The old MMO “trinity” has been flexing somewhat of late, what with the skill wheel of The Secret World, the everybody-heals classes of Guild Wars 2 and three player instances in World of Warcraft amongst other developments. Inspired by Tobold’s post title, Playing without a tank, I thought I’d conduct an experiment, and refuse to either play or group with a tank in a game for a week to see what happens.
In hindsight, though, World of Tanks might not have been the best choice of game…
I’ve worked out who I am in Skyrim. Let’s examine the evidence:
I’m obviously an incarnation of The Doctor. My general approach to the game is entirely consistent with that, constantly being distracted by new and shiny things (not to mention dressing Lydia in Forsworn Armor and calling her Leela all the time):
“Of course, Jarl, I shall immediately go to this remote monastery you speak of, many miles away, to learn more. Come on, Leela!”
“It’s Lydia”
“That’s what I said. To the monastery, allons-y!”
Two minutes out of town…
“Ooh, a cave, I wonder what’s in there?”
“Shouldn’t we be going to the monastery, my Thane?”
“I told you to call me Doctor. Anyway, what monastery? Look, a chest! Quick zap of the old soni…lockpick, and, ooh, a Steel Helm of Fire Resistance. I wear a Steel Helm of Fire Resistance now. Steel Helms of Fire Resistance are cool.”
There is one tiny difference: The Doctor is famous for his aversion to weapons and pursuit of non-violent solutions to conflict, whereas in extreme circumstance, if pushed, I will sometimes wield a sword. And an axe. And a couple of daggers. And stab unsuspecting bandits in the back. Or shoot them with a bow. Or cast an assortment of fireballs, lightning and ice shards. Hey, nobody’s perfect…
I’m on a bit of a MMOG-break at the moment. I’m coming to the conclusion that the longevity of a game may be less to do with the game itself and more my own frame of mind when approaching it; this year I spent several months in Star Wars: The Old Republic, hitting the level cap and doing a few operations, a month or two in The Secret World, and about a week in Guild Wars 2. It’s not that Guild Wars 2 is a bad game, it’s perfectly splendid, but I just haven’t been bitten by that “must play it” bug; there comes a point every now and again (I’ve blogged about several over the past years) where I need to take a break from killing a certain number of things by activating hotbar abilities to cause damage. With the Paralympics just finishing, hot on the heels of the Olympics, I’m feeling a similar way about Olympian endeavours; 25-odd days of top-notch sport have been fantastic, but a bit of a break now isn’t unwelcome. Four years is probably overdoing it slightly, but a bit of time pottering around Skyrim, engaging in turn-based World War II-ish fights in Silent Storm: Sentinels (now available from GOG, hurrah!) and perhaps madly shooting in Borderlands 2 at the end of the month might well recharge the old batteries for a proper go at GW2 or something else MMOG-y in a while.
So. Farewell then
City of Heroes
You were My First
Like the Barry White
Song
(But not my Last or Everything.
Still. One out
Of three
Isn’t bad.)
– E. J. Zoso, age 17½
Terribly sad news that Paragon Studios are to close down, bringing an end to City of Heroes. As my first ever MMOG, City of Heroes will always have a place in my heart, somewhere between the pulmonary artery and left ventricle. It got me into this whole business and set a bar that even now some games limbo under rather than superjumping over, with features like flexible group sizes, sidekicking to play with friends, character customisation.
“In times of trouble, go with what you know”, as they say, and we know nothing here if not A Bit of Fry & Laurie. This genuinely heart-wrenching sketch from Series 2 seems rather apt.
“How do I like my MMOs? I like them the way Paragon Studios used to make them.”
I’ve been somewhat remiss in posting about the card & board game exploits of our irregular (in many senses) gaming group. Over the past couple of years we’ve tackled a fair assortment of cardboard-based diversions, many covered during Murdering of Time, or in textual form at The Azadian and Power Armoured Beard. Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Dominion, Thunderstone, Small World, Battlestar Galactica, Ticket to Ride, amongst others, have been big hits, and last weekend featured a couple of new additions to The Shute Library.
Gloom, as seen on Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop, is a card game in which the objective is to make your family as miserable as possible, and then kill them off. Gloomy, eh? As well as making your own family unhappy, you can play cards on other families that make them more happy, although of course that makes their player unhappy. It’s something of an emotional rollercoaster… The cards are nicely done, being transparent, so they can be stacked up to cancel out or enhance previous effects. A lot of the fun is in the storytelling that players are encouraged (though not obligated) to do to explain precisely how the family member in question became Popular in Parliament, or was Devoured by Weasels. In our game there was a particularly action-packed park where, amongst other improbable happenings, a teddy bear (with a human brain) Found Love by the Lake (in the form of a swan, apparently), while a hapless explorer was Drowned by Ducks after being Pursued by Poodles. We had six players, using additional families from a couple of expansion packs (but not the extra rules, while we got used to things), and the only slight problem was that the game dragged a little. We used all five family members for each player, and cutting that down to four as the rules suggested for a four player game, or even three, would’ve probably been ideal; as it was it took too long to kill off an entire family, especially with action cards preventing several untimely demises.
Lords of Waterdeep is a Dungeons & Dragons boardgame without many dungeons, or indeed dragons. It’s about gaining power and influence in the city, mostly by collecting resources, then spending those resources to complete ‘quests’. To stick to the D&D theme the resources you collect are Fighters, Rogues, Mages and Clerics, but with a bit of a tweak to the fluff text they could just as well be Brick, Wood, Sheep and Wheat. You might pick up a few references to Elminster or Zhentil Keep or something if you’re into the Forgotten Realms, but there’s no need to have any D&D knowledge at all. Like many games it seemed confusing and overcomplicated when pressing out hundreds of cardboard tokens and first reading the rules, but it only took a couple of turns to get the hang of things, and it rattled along very nicely after that.
On a bit of a stroll around the forums of boardgamegeek.com, I think I stumbled across the boardgame equivalent of the MMOG “theme park” vs “sandbox” debate: “German-style” vs “American-style” games. In neither argument do the terms have a concrete definition, more a series of characteristics; in neither argument is there a “right” answer, just personal preference, with many people perfectly happy to play games of, or with characteristics of, either or both types. Naturally, then, there’s no shortage of flamewars burrowing into deep semantic rabbit warrens as participants attempt to convince each other that their subjective personal opinion is The Truth. As The Economist put it, “arguing over what the difference is seems to be gamers’ second-favourite pastime.” Today’s xkcd is strangely aposite, fractal nesting of subcultures indeed.
It turns out I’m generally on the Eurogame side of the fence, particularly the element: “There is very little randomness or luck. Randomness that is there is mitigated by having the player decide what to do after a random event happens rather than before. Dice are rare, but not unheard of.” It’s something of a surprise; dice, for me, are inextricably linked to games, from early family games (Ludo, Monopoly etc.) through the polyhedral splendour of RPGs, but sure enough there’s a remarkable paucity of dice in the games I’ve enjoyed; Small World and Battlestar Galactica feature a little bit of rolling, Settles of Catan uses 2d6 per turn, but as a randomising element rather than resolving actions. On the other hand Blood Bowl decides almost everything with dice, and I didn’t get on with that at all, though I still haven’t tried it against a human opponent. Blood Bowl: Team Manager, though, a card game, was excellent. We tried Last Night on Earth once as well, a zombie boardgame. It didn’t help that, thanks to certain cards being played, two of us human players missed our first two turns, a pointlessly frustrating start that might’ve coloured my view of the rest of the game, but then there was all the rolling; roll a dice to see how far you move, roll dice to determine the outcome of fights, roll dice to see if more zombies turn up, yada yada. Not my cup of tea at all.
It’s not that I’ve suddenly become dice-phobic; Zombie Dice are great fun, and there’s something oddly satisfying about throwing a massive handful of dice to resolve a ludicrous short-range broadside in Uncharted Seas. I can certainly understand the arguments in their favour, the dramatic tension that dice rolls can bring, but for whatever reason I’ve enjoyed the diceless games more. It might retrospectively explain why I was more into the theory and fluff of RPGs and wargames than actually playing.
There’ll never be an end to the debate, though. Even Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are in on it, both trying to co-opt God to their side of the argument. Einstein’s famous “God does not play dice” suggests He is more of a Eurogamer, whereas Hawking counters with “Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.” So I’m definitely not inviting Him round for a game of Blood Bowl.
It’s summer (apparently), so it’s Steam sale time. This year’s event has been going for a week now, but like last year I’ve generally resisted temptation, even without lashing myself to a mast or stuffing cheese in my ears. I’m not sure if it’s just my perception or a genuine shift but cheap games hardly seem particularly notable now, columns like Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s Bargain Bucket turning up sales from the various digital providers, pay-what-you-want bundles and the like on a weekly basis. There’s also the move of “free to play” from murkier backwaters to the mainstream (even if it’s still tainted in the eyes of some), making a plethora of shooters, MMOGs and more available for the princely sum of no pence. Unlike a few years back, “it was a bargain” isn’t really a good enough reason on its own any more.
Another factor is that previous sales, especially those involving large bundles, have resulted in many of us having Steam Libraries of Guilt, lengthy lists of games we really must go back and finish sometime… or indeed go back and *start* sometime; someone’s even come up with a nifty analysis tool to check the stats. I have been checking out this year’s daily Steam offers, something the Android mobile app is ideal for when out and about, or even when stuck at a loading screen in another game. There have been flashes of temptation (“75% off new powersets and end-game content for DCUO so it’s only a fiver?”), but rationalism has held sway (“Total time racked up with the game so far is about 37 minutes, extrapolating from that it’s unlikely I’ll need any end-game content until the year 2072. And then only if no more games are released in the meantime.”) I have bought one game, though; you probably haven’t heard of it, it’s a really obscure little title, goes by the name of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Just need to find the time to start it up now…
Unlike many MMOGs that bestow an ever-expanding range of skills, spells and abilities upon players as they frolic and cavort o’er hill and dale The Secret World is more similar to Guild Wars, restricting the player to seven active abilities, chosen from a wider pool, and seven passive abilities. Eight abilities shalt thou not equip, neither equip thou six, lest ye not yet have gained sufficient AP in the Lord’s sight to purchase seven. Nine is right out.
This system works rather well, especially for players who like a bit of deck building. Some attacks are of a particular type such as “Frenzy” or “Chain”; other abilities are more effective when used on mobs in a certain state such as being “Afflicted”. Get yourself a couple of nice Frenzy attacks, find a passive ability with an effect like “All Frenzy attacks also Afflict the target with a DoT”, then slot in an attack that does bonus damage when the target is Afflicted, ate wallah (as they say in Swindon), a nice bit of synergy. If you just want to get on and poke stuff with swords (or hit things with a plank of wood) then each faction has a number of template decks you can work towards; if you want to get yet more complex you can delve into the crazy underworld of bridging passives and the like (full details available from guides such as Yokai’s). For the moment the game is young and thrusting and urgent, the coffee is free and the love is cheap, and as far as I’ve seen the nigh-infinite possibilities of power combinations have yet to congeal into a couple of Player Authorised builds, deviation from which shall be most sternly frowned upon. It might even stay that way; at the very least it’ll give us some more data points for the good old debate around classes/skills/roles/templates/tankmages/whether to put jam or clotted cream on a scone first.
At the risk of being something of an MMO Goldilocks, though, after complaining about having too many abilities over four crammed hotbars in SWTOR, I’m feeling that the seven active abilities of TSW aren’t *quite* enough. With two or three long (30-60 second) cooldown abilities you’ve got room for, say, a couple of attacks that build resources and a couple more attacks that consume those resources. Solo combat can then get into a bit of a rut of mashing long cooldown attack(s) when available interspersed with 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 (or maybe 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4 for AoEing a group). On the plus side this does mean you can devote more attention to what’s happening in the game world rather than the interface, especially useful with so many mobs in TSW having telegraphed attacks that you really want to avoid, but perhaps just a couple more ability slots would make things a bit more interesting.
The option to switch weapons, abilities and gear at any point that you’re not actually in a fight makes for great flexibility. In an instance you can go from a resilient AoE-heavy build designed to pick up adds during one fight to all-out single target damage if the next boss is all alone (you know, that boss that none of the minions really like; “yeah, Norman, sure, we’ll turn up if you start getting attacked, soon as you get to 75% health we’ll all swarm out, attack the healers, don’t you worry about it… (aside: not really, we’re all going down the pub now)”.) In theory you could do the same thing for general solo gadding about, alleviating some of the problems of repetitive combat, but having put together a set of abilities that seem to be good enough for most encounters I’ve been pretty much sticking to those. One reason for not experimenting more has been the gear management system; in theory you should be able to put together a set of weapons, gear and abilities, and save it for instant recall later; in practise it’s been rather unintuitive and flaky. Apparently yesterday’s 1.02 patch has improved it, though, so I might give it another go.
Not much to report for Hat News Now Today from The Secret World so far, with a distinct lack of hats in the early part of the game, something of a theme in MMOGs. First tiers of WAR: no hats. First planets of SWTOR: millinery-free zone. Early WoW: les chapeaux? Non. There must be something about hats that precludes their sale to new adventurers. Is it the worry that overconfidence and inexperience may lead the novice to adjust their headgear to an angle of inappropriate jauntiness, such as would cut a fine dash when strolling through a peaceful capital city, but resulting in a restriction of vision that could prove fatal in an ambush situation?
Via Ysh, there’s a splendid guide to the cosmetic items available at Pangea, the clothing store in London, but there’s a distinct lack of hattery there. Quest rewards offer a couple of options, I’ve picked up the baseball cap for completing missions in Kingsmouth to go with a couple of others acquired in the pre-launch Secret War, but a baseball cap is hardly going to excite the Hat News devotee like a crocodile skull.
In lieu of hats our correspondent has been taking a look at weaponry. Selecting the Blade skill, there are some fine swords on offer:
A sword
Not a bad start, pretty functional, has a pointy end which is generally considered a Good Thing by sword aficionados.
Another sword
Slightly more ornate, important when on the pull (UK, informal, attracting a mate), not so much when pulling (MMO, formal, attracting a monster)
Yet another sword
Stab like an Egyptian with this khopesh-inspired piece from the Council of Venice emissary in Kingsmouth
An ornamental teapot, circa 1630.
Nah, just kidding, it’s a sword.
Rummaging around the wreck of the Polaris may yield this techno-katana if you’re lucky. Note the ring that allows you to clip your house keys on there, perfect for the forgetful adventurer.
Having spent a while both fighting and avoiding other players, your correspondent had earned enough tokens for a Quality Level 6 weapon from the PvP vendors in the society base. Exciting times! What sleek, deadly implement would be available? What sort of style would the new blade be? What…
… the hell is that?
“‘Scuse me, Mr PvP Weapons Vendor”
“Yes?”
“There seems to be some mistake… I asked for a sword”
“Yes”
“And you gave me this plank with a couple of nails banged into it”
“Blade, QL6, one of. As requested.”
“Right. Right. Look, I see where you’re going with the style, very Aztec, got the macahuitl vibe, that’s great, I hear tribal is very in this season, obsidian is the must-have igneous rock, it’s just… I’m going to look a right twazzock lumping this thing around”
“I just give the things out, complaints are downstairs, in the basement, in the disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’. Next!”
Fortunately there is a solution. For 30 Sequins of Solomon Island you can buy a kit from the Council of Venice that, when combined with a weapon, produces another kit (destroying the original weapon in the process). This new kit, when combined with a second weapon, applies the appearance of the first weapon to the second. Alternatively, for another 10 or 20 Sequins, you could just buy a QL5 or QL6 sword from the Council that doesn’t look so bloody stupid. At least I hope it doesn’t look so bloody stupid, I didn’t have enough Sequins left to buy one…
Having spent upwards of twelve minutes in the various PvP battlegrounds of The Secret World over the past week, the KiaSA team are now masters of the ancient art of peeveepee, and ready to share their secrets with you…
There’s no general world PvP in The Secret World, which is excellent if you want to team up with friends from different societies to tackle daemonic hellspawn, less useful if you want to sneakily kick a Dragon in the nuts and feed them to zombies. To sign up for PvP either hit “P”, select “PvP from the menu or click the little crossed swords under the mini-map. You’re then presented with a map with three destinations: Fusang Projects, Stonehenge and El Dorado. Select one of these and hit “Join”, you’ll be placed in a queue, and when there’s an available space you can join the battle. Above the “Join” button you’re given a choice of three possible uniforms that broadly correspond to the traditional roles: High Powered Weaponry for DPS, Reinforced Armour for tanks and Integrated Anima Conduits for healing. The uniforms slightly adjust your stats (e.g. High Powered Weaponry boosts damage by 5% but reduces healing by 5%), and also give a visual cue as to what sort of opponent you might be facing, though with the flexibility of builds in The Secret World they could also be bluffs; someone in a healing uniform might really be an undercover tank focused on self-heals… Uniform chosen, it’s time to fight!
The Fusang Project is ingeniously concealed under the PvP section, but is actually a completely different type of warzone, a Player Avoids Player area. When you first enter the zone you should see a terminal with three available missions: Capture a Facility, Capture an Anima Well and Kill 10 Players. Under no circumstances pick up the latter mission, it’s a trap, take only the first two. Then, open the map, look for a mass of players from your society (also know as “the zerg”), and run towards them. If you see an enemy player on the way, ignore them completely; if they attack you, stand immobile, thank them profusely as they’ve probably saved you some running, wait to die, then check the map for the closest respawn point (Anima Well) to as many of your society as possible. Select this well from the dropdown list, respawn there, and join the zerg.
All being well you should be heading for an enemy-held Facility. There are four of them on the map: East, West, South and Centre. Each is guarded by an automated turret and forcefield outside the main gates, and a big old Guardian Type Monster thing inside. When you arrive at the Facility everyone should stand near the turret and mash random keys until it’s dead, then run inside and mash random keys until the Guardian is dead, then someone clicks on a thing, you claim the facility, and get stacks of XP and PvP tokens from the mission. If you forgot to pick up the mission beforehand, you’ve got time if you’re quick to pick it up from the facility itself after the guardian dies. If you’re lucky the turret might already be down by the time you arrive at the Facility, if you’re *really* lucky you pitch up just as it’s captured, and you get your XP for nothing and the tokens for free.
After phoning in the mission completion run outside, and hopefully at least a few people will be heading for an enemy-held Anima Well; tag along with them, stand near the well while it’s captured (or click on it, if nobody else seems to be), phone in the second mission for more XP and tokens, then leave the zone with all speed. You can return once the timer on the two missions has expired, if you like.
If your society is so dominant that it holds all four facilities, or so unpopular that there’s only three of you in the zone, leave at once. You may be tempted to try and “fight” some “players”, but that would be silly. The Fusang Project is a cunning allegory, demonstrating that if we all just work together and seize the means of production from faceless entities we’ll be showered with rewards, but if we turn upon each other and fight then everything just bogs down in pointless slaughter, and nobody gets cake and medals.
If you actually want to fight players, Stonehenge is the destination for you. The Stonehenge battlefield in The Secret World is an implementation of the summer solstice at the actual site. The Dragons represent a bunch of new-age hippies, anarchists and similar types trying to get to the stones for some sort of festival that probably involves joss sticks and falafel. The Templars are law and order, representing the police who want to stop them, and dish out a beating to some crusties while they’re at it. The Illuminati are the press, ostensibly there to observe but really trying to engineer a fight for some good pictures, and as they simultaneously represent both The Daily Mail and The Guardian, they’re equally hated by both the other groups.
Your side scores points in Stonehenge by having the most (live) players within the big circle in the middle of the map, so what you really want to be aiming for in this battlefield is:
1) Standing in the circle
2) Killing enemy players
What you should *not* be doing is:
1) Standing outside the circle
2) Being killed by enemy players
As this is pretty complex stuff, here’s a diagram to help out. Look up your standing-in-the-circle-ness on the X-axis, and your killing-or-being-killed-ness on the Y-axis, and check the resultant advice in that quadrant:
Stonehenge Battlefield Guide
Unfortunately I can’t tell you anything about the El Dorado battlefield for two reasons. Firstly it seems less popular than the others, so the queue for it is much longer. Secondly, upon joining the queue I’d fire up YouTube on the in-game browser and spend the next hour singing along with the theme tune to Mysterious Cities of Gold, thus missing the “Join” window if it ever did turn up. Aaaaahhhh, ah ah ahh ahhhhhh, searching for the cities of goooooollldd…
Player characters in MMOGs don’t tend to be a very chatty bunch. Not the *players*; fascinating socio-political debates in /general, the growing prevalence of voice chat, you can’t shut those buggers up. Their characters, though, tend to let their actions speak for them, giving eloquent speeches like “KILL RAT KILL RAT KILL RAT KILL RAT KILL RAT KILL RAT KILL RAT KILL RAT KILL RAT KILL RAT”, with an occasional bit of interpretive dance (or as close as you can get with an /emote) chucked in. Even textual dialogue choices are mostly limited to “Yes, I would love to perform a menial task for meagre reward” or “I would love to perform a menial task for meagre reward, but have no room in my quest log at the moment.”
Recent games are featuring much chattier player characters; in Guild Wars 2 your character has fully voiced conversations, and of course there’s the Guinness World Record holding Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand some players find it odd if ‘you’ are mute, especially when everyone else in the world is yakking away nineteen to the dozen, on the other hand if you don’t like the voice, or think it inappropriate for your character, it can be a real immersion-breaker.
In The Secret World Funcom have either ignored the issue entirely, or tackled it head-on, I’m not quite sure. There are many cutscenes as your character is recruited into a society, briefed on missions, given general information on what’s happening in the world, with extremely voluble NPCs, and throughout them all you say… nothing. Hardly unprecedented, but it’s a touch odd, especially given the amount of talking other people are doing. Sometimes, like when you’re recruited, it’s quite obvious the NPC is talking directly to you, other times it’s almost like they’re extemporising away and you just happen to be in the area… one scene seemed to be two other characters talking to each other while I stood somewhere in the vicinity (almost out of camera shot), but I still ended up being assigned a mission out of it. The game even lampshades your inaction, having NPCs offer a handshake, and commenting when you continue standing entirely immobile with no indication you’re even aware of their presence. Outside cutscenes you can quiz some NPCs about a range of subjects and receive a spoken response, with no in-game indication of how you managed to elicit it; my current theory is that you have a big pad of paper, and scrawl “YOURSELF” or “ZOMBIES” on it, then wave it at the NPC until they start talking.
It’s quite peculiar and has been mentioned in many of the posts and reviews of The Secret World that I’ve seen, but somehow it sort of works. Perhaps because the world in general in TSW is quite peculiar, in a good way. The whole business starts with an origin story inspired by Burl Ives (“I know an old Templar who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she’ll die? Or perhaps she’ll gain magical powers that enable healing through the medium of an assault rifle. It’s pretty much 50-50.”), and builds from there. I think a lot of the appeal of the game has been leaping head-first into the off-kilter version of our world without any prior knowledge, much like your character, and gradually piecing together what’s happening from talking to NPCs, examining lore items and other snippets you happen across, and in that context your character’s silence is an inspired Brechtian alienation device. Or maybe they just ran out of time and money for recording dialogue.