Back to rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic then, and more poking about what remains of Tabula Rasa. Right from the word go, one of the big features of the game was its Control Points. I've talked a bit about those back in April 2008, in my guise of free-faced newbie, and on paper, they seemed like a great idea.
The basic setup is simple enough; a base with a flag in the middle, walls, turrets and a force-field gate, which every so often, gets rushed by the Bane. If the players don't put up a spirited enough defence the Bane capture it, and access to it's facilities is lost. The whole thing needs then to be sieged and liberated to restore the status quo.
Sounds like a bit of quick fun, and an alternative to questing and grinding of an average session, (and indeed, for a moment, it felt like the PvE Planetside I'd dreamt of) but on balance, I wonder if they should have been ditched before they even went in. Unlike my previous nitpicking, I suspect that this is more of a substantial issue, and one with ramifications for existing and future other titles.
The basic problem is that the Enemy, in this case, the Bane invasion force, is relentless, tireless and inexhaustible. We, on the other hand, are not. As I warp about the two worlds right now, almost all of the designated CP flags are red - enemy hands, with the exceptions being the first one or two in Wilderness - the first zone a new player will encounter one in. Granted, the game is basically full of sightseers on a free pass right now, but even at it's height, I have almost constant memories of not being able to get into these bases - having to sprint and hurtle at those few that did seem to come up blue when i was nearby, just to tag the waypoints or complete the missions there.
I expect to begin with, many people made a real effort to keep these outposts open, fighting hard and often, but every twenty minutes, on the clock, the invasion would start again. I'm doing research in the Purgas CP, in Divide at the moment, and every 20 mins, the alarms go and I'm seeing:
Wave 1: Approx 40x Incoming (Thrax, Machina, Caretakers, Grenadiers; both gates)
Wave 2: Approx 80x Incoming (As above, plus Super Thrax Boss commander; both gates; arrives immediately Wave 1 is destoryed)
All these monsters are Lv19-20, in a map with a suggested level range of 11-16. I ran about hosing the bejessus out of them all with the flamethrower, but then again, I am Lv46. It's trivial for me, so no loot or xp, but I like to think I'm performing a public service of sorts, keeping the road open. I guess what was intended, is that a practiced and complementary team of 8-10 Lv16-18 players in effect, permanently man the stockade, for the greater good of the larger playing public, er, I mean the remnants of mankind!
They added Prestige Points and the like, for taking part at these CPs, but few people could have ever been doing this infinitely repeatable task over and over, as intended, even in it's height, and I remember seeing all sorts of guides appearing, on how to solo-liberate the CP bases, mostly so folks could get inside and get on with missions and travel. Personally, using those techniques, as a Lv46, I can just about solo-capture the ones in the Marshes map (Lv 36-38), which isn't terribly practical, and even then, it's frighteningly easy to overpull and get decimated by sheer numbers. For anything more, I just have to do what many people seem to have had to do all along; ask forlornly on general chat for a bored high-level - not to help retake the place, but to just turn up and swat it.
I think this has roots in Tabula Rasa's lack of obvious or coherent group dependency, and also in the often solo-friendly nature of the title. People don't generally group for much, or didn't in my day anyway; poor LFG tools, basic online shyness, and ultimately, lack of anyone else to actually group with, all helping to teach people how to over-perform solo, and indeed, eventually get the trick of soloing CPs as needed. (I expect many L50s can, with patience, solo any CP they need; hats off to you of course, but my point is that is shouldn't be quite so necessary in the first place!)
It shouldn't have to be such a pain to get from A to B or hand in a mission, and the absolute regularity of the invasions taught volumes on the nature of futility. In the end, I expect most simply couldn't be bothered to retake that base AGAIN...what would be the point, when you turn your back for twenty minutes, and it falls? Very dispiriting that - seeing a red flag on the map, on a base you only just left, after fighting hard to win it back. And then, as a microcosm of MMOs in general, you start to ask yourself some very dark questions indeed...
So another possible reason, and one that worries me more than most, as in essence, what Control Points were was a kind of open ended quest, which anyone could just roll up and help with. A kind of Public Quest, if you will, with Open Grouping, if you like, and what TR has shown me, is that you absolutely cannot base automated gameplay mechanics on a permanent 'staffing' of a minimum number of players, ad infinitum. Sometimes there will be too many, mostly too few, and rarely will they all want the same thing in the same gaming session anyway...
Current TR General Chat Mood: Impotent Rage at WoW; 'fantasy is for fags'; Huxley will be awesome.
Shine on you crazy diamonds...
Yo ho ho, etcetera! All been a bit quiet here over the hols, with the usual excessive amount of time off work sending me nocturnal and feral. Still managed to cling on to some shreds of much needed routine however, and there was the Christmas Show, which is here:
Van Hemlock (Ep 32): In which there's Not Especially Festive News, Festive What We're Playing, The Van Hemlock Podcast 'Best and Worst of 2008' section, and a Just For Fun Quiz! (We'll do the answers in the new year for that)
One more to go before the new year, and something a little different. Mostly because I'll go mad if I don't leave the house for two weeks...
Happy Whatever!
In a somewhat sudden move, I seem now to be playing Lord of the Rings Online. I've never quite worked out why it's taken me this long to get round to it, and in typical fashion, I seem to have turned up in the main game, just as everyone else is launching into the first expansion, Mines of Moria. Heigh ho. I think that's a part of why I'd shown typical lack of self-control and caved in to sign up now, of all times - lots of people saying a lot of good stuff about the Mines lately and I'm sure you can find all sorts of more relevant insight on that in many other places than here.
There's a certain amount of peer pressure of course, these games are always more appealing if you have a gang of mates to sign up with, and perhaps the previous thought of yet another fifty levels of solo grinding had kept me from it for some time. I usually go with 'I just have too much on' when asked why I'd missed this one, but I wonder if the real reason wasn't more pedantic than that.
You see, I am one huge Tolkien book nerd, deep down. From the age of 12 onward, I've been periodically rereading that behemoth of fantasy fiction to the point where the spine is all cracked and some of the mid sections, around Rohan, are now falling out. That well-worn copy of the book has become less a book and more an ancient artifact, a precious thing. As I grew older, my tastes in fiction diversified, matured and blossomed, running to more edgy and challenging types of fantastical escape; The Book of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe), Ghormenghast (Mervin Peake), Viriconium (M John Harrison), Perdido Street Station (China Mieville) and the like - works that are far, far from the comfortable pipe-and-slippers fiction of Tolkien's era, and indeed, Mieville writes quite harshly on that subject. In many ways I agree with him; much so-called 'High Fantasy' can be quite bland, safe and predictable, (indeed, about 'consolation' and little of engage the mind) and on the whole, I do prefer a healthy does of surrealism, dark grubby energy and painfully bright sparks with my swords and sorcery, but for me, Tolkien is where it all started, and I'll always have a soft spot for the Lord of the Rings.
Clearly a subject I can get very pretentious and florid about, and also quite grumpy about in the case of half-arsed poorly executed tie-in games, and I expect that deep down, I was always worried that LotRO was just going to be this really awful MMO-by-the-Numbers reskin job, which paid the barest lip-service to the source material. I didn't want that bubble burst I guess.
I've been playing LoRO for about a week now and have yet to have any bubbles burst - quite the reverse. As a game, well, I'm sure I'll be doing my usual soulless dissection in future posts, none of which will be new to anyone who has read the Internet in the last two years, but right now, what is impressing me the most, is the sheer attention to detail I'm seeing. I've started a Hobbit, mostly because for me, its all about the whole There and Back Again of it all, starting in The Shire. I'm also, partly for reminiscence, and partly as a strategy guide, rereading the book again, at the same time as I play through, and its only because of this that I'm starting to see what an incredible level of precision Turbine seem to have put into the whole endeavour.
I'm not just talking 'Hobbits, check... Bag End, check... Ringwraiths, check...' either. Absolutely minute detailing that I wouldn't have noticed at all if I wasn't Reading-Along-At-Home. It's like they're using the novel as a literal design document, and quite stunning once you know what you're looking for. The Party Field has a large cook area on the north side, as mentioned in passing in the book. It has three white stone steps cut into the road, as in the book! Every feature of the map of The Shire, (most of which were probably only thrown in by Tolkien to flesh the place out a bit in the first place,) has been carefully crafted in. Minor characters who maybe get three lines of dialogue in over 1000 pages, live and breathe. All the Inns are there, and have the right names! Farmer Maggot has the right number of dogs, and they all have the right names! I was out roaming the other night, and came across 'An Abandoned Campsite', in the south-east of the Shire, near Woodhall, almost exactly on the spot mentioned in the book where Frodo and the gang spend their first night on the journey.
Quite mind boggling really, and I guess, only appreciable by massive, massive ultra-nerds like myself, (who happened to be cross-referencing paragraphs as they play) but it is a bit more far-reaching than Design Team OCD, in a way. I've played my way through the 21st Century Cyber Golfcourse that is Azeroth, and while an excellent game, that is a lot how it felt - a specifically engineered venue for playing a game, and not really much of a world to me. EQ2 had a similar feel. Not so here, and one of Tolkien's strengths, and why Lord of the Rings stands out in the High Fantasy genre, is the sheer volume of background material Tolkien created to support his world and story. Not so much a Novel, more a Campaign Setting, way before D&D was even invented. With that much lore to draw from, it would be a shame not to use it all, but as far as I can tell, Turbine seem to be wringing the source material dry, which is keeping this nerd happy at least.
How life is in the other starting areas, for Men, Elves and Dwarves I couldn't say, and I do wonder how they handle the large parts of the game that exist as nothing more than an enigmatic and remote name on the world map, in the book source. Still, despite the borderline obsessive handling of the 'known' areas of the game, I'm sure it must be nice to still have a bit of creative freedom in those parts 'unknown'.
More on the actual nuts and bolts to come, I'm sure, but right now, thanks to the almost religious reverence with which Turbine seem to be treating The Book, I have a good feeling about this one...