beneficial activities.
There should be no levels to progress through, only individual skills to develop through use. Levels segregate players when a persistent world should be encouraging them to build interconnected, interdependent communities.
Individual gear should never be presented as a goal in itself, as bragging rights, but only a means to an end, a tool in competing or cooperating with others. The world is persistent. Player activity is continual. There is no 'end-game'.
3. PvP drives player action.
Conflict between player groups is not only an excellent motivator to keep them engaged, but being less predictable it helps keep the gameplay from getting stale. The greatest events in the game should be the building of cities and their destruction. The game engine must allow for hundreds of players to fight in the same space while remaining smooth and playable. The game should be PvP-centered, with players having no protection from each other except in starter zones. Any law should be created by the players.
In order for PvP to mean anything however it can only be the means to an end, the way to gain control over resources in the game world. It can never be limited to only griefing other players as they try to advance their characters and it can never be limited to arena combat which does not impact the rest of the game.
Never reward players directly for killing each other, aside from looting each others corpses, which should be slightly limited in itself to prevent banditry from being entirely more profitable than industry.
PvP must be frequent and on a large enough scale that resource-gatherers, crafters and strategists can be fully involved in the game without directly participating in PvP on any regular basis, without firing a shot, by simply cooperating with combatants, providing them with production, transportation etc.
4. PvE serves as background.
The world should not be packed with monsters just waiting to be killed. Without levels, the central role of PvE shifts from experience-farming to resource acquisition. Mobs can either be resources themselves or frustrate players' attempts to get resources. They serve as obstacles or skill practice or both. They should move freely within their habitat and react in believable ways, not simply jump on players' swords.
NPC respawn timers should be on the order of tens of minutes, not seconds. Mob populations should shift according to environmental factors and player actions. It should be possible both to clear all mobs from an area for half a day or so or conversely for unchecked monster populations to grow large enough to threaten player settlements.
Also, PvE should never be limited to hunting monsters for body parts. They should be more than moving crafting resources. Taming, enslaving or allying with NPCs should be a frequent part of the game.
One of the main uses of PvE is providing content when/where the player population is too thin for meaningful PvP. Though large-scale encounters are important, there should always be accessible solo content as well. Take measures however to prevent effortless repetitive grinding from becoming a substitute for coordinated multiplayer activities.
Do not give fully-functional rewards from killing NPCs. The reward should never be immediate, but usable in other activities in the game.
Quests, when used very sparsely, help vary gameplay a bit and should be a small part of the game experience.
Instancing should almost never be used. Exceptions might include some form of instanced player housing to lessen overcrowding, and very large very complex scripted raids which would be too open to griefing. However, instances should never be a regular part of either solo or group gameplay. PvP should never be instanced.
5. Crafting and trading hold the world together
The most important forms of interaction are indirect. Functions which are handled automatically by most games like the creation, repair and transfer of goods must be made dependent on players. All but the most basic usable goods should be crafted, and usable resources should be acquired in the world at large, not simply bought from NPC vendors in the safety of a town.
One of the reasons to avoid teleportation is to give resources and items an actual presence in the game world, as weight and bulk to be moved. Give players the means and motivation to cooperate and compete in creating trade routes and hubs. Create the means and necessity for moving bulk amounts of materials and items across the game world, vulnerable to attack.
Resources should not be completely static. Resource nodes should be large, designed for exploitation by groups of players, but finite, preventing them from giving too much of an advantage to those who secure them. Nodes should respawn rarely enough that entire areas of the game world can be barren for days on end.
All items, from ammunition to houses to entire cities, should be crafted by players. There should be no fully-finished, usable loot drops from mobs or 'treasure chests' or mission completions.
Items should never be 'bound' to a particular character. Even if they are not usable without a certain skill setup, anyone should be able to handle anything, to facilitate trading.
No player should be able to be self-sufficient. Crafting skills should be interdependent and costly to maintain so that no player can gear himself. Send them to the market.
6. No legitimized cheating.
Player effort drives the game. No players should be allowed to circumvent that effort. All players pay the same amount of money. All players get the same in-game resources. No microtransactions. No account 'upgrades'. Though it is nearly impossible to police multiple accounts, the game mechanics should be created to prevent having more than one account from being useful enough to justify the expense. This means character actions should never be automated, preventing 'heal bots' or 'crafting alts' from being useful and skill gain should be fluid enough to pre-empt the need for alternate characters.
Botting, real-money-trading and user interface modifications should all be banned without exception.
7. Identity matters.
Persistent worlds are formed of interconnected communities. Building a reputation is part of the game. Players should not be able to escape their own poor image by switching names or characters. Identity must be stable.
Each player should have only one character. There should be no classes. Do not try to force 'replay value' by developing multiple characters in a world where interaction is the main issue. Players should be able to re-skill their character as they wish, with relatively small time constraints on the order of a few hours of gameplay.
Logging off should not be a means to immediately avoid retribution and players should never be allowed to switch characters to avoid recognition. If multiple characters are allowed, a single account ID must be publicly displayed to allow record-keeping.
Facilitate record-keeping through the game interface, allowing players to create personal notes about each other, friendlists, blacklists, kill lists and any other ways to easily discern friend from foe.
8. Arbitrate.
No matter how good the system is, its weaknesses will be exploited. The pretence of objectivity, the delusion of a self-regulating system only punishes the few honest individuals. Game-masters must have the power to make draconian decisions to curb the power of griefers and cheaters.
On a larger scale, any player faction which threatens to completely crowd out competition should be dealt with artificially, by weakening it or strengthening its enemies. This divine intervention does not imply collusion of GMs with player groups. Do not fall into favoritism.
9. Throw wrenches in the works.
Unpredictability and variation keep things interesting. Frustration is better than boredom.
Every once in a while, fiddle with the stats on some monster. Give goblins fire immunity for a month then make them susceptible to it for another. Cause a volcano to rise out of the middle of the game map, sink an island, double the dodo bird's aggro radius.
This should never extend to utter chaos but every month or so, something should change in the world.
10. Don't round unnecessarily.
You don't need ten commandments where nine can say it all. You don't need a superfluous tenth playable race in the game if you can't think of unique game mechanics to justify it. If 100 damage is overpowered, don't nerf it to 50, try 93 or 86. Magic spells don't need to last exactly five minutes or half an hour; why not seven-minute blessings and thirteen-minute curses? Playable characters do not need to be the same size or move at the same speed. Not all weapons should be exactly the size of an ideal phallic symbol. Give players both ten-foot-poles and killer toothpicks.
Balance, but do not homogenize.
11. The customer is usually wrong.
Do not pander. Every change made to the game must make sense in context. Do not spend time implementing extraneous features. Do not unbalance the game unnecessarily because of whiny little brats on your forums. Every decision should be made rationally by the development team. Never simply bow to popular demand.
Do not cater to macho cretins. Your game does not need female armor with no chest protection or male characters with bulging muscles. Not every monster needs to be gigantic to make the player feel big for killing it. Preserve proportion; it will only make the few truly big objects in the game world seem that much bigger.
12. Aesthetics are not limited to a triangle count.
An online game will never be as immersive as its single-player counterpart and it doesn't need to be as pretty. An MMOs graphics must convey information about the world around the player quickly and clearly in addition to providing enthralling visuals. Do not make unreasonable hardware demands of players' systems. Do not use the latest gimmick. Use a tried-and-true, stable game engine.
Do not allow glitz to overshadow utility.
Do use distinctive visuals. Don't just be another elves vs. orcs game. Do not limit yourself to fireballs and castles or lasers and warp drives.
Do use distinctive audio. Sound is not just filler. Hire a good composer who can convey meaning through the audio tracks for different situations and areas of the game world.
Write. Create a well fleshed-out world without too detailed a history. The players will make history, but they must do so within a logical framework.
NPCs, as limited as their role is, must have believable dialogue.
Points 1-8 are must-haves. 9-12 are simply major improvements.
1. The world is the game.
The one feature which sets a persistent world apart from smaller FPS, RTS or RPGs is the persistent world itself and it is that feature which must be exploited to its fullest potential. All other components must be re-interpreted in terms of their influence on the landscape. The draw of a persistent world is taking part in the developing story of the conflicts and advancements of a community of thousands of players, not individual self-aggrandizement. The focus must be taken off performing tasks for immediate reward and shifted onto further goals requiring interaction. The various individual player actions like killing each other, harvesting resources, crafting or killing monsters should have no reward in themselves, but should only be useful in creating a place in the game world for that player.
Components which are treated as separate minigames traditionally must be made to interact. In its simplest form, this is interdependency: combatants must be dependent on gear made by crafters who must be dependent on resource gatherers who must depend on protection from combatants. All player activity must occupy the same game world. There should be almost no 'safe-zones' for resource gathering and no instantly joining PvP arenas from anywhere in the game world. The goal is a network of player communities, tribes, clans or guilds which have an actual presence on the game map, each controlling a smaller or larger portion of it. Between these there can be room for soloers, tourists, bandits and vagrants, but those can only have meaning once stable communities form.
Teleportation and instancing should be heavily restricted. It should be used only as a last resort to keep players from getting stuck somewhere, a 'return' spell to the only safe zone, the starter city, or maybe to one single destination of the player's choice. Everything in the game, quest locations, objects or players, must have an actual presence in it, interacting with other components. Players hunting monsters should be able to get killed by other players. Monsters should interfere when they hear sounds of combat nearby. Objects should have weight/bulk limitations and require players to actively transport them across the map. The landscape itself should have some degree of mutability susceptible to player influence whether in the form of building houses and entire cities, depopulating or deforesting whole regions, or simply blowing a crater into the game map.
2. No treadmill.
A persistent world should not include any mechanics which artificially delay or prevent participation in the events of that world. First off, this means no exponential character advancement. A top-skill, top-geared character should be no more than a degree of magnitude stronger than a starter character and the target power difference between relatively new and relatively well-developed characters should be closer to two-fold. They should be able to cooperate in mutually beneficial activities.
There should be no levels to progress through, only individual skills to develop through use. Levels segregate players when a persistent world should be encouraging them to build interconnected, interdependent communities.
Individual gear should never be presented as a goal in itself, as bragging rights, but only a means to an end, a tool in competing or cooperating with others. The world is persistent. Player activity is continual. There is no 'end-game'.
3. PvP drives player action.
Conflict between player groups is not only an excellent motivator to keep them engaged, but being less predictable it helps keep the gameplay from getting stale. The greatest events in the game should be the building of cities and their destruction. The game engine must allow for hundreds of players to fight in the same space while remaining smooth and playable. The game should be PvP-centered, with players having no protection from each other except in starter zones. Any law should be created by the players.
In order for PvP to mean anything however it can only be the means to an end, the way to gain control over resources in the game world. It can never be limited to only griefing other players as they try to advance their characters and it can never be limited to arena combat which does not impact the rest of the game.
Never reward players directly for killing each other, aside from looting each others corpses, which should be slightly limited in itself to prevent banditry from being entirely more profitable than industry.
PvP must be frequent and on a large enough scale that resource-gatherers, crafters and strategists can be fully involved in the game without directly participating in PvP on any regular basis, without firing a shot, by simply cooperating with combatants, providing them with production, transportation etc.
4. PvE serves as background.
The world should not be packed with monsters just waiting to be killed. Without levels, the central role of PvE shifts from experience-farming to resource acquisition. Mobs can either be resources themselves or frustrate players' attempts to get resources. They serve as obstacles or skill practice or both. They should move freely within their habitat and react in believable ways, not simply jump on players' swords.
NPC respawn timers should be on the order of tens of minutes, not seconds. Mob populations should shift according to environmental factors and player actions. It should be possible both to clear all mobs from an area for half a day or so or conversely for unchecked monster populations to grow large enough to threaten player settlements.
Also, PvE should never be limited to hunting monsters for body parts. They should be more than moving crafting resources. Taming, enslaving or allying with NPCs should be a frequent part of the game.
One of the main uses of PvE is providing content when/where the player population is too thin for meaningful PvP. Though large-scale encounters are important, there should always be accessible solo content as well. Take measures however to prevent effortless repetitive grinding from becoming a substitute for coordinated multiplayer activities.
Do not give fully-functional rewards from killing NPCs. The reward should never be immediate, but usable in other activities in the game.
Quests, when used very sparsely, help vary gameplay a bit and should be a small part of the game experience.
Instancing should almost never be used. Exceptions might include some form of instanced player housing to lessen overcrowding, and very large very complex scripted raids which would be too open to griefing. However, instances should never be a regular part of either solo or group gameplay. PvP should never be instanced.
5. Crafting and trading hold the world together
The most important forms of interaction are indirect. Functions which are handled automatically by most games like the creation, repair and transfer of goods must be made dependent on players. All but the most basic usable goods should be crafted, and usable resources should be acquired in the world at large, not simply bought from NPC vendors in the safety of a town.
One of the reasons to avoid teleportation is to give resources and items an actual presence in the game world, as weight and bulk to be moved. Give players the means and motivation to cooperate and compete in creating trade routes and hubs. Create the means and necessity for moving bulk amounts of materials and items across the game world, vulnerable to attack.
Resources should not be completely static. Resource nodes should be large, designed for exploitation by groups of players, but finite, preventing them from giving too much of an advantage to those who secure them. Nodes should respawn rarely enough that entire areas of the game world can be barren for days on end.
All items, from ammunition to houses to entire cities, should be crafted by players. There should be no fully-finished, usable loot drops from mobs or 'treasure chests' or mission completions.
Items should never be 'bound' to a particular character. Even if they are not usable without a certain skill setup, anyone should be able to handle anything, to facilitate trading.
No player should be able to be self-sufficient. Crafting skills should be interdependent and costly to maintain so that no player can gear himself. Send them to the market.
6. No legitimized cheating.
Player effort drives the game. No players should be allowed to circumvent that effort. All players pay the same amount of money. All players get the same in-game resources. No microtransactions. No account 'upgrades'. Though it is nearly impossible to police multiple accounts, the game mechanics should be created to prevent having more than one account from being useful enough to justify the expense. This means character actions should never be automated, preventing 'heal bots' or 'crafting alts' from being useful and skill gain should be fluid enough to pre-empt the need for alternate characters.
Botting, real-money-trading and user interface modifications should all be banned without exception.
7. Identity matters.
Persistent worlds are formed of interconnected communities. Building a reputation is part of the game. Players should not be able to escape their own poor image by switching names or characters. Identity must be stable.
Each player should have only one character. There should be no classes. Do not try to force 'replay value' by developing multiple characters in a world where interaction is the main issue. Players should be able to re-skill their character as they wish, with relatively small time constraints on the order of a few hours of gameplay.
Logging off should not be a means to immediately avoid retribution and players should never be allowed to switch characters to avoid recognition. If multiple characters are allowed, a single account ID must be publicly displayed to allow record-keeping.
Facilitate record-keeping through the game interface, allowing players to create personal notes about each other, friendlists, blacklists, kill lists and any other ways to easily discern friend from foe.
8. Arbitrate.
No matter how good the system is, its weaknesses will be exploited. The pretence of objectivity, the delusion of a self-regulating system only punishes the few honest individuals. Game-masters must have the power to make draconian decisions to curb the power of griefers and cheaters.
On a larger scale, any player faction which threatens to completely crowd out competition should be dealt with artificially, by weakening it or strengthening its enemies. This divine intervention does not imply collusion of GMs with player groups. Do not fall into favoritism.
9. Throw wrenches in the works.
Unpredictability and variation keep things interesting. Frustration is better than boredom.
Every once in a while, fiddle with the stats on some monster. Give goblins fire immunity for a month then make them susceptible to it for another. Cause a volcano to rise out of the middle of the game map, sink an island, double the dodo bird's aggro radius.
This should never extend to utter chaos but every month or so, something should change in the world.
10. Don't round unnecessarily.
You don't need ten commandments where nine can say it all. You don't need a superfluous tenth playable race in the game if you can't think of unique game mechanics to justify it. If 100 damage is overpowered, don't nerf it to 50, try 93 or 86. Magic spells don't need to last exactly five minutes or half an hour; why not seven-minute blessings and thirteen-minute curses? Playable characters do not need to be the same size or move at the same speed. Not all weapons should be exactly the size of an ideal phallic symbol. Give players both ten-foot-poles and killer toothpicks.
Balance, but do not homogenize.
11. The customer is usually wrong.
Do not pander. Every change made to the game must make sense in context. Do not spend time implementing extraneous features. Do not unbalance the game unnecessarily because of whiny little brats on your forums. Every decision should be made rationally by the development team. Never simply bow to popular demand.
Do not cater to macho cretins. Your game does not need female armor with no chest protection or male characters with bulging muscles. Not every monster needs to be gigantic to make the player feel big for killing it. Preserve proportion; it will only make the few truly big objects in the game world seem that much bigger.
12. Aesthetics are not limited to a triangle count.
An online game will never be as immersive as its single-player counterpart and it doesn't need to be as pretty. An MMOs graphics must convey information about the world around the player quickly and clearly in addition to providing enthralling visuals. Do not make unreasonable hardware demands of players' systems. Do not use the latest gimmick. Use a tried-and-true, stable game engine.
Do not allow glitz to overshadow utility.
Do use distinctive visuals. Don't just be another elves vs. orcs game. Do not limit yourself to fireballs and castles or lasers and warp drives.
Do use distinctive audio. Sound is not just filler. Hire a good composer who can convey meaning through the audio tracks for different situations and areas of the game world.
Write. Create a well fleshed-out world without too detailed a history. The players will make history, but they must do so within a logical framework.
NPCs, as limited as their role is, must have believable dialogue.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Icewind Dale and Difficulty Settings
After finishing Planescape:Torment and learning that an early partnership with Black Isle is basically what set Bioware on its path to greatness, I finally decided to go through the other Infinity Engine games, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Having played to about level 4-5 in Icewind Dale, my first impression is that it's fairly conventional and linear, but still enjoyable. That's not the problem.
The game is just too damn difficult.
And that's the first time in a veeeery long while I've had to say that.
Actually the problem isn't the difficulty in itself, it's that the difficulty was increased without thought to how this factors into the general computer game pattern of killing large numbers of mobs.
Now don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree with the basic notion of scaling player power more evenly against monsters. You should not be able to just mow down armies of gigantic creatures as is the case in most games. At level one, killing a kobold or wolf should be a challenge.
There is a difficulty slider in Icewind Dale. The game tells you in big caps-locked print that the middle setting, the default, represents true D&D settings. At this difficulty, my spellcasters were getting one-shotted by goblin/orc archers at level 2. That's all well and good, you get to play with a 6-character party from the start. The problem is that while the individual monster difficulty is set to provide a reasonable challenge, with a single orc being comparable to a level 2-3 character, the campaign was apparently designed as if for a standard 'duke nukem' scenario where the player is mowing down whole armies. Yes, it's good that a goblin is capable of killing my level 2 fighter, costing me all my gold to resurrect him, but in that case the game should not be throwing half a dozen goblins at once at me at every turn of the road.
Not only that, but the number of encounters was also left as if the game is on 'easy' setting. It's good that encounters are difficult enough that I have to use everything and barely survive them so that I have to rest after each one but then you can't just throw encounter after encounter at the player, forcing repetitive trips to town. It's good to have to fight a yeti that can kill me at level 3. It's ridiculous to have to fight twenty of them before getting anywhere.
Difficulty is good, but forcing players to rest ten times over by throwing endless monsters at them before they even get to a quest location is just ridiculous. It's a grind. You can either have ridiculously large numbers of monsters or difficult ones, not both.
___________________
Edit 2015/07/01 - Capitalized my aye-aye-I's. It only took me two years. Shut up.
The game is just too damn difficult.
And that's the first time in a veeeery long while I've had to say that.
Actually the problem isn't the difficulty in itself, it's that the difficulty was increased without thought to how this factors into the general computer game pattern of killing large numbers of mobs.
Now don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree with the basic notion of scaling player power more evenly against monsters. You should not be able to just mow down armies of gigantic creatures as is the case in most games. At level one, killing a kobold or wolf should be a challenge.
There is a difficulty slider in Icewind Dale. The game tells you in big caps-locked print that the middle setting, the default, represents true D&D settings. At this difficulty, my spellcasters were getting one-shotted by goblin/orc archers at level 2. That's all well and good, you get to play with a 6-character party from the start. The problem is that while the individual monster difficulty is set to provide a reasonable challenge, with a single orc being comparable to a level 2-3 character, the campaign was apparently designed as if for a standard 'duke nukem' scenario where the player is mowing down whole armies. Yes, it's good that a goblin is capable of killing my level 2 fighter, costing me all my gold to resurrect him, but in that case the game should not be throwing half a dozen goblins at once at me at every turn of the road.
Not only that, but the number of encounters was also left as if the game is on 'easy' setting. It's good that encounters are difficult enough that I have to use everything and barely survive them so that I have to rest after each one but then you can't just throw encounter after encounter at the player, forcing repetitive trips to town. It's good to have to fight a yeti that can kill me at level 3. It's ridiculous to have to fight twenty of them before getting anywhere.
Difficulty is good, but forcing players to rest ten times over by throwing endless monsters at them before they even get to a quest location is just ridiculous. It's a grind. You can either have ridiculously large numbers of monsters or difficult ones, not both.
___________________
Edit 2015/07/01 - Capitalized my aye-aye-I's. It only took me two years. Shut up.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Revisiting the latest greatest hopes of MMOs
Four months ago i started a list of promising upcoming online games. I am especially interested in the ones which promise true persistence, giving meaning to player actions unlike the endless rat-farming of WoW-clones. Given that i recently ran across a couple of new ones, i'd like to revisit the old list and add to it. This time i'll be ranking them from least to most likely to be worth a time/money investment.
Not Worth Bothering
Dawntide
Dead. It's gotten too late for them to resuscitate it now. The website is still useful because of the old fans trading tips about upcoming Dawntide-like games.
Planetside 2
Does not live up to its potential. In an effort to make gameplay more exciting and fast-paced, they managed to make player actions trivial. What's more, the microtransaction system is already beginning to pile 'must-have' items into the game, purchasable with real-world currency. It is slowly turning to a pay-to-win system.
Firefall
Looking less and less like an MMO and more like random arena gameplay. Though it promises large-scale PvP, there's no talk of it having any effect on the game world. If it doesn't have battle-lines to shift, it'll end being as trivial as PS2.
Iffy
Xsyon
By the time i'd really get into Xsyon at this point, it would be time for newer, better-funded, better-publicized games to come out. Seems they're already struggling for more customers. It's a pity. Seems like a good project, but since i've already missed the boat, it's gone. If Albion, Repop and Camelot all turn out to be duds, i'll give it another look to see how it's progressed. Otherwise, i just don't want to invest time and money into it.
Life is Feudal
Unfortunately, it seems more and more amateurish, less clearly thought out than the others. An idea like playing unrelated minigames in lieu of crafting can only dilute the game experience. They seem to have put the cart before the horse (aesthetics before functionality) in some respects and the lack of updates on their progress makes it seem like it's about to vaporize.
Albion Online
One of the new discoveries. It promises territory conquests, meaningful PvP but... it's pay-to-win. Despite their insistence that it's not, they are lying through their teeth as far as i can tell. Much like Project Entropia in ye olden days, and EVE later on, legitimized cheating will become the game's ultimate virtue.
Their optimistic scenario of a paying player losing the sword he bought with real money to someone else is much more realistically read as a player paying to have an instant advantage in a fight over you and take the loot you've worked days to acquire in-game.
Cheating should never be legitimized. If they backpedal a bit on that issue and limit the advantages you can buy yourself, it'll be well worth looking into. Otherwise, i have no intention of taking a rusty knife against Richie Rich and his gold-plated battlemech.
Promising
The Repopulation
Still very interesting. New updates to monster AI make it sound like the most fleshed-out and diverse online PvE content yet. Environmentally-influenced player visibility sounds like it'll make sneaking a reality - client-side UI cheats notwithstanding.
Camelot Unchained
This game apparently shares at least one project lead with DAoC and WAR, and the man is saying all the right things. He talks the talk from crafting to PvP to difficulty settings. As things stand now, this is the most likely project to deliver, though it's the farthest in the future. While the Repopulation may get bogged down in PvE somewhat, CU touts the PvP-centered web of interaction i see as central to a persistent world. Where Albion tries to sell a pay-to-win system, even i remember this Jacobs character's hardline stance against gold-selling in WAR. While Xsyon is very difficult to get into, these people know the value of intuitive basic mechanics and developing complexity from player interaction. Where LiF loses itself in diverging visions, CU shows promise of both complexity and coherence.
Soldier on, i barely know anything about this game yet but i'm loving every word of it.
Not Worth Bothering
Dawntide
Dead. It's gotten too late for them to resuscitate it now. The website is still useful because of the old fans trading tips about upcoming Dawntide-like games.
Planetside 2
Does not live up to its potential. In an effort to make gameplay more exciting and fast-paced, they managed to make player actions trivial. What's more, the microtransaction system is already beginning to pile 'must-have' items into the game, purchasable with real-world currency. It is slowly turning to a pay-to-win system.
Firefall
Looking less and less like an MMO and more like random arena gameplay. Though it promises large-scale PvP, there's no talk of it having any effect on the game world. If it doesn't have battle-lines to shift, it'll end being as trivial as PS2.
Iffy
Xsyon
By the time i'd really get into Xsyon at this point, it would be time for newer, better-funded, better-publicized games to come out. Seems they're already struggling for more customers. It's a pity. Seems like a good project, but since i've already missed the boat, it's gone. If Albion, Repop and Camelot all turn out to be duds, i'll give it another look to see how it's progressed. Otherwise, i just don't want to invest time and money into it.
Life is Feudal
Unfortunately, it seems more and more amateurish, less clearly thought out than the others. An idea like playing unrelated minigames in lieu of crafting can only dilute the game experience. They seem to have put the cart before the horse (aesthetics before functionality) in some respects and the lack of updates on their progress makes it seem like it's about to vaporize.
Albion Online
One of the new discoveries. It promises territory conquests, meaningful PvP but... it's pay-to-win. Despite their insistence that it's not, they are lying through their teeth as far as i can tell. Much like Project Entropia in ye olden days, and EVE later on, legitimized cheating will become the game's ultimate virtue.
Their optimistic scenario of a paying player losing the sword he bought with real money to someone else is much more realistically read as a player paying to have an instant advantage in a fight over you and take the loot you've worked days to acquire in-game.
Cheating should never be legitimized. If they backpedal a bit on that issue and limit the advantages you can buy yourself, it'll be well worth looking into. Otherwise, i have no intention of taking a rusty knife against Richie Rich and his gold-plated battlemech.
Promising
The Repopulation
Still very interesting. New updates to monster AI make it sound like the most fleshed-out and diverse online PvE content yet. Environmentally-influenced player visibility sounds like it'll make sneaking a reality - client-side UI cheats notwithstanding.
Camelot Unchained
This game apparently shares at least one project lead with DAoC and WAR, and the man is saying all the right things. He talks the talk from crafting to PvP to difficulty settings. As things stand now, this is the most likely project to deliver, though it's the farthest in the future. While the Repopulation may get bogged down in PvE somewhat, CU touts the PvP-centered web of interaction i see as central to a persistent world. Where Albion tries to sell a pay-to-win system, even i remember this Jacobs character's hardline stance against gold-selling in WAR. While Xsyon is very difficult to get into, these people know the value of intuitive basic mechanics and developing complexity from player interaction. Where LiF loses itself in diverging visions, CU shows promise of both complexity and coherence.
Soldier on, i barely know anything about this game yet but i'm loving every word of it.
Planescape:Torment
Buy it. Now.
Where do i start? Before i had even been able to finish this game due to bugs in an older, non-GoG version, i had said this is a good candidate for the best RPG. Having finished it, i haven't changed my mind. I'll stick to generalities before getting into spoilers.
Torment is the perfect example of the core principle of an RPG. The 'role' you play is not defined by a choice of race or class. It is a personality you develop. The game's a tangle of moral decisions, with combat forming only part of the background of a violent, callous, vicious world. It's dialogue options that drive your game experience, not simple killing or even quest completions, and it's well enough written that the dialogue choices don't feel perfunctory. Your choice to refresh someone's memory or leave them in the dark, to help or attack, to be cruel, vindictive, unrelenting or merciful, has consequences. Minor characters die, quests become unavailable, others' attitude toward you changes. It's rare to find a game in which the main ways to kill yourself come through dialogue options, as do the ways to kill various companions, intentionally or not.
More importantly, it's written so as not to pull any punches in regards to emotional impact. When you perform an evil act, you're not given justification for it. When others recount your misdeeds, their indignation is not ridiculed. It is justified. You can hurt people, physically or emotionally, you can break their spirit or shatter their worldview. Among the outer planes, belief is reality, and Torment is a story about shaping beliefs and understanding. Death cult, transcendence, chaos, merciless justice, sadism, blind vengeance and cold-blooded manipulation all form the moral background. The physical setting itself is purposely drab. Like the original Diablo, Torment largely sticks to a grayscale color scheme and dark fantasy tropes: zombies, demons and well, torment. It's the music that lends a bit of grandeur to events. One of the most interesting features is that as with adventure games, seemingly random items can be intrinsic to various quests down the road and clearing your inventory out is a risky proposition, though this will come as a shock to many players who are accustomed to having their hand held and never being allowed to make mistakes.
This is not to say the game doesn't have flaws. The combat system is rudimentary. If Torment had not been so centered on role-playing, it could've been a major drawback. This also extends to character advancement and skills, with many options being utterly useless. In terms of actual gameplay, the developers obviously had a certain view of the player character, and other options are limited. Torment is story-driven from beginning to end, but unfortunately a few of the side-quests don't entirely make sense. Spoilers follow below but not before i get in one unfortunately necessary paragraph of warnings. Some of the surprises the game throws at you are a bit too much.
One: it is entirely possible to kill some potential companions during the initial meeting or later dialogues with them, so keep in mind your smack-talk has consequences. Also, even if you're like me and prefer to play support roles, keep in mind you will have to solo the end of the game so keep yourself in half-decent fighting shape. Lastly, do fully explore all you can. Many of the best tidbits are found by searching various nooks and crannies of the game world and carefully keeping track of dialogue options. They're not exactly easter eggs, but you do have to keep your eyes peeled. Lastly, you will need a relatively high wisdom score no matter what class you choose.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Spoilers and flaws.
For one thing, the factions of Sigil are undeveloped, and it's aggravating to start out thinking there is a real choice in joining them.
For my own part, i wanted to join the anarchists, but the developers obviously had a very dim view of anarchy. The faction is presented as childishly shortsighted and almost impossible to join, a group of paranoid bomb-planters and slogan-sprayers. In fact, playing the game as chaotic seems to be defined as being a liar, without taking into consideration other anti-establishment courses of action. It's a very simplistic view of anarchism, as though the only encounter the developers ever had with the notion was high-school cliques' facetious rebellion. Though the good/evil axis is very well developed, there is no real way to play chaotically and almost nothing to gain from it.
Another issue is the uneven development of the companions. Though Morte and Dak'kon have excellent storylines and interactions with the player, later additions to the cast become more and more simplistic, with Nordom showing little or no development and even Grace being unexpectedly linear after her excellent set-up in Sigil.
The Nameless One's class choice is also a bit too obvious. Being a thief seems almost entirely pointless, and given that many of the interactions, especially with Ravel, center on spellcasting, being a high-constitution mage is the obvious way to go. The over-arching importance of a high wisdom score is also a mean trick to play on anyone who likes playing an absent-minded professor.
Another frustration came from the unfinished parts of the game. The best example would be skulls. I filled three characters' inventories with them before finally looking up the issue in an online guide and finding out they're useless because the quests involving them were cut out of the release version. Other bits like the memory stones in the brothel's basement or the truth behind Fell's disgrace also seem to have been left incomplete.
One complaint which i have to qualify as subjective is about the massive burst of experience which brings all characters up to the same level right before the ending, regardless of how well you've done previously. In general, RPGs are buildup games. Your earlier choices should affect your chances later on. You should be able to fail. You should not be protected from feeling like the lowest speck of slime in existence for lacking the brainpower to prepare for the worst. The handholding's not as bad as it could've been. You're allowed to make your life difficult for most of the campaign, then right before the end you're given an insurance policy so that you can actually finish the game. As Torment was, again, an intrinsically story-based and not combat-centered game, the pre-finish burst of exp is not objectively a bad design choice.
However, if the exp burst was justifiable in terms of the limitations of the game engine in combination with the developers' intended focus on role-playing and not combat mechanics, i cannot say the same thing about having to solo the Fortress of Regrets. One of the most frequently detrimental artificial gimmicks designers use to spice up games is changing the rules right before the ending. When you've spent all game long building your party of adventurers, having them take little to no part in the final struggle is anticlimactic and frankly... a mean trick to play on me! It works from a storytelling standpoint because of the nature of the fortress and of the Nameless One himself, seeing your fellow tormented dying off because of you, but in terms of gameplay, there were better ways to implement that emotional impact. I can see the motivation for the choice from a design perspective, but i don't see it as justified.
That being said, the game is a world, and the sheer number of different dialogues accessible during the side-quests makes it more thoroughly fleshed out than most fantasy book series. I hadn't even thought to go back to the mortuary after learning to talk to corpses, but though i'd killed too many of the zombies and skeletons on my way out, the dialogues i ran through after finding out about this apparently minor, extraneous feature from an online guide were still excellent. The best part of the game though is Ravel. Her influence and her own character development loom in the background of the story, almost overshadowing the Nameless One's own choices. While the main character's story is obviously intended to be one of attempted redemption, Ravel's own conflict with her past, her lack of regret, her nature as a tired old weaver whose few good deeds wound up killing her is much more fascinating. Visiting Ravel's incarnations after sealing the vicious/pitiful old bat's doom was the icing on the cake.
In the black-barbed maze, after having learned what i had done to Dak'kon and Deionarra in past lives, when Ravel asked me her one question, i answered after the slightest hesitation: regret. I did not expect Ravel's answer to be simple acceptance. Beautiful set-up, beautiful conclusion.
As a concept though, as a plot device, the mark of torment, the curse or blessing of drawing kindred spirits to oneself is also very interesting. It makes for an excellent symbol of the game itself and should have been used as the opening screen instead of the Lady of Pain. It certainly seems to have potential beyond the story of the game itself, and i can see myself referencing it for years to come. What would it take to bring the other tormented to myself, the ones who cannot live in the human world, whose rage and self-hatred would drive them to the plane of negation for the sake of regret?
So, what can change the nature of a man? Arguably, my answer in the black-barbed maze was not perfect, because in order to have that quality, the man has already changed.
Where do i start? Before i had even been able to finish this game due to bugs in an older, non-GoG version, i had said this is a good candidate for the best RPG. Having finished it, i haven't changed my mind. I'll stick to generalities before getting into spoilers.
Torment is the perfect example of the core principle of an RPG. The 'role' you play is not defined by a choice of race or class. It is a personality you develop. The game's a tangle of moral decisions, with combat forming only part of the background of a violent, callous, vicious world. It's dialogue options that drive your game experience, not simple killing or even quest completions, and it's well enough written that the dialogue choices don't feel perfunctory. Your choice to refresh someone's memory or leave them in the dark, to help or attack, to be cruel, vindictive, unrelenting or merciful, has consequences. Minor characters die, quests become unavailable, others' attitude toward you changes. It's rare to find a game in which the main ways to kill yourself come through dialogue options, as do the ways to kill various companions, intentionally or not.
More importantly, it's written so as not to pull any punches in regards to emotional impact. When you perform an evil act, you're not given justification for it. When others recount your misdeeds, their indignation is not ridiculed. It is justified. You can hurt people, physically or emotionally, you can break their spirit or shatter their worldview. Among the outer planes, belief is reality, and Torment is a story about shaping beliefs and understanding. Death cult, transcendence, chaos, merciless justice, sadism, blind vengeance and cold-blooded manipulation all form the moral background. The physical setting itself is purposely drab. Like the original Diablo, Torment largely sticks to a grayscale color scheme and dark fantasy tropes: zombies, demons and well, torment. It's the music that lends a bit of grandeur to events. One of the most interesting features is that as with adventure games, seemingly random items can be intrinsic to various quests down the road and clearing your inventory out is a risky proposition, though this will come as a shock to many players who are accustomed to having their hand held and never being allowed to make mistakes.
This is not to say the game doesn't have flaws. The combat system is rudimentary. If Torment had not been so centered on role-playing, it could've been a major drawback. This also extends to character advancement and skills, with many options being utterly useless. In terms of actual gameplay, the developers obviously had a certain view of the player character, and other options are limited. Torment is story-driven from beginning to end, but unfortunately a few of the side-quests don't entirely make sense. Spoilers follow below but not before i get in one unfortunately necessary paragraph of warnings. Some of the surprises the game throws at you are a bit too much.
One: it is entirely possible to kill some potential companions during the initial meeting or later dialogues with them, so keep in mind your smack-talk has consequences. Also, even if you're like me and prefer to play support roles, keep in mind you will have to solo the end of the game so keep yourself in half-decent fighting shape. Lastly, do fully explore all you can. Many of the best tidbits are found by searching various nooks and crannies of the game world and carefully keeping track of dialogue options. They're not exactly easter eggs, but you do have to keep your eyes peeled. Lastly, you will need a relatively high wisdom score no matter what class you choose.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Spoilers and flaws.
For one thing, the factions of Sigil are undeveloped, and it's aggravating to start out thinking there is a real choice in joining them.
For my own part, i wanted to join the anarchists, but the developers obviously had a very dim view of anarchy. The faction is presented as childishly shortsighted and almost impossible to join, a group of paranoid bomb-planters and slogan-sprayers. In fact, playing the game as chaotic seems to be defined as being a liar, without taking into consideration other anti-establishment courses of action. It's a very simplistic view of anarchism, as though the only encounter the developers ever had with the notion was high-school cliques' facetious rebellion. Though the good/evil axis is very well developed, there is no real way to play chaotically and almost nothing to gain from it.
Another issue is the uneven development of the companions. Though Morte and Dak'kon have excellent storylines and interactions with the player, later additions to the cast become more and more simplistic, with Nordom showing little or no development and even Grace being unexpectedly linear after her excellent set-up in Sigil.
The Nameless One's class choice is also a bit too obvious. Being a thief seems almost entirely pointless, and given that many of the interactions, especially with Ravel, center on spellcasting, being a high-constitution mage is the obvious way to go. The over-arching importance of a high wisdom score is also a mean trick to play on anyone who likes playing an absent-minded professor.
Another frustration came from the unfinished parts of the game. The best example would be skulls. I filled three characters' inventories with them before finally looking up the issue in an online guide and finding out they're useless because the quests involving them were cut out of the release version. Other bits like the memory stones in the brothel's basement or the truth behind Fell's disgrace also seem to have been left incomplete.
One complaint which i have to qualify as subjective is about the massive burst of experience which brings all characters up to the same level right before the ending, regardless of how well you've done previously. In general, RPGs are buildup games. Your earlier choices should affect your chances later on. You should be able to fail. You should not be protected from feeling like the lowest speck of slime in existence for lacking the brainpower to prepare for the worst. The handholding's not as bad as it could've been. You're allowed to make your life difficult for most of the campaign, then right before the end you're given an insurance policy so that you can actually finish the game. As Torment was, again, an intrinsically story-based and not combat-centered game, the pre-finish burst of exp is not objectively a bad design choice.
However, if the exp burst was justifiable in terms of the limitations of the game engine in combination with the developers' intended focus on role-playing and not combat mechanics, i cannot say the same thing about having to solo the Fortress of Regrets. One of the most frequently detrimental artificial gimmicks designers use to spice up games is changing the rules right before the ending. When you've spent all game long building your party of adventurers, having them take little to no part in the final struggle is anticlimactic and frankly... a mean trick to play on me! It works from a storytelling standpoint because of the nature of the fortress and of the Nameless One himself, seeing your fellow tormented dying off because of you, but in terms of gameplay, there were better ways to implement that emotional impact. I can see the motivation for the choice from a design perspective, but i don't see it as justified.
That being said, the game is a world, and the sheer number of different dialogues accessible during the side-quests makes it more thoroughly fleshed out than most fantasy book series. I hadn't even thought to go back to the mortuary after learning to talk to corpses, but though i'd killed too many of the zombies and skeletons on my way out, the dialogues i ran through after finding out about this apparently minor, extraneous feature from an online guide were still excellent. The best part of the game though is Ravel. Her influence and her own character development loom in the background of the story, almost overshadowing the Nameless One's own choices. While the main character's story is obviously intended to be one of attempted redemption, Ravel's own conflict with her past, her lack of regret, her nature as a tired old weaver whose few good deeds wound up killing her is much more fascinating. Visiting Ravel's incarnations after sealing the vicious/pitiful old bat's doom was the icing on the cake.
In the black-barbed maze, after having learned what i had done to Dak'kon and Deionarra in past lives, when Ravel asked me her one question, i answered after the slightest hesitation: regret. I did not expect Ravel's answer to be simple acceptance. Beautiful set-up, beautiful conclusion.
As a concept though, as a plot device, the mark of torment, the curse or blessing of drawing kindred spirits to oneself is also very interesting. It makes for an excellent symbol of the game itself and should have been used as the opening screen instead of the Lady of Pain. It certainly seems to have potential beyond the story of the game itself, and i can see myself referencing it for years to come. What would it take to bring the other tormented to myself, the ones who cannot live in the human world, whose rage and self-hatred would drive them to the plane of negation for the sake of regret?
So, what can change the nature of a man? Arguably, my answer in the black-barbed maze was not perfect, because in order to have that quality, the man has already changed.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Pending Banishment from my PS2 Outfit
I do believe i've found the best PlanetSide2 outfit there is. Unfortunately it's still largely populated by leet-kiddies, and i will likely be getting the boot pretty soon. I don't see much use in 'introductions' threads, being just a pointless social ritual, but after months of being in the guild i finally used their introductions forum to, well, bash them. And here it is, my introduction, custom-tailored to that particular setting.
Arooo
Hiya!
I'm Werwolfe and i probably despise you. I'm tempted to say 'don't take it personally' but i suppose the fact that you're human is somewhat personal.
The problem with this world is human stupidity in its various forms. To the point, my disgust with and condemnation of human behavior gets me kicked out of almost every online game guild i join. Over the years, this has meant arguments over machismo, greed, mindlessly repetitive behavior, nonsensical event participation demands, machismo, complacency, appeasement, machismo and overall, general thoughtlessness. The particular form that conflict seems to be taking in this case is the state of TeamSpeak communication. I find it relatively difficult to filter out noise from sensory input. While it would be easy to attack me as a freak in practical terms, in moral terms it's the noise that is destructive and the noisemakers to blame.
Don't get me wrong, the social component is quite important in these games. You should talk. I suppose the real problem is that none of you have anything interesting to say. Planetside2 being an FPS game, it naturally attracts the highest proportion of brainless little petty thugs whose communication is limited to attempts to qualify themselves as 'badass' members of a social in-group. It attracts sports fans.
If you think up something clever, unusual or truly funny, like a pattern of bomb craters which looks just like Keith Richards or an abnormally high number of enemies trying to snipe using pistols, by all means blurt it out. Let us share in the novelty and creativity. However, if you're only babbling, narrating your every experience just so you can feel like one of the guys, joining your voice to the chorus of communal moo-ing of the greater herd, you are counterproductive. Your contribution, instead of elevating the game experience, functions as white noise. If your speech pattern features constantly recurring all-purpose fillers like 'dude' 'like' 'omygawd' 'noob' 'awesome' 'rocks' 'gay' 'sucks' 'carebear' 'pro' etc. then you likely have nothing interesting to say. Spare more intelligent beings your social ape attempts to endear yourself by spouting socially approved catchphrases. At this point, it bears mentioning that your mental reaction of 'but like dude like that's like just like how like people like talk(s) like' is equally brainless. You don't 'just' do anything. Your behavior has instinctive and societal roots, reprehensible forms of brainwashing which detract from your intellectual advancement. Overcome them.
It must be said that this group has offered me a personal first. I've been accused of many things over the years, but i can't remember the last time someone called me boring. To clarify: i am now talking on an online forum. This is the place for chatter, rants and finding common interests. This 'introductions' subforum in itself is a pointless social ritual but being labeled as such it does not infringe on my game experience. I can avoid it if i want to. I am posting here to illustrate a point. If you need to ask someone 'what's your sign' do it here, not on TS. Books, movies, music, other games, ballet, whatever, start chatting. Stop chatting when it disrupts the logically appropriate function of another activity. The game is the game, a thing in itself, not just an opportunity for you to make yourself look good or feel popular.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
ESO Advertising Impressions
There's a lot you can tell about a product by the way it's sold, and it's usually not by what's said as much as what's obfuscated by marketing glitz.
The Elder Scrolls Online will not be an MMO. It will be a World of Warcraft copycat. That conviction was cemented for me in one of their early press releases when they spouted the deadly magic words "end game content." You have to read between the lines there, below and above. Below that line lies the assumption of a levelling treadmill. Before you get to do anything interesting you'll have to work your way through forty, fifty levels of solo gameplay... to start. They'll keep spinning the hamster wheel, adding ten levels now and then. Above that line lies the item-farming treadmill, which, even after hitting top level, will have you farming the same simplistic PvE instances a hundred times over for faction reputation to get gear. I refer you to my past complaint about Oblivion for the company's treadmilling tendencies.
Unfortunately, since i would otherwise be able to safely condemn ESO to its well-deserved status as just another WoW-clone, their current marketing push touts large-scale PvP as a main activity in the game. This makes ESO the third large-scale release which promises to make good on WoW's unfulfilled promise of global faction conflict, after Warhammer Online and Rift. That it will likely be another monumental failure seems obvious from their promise that the 'top player' in a faction will be crowned emperor if that faction captures the imperial city. The problem is that in modern society, institutions and organizations like to make a big show of the pretense of objectivity. This means that instead of the emperor being a brilliant strategist as seen by a game-master, a thinker who made the decisions which led his faction to victory, the crown will simply be another rat-race, determined by which player farmed the most killing blows in PvP without regard for furthering his faction's cause, to raise his stats. The only other plausible alternative would be a popularity contest, where the hoi-polloi choose the doodiest dood in their faction to be their dooderor.
PvP is meaningless if it's just a stat-farming contest.
The most telling feature of ESO's advertising though is... well, its reluctance to tell us any features. If you look at the smaller projects i mentioned in this post, or the more 'artsy' online game of your choice, they generally lead with a mission statement, a list of objectives, features which would improve the quality of gameplay over WoW-clones like the mechanics for territory captures, the skill system, character advancement, crafting, the in-game economy, etc.
ESO has nothing but pretty pictures. It shows nothing but hype, and some vague grandiose promises about large-scale PvP. I think i will sign up for the beta just in case, but i am doing so with none of the hope which i held for its predecessors WoW, WAR and Rift, not to mention better projects like TSW.
The Elder Scrolls Online will not be an MMO. It will be a World of Warcraft copycat. That conviction was cemented for me in one of their early press releases when they spouted the deadly magic words "end game content." You have to read between the lines there, below and above. Below that line lies the assumption of a levelling treadmill. Before you get to do anything interesting you'll have to work your way through forty, fifty levels of solo gameplay... to start. They'll keep spinning the hamster wheel, adding ten levels now and then. Above that line lies the item-farming treadmill, which, even after hitting top level, will have you farming the same simplistic PvE instances a hundred times over for faction reputation to get gear. I refer you to my past complaint about Oblivion for the company's treadmilling tendencies.
Unfortunately, since i would otherwise be able to safely condemn ESO to its well-deserved status as just another WoW-clone, their current marketing push touts large-scale PvP as a main activity in the game. This makes ESO the third large-scale release which promises to make good on WoW's unfulfilled promise of global faction conflict, after Warhammer Online and Rift. That it will likely be another monumental failure seems obvious from their promise that the 'top player' in a faction will be crowned emperor if that faction captures the imperial city. The problem is that in modern society, institutions and organizations like to make a big show of the pretense of objectivity. This means that instead of the emperor being a brilliant strategist as seen by a game-master, a thinker who made the decisions which led his faction to victory, the crown will simply be another rat-race, determined by which player farmed the most killing blows in PvP without regard for furthering his faction's cause, to raise his stats. The only other plausible alternative would be a popularity contest, where the hoi-polloi choose the doodiest dood in their faction to be their dooderor.
PvP is meaningless if it's just a stat-farming contest.
The most telling feature of ESO's advertising though is... well, its reluctance to tell us any features. If you look at the smaller projects i mentioned in this post, or the more 'artsy' online game of your choice, they generally lead with a mission statement, a list of objectives, features which would improve the quality of gameplay over WoW-clones like the mechanics for territory captures, the skill system, character advancement, crafting, the in-game economy, etc.
ESO has nothing but pretty pictures. It shows nothing but hype, and some vague grandiose promises about large-scale PvP. I think i will sign up for the beta just in case, but i am doing so with none of the hope which i held for its predecessors WoW, WAR and Rift, not to mention better projects like TSW.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Half-Life would bomb today
For the simple reason that the demographics have changed. Today's computer game crowd, the ones calling themselves 'gamers' would never accept Gordon Freeman as a hero. Freeman is a nerd. The only thing today's morons can relate to is Duke Nukem or Conan.
Look around. Listen to the chatter. The arguments over Kirk and Picard have been replaced with macho sports references. There are more and more assault rifles and fewer and fewer laser guns. Imagination, contests of wits and escapism have been replaced with sheepish adherence to the current social norms.
R.I.P. Gordon, the M.I.T. grad with a gluon gun, we hardly knew ye.
Look around. Listen to the chatter. The arguments over Kirk and Picard have been replaced with macho sports references. There are more and more assault rifles and fewer and fewer laser guns. Imagination, contests of wits and escapism have been replaced with sheepish adherence to the current social norms.
R.I.P. Gordon, the M.I.T. grad with a gluon gun, we hardly knew ye.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Firefly Archetypes
While writing the previous post, I found myself citing two characters from Firefly as examples of noncombat rogues. Then a third. Then I realized I wanted to include a second half to the idea. Then I decided it'll fill up a page of its own. So, here it is, I'm sure I'm earning lots of nerd bonus-points by defining Firefly characters in terms of D&D alignment/class. I'm not going too in-depth in terms of prestige classes or whatnot, and I am ignoring the movie because it changed the characters too abruptly from the series.
Malcolm - True Neutral Fighter
The reason for Mal's ambiguity is that he is, at the opening of the series, a broken man. He no longer has a cause and while he has some measure of morality, he constantly cheats and steals to keep his ship flying. I'm sure that if the series had gone on he would have progressed to Neutral Good, taking up River's cause. He may even become a paladin.
By necessity of storytelling, though, many fictional leader figures end up as Lawful or all-out Neutral. They are the ones who pull the story back on course at the end of each episode.
Zoe - Lawful Neutral Fighter
Her defining character trait is her unflinching militaristic devotion to Mal. Past that, her character simply wasn't developed in the series.
Book - Lawful Neutral Monk
I wouldn't classify Book as good, due to the couple of times his character showed hidden depths. He is, however, a moral anchor for the others, keeping them steady or dragging them down, depending on your definition of 'Lawful'. It's debatable whether he would count as a cleric because his influence on others (including the ability to help them) is limited.
Jayne - Neutral Evil Fighter
Animalistic, brutish, not interesting enough to be chaotic, too shortsightedly self-interested to be lawful, Jayne is just classic hired muscle. He is a sadistic petty thug whenever not kept in check by the captain.
Kaylee - Chaotic Good Rogue
She's the one that sparked this post, the realization that in her mechanical genius and her trap-disarming skills, Kaylee is an excellent example of a non-combat rogue. She basically wants everything to be happy sunshine and wagging puppy-tails, no matter how she goes about it.
addendum: on the topic of noncombat rogues, I had also wanted to cite Saffron as a chaotic evil rogue - her only purpose in life is to screw people over, by means of seduction, trickery and sabotage, not direct violence
Inara - Neutral GoodRogue Bard
The team's (wo)man on the inside, the spy, the deceiver who always keeps true to her principles, who only reluctantly and rarely dirties her hands with the others' schemes. It's the tired old 'hooker with a heart of gold' routine.
addendum: come to think of it, she's more of a bard, what with the charisma and all
Wash - Chaotic Good Ranger
Serenity is Wash's companion, flying is his faith. Wanderlust (and Zoe-lust) define him more than his tendency to be a nice guy. The nice thing about him is that he's one of the few characters you find that never make plans, that really do let themselves be pulled whichever way by fate. He has a personality but is not wrapped too tightly into any lengthy plots.
Simon - Lawful Good Cleric
What's more to say? He's the party's healer, prim and proper. He's no crusading paladin though, a noncombatant to the last.
River - Chaotic Neutral Mage
The only character with arcane powers, probably a diviner who'd get some enchantment abilities late in the series. I could go on and on about how much I liked River, but the truth is that I just love the chaotic neutral archetype and I'm a sucker for broken little girls.
Aaaand that concludes the D&D portion of the program and brings me to the second topic. No, Firefly's characters were not created as a D&D adventuring party, but they were created fundamentally as sexual archetypes. Every character, male or female, was designed to conform to a particular sexual type. The writers wanted as many different viewers as possible to sexually pair-bond with someone in the cast, so each character at its most basic embodies a different type of idealized mate.
Mal, the alpha male
Jayne, the bad boy
Wash, the one that makes you laugh
Simon, the clean-cut one
Book, the father-figure
Zoe, the amazon
Inara, the seductress
Kaylee, the nice, simple girl
River, the complicated one
They certainly had my number with River. Which one got to you? Be honest with yourself now.
______________________
Edit 2015/07/03 - Since this post still gets hits, went back and capitalized my I's because pressing the shift key every time no longer feels like some sort of antediluvian linguistic oppression. Now I'm fixated on writing dates in ISO format. I wonder when that will wear off and I'll have to edit this edit?
Malcolm - True Neutral Fighter
The reason for Mal's ambiguity is that he is, at the opening of the series, a broken man. He no longer has a cause and while he has some measure of morality, he constantly cheats and steals to keep his ship flying. I'm sure that if the series had gone on he would have progressed to Neutral Good, taking up River's cause. He may even become a paladin.
By necessity of storytelling, though, many fictional leader figures end up as Lawful or all-out Neutral. They are the ones who pull the story back on course at the end of each episode.
Zoe - Lawful Neutral Fighter
Her defining character trait is her unflinching militaristic devotion to Mal. Past that, her character simply wasn't developed in the series.
Book - Lawful Neutral Monk
I wouldn't classify Book as good, due to the couple of times his character showed hidden depths. He is, however, a moral anchor for the others, keeping them steady or dragging them down, depending on your definition of 'Lawful'. It's debatable whether he would count as a cleric because his influence on others (including the ability to help them) is limited.
Jayne - Neutral Evil Fighter
Animalistic, brutish, not interesting enough to be chaotic, too shortsightedly self-interested to be lawful, Jayne is just classic hired muscle. He is a sadistic petty thug whenever not kept in check by the captain.
Kaylee - Chaotic Good Rogue
She's the one that sparked this post, the realization that in her mechanical genius and her trap-disarming skills, Kaylee is an excellent example of a non-combat rogue. She basically wants everything to be happy sunshine and wagging puppy-tails, no matter how she goes about it.
addendum: on the topic of noncombat rogues, I had also wanted to cite Saffron as a chaotic evil rogue - her only purpose in life is to screw people over, by means of seduction, trickery and sabotage, not direct violence
Inara - Neutral Good
The team's (wo)man on the inside, the spy, the deceiver who always keeps true to her principles, who only reluctantly and rarely dirties her hands with the others' schemes. It's the tired old 'hooker with a heart of gold' routine.
addendum: come to think of it, she's more of a bard, what with the charisma and all
Wash - Chaotic Good Ranger
Serenity is Wash's companion, flying is his faith. Wanderlust (and Zoe-lust) define him more than his tendency to be a nice guy. The nice thing about him is that he's one of the few characters you find that never make plans, that really do let themselves be pulled whichever way by fate. He has a personality but is not wrapped too tightly into any lengthy plots.
Simon - Lawful Good Cleric
What's more to say? He's the party's healer, prim and proper. He's no crusading paladin though, a noncombatant to the last.
River - Chaotic Neutral Mage
The only character with arcane powers, probably a diviner who'd get some enchantment abilities late in the series. I could go on and on about how much I liked River, but the truth is that I just love the chaotic neutral archetype and I'm a sucker for broken little girls.
Aaaand that concludes the D&D portion of the program and brings me to the second topic. No, Firefly's characters were not created as a D&D adventuring party, but they were created fundamentally as sexual archetypes. Every character, male or female, was designed to conform to a particular sexual type. The writers wanted as many different viewers as possible to sexually pair-bond with someone in the cast, so each character at its most basic embodies a different type of idealized mate.
Mal, the alpha male
Jayne, the bad boy
Wash, the one that makes you laugh
Simon, the clean-cut one
Book, the father-figure
Zoe, the amazon
Inara, the seductress
Kaylee, the nice, simple girl
River, the complicated one
They certainly had my number with River. Which one got to you? Be honest with yourself now.
______________________
Edit 2015/07/03 - Since this post still gets hits, went back and capitalized my I's because pressing the shift key every time no longer feels like some sort of antediluvian linguistic oppression. Now I'm fixated on writing dates in ISO format. I wonder when that will wear off and I'll have to edit this edit?
Rogues
a.k.a. duel-wielding rouges
(sorry, couldn't help myself, pet peeve)
There are two problems with the 'rogue' archetype in RPGs. One is the WoW-clone interpretation of rogues as just people who stab things... really, really hard. The other is the more basic D&D alignment issue, the image of rogues as flighty, shortsighted, and greedy.
As far as MMOs go, the problem isn't with the archetype itself but with the oversimplification of the genre. Rogue or not, all anyone ever does in a WoW-clone is stab things. Everything revolves around damage meters. In a real MMO, PvP would create much of the demand for the currently absent roguish trickery. Infiltration, distraction and sabotage should be the main purpose of a sneak, not just popping up to stab people in the back. Scaling walls, laying traps, disrupting spellcasting, relaying information about enemy movements or disabling mechanical constructs like golems or siege equipment should all take the place of simplistic stabbity-stabbity. Oddly enough, one of the most out-and-out copyish of WoW copycats in terms of gameplay, LoTRO, also features a delightful break in that pattern. The 'burglar' class in LoTRO is not a damage-dealer in groups. Instead, its purpose is to debuff or disable mobs, manipulate aggro and most importantly initiate group maneuvers.
In PvP games, the sheer 'OMG overpower-ness' of invisibility can quickly lead to the expansion of the archetype past stabbing. The main role of the rogue class in Savage 2 was to plant bombs by enemy buildings and to dash around forcing enemies to chase him. In EVE, cloaked ships were an essential part of corporate warfare as scouts. In TF2, spies are the bane of engineers, undermining both enemy defense and offense by destroying sentry guns and teleporters. Even in WoW, in the earliest PvP instances, i spent a fair bit of my time as a druid simply keeping an eye on enemy movements while prowling around as a stealthy little cat.
However, the problem predates WoW-clones. Computer RPGs in general suffer from limitations in the kind of flexibility which would allow for trickery, from an emphasis on simple brawling. Both rogues and mages are trickster classes but trickery is almost irrelevant when the object of the game is to kill everything. A frequent source of frustration is attempting to sneak around an encounter only to be interrupted and brought out of stealth by a cutscene. Other times the problem is that characters in a computer RPG always move together, which means rogue stealth is always undermined by less stealthy characters. Most times, there is simply nowhere for a rogue to use his skills. Even games which nominally include traps and pocket-picking only do so as an afterthought, with the rewards meaningless compared to the time investment, while scouting ahead means nothing because there is no choice but to kill everything to get to a boss anyway. Even if all the above are not true, even when it is posssible to steal, sneak or bluff one's way past encounters, the rogue's role is undermined the the outdated mechanic or experience gain and levelling up. Character advacement is at the core of RPGs along with moral decisions. When advancement depends on experience gained through killing, well... shoot 'em all and let the gods sort 'em out.
The one RPG i've played which truly integrated stealth was VtM:Bloodlines. Killing was only a means to an end, giving no experience or loot in itself. 'Trash' mobs were created to be bypassed. Many missions gave even better rewards if performed without ever killing a thing.
This also brings me to the second issue, that of true role-playing, the moral character and mentality of rogues. The main reason why stealth classes hold no appeal to me in most games is that they are treated as petty thugs, sneaking around mugging people for their spare change. One of the few breaks in that routine is Vampire: the Masquerade's take on one its vampire groups, clan Nosferatu, forced to continually remain out of sight because their appearance would give them away. I like the image of the Nosferatu as spies, information brokers and secretive masters of the underworld.
It's a quick reminder that James Bond is a rogue. In the real world, the sneakiest sneaks, the ones who can make all their bluff checks at airport security and always keep an eye on what porn sites you've been visiting, are kept in pretty tight check by various power structures like national governments and organized crime. They are brainwashed into obedience, unable to break away from whichever group has their nuts in a vise. They are Lawful, even if they don't obey the same laws as the rest of us, from Odysseus to ninjas to Mata Hari and the 007s of the information age. There is no reason why spies, brainwashed wind-up toys dutifully serving the whims of military or commercial overlords, should not play a much bigger role in games' stories.
Aside from that, it's the origin story of the rogue that always grates. Every rogue in fantasy games is a gutter-rat that was forced by harsh conditions to steal to survive, yadda-yadda chaotic good heart of fool's gold. Why not a trickster like a stage magician, certainly adept at the kind of sleight-of-hand that defines the rogue archetype? Why not a blackmailer, unable to sneak anywhere but trading information to get the upper hand on others? Why not an eaves-dropping courtier or a mechanical genius specializing in traps and sabotage instead of stabbing?
(sorry, couldn't help myself, pet peeve)
There are two problems with the 'rogue' archetype in RPGs. One is the WoW-clone interpretation of rogues as just people who stab things... really, really hard. The other is the more basic D&D alignment issue, the image of rogues as flighty, shortsighted, and greedy.
As far as MMOs go, the problem isn't with the archetype itself but with the oversimplification of the genre. Rogue or not, all anyone ever does in a WoW-clone is stab things. Everything revolves around damage meters. In a real MMO, PvP would create much of the demand for the currently absent roguish trickery. Infiltration, distraction and sabotage should be the main purpose of a sneak, not just popping up to stab people in the back. Scaling walls, laying traps, disrupting spellcasting, relaying information about enemy movements or disabling mechanical constructs like golems or siege equipment should all take the place of simplistic stabbity-stabbity. Oddly enough, one of the most out-and-out copyish of WoW copycats in terms of gameplay, LoTRO, also features a delightful break in that pattern. The 'burglar' class in LoTRO is not a damage-dealer in groups. Instead, its purpose is to debuff or disable mobs, manipulate aggro and most importantly initiate group maneuvers.
In PvP games, the sheer 'OMG overpower-ness' of invisibility can quickly lead to the expansion of the archetype past stabbing. The main role of the rogue class in Savage 2 was to plant bombs by enemy buildings and to dash around forcing enemies to chase him. In EVE, cloaked ships were an essential part of corporate warfare as scouts. In TF2, spies are the bane of engineers, undermining both enemy defense and offense by destroying sentry guns and teleporters. Even in WoW, in the earliest PvP instances, i spent a fair bit of my time as a druid simply keeping an eye on enemy movements while prowling around as a stealthy little cat.
However, the problem predates WoW-clones. Computer RPGs in general suffer from limitations in the kind of flexibility which would allow for trickery, from an emphasis on simple brawling. Both rogues and mages are trickster classes but trickery is almost irrelevant when the object of the game is to kill everything. A frequent source of frustration is attempting to sneak around an encounter only to be interrupted and brought out of stealth by a cutscene. Other times the problem is that characters in a computer RPG always move together, which means rogue stealth is always undermined by less stealthy characters. Most times, there is simply nowhere for a rogue to use his skills. Even games which nominally include traps and pocket-picking only do so as an afterthought, with the rewards meaningless compared to the time investment, while scouting ahead means nothing because there is no choice but to kill everything to get to a boss anyway. Even if all the above are not true, even when it is posssible to steal, sneak or bluff one's way past encounters, the rogue's role is undermined the the outdated mechanic or experience gain and levelling up. Character advacement is at the core of RPGs along with moral decisions. When advancement depends on experience gained through killing, well... shoot 'em all and let the gods sort 'em out.
The one RPG i've played which truly integrated stealth was VtM:Bloodlines. Killing was only a means to an end, giving no experience or loot in itself. 'Trash' mobs were created to be bypassed. Many missions gave even better rewards if performed without ever killing a thing.
This also brings me to the second issue, that of true role-playing, the moral character and mentality of rogues. The main reason why stealth classes hold no appeal to me in most games is that they are treated as petty thugs, sneaking around mugging people for their spare change. One of the few breaks in that routine is Vampire: the Masquerade's take on one its vampire groups, clan Nosferatu, forced to continually remain out of sight because their appearance would give them away. I like the image of the Nosferatu as spies, information brokers and secretive masters of the underworld.
It's a quick reminder that James Bond is a rogue. In the real world, the sneakiest sneaks, the ones who can make all their bluff checks at airport security and always keep an eye on what porn sites you've been visiting, are kept in pretty tight check by various power structures like national governments and organized crime. They are brainwashed into obedience, unable to break away from whichever group has their nuts in a vise. They are Lawful, even if they don't obey the same laws as the rest of us, from Odysseus to ninjas to Mata Hari and the 007s of the information age. There is no reason why spies, brainwashed wind-up toys dutifully serving the whims of military or commercial overlords, should not play a much bigger role in games' stories.
Aside from that, it's the origin story of the rogue that always grates. Every rogue in fantasy games is a gutter-rat that was forced by harsh conditions to steal to survive, yadda-yadda chaotic good heart of fool's gold. Why not a trickster like a stage magician, certainly adept at the kind of sleight-of-hand that defines the rogue archetype? Why not a blackmailer, unable to sneak anywhere but trading information to get the upper hand on others? Why not an eaves-dropping courtier or a mechanical genius specializing in traps and sabotage instead of stabbing?
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Fallen Enchantress
There are many reasons why my posts here have petered off in the past couple o' weeks. Some of them intersect this virtual realm. I've gotten some old toys to play with anew. One is the beautiful late-90s RPG Planescape:Torment. Another is Fallen Enchantress, the expansion to Elemental: War of Magic.
To call it an expansion is misleading, though. I said in my post about Elemental that it was aggressively unlike Civilization or Heroes of Might and Magic but many features of both games have made their way into Fallen Enchantress while some from Elemental were pruned away instead of being properly developed, like the lineage system or town layouts. It is a compromise, and i dislike compromises. It is more playable but gives players fewer reasons to play it. It is more professional but less creative. It is, overall, less than Elemental promised to be, but it is more tightly packed, coherent, cohesive, enthralling, enchanting. It still holds within it enough of the charm of Elemental to keep me interested.
Greetings, from the Feral Assembly, soon to rule the world of Elemental. Though it stands less proud now, its particular beauty still shines through.
To call it an expansion is misleading, though. I said in my post about Elemental that it was aggressively unlike Civilization or Heroes of Might and Magic but many features of both games have made their way into Fallen Enchantress while some from Elemental were pruned away instead of being properly developed, like the lineage system or town layouts. It is a compromise, and i dislike compromises. It is more playable but gives players fewer reasons to play it. It is more professional but less creative. It is, overall, less than Elemental promised to be, but it is more tightly packed, coherent, cohesive, enthralling, enchanting. It still holds within it enough of the charm of Elemental to keep me interested.
Greetings, from the Feral Assembly, soon to rule the world of Elemental. Though it stands less proud now, its particular beauty still shines through.
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