Dissecting Firefall's Gameplay Video

Red 5 Studios has finally come out of their hole to reveal the MMOG project they have been working on.  Titled Firefall, we got our first look at it this past week via this gameplay video.



There is no commentary with the video, so I wanted to take a few minutes to dissect it and throw around a couple of comments I have.

00:29 - We meet the two characters we will be following around the entire video. The second character has a visual effect of what can be assumed to be a continuous heal-over-time ability. Little blue plus signs swirl around the character. Visual queues seen by all instead of only textual and/or UI elements is a must in any modern game. Sadly, we've seen many MMOs where this is sacrificed for performance.

1:01 - Jumping! Jumping higher with jet packs! Jumping higher with jet packs and shooting! Hook, line, and sinker.

1:11 - The main character places a beacon to call down a Thumper which spends the next few minutes mining for minerals.

1:12 through 4:27 - Phew, that was a long boring three minutes. Wave after wave of enemy that looked and acted the same. This sort of repetitive combat that annoys players who are given guns and jet packs.

I really hope that this was more than just a quest and is actually Firefall's form of resource gathering. Locate a pocket of minerals, call down a Thumper, protect it while it gathers, let it shoot back off into space, and when you are back at base you can collect the minerals for crafting or selling or whatever they may be used for (fuel possibly as we'll see next).

4:31 - Seriously, loot with purple lettering!? I hate having loot spray out all over the place, especially when it makes no damn sense. Crystals and armor from bugs? Disappointed.

4:44 through 7:17 - Oh fuck yes, transport ship! The trip we take to the bastion of Dredge is quite amazing. We get a glimpse of an absolutely stunning open world. My main question, is this on rails or can players pilot the ship anywhere they want to go? Disappointing if this is only World of Warcraft's flight paths, but with space ships. Well maybe not too disappointing if they can be called in to pick a player up anywhere in the world! Lots of potential.

5:09 - Before moving forward, were those player-controlled ground vehicles I spied? They don't seem to be taking any preset path, so here's hoping they are player vehicles!

8:04 through 8:35 - Dredge: looks cool, seems dull. Standard MMO city, vendors and a bar. None of the NPCs really seem to be moving around at all. The place seems as boring as the cities from Borderlands.

8:36 through 9:36 - But right as it seems to be boring all hell breaks loose as Dredge comes under attack. This felt like a very organic fight. Obviously it is set to replay itself out on a regular basis, but this was cool enough that I wouldn't mind multiple run-throughs. Populate the entire world with events such as this and it's a promising feature.

9:37 - Alert, giant fucking robot attacking.

10:09 - Just as we are getting a taste for the ground combat, the character jumps into a turret and starts laying waste to the enemy. Next, the turret turns on the giant robot and we finish the video wondering what the outcome was.

Overall, I really enjoyed the video and I feel the game has potential. I understand the blog'o'sphere's concerns about it being Free 2 Play (F2P), but there is overwhelming evidence (from DDO to Allods Online to Battlefield: Heroes) that F2P works. Not to mention the evidence showing that the subscription model is faltering (WAR, LotRO/DDO dumping it). My advice to those glancing past Firefall already because it will be F2P: play it first.

Bioware please tell me you are not serious; another SW:ToR video

Another day, another Star Wars: The Old Republic video:



Each new video that we get seems to be a 50/50 split of awesome and total crap. This video is no different. The dialogue is good. The characters look awesome (maybe a bit too spiky, but I can deal with that). However, the combat is so fucking terrible that I seriously hope its a joke from Bioware and that they are going to reveal a new combat system video at some point.

Not only is the combat terrible in this video (as it is in all videos for SW:ToR), but I have a couple other points to hit up:

1. When they reveal "the dungeon", we can see a bunch of static groups of enemies standing still waiting to be pulled. In other MMOs, this would be called "trash pulls". I would have no problem with this if Bioware wasn't trying to sell this as "epic" and "exciting" combat. I can't remember the last time I was excited by sitting in a dungeon pulling group after group of enemies.

2. The obvious "go here, do this, get X prize" quest structure. With all the talent and money Bioware is putting into this, I was hoping they were going to come up with something a little more interesting. I don't think we've seen a single quest or event video for SW:ToR that didn't have the same stale quest structure.

I was willing to give Bioware some credit due to their past games, but my patience has eroded.  I'm going to start getting very angry about SW:ToR unless Bioware gets their act together and either admits their combat isn't as exciting and epic as they label it or starts showing me how exciting and epic it can be.

My son turned one and other things I did in August 2010: What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying

August was the month that my son turned one year old. It amazes me how fast time flies with children. It feels like only yesterday when I was welcoming "the dude" (as we call him) into the world. He can walk (run), talk (ask repeatedly for mom), and sleep (for short periods).

It's been a long first year to be honest. Our son has only slept through the night a handful of the time. He fought acid reflux, viral infections, and ear infections for the entirety of his first year. His birthday present was a trip into surgery for tubes in his ears (which helped finally get rid of months-long ear infections). It is kind of amazing to think my wife and I have gone almost an entire year without more than a few hours of sleep per night.

So, as I look at my /Played time for August, it echos my entire year: I play the same number of hours per month as I used to play in a single weekend (day even). However, he is a cool kid; pictures to prove it:

I have embedded the new What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying spreadsheet for June below. The overall spreadsheet (includes previous months) can be found here.

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Game of the Month

NONE. I chased my son around all month instead :)

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/Played

Bioshock

I finally got around to beating Bioshock. The setting is absolutely stunning with an amazing story. I am unsure why I didn't get into it the first go around. I elected to save all of the little girls, so was greeted with the "happy ending". I hit up youtube for the "not-happy ending" and was like "meh". When Bioshock 2 goes on sale for under $10, I am all over it.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

It's Battlefield and a great game. I put a good amount of time this month into unlocking all the weapons. Now I am working towards getting Bronze Stars (25 kills) with each weapon. Also, working on my spreadsheet each month, I realize I need to play this game A LOT more to justify its initial cost.

Left 4 Dead 2

The parrot on my shoulder says: "...working on my spreadsheet each month, I realize I need to play this game A LOT more to justify its initial cost." I love the Bridge finale for "The Parish" campaign. It's everything I want in the zombie apocalypse.

Freedom Force

For $1.87 I didn't expect much from the game. After about an hour of play though, I'm bored with ot. I thought it would move faster (being a Super Hero game and all), but I'm finding it to have a glacial pace and it feels constrained. I will give it a better shot at some point. Any tips?

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/Paid

Total spent this Month: $0.00
My Value Rating: n/a

I made no gaming purchases in August.

Oh, Fuck You Mythic and those dirty Skaven too

Warhammer Online is getting a three-stage "RvR" pack as outlined in this letter on the main site.  Skaven, realm rank increases, and magic, fucking magic (ok maybe no more magic is being added, but it sounded good).

My initial reaction: cool. 

My reaction after reading the entire letter and thinking on it a while: fuck Mythic.

The first issue I want to bring up:

WAR is not going Free 2 Play: We’re not considering this option right now.

Just by the mere fact that they mention this (first thing they mention interestingly enough) I am convinced they've recieved a ton of feedback requesting a Free 2 Play model for WAR.  That they are NOT considering at this point is indicative to me that WAR is doomed within the dark dungeons of EA.  There is plenty of evidence out there showing that Free 2 Play models can be successful after subscriptions failed the first go around.

So instead of a F2P model, WAR is going to split it's RvR pack into three seperate purchases.  Splendid!

Additionally, we will continue to offer that buffet of services by offering the entire RVR pack purchasable in three segments.

Next, we have some talk about the lessons they learned from Dark Ages of Camelot:

We are increasing the RR Cap to 100: This goes hand in hand with a rework of the Renown Ability system. Our goal is to make the Renown Ability system less restrictive, more customizable and closer, in spirit, to the RA system from Dark Age of Camelot. In the past ten years, we’ve learned a lot of lessons from DAoC, and we’re taking our inspiration from this. At the same time, we’ll be easing some of the grind from 1-80. RR 100 will be a challenge, but we will take responsibility for making sure that the power gap between lower RR’s and the higher RR players isn’t an insurmountable obstacle to overcome.

Read that again:

In the past ten years, we’ve learned a lot of lessons from DAoC,

No, I don't think you are understanding what they are saying:

In the past ten years, we’ve learned a lot of lessons from DAoC,

FUCK. YOU. MYTHIC. What honestly did you learn from DAoC? That waiting until years after to release to fix fundamental problems is a disastrous idea? Honestly, had Mythic learned anything from DAoC, WAR would not have suffered the embarrassment that it did at launch. Sorry Mythic, you ignored what was learned from the development and lifetime of DAoC and its too fucking late to go back and try to fool us into thinking you did.

I'm done. Finished.
Bye.

Why I bought The Way of Kings by @BrandonSandrson

I don't get excited about many new book releases.  I'm too backed up on books I've never read to care.  However, Brandon Sanderson's up front and always on promotion for his writing (from finishing The Wheel of Time to Mistborn), has made me a fan.  With his new novel, The Way of Kings, releasing today, I wanted to share a blurb from a post on Tor.com about why this book is worth buying:

Well, finally—after two decades of writing—Tor has given me the chance to share The Way of Kings with you. They’ve taken a risk on this book. At every juncture, they agreed to do as I asked, often choosing the more expensive option as it was a better artistic decision. Michael Whelan on the cover. 400K words in length. Almost thirty full page interior illustrations. High-end printing processes in order to make the interior art look crisp and beautiful. A piece of in-world writing on the back cover, rather than a long list of marketing blurbs. Interludes inside the book that added to the length, and printing costs, but which fleshed out the world and the story in ways I’d always dreamed of doing

If that doesn't make sense, let me use a gaming analogy.  This is essentially an indie developer going to EA and telling them that they will release his indie game the way he wants it released.  It's not saying that Brandon was rude or out of place making these demands of Tor (his publisher), but made the case that this will make the experience better.  Tor believed him and made at least one customer happy by doing so.

I am excited to get my copy.  Get yours via Amazon or your favorite local book retailer.

Fixed: Bioshock error "This game is currently unavailable" w/ Steam on Alienware m11x

I love my new Alienware m11x laptop, but I was about to lose my cool this morning because I could not get Bioshock to run via Steam.  I was getting the dreaded "This game is currently unavailable" error message when launching the game.

Steam support has a great guide for this problem.  Unfortunately, the step I needed to take was towards the bottom and it took me a long time to get to it.  I first did the Windows 7 troubleshooting, then driver updates (which are not easy on the m11x thanks to Dell's m11x vs. m11xR2 branding), and then I ran every option on the list; except for one that I didn't think was needed: Verifying Game Cache Files (GCF)

It took a few minutes to verify Bioshock's files and in the end it found 5 missing files.  A few seconds later Steam downloaded the missing files and Bioshock now works.  So, lesson learned. Do the simple steps first and then worry about going ape shit with deleting/reinstalling/etc.

MMO Developers: Read this, learn from it

Gamasutra has an article posted wherein CCP outlines their design philosophy behind EVE Online's single-server design. It's an amazing read and no blurb I can quote from it does it justice.  But I'll throw a teaser out to get you to click on over:

The real solution to this problem is to embrace the notion that in an MMO, just like in any other social network, players are the content. Once that is accepted as a fundamental design guideline, it becomes easier to navigate the challenges involved in creating and maintaining a single shard architecture and actually gives the advantage to that design model.

Torchlight 2 Announced by @runicgames

Torchlight 2 has been officially announced by Runic Games.  See the official site here; pretty pictures from PC Gamer here.

Torchlight II ignites the franchise created and developed by Runic Games in this exciting sequel to the award-winning Action RPG Torchlight. Runic Games, located in Seattle, is a veteran team composed of the designers and leads of projects like Diablo, Diablo II, Mythos, Fate, and Torchlight, which won the Game Developer’s Choice Award for Best Debut of 2009.

Torchlight II is richly textured with our unique art style, drawing from traditional animation influences and expanding on the whimsical and quirky world captured in the original Torchlight. We aim for that broad appeal that’s appropriate for older kids, but is really intended for the kid in every adult.

CO-OP ACTION

The most exciting new feature of Torchlight II is the multiplayer element. Play with your friends, and use the free peer-to-peer matchmaking service to meet new players of a similar level and interest. Together players will discover expansive randomized outdoor areas and deep ominous caverns; random instanced and persistent dungeons, a huge variety of all new monsters and villains, endless variations of loot to find, and quests to complete. Players journey through the perilous Overworld, enjoying all new weather features, time of day events, and a rich and cunning story to drive gameplay.

BACKSTORY

Beyond the town of Torchlight lies a world shrouded in adventure and mystery. Guardian-warrior Syl appears in a prophetic dream, summoning the player to the Estherian Steppes. There, you meet with the Destroyer and soon venture across the continent of Vilderan, an exotic frontier besieged by forces of evil. A discovery unfolds, that the Alchemist, following his conquest of dark ember, disappeared on his quest to defeat the unknown corrupted force responsible for destroying the mystical race of Estherians. Aided by Syl, the remaining Estherian Guardians, and clues left behind by the missing Alchemist, you will find yourself battling a powerful enemy that threatens to unravel the elements of the entire world.

Runic Games will release Torchlight II initially as a digital download in Spring of 2011.

KEY FEATURES

* Multi-player – Play with your friends over a local area network, or over the Internet. A free matchmaking peer-to-peer service lets you make new friends for exciting co-op play.
* Customizable Characters – Players create and customize a character from one of four classes available and choose an animal companion. Through cosmetic, class, and gender choices, skill path decisions, and the treasures they acquire, each character can be custom-tailored to each player’s needs.
* Moddability – Torchlight II will release with an updated version of TorchEd, the Torchlight editor. Players have the option to create their own mods, adding even more content to the world. You and your friends can download the same mod and play together!
* New User Interface – Torchlight II boasts an entirely new, improved user interface, designed to be easier than ever for new players to pick up and play. Thanks to this intuitive interface, players have immediate access to a rich and varied world, with little experience necessary.
* Overworld Areas – Torchlight II has large randomized overworld areas to explore with weather, time of day cycles, and random events that provide players with even more content to experience.
* Random Dungeons – Delve into randomly generated dungeons within the game at any time for extra experience and rare loot. Dungeons in Torchlight II have even more branching paths to explore with friends filled with random events, rewards and dangers.
* Retirement System – Once characters are sufficiently leveled up, they can “retire” and bestow specific benefits and perks onto new characters.
* Pets – Players choose a pet to accompany them. Pets level up along with the player, and help in battle, learn spells, carry items, and perform a variety of support services.
* Fishing – Fishing returns in the sequel! Players can take a break from the high-energy pace of adventuring to relax by one of the many fishing holes and see what they can catch. Fish have unique benefits for the player and pet, while a number of other rewards can also be discovered.

I'm slightly confused, because I thought their MMOG was coming next, not another co-op/single-player game. Or I'm not understanding exactly what Torchlight 2 is!?

Microsoft Surface > iPad for boardgames

I was mildly intrigued by the idea of boardgames played virtually on a tablet such as the iPad. However, Microsoft's Surface continues to impress me, this time showing off Settlers of Catan.

Watch the video:



Now, some people may ask what advantage the Surface has over something like the iPad? Aren't they both just touchscreen interfaces and isn't the Surface super expensive? Yes, to both questions, but both are besides the points.

The iPad and like devices are touchscreen, but that's it. The Surface incorporates cameras within the screen to identify tags on different objects. That is how in the video both the real dice and card blinds work. That's the benefit of the Surface and why it's the better platform for virtual board gaming: it is meant to be used with real objects, not just virtual.

That leaves only the price at play and the Surface is expensive. But then again it is marketed as something that would be installed in a cafe or arcade of some sort, not a home use gadget (yet!). I really think Microsoft has a much better chance at long term success with the Surface vs. the flame of the moment tablets (which like netbooks, I guarantee will burn out soon enough).

July 2010: What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying

July was a laid back month for gaming. I started off with Elder Scrolls and ended up playing Bad Company 2.

I have embedded the new What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying spreadsheet for June below. The overall spreadsheet (includes previous months) can be found here.

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Game of the Month


Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Cost: $8.50
Played: 8 hours
3-words: lame, but bearable

I picked up a copy of Oblivion on sale via Steam. I like the game, but at the same time I don't like the game. Until I included some mods, it was an unbearable experience. The first few quests I went on in the game were bugged and without the console and UESPWiki, I would never have figured out what to do. Also, I can't stop accidentally clicking on random objects and getting flagged as a thief. Oh, and the default UI sucks balls.

Fortunately, I did install some mods and the game is bearable now. I have a better UI, better graphics, and the Unofficial Patch fixes TONS of quest bugs (pretty much every bug I had encountered so far).

I find the main storyline to be about as exciting as nails on a chalkboard. It is 100% generic fantasy and a hero with a thousand faces type stuff. But that's OK, because I can travel off the beaten path and explore an amazing world. It actually boggles my mind: they built this great world that's FUN to explore (a rarity in single player games), but couldn't build a decent story around it.

My end goal is to hit the Shivering Isles expansion, where I hear its a bit more fun.

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/Played

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

I've had a renewed interest in BFBC2 this month and it dominated my /played. I've set some goals and am trying to unlock some of the harder achievements such as getting a bronze/silver/gold with all weapons. Coincidentally, unlocking this achievements gives a ton of experience, so my level is increasing nicely.

MtG:Duels of the Planeswalker

I've had a sick 11-month old all month (actually longer than that). DotP takes a dedicated block of time to enjoy and be fair to other players online. My son wakes up constantly during the nights, when I usually play, so that has limited my DotP play time.

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/Paid

Total spent this Month: $1.87
My Value Rating: Unknown

I bought Freedom Force as part of the Steam July 4th sale. For $1.87 I don't think I could go wrong.