Quixotic Evil http://www.quixoticevil.com/ en-gb Nucleus CMS v3.51 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.quixoticevil.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif Quixotic Evil http://www.quixoticevil.com/ <![CDATA[A Break]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=567
See you on the other side.

]]> QE http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=567 Tue, 1 Jun 2010 00:42:27 +0000 <![CDATA[Need a new CMS]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=565
While I'm at it, I'm considering finding some folk to collaborate with, since I don't really have enough to say to keep a critical mass on my own (or perhaps I do, but while there's little evidence of anyone reading, I'm not really inclined). If you've got thoughtful things to say about games but don't already have somewhere to say them (and ideally know me already) then give me a shout.

]]> QE http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=565 Sat, 22 May 2010 15:39:37 +0000 <![CDATA[Platform Envy]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=563
So, iThings (Pods, Phones, Pads, whatever) don't run Flash. Apple claims it's not a commercial decision, although to me that sounds unlikely. Apple has essentially locked out all the code it doesn't like, and no matter what they say about it the commercial benefit just looks too convincing.

Thing is though, look at what the other side are doing: Google's 'Game Advocate', summing up Google I/O recently introduced a host of exciting things. Not only are they working with Unity to support that on their platforms, which is exciting in itself (bearing in mind that Unity is one of the many things that won't run on Apple's mobile devices), but they're doing so as part of a standard to execute native code within a browser, which should open up all kinds of functionality with no need for browser plugins.

Then in other news Flash gaming portal Kongregate have a partnership with Adobe to bring Flash games to Android.

Can Apple really afford to keep such a tight hold on its precious app space, while all the people and companies they alienate team up against them?]]> Gaming http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=563 Sat, 22 May 2010 15:35:42 +0000 <![CDATA[Reader Feed]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=560 URL (yes, I could personalise it; no, I'm no bothering).

Always happy to hear about other sources I should be following.

]]> Web http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=560 Sat, 22 May 2010 01:40:52 +0000 <![CDATA[Mutt]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=559 blog post that Richard Bartle and I gave the same name to the dog character in Dragon Age: Origins.

Well why would I give it a proper name? It's a single-player game... (Plus, it's a dog)

]]> Gaming http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=559 Sat, 8 May 2010 19:09:18 +0000 <![CDATA[I haven't forgotten...]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=556
Things in the pipeline include:
  • Script Frenzy: Scripts are interesting and very different to prose.
  • Heavy Rain: It's not perfect, but still awesome.
  • Star Trek Online: What do I think now?
I'm kind of tempted to bring the human angle back; I know that a couple of people (bearing in mind that 'a couple of people' has at any given time constituted a large proportion of my readership) have drifted away since I focussed on the gaming, but probably I can't get them back now and ought to continue pushing the more focussed discussion and analysis.

I'm just frustrated with Twitter and Facebook at times; so much to say but too many people listening. Which isn't to say I'd be much more open here, to be honest.

Ho hum.]]> QE http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=556 Thu, 6 May 2010 00:49:12 +0000 <![CDATA[Scarcity]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=553 Script Frenzy) so I expect to be scarce again. The time until April is likely taken up by finding out how the hell I'm supposed to write a script, being sociable with other frenzied people and I may have accidentally bought a PS3 as well...

See you on the other side.

]]> QE http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=553 Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:33:51 +0000 <![CDATA[Reliability]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=550
I apologise for the inconvenience. Since I no longer have the time or the expertise to do all of the admin and trouble-shooting on a live server I'm considering moving my mission-critical sites (including this one) to more conventional hosting, where someone else takes responsibility for the hardware and software and only gives me as much access as I need to manage the sites. This may happen soon, depending on how I feel on Monday (and to what extent the crises have abated).

I'll keep you posted.

Edit: So, that wasn't the answer after all. My interim measure is to restart the MySQL process periodically, so if the blog says it can't connect to the server try again in a minute or so. Sorry for the continued inconvenience.

QE]]> QE http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=550 Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:22:00 +0000 <![CDATA[My STO]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=548
Instead, for the moment, let me make another list of random thoughts, this time what I'd do differently.

Skills:
Some of these things are almost bugs rather than design decisions. Here's hoping they fix some. Anyway, some thoughts:

Use one row for each ship type, with two admiral columns so that the two variants at that tier can remain on the same row. Put the general ship skill on the top or middle row and band the background to make it clear it's related to all three rows. Move the team leader skills out of the way (or if you really need to save some rows, put the general ship skill alone on one row, then the team leader ones on the same rows as the ship types.)

Apparently the ship-specific skills don't help when you've got out of that tier: the bottom one and the first role-specific one work right the way up, but the specifics don't. Fix: give them manageable stacking bonuses so that they're all useful at the top. Alternative: if you can't manage stacking bonuses, just make each one prerequisite to the next. Same mechanical effect (with regards player choice), less friendly to players. Also, what's with some of those skills unlocking officer abilities? Some serious asymmetry there.

The skills aren't paced right. Rear Admiral is such a short level range and the skills so expensive that you can only cap one. I would commit to players being able to get the same number of skill boxes in each rank and scale the number of skill points required accordingly, : having decided how long you want the player spending in each rank I'd then set SP awards that provided the right SP/hour. If you need to, make Admiral skills better; if you can't do that it may be that they shouldn't be any more expensive (although that would ruin the SP/hour curves).

Somewhere, possibly not on the skill list but accessible from it, there should be a directory of all the abilities that depend on a given skill, and vice versa. All of them, searchable, and generally making sense. Link to it from the items that affect the skill scores, too.

Ranks on items
I think they missed a trick with the ship tiers. There's some potential there for reducing the epic gap that tends to exist between low levels and high levels; it goes some of the way, but could easily have gone further. Consider the following:
  • Rather than (or as well as) having a required rank on a piece of space equipment, require a ship tier. For example, Mk VII Wotsit, requires tier 4 ship. It implicitly requires Captain (since only Captains and Rear Admirals can fly tier 4) but bars it to them if they are in a lower ship.
  • Then do the same to their abilities: a Captain in a Commander ship gets the Commander rank of his special abilities (or has an ability locked out completely if there isn't a Commander rank).
Doing those things (and only those things; everything else is already in the design) levels the playing field for space combat: all you need to do is limit which ships can enter a particular fleet action or PvP engagement and you know nobody is overpowered. It's equivalent to WoW's battleground brackets, but with any player able to clamp themselves to a lower bracket just by switching ships.

Of course, then you have to give incentives for players to step down like that. That's the hard part; I don't have a great answer.

The Tier 5 ships
At tier 5 the ships are no longer symmetrical; where each previous tier favoured the speciality and kept the secondary ones balanced, tier 5 instead ranks them primary, secondary, tertiary and provides one ship per ordering. However, the distinction is almost negligible. Tier 5s have an officer spread like this:
Primary: Commander (4), Lt. Commander (3); Secondary: Lieutenant (2), Ensign (1); Tertiary: Lieutenant (2)
A single Ensign slot really isn't much of a distinction (nor is the single extra console of the secondary speciality); being limited to Lieutenant abilities in the non-primary specialities severely limits their effect. Instead I'd arrange them like this:
Primary: Commander (4), Lieutenant (2); Secondary: Lt. Commander (3), Ensign (1); Tertiary: Lieutenant (2)
The totals haven't changed much (6/4/2 rather than 7/3/2) but access to a Lt.Cdr. ability in the secondary field allows that bit more specialisation. It does mean that the Science/Engineering ship would be a little closer to the Engineering/Science one (for example), but the primary speciality already provides various traits that would continue to distinguish them, and access to a Commander ability slot is a large distinction.

While we're at it, some part of the Cryptic publicity claimed that tier 5 ships weren't intended to be a huge step up from tier 4, so that if players wanted to stay in tier 4 they wouldn't be heavily penalised. That's mostly true: it's two additional abilities, two additional console slots but otherwise mostly the same. Currently the officers on a tier 4 look like this:
Primary: Commander (4), Lieutenant (2); Secondary (each): Lieutenant (2)
That's 6/2/2, which sounds a fair bit like I'm recommending for tier 5s (6/4/2). I've already closed the gap a little: the main advantage of [my] tier 5 over 4 is the ability to diversify. I'd go a little further:
Primary: Commander (4), Lieutenant Commander (3); Secondary (each): Lieutenant (2)
I've added a whole extra ability, closing the gap a little more (12 over 11, rather than 12 over 10) and I wouldn't change the distribution of consoles (4/3/2 over 3/2/2) but crucially the tier 4 now has something the tier 5 doesn't: an additional Lieutenant Commander ability, making it the only way of one ship having two Lt.Cdr. slots in the same speciality.

Now there's a real choice: tier 5 ships give you a chance to complement your speciality with a strong element of a secondary field, at the cost of some of the focus you had available in tier 4. It's not a clear choice, and as a player I'm not even sure I'd be comfortable with it: that's a good sign in my opinion.]]> Gaming http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=548 Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:49:48 +0000 <![CDATA[SWG follow-up]]> http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=547 post out to various folks I know from different places, which is why it actually got some comments. I did get one interesting response elsewhere, so I'll paraphrase that and share with you my response.

"I never played SWG. I remember suggesting you play WoW because it was a lot less broken. The CU seemed less of an 'upgrade' and more a 'nerf' to players I talked to. So after the CU did they have more or fewer players? And then after the NGE?
In both cases I think it's fewer, and the game producers have generated a lot of ill will.
So was changing the product a good idea? Fewer players = less money, so 'no'

Better not to launch flawed or broken games in the first place.

What he says is largely true. Some bits I don't quite agree with.

Obviously I don't have the figures but I suspect they did have fewer players after the CU went live, and all signs point to far fewer after the NGE (although it's still got quite a handful even now, which is interesting).

As for whether the CU might have been a good business move, I don't think it's that clear cut. Most games have a certain amount of churn and rather than the subscriber numbers for any given month representing a fixed number of people they'll be some proportion of the same people as last month plus a bunch of old returnees and a big chunk of newbies. That's especially true when you've got something big to draw people in, such as a big IP (and they didn't come much bigger than Star Wars).
If you've got a largely static population and less of a draw, such as when your game is old enough or specialist enough that most of the potential market have already seen it (e.g. EVE) then offending those people would be a very bad idea. Star Wars Galaxies was not niche, though - with that IP it could have been the most accessible MMO yet - and at less than two years old it certainly wasn't past it by MMO standards.
The danger of keeping things the same all the time is that new people won't stay, so the inevitable churn won't be replaced and eventually even the die-hards will get sick of it. In particular, the people crying 'nerf' are playing an optimal strategy and the chances are they're either bored that the game isn't challenging them or bored that it doesn't have meaningful choices for them (or both). Those people are quite likely to leave if you fix that, but but they'll only stay for so long if you [i]don't[/i] change something, so it's likely you've pretty much lost them already.
If your game is broken enough you either have to leave it as it is while the current happy users keep it afloat for as long as it goes, or fix it and risk losing them. (An alternative is to fork it, but that's got a bunch of risks of its own and the UO non-PvP server is the only example I know of anyone getting away with it). [It was pointed out to me that this wasn't really a fork: they ran it on the same codebase and although I don't know whether you could move between shards it's likely that this didn't split the community like separating them into different games with different update objectives could.]

When you look at it from that angle, possibly even the NGE wasn't such a bad idea. After all, SWG still runs today, on fewer servers than it used to but crucially more than Matrix Online, Asheron's Call 2, probably Age of Conan and definitely Warhammer Online. You can wonder whether letting the CU mature might have got them more, or even leaving the game closer to its original state; we'll never know.

The main mistake that SOE made throughout, and the thing primarily responsible for the ill will in my opinion, was the lack of openness and communication. Everything they did looked rushed, and tended to go to public test servers broken without any apparent intention to fix the bugs that were being reported. Players felt like SOE didn't listen. The NGE went live within a day of being announced, having been kept secret until then. Keeping secrets is a sign of distrust: if you feel you have to do something players aren't going to like, get the idea out there, let them get used to it and persuade them it's for the best.


None of this is a defence for releasing broken games: in fact the evident difficulty of fixing them should be a clear indication that it's cheaper to put more money and time in to get them right in the first place :)

Again, many thanks for the quoted post. I won't name people here but you're welcome to drop by and take credit.]]> Gaming http://www.quixoticevil.com/index.php?itemid=547 Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:41:49 +0000