All sorts going on Tabula Rasa at the moment, and for want of a better term, I guess this is probably my main game just now. For reasons mostly to do with altitis and accidental sociability, we find ourselves on Concordia, again. I do quite like these first three maps; Wilderness, Divide and Pallisades, you understand, but if I have to go through Torcastra Prison one more time, I may go mad.
This time, and in a bid to keep level levels with a new-person we'd met, we've started over and swapped branches, with my usual and previously Specialist friend going Soldier and me trying out the Healer/Support side of the career tree. (I think everyone, in any game, should spend a few levels on an alt, as whatever 'Healer' class is available - it is always an education!) They've gone Ranger this time, and generally going a bit potty with all the revised and new Carpet Bombing stuffs; Ion Beams, Napalms and the like, and also using Stealth Armour, which a) Doesn't protect that well in a tanking kind of role, and b) makes all the monsters not notice them much, and instead charge after me, the healer!
I'm a Biotechncian now, and in a complete reversal of my previous waffling about how suckey all the support weapon choices sounded, am now very impressed with them; the Leech Gun and Injector Guns specifically.
The Specialist's Leech Gun, far from flinging invertebrate parasites, as I previously suspected, in fact shoots out a sustained beam laser type of thing, which drains the enemy's armour/health, and then gives it not only to me, but to all members of my squad standing close enough to me. Genius! The actual repair tools and healing disks still seem more potent for actual healing, but crucially, I'm still doing damage to the enemy when I use it, which is very important in smaller groups and duoing. All in all, a very clever idea - Nifty, almost! Can be a bit of an ammo-hog though.
The Injector Gun is the Biotech's weapon, and is a lot like the Space Syringes you see on many Sci-fi shows - click-hiss! This one was clearly designed by a madman however, as it is capable of delivering 25ccs of Undisclosed Green Serum X a staggering 50 feet, presumably for those more needle-phobic...er... patients. It also comes in a kind of insane 'defibrillator' variant, which swaps the green goo for a good 50,000 volts where it'll do the most good, although quite when one would be required to restart someone's heart from 50ft away, is a chapter I've yet to reach in my AFS Medical Textbooks.
They seem a bit wimpey at first glance, but the virulent version ignores armour entirely, and the electric one is a damage type that many things are quite weak to. I think both seem to have a mild short-lived damage over time effect as well - hard to tell. Surprisingly powerful, although they have a tendency to overheat more than other weapons, so something to look out for.
Our latest Torcastra run was as hectic as ever - that 20 minute timed rampage at the start with the mortars, being the worst bit. A lot of frantic Chaingunnery on my friend's part, and me learning, at the very sharp end, the vagaries of being a healer in TR.
It's quite a tricky business actually, mostly due to the FPS nature of basic gameplay. You can't just hammer F2 through F6, and then blast off a heal and have it go automatically where it's needed, and instead have to actually point the healing devices at the patient, in-world. Fortunately, just as you can't accidentally shoot your own team, you can't accidentally heal the enemy, but unusually in games of this kind, the healer does need to be a fairly good shot as well. Depending on how hyperactive one's more front-line combatant compatriots are, this can be a bit of a headache, and the less potent AoE heal tools might be a better bet. Even with those, you still need to be near enough.
Swapping to the Leechgun became essential for the Bosses, there only being the two of us for damage, and in real panic, the Logos Ability 'Reconstruction', a kind of AoE heal-pulse, saved us from the brink on a number of occasions. All very hectic, and a far cry form the usual 'heal-bot' gameplay so lamented in the more usual Holy Trinity Class Based MMO. We still wiped a couple of times mind you, (leaving me, the only one who can resurrect, to run all the way from the start, while my lazy Ranger friend just lay there, counting down the mission timer at me!), but not so often that we couldn't kill all four mortars in the 20 mins allowed. We literally finished with seconds to spare, which my colleague calls 'exciting', and made me nearly ended up having to use my Defibrillator Pistol on myself by the end of it all!
Quite looking forward to settling on a character, any character, and pressing on to beyond Crucible, actually!
Also we took time out to have a look at the new boxing arena, added this week in the patch. A curious thing, it takes the form of an entirely new map, with teleport connections from a variety of AFS bases; a bit like City of Heroes' "Pocket D" nightclub thing, (So good as a travel route, if nothing else). Inside is a boxing ring, with plenty of room for spectators. A vendor sells the gloves, helmet and some very natty trunks, all for nominal amounts of cash and in you go. The boxing just uses the already existing Duel option, rather than being a spatially flagged FFA PvP option, but the gloves are the clever bit, being a new kind of weapon, doing, well, point blank melee damage, based on the wearer's level.
We went a few rounds, with me consistently losing. I was even a level above my Ranger opponent, but found myself bare able to dent them, and going down myself in five or six hits. I think the problem was stat spending on my part. I've gone with lots of points in The One That Makes My Logos Abilities Do Lots of Damage/Healing, while my opponent is mostly spent in The One The Gives You Lots Of Hitpoints. This basically makes them far more robust than frail old me, and while not restricted by the game, there does seem to be house rules forming up already among the frequenters of the ring. For example, the use of a massive psychic lightning blasts (Which I'm quite powerful at) to even the odds would be frowned on, and most certainly is not Queensbury Rules! Similarly, the chap who leapt into the ring in full power-armour and toting a flamethrower and exploding shrapnel bursts, got a bit of a frosty reception, and strangely enough, no duel accepts!
I take it in good grace; it's a bit of fun, but suspect anyone wishing to make a regular thing of the boxing ring should probably create a dedicated clone for the very purpose, able to respend attribute points specifically to become a good boxer. Without a respec, I'm not sure I could win that fight. While there were a few low-levels like us duking it out, the main event did seem to be the Lv50 crowd going mano-a-mano, and most likely dedicated pugilist clones at that. The thing could also do with a 'block' of some sort, (perhaps as a RMB 'Ability', free to all, that uses Logos Power or Adrenaline?) which it appears not to currently have, but I'm quite impressed with how they've managed to make a fun sport, without having to rewrite the entire of how combat works, mostly through the boxing gloves themselves.
I'm also impressed that it was done at all. Turns out that many of the community had already been doing this on some kind of 'Friday Fight Nights', only completely unsupported, just at some normal base, and having to pistol-whip each other for want of a decent fist attack. A patch or two later, the devs give them an entire arena zone for the very purpose - gloves and all. While it might be argued that there are more 'important' things for them to be getting on with, this kind of very hands-on involvement in player's lives and activities does them enormous credit, and makes me much more optimistic about TR's future, than I might otherwise be. There is never going to be 'enough' end-game content, ever, but the odd quirky addition like this can do wonders for morale, I think...
So perhaps Last Chaos wasn't quite my cup of tea, but I'm signed up with an Aeria account now anyway, so thought I'd have a poke about in the rest of their portfolio. I'm glad I did actually, and I'm not sure it's entirely fair to judge the whole network by one unlucky first-play. Next on the list is Shaiya: Light and Darkness.
Also free-to-play, and as part of the greater Aeria experience, one account seems to cover it all, which is quite convenient - just download it and go.
Aeria Games: Shaiya Download
No further details necessary, and it's a little under 1GB in size, so put the kettle on!
In the beginning, the goddess Etain created the world, the Dragons, the Nordein and the Dumianas. She didn't like the Nordein and gave them the old heave-ho. The Dumianas began to have serious doubts about Ineffability at that point, (quite understandably), and their disbelief weakened her to the point where a successful assassination attempt by said Dumianas caused a bit of a pantheonistic ruck. The two halves of the slain goddesses' soul eventually came out on top and promptly set about war with each other. This is largely conducted by proxy, via two new factions of Dumianas, the Elves and the Vail (Who look a lot like Drow to me), and these old sparring partners were later joined by the Humans and remaining Nordein (Surprisingly Ogre-y, if you ask me), respectively. These races allied and become the Alliance of Light and the Union of Fury, and now wage constant battle for the future of Teos, and ultimately, the extinction of one goddess.
Three Good Things:
- Avatars:
The various characters look and feel pretty well done. Being a somewhat superficial type, with mildly worrying misogynistic tendencies, I went right for the Dark Elf Hottie, but much of the character design and animation stands out as of a surprisingly higher quality than you'd expect from a free-to-play knockabout of an MMO. I particularly liked the double-tap left/right and backward flips and cartwheels, which seem to serve no obvious combat purpose, but do look damned cool.
Actual combat attacks look smooth and well crafted, and although all the Vail have a tendency to run about everywhere in a chiropractically improbable hunched over 'skulk', this is probably a design choice, rather than a balls-up in Poser! The Nordien on the other hand lumber about in a suitably massive way, which also works well.
This extends to the NPCs as well, and certainly what I saw of the initial Union of Fury lands seemed to have a unique and baroque style that made roaming the lands quite a distinctive experience, so much so that I didn't even get that irritated to see that many of the monsters had been shopping in the Anne Summers Hand-To-Hand Combat Lingerie Department, again, a feature that normally just makes me start giggling, but which didn't here. It fit, somehow.
- Battle:
PvP is very much a built-in factor in this game, and at all levels, you'll have access to a portal that will take you to an appropriately levelled Borderlands map. These zones are less reminiscent of WoW's Battlegrounds, and the rigidly structured Rugby Matches of those, and much more in the nature of the 'good old days', of Taren Mill and Crossroads battling, which I quite liked. The resulting battles can be a bit chaotic, and mirror those old zerg-games; two lines of enemies facing off, the edging forward, and the sudden cataclysmic discharge of mayhem. If you miss the type of PvP that was once had at Taren Mill, have a look here - it seems to live on.
It seems the PvP has a bit of a purpose too - victories contribute in some fashion to a big Goddess progress bar, which when filled, grants a hefty buff to all members of that side, wherever they are. A nice touch that gives it all a bit of meaning.
Those that want nothing to do with it need not fear, as the mayhem seems kept to it's own special places, and large normal zones also exist in which to do the usual adventuring; an implementation I quite like, entirely consensual, and with some place else to go when you aren't in the mood. (I'm not sure if at the top end, this distinction is maintained, mind you.)
An interesting and relevant feature is the treatment of Alts; upon creating your first character, you have to pick a side, Alliance of Light or Union of Fury. After that, you can only make an alt on the other side if you delete all your existing characters first, making it all a bit of a commitment, but preventing the scourge of alt spies, which is important in any kind of PvP-based game. On the other hand, it does mean that I have no idea what the Humans, Elves or their lands are like, having never seen them. Think carefully before choosing your side!
- Difficulty:
A novel idea; Shaiya asks you to pick a difficulty during character creation; Easy, Normal, Hard and Ultimate. Easy is capped at Lv30 and has some off-limits special abilites. Normal is capped at 50, and you have to unlock Hard by doing just that. Presumably Ultimate is Lv50 Hard to unlock. As the world itself is shared by all these different characters, I can only assume that the primarily difference here is rate of XP gain, and perhaps reduced stats. I'm a tourist, so went with Easy, and found that to be of a fairly comparable rate of XP gain to WoW, so Normal is probably harder work, and the other two are for masochists! These advanced levels seem to have floating icons above their players, allowing you to reap the appropriate kudos from those around you for picking a harder road to travel.
Related and worth mentioning, each class, when picked in character creation, shows a series of bars, allowing you to see how well suited that class is to Party work, Soloing, and how good at Attack and Defence it is. I wish more games would do this, allowing the player to make a somewhat informed choice right form the word go. I only remember seeing this kind of outright admission in Anarchy Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online previously; everyone else just lets you make critical playstyle blunders in the dark.
Three Bad Things:
- Engrish:
Like Last Chaos, it seems the localisation was a bit of a rush job, and most of the NPC dialogue, tutorial help and tooltips are quite painful to read. Perhaps it is just me, one of nature's pedants, but while in Last Chaos, this kind of thing was just one more wave in a tsunami of mediocrity, it bugs me here as the rest of the game is quite good. "Liquid Medicine" Merchants? Green "Abels"? Being addressed by a stately pallorous waif-like fellow in very vampireish clothing with 'What's up yo?' It all seems a bit of a shame really.
Mind you, the rudimentary quest journal does at least colour in '5 Frost Breath Succubi' in a different colour, allowing the casual reader to get right to it. It is unlikely that you are supposed to take tea with them...
Also, stop doing line-bre
aks mid-word in the con
versation windows! Grr!
- AFK:
As in Last Chaos, they've gone with the Player-As-AFK-NPC-Merchant thing again, which still winds me up. I'm not really in any position to comment on the finer economic aspects of Shaiya really - I've been getting by on quest rewards so far, but then again, I am quite litterally playing EZ-Mode. It probably is important for the more serious players to shop around for good gear, and at least here, they've designed The Selling Place to be some place on it's own map, ala EQ's Luclin Bazaar, rather than the spot where brand new players first wake up!
I still see no need for it at all, mind you, when countless other MMOs have shown how simple, convenient and useable, any kind of basic Auction House can be. Still, in this case, the main Union City where all the AFK people are, can happily double as a social space and if it all annoys you, as it does me, just don't go there. Out in the main zones, this stuff is nicely out of sight and out of mind.
- Micropayments:
Quite unfair on my part, this one. The game is indeed free to play, but has extensive micropayment stuff built all the way in. There's even an in-game button you can press to open up the RMT Shop window. As an example, 499 AP (Which costs approx $5 US, through the Aeria website), will buy you a potion that increases XP by 1.5x for seven days (Not sure if that's online or realtime). This stuff is the pillar on which the game is built, and presumably, can afford to be run. Which is fine, but there are boosts to be bought in all manner of stats, and given the PvP nature of a large part of the game, well, draw your own conclusions. Suffice to say there were folks in the first borderlands on the opposing side, who seemed more or less invulnerable to me, even taking my innate suckage in to account! Highly suspicious.
It does rather seem possible to, if not precisely buy your way to the top, then certainly lubricate the wheels of progress a great deal with cold hard cash. Seeing GM Broadcasts that read like sales pitches is a bit disconcerting too, if you aren't use to it. They'll come on an announce some 'event', which largely seem more like limited edition 'Buy now or miss your chance!' once in a lifetime deals, to me.
Perhaps it is just me; I'm not used to this way of doing things, being a dyed in the wool Subscriber in my MMOs so far, and at the end of the day, it is a question of this 'Self Discipline' thing I've been banging on about of late. If I'm happy with the basics, then that's fine, but given the very up-front business model of the Aeria network, perhaps it is a bit naive to expect to be the best without putting in a bit more, and financial, commitment in than simply downloading for free and scoffing at the lack of subscription. To be fair, I've not encountered any gameplay situations which absolutely required that I pay up to progress, but then again, I've not got that far in.
A matter of personal preference, clearly, and at the end of the day, the servers have to be paid for somehow. To it's credit, at least there are no in-game ads to worry about - other than the ones broadcast by it's own staff anyway.
After Last Chaos, I was pleasantly surprised by this one, proving to be a solid alternative to World of Warcraft, if a bit rougher round the edges and a touch more primitive. In this case, the term 'WoW-clone' seems to be a very accurate description, and players of that will find a lot of similarities here, but also a lot of interesting and unique takes on the same basic game. And it's free, so that's a bonus. (Well, as long as your willpower remains strong, anyway. Not that there is a lot of shame in chipping in toward the game's continued existence, mind you.)
I can see myself keeping this one on and dipping in there now and then, and while not perhaps quite a strong contender for my time as a more mainstream MMO I pay monthly for, the whole thing does make for a nice change of scene on my off-nights.
Final Verdict: Not bad at all, and definitely worth a look. Probably not an 'Only Game' though.
Also on Aeria's books are Twelve Sky, a "Martial Arts MMORPG" apparently, Project Torque, some kind of "Racing MMOG", and Dream of Mirror Online, a "Social MMORPG". I expect I'll get to those soon enough.
(Except for the last one, DOMO, which apparently actively blocks EU IP addresses, probably for some draconian regional redistribution reasons. Either that, or they've seen me coming...)
There is certainly something compelling about free-to-play MMOs, I'm starting to find...
Classes irritate me a bit. Of course you learn to get on with it soon enough, but there's always the nagging worry that someone else might be having more fun, or and easier time of it, than you.
You know the kind of thing; you install, sign up, fire the game up and then are presented with a big old list of what 'job' you'd like to choose. Often you've no idea what a Jedi, or Bureaucrat or Shaman or Herald of Xotli actually is. You might have notions of what they might be historically, or mythologically, but what they are actually for, is a often less clear.
After a few of these games you start to see patterns, see the archetypes, and it becomes a matter of working out what the healer, tank, crowd control and such are called in this particular milieu. But you'll generally be assured of having one particular job in a group, and one particular way to play. Which is helpful in general, but can become a bit repetitive, and often, the needs of a group and the needs of, well, your solo self, can become at odds, in basic function. A class can be such a thing as too useful in a group. What if you could switch between different modes of your class, as the occasion demands?
Nifty! #9: World of Warcraft's Warrior Stances
I'm sure regular readers will have noticed that I'm looking for something Nifty! in every game I've played, but when it came to WoW, I did have some troubles. Successful, and indeed, good, as it is WoW isn't especially renowned for bringing anything startlingly original to the genre, per se. It does a astonishing job of presenting a lot of the older ideas in a highly-polished and well-put-together way, on the whole, and this is it's own main strength.
The Warrior Stances did strike me as a particularly clever idea though. The Warrior, over time, eventually ends up with three Stances; Battle Stance, Defensive Stance and Berserker Stance.
These aren't just buffs or special attacks, but are something qualitatively different. Choosing to be in one of these stances alters a Warrior's entire mode, opening access to some skills and closing off access to others, and each confers its own bonuses and penalties, simply by being in it in the first place.
Battle Stance is the middle ground, a flexible footing for general combat, with moderate Threat (WoW's hate list mechanic) reduction. Defensive Stance offers damage reduction and increased hate list visibility, making it perfect for being a group's main tank - making it more likely the monster will focus on you, and reducing incoming damage to help survive that. Berserker Stance is an all-out DPS type of mode, increasing critical hit chance and reducing Threat, but at the cost of increased damage taken.
The various other Warrior abilities tend to work best (or indeed, at all) with one or two of these modes, further helping to specialise a given Warrior in a group role. What happens if you have two Warriors in a group? You can't both be main tank, and usually, the second tank just has to stand about hitting the monster, but not so hard that the healer now has two patients to worry about. The stances allow two similar Warriors to take on two entirely different roles, and not to get in each other's way, with aggro and such. A Defensive Stance Warrior takes on the mantle of traditional meat-shield, usually supported by a dedicated healer. The Berserker Stance Warrior then becomes an almost Rogue-like figure, trying to avoid notice and dish out huge amounts of DPS at the same time. And for soloing, either can drop back into Battle Stance, which offers moderate amounts of both survivability and damage, and if they both get bored, they can even swap over entirely, taking it in turns to be Main Tank - often in the same instance!
Having done my time as an Everquest 1 Warrior, this sudden versatility came as quite a liberation. I don't have to find a group (with no other warriors in it) to get on with my life? Shocking! Having gotten a WoW Warrior to 60 in my time, the correct and thoughtful use of these stances made my life a much more enjoyable thing than it might have been, with far greater flexibility than might otherwise have been the case, and most crucially, didn't leave me trapped in a class that has only one very specific purpose.
It isn't perfect, of course, and I never made it to the Raiding Endgame. Much of Tobold's ongoing analysis of the Warrior, (and to a lesser extent, Priest), shows that at the top-end, certainly, the switching of modes is not enough on it's own, and having different sets of equipment, and paying for frequent and pricey Talent Respecs becomes increasingly more important, if a member of a given class is to carry out more than one job at a time, which is a shame.
But the journey there at least, is a much more enjoyable thing with this innate flexibility, and something I'd like to see become standard in all future MMOs, for all classes! Other classes in WoW get something a similar - the Druid's shapechanging alters the way they play on a situational basis, and to a lesser extent, Priest Shadowform, and Rogue Stealth.
I'd be hard pressed to find anything comparable in other MMOs though, past or present - the idea that you can just hit a toggle and almost become a different class entirely. Guild Wars' ultimate flexibility in skillbar selection, and continually rechooseable secondary class is something akin to the above, perhaps, but the game itself requires much less in the way of defined 'roles' anyway. If you know of others, do let me know!
So for only making me be a Tank when I deem it necessary, and for bundling three classes into one, World of Warcraft's Warrior Stances; Nifty!
Hell, you don't need me to tell you where WoW is! The Warrior's Stances however, are dished out over quite a large span of levels. You get Battle stance at start, Defensive Stance at Lv10, which isn't too big a slog, and Berserker Stance is given out at Lv30, which takes a bit longer.
Just having the Battle and Defensive Stances should be easily enough to see how they work, and what that means to the adventuring Warrior, both in a group, and alone.