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Creatively Improve Stealth, Don’t Remove It

January 7, 2013 by

tf2 blue spyStealth is an interesting mechanic; some people despise it in all forms, and others won’t play without a class that can stealth and sneak around.  I’ve had those moments where I hate stealth and the people at the controls.  I can remember as far back as DAoC (the first game I truly got into PvP) when I would be straggling behind the herd and suddenly I’m dead.  I was killed by a stealth character.  Being stun-locked in WoW sucked.  I also have memories of being a stealth Scout archer and being the player who reports enemy movements, and being able to move into position and shoot arrows at unsuspecting targets.

I think stealth is a positive addition.  Stealth adds depth to combat, and provides alternative ways to play.  Those are ‘good’ things that MMOs need more of instead of this massive homogenization of roles and play-styles.

There are three things that I personally think are wrong with stealth or that should not be allowed:

  • No one should be able to “1 shot” someone else, especially if that person can sneak up and do it without being seen.
  • Stun-lock should be non-existent.
  • Getting out of combat instantly and being able to escape a fight has to go.

MMO RogueTo improve stealth, I would make it more of a recon tool or a positioning tool, and preserve the ‘coolness’ and ‘style’ it brings (See TF2 Spy or the cool guy on the left).  A ranger should be able to traverse through a forest and be less visible than other classes.  That makes sense to me.  So why not let ranger-like characters get a form of stealth or invisibility near trees until someone gets close?  Holding still could make them harder to detect, and moving makes it easier.  A similar system can be implemented for sneaky rogue characters.  When stationary, let them have a form of stealth — let it be permanent.  For stealth while moving, have it be temporary and easy to reveal if they get too close.  For all of the classes that use stealth, their core abilities should be usable when breaking stealth.

Even though I rarely play stealthers, and I end up hating them because they often counter my play-style, it’s a feature that belongs.  That’s a pretty big change from my opinion on the subject back in 2008, but I’ve really learned a lesson about how important it is to preserve good ideas and improve them.  Stealth is a classic, and the ‘coolness’ of a rogue should be preserved.  I would like to see creative ideas used to improve stealth instead of just losing the feature entirely because it has issues in its current, traditional implementation.

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Of World PvP and Battlegrounds

January 10, 2011 by

The thought of world PvP and battlegrounds has been on my mind lately as I think on the subject of dynamic content and experience games like Rift and WoW with their battlegrounds.  We really hashed out this subject a lot when WAR launched and we saw the immediate negative effects from their scenario/battleground system.  Over two years later we are still seeing games launch with battlegrounds while trying to emphasize that there is open-world pvp too.   The two can not co-exist as they are.

World PvP should create a sense of connectedness between players, to both each other and the world they’re playing in.  When done well, and even poorly sometimes, it changes the world for players or at least their perception of it.  Is it dangerous?  No longer accessible?  Something I want to claim for my realm or want to defend lest it be taken by the enemy?  These feelings are then experienced 24/7 — or at least they should be.

What happens when you introduce a system that compartmentalizes PvP is that you take away those feelings, thoughts, or desires.  You take away the connected feeling between the players and most definitely the world.  Another problem that arises from the battleground system is that you often see them mistakenly being the source of the best rewards.  Now we’ve lost the experience and the drive to be apart of your world and interact with other players.  It’s been replaced by the path of least resistance, the desire for improving oneself and the selfish nature that comes along with it.

Themepark designed games thrive upon this idea of creating ways for players to want to focus on themselves.   They also focus heavily on the path of least resistance and upon variables they can control.    While I won’t say that this is a bad thing, because clearly millions love it, I will say that I believe there is a viable alternative and in my opinion a better way to present PvP.

Dark Age of Camelot accomplished something that many overlook.  DAOC could easily be considered a close relative to the themepark model.  The PvE zones or realms were like continents accessible only by your fellow realmmates.  There was absolutely no PvP that went on in the world.  It had dungeons, albeit not instanced but rather open, and a few quests, grinds, rare spawns, and in its good ole days only a minor drive (yet still a drive) for better gear.  However, it also had another focus.

Accessible only by a portal, DAOC had these places called Frontiers which housed the entirety of the game’s PvP.  For all intents and purposes, these could be looked at as 24/7 battlegrounds.  They were ginormous though and at times felt bigger than the PvE lands.  In them were Keeps that could be claimed and defended.  What else was in the zones?  There were PvE mobs that provided some worthwhile benefits like EXP that people wanted.  These frontiers also housed Relics which were inside large keeps called Relic Keeps.  These Relics bestowed upon the owning Realm gains to various things like EXP, damage, etc.

DAOC also had battlegrounds, yet they were not like WoW’s battlegrounds.  These were like miniature versions of Frontiers and no bigger than Alterac Valley if it were squished wider.  A keep was in the center and it was vulnerable 24/7.  The goal?  Own the keep.  That’s it.  It was one of the biggest successes of DAOC and spawned the battleground phenomena.

The point of all that DAOC talk?  DAOC seperated PvE from PvP and made PvP voluntary.  At the same time, they created such a large open-world PvP frontier that players forgot they were separated.  They also created a desire to go there to PvP because of relics, guild and personal prestige, the fact that it was the only area to PvP, and because players took pride in owning the land.  There was also the fact that the best PvE open-world dungeon became available to only the realm that currently owned the most keeps.  Note: Physical ownership of keeps mattered and there as no ridiculous point system for zone ownership.  Your realm owned a keep or it didn’t.

Why then can’t this work in themepark games?  The answer is that it most definitely can work.  It can work in themepark games just fine and absolutely thrive in the more open or sandbox styles.  The small-scale focused compartmentalization and reward taking the focus off of the world and the connection between players would just have to go.  It’s a complete opposite of everything world PvP tries to accomplish and actively inhibits it.

I’m anticipating that within a year we’ll see a studio announce a pseudo-themepark pseudo open/sandbox like DAOC with PvP being separated from the world and voluntary, but woven into the game’s soul.   LotRO was soooo close it hurt with the Ettenmoors.  All they needed were more meaningful claimable objectives (like Keeps) and a more fleshed out Monster system (ideally 3 sides).  It’ll happen soon and it will, hopefully, open some eyes.

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Deathwing’s dynamic contribution

October 28, 2010 by

This was news to me when I read it on the official forums that in Cataclysm Deathwing will fly around Azeroth causing destruction.  I think that’s a really cool idea.  I’m in favor of having events going on in the world that add to the atmosphere and set a mood.  That’s why I also love seasonal/holiday events so much; They change things up and introduce temporary change and break up the ease at which these MMO worlds become too familiar and dull.

Sandboxes that allow players to really change the world do not face this problem to such degree.  In SWG it was neat to see new houses pop up or new camps of mobs in places as well as watch how the popular areas changed over time.  In UO the world changed greatly as well and early on when I played it would be dangerous to go certain routes.   Even in non-sandbox games like DAOC, the use of dynamic events (relic raids, keep sieges, etc) made the world feel changing.

WoW has always done a better job of keeping their world fresh than most themeparks MMO’s so I can’t fault them much.  I’m glad though that the Zombie event fiasco hasn’t scared them away from the idea of Deathwing wreaking havoc.  While it’s not the same as a sandbox or player-driven-dynamic-events, it’s something different, matches the story/theme of what’s going on, and it will add to the experience.  More of this stuff would be a welcomed addition.

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More on FFXIV, learning as I go

September 30, 2010 by

FFXIV can be absolutely gorgeous.

FFXIV’s class system is interesting. It was advertised that players simply equip a weapon and they’re immediately that class. That’s actually how it works. You put on a cane and you’re a Conjurer; put on a spinning wheel and you’re a weaver. It works for combat and crafting and you can be all of the classes at once. When you use your class’ abilities you gain class experience. When you do anything worthy of gaining experience you get general experience which levels up your “physical level”. Physical level determines your stat by granting you points to allocate each time you level up. Gaining rank in a class gives you new abilities and strengthens your abilities.

It’s not as simple as killing a mob and getting 2 sets of exp. You definitely get general experience for just about everything, but class experience is more random. For my Conjurer I do not get much Conjurer exp at all if I nuke mobs dead in two casts — in fact I often get none. If I just use my cane to attack, which is like a wand in WoW, then I get more attacks in per mob which increases my chance to get a little nugget of exp. As you’d expect, the strategy is to just attack with the cane to optimize exp gains. Random chance benefits from repetition so I can’t say it’s a flaw in the system, just an unfortunate reality for casters at lower levels.

Being able to put on any hat whenever you feel like it is awesome.  I think they’ve done a very nice job creating an experience similar to SWG with the one character per person feel.  Spending points into certain stats is a limiting factor, but it appears that you can reassign points.  Mixing and matching abilities from classes is also something worth noting.  The recommendation from most people is that you pick two classes that compliment each other and use their abilities.  Weapon use, stat type, and other limiting factors seem to favor sticking to a lower number regardless of whether or not you have the time to level 5 at a time.

Weaving my Local Leves

The questing system is very important to understand.  There are regional leves and local leves.  Regional leves are the “quests” that you’ll be used to doing which give you some nice coin, maybe an item, and lots of experience.  You’re restricted to just 8 of these in a 36 hour period.  Local leves are crafting and you have a limit of 8 on those as well.  This means that if you play several hours in one day and just do leves, you’ll be out of luck.  You can group up with others and get some credit for helping them with theirs, though.  This encourages grouping in a big way.

What do you do when your leves are gone?  As far as I can tell, you grind.  I like to mix grinding, exploring, crafting, and leves together so that I find a harmony and never really burn out on one thing or run out of stuff to do.  Unfortunately, if you play a lot you’re going to be stuck grinding.

Crafting is beneficial.  The economy is entirely player driven from what I have seen.  Players are hocking their goods in chat channels, putting up their little shop ala Asian style games, and some are successfully getting rich.  Others look like they’re just crafting for themselves.  Many tradeskills feed off each other and when you can be anything and everything whenever you want, it’s not hard to be self sufficient.

The crafting system is one of FFXIV’s better systems.  I chose to be a Weaver which makes cloth armor.  Crafting consists of putting materials in the material receptical that satisfy a recipe.  You learn these recipes two ways (that I’ve found).  1) You pay attention to Local Leves or 2) You look them up online.  Put the right resources in the receptical and begin crafting.  It’s not just a combine mechanism though.  You actually to actively participate.  With Weaving a little colored bauble will appear on my tool.  Based upon its color (Green, white, yellow, red) you will get different outcomes for actions you take.  The actions are to do a standard synthesize, a bold synthesize, or a rapid synthesize.  Standard seems to be the middle and the others are obvious.  You have a quality and durability number and based upon which action you choose matching the color appearing (and your tool quality and other factors) yields your end product.  It’s overwhelming at first and I’m still learning the ropes, but it’s a heck of a lot better than just combining.

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