My Tactician AOE clearing groups of mobs in Rift.

Last week I shared my thoughts on the Rift F2P conversion slated to arrive in just three weeks. I wanted to jump in and revisit Rift before the change so that I can have up-to-date experience before commenting on how the F2P changes really impact the game.

The Rift team reached out to me to help get me back in and playing on my account.  In a matter of minutes I had my Rogue created and I was slaying mobs in the familiar starting zone.

A lot has changed.  Right from the start players get all of the souls and there are these paths players can choose which sort of templatize the experience for those looking for a hand in choosing souls and talents that will meet their playstyle.  I quickly broke my training wheels and chose a Bard/Tactician combo with a third soul that is probably not going to get a single point.  I haven’t looked up a single guide or walk-through, but looking at the talents I think this will be a great support class.  Feel free to correct me if I’m entirely wrong.

To be quite honest, I hate these starting quests. I’ve done them each a dozen times having Alpha and Beta tested Rift.  I haven’t experienced the second zone and on for the Defiant though, and just before I logged off I finished up Freemarch.  Now I’m ready to continue into content I’ve never seen which is where the fun will start.  Thankfully the rifts and bg’s were a great distraction.

Speaking of battlegrounds (or whatever they are called), my healing topped the charts every time. I was even 4x the healing of other healers carrying my team to victory.  I love being a lowbie healer.

I don’t have a ton to share right now other than my opinion that Rift has gained quite a bit of polish over the years.  Rift has this simple elegance about it that makes it feel more MMO than SWTOR — I recently tried SWTOR as well.  I’m also liking how Trion has made playing with people easier.  Instant adventures, public groups, and several tools to get people matched with others.  I haven’t had a single moment where I felt alone.

More to come as I, hopefully, make my way through the lower levels.  I’d love to see some of the content Elrar showed me during my personal tour with him just before Storm Legion launched.  The great thing about going back to play a themepark MMO several years later is that usually the devs have gone out of their way to make it accessible and easy to enjoy.

Of course I’ve known of the existence of the PlayStation Plus program, but I never really knew just how awesome it would become. I suppose I wrote it off back when it first came out because it wasn’t a required service like Xbox Live, and I must have figured they would never offer anything worthwhile. Of course I was wrong, which obviously doesn’t happen that often.

I’ve probably mentioned a few times by now that I have a new Vita. The PlayStation brand hasn’t been getting as much of my attention as it deserves over the past few years so I wasn’t really aware of any of the Plus offerings until I found out about their whole “Instant Game Collection” thingy. It’s actually pretty awesome that I can play games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Gravity Rush, and Disgaea 3 just by being a subscriber and it’s what initially caused me to sign up for a year of the service. Not only that but just recently Sleeping Dogs appeared among the PS3 offerings so I feel pretty jazzed about that. They also cycle these games every month so you are constantly getting new and interesting things to play as long as you are subscribed. I’d say it’s worth it for the ability to play these games alone, but you also get great discounts and exclusive deals on stuff.

It actually makes me wonder what exactly it is I’m getting with my Xbox Live subscription. I believe I’ve been a member for 8 or 9 years, at least according to that big number next to my gamertag, but I’m not really sure I have anything to show for it other than some truly horrific customer service experiences. Sure it grants you the ability to play games online and do some other minor things, but those seem to be free on every other console… I’m actually scratching my head on this one.

You are thrust into the role of a prisoner being held captive by Magusar, an evil sorcerer. He has been blessed (or cursed) with immortality and has to sacrifice people in order to maintain it. One day you happen upon a living journal in the cell next to you. He’s a wise-cracking english fellow by the name of Librom and he tells you within him are the memories of a nameless sorcerer. By reading through and reliving these past experiences, you can learn magic and possibly use your new found powers to defeat Magusar and escape. It’s an interesting tale for sure, and through-out the memories contained in Librom you will learn the secrets behind Magusar and the nameless sorcerer who he once called friend. Well I liked it, at least. Some people just show up for the cool spells, bosses and online play.

I’m not sure how I’d classify Soul Sacrifice. Some people say it’s like Monster Hunter while others swear up and down that it isn’t. One thing is for sure, however, and that is that it is NOT a Souls game in the same vein as Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls. A lot of people seem to make that assumption.  I would actually have to join the camp that says it’s like Monster Hunter, but only somewhat. I’ll stick my foot in that camp but that’s about it. You essentially undertake missions that want you to kill certain kinds of monsters or one larger monster archfiend. You can equip different offerings, or spells, along with carving sigils into your right arm that augment your abilities. Every time you kill a creature you get the option of saving or sacrificing it, which confers health and Holy experience or restores your spell count and gives Magic experience respectively.

There are actually several different ways you can specialize your character. A lot of people go pure magic and do insane damage, but die in one to two hits — Your basic glass cannon. Others, like myself, take a more supportive role by doing pure holy and gaining tons of HP and using support spells like healing, taunts, etc. Or you can just go neutral and take some of both. Then there are different spell types to work with. Melee spells that create weapons or turn your arm into a giant fist, thrown spells that shoot different objects, summons that call forth powerful immobile golems, shield spells that block damage and counter certain attacks, etc. You get six slots and can use whatever you want. Each spell has a certain number of uses and requires additional sacrifices mid-quest to replenish. You can upgrade these to more powerful versions and increase the effect and spell count.

The feature that most people are likely interested in would be the online play. You, and three others, can play any of the Avalon Quests together and take down different archfiends to farm certain offerings or soul pieces. It’s a lot of fun when you can get some competent people to play with, preferably the ones who won’t sacrifice your ass when you die. Oh, right, you can do that by the way. When a teammate dies you have the option of either saving them, and giving them half of your health, or sacrificing them for a big burst of damage against the boss. It’s beneficial to do both, and even when sacrificed you still get rewards including a nice martyr bonus. You really have to weigh the pros and cons of each situation or at the very least listen to whether or not the guy wants to be revived or not.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the game are the Black Rites. During a quest you can sacrifice part of your body for an extremely powerful spell effect. Sacrifice your skin for a burst of damage, but get your defense cut in half. Offer your eye to damage and paralyze a boss but in return your vision gets extremely narrows. Or just rip out your heart and turn it into a massive sword and hurl it the guy, but you will be constantly bleeding out. It’s really fascinating stuff but I wish they had gone a step further with it. Overall there is a feeling in the game that there are no real consequences for your actions. If you save somebody or sacrifice them or, like I said earlier, rip out your eye then you can just use Lacrima — essentially white-out — to erase your choice and completely void what you just did. It somewhat cheapens things when you can just undo them if you don’t like the results. I’d love to see more impactful sacrifices in a sequel.

It’s a very fun and enjoyable game. Maybe not the system seller that the Vita needs, but worthwhile all the same. Personally, I wouldn’t give my arm to play this game but I would give $39.99.

Kil’Jaeden of The Burning Legion

Titan is on its way — probably being revealed at Blizzcon — and what a coincidence WoW is trending downward in what feels like a wrap-up.  Bobby Kotick came right out and said he expects numbers to decline even more in the coming months, and I’m absolutely in agreement.  Blizzard doesn’t want people being perfectly content in WoW.  Blizzard wants people chomping at the bit to play their next game.  This is how the hype cycle works.

A graceful conclusion is in WoW’s near future.  I think we’ll have an expansion focusing on The Burning Legion, and then something that feels more like a conclusion.  That gives them about 3-4 years (I think there’ a good chance they expedite it) before Titan, and plenty of time to wrap up the story.  After that, WarCraft 4 (RTS) can come out and I can be giddy about a dream come true.

And in the end, even if this decline isn’t what Blizzard wants, and my crazy marketing strategy really is crazy, they’ll still have to do something to address it which means players benefit every way you look at it.  That is the beauty of Blizzard.

Visually, the game is great. They did a fantastic job with the pixel art and the aliens and ships are fascinating to look at. They obviously went for a Star Trek feel and I think for the most part they nailed it. Unfortunately it just all goes downhill from here. The combat, ship, crew, and diplomacy (or lack thereof) mechanics are all bad. They really are. I probably shouldn’t make sweeping statements like that but I honestly can’t think of a single redeeming feature among them.

The entire game is based around tokens. Win a battle, get tokens, spend tokens on upgrades or crew. Good luck being able to afford anything, though, when you have to constantly replace your crew. Parts of your ship also use different types of tokens to dodge attacks and fire special weapons. The problem is that you not only need to wait for the rooms to charge up, but then you need to spend a token. Unfortunately you can only hold 2 tokens of each type at a time. After that you have to generate tokens, introducing an additional timer into the mix.  The same is true for shield regenerators, etc. It’s a completely stupid and broken system. I just don’t understand why they created, essentially, 2 different usage timers. It would have been great if they just let you buy and stock ammo, but there’s none of that.  Read on.

The combat is only vaguely similar to FTL. You charge up your weapons and then fire. Except that’s not where it ends. You then have to partake in an inane touch mini game to make sure you actually hit your target. The novelty never has a chance to wear off because I don’t believe it existed in the first place. Oh, and this is great… You essentially ALWAYS get hit. I guess your enemies are mini-game masters because they seem to NEVER miss. If you want any relief you can use a dodge token but that’s essentially worthless when you have to wait on 2 separate timers and they can get 3 to 4 shots in between anyways. In the end it doesn’t really seem to matter because no matter how beat to hell you get you never seem to blow up. Your shields go down, hulls can be breached and crew sucked out, and fires can spread everywhere but it seems your ship is otherwise invulnerable.

Oh, and while you micro manage all of your firing minigames and token generation, you must also deal with being boarded by hostile forces, which will happen ALL. THE. TIME. I’ve never been able to tell if having shields up matters or not. It doesn’t seem to because they will send wave after wave at you and you have to send your red shirts in (The only ones who can attack) to take care of them. This means you either need to pull them from your weapons systems or just have a crap-load extra. You also need to make sure your blue shirts back them up with heals or they are shit-out-of-luck because the aliens are way tougher. My personal favorite part is having your last red shirts die and having to send crew members ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SHIP, to either the command deck or weapons room, just so they can change shirt color and fire on the enemy forces. I find this absolutely mind-boggling. I mean, I know I’ve seen Geordi phaser a bitch. It’s all just frantic and hard to manage. Looking at screenshots you are reminded of classic Xcom, but it’s nothing like that. It’s all ll in real-time and difficult to control as your crew is hard to individually select and paths around your ship like a blind person who just had their furniture re-arranged.

Oh, and as for diplomacy… There’s really none. At all. Sometimes you get dialogue choices before battle, but it all just leads to fight after fight after fight after fight.

Star Command really could have been so much more. I really wanted it to be more. In my mind I played a deeper, portable FTL with XCOM features and battles. You could explore vast galaxies, meet strange new species and peacefully co-exist (or not). Then I woke up and realized none of it had ever happened and I didn’t even get a damn flute to show for it.

Trion’s big marketing strategy with this F2P transition is to clearly state that players are getting complete AAA MMO experience for free.  You only have to pay for certain things like boosts, mounts, gear, and expansion souls.  All story, all level, all raids — all content is free.

That’s a great strategy, and really the only one I believe can possibly work for a true “AAA F2P” MMO (if such an oxymoron exists).  Let’s look at their execution.

All content in Rift will be completely free.

Subscriptions

Having a sub to Rift gets you boosts.  Whether they’re slowing everything else down like SWTOR, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.  As a Patron (their name for a subscriber) you can get bonus mount speed, more reputation, more tokens, more currency, loyalty rewards, and those types of things. It’s the whole “you want to pay money to not be at a disadvantage” trope. Will it be enough to get people to subscribe?  Personally, I don’t see the real benefit.  I’d rather buy these as I want them individually.

Selling Gear

Here’s the big one.

“We will also have gear for sale. Our guidelines for gear on the store are generally as follows: The best gear in the game must be earned and high-level items on the store must also be available to be earned in-game.”

That is vague; I can interpret that to mean you can buy the best gear in the game.  All X are Y but not all Y are X type of logic.  Regardless, it’s pay-to-win unless your definition of winning is to only have the best stuff instantly.  If I can buy the second best stuff right when hit max level, then jump in the next day with the second best gear and start earning the best, that’s winning to me.

This whole conversion is going to do really well for Rift.  I’m absolutely positive that they will see more people playing, and more revenue as a result.  However, F2P is a short-term strategy for MMOs.  Trion forfeits Rift’s credibility and sense of being a genuine AAA game.  Transitioning to F2P will do very well early for the game, but it will expedite the end even if it only makes people consider there being an end, thus that in and of itself diminishing their future possibilities.  Rift’s love group is being served with the realization of the game’s mortality, and I’m confident that the long-run will suffer as a result as those love-group-players lose their desire to stay and start looking for a game without a future dictated by altering design to earn the most money.

I’ll give the game a shot now (I was going to anyway since Raptr gave me 30 days free AND the expansion free…) and maybe give the game a bit of coverage from a ‘how does it play free’ perspective.  That’s precisely what Trion is hoping thousands of people will do.

Elder Scrolls becomes less of a deep RPG and more of an action game with each iteration.

I find this to be an extremely puzzling and often frustrating occurrence among games. At one point you will be playing a certain game, and as time goes on maybe the sequel. Before you know it years have passed and you are on game number 4 or 5 in the series and somehow it’s gone from being an RPG to a straight up Action game or whatever the scenario may be. I don’t even know how to describe this. The only thing I can really think of is possibly Genre Drift? Is that a thing? Well I’m making it a thing and if it’s already been thought of then I’m officially taking credit.

The game that made me think about this recently was Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move. It’s a downloadable title on the 3DS eShop where you control tiny clockwork Marios and guide them to their destination. There has actually been several of these game over the years, except they never started out that way. Let me go back…

Back in 1994 Donkey Kong came out for the Game Boy. It includes the first 4 levels of the classic Donkey Kong arcade game and features Mario pitted against his gorilla nemesis but that’s really where the similarities end. In this version Mario can perform a handstand maneuver and jump, do some kind of side flip, pick up objects, etc. It’s great and there are a crapload of levels. Fast forward to 2004 and a follow up game (or maybe relaunch, I’m not sure) was released called Mario vs. Donkey Kong which has essentially the same game mechanics except every so often there is a level where you have to help little clockwork Marios get through dangerous obstacles. Two years later we’d get a sequel, Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis, except you don’t seem to control Mario at ALL. Hell, you don’t even use the control pad. You tap the screen to direct little clockwork Marios around. This was followed up by Minis March Again, Mini-Land Mayhem, and now recently Minis on the Move. What was once a platforming game with puzzle elements is now purely a puzzle game. I’m not saying the later games are bad in any way, but they are a huge departure from the series roots. It’s mind boggling.

It’s also happened in several other instances. If you look at the Elder Scrolls series you will noticed that with each new iteration it becomes less of deep RPG and more of a straight up action game. Mass Effect was an RPG with shooter elements but it kind of did a reverse into a shooter with RPG elements. Granted the drift is more gradual with these examples and not as steep a change as is the case with Mario vs. Donkey Kong, but you can obviously see genre drift.

Now I’m not saying that any of these changes are necessarily bad. I actually enjoyed all the games I mentioned. However there is a definite change in how the games work and often results in compromise to gameplay elements, which does tend to polarize people. I know that a lot of the time I expect a game series to maintain certain features and qualities and build upon them rather than chip away and compromise them. This can lead to expectations that aren’t met and possible disappointment. I’ve seen it happen quite a bit.

It kind of reminds of the radar/spider graph or whatever that they use in Pokemon games when you feed pokemon different gummy types. Depending on which trait you raise more it tends to pull the graph in one direction and away from another. The more you pull towards tough and cool the less cute you are. Similarly it seems the more you drift towards one genre the more you drift away from another. I realize this analogy is really obscure and likely only makes sense to me. At least it does in my sleep deprived state.

I’m not trying to say the change is bad or anything. Well, admittedly I am not a fan of change but that’s hardly the point.

Over the past few days I’ve had this horrible pit in my stomach caused by an acute lack of MMOs to play.  Looking around to remedy my situation, realizing nothing will currently cure me, and hoping there was something in the future, I turned to a game that I’ve only had slightly visible on my radar: WildStar.

WildStar will have episodic, phased, open-world, and undoubtedly instanced PvE.

WildStar isn’t trying to be the next best thing. I don’t get this feeling that the developers are trying to overly-innovate or convince people that WildStar is creating some new reason to enjoy MMOs.  I see a zany unique IP with which the developers are having fun.  All of the videos are just cool — that’s deep, I know.  But seriously, there’s a significant amount of ‘different’ stuff in a ‘cool’ way without really being technically ‘new’.

WildStar will have episodic story content, typical questing, battlegrounds, raids (I read there will be 40-man raids), and supposedly open-world leveling on top of customized content that I think is being handled with phasing. All of these can be fun if done right, but what I’m truly excited for are the Warplots and housing.  Build up a base then taking it into a battle against another guild that has built up a base sounds really fun.  Customizing a house to the level of what’s been shown in WildStar is something I have always loved.

Amazing housing and base building are the driving force behind my excitement.

I don’t need every MMO to reinvent the wheel, but I demand that every MMO at least try to do something better and different than their competition/predecessors.  With a zany new IP being really driven home by over-the-top stylized gameplay, and what appears to be a team embracing the themepark mechanics in their own way, I think WildStar shows great promise.

To sum it all up, we can analyze what WildStar does right, and what it gets wrong, later.  For now, it just looks fun.

When I first saw the feature demonstrated on the Wii U (at whatever event) I was incredibly intrigued. It seemed like a good idea, and one that I might use on occasion, but I never expected it to become a feature that really mattered to me.  It’s fully possible that off-tv play is merely a situational thing and has a different level of relevance on a person by person basis. Maybe nobody else gives a crap, and maybe there are only a few people out there like me. I just hope we see further use of the feature across MANY platforms.

The Wii U is really the only device I have right now that supports the feature, at least that I know of. Supposedly the PS3′s remote play function with the PSP and Vita is quite poor and under-supported, but the PS4 is supposed to make great use of the Vita as a vessel for off-TV play. Microsoft has their Smart Glass thing, but I’ve not heard anything on that front in regards to the subject at hand.

It’s actually a little surprising that some of the Wii U games don’t utilize the feature. I can understand that it’s not practical for some games that make heavy used of the touchpad and second screen but it’s still missed. Some games don’t support the feature when there really is no reason not to, which I find confusing. I remember The Cave came out and I was jazzed to get it on Wii U so I could use the off-TV play if I wanted to, but for some reason the feature was absent. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate launched without the feature but it was thankfully patched in around a month or so later.

The thing that surprised me the most is that I actually will go out of my way for the option. For example, I have a new pinball addiction and absolutely LOVE playing Zen Pinball 2 on my Wii U gamepad while Keen watches Star Trek or West Wing or whatever else is on Netflix. Not too long ago the Star Wars tables came out and I REALLY want to play them because what could make Star Wars even better? Pinball of course. Sadly they aren’t out on the Wii U version yet, so I’ve had to heavily resist the urge to buy them anywhere else because I really want that off-TV play action.

I don’t know, that’s pretty much the end of my crazy rambling. Maybe it isn’t as important of a feature to everybody else as it is to me but even now I’m thinking about how I wish I could play something like Bioshock or XCOM without having to be tied to a particular screen.

I’m not saying that quests where you play an important role are bad. However, it seems that so many games nowadays are designed around questing. Also, every MMO is trying to infuse a story as well because, hell, that’s important right? No… No it isn’t. It REALLY isn’t. And this is coming from somebody who loves to hear a good story and loves even more to write them. Stories in games can be FANTASTIC but MMOs really don’t need them. You can have an overall theme or direction that shapes the lore of the world over time but when you try to tell important, epic stories through quests it is just bad. It’s so because you are making each player the main character of the game and that’s really not the point. Like, at all. It really isn’t, trust me. People that are looking for this experience, again, should seek better offerings. No, really, there are some great games out there where you don’t even have to interact with other people.

Deep down I know I have no right to dictate that players should play something else, but I still really want to. I mean, I liked it when MMOs were a certain way and catered to a specific demographic. However now it seems like there exists a large population of players that want, basically, a single player experience with the option to play with others if they so feel like it. What the hell is up with that? I just don’t understand this at all… The point of MMOs, or at least what I thought, is to exist in a world with MANY additional people and communities of which you needed to rely on and be apart. You are just a cog in the machine as it were. This culture of self-centered players and games that essentially put you at the center of attention primarily, and oddly enough, to your own self… it just… there are no words, man.

Go play a freakin’ single-player game.