Category: Gaming

I’m a gamer. I game.

Amazon vs Lord of the Rings Online

Gaming

At the last possible moment… okay, not the last moment, but close… Saturday, I decided the wife and I would play Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. So, I threw a copy into the Amazon shopping cart, changed the quantity to two and placed my order. The reason I started by saying it was a close call was that the game released on Tuesday, and you had to order it before then as a pre-order to get the super cool Founder’s bonus stuff, most importantly the $9.99 a month rate. Since the normal rate would be $14.99, $5 a month times 2 is $120 a year savings.

If we end up playing for two years, I might kick myself for not taking the Lifetime subscription, but then again, if I paid $200 and then canceled after six month I’d kick myself. Damned if you do…

Back to my point though… we ordered our two copies of the game and then I went to the digital download section to claim our pre-order key… wait. Key? Singular? Shouldn’t I have two keys?

Why yes, yes I should.

So I call Amazon Customer Service… or rather, I go to the web page, enter my phone number and click the button to have their help desk (helpfully located in India) call me. The woman is nice enough, at least the broken formal English she is reading from her CS manual is nice enough. After many unsuccessful attempts to explain how the pre-order, account registration and all that is supposed to work, and trying to point out that I ordered two copies of the game but only got one key… to give a quick example, it went sorta like this:

Me: “I ordered two copies of the game, only got one pre-order key.”
Her: “Order shows one item.”
Me: “With a quantity of two.”
Her: “Not two, just one item on order.”
Me: “There is one item, with a quantity of two.”
Her: “Sir, your order has only one item. Digital downloads are given one per item.”
Me: “The item cost $50, my invoice is for $100 because I bought two.”
Her: “But there is only one line item.”
Me: “With a quantity of two.”

Finally, she grasps the concept… one item, quantity of two… and determines that she is not capable of resolving my issue. She says that I should have ordered the items at separate lines, then forwards my problem to another department, says they will email me the resolution, and hangs up.

Now, there are many things I am not, but one thing I am is a Web Programmer. You would think, if Amazon has an issue with providing digital content on multiple quantity single line items someone over there might be able to trap a flag and issue a warning to the user, or even not allow multiple quantities for items with digital content. A nice little pop up that says, “This item includes a digital download and product key, please add multiples to the cart separately.”

In any event, we are now waiting to hear from Amazon. They owe us a pre-order key, or they owe us $5 a month. Let’s see how long this takes to resolve…

Update: As bad as the first call was, my follow up 48 hours later was good. The woman was pleasant, contacted the department needed, got us all on the phone, got the issue reviewed and resolved, and she apologized for it taking a second call to get the work done. Apparently the first woman hadn’t actually forwarded my issue to the other department. All is good now.

Zombies: Dialog and Quests

Gaming

After mulling over the ideas in this post over at nerfbat, I thought I’d tackle it as it concerns my game design.

How would I present dialog? Well, thankfully I get out of part of it in that my only NPCs are the undead and all they do is moan. Of course, that brings up an interesting idea of do I display the moans as text or just audio that gets louder the closer they are and the larger the crowd? I like the idea of audio, even directional audio, but there might need to be an option to turn on text, just incase deaf people might want to play and not play as a deaf person. It is a role playing game, after all.

But if there are no NPCs, how will there be quests?

To understand the drive of the game, you have to understand the backbone driving force of the game: the tamagotchi.

Essentially, its a much more complicated version of that simple child’s toy… but if you boil it down, so is life and my Zombie MMO is really nothing more than a Life Simulator in a world of the undead. SimRomero, if you will.

Your character will have a stat sheet where you can monitor and manage things like how much you eat per day and how that affects your energy levels and overall health. You’ll be able to see how long your food supplies will last given your rate of consumption, and a projection of how long you will last without food given your current level of health. There might also be things like progression bars toward dementia, which can be reduced by human contact or reading books or listening to music, basically anything other than dealing with zombies.

So where are the quests? In a way there will be two sorts of quest like devices in the game…

The first will be player designed, largely including trade. If you have a stash of salt, a ton of it, and you have a need for other supplies, you will be able to set up a trade mission where you will trade X salt for Y other product until you have Z of said product. Players who stumble upon your safehaven while you are offline will be met at gunpoint and offered the quest. It will jot down in their notebook what you are looking for and what you will give for it. The twist here is that since you can specify a cut off point, like say you want oranges, 6 at a time, stopping when you have 4 dozen, its possible that player may find 6 oranges, return to you and find that you’ve already hit your limit of 4 dozen and are no longer taking oranges in trade. But that’s okay, its not a total waste since he can use the oranges himself, or in another trade.

The second will be presented in a “kill sheet” style, where you can earn Xbox360 style achievements by doing things. Kill 100 undead and you might get a title. A second title might be waiting at 500, a third at 2000, and so on. Have you been well fed for the past 30 days? Title. Killed another player? Title. Killed 100 other players? Title. Survived for a year? Title. You get the idea… As part of this, the game will include online profiles of players through the website, even the ability to make message board signatures that will include your stats (like the Xbox gamer tags). And of course, the system will include an options for hiding your profile completely, or making it viewable only to people logged in and on your friends list.

It sounds overly simplistic, I’m sure, but that’s the goal of the game: simple and fun. I don’t need to be a WoW-killer, I just want enough people playing so that maybe I can quit my “real” job.

One Ring to Rule Them All

Gaming

Yeah. I bought Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar.

I played around in the beta, and the game played well enough, looked good enough, and showed enough potential for more than just grinding raids and killing things that I decided to pick it up. I pre-ordered and it should arrive tomorrow.

At the very least I will be playing a human minstrel on the Silverlode server named Ishiro. That may change (name, class, race or server) but it is where I will start. Now to begin building my fellowship…

Zombies: Crafting

Gaming

How exactly would one go about building a game where the player can do anything they want?

Well… you can’t. Seriously, unless you want to be Second Life 2, you have to exert some content control over what the players create. That’s why I have come up with a two pronged assault…

First: a lengthy beta period. The original people brought into beta will serve two functions, the first being to test the game for bugs… but the more important function is to “think shit up”. Want to build a weapon by attaching an ice skate blade to a hockey stick? Sure, sounds good, recipe inserted into game and now everyone can get an ice skate, a hockey stick and some duct tape (or string) and make this new weapon.

Second: the design tool. We won’t allow players to design their own models directly, but they will be allowed to submit suggestions. Suggestions will consist of two types “Assemble” and “Dismantle”. The dismantle submission will be accomplished by having the player drag the item model, for example: an ice skate, into the model window and then in the provided text box explain “I would like to be able to remove the blade from the ice skate.” The game designers/admins will review the suggestion, and if approved will create new models for an ice skate blade and an ice skate shoe without blade, and then add the new dismantle recipe to the game (and to the patch notes, “Ice skates can now have the blade removed from the shoe”). For the other side, they’d drag the models for the ice skate blade and the hockey stick into the design window, align them as desired, attach them with tape (or string) and then in the provided text box explain “Would be used as a weapon.” Again, the designers/admins would review it, if approved they would need to add the new assembled model, animations for using it, alternate uses for it if they think them up, item statistics if they are required, and slap it into the game (and the patch notes, although since part of the fun of the game is to figure stuff out, assembly notes might be intentionally vague).

This way, you give players the ability to create what they want, but we retain control of what goes in the game and how, mostly so we can prevent player_x from inventing yet another in a long line of freaky sex toys. Sure, it is labor intensive, but since I plan for the game to have no bugs, my CS people will need something to do. 🙂

Together Alone, Alone Together

Gaming

Over at the nerfbat, Ryan adds another lesson, this one about Solo Content not being a bad thing.

He is right, in his way. Solo content isn’t bad, and personally I think that every game should have solo content. But to what degree?

One of the major issues you will run into here is that solo content will actually affect your entire game design and reverberate through your community. Take World of Warcraft as the 800 lb. example. Pre-Burning Crusade, soloing to level 60 was easy. Anyone could do it given enough time at the willingness to do so, with any class. But, if you only played solo content, you were viably limited to solo and small group content. Even if you did instances now and then, or even were hardcore at the five man instances, when it came to open PvP or the battlegrounds you were completely outclassed by raiders. The gear obtained from raids was head and shoulders above the rest of the gear in the game, to the point that raiders could have nearly double the hitpoints, resistances and damage output. Unless you were a perfect assassin type circle strafing PvPer, you almost could not win. Most games on the market are like this because of the weight that items carry, they are item-centric designs.

Post-Burning Crusade, it got better… the “crap drops” from “trash mobs” and easy quests were nearly equivalent to raid gear from the Pre-BC era. Of course, as people explore the raids of BC, the disparity is re-emerging because the game is designed for raiders to get better rewards than anyone else.

Of course, you could try to solve this problem by giving soloers and raiders the same gear rewards… but then your raiders would complain, or they simply wouldn’t bother with raiding since the organization and trials of doing so earn them nothing better than they could get in a group on a lazy Saturday afternoon. As a non-raider myself, I would not mind this in the least, but there are people who would.

The flaw here is in attempting to cater to many play styles AND have those play styles interact. Each style is rewarded differently, and those differences become glaringly aparent when the styles clash.

The solution? Smaller, more focused games… or move away from item-centered designs. I really think that the Xbox 360 is on to something with its achievement system. Games need kill sheets, titles and trinkets. Adornment to show that you’ve done raid X or killed monster Y or cleansed the world of Z hundred creatures or completed quest chain A or defeated W other players in combat. We need more rewards that don’t affect game balance, things that show what you’ve done without making you capably better than players who haven’t.

The Alliance is Bored

Gaming

Lately, as I play my new blood elf hunter, I have been frequenting the Tarren Mill and Hammerfall.

Tarren Mill is under attack!

Why yes, yes it is. Tarren Mill is being slaughtered, probably as you read this. A group of well geared level 70’s are sitting on the hill (or worse, sitting in town) killing all the NPCs. The master tailor is dead, so are the quest givers, and the innkeeper… everyone, all gone. You get maybe five minutes to do your thing after respawns before they wade in again.

Hammerfall is under attack!

Look! Epic mounted level 70’s are riding through town again and killing everything! The guards at the entrance to the battleground are dead? You don’t say! Oh look, they’ve accidently attacked the flight path guy, all those spawns should keep them out for twenty minutes.

But why do I say the Alliance is bored? Well, because 95% of the Horde who frequent these areas are level 25 to 35, and most of the NPCs are 40 to 50. Are there no battlegrounds for these people to fight in? Are there no towers for them to siege? Oh… wait… I forgot, the Alliance outnumber the Horde on Durotan… I’d tell you by how much, but despite all the info you can see in the Armory you can’t get simple info like population counts! But wait, players have been running a census for a long time, so while not 100% accurate, it is close… almost 3 to 1.

So far, I’m decent at PvP, but I haven’t been able to win a 3 to 1 fight, especially when I’m level 32 and my opponents are all over 60.

If you read my blog, and you want to play WoW, come to Durotan and play on the Horde side. I’m usually playing Calibre or Wayd. Look me up and maybe I’ll hook you up with a little funds to get you up and running as long as you promise to spit in the eye of any Alliance you run across.

Pete and Re-Pete

Gaming

Pete and Re-Pete were paddling a canoe when Pete fell out, who was left in the canoe?
-first grade humor

Now take a moment to consider that. If you don’t get that joke, please, please… stop reading my blog. Encapsulated in that joke is the one thing that really irritates me most about MMOs. Just the other night in World of Warcraft, my group and I went off to collect the heads of some thieves. Now, when we killed each of the offending people and take their heads, my suspension of disbelief allows me to equate that fact that each of us gets a head to be taken as we have evidence of the head, or since we all plan to go back together that there is really only one head that we share. Of course, one of our group had killed them and taken their heads and turned them in for the reward two days prior.

People in EverQuest used to make jokes… “Oh thank you!” quest giver Sarah tells you. “You found my mother’s locket!” She tosses it over her shoulder into a box full of identical lockets.

I realize that designed content is limited, and players will exhaust content faster than it can be created, so I’m not sure what the answer is here… except to stop generating content. The one thing that EVE Online does better than any other game I have played is to encourage you to get involved in PvP. Honestly, unless you really enjoy playing the economy game of buying and selling goods (I have a friend who makes a billion isk a month and rarely ever leaves his hanger), or grinding the same twenty missions over and over, there isn’t anything else to do. Of course, EVE Online is a niche game.

And that comes to the real point… its one I’ve made before and will continue to make: the world needs more niche games. We need more companies who plan properly and would be happy with fifty to one-hundred thousand players, maybe less, maybe more. We need more companies who actively do NOT want to be the next big thing.

One Step Closer

Gaming

The 360 takes another step toward closing the Console-PC gap with its upcoming release. Check out the details over at gamerawr.

The biggest thing to me, and the step I’m saying they are taking, is the addition of the keyboard. Frankly, voice communication has only come so far, and for games supporting multiple chat channels, like MMOs, voice is severely limited. Some games just need text, and without a physical keyboard its just too hard to do. If you don’t believe me, trying using virtual keyboards, or even your 10-key phone pad to write long messages. There is a reason people invented text message short hand. (And deep in my heart of hearts, I hope this goes toward the erradication of needless short hand.)

Should this take off as I expect it to, we could be seeing the beginning of the end of PCs as a gaming platform. Though some might think this is great, its not entirely all roses. How do indie game devs break into the console? Maybe Microsoft could start offering a program to burn viable 360 discs so that indie games could be run… but I don’t really see that happening because it opens alot of doors to piracy. Also, if game modding continues to be popular, consoles do not exactly support making mods, at least not modeling and creating textures. As, of course at this time I don’t believe Microsoft supports external game servers… the PS3 claims it will though (or will support paid hosting of game servers).

In any event, the 360 is adding something new that may have an effect on the industry as a whole. Time will tell…

Zombies: Replenishing the World

Gaming

One concern that has been brought up by the few people I have discussed this game idea with is: How do you replenish supplies in the world?

This is a very complex issue, that after much though has a very very simple solution, and that is: You don’t. Not directly anyway.

To be honest, one of the problems I have with many games is the endless respawn of stuff. Now, I did say this would be a world of endless zombies, but all my zombie spawns would be “at the edge of the world”. Anywhere a “populated” area meets an “unpopulated” area is a potential spawn point for zombies because they are wandering in from other areas. But monsters and items fading in to view appearing out of thin air while the player watches… not in my game, its immersion breaking.

As for food and other supplies that players go after, in their area they will eventually scavenge it clean, at which point they’ll need to either a) start with the farming, b) widen their scavenging routes, or c) move somewhere else. If they choose a, then there is no need to handle any replenishment of supplies, they will find make them themselves. If they choose b or c… well, you don’t want the world to eventually be totally picked clean, so what you do is, when an area remains “unpopulated” for a length of time, you reset it, and everything goes back to like it was on launch day.

By design, the game will take care of all potential issues except for player memory. Players who used to live in the area that haven’t logged in will have eventually starved to death (as mentioned before, the game is going to have a level of persistance not used in very many games, when you are offline your character is still living), which is one of the factors in deciding to reset the area. However, nothing could be coded to prevent a player from remembering that they used to live in that area but had moved out. They’ll remember clearing the mall and eating all the food, perhaps even burning it to the ground, but suddenly upon area reset the mall will be back and stocked (with supplies and zombies).

The only real issue facing the game is making sure there is enough world to support the players, but that’s an issue that would have to be planned for but addressed only if the game exceeds expectations.

On The Hunt

Gaming

The Burning Crusade came out to much fanfair. Lots of people have blogged about how it is either totally awesome, more of the same, or a complete waste of time. I’m enjoying it, but probably not for the same reasons that everyone else has.

Most of my friends always wanted to play the Horde. And I must admit, playing on the side that is, in PvP, the perpetual underdog appealed to me. Back when I used to play FPS games exclusively, I always joined the losing side in public games to try to even the score. You can’t be the hero if you win all the time… heroes are supposed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, not lazily claim another victory from the pile of easy wins. But one thing always kept me from getting in to the Horde: the male-hunchback syndrome.

All the males of all the Horde races have their heads slumped down and look like they should be ringing the bells of Notre Dame. It would be one thing if the women were hunched too, but they weren’t, it was just the men. But with the introduction of the Blood Elves for the Horde in the Burning Crusade, finally there was an upright standing male to play.

So the wife and I rolled up some blood elves, and rather than our usual form of one of us playing damage and the other support, we decided to both play hunters.

It really is kind of silly. Another friend of ours plays a warlock and when we all group, its like we have a six person group, not three. The one thing we lack is reliable healing, but luckily (or is that sadly?) you can pretty well avoid the need for healing with the proper tactics. We kill… everything. Pets and traps, bows and arrows. The animals tank, we slow them and burn them, and we pincushion them. It’s almost not fun unless we push the envelope and work exclusively on Orange and Red quests, fighting stuff three, four and five levels above us.

It is definately a different game than the old priest/paladin game we are used to playing.