“An executive from SEGA, one of Nintendo’s largest publishers, told Forbes.com on Tuesday that he expects the Wii to sell for less than $200. Post said the Nintendo machine, which features a wireless controller that responds to players’ body movements, ‘will appeal to a broad demographic of both hard-core and casual gamers.'”
Sounds like they are talking about mmorpgs. Heh.
I was going to write about other stuff but Arthur Parker linked an interesting 7-min video (you need to copy and paste in a new browser window to make it work) that reveals some of the aspects I was trying to examine:
This image should represent the zone distribution in the game for one of the three “war fronts”: Greenskin Vs Dwarf.
I wonder if the numbers represent the four “tiers” of the levelling system.
In this case there are two interesting observations. The first is that the zones are level capped as I guessed. The second is that the capital cities are EXCLUSIVELY PvP zones. Just like an end-game PvP raid zone (DAoC’s relic raids) that you can access only when the battle front moves there. So no social “hubs” like in WoW, they are just used for PvP.
If you count all the circles they are 11. So confirming the number of zones for each “war front” (33 zones in the full game). But at the same time we know that the starting zone for dwarves and greenskin is shared, with two opposite entry points and a seamless PvP zone in the middle.
Instead in that scheme the dwarves zone and greenskin zone look separated. So I wonder if they count it two times, like splitted in two in that graph, but seamlessly connected in the actual game.
In this case the unique, accessible zones by one character per warfront would be four (plus the two capitals). Which is GOOD, imho. Since it would help to make the PvP activity converge. Like a consolidated version of the DAoC’s frontiers (if they don’t overdo with the instances).
I wish we could have some confirmations.
Add warmachines and divided the assault to the capitals into five-six different “stages” with each its own objective (think to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory) and it could be the coolest thing EVER.
—
And more, truly interesting (but unconfirmed) details:
No levels.
Four tiers, with ranks within each tier. You’ll have 4 XP bars that allow you to select “packages” of advancements – abilities, static buffs, skills, etc. that you want to work on. Three will be “standard” bars, one will be RvR-specific.
The packages allow you to select advancements that interest you without level-locking them. So, if you’re a big fan of exploring and you want to get a mount earlier than – say – an improved combat ability, you can choose a package that includes the ability to use a mount. Packages will have SOME restrictions – most likely tier-specific – but they offer players the ability to wind up with all of the stuff they want eventually, but also the ability to get it in the order of their choosing.
—
no pure “support” classes. In addition, no rogues or stealth classes. Not fond of hybrid classes either, though there will almost certainly be SOME degree of hyrbidization for some races.—
EVERY CLASS – is a combat class, you won’t find yourself ineffective simply because your group lacks total diversity.Regarding differentiation, there are a number of things to consider:
1) In terms of simple aesthetics, customization will play a large role. Armor dying and trophies, primarily, will allow players to be visually unique without breaking the aforementioned “iconic look, iconic role” rule. When I say trophies, I mean things like orcs wearing belts of dwarf beards and the skulls of fallen opponents impaled on the spikes of their armor.
2) In terms of personal advancement, you have the package system. I explained this earlier, but it basically lets you play the class you want to play and advance in exactly the way that appeals to you, in exactly the order you want to do it.
3) And in terms of combat, you have tactics. This system is a strategic layer of combat where players choose from a pool of available “tactics” before combat that they are then locked into for a set period of time (minutes or hours, not days). Tactics can be things like persistant buffs, race or mob-specific attack bonuses, etc. As players advance, additional slots open up allowing players to use more – or more powerful tactics. Weak tactics are worth one point, the most powerful tactics are worth – say – five. So if you have ten slots open, you might choose ten minor tactics or two extremely powerful tactics or a mix of five of the former, one of the latter. Or any other mix in between.
This is designed to help players avoid being locked into a specific character spec in any significant way without giving them the ability to respec on the fly without any advanced thought. And, of course, to avoid the typical “I hit these three buttons and – SOMETIMES – this button over here too” style of play.
Let’s examine this in order.
“No levels” IS GOOD. The four experience bars could mean that you select the skills you want to level up. Usually the skill systems are based on the use, the more you use one skill the more you improve in it. Here Mythic gives you “four slots”, where you can put the skills you want to improve and then the experience points you get will be automatically distributed to those skills. So no more use-driven, which adds freedom and could be a very good design choice to streamline the game.
Now, it’s not really a single pick for each skills, but a “package” that you can put on one of the four “experience slots”. Here it’s still hard to understand how the system works because there must be a link between the ranks and the “skill packages”.
From the sound of it I could guess that the system could become highly selective. You obviously need to select those packages you want to use and those you’ll leave behind. As a specialization system it looks close to how DAoC currently works. For every level in DAoC you gain “x” specialization points that you allocate to your spec-lines. Here the mechanic is basically the same, but reverted. DAoC’s spec lines = Warhammer’s packages. You choose the spec-lines / packages you want to develop and then go out to “level them”, which will also make you gain “ranks” (probably you gain one rank for every “x” skills you unlock in a package), with the direct consequence of not letting you develop all the packages, but forcing you to select only those that fit with your “build”.
In DAoC: level up -> allocate
In Warhammer: allocate -> level up
Not so incredibly innovative ;p
The only difference could be that every new skills in the same package always “costs” you the same amount. While allocating every new point in a spec-line in DAoC costs you progressively more points. It would be an improvement if so.
The negatives of this system are all already known in DAoC. It becomes extremely hard to make choices for your character without third-party character builders that let you plan your character from the first level to the last. And without a respec system you could easily gimp your character forever. So it’s a system that requires a very good knowledge of the game and that isn’t easy on the newbies (accessibility issue). You cannot start to play and slowly learn the game, instead you need to have already everything pre-planned from the first minute so that your character doesn’t finish to suck.
My suspect on the four “tiers” is that they will be used as a measure the overall power of the character, similar to how the levels are being used in Oblivion to then adapt the world around the player.
If this is true then all I said before about the level caps on the zones can still be valid. It would damage the PvP if Mythic allows a “tier four” character to go mess in a zone with characters at the first tier.
Considering everything together the “no level” claim is pretty weak. It’s possible that gaining ranks doesn’t scale up your stats, hitpoints and mana (at this point it would be the only real difference), but add a rank-based itemization and you basically have the exact same mechanic that drives DAoC or every other level-based game.
No support classes IS GOOD. Remove “healers” altogether, it can only be good.
No stealth classes IS GOOD. Removing annoying ambushes from campers is a good design choice for a game that focuses on a “war” where everyone is supposed to participate together.
About the “tactics” system, as I commented I fear it will lead to min-maxing and default builds. It sounds like WoW’s talent system, just more manipulable. I don’t see it having a particularly significant role in the design and the gameplay. In the sense that it doesn’t seem to add much and being indispensable or worthwhile idea.
I need to know more. Some things are interesting and convincing, some other less.
I have to admit that the goblins look great.
Great model and textures. I just hope that the animations are on par. And the ears! Please animate the EARS! (make them twitch at times during the idle animation, it would add a lot)
If anything I would make them just more curved and three-fingered instead of five (but then lore guys would complain, I guess?).
The art direction is MUCH improved from the screenshots released earlier. I love the color palette and I hope it’s not just a trick on some screenshots. The dwarf model still sucks, but the rest is starting to look much better than WoW and not as cartoonish (or at least less goofy).
In particular I like how the “green” used on the goblin is much more natural, detailed and opaque compared to the neon-green of the orcs in WoW, for example. This is why I hope it’s a definite choice in the art direction instead of a trick of this one screenshot. I think that fluorescent greens, yellows and purples are out of place for this kind of fantasy setting, but this is more like a personal point of view on the genre and a stylistic choice than a rule. Still, you can see how much better things can look when the art direction is solid.
Keep the colors more opaque, dimmer and natural and the game will look much better.
The look of armor and weapons is finally matching the setting instead of going in the Voltron direction. If they stick to that path the game overall look will finish to be more appealing than WoW. I want to see metal, bones, wood, leather. Stains, worn look, rust. NOT PLASTIC.
There are also a few screenshots of the interface. Very WoW-like. But at least it’s well organized and leaves behind the old-generation square blocks used in the old school mmorpgs (DAoC included). It’s nice the idea to add a full animated model in the middle on the bottom-bar. But I guess here the point it to see your party members fully animated, not just your own face. Without cluttering the screen.
So, if things continue to go in THAT precise direction, the game could really look amazing. If not, it will trip and fall behind WoW as a shabby imitation.
As for the rest, this game is at a crossroads.
From a post I snagged from F13, some interesting features that will land with the first segment of the Kali patch:
* Kali in 2 months.
Big new stuff:
* Solar System view. 3-D view replacing the Scanner that lets you see stuff around the solar system you’re currently in. Improved and more usable scanning. Blob size apparently influences how easily you can be detected. Also, there’s a spore-like ‘seamless’ transition from ship view to solarsystem view to galaxy (map) view. Scanprobes will be changed and improved. They will now be 3-D aware and not a giant pain to use. No details on what that actually means.* Along with the SS view will be more hidden complexes and hidden asteroid belts with goodies in them. This is to “enhance the exploration aspect”.
* When ships explode, they no longer blow up into cargo cans. They will now leave a hulk that you must ‘scavenge’ for loot, parts and stuff. Scavenging will have skills associated with it. Hulks will last longer than current cargo cans, “a few hours”.
* Booster system, where you take drugs to confer temporary bonuses at the expense of temporary drawbacks (e.g. +5% turret rate of fire, -2% velocity). Tolerance, so if you shoot up a lot, the bonuses won’t last as long as the drawbacks, thus simulating addiction. This second bit is not finalized.
* Gas clouds and gas cloud mining, which are used in booster manufacturing. Gas clouds are all in 0.0.
* Reverse Engineering. Basically, using parts found in complexes or salvaged off of the hulks of your enemies, you use reverse engineering to fix them up and then ‘assemble them’. The game mechanic way of describing it is that you ‘put parts in a box’ and seal it; this locks in a set of advantages and disadvantages. You can then drop the box into your ship (“like implants for ships”), conferring those bonuses and drawbacks to that one ship. The ‘box’ will be destroyed when your ship explodes. Skills associated with all of this, naturally.
All interesting features to enhance the game, but not really adding anything in a meaningful way, honestly.
In the meantime, after my earlier E3 report by proxy, I decided to cancel my account.
The biggest reason why I was interested in Eve and to support it was about seeing it move past its limits and really achieve its potential. This objective was made concrete through the “Factional Warfare” plan that I had extensively described and commented. That’s where I wanted to see CCP’s resources being spent.
With the announce that this part has been delayed to the next year, I’ve decided that I’m not going to support their choices and I’ll be back only when they decide to make the accessibility of their game their first priority, instead of the last.
With more details about Warhammer coming up, it’s easier to imagine how the game will be and the possible problems it could present. The guesswork is the true nature of game design, you need to anticipate the outcome even if you have only rough sketches in your hands. And the problem-solving is fun.
Since I don’t enjoy to analyze and criticize but also design solutions, here are some rough ideas to address some of the problems I examined. I like these sort of “design challenges” because it’s an indirect way to confrontate solutions. From the rough previews about the game it’s already possible to imagine from where the problems could arise. Here I suggest some possible solutions and I’ll see if Mythic’s own answers will be better than mines, when they’ll be revealed.
Point 1:
clarify the role of Battlefields and Scenarios while addressing population balance issues
I was thinking that it doesn’t make much sense to support instanced PvP for starting characters, but then I also thought that with the initial release the noob zones will be quite crowded and in this case an intelligent use of instancing may help a lot. I don’t know if Mythic has thought something along the same lines but the interaction between battlegrounds and scenarios could be exclusively driven to regulate overcrowding issues.
The players would enter a queue as they step in the PvP zone. The scenarios could be just mirrors of the same battleground (minus the PvE portion), but instanced. As the battleground gets too crowded to support a decent PvP action, an instance is spawned and the players in the queue prompted to join. As this happens the “shared PvP objectives” would automatically switch for all players from the battleground to the scenario, so that the players would be encouraged to join. This would create a dynamic system that would spawn scenarios only when required, while keeping persistent “world PvP” always alive even where there are only a few players around. In this case the players wouldn’t be able to manually spawn an instance if the battleground isn’t already overcrowded.
At release the noob zones will be filled with players, so it could be possible to have multiple scenario instances active even in those starting zones. After a few months they’ll get much less populated and in this case the instances would be dynamically removed and the players made naturally “converge” in the persistent, base battleground. For the outcome in the “campaign” the results of a battleground objectives would matter only if there aren’t instanced spawned, while, in the presence of the instances, the players would be encouraged to move there by automatically switching the shared PvP objectives.
With this idea I have better defined the interaction and role of battleground and scenarios, also addressing some of the population issues.
Point 2:
a “recruit system” to keep the PvP alive and accessible at all levels and always, taking advantage of all the content available and without losing progress
As I wrote in the other article analyzing the game, there’s the necessity to lock the level range of a zone if Mythic wants to support open PvP zones and levels at the same time. In DAoC the lower levels battlegrounds are level capped and instanced, while the open frontiers are only playable at the high levels. Warhammer is supposed to have PvP and PvE mixed in the same zone. Without a zone level cap an high level character could go in a noob zone and ruin the PvP for everyone.
The “recruit system” is an idea to allow a player to dynamically bind its character to a zone that is currently out of its normal level range (but only downwards). This would retain the current progess in the game (like in Guild Wars you can only move between content already unblocked and visited) but it would also allow the players to still experience the content “backwards”, without the need to create a new character.
The idea is similar to EQ2’s mentoring system but in this case tied to a whole zone instead of a group of players. At the entry point of each zone there could be an “office” that would grant the entrance to the zone only to those characters in the appropriate level range. An high level player who wants to enter a lower level zone would need to go to this office and get “recruited”. The recruit status binds momentarily the character to that zone and lowers its level to be appropriate with the level cap of the zone.
As for the mentoring system, the player still gains some progress toward its normal level even when “recruited”, while the current level is locked so that he doesn’t risk to outlevel the zone where he is playing. This means that playing in a lower level PvP zone could still be a rewarding experience. With this system the level/ranks become more like a measure of the content you can access more than just an unidirectional power growth. An attempt at a “sandbox”.
The original idea is of “permeable level barriers” (the idea of “permeable barriers” I keep reusing and that I consider the keyword to advance the genre). Your character grows, but it can still move “backwards”, continuing to have access to lower level content if the player makes that choice. The “recruit status” is temporary in the sense that the character can always leave the zone and regain its normal level.
Ideally a player could decide to never go past level 10 if he likes particularly that PvP zone. At the same time that character continues to earn progress, so that when he decides to leave he won’t have lost any progress just because he decided to stick with the lower level battleground.
The goal of this idea is to keep ALL the game content accessible for ALL players and characters ALWAYS. Maximizing and valorizing all the content the game has to offer. Without the need to create multiple specialized characters or risking to outlevel and leave a PvP zone you particularly like. You make the choice, the game would be completely OPEN ENDED. Wherever you want to play, you’ll always continue to gain progress, albeit at a slightly lower speed (to give some incentives to those who play at the appropriate level range).
This is not only a significant advancement in the overall design of the game (all accessible and based on the player’s choice), but it will be also useful to keep the game well-populated and vibrant at ALL level ranges even years after launch. This because the players aren’t forcefully pushed against the level cap wall, but can also go back and decide where they prefer to play. The players will ALWAYS have the possibility to go play in the PvP zone where there’s some action, no matter at which level it is. The levels aren’t anymore impassable barriers separating you from the fun or your friends. Instead they become “permeable”. Just a way to measure the content, but not a way to segregate and isolate.
This would also effectively solve the gap between casual players and hardcore. By making everyone progress at their own pace.
On top of this I would even add specific rewards and military ranks to recruited players. It’s just an alternate character progress system to reward the players. So that the player can gain special ranks for EVERY PvP map and not just overall. In this case the rewards wouldn’t be in “power growth”. The idea is to offer items and perks, but that only define a status without giving directly more powers.
Like unique and recognizeable weapons and armor pieces who don’t have better stats, but just a special look as a reward and demonstration that the player has achieved a lot of experience on that map. Just a way to “personalize” your character even more, without fucking the PvP balance and gameplay.
At the very end of these specialization paths there could be even some special skills that would still remain usable only occasionally, more like fun events that the player can trigger and that would engage ALL the players. So not in the form of personal skills and attacks.
You can easily open up the recruit system to give the player all sort of fancy services, with the overall rule that these services wouldn’t provide directly more power. Just more customization and cool stuff to equip your character with. But not +damage stuff.
It would become an incentive to continue to play, without the pressure to reach the loot because you just cannot compete without it. It’s like RMT done right: through gameplay and dedication, but still without obtaining unfair advantages over other players in a PvP environment that should remain ACCESSIBLE AND FUN FOR EVERYONE. Hardcore or newbie.
Point 3:
a “bounty system” to balance direct player kills with shared PvP objectives, while avoiding exploits
In my analysis I already underlined the problem of PvP balance in the form of rewards.
– In DAoC: the players form selective and specialized ganking groups and ignore shared PvP objectives because ganking is by far the best way to gain Realm Points, while defending or conquering keeps is never as rewarding.
– In WoW: the honor reward coming from the objectives is much better than direct kills (diminished returns) to the point that a good number of matches are “arranged” so that both factions cooperate to get the reward without the effort.
Balancing these two is a crucial problem for a PvP system, but I don’t believe this balance can be achieved through simple math. This is a deeper design issue that is about the real meaning of a conflict. If the players are there for an external “carrot” they’ll try to get the carrot without fighting. Such is the nature of games. PvP is about killing players, the objectives are a way to add a variation and some significance to the formula. The goal is to make the direct kills still the focus of the PvP, but this while fighting for an objective.
My “hotspot” idea solved this by rewarding more points in the proximity of a PvP goal. So the “hotspot” or objective becomes more like a magnet, while the game still relies on the pure player vs player (if there aren’t players around you don’t gain points).
In the case of Warhammer this idea isn’t easily portable because of how the zones are being designed, but the idea of “bounty points” could still address the main problem of the balance of the reward.
The idea is that the players only gain a small amount of “progress” (experience, realm points or whatever) directly from killing opponents, but at the same time every direct kill grants an amount of bounty points. These points are only useful when they are “cashed”, so they need to be converted in the currency that the PvP system uses.
To convert these bounty points the players will simply have to win the shared PvP objective of the battleground. Basically the idea is that accomplishing the PvP goal isn’t worth anything on its own (only a small amount, like for the direct kills), but it’s the only way to convert the bounty points you have gathered while fighting. It’s a system working in two moments. First you collect, then you “cash” into tangible progress. Both chained together.
The amount of points converted after reaching a PvP shared goal is capped, so that it’s possible for the designer to tweak an ideal “ratio” between direct kills and objective-based PvP.
The purpose of this idea is also to avoid exploits. For example if there aren’t players in the other faction it would become too easy to win the battleground repeatedly while noone is around. With the bounty system the objective itself wouldn’t be worth anything alone, but it becomes important after you have fought enemies for a while and then need to redeem your bounty points. No enemies = no bounty points. So nothing to convert. The PvP goals are essentially just exchange systems.
The system is supposed to bring together the direct kills that are the essential of a PvP environment, with objective based PvP in a way so that it cannot easily boycotted like it happens in DAoC, where the shared objectives are really not worth the time they require.
It’s a way to put the PvP “carrot” where the purpose and the fun of PvP should be. Avoiding to create a “faked” PvP system that is then exploited like it happens with WoW and the arranged matches.
Warhammer completely replaced DAoC at this E3. While an expansion for this other game is planned for the end of this year, Mythic decided to not present it and instead focus their efforts to hype Warhammer.
One of the comments to the preview of “The Escapist” tells a lot about Mythic’s general approach and stategy:
it’s surprising to me that you’d expect anything “revolutionary” or “innovative” from MJacobs and co. I believe Mythic to be the most professional and among the most talented outfits out there but if you now anything about Mark you understand that Mythic is a business first and foremost and the corporate mantra is “follow the leader”
you’re looking at the wrong company to take gambles or innovate. Mark’s proudly modelled his games after whichever game is leading the genre at the time. for DAOC he loudly “borrowed” from UO (then EQ). Imperator was a developed (then dropped) modelled on the SWG (which was SOE’s flagship until it sunk). With 6 million subscibers, obviously WAR follows WOW.
Mark’s clearly stated his preference over the years to follow “established leaders” and to only base games on widely recognized realms and franchises (such as Arthurian legend, Classical Rome and now Warhammer). Mark is a great businessman and his companies make fun, solid games but you ARE expecting too much if you expect them to take risks and break the mold. In fact you’re looking at the wrong bunch of folks entirely
I think this also helps to frame Warhammer and the realistic expectations about this game. Mythic has always tried to occupy a market space by reacting to other mainstream mmorpgs and then refining and specializing one one part that is usually neglected, like the PvP.
As a company they are non belligerent and aim more to preserve their space more than imposing themselves, but with a more competitive market their efforts weren’t anymore enough. While WoW doesn’t offer a good PvP system, the game still stepped on Mythic’s plate and this, as expected, caused a reaction.
The Warhammer licence was for them a perfect occasion to leave the weight of DAoC behind and reach out for WoW, another game that created demand and interest for PvP. It’s also probable that if the fantasy Warhammer will work then they’ll move to the 40k version as an ideal way to revive Imperator.
This is still a defensive move. With Warhammer they are trying to reach again the space that DAoC lost with the time and lack of initiative. It’s a nudge to WoW, with a so similar setting and a focus on the PvP. Even here Mythic expects to leech enough players to keep the game successful while not disturbing too much the daddy.
The first relevant news from the E3 is the possibility for the game to be released both on the PC and XBOX360. There haven’t been official announces but Gamespot wrote that Mythic managed to port it and demonstrate it. This is probably just an experiment. Launching the game for the console is an easy way to expand the user base significantly. Along with their plans to support voice chat this could be a big occasion for them.
As for DAoC, Warhammer’s client is built on non-proprietary middleware (Gamebryo, like Civ4 and Oblivion) and this middleware should be already portable. So I think they decided to make an experiment to see if it could have been a viable option and considering the results it seems that it was.
Through various previews is now easier to figure out the overall structure of the game even if some parts are still quite unclear. The game will have 40 levels and branching classes. Every 10 levels your character will be able to further specialize and there will be four different careers/classes for each race.
There will be six different races at release. Greenskin (orcs + goblins), Dark Elf, Chaos, Dwarf, High Elf and Empire.
So a total of 24 classes (with further specialization paths) probably reduced to 12 “unique” if you consider that they’ll need to mirror them between the two factions if they don’t want to have huge balance issues.
At the base of the PvP system there are two opposite factions. Order and Destruction, each clumping together its three races Vs the other three races. While the single zones should be broken up between three different “fronts”: (Greenskin Vs Dwarf) (Dark Elf Vs High Elf) and (Chaos Vs Empire). We’ll see if this will lead to population imbalance problems. For now Mythic hasn’t revealed any plan to address this problem, even if it’s a fundamental one for this kind of games.
The PvP model they are going to follow is much better then the one proposed in DAoC. This is probably the best choice they made with this title. Instead of separating PvE and PvP like two independent games crippling each other, this time they are trying for a more coesive approach where PvE flows into PvP naturally. Molding together.
The newbie starting zones (three in total, one for each “front”) have already PvP-enabled parts, as I already explained. While I hope the zone design is flexible, the zone general scheme has two opposite entry points, one for each faction. The player can then start questing and killing PvE creatures in this “safe zone” as in every other mmorpg but then the quests will also lead toward a central, contested zone where the PvP will be enabled. This transition should be smooth, so you won’t need to “zone in”. It should be more like walking through an invisible line with a voice announcing that you are entering a zone of conflict.
They are planning for 33 zones. So 11 for each “front”. The players can freely move to other fronts and help allies. For example a dwarf character could decide to play in its default zone and fight against goblins and orcs or move to the Empire zone and fight against Chaos. The biggest problem Mythic may encounter here is again about the population imbalance.
Since they decided to go with a system based on levels, they’ll need to lock players out of the zone when past the appropriate level range, or one high level character could go sit on a noob zone and disrupt the game for everyone else. This will effectively segment the game world since as your character grows you won’t be able to go back to the zones you have already visited (if they don’t add a “level downgrade” like EQ2’s mentoring system). Here the game mechanics are extremely important because if they divide the zones accessibility in four (as the four tiers of ten ranks, for a total of forty levels) the PvP could become just a matter of who’s closer to the zone level cap. It’s important here that each new rank isn’t a huge leap over the other, but at the same time this would make the character advancement rather bland, so they’ll have to reach a compromise. Which is also why I believe that it would have been much better to go with an open skill system with a flat power growth.
Instead if they use shorter level ranges (like setting the zone caps every five levels) then the world would really feel too linear and encapsuled.
Actually I wonder if they have even considered the problem of zone level caps or if they just overlooked it completely.
This still leaves the eleven zones to be used and distributed. My hope is that they keep the early and mid game as focused as possible so that there will be PvP activity even months after the game is released. There’s always the problem of the desertifications of the newbie zones and it’s crucial for a PvP mmorpg to keep the starting zones always active and well populated. I also hope they achieve a better balance between the experience gained through PvP and PvE, in particular when it comes to the shared objectives that in DAoC are ridiculous.
If they can screw up one element is by imitating DAoC and reward elitist gank groups that systematically avoid any shared goal. If the “open PvP” doesn’t pivot around precise objectives instead of just consecutive player kills, the whole model will crumble. Thinking about this, beside the level ranks they still haven’t revealed any detail about the PvP “carrot”. What will make you continue to fight beside the hopefully fun gameplay? How you’ll keep improving your character after you reached the last rank? This is another problematic core concept of PvP games, along with the population imbalances, that Mythic hasn’t answered yet.
The same for the character growth. In WoW you can reach level 10 rather quickly, we don’t know yet how the progression will be in Warhammer and whether they decided to speed it up to focus on the endgame. As we know from the standard population trends they are going to waste a lot of content if they reserve too many zones for the mid levels. I wonder if they could develop a dynamic system that reserves and flags the level range for the zone on the fly, based on population requirements. While doable for PvP, the PvE portion would be much harder to adapt and it would also become a design limit, so I’m not sure how good this idea could be. Still, they need an answer to that problem or the mid game risks to become frustratingly desolated. And it’s also why I want to know more about how they are going to distribute the zones before I can figure out if it could work or not.
From the various press releases and previews there are more precise informations about the PvP “models” supported, even if my early guesses were already quite precise.
Officially there are four different modes: Skirmishes – Battlefields – Scenarios – Campaigns.
We can forget the first since it’s just Mythic’s fancy definition for a random PvP encounter, while the other three should be more “structured”. The confusion here is more about the interaction between battlefields and Scenarios. The risk is that Mythic is trying to overdo and that they’ll finish to support too much “PvP space” that will be directly mudflated by the players as it happened with DAoC. As for the general population trends, in the PvP the players need to converge (and spontaneously do so). So a bunch of zones and PvP modes supported aren’t an advantage, but quite the opposite. They cripple down the PvP activity.
The Battlefields should be a concept similar to my hotspot idea. The players concentrate around a “shared objective”, like fighting for the control of a resource, or a tower or whatever. Again, I hope that, contrarily to DAoC, the PvP objectives are worthwhile instead of openly ignored by the players. This is another significant design issue since if you reward for a goal then the players could learn to avoid each other to reach for the carrot (WoW), or, even worst, ignore the objectives and just gank each other if that’s a more rewarding path (DAoC). It’s also possible that the best path will be grinding PvE quests and in this last case the PvP will get completely ignored till the endgame (where you hit the level cap and so don’t get anymore exp). As you can imagine this is another MAJOR point that needs an answer. My “hotspot” idea addressed this, we’ll see what will be Mythic’s answer even if in this case they have NOT learnt from past experiences. This is still one major, unaddressed problem in DAoC. Changing the name of the game won’t be an effective response on its own.
As I said the relationship between battlefields and scenarios is still confused. The raw difference is that the battlefields are static zones, while the scenarios are instanced and balanced as in WoW, with the addition of NPCs (dogs of war). This idea leaves me rather doubtful. It’s already extremely hard to balance the game between the characters, I think it would be nearly impossible if you have to factor even these NPCs. Also considering that Mythic’s AI for the mobs hasn’t shined in these years. WoW had similar plans when it was still in development and they also decided to scrap it. We’ll see if Mythic will go further than that or not. I don’t think it’s a really good idea and the whole concept of WoW-inspired battlefields isn’t convincing. I don’t think it is going to fit well with the rest of the game and it’s an added layer that I find superfluous and complicated.
I also need to know more. It looks like the scenarios are just instanced battlefields. I wonder if these are separated zones (I mean with unique level design) or just mirrors. It’s not clear when a scenario will trigger. Even if the choice is left to the players there’s still the need to define different *roles* in the game for these two modes. For now all I know is that the “campaign” layer spawns from here. Winning scenarios or accomplishing PvP objectives will probably flag the zone as “captured”. As the players gain control over more and more zones, they could finally unlock enemy lands and pillage the capital cities, similarly to what happens in DAoC with the relic raids. Just with a more dramatic approach since it’s an invasion of PvE-flagged areas.
By the way, the capital cities aren’t in the noob zones, so it’s probable you arrive there after the first 10 levels. Mid to high level zones, I guess. In this case I wonder how they are built. They cannot put a capital in a contested zone or the “conquest” system wouldn’t make sense. At the same time they need to put some content around the capital or noone will use it. Even here Mythic hasn’t explained much.
I stop here my considerations. I have more to say but it will fit better a stand-alone post (later).
I haven’t commented here the classes in detail nor the quest systems. Both of these seem to have been the major focus of the previews but from my point of view they can only be examined and evaluated when the whole structure of the game is complete. Sparse examples of quests could be good for some hype but they really don’t tell anything about how those ideas will work and fit in the game. That all depends on the game balance and it’s something that cannot be abstractly designed, but that instead needs to go through extensive, practical testing. So it’s not something that it’s worth discussing without having played the game in the first place, nor I believe it’s something to be excited about.
Instead it’s interesting the idea of the “tome of knowledge”:
(source)
First on the list is the game’s new journal. Warhammer Online players will benefit from the incredibly useful Tome of Knowledge. It stores information on all of your quests, letting you see at a glance the area it takes place in, how far you’ve progressed towards each goal, the rewards for completing it and, wonder of wonders, the actual dialogue from the person who gave you the mission. The quest journal also activates the appropriate quests as you move from area to area.The Tome of Knowledge also contains a comprehensive bestiary. As you encounter and fight monsters, their entry will grow more and more detailed, even to the point of offering advice on how to defeat them. You’ll also get a look at the concept art and see a tally of how many of that beastie you’ve killed.
I always had the idea to bring to a mmorpg the RPG-style Pokedex (Pokemon) where you can “collect” monsters, quests and all sort of statistics. It should be easy to implement and it would be a simple way to appeal both achiever (completists) and explorer types. It would be also a possibility to bring in the game all that kind of interesting material that is usually reserved for the third-party guides or that is just left unused. Zone guides, monster strategies, concept art. It could become an ongoing project that continues to be supported and that gathers all the game sources available.
To conclude, the various previews I’ve read still leave many doubts and don’t provide answers to some basic and general problems that always come with PvP games. The design of Warhammer hasn’t revealed anything particularly significative beside the attempt to bring together PvP and PvE.
This is a quick list of things that are still unclear or problematic and to which Mythic will have to provide an answer, sooner or later:
– Population and class imbalances
– Power growth between ranks
– Level-based lock (caps) for the zones
– Zones distribution
– PvP rewards
– PvP activity convergence
– PvP persistence (results)
– Empowering players and guilds in the PvP persistence
– Balance between PvE, gank groups and shared PvP objectives
– Role of capital cities
– Itemization
– PvE endgame (if any)
– Crafting (if any)
The success and viability of this game depend on the answers to those points.
A moltitude of new mmorpgs are in development. How many will be launched? And how many will actually matter in the market?
Webzen is a company that seems to come out of nowhere. They started with a Diablo 2 clone (MU Online) popular in China and now they are working on multiple big-budgeted mmorpgs. How is this possible I really don’t know. For sure “merit” isn’t the reason why they have so many resources. It’s already a few years that they get huge, loud booths at the E3 but I think they’ll still have to present something in the western market.
They say Webzen is one of the “market leaders” in Korea, but as far as I know they still have to launch one game there. They have open betas, ok. But no games yet. Maybe it’s better to wait before handing out titles?
What I see here is a lot of noise, lot of hype, but really no concrete signs that they can develop an interesting game that could matter in the western market. There’s lots of talk about all the “major” mmorpgs they are planning to launch, like Huxley and SUN, lots of hype, but the impression I get is that it’s all superficial. They are supposed to be a major threat for NCSoft but what I see is a company coming out of nowhere that is just releasing pretty splash screens. They want in the western market but it seems there’s not much behind the pretentious presentation.
Summary: “a barking dog does not bite”.
Huxley: This is supposed to be Webzen’s major title. The one supposed to tansform Webzen’s entrace in the western market in a triumph. Darniaq wrote:
This one appears to have all the makings of a success though. In addition to the massive battles of Planetside, it has pretty high production values, and is more than just about the battles themselves. Featuring ample storyline and game-directed content, Huxley could offer that magic combination of the superior control system of PS but with a more mass-marketable way of retaining players through new content release. The server will support up to 5,000 players concurrently logged in, but they appear to have some effort left to go before their 2007 launch since the game was lagging fairly noticably with just the 30 concurrent players they were hosting at the show.
Beside the fact that Darniaq is biased toward every MMO FPS, there isn’t much else. The first line is quite revealing. Huxley “appears”. Lots of promises, pretentious graphic and the idea of a massive FPS. But it’s all so vague, so superficial. They are selling an idea, they are showing splash screens but I wonder if there is something beside the marketing effort. This title won’t come out till 2007. This year we are going to have two major online FPS with some “massive” ambitions (UT2007 and Quake Wars) and many good and concrete ideas to advance the genre. Will we even remember this title in a year?
I’ve read other short previews but none that gives some concrete informations. It’s a FPS, it’s massive and it will come out even on the xbox360. This last one is the only significant element. The game will have a single-player portion, we’ll see how many players they’ll convince to pay a monthly fee to play an online FPS with “massive” ambitions. This specific market (FPS) looks more corwded than the MMOs one, and it’s also quite vital, with many significant advancements on the gameplay. I don’t see Huxley offering something particular beside some unfulfilled claims.
I don’t expect this title to achieve anything significant. Neither in the western market, nor in Korea. These titles may temporarily destabilize the market as they get hyped and enter open, massive beta tests. But I don’t think they have the numbers to stay.
Btw, it has levels.
SUN: This title is pretty much the same of Huxley. Just applied to the fantasy genre. Big focus on the graphic, high-production values and nothing else. It’s a “show”, a way to see a “game” in the most superficial way. Products made to catch the attention but so vapid that I doubt they can resist in the longer term. Joystiq wrote:
Fantasy MMOs are ten a penny these days, so we asked Webzen representatives what makes SUN different. They are banking on its graphical style to win fans, and also its competitive nature — players enter into ‘competitive hunting’ with others, rather than co-operating as in many other MMOs. The game also features voice chat amongst adventuring parties and guilds.
For a game that’s banking on its graphics so heavily, we expected something a little special — instead, SUN is extremely reminiscent of Guild Wars with similar style characters, environments and even a near-identical skill bar. The character customisation options are similar to FFXI or Lineage. While the voice-chat aspect may make the game stand out, one feature alone does not a successful MMO make.
Darniaq also has some comments but that don’t add much. It’s another title that won’t be released till the next year, all focused on the graphic and highly instanced like Guild Wars. With the difference that GW is a solid game based on solid premises. If it isn’t terribly successful is because of limits enrooted in the model, but it remains a valid game that definitely achieves its goals and with many good ideas behind. SUN, I don’t know. I’ve read it uses a skill chain system that is supposed to make the combat feel more involving but my imression is that it could be just tiring and extremely repetitive. It’s like a Guild Wars without the good ideas. Just fancy graphic and crappy, grindy gameplay slapped in with some Korean-style PvP. It’s interesting to know that this is also being distributed by The9, in China. Along with WoW and Guild Wars.
Webzen has also other titles in development like “Project Wiki”, but not even planned to arrive on our market. I don’t know how Webzen managed to convince everyone that they are BIG, nor I know from where they are getting the money and resources to pump all this hype, but the games look rather weak and I don’t think we will remember these titles for long.
Age of Conan: Here I’m biased and know very little about the game. For me Funcom is like Turbine. I have little consideration of both, and both fall in the category: “bit more than they could chew”. Funcom should have a bunch of different games in development and, as for Turbine, I wonder from where they are getting the founding. It’s not like their games are extremely successful.
The game is supposed to have a first part that is single-player only and that should be available “for free”, then another multiplayer part that requires instead a monthly fee. The world is instanced and I heard you can build cities. These two features don’t fit together, though. The combat is supposed to be simil real-time. From Darniaq:
They mapped the Num-key pad to perform sword swings at specific angles. For example, the 7 key would swing a sword from upper left to lower right while the 6 key would swing laterally from right to left. Fighting is very direct. Beheadings and lifting-enemies-by-their-neck-to-gut-them. PG-13 type stuff here.
I wonder: do I need three hands to play this game? Because if one is on WASD and the other on the mouse then I need a third for the keypad. Some ideas about this game are interesting but I don’t think the overall scheme is appropriate, nor I have faith in Turbine, erm.. Funcom.
Just not a game and setting that interest me.
Aion: This is one of the titles developed by NCSoft in Korea. With THREE Lineage titles I really wonder why they need another fantasy title with fancy graphic. They have in-game physics and world-changing events. I don’t know why this title exists, you can go find previews but I doubt you’ll find something that is even barely interesting. Just another trash fantasy game to add to the pile.
Exteel: This is the game that with Dungeon Runners will be available “for free” and then through RMTs. While for DR it seems that you’ll buy content, in Exteel is all about loot. It isn’t even a mmorpg. From F13:
Exteel isn’t an MMOG. It’s an third person shooter. There are missions in which up to 16 players (8 per side) fight on a map. There’s nothing around that. At all. You pick a battle map, it gets filled, you go. There are rankings and whatnot, but no linking world. It’s like EA’s Battlefield 2 servers.
Controls are twitch-based. The people there were hammering the mice and keyboards.
RMT. Lots of it. More mech types, better weapons, and so on. And here’s the rub; the guy who spend $500 on uber equipment? He can be thrown into the same maps as a bunch of people who’ve spent nothing. There will be private maps (they were vague on the details), but the default is the random matchup. Anyone with disposable income gets a better chance to win.
Environments are completely non-reactive. That bus you keep tripping over is melded to the landscape. Your two-story mech can’t punt it, and you can’t blow it up. It’s just there, and you have to go around or over it.
The only bright spot is that there is some detail to the combat. Like an FPS, fire can be blocked by intervening objects. Many of the mecha have shields, which can be angled forward or to fore-port / fore-starboard. If your shield isn’t facing the right way, it won’t help you.
Really, what it reminds me of is the single player Gundam games, like Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam. I could deal with that, but combined with the “buy your way to victory” subscription model, it really leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
While the business model isn’t exactly defined for our market, the way the game is built doesn’t leave many options, imho. Is this even supporting PvE?
Middle Earth Online: Meh, Turbine. I’m commenting this just because it seems it didn’t get much attention at the E3. I haven’t read anything about this title.
Pirates of the Caribbean: No particular hopes to care about this title, but what Joystiq says is more then enough to forget about it:
Disney’s upcoming MMO Pirates of the Caribbean Online is aimed at the teen and casual market, enticing fans of the films to try a new genre. As such, it’s a very stylised representation of a pirate world, with fast-paced action that’s easy to jump into for a few minutes.
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It looks like a good introduction to the MMO world, but veterans may find the game shallow and unfulfilling on the endgame front.
The movie was good because it didn’t look like a Disney movie. It seems that the game doesn’t go down the same path.
Tabula Rasa: Yes, I put this game in the sack as well. At least for now. It went through too many radical revisions to deserve hype. I’ll see if it’s decent when I can play it (but then I won’t because of the voice chat support), whatever I’ll hear about it is not relevant. If Garriott didn’t have nearly infinite resources available this game would have been a huge failure. But Garriott can have much more than “second chances” and it’s too easy to build decent games with those premises. Not everyone has the same luxury.
This moved from a fancy fantasy game with crazy ambitions to some sort of sci-fi FPS with RPG elements. With this E3 it became “SWG NGE done right”. Since it mixes two opposite kinds of gameplay I was interested to know more about the mechanics and the controls but the majority of the previews I’ve read don’t explain much.
The game seems to be all about the fancy graphic and the combat. The progress through the game seems to happen through scripted missions. Darniaq says that with “Q” you cycle weapons and with “E” you switch styles. There are still to-hit rolls like in a RPG, but you need to keep the target under your targeting reticle if you want to hit. From the sounds of it, it is really, really close to the last reiteration of SWG. This is why it would be really interesting to directly compare the two and figure out why one works and is fun (or so it seems) while the other sucks. Here I can only read the impressions of others and I cannot find elements that would justify a so different reaction.
Another point of interest is the cloning system that is probably the only element retained from the orginal Tabula Rasa design. The characters can be cloned, so you can “respec” to different classes without creating new characters and going again through the early content. You can basically branch your characters to explore different classes without losing the progress through the game. But this makes me really wonder. Why not simply move to a skill-based system where you can freely switch classes on the same character? The basic idea is just about allowing the players to access all the different types of gameplay offered and avoid repetition. There’s really no need to invent a fancy cloning system to achieve that goal.
Even this game is based on instances, so I wonder what you’ll do when you moved through all the levels. It sounds like it has no depth beside the twitchy combat and since they wanted to completely avoid the repetition I wonder with what they plan to replace it.
This is another game with voice chat support and that should be out before the end of this year, even if it could be delayed again. After all the resources they’ve wasted on it I think the game will have some value. But I wouldn’t bet too much on it.
Vanguard: Heh, Vanguard. After the passage to SOE and the last rumors I don’t care much anymore about this title, nor I think it will work. I’ve seen a bunch of screenshots and they are all range from barely acceptable to poor. It’s fun because when you complain about the graphic then the reply is that it’s the gameplay to matter. But then Vanguard brags about fancy technology and it seems noone is able to make the game run with playable framerates in beta. Excuse me but if the engine is so heavy then the graphic MUST be absolutely great, because it’s unacceptable to have a game that runs like crap and then even looks like an amateurish tech demo.
Hello world design. That looks more like a randomly generated terrain. I hope that no player character is supposed to walk there because it looks like the moon. With some ugly stains of green.
The screenshots I’ve seen all show large expanses of nothing with a few trees randomly distributed and a dull terrain texture with improbable colors. How it’s possible that the engine has problems moving that? It’s *empty*. It cannot be worst that EQ2’s engine, can it? They use Unreal 2’s engine, come on, it’s not possible that they crippled it down to the point it doesn’t run anymore. The impression I have is that the game will have these big continents with the actual content necessarily diluted. I know that Brad doesn’t want to use instancing technology so that different groups can meet and avoid to fragment the community, but then I wonder, has Vanguard the technology to support 6-7.000 players on the same server? Because without fast travel methods the risk is that you’ll never meet another player on a so large landmass.
Some previews I’ve read are silly:
Armor is also equally flexible — literally. A Sigil artist can create one set of armor that automatically molds itself to any body type. No more having to make human versions, elf versions, dwarf versions, gnome versions, et cetera.
Wow, serious stuff. The problem is that in Vanguard the races all share the same body model. What changes is the head and the skin color while the body model is exactly the same. Resized or stretched, but the same. Basically here they are selling a huge limitation as a “feature”. SWG’s races looked like crap because they all used the exact same animations, in this case not only the animations will be cloned for all the races, but even the bodies.
Tell me, then. Why have different races in the first place? To plug in the body different kinds of heads? It will be interesting to see that a dwarf is just a rescaled human.
Both Lum and Darniaq have mostly positive comments, though:
Lum: they’ve come a long way from the rough clients they’ve shown at previous E3s and save a few rough spots (mostly involving combat animations) it looks perilously close to coming out.
Darniaq: The graphics are ok. They feel like someone started with the EQ2 world and threw some vibrant colors at it. Animations were ok. Servicable, but nothing to write home about.
Believe who you want. I’m definitely not persuaded.
On the gameplay Lum and Darniaq also agree:
Lum: The devs who showed it off clearly were all experienced EQ-style MMO players and showed off various subtle game systems and UI improvements that would only make sense if you were staring at a combat screen forever, such as pre-built combat macros for common tasks, inherent friendly- and enemy- target differentation and the like.
Darniaq: # All enemies that are currently targeting you are listed on the upper right.
# Players can have both Offensive and Defensive targets. The former would be enemies you attack, the latter people supported, with things like heals and buffs.
The idea is of a game deeply enrooted in precise and convoluted gameplay mode. Following the trend that cuts out completely the immersion from the game. Aggro lists and different targets are solutions to the current paradigms. They aren’t new points of view on a “fantasy genre”. Instead they are elaborations of a specific gameplay model that now is completely independent from the original fantasy influences. The game doesn’t even try anymore to make the player “identificate” with something. Which is exactly what Lum wrote. It’s a game that targets to veteran, knowing mmorpg players already used to a specific gameplay scheme that here is pushed to the extreme.
It’s the opposite of the trends with sport games, FPS and what Nintendo is trying to do with the Wiimote. In these cases the effort is to move closer to an original “feel”. To simulate through a game the “real” experience. Make it as immersive and intuitive as possible (the faked dragon). Instead Vanguard represents a “mature” genre that is now completely independent from those influences that aren’t its own.
Extremely specialized in its abstractions.
Despite this, my overall opinion about Vanguard hasn’t changed. It’s not the hardcore target that worries me, but the execution. With a poor execution it will be extremely hard to make the players digest an hardcore game. It worked with EQ because it was the first explorable world in 3D. “Hardcore” is something you become if the incentive (“the push”) is strong enough. In the case of Vanguard the players have now choices, so it will be harder to impose gameplay choices on them. It’s now harder to influence them.
It will be interesting to see how things will go. After all I had NEVER expected EQ2 to come out of its horrible premises to become a game worth playing.
I’ll conclude with a note from Nicodemus:
All the wrong people are getting the right money to make the wrong MMOs.
This could be a big news.
I was reading on Joystiq some impressions about Dungeon Runners and Exteel but what caught my attention is that they say both games will be FREE:
We know that MMOs can be a little addictive. So do developers and publishers. That’s why some of NCsoft’s new offerings are at once a stroke of brilliance and absolutely terrifying. Aimed at new MMO players as well as existing ones, the PlayNC portal invites players to try its games by putting them at an irresistible price — $0.
The money, of course, lies in areas like micropayments — while a great portion of each game is free, features like new items or character slots will come at a price. Some games may only offer lower-level gameplay for free, meaning that players are enticed into purchasing the game once they have become invested in a character. Two games from the PlayNC portal were playable at E3: Dungeon Runners and Exteel.
I have the suspect that Joystiq mishunderstood the whole thing, but if it’s true it is really a huge news.
From what I’ve seen neither of the two is worth a subscription fee but at least Dungeon Runners could become extremely interesting if they make it accessible for free and maybe sell new content at a very low price. The last few screenshots I’ve seen are much, much more improved. This could easily become a new “Diablo 2” if done right.
I’m still rabidly against the RMT model. But I would accept paying an accessible price for content on a casual MMO-like. If they hit the center you can kiss DDO goodbye.
It looks like SOE is being left behind pretty much on every field.
I snagged this brilliant comment from Slashdot:
(source)
They developped as much content they could afford, and messed with how much they give you at each level. If you plotted a graph with the time along X and the percent of content you’ve seen as Y, let’s just say it would look like very much an asymptote. It starts by going up pretty quickly, but then it slows down, and it takes more and more time to get closer to that covetted 100% spot. By the end of it, huge amounts of time are required to make even the tiniest of progress.I fondly call it the “boiling a frog alive model“. They say that if you put a frog in hot water, it will just jump out. But if you put it in cool water and slowly heat it up, it will stay in and get boiled alive. Now I don’t know if that’s true with frogs, but it’s certainly true with about half the WoW players. Because that’s what Blizzard does.
