Trial by fire: Vesuvio (part 1)

Remember Vesuvio? It was a little game I designed for the Game Design Challenge blog, but ultimately, one I never tested. Now, it's one year later, and I'm due to go to Cannes' International Game Festival as a fledgling author. I have two other games under my belt (both unedited prototypes), but I wanted an even 3, and Vesuvio had been deemed interesting at the time.

Well, guess what? It wasn't... At least, the first time we played.

Let's just gloss over the fact that you can't find flint or fossiles near basaltic/volcanic rocks. That's not the core of the game system.

Before building the prototype, I did some minor changes (original rules here). 

There are 40 squares currently divided thusly: 

-> 20 mining spots (10 "1 PA-> 1 card", 5 "2 PA -> Draw 2, keep 1 card" and 5 "4 PA -> Draw 2") 

-> 5 rifts

-> 15 with nothing but dirt. 

The cards are divided by color:

-> 15 Green (6 Flint with a value of 0, 6 Fool's gold with a value of 1, 3 Sapphire with a value of 3)

-> 15 Orange (1 Flint, 5 Fool's gold, 6 Golds with a value of 2, 3 Fossils with a value of 3)

-> 15 Red (2 Golds, 6 Fossils, 6 Strange Rocks with a value of 4, 1 Dead sea Parchments with a value of 10)

The "Hinder" action and the special items were removed, too. (Honestly, I don't know why I added the special items in the first place... They seem totally unbalanced, too)

The random squares distribution works, at least.  

The first try involved 4 players. The problem encountered was that the mining squares were screwed up: I intended the 1 and 2 Action Points for a card to be meager lodes and the 4 AP for 2 cards to be bountiful. It turned out to be exactly not that. People would stay on a 1 AP one and spend their 4 points for 4 cards. And the explosion starting when people reached collectively 15 points, why go up? And 15 points was reached veeeeery fast. We toyed with the idea of "the volcano erupts when people reach 15 cards" but still, there was no interest going up. I had to get my players moving, make them want to reach the summit and I had to make them fear the wrath of the molten rocks.

Getting the players moving

"Each player can use a mining spot only once per turn" That way, you can't stay on a spot forever, and spots I intended meager stayed meager. You can stay on a spot forever, but that means losing APs, APs that others will use.
The squares "4 APs = 2 cards" are reduced to "3 APs = 2 cards". That way it's more itneresting to reach them because there's a chance you can use them right away, and players are enticed to keep moving afte that in order to lose as few APs as possible.
"A rift is 2 squares in one" The +1PA introduced many headache-inducing special cases... With this, it's just 2 squares following the rules of the zone they're in, and the rift separates neatly the 2 squares.
Finally, the summit of the volcano. As it was, reaching it was just a suicidal move, no more, no less. My players had the idea that reaching the summit enabled you to take a picture of the volcano mouth, a picture not worth a thousand words, but at least 8 points.
And the green zone had too many points in its deck, so 2 of the 3 sapphires in the green deck were changed in 1 Fool's gold and 1 gold

Fear the wrath of the Fire God !

I wanted the player to fear the eruption, which meant being in the red zone when it started. Linking the eruption with how many points or cards had been drawn meant too many possibilities for this plan to go awry. Even if I said "30 cards and then boom", people would go to the red zone, make it barren, then go down before the volcano had a chance to get them.
"The eruption starts when the card "eruption" is drawn from its random spot in the second half of the Red deck" The Dead sea parchments were replaced with this card. That way, you don't know when everything will go boom. You may have an idea, but you can't plan. There's an element of luck, which many people like.
Second problem, how does it move? If people started the eruption, and then stopped getting cards, the lava would not flow. I needed i to flow a minimum each turn. And I decided that having to  keep track of the score to know the lava's speed was uninteresting.

"Lava moves at the end of each player's turn, 1 square at a time, +1 for each card that was drawn by the player" I got roasted that way. I would have survived, but the player before me drew a card. Slick bastard...

The game was still dull.

The two last propositions were adding a dice, or action cards, to have something to do, introduce a chaos element, SOMETHING to spice it up. And reducing the Green zone while expanding the Red zone. It is currently suicidal to go Red, which is NOT what I intended.

The problem, mainly, was that there were currently no interactions between players. You played, they played. You got burned. Yeepeekai. There are meaningful choices, but not enough, or interesting enough, to keep playing. And the "Cheer" maneuver is just useless. No incentives to use it.

Next time: the 2 players trial !

Choice Matters

I've recently finished Overlord: Dark Legends for the Wii, and something felt off during my entire playthrough, compared to the original Overlord. Reading Challenges for Game Designers, and the blog Game Design Concepts helped me figure it out. It's really simple. It can be summed in one word: choice.

But this word has many consequences...

1) Choice?

Yes. Choice. As I discovered in the sources mentioned above, there are different kind of choices. Some are good in a game, some... Less so.
A meaningful choice has an impact on the course of the game. Also, you take one because you have at least an idea of what the consequences will be. A blind choice is one where you do not know what will happen when you make it. A meaningless choice is one that has no impact. Whether you take one path or the other, the rest of the game will be stricly identical. It might as well not have been there. An obvious choice has different outcomes, but one is so evidently superior to the others that you will always take it.

In Overlord, everything is about meaningful choices. Yes, you are an Overlord. But will you be the evilest on the block? Or will you help grannies cross the street, and then mangle the young whippersnapper that tried to run the two of you over? There are many moments where you have a choice between Evil and less Evil (or even, ewww... Good). At the start of the game, you are explained what the consequences of corruption(your evilness meter) will be : your spells will be more powerful, but you will gain less gold. There are different endings as well: almost good, quite bad, and evil.
In O:DL, the only choice you get while following the script is whether or not you will do the optional quests. How meaningful...

"What about your equipment? There are forges to be discovered in O:DL !", I hear some of you say, "so you can choose what to wear, at least"
Oh, yes, you can. You have different armors, with no clue as to what they do, for gold... You have different weapons, with some little clues as to what they do, for gold. So, you just buy the most expensive one. Because expensive = better, right? And you've got more gold than you can shake a stick at. Now, that, you see, is a blind choice. You just hope your decision is good.

How is it meaningful in Overlord, then? Aaaah, am I glad you asked...
First, you have to choose whether you will take an expensive piece of equipment, which is potentially stronger, or a weaker one, but far more affordable (and so, enabling you to buy more pieces of equipment). Because if in O:DL, you will soon have more gold than your really need while playing the game normally, in Overlord, it is not so.
Then, the equipment itself. They begin bare. You have to sacrifice minions to make them stronger (I'll get back to the concept). But if you sacrifice minions, which you summon using Lifeforce gathered from defeated enemies, maybe you won't have enough Lifeforce to play the game efficiently ...
Finally, what will you upgrade? For example, armors can give you more mana, more life, and a third choice that escapes me right now... But you can not upgrade them all to the max. Each armor can only accept so much minionic lifeforce. You must choose what is more important to you.
That way, your Overlord is equipped as YOU see fit. You know why you made every choice. You know what these choices entailed.

To change a blind choice into a meaningful choice, you need to give players data. Give them an idea of what each choice will result in. Or, if you want them to explore, give them feedback on their choices. What are the consequences of their choices? Delayed consequences are fine, as long as the player knows what action begat what.

That covers no choice, and blind choice.

Now, Let me tell you about Minions' Sacrifice and Minion's Sacrifice in O:DL.

In Overlord, part of the equipment upgrade process is to sacrifice minions. Not only do You get the armor you want, you also get to see a cool sequence where all the minions you've just decided to sacrifice run en masse and jump gleefully ("Woohoo!" "Yeehah!") in the bubbling cauldron of the forge. Imagine the sight when you've decided to sacrifice 400 of them (And the colors are respected, too). Check around you: people love that sequence. As I said, in 0:DL's forge, you just buy your equipment and are done with it. Maybe it's because the Wii can't handle it? Maybe. Doubtful.
Be aware that this paragraph was just a rant because they took out of the game something that added to the flavor and the atmosphere. The next one is about choice. Really.

So, they added Minion Sacrifice. How evil (and it's an honest "How evil", not a snarky one). You grab a minion by its throat, shake it to build up the pressure (thus called the TG&S: Throat-Grab & Shake), and then break his neck to replenish your Health/Mana. Very cool idea.

Now, how can you replenish your Health/Mana.
Breaking a minion's neck gives you a shade of Life or Mana depending on its type. Something like 10% of a bubble.
You can also sacrifice a minion by sending him in a Life/Mana well, which gives you 50% or 100% of a bubble. You can also wait for Life potions to drop when your minions destroy objects. They give you 50% or 100% of a bubble.
There are at least 2 of each well type per map. Maps are small, and you can backtrack without penalties. The more you are hurt, the more the potions drop.
Know what we have here? Those who said "an obvious choice" can join my minions and have a cookie ! Why break a minion's neck when you just have to backtrack a bit and sacrifice the same minion for more health?

To change an obvious choice into a meaningful choice, the Risk/Reward ratio of each choice must be close(r). For example, if there were less Life Wells, snapping the neck of a minion for less life might be interesting if I am pressed for time. Provided it replenishes enough.

You can also TG&S a minion, and then release it in a direction of your control. After a (short) time, he will explode. You're told that you can destroy some barriers with it. You encounter 3 of them in the zone where you're told that, and then never see them again.

TG&S&E is also advertised as an attack move, but the process of grabbing, shaking and sending is very long. So either your other minions are doing nothing while you do it, or they have already killed the foes they were sent on before your minion bomb is ready.

Again, the obvious choice is not to use it beyond the barriers...

Is there a meaningful choice in O:DL? I honestly can not recall. To their credit, I can't find a meaningless choice either.

After this lengthy demonstration, I'm sure you're asking yourself: ok, but why does choice matters?

2) Connection and Feedback

I'm not talking about the controllers. I'm talking about the player, and his relation to the character he's playing.

When there are no meaningful choices, I find it's hard to relate to the character I'm playing. He's just a puppet on strings. I'm controlling it, but someone else is controlling my actions. I follow the script.

But when I get to make choices that do matter, it gets different. He becomes my character. My avatar. Anything that happens to him, or people close to him (especially when they're close because of my choices) is important to me.

In Overlord, as you advance in the story, your tower evolves because of your choices. It gets rebuilt. New rooms are opened, new decorations that you buy, trophies that you pilfer. You can't have everything, so what is there is what you've chosen to be there. It becomes your tower, an extension of your Overlord. Plus, you get to have a cool mistress.

Incidentally, this is also where you begin everytime you launch the game. So, the first thing you see is everything you have done so far. A good way to congratulate the player, and a good way to make him want more.

In O:DL, you do start in the same place (it's not your tower, it feels more like the cellar of the castle, but whatever). But it does not change, apart from the mana/blood/minion stonesthat get stacked around your throne. These stacks feel small compared to the size of the room, and the room in itself feels drab. You don't feel any need to stay here, whereas in Overlord, it is fun to simply walk the halls of your tower basking in your Overlordness.

Game Design Challenge

I found a very interesting blog named Game Design Challenges through an article by Tesh. The blog is manned by Brenda Brathwaite Whose blog is here and Ian Schreiber whose blog is there. The blog is meant as a course on game design, be it tabletop, card, or video games and is very interesting. The book which is par for the course and the course itself do pose some challenges for aspiring game designers.

So here's my take on the first challenge: building a "race to the end" game.

Without further delay, let me give you:

Vesuvio

Theme:
After some earthquake unearthes interesting stones on the slope of a volcano, a score of Geologists decide to get a closer look and make a friendly wager on the stones each will find. But... doesn't this earthquake hint at an awakening of the volcano in the near future?

Core Mechanic:
-> Race to the end
-> Resource gathering/management

Board:













The field is divided in 3 "tiers" on top of each other. Yous tart from the bottom, and the closer you get to the summit, the more chances you have of unearthing quality stones.

There is the "easy" way, which snakes from bottom to top, and the "hard and fast" ways (2 and 4 cases long) which a direct.

Material needed to play:
-> 1-4 players. Yep, you can play alone ! Even here, soloists are welcome ! So... 4 pawns.
-> Pieces to be put on the board. Each has a "Lava" side and a side with either dirt, a rift, or a number (1, 2, or 4)
-> Green "Mining" cards containing simple rocks (0 points), Pyrite (1) and a flawed sapphyr (3)
-> Orange "Mining" cards containing one simple rock (0), some pyrite (1), some gold (2), and some strange fossils (3)
-> Red "Mining" cards containing some unique rocky formations (4), diverse precious stone (5) and a Dead Sea Scroll (15)
-> 8 "Equipment" cards (rope, ice pick, 10 feet pole...)

Setup:
The board pieces are shuffled, then randomly placed on the board with the "Lava" side up. Once they are all on the board, turn them on the other side.
All the "Mining" cards are shuffled, and the three corresponding stacks are built.
Equipment cards are shuffled, for every player missing, draw out 2 cards and get them out of the game. Then, the first player pickes one, so does the second, etc until no more cards remain.
Place all the pawns at the bottom of the slope.

Rules
First part: the Ascension
Each turn, a character gets alloted 4 Action Points. Using these, a character can (Action costs are indicated in the relevant sections):
-> Climb
-> Mine
-> Cheer
-> Hinder
A character does not have to use all its AP in one turn. It is possible to start spending APs on an action during one turn, and finish on the next, but you have to finish your action, and only get the result once the points are spent.

Climb
Climbing the easy way costs 1 AP per square
The "Hard and Fast" slopes cost 2 APs for each square you advance, unless the character has the ice pick, which reduce the cost to 3 APs per 2 squares
On a rift, a character needs 3 APs to advance, unless with the 10 feet pole, which reduces the cost to 2 APs.
Characters are free to go up or down the slope.

Mine
On squares with a number, spending that AP amount enables you to draw 1 card (on the "1" and "2" squares) or 2 cards (on the "4" squares) in the corresponding stack (green for the first tier, orange for the middle, red for the high tier)
There is no limit to the amount of stones a character can carry.
The mining pick enables you to draw an additional card for 1 AP. You must then choose and discard one of the additional cards.

Cheer
A character can cheer another. When being cheered, a character must select one of its stone and give it the to the cheerer. The cheerer loses as many APs as the value of the stone (potentially making him lose turns if he loses more than 4 APs), while the cheeree gains as many APs (usable immediately, with no upper limit).
If equipped with the rope, the cheerer only loses 2 APs for every 3 he should have lost. The cheree still gains as many.
If equipped with the bright suit, the cheree gains an additional AP.

Hinder
If a character lands on another character's square, he can hinder him by spending 1 AP, making the other lose 2 APs.
If equipped with the sieve, alternatively, he can draw a random stone from the character for 2 APs, instead of hindering him.

As stones are collected, the total value of the stones must be tracked: as soon as the number gets bigger than 20, the eruption begins !

Second part: the Descent
From now on, the eruption has started, and lave begins to run down the slope. At each turn's start, lava advances ((Total accumulated points)-20) squares (flip each piece to show its "Lava" side). Lava comes down every slope at the same time (but at the same rate). If Lava reaches a character, he's immediately immolated (unless he has the Lava Suit, which saves him for one turn), as well as his equipment and mined stones. They still count for the lava's speed.

The character's still have 4 APs and the same action.
But now, the "Hard & Fast" slopes can be climbed down at the rate of 2 squares per AP. However, these slopes are so steep that the character loses 1 random stone for each AP spent. Unless he has big pockets, which saves the first stone that should be lost.

The game ends when no more characters are on the board. The winner is the geologist with the biggest amount of points. In the case of a tie, the one with the least amount of stones wins.

Unlocking the LEGO box

I’ve been playing quite a lot of Batman LEGO these last days, finishing the main adventure for both heroes and villains, and reaching something like 80% of completion. But, in the last days, some design decisions have become quite prominent to me, some in good, some in bad.

First, the good: deadly is deadly.
In the LEGO Batman universe, hazards are pretty consistent either for your characters or for the enemies. Which means that radioactive stuff or fumes kills them as much as it kills you, and glacial fumes freeze you and them as well. It’s pretty much a detail, but it made a boss fight far easier for me through a stroke of luck: in the level against Catwoman and the penguin, Catwoman is only a sidekick. You can not beat her with your fists: she will run away from you when hurt, and come back later. And believe me, she can be a pain.
But, as I was exploring the area, one of my hits sent her flying in a patch of radioactive goo. And before my eyes, she dissolved… No more sidekick for the penguin ! Needless to say, the fight went pretty much downhill for him after that (not that he was really winning before that event…)

I like when games have the same set of rules for you and for your enemies. You do not feel arbitrarily limited in your interaction with the world, you do not feel that everything is stacked against you.
Also, I find it helps with the suspension of disbelief: the gameworld is logical.

After that, my beef is with the unlocking system. No, not so much the system (having to use multiple characters abilities to reach a hidden brick that unlocks something, that’s something the Explorer and Achiever in me do like) than the unlocks themselves.

Let’s start with the ridiculous: the multipliers bonus.
In the game, you collect studs, which are used as a currency to buy just about everything: additional characters and vehicles, data, and upgrades (once they have been unlocked through hidden bricks in each level). Some of these upgrades are multipliers: x2, x4, up to x10. The first one costs 1 000 000, the last one 5 000 000.
My first (logical) thought was “Each one will replace the lesser one” or “only one may be active at a time”. A simple calculation showed me that buying them in order would cost me, not 15 000 000 studs, but 4 041 666. Better than buying the 5x directly.
You can imagine my surprise when, buyin the x4, I see the x2 on my screen changing to a x8. Long story short, I reached a ludicrous x640 modifier, making all my studs needs moot (but not my stud’s… nevermind).

This, I did not like. Why? Because up to now, I had choices to make whenever I bought something. I did not have enough money, so every time, I had to ask myself what I wanted to buy. That was my story. Now… Not so much… I just had a laundry list of things to buy, and the limiting factor was to unlock them…
To their defense, it is possible to disable these. I did, but not before going on a destruction spree due the power rush it gave me. Kind of like when Tabula Rasa offered a +2000% XP bonus some weeks before closing down. I gained 7 levels in one evening, then was left with a sour taste in my mouth, having outleveled content I wanted to enjoy.
Power rush is a dangerous thing for the weak-minded... I never said I was perfect !


My next gripe is with suit upgrades.
Most, if not all of them, are Nice-to-Haves: more targets with a batarang, swifter construction and so on. Not gamebreaking, but reducing the time needed for some actions that can be considered “less fun”, thus improving the fun proportion. I’m cool with that.
But then, why is their use limited to the free mode ?! If I take the time to redo a level to unlock an upgrade I’m interested in, why must I be punished by not being able to use it during the story mode, thus enabling me to enjoy the story more?

There was also a bit of cutscene power upgrade, where villains tend to have their abilities upgraded when you’re against them (Catwoman makes huge jump, moth man can glide much longer), but it’s more nitpicking than griping. It’s a minor detail than doesn’t really break the suspension of disbelief.

So, in short, I prefer to see games:
-> Where the rules are the same for the player characters and for the non-player characters.
-> Where upgrades do not suddenly break the game, making everything trivial, or redundant
-> Where, if I take the time to achieve something, I’m awarded the achievement’s result for the rest of the game

Plants vs Zombies: a recipe for success

Everybody and their brother is talking about Plants vs Zombies, so I might as well join the crowd...
What's more, I've finished the game and did almost all of the puzzles/minigames/survivals. So I can comment on the game as a whole.

I have liked that game from the first ten seconds and have played it for quite some time after I bought it. There are at least 4 people who are now playing it because of me. Viral marketing and word of mouth are powerful tools indeed.

The graphisms are cute and grow on you, the gameplay is easy to learn (and, "sadly" easy to master), the music is fine (and stays in your head...), and you will laugh many times over the course of the game.

There are many interesting things in this game.
First, your options grow as you advance in the game (for a very interesting article on progression of gameplay, in french, go here). Some grow as you advance in the game, some must be bought and some must be discovered. And most of the time, the new option will be needed the round BEFORE you get it. That way, the game lets you learn without choking you with too many options at once, and makes you understand how useful each new plant is. My girlfriend, who's not a gamer (yet; remember the girlfriend experiments ?) was never lost in terms of possibilities offered.

What's more, you have a limit on how many plants you can have on each level. So rapidly, you have choices to make, and your playstyle will emerge: want to slow them down? Do Area of Effet damage? Do huge single damage? Have one time autokills?

This led to an interesting discovery: No one plays the same way, and watching others play can make you learn how to improve yourself. For example, at first, I started by planting as many sunflowers as I can (up to 12, most of the time) (for those who haven't played, sunflowers give you sun, which is the resource used to install new plants; money is only used to buy power-ups between each level) and peashooters to stop zombies. She started by planting sunflowers too, but then, instead of peashooters, she used potato mines, one-time bombs that takes some time to arm themselves, have a very long recharging time and cost practically nothing.
As the 3-4 first zombies are quite apart in terms of time, you can use potato mines for each of them. This led to her having far more money than I did subsequently, enabling her to organise her defense more efficiently (the PvZ girlfriend experiment will come at a later time). Mainly, enabling her to put more costly, but also more powerful, plants. Needless to say, I borrowed that strategy.

Every 5 levels, the game's rythm is suddenly changed with a mini game. You will go bowling, play whack-a-mole, or have your plants on a treadmill. That way, monotony can't set in. And additionnaly, the end of each section of the game (5 sections of 10 levels) is identical for every players, enabling developers to make sure that everybody gets the same chance to win the section, grinders and other players alike.

The game is very easy to grasp. Even people not used to playing can. And it's cute enough to grab a bunch of people, and interesting enough to latch onto them.
It's also very forgiving in the first levels: we discovered that when a zombie reaches one of your lawn mowers (and gets dissected by said lawn mower), no other zombies appeared on that line. It struck me when she let zombies reach 3 of her lawn mowers, and the subsequent "Huge wave" was only on the 2 remaining lines. IMO, it's a good thing, so beginners don't grow frustrated too soon.

But it was clearly too easy for me. I finished the adventure with perhaps one or two stressful moments. I never lost once. Even in the second run, which is harder (more on that later). And I'm not hardcore. It's as much a good thing as it is a bad one.

Once you have advanced enough in the game, you unlock some mini-games. The bulk of them, as well as the puzzle mode and survival mode, are unlocked when you finish the game. Many of these games are winks to other popular games: you have a bejeweled-like game of "match 3 plants" while zombies are trying to eat them, you have an aquarium game related to the first game the developer made, etc... The concept "defend from zombies with plants" was pushed very far, changing how you killed zombies, or how you got plants, or how you got sun, etc.

One of the puzzle, strangely, is the one I played almost as much as the basic game: You play as the zombies, trying to get to the house, against randomly generated fields of plants. This role reversal is an excellent idea, enabling you to see just how efficient each zombie can be, and what plants are especially efficient against them. So you learn how to improve your stategies in the normal game.

Finally, there is a great attention to details. You can see how much a zombie has been damaged, enabling you to see how much of a danger they still are. Frozen peas do not catch fire when going trough the stump, they simply unfreeze. As well, frozen zombies defreeze when hit by a burning pea. So you must adapt you strategy accordingly. Mushrooms sleep during the day.
Many plants are good in standalone, but perfect with others. Chomper eat zombies, but then have to masticate some time, during which they are vulnerable. Put a nut before them, and they'll have enough time to swallow, and eat again. So the game encourages you to try many things.
What’s more, rarely are plants “outdated”, perhaps only the original peashooter can be described as such. All of the others have their use, advantages, and disadvantages. This is rare enough that it warrants to be said.

Finally, some are just for fun. Zombies make a face when eating garlic. When exploded, they
blink before falling into ashes. I could go on.

So, apart from the fact that I found it a bit too easy, I can’t really find any faults to that game. It was well worth the 20$ I forked for it. There are many games that cost me more, and that I enjoyed less…

[Insert Blank Slate Joke here]

I know, I know, the closing of Tabula Rasa is sooooo 2 months old. But I’ve got things I have to get off my chest… Because, you see, I LIKED Tabula Rasa !
Of the different MMORPG I played (which to date, are DAoC, WoW and GW. I’ve made a lot of above-the-shoulder EQ watching), it’s the one I enjoyed the most. But I came in late, and only enjoyed it for its last 2 months…

There are many good articles on that game, like Mike Darg's serie on it (part 1, part 2, and part 3)

Some from people that were part of the team, like Adam Martin, or some that were just in the same company, like Scott Jennings

And, to my mind, it was a good game, at least in the end, with design decisions that I’d like to see again…

1) Immersion
I’m not an immersion fanboy. But still, having monsters *pop* suddenly out of nowhere, or having NPCs standing in one place day in and day out is always kinda grating for me. Even if knowing that Joe Blacksmith is always there to buy my junk makes my life easier.
But here, they really had an attention for details: Banes were teleported from dropships, tripods were dropped from the sky as metal “seeds” that bloomed in a mechanical monstrosity, pyrosaurs were born in a lava blast.
And striders clawed themselves from the ground… Gods above, if I have to remember a single “wow” moment, it will be the time a strider clawed its way from right under my feet. At the time, facing a strider alone was almost sure death for me. You can imagine how I ran…
NPCs did rounds in the camp. They chatted with one another when they crossed paths. They fought with you in the entire map instead of only in camps. Planets were coherent. No tundra near a jungle here, nu-hu.
The game was consistent. Everything had a reason to be. And, the little spawning animations were awe-inspiring in their own right, and had the added value of giving you time to prepare yourself at least mentally.

2) Dynamic maps
Control Points… Bases which could either belong to your army, or to the banes, which needed to be conquered, or defended from invaders. CPs were always great moments for me. Because almost every time, I wasn’t alone doing it. Granted, sometimes, there were just NPCs, but I was part of a team, part of a squad. We wouldn’t let these goddman banes take our goddman bases, or keeping their goddamn nodes on our goddamn planets, nosiree. And sometimes, taking these points unlocked quests, or instances.
Yes, the constant assaults of the Banes were perhaps a bit too frequent, yes, as Richard Bartle said concerning WAR “RvR is never resolved, so it is pointless”. Yes, there was a statu quo.
I didn’t say it was perfect.
But it was an incentive for people to play together without forcing you to group.
Dynamic story points would have been interesting (like in Asheron’s Call, if I understand correctly). For example, a huge Bane base with heavy defence needing a massive and cohesive player army to bring it down, which would have been a unique moment in play. I know it’s much more work for developers, but if they did it in AC or EQ, why can’t they do it now?


3) A good incentive to group
Yes, you could solo. I did a good part of the 36 levels I gained that way. But I did all instances in groups, mainly PUGs.
In most games I tried, when you group, XP per kill is divided by the number of people in the group. Quite fast, you gain a trickle of experience, and even if you kill more mobs per second than before, it’s still not enough to leverage. In TR, you had a “group bonus” to XP that got bigger the more you were. True, XP was still divided, but with the bonus, it was close to when you soloed. And as you plowed through monsters more quickly, you had a rage bonus on top of that.
Not to mention that the different classes played quite well together.

4) The community
… You just laughed, didn’t you?
Ok, it’s not a design decision, and I’m aware that it was linked with the fact that the game was doomed and thus only fans stayed. But still, I encountered many helpful people when I had questions, I never had any trouble in finding a group, and 95% of the time, I had fun with that group. That’s far more than I can say about WoW for example…

5) The cloning system
Not used as intended, but it allowed me to play with friends that had been playing for far longer. As they had clones at lower levels, we could play together even if we weren’t at the same level.
Still, I think I’d prefer something à la CoH and their mentoring system (the sidekick gets boosted to the level of the master, or the other way around, I don’t really know) to help people play together whenever they want. As I said, ot used as intended ^^
Also, it allowed you to level alts without having to redo the whole game (something that some people really loathe as they are here only for the “endgame”)

6) The weapons
I really felt that all weapons were different and had their pros and cons. Some did AoE damage, others had a long range, or ignored armor. Not only that, but you did not use 2 different weapons the same way (auto attack, anyone?). Everyone could find their preferred style, and everyone was different. Just because you could use a higher tier weapon did not mean you had to, as lower tier weapons could still pack a punch.
Also, I liked the fact that you could have 5 different weapons on quickwield buttons, enabling you to adapt to a good range of situations

7) Dynamic fighting

No auto aim, here. You aim at your enemy, and then you shoot. Some weapons needed a longer time to aim than others, and you had to decide whether to stay unmoving, aiming faster, or moving, so the enemy could not draw a bead on you. Yes, you used action buttons, but at the same time, you did aim and shoot. I was far more “awake” than in most MMOs. And the fact that the more enemies you killed, the greater the experience multiplier was a real incentive to continue.
Also, as soon as you were out of combat, the regenerative qualities of your character were greatly enhanced, enabling you to go back into the action quickly.

8) A dedicated team
I know, that’s no design decision… But it is still important !
Even though the game was doomed, the developers continued to issue bug fixing, and to add content during the last throes of the game instead of just letting it die. You have got to respect that… Alo, they did pay attention to their customers, from what I’ve read. I mean, adding gloves and a boxing arena because some players did pistolbutt one another for fun? I find that cool.

9) Choices in quests
Choices, dammit ! You did a quest, and you could have 2 different outcomes based on your decisions. Would you take the young pacifist to be trained as a soldier, or let him become a shaman, serving his people in a way that more befitted him?
Did you poison the bane to make him talk, or try to gain its confidence?
That way, your character lives ITS story. It’s not exactly the same as Joe Soldier on your left..
True, there weren’t many choices, and some had no reason (the Bane that asks you to give him the serum, because the disease kills banes as well… I have no reason to feel empathy to these creatures, why should I begin now? It’s a shame, it could have been a very interesting dilemma). But there were choices, and that is a step in the right direction.

Damn, 9… 10 would have been so perfect !

Others have talked far better than I did of the downside effects of being able to fight quasi non stop, with no downtime: (I’ll update as soon as I find the links again…)


So I’ll leave you with the fact that I hope the people working on that project have been able to find something else to work on, and that they will be as dedicated. Let’s just hope their next project does not see its core idea changed twice, and a too early release (meaning “compared to the moment a fun core was found”)

Junk Selling in MMOs

Every time I have started a new MMO, I have encountered the same way of giving me some starting coins : emptying my backpack on the table of the local vendor, watching his eyes lit with joy at the prospect of buying my junk : broken scorpion pincers, torn butterfly wings, and so on.

I have never understood their love for junk, but, as I needed cold hard cash, I was happy to provide them with it. And they would always buy them. Or perhaps it was out of pity for the fledging adventurer that I was, far from the god-killer I would one day become ? Or perhaps they were hoping that, since they bought my junk, I would come back to sell them said killed-god-kidney?

But I digress…

The question still remains: WHY would they buy this ?

And I have a second question: they see thousands of adventurers coming, many buying their equipment to improve their efficiency and/or survivability. How can they cope with so much demand?

I have found a modicum of an answer in a single player game. On the DS: Etrian Odyssey. In that game, there’s no crafting. There’s no finding a legendary epic double blade of poisoned fang in the rectum of a killed wolf (at least we know why this wolf was angry). In EO, the only things you find during your encounters are monsters’ parts. Or supplies like wood or plants. And, when you sell them to the vendor in town, it unlocks equipment to be bought.

So, there is a reason behind buying that junk: creating the supplies needed to equip all those starved heroes. And there is a reason for all those supplies: much junk was sold.

But, why not do it like EO does? Why couldn’t players unlock equipment by supplying vendors with supplies, following “recipes” where 2 “butterfly wings” and 3 “wolf’s hide” would unlock a “darkened leather suit”? And why (like in Etrian) should it unlock unlimited supplies? Perhaps it would enable 1 to 3 equipment to be sold next. That way, the economy would enter a crafting cycle somewhat like the original SWG, or so I was told.

Of course, crafters themselves would have access to other recipes, in order to let people choose their path.

What do you think? Would this work?