Monthly Archives: November 2005

CCP lectures on how to develop a mmorpg

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We recently discussed a lot about “change” in MMO. I explained that I love to see mmorpgs evolving and I support when game companies make daring choices. But at the same time I support a type of evolution, more than revolution, that builds on top of what you did already. Learning from the experience and reiterating the process to move the game more and more near to an ideal. That you never reach, because that’s the nature of the dreams.

So I hate when one of these games stands still just hoping to preserve its status quo or stretching its life-cycle as far as possible. It’s frustrating, it’s simply a way to choke the potential and handing out the competition the opportunity to fulfill those dreams that should belong to you. After all building games is exclusively for those who chase silly, unrealistic dreams and don’t feel like fitting in the real world. Building games is already an utopia in the concept.

Lum summarized prefectly what I could only explain in long paragraphs:
“MMOs are living worlds, living worlds grow, and players — and designers — should embrace growth and change as part of the game’s life cycle.”

CCP (Eve-Online) offers another example about how it’s possible to put those silly ideas into the practice. This is another dev blog I save from the feeds. Taking the parts I find worthwhile.

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My presentation was about the upcoming content expansion, Red Moon Rising, slated for December this year and our full expansion, codenamed Kali which is tentatively scheduled for late Q2 2006. We wanted to divide and conquer, splitting Kali up into two releases.

We have a lot of optimizations, fixes and general improvements that we want out and releasing the Kali features which are already done decreases a lot of risk factors. It also enables us to focus on the major things we want to release in Kali.

– Red Moon Rising –

The name signifies the total lunar eclipse where it turns blood red. It fits well with the escalation towards war and the arms race of the factions. What we’ll see in Red Moon Rising is mainly optimizations, fixes and improvements but there are a couple of features in there and a lot of content.

On the Optimizations front we have the Turrets & Effects system rewrite ongoing and much of that will be released in RMR. We also have the Next-Gen Manufacturing & Research Facilities rewrite which should result in 5% of 140 cpu’s being freed up.

On the Improvements side, you’ll see Starbase Roles, MK2 Ships and a number of UI Improvements both new stuff and feedback from useability tests and of course we have tons of bugfixes. We’re also adding more Corporation logos and if we have time, we’re going to check out if we can make logos viewable on the ships when you do “look at”.

We have a number of Tech 2 ships coming in Red Moon Rising, The Interdictor, which is the Tech 2 Destroyer and is a warp scrambling bubble ship, the Recon and Force Recon cruisers Tech 2 Cruisers, EW platforms where one of them has covert ops cloaking ability and bonsues to cynosural field generation.

We’re also doing two Tech 2 Battlecruisers, the Command Ship and the Fleet Command ship, where the former is more combat focused while the latter is a pure tanking and leadership platform. In addition to that we will probably be able to get Tech 2 ammunition into RMR.

Needful things for mining coming in Red Moon Rising, 4 skills, 3 leadership modules, 2 mining upgrade modules – one for Ice and one for regular mining. 4 hardwiring implants and a leadership implant (mindlink). We also have Tech 2 Mining Barges and we added named ice-, strip- and Deep Core miners in addition to named mining upgrade modules.

With the Nex-Gen Manufacturing & Research Facilities coming in RMR, we will deploy Manufacturing & Research Starbase structures which allow for specialization, a reward for the added risk. If we have time, we’d like to add special manufacturing modules for some of the Capital ships allowing them for example to replenish their supply of Fighters but currently we’re focusing on the Starbase structures and getting them ready.

We have 4 new bloodlines coming in RMR, one for each race, male and female. They look quite good at the moment but as was frequently asked about, you will not able to switch between bloodlines.

NPCs are revisited, we’re adding elite pirates in Tech 2-ish ships and adding a number of ship classes like Destroyers and Dreadnoughts, too. We’re enabling players to affect them with cap drainers and other offensive modules, but the NPCs are going to be able to retaliate in kind.

We’re trying move to fewer but stronger NPCs which not only should make it more fun but also drastically reduce server load and client performance in high-end encounters but this is more of a long-term project so don’t expect everything to be like this in RMR.

Eye for an Eye is a new system, which allows you to revenge the podding of your character if it happens under unlawful circumstances, such as in empire and not at war. You get a time limited contract, most likely a month, to revenge your death.

We’re also flagging can’s by ownership, criminally flagging you against the owner of the can, enabling him to shoot you without CONCORDOKEN for stealing his ore or loot.

Combat Revisited is a big and ongoing project, now focusing on prolonging combat by adding new defensive skills and improvements on a lot of defensive modules. We made some modules useful, like the damage controls and are looking at a number of other modules, making them a more viable choice in combat.

Prolonging combat should not only make it more fun but also enable us to take new paths in future expansions to deepen combat, like allowing players to overload modules at the risk of them getting damaged or destroyed and even allowing targeting of certain ship sub-systems – something which the current combat times does not offer you.

The flagship features of Red Moon Rising are Carriers and Titans. They fully personify the arms race of the empires, where you have the massive fleet support ships and a newer, more practical version of Titans which don’t require depleting moons (well, not as much anyways).

There are 8 Carriers coming in RMR, 2 for each Empire eace. The Carrier is quite affordable in terms of Capital Ship and we expect most major corps to have at least one or two of these in their engagements, but we also have the Mothership which are considerably bigger version of the Carrier.

Motherships feature Ship Maintenace Array functionality allowing you to store ships and fit modules in space around it. They also have an corp hangar-ish ability so that you can get modules from it in space depending on your access rights.

You also get X-Large logistics modules for Carriers which should have drastic effects in fleet engagements and Fighters, the X-Large drones. We’re also adding new drone functionality, which ones will make it into RMR is unknown at this point. The often mentioned salvage drone will not come since we’re planning on doing a tractor beam for RMR allowing you to drag in your loot cans.

Player Titans are a less resource intensive version of Empire Titans requiring less depletion of the universe’s resources but are just as big and more powerful in many ways than the older empire versions. They feature most of the main benefits of Carriers but have the added ability of fitting X-Large turrets and has a massive Superweapon.

Both Carriers and Titans are Tech 1 ships, so they will be available to everyone from day one. We might do something else with Titans but I think the sheer mineral logistics and costs associated with it should in itself keep them few and rare.

Kali – Q2 2006

I went over our main features for Kali and a couple that we really want in there. We’re focusing on Factional Warfare in Kali since it includes Combat Organization, the project name for better fighting hierarchies and gang abilities, Medals and Certifications both for awarding by EVE through factional warfare but also for corps or alliances to give internally, Ranks for better visible organizations which should also benefit corporations and a number or ranking lists, such as the EVE Combat Rating which is ELO based.

One of the biggest changes to EVE in Kali will be the Contracts system, which not only enables complex contracts between parties which do not have established lines of trust – such as BYOM manufacturing contracts – but also enable organizations with established trust, like corporations or alliances to create “mission” like contracts, milestones and allow them to track achievement and empower players which are even more trusted without having to give full access to corp hangars.

We also have Combat Boosters. Think time-limited hardwire implants with drawbacks. They are creating a whole new value chain since the foundation of Combat Boosters are new ingredients found in 0.0 COSMOS regions, which then require Starbases with Drug or Chemical labs to create.

The 0.0 COSMOS regions all have the basic ingredients gathered with mini-professions, have a single unique ingredient, which allows you to create that regions special line of Combat Boosters and formulas for creating them all.

Get more unique ingredients from other COSMOS regions and you’ll be able to make even more powerfull Combat Boosters. That should either lead to trading contracts – or simply people killing each other for them :)

On the list of what we really want to get into Kali is Next-Gen R&D moving us away from the free dish outs of blueprints and involving the player more in the gamplay. It also includes customization and modding of ships as well as more complex research of bleuprints and branding of the products.

We’d like to do rewarding Exploration, with system scanning and escalating paths (both seen under the drawingboard, New Environments which are also listed there but are really big projects requiring a lot of effort which we haven’t been in the position to do and probably won’t be in the near future. We’d also like to see Tier-3 Battleships and Tier-2 Battlecruisers.

Planetary Flight will not be in Kali, the effort required to make that the way we want to do it and how EVE deserves it makes all of Red Moon Rising pale in comparison. We might have to notch it down a bit in the end but it’s currently post-Kali and requires a full expansion in itself.

– China –

The first major decision is that the universes are twins, they are identical except for a new resource distribution. There are a number of reasons for this. First and most obvious, is that all content and features created for Tranquility work directly in China, minimizing all porting and integration to a China universe, so we can instead focus our resources on creating rather than adjusting it all to fit both universes.

It’s also financial and manpower. With a unified development path for both universe, we can leverage all the incoming revenue on increasing the team to create more content and finally be able to do bigger projects like Planetary Flight without it taking three years and half the company’s manpower.

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Notice how it’s all about or around systems. As new features or enhancements.

Notice how they plan to revisit the combat by slowing it down and opening the way for brand new mechanics and possibilities to make it more meaningful and involving. Not scared to death about moving something they shouldn’t, but just looking ahead to those goals they set and that they want to reach.

Notice what they say about China. They aren’t planning for sequels, new projects or new markets. They aren’t planning to make money hats and swim in the money pool. Eventually they’ll do that in the spare time.

They’ll reinvest the resources they may acquire to finally reach and fulfill those ideas that aren’t possible right now. This is a type of development that doesn’t know what the mudflation is and doesn’t waste the resources on it. Instead it naturally creates the conditions so that the game can grow and embrace new ideas and possible developments in a positive, steady way.

And that’s only where things start.

[WoW] Thoughts of a Grand Marshal (Honor System)

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Saving a post on the official forums.

Author is: Grantham, Paladin on Argent Dawn server, Invictus Decora guild.

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As of November 15th, 2005, I have successfully attained the rank of Grand Marshal (rank 14) on my Alliance Paladin. I have been PVPing, first part time then full time, since the honor system came out. I ramped up the amount of participation I had in the system as my rank advanced. I did stall at Knight-Captain (rank 8) for about six weeks after the battlegrounds came out as I focused more on Alterac Valley than the more honor rewarding Warsong Gulch.

It took a lot of things to get where I am. It took the cooperation of a good group, the understanding of players who were willing to scale back their earnings to allow me to surpass them, and the understanding / support of my guild. I would be the ‘success story’ of the PVP / Honor system it seems.

I can unequivocally state that I will never participate in the Honor system ever again. Even if the expansion does not reward former rank 14 players with the level 70 rewards, I will not compete to achieve new versions of the gear I have gained. The system itself is flawed, and in my opinion it is best if people do not get involved in it in. If I had known the real investment needed to advance when I started, I never would have gotten into it.

It is easy to sit back and criticize the choices that GM/HW characters have made when they talk about how much they have had to work to get where they are. The most common statement that the uninformed make is ‘it was your choice, and you should have just stopped,’ or some iteration thereof. I can state that it is not that easy.

There is something called the ‘Dollar Auction’ (sometimes called an ‘American Auction’), commonly used by charities, where when auctioning off an item (or, originally, simply a dollar bill) that the second place bidder must also pay what they bid, but do not receive anything in return. It is extremely common in auctions such as this for bidding to reach a rather silly level (an example is $20 for a standard $1 bill) due to whoever is currently in second place now having invested too much to lose what they are putting down on the table without getting something back. Psychological phenomena prevents the average human being from walking away when there is still a chance of receive some return on investment. Companies around the world continue to pour millions into failing divisions and projects due to the same psychological hurdle.

The honor system plays off this same affect, leaving those who don’t achieve the GM/HW titles with, literally, hundreds of man hours invested with no return. The frustration that this can cause leads to people pushing harder than is healthy to finally get something out of the system. This is where we hear the stories of people sleeping 4-5 hours a day, and then spending all day in the system taking breaks only to eat and use the restroom. Beyond even that, you have people who have their characters played in shifts so that they can have some semblance of a life.

I know people who have spent vacation days from their real life job in an effort to push hard for a next rank or complete the final weeks of the rank 13 to rank 14 transition. I have done it myself, taking four days off of work (November 7 – 10, 2005), so that I could guarantee myself the extra points so that I did not have to continue competing the week of November 15 – 21, 2005.

Even on a ‘soft’ server like Argent Dawn, where the competition is nowhere near as steep as the PVP servers such as Blackrock, Shattered Hand, or Archimonde, those that have achieved rank 14 have at times succumbed to exhaustion, psychological burnout, and general malaise in regards to the game. The system creates a burnout or shell shock affect in the players that participate in it, causing them to cut back on or cease playing the game entirely. In effect, this system can cost Blizzard customers just as constant overtime can cost a company an employee. Anecdotally, many different players on the Blizzard forums report that the rank 14s on their servers all but vanish after achieving their ranks.

There are many achievement oriented people that play MMORPGs, and that is precisely who the Honor system is attempting to hook into participating. Just as the game itself is potentially psychologically addicting (just like a gambler’s addiction, which is very real), the Honor system is even more so. The need to get to that next hurdle or accomplishment to prove to oneself that one is progressing can be extremely strong. This type of compulsion will not show up in everyone, but that is simply due to the fact that every person is different. What affects one person mentally is not guaranteed to work on another. This can lead to decisions that adversely affect the self, just like a gambling addict that sells his car for money to take to a casino.

In summary, I find that the Honor system is not something that is either healthy or constructive. Blizzard has created a system that people can abuse themselves with, and should make changes to it so that the intensive, consecutive time requirements currently in the system are no longer the case. This would be both to show care for their PVP oriented populace, and to retain the customers that often quit after either finishing or no longer wishing to participate in the system. Compete at your own risk.

Some bad impressions

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Not from me. I was busy in my first DarkSpire run in DAoC and getting mad at Mythic (and, once again, congratulating the artists, that place is another masterpiece).

The bad impressions are coming from SWG and with a few things that still annoy me even if I’m not playing the game:

You still canNOT sit on the beds (benches, chairs). Just as in the beta all that time ago, I sat in midair about 7 feet away from the bed. It was vaguely amusing.

What the hell. What the fuck! I thought they fixed this in January. No. Characters still sit in the air. It tells a lot about the rest of the execution.

I’m not totally sure but I’ve read that if you download the trial and try to connect you have to download another 200Mb patch.

On day 1.

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FIND A BOMB AND DEFUSE IT! Follow this glowing blue fairy thing!

Walk for 1 minute, click once, walk back 1 minute.

Yeah, shot through walls. Stuff meleeing me from 20 ft away.

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Most force skills don’t even have an animation, the enemy just turns into a corpse as soon as you click the right button on it. Some other don’t even work.

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It’s simply *impossible* to shoot a mob between some dead bodies due to the retarded target system. You try to shoot but instead you target the dead bodies and start looting them while you are getting shot.

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12k+ ham bars. It feels like playing a pinball.

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Anything you “target”, your character LOOKS at. So this means as I move the mouse around, my characters head is twitching madly as it looks at dozens of different things for a tenth of a second at a time.

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My favorite part of last night was standing in front of Mos Eisley cantina and saying that the game looks like a piece of shit now, everyone moves all stupid and everyone’s heads snap left and right all the time, and several folks shouting ADAPT! and THIS IS BETTER you just have to get used to it and give it a chance!

I then proceeded to shout, “Are you fucking blind, look around you and how people are moving – especially people FIGHTING. It looks like shit, plain and simple. Get used to what? People in a near fetal position gliding across the Tatooine sand on invisible rollerskates?”

Aside from the many UI and control issues, they need to turn down what craptacular speed boost they put in, because animations are so fast that the server can’t even keep up.

And then, they need to actually sit down and do some real work on melee, because it’s pathetic.

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melee is almost impossible. I had several mob AI run from me from melee range. I had several on Endor do the classic run-1Km-away-and-then-back-again-bug. Hadn’t seen that since year1.

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you can hit in melee facing your enemy backwards.

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Even if you use your saber block, you wait out the root, then snare the other guy, he snares you, you both half-step your way towards each other (well, the Jedi gimps towards the gimpy ranged person, as they continue their kiting) and eventually – you get rooted again. And pummeled. Eventually ranged wins, because in the midst of all this running and gimping around – guess what – Jedi does 0 damage to their target, or they get a couple saber throws in that do a few slivers of damage. The ranged person has ample time to let that regen while they continue their snare/root/kite technique.

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I can no longer be a dancer and make my own clothing and that royally sucks.

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Within the first 10 minutes you meet C-3P0, R2-D2, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and get chased by Vader. It’s worth nothing that Solo throws in a random “kid” about every other sentence. You also get to have a laughably easy turret shootout with TIEs moving at about 1mph, and take down some nonresponsive storm troopers that seem to be in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s.

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You just point at an object that the game deems as “shootable” and left click. The camera controls suck, frequently making it difficult to see since your character gets in the way of aiming. I also had occasional problems with the camera clipping out of the station and showing the stars outside. Objects in the game and in your inventory also flicker pretty badly.

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So we know that they removed the decay. Once again people leave around their vehicles littering the place and lagging everyone.

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Crafting is now also a bitch, because of the difficulty in turning off mouselook mode. This tosses you back to staring at your worthless crosshairs every time you sell an item on your vendor.

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Using force run or force heal puts the character in combat, even without aggressive mobs in a 4km range. You are stuck in it. The only way to get out of combat is to search for a friend to duel or go shot a mob.

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the right-click specials system…. So how do I clear a special so I don’t fire it off accidently? Or better said, how the hell can I /peace anymore? Hitting ESC only brings up the HUD. If you target some objects — let’s the say a bank terminal, which I’m testing in another window as I type this — and right-click, you fire off that special and start combat. And you fucking stay in combat…

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As soon as I logged in, my server announced it was shutting down. I tried to sit down to log out, but it put me into combat mode and wouldn’t let me leave. I ran around for a bit, watching random “-SNARED-” and “-LEVEL UP-” text come out of my character’s head for no apparent reason. Then the server kicked me off.

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The Officer buffs don’t work on the group but affect only the Officer.

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Well, it seems that since I posted my last blurb one of the medics four healing abilities now works.

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Loot! Just like in the star wars movies, kill thousands upon thousands of small, inoffensive creatures and then rip their brain from their head. What do you do with the brain? Why you sell it to a fence of course!

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There were at least a couple of “obj_value[skill_luck]=3” or whatever lurking about, the “Select profession” button (according to the text) was not called that (it was “Next”), and there were quite a few graphical glitches. And it still has all of that “I can’t run underneath this spaceship because the transparent model extends to the ground” shit that I remember from my subscription days. Thanks for stressing the point that it’s more 2.5D than 3D, except in space.

Slow: Not just the space combat, but the lag, and controls in general.

First of all, it’s 3rd person with the “person” off to the side, so you end up running “sideways” because you’re trained to move forward into the center. Anger!

Second of all, the switching between mouselook and interactivity is, as others have pointed out, inconsistent – frequently, the game will decide it should switch to the other when you would assume it would not. And ESC is dangerous, because it will close some dialogs, not just switch the modes.

Third, interaction sucks; Aiming the tiny cursor is hell when your target is obscured by big damage numbers. Targeting a conversation choice is hard when it’s relative to an NPC going through animations.

Shooting through walls is bad, meleeing from far away is bad. Not being able to sit on a chair properly after more than two years is even worst.

Consistence, pls. No game based on ranged combat can have the *pretence to exist* without an even rudimental Line of Sight check.

The most comedy value comes from Smedley himself:

While the scope of the new enhancements is large, it’s built upon a very powerful underlying engine that gives us the ability to enhance the game in meaningful ways rather quickly.

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Do not repeat “Derek Smart” three times or a MMO may appear

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I was browsing Direct2Drive to see if I could buy Civ 4 as a digital download. Sadly with no luck since it’s available everywhere with the exception of Europe. Then, under the new release list, I saw Derek Smart’s latest effort and felt this really sick curiosity about it.

I guess I don’t need to explain who he is and what kinds of games he creates, but I’d say that I consider him a controversial figure. Which triggers some honest curiosity. He started to employ a type of mmorpg development before the mmorpgs started to impose themselves on the market. He has one foolish vision, one type of game. He sticks to it and, year after year, he keeps developing the exact same game, wrapping it up in a somewhat (un)finished state so that he can release it and get some money to continue with this ongoing development. Along the years he kept updating the technology and adjusting and enriching the game mechanics, moving step after step closer to that crazy vision he had. From many points of view he anticipated a bunch of trends and, despite all the harsh critics, he still managed to survive and keep creating the games he loves. These games sucks and are awesome at the same time. Between all the indies developers he is surely the craziest but also one of the most interesting for obvious reasons.

It’s not something easy to frame. You can just download and (try to) play a demo of his games to see clearly what’s wrong. But at the same time it’s hard to not feel fascinated by the scope of what he tried to create along the years. There are so many reasons to just dismiss his games as complete clusterfucks, but, still, an undefinable appeal remains. It has some value and deserves that curiosity.

With the release of the previous “episode” (Universal Combat) he changed the name of the “brand” and started a bunch of parallel projects, creating a whole lot of confusion if we consider that it’s still essentially all about one game. To understand what the hell is going on and which type of product was the one just released I started to dig his website and forums and also found a link to an interesting interview that is the actual reason of what I’m writing here. With the time he is starting to sound more… reasonable. Oddly calm and rational even if still firm in his positions. It’s quite fun to read him badmouthing his publisher without a worry. He really seem allergic to any kind of control. Some of his comments are really awesome and I think he is totally right when he says that his games reflect his personality. This is a collection of those parts I consider interesting, even outside the specific context:

– I had two solid offers for the game, but at the last minute – after several discussions with the president – we reached an understanding which later became an agreement. So I went with them instead. I go by one simple rule: I am better off dealing with the devils I know, than the angels I don’t.

– I have a love hate relationship with my publisher. They love me – I get the job done and make them money. I hate them – they cause me too much needless aggravation. At the end of the day, its all good because for good, bad or ugly, we need each other. I think.

Computer Games – How hard is it to come up with new ideas for your space sim series?

– Not very hard, to be honest. The hardest part for me – in any of my games – is the actual implementation of my grandoise ideas. Especially when you consider that most computers won’t even run the darn thing. Ideas – at least for me – come easily because the vision I have for my games is an ever evolving one.

Computer Games – Is A World Apart being made for the die hard followers of your game franchise or are you making it easier for new players to come into the series?

– From the onset, AWA was developed for fans of the existing games. There is absolutely NOTHING in it that would cater to anyone outside that group. I’m not, never have been and never will be, a sellout. If I decide to develop games for another type of market, I will spawn a new franchise. Until that time, the people who have supported my games through no less than six incarnations, are my primary concern and focus. Sure, the publishers can go try selling ice to eskimos, I could care less – as long as I get paid.

Most gamers have a hard time wrapping their heads around what goes into developing subsequent titles in a franchise. In fact, one print magazine reviewer (who shall remain nameless) recently said to me that the magazine EIC said that they won’t preview it because they think that not much has changed between UC and UCAWA. I laughed out loud when I read that; which just goes to show just how clueless some of these chaps are. There are so many clones, derivatives etc littering the shelves – all from big name publishers – and yet, nobody seems to mind. It is one hellaciously corrupt system indeed.

Computer Games – You are throwing in space, planetary and foot combat into A World Apart, and you have ambitious game designs that most developers won’t even touch. Are you worried about diluting your work by throwing in too much into the kettle so to speak?

– No. If I was worried about that, I wouldn’t be doing it. John, you’re from the old school and I think that over the years, you know my style: I don’t care about what people think. Its my game – I’m the one funding its development – I’m the one calling the shots. So, I can do what I bloody well like and have no regard for those who think they know whats best for me, my franchise properties or my fanbase. Only I know that and I think I’ve proven that time and time again. There’s a damn good reason why I’m still in business when all around are falling by the wayside. Its because I stick to my vision and make no compromises for same. Devs who lose their way, are those who lost the vision. Lose the vision and you lose the fanbase. Lose the fanbase and you’ve lost the farm.

Computer Games – In addition to the retail version, an electronic add-on pack for owners of Universal Combat will be available for download. Are you a fan of this form of distribution and will we see more of this for PC games in the future?

– I am not married to any particular distribution method. The main reason for my separating a retail version from an electronic versionwas to ensure that – going forward – my sole business income didn’t come from publishers. Most publishers – are terrible when it comesto paying their bills. A dev spends more time and money trying to get them to cough up what they owe, than what they actually owe. So, the condition of this new deal was only if I were allowed to keep the online distribution rights.

The fact is, direct distribution is going to be the wave of the future and the preferred distribution method for indie developers in the future. You have NO idea just how much crap we have to put up with – even when these publishers are selling our games and making money from them. Most of them shouldn’t even be in business – and won’t be for long. It is inevitable and we’ve already started seeing this already. Why would any indie want to ally themselves to a publisher when you stand little or no chance of ever getting money for your work, when you can simply go direct? When you go to online distributors with a monthly payment method, you get the money directly and frequently. They don’t pay, you yank the product and take it elsewhere. With publishing contracts, termination is not an easy – nor straightforward – affair. So you are usually stuck while some bastards in suits have your game, are making money from it and either not paying at all or habitually paying late.

Computer Games – You are well known for your outspoken viewpoints on a number of topics. How do you think your public persona has affected the interest in 3000AD’s games, if any?

– There’s no such thing as bad publicity. If I really cared about how my persona affected my games, I’d have packed up and moved to Canada by now. Everyone has a personality and I am no different. I just don’t make excuses for mine and certainly don’t tuck it away in the closet. Just like my games, you either like and respect me, or you don’t. There’s no in between – and I could care less either way.

There is a big difference between being an experienced outspoken person who knows what he’s talking about; and just being a clueless outspoken loudmouth. I didn’t need to prove myself to anyone; my work, my accomplishments and my uncompromising standards, say it all.

Computer Games – Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Universal Combat: A World Apart?

– Only gamers with a passion for advanced and uncompromising games, need take a look. Everyone else, move along; nothing to see here; no matter what the publisher’s marketing team cooks up.

Computer Games – The Battlecruiser/Universal Combat franchise has been your life for over a decade now. Any chance you might become bored with it and try out a new genre or setting for your games?

– Nah, I’m never going to get bored. My ultimate long term vision is much too ambitious to afford me that luxury.

He sounds like a cowboy in the far west of gaming :)

About the games it seems that he released two this year. Universal Combat Gold (UCG, DS loves acronyms), which is just a minor update to the previous released game and only available as digital download, and Universal Combat: A World Apart (UCAWA), which is the actual new “episode” with a reworked graphic engine, art assets and a bunch of things that only Derek Smart himself or someone with his same degree of crazyness could identify. And I’m truly ashamed to reveal that I decided to reward at least his stubbornness and perseverance by buying the new game…

His plans for the next couple of years are crazier than ever and I really do expect some fireworks out of this:

Press Release Announcement

THIS is the seamless sci-fi MMO you’ve been waiting for. But if you’d rather kill rats, dance like an uncompromising dufus in a bar, well then, have fun with that.

Universal Combat Online (UCO) is our massively multi player online game. Based on a vastly improved version of the Universal Combat – A World Apart engines, it contains a plethora of new advanced technologies and content to make it the ultimate futuristic battleground with our pioneered vast seamless space and planetary worlds.

Engage in space or planetary battles with hundreds of other players across a vast persistent game world with several galaxies hosted on linked server clusters. Fly an agile fighter or lumbering capital ship; run around in first person with various weapons of mass destruction; helm a submarine undetected up an enemy invested sea or drive at break neck speeds into battle at the wheel of dozens of vehicles. The choice is yours. Its your game. How will you play it?

True skill based gameplay, zero grind. Whether you are a skilled commander of a behemoth space carrier roaming the space ways or a newbie Elite Force Marine defending your planetary base; your own personal skills determine your survival.

Advanced grouping features allow various types of team based gameplay; whether it be fleets or guilds. Built in support for voice chat (internal as well as external apps such as TeamSpeak, Ventrilo) as well as an advanced chat interface.

Build, control and defend space or planetary cities and bases. Become a trader for profit or control the flow of contraband weapons in a combat invested planet or space way. The choice is yours. Who do you want to be today?

Full PvP engagements with NO sissified rules.

Good luck with that :) At least he knows how to pitch his things. If all goes as expected we will see this only by 2010 and it WILL be a huge clusterfuck. But at least it will be an awesome one. I only wish he could take back the old Battlecruiser brand. “Universal Combat” still sounds too much like a lame b-movie instead of a niche, hardcore title. Humor and Derek Smart don’t go along well, what is so fun about him is that he always sounds so damn serious, so he is fun in a sort of spontaneous way.

It’s also nice to see him babysitting his players. Jokes aside, it shows how he is passsionate about his games.

EDIT-
I just found a biased article about some sort of conference with Derek Smart to present his last game (I think).

It’s interesting because he comments one of the last topics that have been discussed around here (fear change):

For Derek Smart has never made a game that he thought his fans would like, he has made games that he would like to play. He confesses, “If you listen to every angry fan or every negative review, you would just eventually get fed up and give up. But, if you try to improve on where you went wrong and continue to make the best game possible, you will gain a faithful fan following.”

Derek also talked on the death of a franchise. He advises that the reason many franchises fall along the waysides is that they try to fix upon what made the series work in the first place.

EDIT-2
It’s also so fun reading his “open letters” to the magazines reviewing and systematically digging his games :) There’s one for each version of PC Gamer (here and here).

The comedy value is incomparable:

Unless you took a wrong turn at Albuquerque on your way to the water cooler and ended up at the ass end of Alpha Cygni when you were clearly *told* to go to Tau Ceti, how could you miss the action?

If not by the game, I’m amused by Derek Smart :)

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Until the end of the world

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What would you do if this is the last day before the world’s end?

Tomorrow the discussed radical changes to SWG go live. Some classes will be wiped while others transformed. For sure it will be one of the most traumatic days after the announce itself. On the Q23 thread there’s a post describing the last day in SWG as we know it, like a parody :)

—
Kahar The Mad

Well tomorrow is the big day here in SWG land. I have logged onto both the test servers and the main servers..Just to see…here is what I found….

– On the test servers –

Jedi are slowly realizing they just got screwed by a telephone pole. The jar of vaseline they handed to the jedi is basically ‘a new lightsaber’ wooohoo…

Jedi have populated to the point where it looks like a cockroach infestation at a Tiajuana hotel. You turn the light on over CNET and about 300 of them scatter on instinct and there are usually 4 actual alternate classes sitting there.

Bounty Hunters have been seen sitting together for warmth. Most of them are looking at the weapons they have bought and can’t figure out what the hell to do with them. Most are overheard saying “what do you wanna do?”
“I dont know what do you wanna do”
“Lets do a NPC Bounty”
“Sure”
At This point they stand walk 100 feet away grab the misison and turn and shoot the guy standing 100 feet away from the terminal.
They then sit down again and repeat the cycle.

Crafting classes are still confused as to what exactly they are supposed to be making.

– On live Servers –

Creature Handlers are staging a protest. I think alot of them are actually putting a physical price on the devs heads. However alot of them have rallied and are selling CL10 Pets at about 2.5 to 10 million per.

Bioengineers are sitting in front of thier manafacturing stations staring in disbelief.
Most have take on the Rainman personae. And have dubbed Black Tuesday as “Heavens Gate” Im not sure what this means but I have heard purchases of Koolaid, and jello pudding have gone up.

Sales on merchants, look like Big Lots, in a agressive take over has placed their spokeman Jerry Van Dyke in charge of marking the prices.

Bounty Hunters have declared this day Jedi Love day. This is where the Jedi, All levels and abilities are hunted. Bounties are flying off the Terminals faster then cards in a rolodex in the middle of Katrina.

Jedi in game are being hunter in the last few hours like Sam Neil in jurassic Park. Jedi are trying desperately to Grind out thast bit of xp they can. While the Full Template Jedi keep screaming “Dont go into the long grasses” as another Bounty Hunter takes out the padawan with a round from his carbine.

Smugglers are pushing Drugs on the newbs at a alarming rate. Most of the newbies in game are walking around in a permanent purple haze and a few can be seen begging more from the smugglers.

Dancers, and musicains are huddled together against the coming night crying each other to sleep as if a guard is gonna come inside the cantina soon and drag one of them away for an execution.

Carbineers are found screaming at the top of there lungs “No Brady Bill”

Riflemen and Rangers are trenched in with supplies of food, bandaids and annuals of Deer Hunter Weeklys.

Pistoleers are screaming “They will take my gun when they pry it from my dead hand!! Or when the server comes down!!!”

Terras Kasi are prancing around singing “I get to be a Jedi”

Pikemen and Fencers…See Terras Kasi

Politicians and Mayors of towns are see in the streets screaming “There is no need to be alarmed!!! Citizens!! All will be fine!!! Trust the Government!!!”

Other than that… Things are business as usual.

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So I dream

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This is something I definitely wasn’t planning. Just a derailed thread on Q23 that I resurrected only because I was curious about one of the board members getting involved with the game I manipulated to trigger my own reasonings. So here more reasonings. I was accused about not being coherent and then defended because what I wrote was a few months old. Come on. The basis of my ideas are *years* old now. with the time I delve deeper, expand and learn new things. But I’m coherent and not an hypocrite. You can say my ideas suck and that what I think is retared, but you cannot say that I contradict myself and there isn’t anything consistent behind what I babble about. The ideals I chase are strong, very strong and consolidated. They definitely aren’t volatile trends. I even think I’m awfully redundant most of the times.

(“the graphic is the game” reference is here)

Unrelated observation: there’s an increasing interest everywhere about games appealing to women (the last reference I read is from Raph). The believable commonplace (I simplify here) is that women seem to love in particular three parts: the social aspects, the character customization and personalization and kick-ass PvP. Have you noticed how these last two are merely subsets of the first? PvP is Socializer, not Killer. And women love to kick asses. In particular they love to find out and demonstrate they can.

The two, awesome screenshots that triggered everything can be found here.

These ideas are bland a superficial but they also distill the essential so that I remember from where I’m coming. The ideal. The actual valid “pitch” of those ideas.

—

Andrew Mayer:
Amazing. After all the scoldings you’ve given over the last year or so you’re seduced by a couple of pretty screenshots.

And what other parts of the gameplay are you referring to? Do you see the irony in the fact that in that very sentence you manage to totally avoid any specific details on the “other parts” but clearly define what you mean by combat wth specific examples?

I give no scolding, in fact I’m not between those ranting loosely about the lack of innovation and I believe more in the evolution. I also dislike commonplaces and I wrote in other occasions that I believe that “the graphic is the game”. Like if we could go to see a movie and say that the image isn’t important, only the story is.

My old comments about the screenshots were the result of my own awe and my own impressions that those screenshots simply suggested me. It’s just what I “saw” into them, not what the actual game will be. It doesn’t mean that the game will be like I imagined it by looking at the screenshots, in fact they have nothing to share. I just put them out of context to illustrate my own idea, even if that idea is completely ignored in the actual game.

That said, those two screenshots illustrate perfectly the two most important aspects I would like to see in a mmorpg: 1- The “virtual world” scope, not just limited to combat (first screenshot) 2- The large scale PvP and conquest system (second screenshots)

Now look at the first. There are farmers, animals (and not xp bags), caravans, big and small boats, a lighthouse and a general natural, countryside quiet mood, with warm colors which, already in the screenshot, look absolutely stunning and immersive. That first screenshot has a strong charming impact, imho. I started to think about that.

That’s what I see and all the rest is triggered from those stimuli. What if we start to design a (even graphically) believable, recognizable world opposed to one built as a set of squared boxes labelled as “level 1-5”, “level 5-10” that you have to follow linearly, without any pretense of cohesion and self-consistence. What if those animals, the farms, the caravans, the lighthouse and the boats all had even a gameplay relevance instead of just sit there as “pretty scenery”. What if a player could own that farms, sail those boats, lead along those caravans and build a believable commerce system between the countries that just doesn’t teleports all the items from “x” to “y” or regulated through an artificial UI named “Auction House”. What if all those abstract and alienating intrusion of game systems could go away to put again the actual players at the *center* and as focus of the game world, instead of just gliding on a fixed, rendered background. What if we could drop all these buttons, quickbars, health bars, text messages and generally clunky and counterintutive, heavy interfaces that are just a huge limit of accessibility for most of the players and an intrusive curtain between you and the actual game world that you can *see*. What if these games could finally emancipate from their MUDs heritage and leave behind that type of cumbersome geekdom to move toward a more natural, believable and even visceral (guess why sex and violence and even the tactile world of Katamari Damacy are successful nowadays?) type of gameplay that is directly fun and accessible for everyone. Because it draws hands down from our real experience and the most natural feelings?

All that is just a start. Because all the rest follows, like a chain. Once you trigger a line of thoughts and dream about a potential, all the rest will follow naturally. You are chasing an idea that links together all these parts. An idea that can be started just by one screenshot to then move on its own. When I think about mmorpgs in general, that’s what I see.

Then there’s the second screenshot. The ideas above, for me, melt with this second part. Because in that type of world I described I want also the conflict and the conquest. The PvP is the most fun, social and satisfying repetable content possible. It just needs better environments where the players are, once again, the focus. Where they OWN the world and not just move around in one ruled by NPCs.

In that second screenshot I see once again the luscious scenery, a town with various buildings, defensive walls, watchtowers and an army moving to war. There seem to be archers, soldiers and huge dinosaurs used like huge war machines to siege the town. The awe here comes from the *scale* of things and the idea of a conquest. Two elements that are severely lacking in the games of today where the focus is always the single player and where the scale never changes. That scenery suggests “breadth”. It suggests a battle that will start shortly after that may remind what we saw in the Peter Jackson movies (which also strongly exploited z-axis movement of the camera to underline the sense of scale and dizziness).

We are excited when we buy a mount in WoW. What if you could drive one of those huge dinosaurs? What if you could charge and pound against those defensive walls and breach them? What if you could sweep the place with the tail and tear both men and buildings with the jaws (and here we would need a true physics engine and not intangible character models)? And what if all these actions were possible with more natural controls instead of a bunch of quickbars cluttering the screen with fancy, retarded effects like DOTs, mezz, stuns, buffs, debuffs and other totally absurd abstractions?

Think to a truly epic battle and conquest suggested in the second screenshot, with smooth, fluid and intuitive controls and visceral combat like in “God of War” and all within a cohesive, believable and consistent virtual world with an unmatched breadth as suggested in the first screenshot.

That’s what I “see” :)

DAoC and slash commands: too deeply in love

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Mythic has always had this deep love for counterintuitive /slash commands that you have to dig into lenghty patch notes and then learn. If there’s something absolutely archetypical of the accessibility problems of these games it’s about /slash commands. Direct and cumbersome heritage of the MUDs, the dawn of the mmorpgs. Sometimes I wonder if aren’t these to really define the separation between the second and the third generation of mmorpgs. Have you ever had to use slash commands in WoW to complete a quest? Obviously not. The basic design of the game begins there. In DAoC, instead you’ll have to /dig, /search and /use, for example. And for the last of these you have to exit combat, open the inventory, target the item, right click on it, type /use and press enter.

We aren’t talking about “sticking to what we love” here. The unbelievably clunky, counterintuitive process to trigger an effect on the artifacts was introduced with ToA, not even at the game release when they were in serious crunch time and couldn’t spend time to polish minor details (the controls are a minor detail?). This is brand new design. And for this reason absolutely unacceptable.

I’ve already wrote about this. If you cannot go back and redo the controls/UI for the multitude of commands the game already has, at least do it right for THE NEW ONES that are being introduced from now on. We are back at discussing “bad habits”. This is a terrible one that should be eradicated. So lets take again the test:

“When a new patch is ready to be released publicly, one of the devs should browse through each fix and new feature to see if it passes a simple test. If the test is passed the fix can be approved and published, if the check isn’t passed the new feature/fix must go back in development and adjusted accordingly.

The test is simple: a player should always be able to understand a change or use a new feature without reading the patch notes.”

Now lets see how the test goes with the very last patch notes (not official but confirmed):

– Added a new /xpoff command. This allows players to stop receiving experience points if they choose (primarily for use in the battlegrounds). This feature can be turned off by using /xpoff again. Players will be reminded that they have this feature on each time they enter the game, but not every time they would have gained experience points. Note that experience messages will not print when the player has experience turned off.

– Added a new /rpoff command. This allows players to stop receiving realm points if they choose (primarily for use in the battlegrounds). This feature can be turned off by using /rpoff again. Players will be reminded that they have this feature on each time they enter the game, but not every time they would have gained realm points. Note that realm point messages will not print when the player has realm points turned off.

Test: FAILED.

Of course these patch notes aren’t even official and not set in stone. If things change I’ll be more than glad to note it. But then I’ve observed how Mythic works for a long time and what I expect is that those command won’t change once the patch will be pushed live. The sky is falling? Obviously not. These are very minor commands to be used only by veterans. By the time you need them you’ll be aware that they exist. I’m not ranting on this specifically, I’m just using this as a blatant example of the awful bad habit that definitely ISN’T a thing of the past as it should. The actual priority should be to redo from zero the controls for those /use and /use2 commands that have to be used in combat and that damage directly the gameplay.

But lets focus on this example, instead. This is a very delimited feature. Why would Mythic implement two commands, one to block XP and another to block Realm Points? Because some players enjoy to play in the BattleGrounds. These BGs are accessible only at certain levels and are also capped by RPs. If you “go over” you have to move on and cannot keep playing forever in the same BG. So the purpose of the two commands is about giving these players the possibility to “freeze” the progress of their characters and keep enjoying that type of gameplay till they want. Summarizing some more this means that this is essentially a BattleGround feature.

Was it too hard to simply place an NPC right inside the starting keep in each BGs so that all players could go talk to it to block/unblock the two options? This could have erased the burden to discover and learn another two /slash commands. The commands themselves may even remain as they are but the NPCs could have helped new players to be aware of the function without having to dig it. It could have even be justified within the game as some sort of recruiting campaign called by the king to reinforce these zones that are more in need of assistance against the other realms (which also makes sense since the BGs are sometimes deserted). Maybe this could have even been the beginning of a new path that could have brought to new, special rewards (visual recognizability, special armors or banners, new titles, craft orders dispatched by the king for player crafters to be executed – just for some entry-level and conventional examples of what could be possible) only accessible for these special characters that decide to commit to these BGs and not continue on their conventional treadmill. Valorizing something that the players have demonstrated to appreciate (the smaller and more accessible scale of the BGs compared to the actual endgame RvR).

But instead Mythic keeps developing the game at the minimum common denominator. If there’s something to implement, they strictly do the bare skeleton. God forbid something more elaborated.

Again this is just a minor example and just an excuse to bring up an old problem.

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A genius is a genius, hats off

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No more computer games for the guy behind that Katamary Damacy masterpiece. And even a few words are a lesson of design:

“In 10 years time, I am not going to be making games any more,” Keita Takahashi told the BBC News website.

“I would like to create a playground for children,” he said. “A normal playground is flat but I want an undulating one, with bumps.”

At first glance, this seems a strange ambition for a game designer. But Mr Takahashi has a degree in sculpture and Katamari is all about a tactile world.

And he believes children should spend more time in the physical world and less time wrapped up in the virtual world of games.

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Lum is a pussy and too scared to admit he agrees with everything I write! (with Colin Powell as guest star)

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I was going to just archive the reply I wrote over there as I usually do. But then, on a second read, I gave this passage some more weight and started to think about it:

Developers fear change too. They can be beaten down just as hard; the hammers are just called different names. Message board posts. Emails. Subscription numbers. Publisher pressure. Going home and getting yelled at because your significant other can’t understand why you people just don’t fix X, Y, and Z. After a certain amount of time, inertia kicks in out of self defense. If you don’t change anything, you don’t make any mistakes, after all.

I think I can understand what he is trying to say here. That position is understandable and it’s normal that, given those conditions, the reaction is a defensive one. I wouldn’t blame or accuse anyone. I wouldn’t point my finger. It’s simply legitimate and normal. But still… It isn’t a type of value you can share or build things upon. It’s not something you can expect people agree with. Understand, probably. But not agree with.

The current situation is understandable, but this isn’t a justification on its own. It doesn’t mean that things cannot change. Or that shouldn’t change. It doesn’t mean that nothing can be done to make things better. It doesn’t mean that we have to suffer this (I shouldn’t use “we” here since it’s way too easy to preach without being directly involved, but I wouldn’t know how to phrase it). So I don’t think that this position is defendable. There is no fault in the position itself, but at the same time not enough to make a valid point. The fact that this is what currently happens is the very first reason why we should desire it to change. Work better, offer better products, and not suffocating the potential on our own.

“Shit happens”. So we do nothing and feel jaded or even sage. This isn’t enough of a justification. I’m simplifying, but that’s the tone. It sounds like a type of anxiety-inducing reaction that I actually know rather well. But I’m not so stupid to justify this position as valid. Even if I choose it. I know it’s short-legged. If there’s too much pressure (and I’m sure of this) there’s the need to transform it in a positive drive, or things just won’t work. It’s just frustrating. We need to get educated and educate so things can change. Not work *despite* the negative conditions or the pressure. But transform the situation so that it becomes a positive one. Lead the context instead of suffer it.

But then I write this because Lum brought it up. He says he reads me because he has different opinions. What a liar :) I know perfectly that he agrees with everything I write. He is too intelligent to disagree with me. And I’m a genius. Besides, if he wrote about this it’s because there’s a controversy where he felt involved, somehow. It is evident. He tries to defend a position but it’s obvious that he is siding the other… He wishes he could disagree.

See, it’s like a little kid crying “…my mom spanked me!” Of course he doesn’t want to hear his mum is a bad mum because he loves his mum after all, but at the same time he doesn’t want to keep getting spanked, either.

And this is where Colin Powell arrives (stolen from Eve-Online dev blog):

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It’s an excuse for inaction. It’s a mindset that assumes (or hopes) that today’s realities will continue tomorrow in a tidy, linear and predictable fashion. Pure fantasy. In this sort of culture, you won’t find people who proactively take steps to solve problems as they emerge.”

Here’s the rest:

—
I’ll just say this.

Why the hell new games are allowed to get marketed over the mistakes of previous ones?

http://www.corpnews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2674

“- The combat itself is much longer than what I experienced in DAOC or SB where fights were over inn 1, 2, 3, gone….spend 30 mins regrouping.

– Each character seems to have a decent amount of surviability so you have time to react

– there is NO /target, /group target, or /sticky command.”

This is a very simple example. The *whole* World of Warcraft was built on top of the mistakes, failures and bad habits of previous games. In general I could safely state that these successful games are more the result of the observation than the rabid creativity. Which is also what drives this whole industry, not just the mmorpgs: reiterations over previous models. Who “gets it” is successful. In the mmorpgs this is even more emphasized because who gets it *first* is successful. So what is fundamental is the aptitude to anticipate trends and possible developments. The market itself requires this availability to evolve and rewards it.

My belief is simply that this is what this genre could do at best considering the “ongoing development” and the nature of “game worlds”. The ideal world and inspiration remain, the implementation can improve and grow, along with the possibilities and the technology. You can express new ideas and open new potential from here. Working on top of what you already built. The game can become richer and you can finally explore those ideas that just weren’t possible till that moment. It’s a journey and you are required to learn from what happens along the way so you can continue on that path.

The point is, the games who decide to fear change are consequently predated by other projects. The competition is going to use your weaknesses and by being conservative you just hand them on a silver plate the opportunity to eat your slice of the pie:

“this game is broken and I’m gonna see you in Dark City of Shadowquest 3: Electric Boogaloo.”

That said, I specifically wrote that I don’t fully support what is going on to SWG (as LoH also writes here above). I like change and I like when a company dares, but this should be the result of reiterations, even radical but never to discard months and years of work to steer the game in a completely different way. As I said the ideal should be about working on top of what you built. Sometimes this means to step back and rebuild something following the new rules you learnt, but it shouldn’t mean that the game should restart in a brand new direction that requires to replan and repackage everything from the ground up every six months. Choices, even here, must be made. Once you choose a path you have to stick to it. To commit to it. This is alse why I often criticized devs jumping from project to project. And, if you notice, SWG had a strong churn rate of developers that obviously affected negatively the game. I want authorship and commitment instead.

I don’t support “change” just for the sake of it, in the same way I do not support fancy ideas with no foundation. What I’d like to see is working actively to deliver what was planned and adjust what you are creating with what you learnt along the way.

Then the final point is even more simple. “Change” is good only when well executed. SWG will get many, many more subscribers and will get revitalized for the years to come if it will deliver on the premises. But this is a risk. It could go well as it could just not work. I’m the first to feel sceptical. Six months down the road we will remember this as a huge success, or as a big, predictable (like we are doing here) failure, or something gone so so. The truth is far from *all* these three possbilities. The truth simply depends on how “change” is executed and not “whether change or not”. I hate this generalization about “change”. If *this* change is well executed the players will finally reward it, if it sucks the game will pay an harsh price. The same would apply if we were talking about a brand new product.

And to really conclude, the very first quality of a designer is about learning. In the same way “learning” is what these games are about. As Raph says: “the best personal qualification is intellectual curiosity and a dedication to self-education”. Learning is about change. If a designer “fears change” he is just done. He hasn’t anymore anything to say.

Maybe a more interesting point could be about how we could educate ourselves to not fear change and use it as a positive motivation instead of a negative, stressful pressure. I know that “we aren’t there yet” in the same way I know that SWG’s changes “aren’t there yet”. In fact most of what I saw sucks and is the result of awful compromises. The point is to move in a direction when you decided that the direction is worth the effort.

I want these games to be vital and not just drown in stagnation to finally get predated by better products. I know “we aren’t there yet” but I also know that this is the right direction where to go. And enjoy the ride.

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