Will You Respect Your Game Mechanics In The Morning?

A quick aside: A while back, I was having a discussion about Champions Online with a friend and while describing the game, I mentioned that CO had crowd control mechanics, but didn't respect them. He asked me what the heck that meant, and to be honest it took me a couple of minutes to work it out in my own mind... but I think it is a valid concept.

RPGs and MMOs consist of lots of little game mechanics that interact to form the entire experience. When a design "respects" a particular mechanic, that means that the mechanic is a viable way to solve problems encountered in the game universe. In terms of combat and adventuring, a character can be build around this mechanic and perform to the level of his peers who use other means to get the same job done, or perform a specific useful function in a group situation to the expectation of the group... (that was a mouthful).

So, you can take holds, stuns, sleeps and other crowd control powers in Champions Online for PvE, but they last only a couple of seconds, are often resisted, and easily broken. You are really better off piling on the damage. It is much easier to kill enemies in CO than it is to hold them and thus the "controller" character does not perform up to the standard of the "damage dealer."

Compare that to the late City of Heroes, where crowd control could stop an entire group of enemies cold, allowing the controller to pick enemies off at a leisurely pace. In WoW and Everquest, crowd control was not that powerful, but performed a very specific function of handling adds and keeping encounters manageable. No such function exists in CO, and so I say that game does not respect its crowd control mechanics whereas WoW, EQ and CoH do.

While the discussion started with MMOs, I think that it applies to tabletop rpgs as well. An example that hit home for me was with my own game, Runebearer. I have an extensive alchemy section in the current game, but over the course of many years, it was barely used. Talking to a few long-time players, they said that alchemy was cool and had lots of neat stuff to offer, but was simply too much of a hassle with lots of limitations and costs associated with it. One player said, "I can collect ingredients, trade with town alchemists, take lots of time and spend lots of money, or I could just be a mage."  My design didn't respect the alchemy system, and so it was ignored by my players.

What other games have systems they don't respect? If you have any thoughts or examples, comment here and let's discuss them.

Repost: Remind Me Why I Rolled on Freedom? (Or One PUG's Story)

This is a repost of a blog post I made in 2008... Pathetic to repost, most certainly, but dammit, I miss CoX!!!!!! So, here is one great memory of that great game.

...

Generally, I run with a group of what I call "post-modern" CoX players (I'll talk about them some in a future post). They are good friends and great players, forming uber farming teams and rolling through pretty much everything they come across. It's great XP ... but sometimes boring. See, these guys have been playing pretty much straight through since beta. I've been offline about half that time and so every time I reopen my account, there is something I've missed. Of course, these guys have mostly seen it all, or don't care to see it all and so while I can farm to 50 with these guys all day... I might never see most of the game.

To experience the rest of the game, I created a new character on the heavily populated Freedom server and decided that I would level to 50 in pick-up groups with only the occassional interlude of soloing. Thus a new Plant/Storm controller, Song of Land and Sky, was born. Yes, I know, the name is fruity... but I sort of like it... and do you have any idea how hard it is to get a reasonable name on Freedom???

So, after a few solo runs and a few more pick up groups (have I ever told you how much I truly love the Hollows?), I have leveled Song to 16. Late last night, I am tooling around, trying to figure out what to do, or if in fact, I should just head to bed, when I get that fateful tell:

"Can you heal? We need another healer."

I sadly replied that I did not in fact, heal, but instead brought confusion and holds to the table. I figured this would kill the conversation, but surprisingly I got another tell:

"That might work. We are fighting CoT." And along came the invite.

Now, I should have been wary. I generally feel that most teams in CoX don't need any healers and this guy indicated that they needed another healer. Not one...another. With that single word, I created an entire scenario in my mind; a scenario of scrappers charging into a horde of purples, of wanton fire blasters firing Rain of Aggro... I mean Fire, of team wipes.

Sign me up!!!! I accepted, greeted the team and headed straight to the mission door.

Once in, we were faced with a gaggle of level 19 purple CoT. The first few battles went... ok. Slow, but steady and we didn't get into too much trouble. However, the first room we came to, the tank charged in and three Ruin Mages (and sundry minions) started pounding him... He dropped like a stone. I missed my Seeds of Confusion... which would not have handled the bosses anyway... and managed to buy my team an entire 0.3 seconds to flee as they eviscerated me and chuckled over my corpse. Within seconds, everyone was at the hospital heading back to the mission.

You know it is going to be a long night when you find yourself thinking how convenient it is that the hospital is less than 300 yards from the door.

Now, the tank is talking about finding another healer and though I usually try to stay off the soapbox, I felt the need to point out that healing wouldn't have helped much in that room. No healer of our level would have kept up with that onslaught.

We decided to pull.

Pulling goes OK for a few minutes and then people start getting antsy. Inevitably, "corner" pulling degrades into "hallway" pulling, degrades into "at the door of the room" pulling, degrades into "I will go with you pulling". So, our dark defender was essentially following the tank into the room, forgetting he had his targetted heal on auto...

At least this hospital serves Jello!!!

We head back and surprisingly, we've learned our lesson. The non-pullers stay back somewhat and we have a couple good pulls and start slogging through the room pull by pull. Hey, debt's gone... time to make more!

This one is totally my fault. We have mostly cleared the first room. There is maybe a group left and we have charged it. I am spamming confuse and holds and the occassional attack (I have serious energy issues at this stage). It is tough, but we are doing well. Suddenly, I see a flash of red in the corner of my screen. It seems we have an add or perhaps a runner. I WILL TAKE CARE OF HIM!!!!

So I dash after him... and am instantly gutted by the dozen or so of his buddies sitting just around the corner. I pull the adds, die, and then the baddies roll up the rest of the team.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get bloodstains out of Lycra?

Ok, lesson learned... no need to be the hero... or at least use some stealth when dashing willy-nilly around corners.

A few more battles and we have our collective stuff together. We cap a couple more groups and head into the next hallway. I am following the tank closely when we walk through a doorway and back out again, pursued by a convention of angry CoT. Strangely enough, this doesn't cause another team wipe. We pull the CoT through the door and the controllers manage to get the fight under control. As the enemy comes through, they are held, confused, debuffed and subsequently slaughtered. The doorway is clear... we are still standing...

And that's when the dozen or so Unbound Nictus start pouring through...

Not a Kheldian in sight, but somehow, we spawn a Crystal. And while we were valiantly fighting the CoT, what we didn't see is that there were two crystals spawning their little black clouds of death the entire time. There are at least a dozen of them and they make quick work of our unprepared team.

Back to the hospital... again... and again... and

See, those crystals had built up quite a head of steam and had filled the antechamber with nictus. We had to zip through that mess to get to the crystals and engage them. All the while, more nictus are spawning. It made quite the gauntlet to run. Finally, we bust through, attack the crystals and...

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh right, forgot about the blowy uppy thing when you kill one of the crystals... and presumably our blaster has never seen it because she is dead and spouting a whole load of WTF!!! on the team chat.

But now the final door is in sight. Victory is ours with just one more room. Click the door and there are no less than 3 bosses sitting right there, all in a tight clump, staring at us and daring us to cross the threshold.

It is at this time that my own boss... my wife gently reminded me that it was 1:00 am in the morning and the baby was awake and perhaps I should tend to him. And so I had to leave my team in the lurch... I wonder if they ever got that other healer?

Now, it might sound like I had a miserable time. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I had a great time. The mission was hard. The players were fun and did a nice job given the circumstances. I was laughing the whole time. This is why I still play CoX and why I rolled on Freedom!!

Weekend Gaming Odyssey

I have spent an unfortunate amount of money on computer games recently... and honestly, I haven't gotten that much satisfaction out of them. I am getting grumpier with my games as I age, I guess. In any case, I spent my weekend looking for something exciting and... I got mixed results. Here is what I played this weekend.

This was the final beta weekend for the new Marvel Heroes MMO and I decided it was too tempting to pass up. Marvel Heroes is an upcoming FTP offering from Gazillion Entertainment. It plays an awful lot like Diablo II. You pick one of 20+ Marvel superheroes with which to start your crime fighting career. Each character has a distinct fighting style, advancement tree and gear. Action is point and click with the ASDFG and H keys allotted to your special powers.

The game plays well enough and is a reasonably fun ARPG. I was lukewarm while I was dozing through the tutorial mission, but once I got to the first open zone, Hell's Kitchen, I was pretty happy with the game. There are lots of mini-missions, events, side maps and bosses to keep you occupied. If you like Diablo II, or Torchlight, and you can stand running around with a dozen Iron Men named lickIt, and born2pwn, you should give it a shot when it releases.

Marvel Heroes was fun enough, but it isn't really my kind of game and so I spent a few hours searching for something else upon which to waste my time. And though I am not in need of any new games (my current back catalog of PS2 JRPGs alone would last me until my death), I just can't help giving Valve more of my money.

For that reason, I picked up Might and Magic Heroes VI on Steam. I have loved pretty much every Heroes of Might and Magic since the very first one (including its predecessor, King's Bounty)... even the much maligned HoMM4. Aside from the Yoda-ization of the name, MMH6 is pretty good. Some of the game is streamlined, primarily the resources and the town building, but the basic game play is there -- build a stack, level a hero, pick some cool powers, kill your enemies in simple, but fun turn-based battles. MMH6 delivers on this formula fairly well, I think.

What is not so good, is that it also delivers on the modern-day wackiness of DRM and bogus online options.  You already have the DRM inherent in Steam. I can live with Steam. Like many PC gamers, I have made that Devil's bargain of trading the hassle of DRM for the convenience of getting my games quickly and easily and with the extra features that Steam brings to the table (Community and Workshop, for instance). However, on top of Steam, you still have UbiSoft's Uplay system. So "playing" MMH6 from your Steam menu really just starts UPlay, where you have the option to hit "Play" again, or go shopping with some goofy U-currency for crap you couldn't possibly want... It is literally the version of Heroes for people who want DRM in their DRM.

When you are in the game, you have even more online options. You start by connecting to the Conflux... what the heck is the Conflux? And you can spend your dynasty seals on new heroes and widgets... and you can sync your games to the cloud and... I don't know. Honestly, I love wacky options and features piled on top of features, but couldn't we have somehow made these features part of the game, as opposed to some kind of micro-transactiony metagame? If this is where the franchise is headed, I am not impressed. For now, I suppose I can ignore it, hit Custom Game and have at it.

And because I have a lifetime account and little self-respect, I found myself coming back to an old standby, Champions Online. CO is my go-to superhero MMO since City of Heroes folded. It is much-improved from its release in 2009. Pretty much everything from the gear, to the power sets, to the leveling has been made much better and CO is probably the best it has ever been.

That's the good news. The bad news is that, regardless of how far CO has come since 2009, it hasn't improved much at all since 2012. Updates have stopped (Neverwinter might have something to do with that) and the player base is very depressed. I have played a lot of MMOs over the years and this one smells like it is in a steep decline...

I hope that isn't the case because I have remade my first and favorite City of Heroes character in Champs Online. Monochrome Girl is now officially a refugee from Paragon City. Hopefully, she will have a few more years in her new home before they shut down the servers for Neverwinter Online 2: The Drizzt Files.