Reiaku

Any Artists in Rochester NY lookin for work? game studio  opening in the brighton/henrietta area is looking for more

I managed to swagger my way into the torchlight2 beta, so ill post something about it after i get some play in

Earlier in the week i managed to wiggle my way into the closed beta for TSW

I hadnt expected much, seeing as how i consider the previous games they made absolute shit. AO? No Thanks, Age of Conan? is that even considered an MMO? it was fucking shit, it was shit with covered in shit drizzled with diarrhea and slow cooked over an open fire.

So i went into it not expecting much, so when it turned out to not actually be that bad, I was seriously suprised. 

Sure, the combat is much like anything else, its a simple interface, but you dont really need to reinvent the wheel, the combat doesnt need to be amazing for a game to be popular. Tera with its “Real True Combat” sucks dicks, this isnt Korea, we dont want a Korean PvP MMO, we want something Deeper.

The introduction area was swarmed with people (this was during a stress test, so im not shocked) just standing around. They introduce the skill system (since theres no levels or classes) they let you pick whatever weapon you want to spec into to start, then they send you to the world tree (which serves as a transportation hub across the globe), and eventually off to the noob area to learn the ropes.

So the noob area in TSW is a zombie outbreak on a place called Solomon Island, in the town of Kingsmouth. When you get there you immediately get entered into the world of any good zombie game, this section felt more like a map from Left4Dead than an MMO, and the feel changes as you go on, but more on that in a minute.

Its simple enough, the first quest leads you down a road with abandoned cars and zombie hordes, and you arrive at a police station that survivors are using as a holdout against the outbreak, the quests here reveal the location of other caches of survivors, and each of them grant a quest or two. In addition to that, random items or people or sights also grant small sidequests, this adds flavor to the town, as you never know what you might stumble upon next.

One of the first things i noticed in the game was that hitting B does not open your bags like in every single other MMO, B opens a web browser. My initial impression was.. oh cool, a browser.. something to pass the time or look up guides and shit, neet. 

Shortly after i started doing the bulk of the quests in the kingsmouth town area, I came across a quest that required me to Open a computer, and the Password “hint” was a reference i didnt get, at all, with nothing hinting to the solution in the quest dialogue or around the environment, the solution was not inside the game itself. The Solution was on The Internet.

Google in game Design.

They had managed to incorporate the internet, as a whole, into the game. Using Google or looking things up online is looked at under the same light as Hitting M to open the minimap or opening your inventory.

Composers during the 18th Century? No need to have a masters, just google it. Duration of Safety Dance and Dont Stop Believin? NPNP Verses from the bible? Got you covered brosephine, we can just check it in the game.

This opens a whole new door to possible metagaming, Its like Fez in an MMO, and its the most mindblowing thing ive seen this year (next to Fez, cuz.. lets be honest, jesus christ, Fez.) Funcom can build websites with hidden illuminati clues and secrets and all kinds of shit not seen since that shitty Sandra Bullock Movie where she clicked the Pi symbol in the corner of a page and the government fucked her day.

They can hire a web guy and have him actively building content for the game, without actually touching the game. its fucking Genius and i love it.

Even if TSW doesnt reach massive popularity, it’ll still hold onto a niche following somewhere around the likes of EVE online, and that’ll always keep it profitable for Funcom. And they can count me in this group of people, im sold, the secrets made the game for me.

Oh and the Survival Horror feel continues, after the apocalypse you literally enter a gateway to hell, followed by a trip down to silent hill. Im personally looking forward to continuing down the path this game has for me, and excited to see what kind of twisted shit is on the way

I’m not actually really excited about the announcement of TES:O, and I think i have very valid reasoning as to why.

Theres been alot of “Next Big MMO” releases lately (Tera, GW2 soon, TOR, and a shitload of F2P games) and not one of them really has redefined the genre, the closest attempt was Tera, putting more of an emphasis on combat, but everything else in the game lacks substance. Guildwars2 Looks to be a fun distraction, with alot of good ideas, and i think its going to be successful, but not WorldOfWarcraft Successful.

Lets just jump to the point here, success of an MMO from the point of view from a PLAYER is determined by the size of its playerbase compared against the playerbase of WoW, the More MMO’s come out the more people move away from the Blizzard behemoth, which is in my opinion -GOOD- for the future of the Genre.

The weight of the Elder Scrolls name might be enough to provoke a massive exodus of retarded, lingering, “nothing better to play” WoW players to move to it, and even if its not good, they will have detached from WoW and be more willing to try new things after that point, because frankly, even if it was bad, its still better than WoW.

Why am i not excited about TES:O? Its because for every ounce of potential a game has, it has the same amount of potential to be bad. The charm of TES games lies in how its a single player game, thats why they never tried to slap multiplayer into them, some games just should NOT have a multiplayer component (lookin at you God of War). Theres also ALOT under the hood in TES, if you have No idea what the reality behind Vivec is, you need to go read about how that man broke the living crap out of the 4th wall. Try wrapping your head around the 36? Sermons of VIvec, and realize that half of them are telling you to exploit game mechanics (pausing and healing in the inventory menu?, slaying Vivec himself to find the shortcut ending in morrowind?, how bout the fact that save-scrubbing creates multiple TES realities? AND THEY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT FACT).

Additionally you always play some sort of Fabled hero, how can a normal person possibly compare? Is everyone going to be a fabled hero? is the existance of the TES:O universe part of the multiverse of savescrubbing realities produced by the player? I guess that seems legit, since they put it in the lore (even though 99% of players never saw the texts for what they were).

The Elder Scrolls games are amazing, but i personally believe that taking them online is a terrible idea, under the same logic as if nintendo made the Legend of Zelda into an MMO. Sure, it could be a good MMO, but judging by all the recent bad/failure super-hyped MMO’s.. i don’t think the Industry has recognized that the playerbase doesnt want another warcraft clone, they want something COMPLETELY different.

I saw Kotaku put up a list of things they think should be in the game (Link), and we’ve actually been throwing concepts about what needs to be in a truely next-gen MMO now for almost a decade, and the things we came up with in 2001 STILL havent been implemented, but i see some common things on both of our lists.

Heres our list.

1.) First person - My Fiancee would completely disagree with this, but I personally believe that first person is a good thing, instead of the feeling that you are controlling a character in a story, you get the impression that you ARE the character.

2.) F2P - The F2P model would work great in MMO, the reason why companies shy away from this is because MMO’s take significantly more work before release than any normal single player game ever would, and the return on investment by publishers wouldnt come in for awhile, so getting funding would be harder. But the F2P system works, its been proven time and time again. F2P allows players to try before they buy (which is why most people put $5 down at gamestop to get into betas for MMOs), but as a side effect of the system, people for some reason EXPECT LESS from a F2P game. F2P doesnt have to mean “Shitty” you can put as much polish into a F2P game as any AAA company can into a normal release, but people DONT, and im not sure why. If you look at how the currency exchange works in GW2, that is how the F2P MMO should be, you allow people to buy a currency, and you can freely exchange that currency for in-game gold, the player run auction house prices are now giving people a reason to buy currency from you, without any direct interaction. Cloak of Flames is amazing for you? too poor to buy one with in game money? drop $20, change that into gold, and buy it! Casual buy still want to have great things AND you are loaded irl? Do it up! You dont need to sell direct advantages in some sort of real money shop, you can just sell the gold, the game would do the rest for you.

3.) Completely interactive environments: If i hit you with Ye Olde Rain of Fire, the grass under you should burn, if i hit you with a Meteor there should leave a crater. You add a regenerative system to the world so it repairs itself slowly over time, or even a nature-based class that benefits from healing the environment. Massive battles should leave marks on the world, people leaving a town and walking the same path through the woods should wear down a trail and eventually a road.

4.) Redefine Raiding Dynamically: If you go into a cave, or a castle, or a tear to another plane every tuesday and complete the same events from week to week, with no changes, i feel that the developer has failed you. Raiding should be based on oppritunity, things should happen to the world, and you go out and solve them, and the frequency changes based on the number of people around capable of contributing. Additionally, Dragons dont drop Armor, or Two handed swords, working crossbows, etc. Dragons drop dragon parts and if you could find someone skilled enough..

5.) Worthwhile Tradeskills: The tradeskills should produce everything, you shouldnt be camping an undead frogluk for 8 hours on end for a flowing black silk sash, how would that frogluk have gotten it in the first place? no, let people control the creation of items, make the tradeskills the biggest system in the game, and nearly everything the players do produces some form of crafting material. This rewards people who dont have any interest in slaying the dragon with a means of having some sort of influence in the world, being popular for a skill instead of popular for their damage on a meter.

6.) Ditch Classes and Levels: The Secret World is doing this, but i have yet to actually see this implemented so I am not going to hold my breath, This allows people to define their roles, someone could be a blacksmith, or work on magic and swordplay enough to combine the two. Think Skyrim with 1400 different skills instead of like 30. And dont tell people what they are.

I have over 100 of these, i could keep going. OH and Guildwars2 stole my Tradeskill System design. Sons of bitches.

Anyway, the next big game is going to pull numbers that’ll dwarf World of Warcraft, but in order to be the next big game, you have to try to PULL AWAY from the world of warcraft model. If you are stealing ideas from WoW, you have already failed in making a game, and too often, thats exactly what people do. Stop trying to appeal to people based on what they are used to, try to make something that you think is amazing, and people will come play that in droves. Also people want to feel some sort of pride in their accomplishments, if any group of retarded 12 year olds can band together and slay the dragon, why gives a shit if you slay the dragon? Make the game harder than balls, when people accomplish something they will get more from it. and NEVER appease the masses, there will always be a very vocal small percent who suck at the game, dont appease them! they wont quit, they just like to bitch. 

-DP