This blog is (and will continue to be) about video games. However, today is not a day for video games.
Thade and the Soon-to-be-Mrs Thade are now engaged; this happened on like Sunday.
Don’t worry; I’ll get back to video games soon enough. I’m a bit intrigued by Guild Wars 2, but with D3 (which I already hate) on the way and several games on my plate right now, I don’t see how I’ll fit it in.
But, today…not about video games.
Whenever that word comes to mind, I think on a book I read back during my first degree program; the theory that comes to mind is that of commitment and consistency. Basically if I’m into a thing, I feel the potent (if passive) need to stand up for it. I don’t really feel the need to enumerate all of the things I love about SW:TOR, nor could I as it would really fill a volume of text roughly equivalent to the time spent playing from launch to now; though when others enumerate the things they dislike about it, I always feel a bit defensive.
I haven’t found the questing anymore repetitive than any other combat game mechanic suite I’ve encountered over the course of my gaming life; if anything, it’s less, because it’s punctuated by dialog sequences that are engaging and a story that keeps twisting on me in fun ways. Crafting in this game is far more useful far more immediately and consistently than any other MMO I’ve played yet; I have used a great deal of equipment from Synthweaving and look forward to getting fancy material drops in flashpoints to make the currently big and bad stuff to wear. I’ve done a few flashpoints now (Esseles, Hammerstation, Directive 7) and I’ve really enjoyed them. Directive 7 in particular was awesome as it’s basically a beautiful homage to Left 4 Dead, set in Star Wars. It worked in a way I couldn’t have predicted.
All of this is enhanced by the true necessity in any game like this: I found a fine group of people to experience it with. If I hadn’t found a group of positive, easy-going but persistent players to experience this stuff with, I wouldn’t be getting all curious about how the hit tables and spell coefficients in this game work and what kind of gear I should look for and try. The game is very young and I feel I can appreciate it in a way I couldn’t appreciate WoW in its youth. I get to not only see it grow, but to grow with it.
I’ll be staying.
I also want to see the next wave of stories that will inevitably come, especially since my romanced companion and I have a lot more terrain to cover. She sends me love letters. Love letters. Maybe one every few days, and – always – they have a Courting gift attached to them.
Let me spell this out for you.
My companion is giving me Courting gifts.
She’s playing the game too, which explains perhaps why she jumped on my Jedi’s face so quickly when she saw the opportunity. The entire Master-Padawan relationship paradigm is remarkably interesting. Bioware did it. Jedi can love if they can control it. It involves this transcendental understanding of attachment: that it is transient, like we are; that it is fundamental and – in fact – at the core of the very thing the Jedi (and the Republic) are fighting to protect. Recommended against as it’s ludicrously difficult to get a handle on, but then nobody’s really telling the Barsen’thor – a Jedi that single-handedly liberated several wartorn planets and raised one of the most powerful armies ever encountered – that he’s not allowed to throw his cute and intelligent padawan a vial of Huttese Perfumes now and again.
The love letters are well-written (in character) and really flush the story out in an interesting way. Bioware, I like what you’re doing. You’re making me kind of regret not sending you a resume to reject a few years ago when you started on this project. I like it so much that I wish I was a part of making it.
Last night in EVE I got pretty excited about buying and injecting Accounting. Perhaps a little weird when the word “accounting” is included in any sentence starting with “got pretty excited”, but there it is. I think that means I’m committed now.
I bought a ring for the real-life lady. She doesn’t know and naturally doesn’t read her man’s nerdy blog. We have been tossing Courtship gifts and love letters at one another for quite a while now. And, as you probably have guessed by now, I’m not the kind of guy that gives up on anything without a fight.
Software bugs are a fact, and even if a bug is a solved issue for one studio/dev-team, it may still be unsolved for another. You know, because:
Ilum is broken again. Not ideal, but hardly an affront to anything. I actually haven’t done a single PVP thing in Star Wars yet, as I view it much like going to a great sushi restaurant and ordering chicken nuggets and french fries. Get what they specialize in, not the thing they throw on the menu to lure in your change-averse friends.
Anyway, there will be bugs. Let’s get over it. I’d rather read about your various gaming adventures anyway. That’s why I read blogs. <3
NOTE: Jedi Consular Story Spoilers.
I cleaned up two more prisons…one was ancient and involved both putting down a break-out and staging a break-out. (Little hard to explain on the resume; it’ll come out in interviews, I’m sure.) I took down another Child of the Emperor. They’re uniformly powerful, resourceful meglomaniacs on the verge of insanity.
The young force wilder (built up to be my apprentice since early Chapter 2) finally signed on with me. At first she did not approve of my teachings (in the wake of her father’s murder I tried to lay out the Jedi-lessons…didn’t go over well, to the tune of several -200 affection losses) but when it became official (in her father’s will) she was then ecstatic. She’s seemed smitten this entire time; it quickly graduated to obviously smitten when she gained an Affection Meter.
“Things suck for me right now,” she said, “but you, I mean. You know I…look up to you. A lot. Right? I have been looking up to you. And, like, you are such a…a…I mean. You make such tough decisions. The galaxy hangs in the balance and you just roll with it. How do you do it? Can you teach me how to do it?”
“I can try,” I said. “Let’s start with the basics: be at peace.”
“You’re hot,” she said. “I really dig the beard.”
“Beg your pardon?” I said.
“Peace! Right. Being at peace. That’s me.”
I sped up the story there a bit by shoveling roughly 3000 points worth of gifts on her. More than half of them were Courtship. So she then wanted to talk to me on my ship about a dozen times in rapid succession. It was honestly all the conversing we should’ve been doing up to now (she’s been conspicuously no where on my tiny ship before becoming a real companion). The [Flirt] options for me were hysterical; I still sounded all sagacious and pedantic, even when trying to be sweet. The bottom line here was that I could not resist. The only cuter Bioware NPC I’ve seen up to now was Tali; I allowed my Jedi to fall for her. At the end of my play session she surprised me by diving on me with a kiss. She pulled away and then (surprise number two) DING I hit level 49.
Qyzen has asked that we take a detour to Alderaan for his Rite of Passage. He’s still my favorite character in the game (though Nadia is a very close second…even before recent events) so I’m naturally going to help him.
“Herald. You have the Force. What do you see?”
I like Zenith, so he’ll probably be next on the gift shovel train. (Underworld Trading, I never knew how good you’d be for me.) Guy’s a jerk but he’s a jerk with purpose and a multi-dimensional character. I like him.
As for the other unwelcome bozos riding around on my boat, well, I do want to give them each a chance to sway me.
Summary: I’m loving this game.
This is a first for me. I would like to pvp in EVE and opportunities for it naturally abound, but I feel that I can’t afford it. I just dropped millions of ISK on implants and a skill book in order to increase my market game (and the speed at which I train in it). I’m currently making roughly a million ISK a day on flipping products; I’ve basically cornered one very little market in my section of space and I’m highly competitive in several others. (I admit it; the game has already gotten to me in that I don’t yet want to divulge publicly what I am trading in.) I see people placing orders for something and notice that their range is not as great as mine, so I either allow them their small areas and blanket them with my own, or I entirely squish them by both blanketing and over-cutting/underselling them. I disguise my orders by posting them at different times and with different amount-shifts, sometimes random, other times as near the format of those present as I can. There are probably ways of identifying me I’m not aware of, but these markets are pretty small fish, so there’s probably little risk.
Regardless, I’m making money and – with my trade skills up in the 3s and 4s – I no longer need to undock to do it.
My long term plan is to be a Covert Ops and Black Ops pilot; the focus being stealth recon, but I really need a way to finance it and I’m honestly enjoying the market game. It’s fun, it’s competitive, and the in-game and out-of-game tools for it are remarkably well done. While I figure out my year-long skill training plan with EVE Mon I will use implants to train myself up in the short term (being like several weeks to a month or two) in market skills. I want the level 4s at least; Regional would be epic (lv5) but really 20 jumps is more than enough of a radius for the level I’m at, I feel. We’ll see, though.
This means my EVE involvement can be minimal; literally a log in or two a night to check that my orders are still competitive, to sell product that I manage to buy, and of course to update my skill queue at need. In the meantime, my Jedi Consular is extremely close to getting his apprentice, which I very much want. My epic hero is due some make-outs…as well as some end-game instancing. I’m closing in on level 50. Money’s a non-issue in Star Wars thanks to the fact that I get bounties on space missions and the temple pays for my extensive and constant ship repairs.
I took a few days off from League of Legends only to discover upon returning last night that I suck again; time to get myself back into shape. PAX is a’comin and I don’t want to be the n00b when I hang out near Riot’s booth like a fanboi. I had some epic bandage tosses last night and put the hurt on bottom lane Morgana…but I fell really short on farm (letting my ranged partner kill everything when we were pushed to tower by a very effective and aggressive Morg/Siv combo) and thus couldn’t afford to keep up. EVE, you are following me everywhere. Even to Amumu. Give the kid a break, he’s sad enough.
I am perhaps now what you might deem an odd duck. The black sheep of the MMO blog-o-world. The weirdo, to be more plain. I’m still a big fringe (the polite way of saying “entirely unknown”) so I think I’ll get away with what I’m about to say.
I very much enjoy both Star Wars: The Old Republic and EVE Online.
It doesn’t sound weird to me, but when you consider the flaming tar-filled line in the sand between Sandbox and Theme Park players, it’s borderline sacrilege.
Let’s run a comparison.
I am of course talking about Master of Orion 2 versus Super Mario Bros. 3.
Now back to EVE and TOR.
They’re remarkably different games that fill remarkably different niches; genres that are distinct from one another and – frankly – criticisms leveled at one from the stance of the other camp really do boil down to MoO2 vs SMB3. Some like number crunching…some like racoon tails. And that shouldn’t seem weird. If it does, let’s look at how this fringer here manages it.
Why I like Star Wars: The Old Republic
PI enjoy the story. I have done every last bit of quest content I’ve come across on my Jedi Consular; every side quest, every bonus series…all of it. I’ve run a handful of instances and 4-player heroics…enough to know that I very much enjoy the Jedi healing game and I look forward to the “end-game” where I run a few instances a week with my friends while we wait for more story content.
The game is beautiful. The music is fantastic. I have abilities on long cooldowns that both save my butt and kick off crescendos in the score. My Jedi is made out to be an epic bad ass paragon; I haven’t felt this awesome about a toon since John Shepard. He’s a hero and I really believe that as I play.
I enjoy the space battles because, frankly, they are easy, fast-paced, and have some great music. I loved the X-wing VS Tie Fighter games as a kid, but I still love 1941. Seriously, how could you not like that style game? Didn’t you play River Raid growing up? Well, now you can play it again as a daily mission and make boatloads of in-game credits for it. Best model for a daily quest ever. Screw running around Icecrown killing the same stupid zombies over and over. Screw it hard.
Nobody has to click on my light well, I never go out of mana, and I have a lightsaber.
Why I like EVE Online
You cannot rush this game. There’s no rolling a Paladin, blitzing her to max level, and grinding her entry-level raid gear over a two week sleepless vacation. EVE is a game that rewards planning and patience, and it punishes rashness and lack of research in very hard and very real ways. A game with this design that is this old has a remarkable player base. Even the jerks seem to be patient in their own ways. (At least, the truly dangerous jerks are patient.)
If you rush up to a big fancy ship and launch it without a clue, odds are high you’ll lose it and be really unable to replace it financially (talking in-game money here). I think I really realized and began to adore the pacing in the game when I really got into EVE Mon: it showed me that it will be – easily – three to six months before I can fly the ships I want to. Covert Ops ships will take me a minimum of three months…and that’s if I neural remap (something I’m very adverse to doing) to shave off a week. I’ll probably save the remaps for a lot of level Vs. As it is I’m a salvager/explorer wannabe which means my Gallente covert ops ship is not for me (two high slots, pssh) and so I’ll be training up Minimatar for an ugly but speedy Cheetah. That only puts me two days behind that schedule (to train Minimatar Frigates 1-4).
It’s not like I’ll be idle during that time; I can easily fit super cheap and easy to replace T1 ships for tackling and ECM; perhaps even shooting. And I’m really enjoying the whole marketing thing (I’ve actually managed to corner a little market already) and so I’ll probably tough it out and train up my basic marketing skills to 4 and 5 (using implants to help) while I figure out the best way to get myself into a Sin Black Ops ship (six to ten months into the future).
This may be the first game I ever pay for a bigger-than-a-month sub.
Beyond all the planning (which caters very well to the spreadsheet junkie in me) I love the ship customizations, the utter lack of “class pigeon-holing”, and the diplomatic and territorial struggles that the game not only supports but encourages. I enjoy the deep space probe mini-game, the whole target-locking thing…really the entire UI is awesome and really gives me that “I’m in space” feeling (minus the lack of gravity in my chair).
Since it will be months before I can fly as a scout I see no reason to rush anywhere. I log in because I want to, not because I feel I have to.
The Balance
So far it’s favoring EVE, but only because I’m well ahead of my friends in TOR and there’s no reason to wrap up my story and hit 50 while they have more ground to cover. I’m in a great guild in TOR, full of like-minded peeps (all casual, most married, all happy…the guild leadership has been tied together for six years) and things are looking up there. I’m honestly excited to get to 50 and run flashpoints and ops with them all. Get my heal on, as it were.
I got into EVE University and so far it’s as-advertised; people tirelessly answer my rookie questions, are very polite, and quick to offer assistance. If this keeps up, I’ll build them a Titan. You know, after a few year of dominating the market. (It’s about long term planning!)
For the foreseeable future I will play both games. They’re both awesome for very different reasons. Star Wars you can jump right in. EVE I recommend at least 30 hours of focused reading and studying on it before trying it out. That’s what I did.
Very different games.
In a way, I get it. I really do. When people are jerks on the Internet, I at times have fascinated about punching them in their faces. I think there is a distinct difference between one who imagines this and one who actually does it. Far beyond the actions of Jay and Silent Bob’s strike back at forum trolls, this guy actually strangled achild over being taunted and teased in Call of Duty.
NOTE: I DO NOT ENDORSE STRANGLING KIDS. Just in case anybody wants to jump on the hate train, let me make that abundantly clear. The guy was wrong to attack a kid. He knows it himself and feels bad for it. (I also don’t endorse spanking or injury-based punishers of any nature in child-rearing, but that’s not really for this blog.)
Well, as there will be no limit to the number of people speaking up for the poor and defenseless brat who thinks he’s all that while taunting people over one of the worst Wolfenstein “successors” to date, allow me to try and see the silver lining here. Perhaps this stressed out-of-work father learned something about himself with this tragic breakdown and will be better for it. Given his plea, it seems that may be true. Perhaps the child learned that being a jerk on the Internet is not okay. Even one child learning this would be a god damned welcome miracle.
A man can dream.
I also do not endorse passive parenting that results in kids playing video games for hours and hours, learning that it’s acceptable to lay harsh effrontery upon those that they don’t even know.
However, if I may be so bold, I will re-link a comic that I think both encompasses the current console gamer culture and the appropriate way to respond to it as an adult. (Note again: it is a non-violent response.)
The Tribunal forum on the League of Legends site is one of my favorite boards of all time. I say this sincerely and with great weight. Most forums (including many subforums of Riot’s boards there) are essentially cesspits of trolls, flame, and QQing, but every so often we get a diamond in the rough.
The threads on the Tribunal forums have a beautiful pattern to them that is very easy to see.
NotSoNicePlayer posts:
“This system is broken” and “I can be a jerk if I want to be; it’s my right.”
The universal response from the developers, maintainers, community managers, and players is this:
“No, you cannot. Go play some other game. Let our community be.”
I love it. A particularly good read on that board (no account necessary to lurk) is this post, which gathered up the majority of Riot personnel answering questions about the Tribunal.
Take note, every other game company. The bar is set.
Oh, Trion.
This morning is particularly upsetting for me as I was in the process of writing an article agreeing with Syncaine’s views with regards to how F2P is a tragic thing for the MMO world…and I had cited Rift as an example of a game that saw no real benefit to a F2P model. You know, because, having many players supported by significantly fewer subscribed players will – as a rule – detract from the overall user experience.
So. You too, Brutus?
Is there a cash shop yet? When can we expect it? Because the natural progression seems to now be this:
Trion. The moment you start selling ponies and power for cash is the moment you fail. Just say no.
F2P is bad, mmkay?
ADDENDUM: While I haven’t yet found a link to support this, Grimnir has ever been a source I rely on. In the comments you’ll see he’s set my mind at some ease. The F2P for Rift is restricted to the trial servers, so there will be no population diffusion and (for now, at least) no weird cash shops. All a slippery slope I constructed in my mind.
I’m trying to breathe a sigh of relief, but I’m not feeling it. C’mon, Trion. Don’t let me down.
The Game
Things are expensive, complex, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and alone. EVE isn’t just a grind-fest. I mean, the grind is there, if you want it, and it’s even at times a bit necessary…but that’s not the game. There are NPC pirates and “quests” (missions) that grind up a little money and even faction, and sometimes you need those too, but that’s also not the game.
I came from a land where planning out a raid and taking on bosses was the game; a land where knowledge of healing coefficients and critical hit tables were the meta-game. In this new land, engaging other players for territory and money is the game, and literal spy-vs-spy leveraging inner-guild drama is the meta game.
Sometimes in a theme park MMO, you want a special resource…to make a fancy piece of equipment or something. To get it, you need to down a raid boss – a known quantity, likely very well documented with videos and wiki pages – working alongside nine to twenty-four people that you (hopefully) get along with.
Sometimes in EVE, you want a special resource…to make a fancy piece of equipment or something. To get it, you need to gather up dozens if not hundreds of friends, acquaintances, or at least allies bonded to you by regional or monetary ties, and you need to engage and potentially oust some other potentially as-organized and equipped group of friends, acquaintances, and allies who already control that resource you want. Their ships may be known quantities in a post mortem, but there – in the moment – even if you have hundreds of possible ship fittings memorized, you don’t really know how each player is going to handle his or her ship, or how the improvisational concert before you is about to play out. It’s a battle and a meaningful one…because the winner doesn’t walk away with enough points to buy the same set of armor that his buddy bought the week before (you know, to get ten more points of whatever)…the winner doesn’t walk away at all. He tries to set up shop before the “loser” rolls back in with reinforcements…or worse, before some third party that’s been lying in wait reveals that NOW while the winner is stretched thing and their resources are strained is the time to strike.
Maybe there’s even a fourth party waiting for that to play out.
EVE is Risk, Diplomacy, and Privateer all rolled into one. With thousands and thousands of players.
In WoW, if there’s a drama-splosion, the guild crumbles and people find other guilds to get back at the content they were farming.
In EVE, if there’s a drama-splosion, it could be that your corp or alliance falls apart. It also could be that the entire thing was orchestrated by players who profited a great deal from Random Angry Mage Who Knows Hes Better Than This Guild*, and the hundreds and hundreds of player-hours worth of ships, equipment, and territory didn’t just evaporate…but some of it fell into somebody else’s coffers. (*No, there are no mages in EVE, just go with me here.)
It’s the meta game.
And once you get past the complexity of the interface and the scope of the galaxy, that is the real barrier you confront. In EVE, you are the game.
The Rush
Poor poetry aside, it’s this very thing that I think makes an EVE player very different from a devout theme park player. In a theme park, you more or less know what to expect each night when you settle in to explore. Knock out a few quests, see some more story, chat with some friends. I’m not saying Club Penguin is bad…hell, it’s actually kind of cool. It is, for the most part, low stress.
I can see EVE as being very high stress. You know that high you get when you’re solo lane Tryndamere against another solo lane Tryndamere and you know the first one of you that slips up will feed the other one in a fast and terrible rock-and-roll snowball to Fed Trynda-RAGE (TM)? Those kinds of rushes come to you in EVE.
In LoL, if you fall to the rush, you lose the lane, possibly the match. Time “lost”, possibly an hour. Probably less. (We’re talking fed Tryn here.)
In EVE, if you fall to the rush, you lose your ship, possibly your clone. Time “lost” could be anywhere from a few days of farming and skilling up to literal months of resources as your clone’s implants and ship’s expensive riggings are obliterated by your assailant.
A smart Tryndamere is patient. He picks his fights carefully. He knows he’s bound to make a mistake and hopes that – when he does – it won’t be a costly one.
That’s EVE for you.
The Summary
I’m having a good time. It’s not “better than SW:TOR”; it is remarkably different. When I play TOR, I know what the evening entails. Predictability has it’s merits and they are well recognized by us all, if passively. You sit down to a TV show, you are entertained. You sit down to SW:TOR, you interact with it more than TV but you’re still entertained. I appreciate and enjoy both of these forms of entertainment.
EVE is almost entirely devoid of predictability, and that’s also very cool. It’s a form of entertainment that is more akin to free-form tabletop role playing. At a table with, like, 200,000 some odd players. Each with agendas.
This GM is literally insane in a way that may intimidate you; that may for a barrier between you and your trying this game.
I think it’s worth punching through. So, I’m trying.
