New World: My hopes for territory control revamp!

 Having gone through the war cycle in New World recently (we won a war, got a territory, and then promptly lost that territory in a follow up war) it had me thinking a lot about the territory control and war system which is slated for a full revamp in Season 3 later this year.  Here are some hopes I have for the new system.

 The most important aspect for the new system is to get rid of the current PvP mission model to push a territory to war.  The mission objectives are static and so freaking boring.  There is also no real way to defend against a coordinated push. Also after the first wave of kills players are not worth any rewards for killing until their rewards timer resets so it gets tiring real fast as you can't ever stop players and you get no reward for stopping them.

 The dev team has hinted that the new system will be a timed event and focus on concentrating players into the open world zone that is being contested.  Control points/towers were mentioned. I am hopeful this means lots of open world PvP and long enough windows that players can get into the action without having to set a clock but not too long that players feel like they have to treat the game as a second life.

 One of the other things with the current territory influence mechanic is who gets the declare the war at the end of it.  While most often its just one company pushing a territory these days there are times when its more than one and the one that gets to declare and do the war is a toss up.  That is a lot of boring PvP mission grinding for nothing so I am never surprised when players don't want to do it. The root issue isn't that declaring the war is a toss up; the problem is there is only one war as the result of the action.  

 My hope with the new system is a tiered set of war brackets where every company should be able to declare war and get matched up (or not) with a defending company.  While one company owns the territory it should be a faction-wide event when it comes to the war.  If I'm a small company that contributed I should be able to get a war and fill out a roster against the opposing faction.

 My vision would be a set of tiers of company wars.  The top tier is for the faction control of the territory and governed by the winning company.  The lower tiered wars would be for a slice of the territory pie; basically wars would be for a stake of the prize.  I would even be open to the idea of a company in an enemy faction winning a stake in another factions territory; though at a reduced percent if their faction isn't the owning faction.

 Anyway they do it they need to make war more accessible to more players.  The only way to avoid the "war logger" (players that only log in for wars and often have several accounts to get around account restrictions) is to ensure the wars all happen at the same time so players have to pick where they are fighting for that war.  

 I'd love to see a war calendar where a new territory is going into war every three days and the opposite day is for territory control fights and invasions.  Then if you win a stake in a territory you can rest longer than a couple days before you are cycling back up for defense.  The current pace a territory can be pushed is exhausting.

 In summary: make pushing territory into conflict an event and ensure more players can get into wars while spreading out the rewards for territory control to more companies.  Thank you for attending my Ted talk.

So it begins... again!

 It's the second week of Blaugust 2023 so we are moving onto "Introduce Yourself Week".  To kick things off let's take a look back at my first post on this blog: So it begins...

The date: Sunday, May 29, 2005 (18 years ago!)
The topic: MMORPGs

 The opening paragraph sticks with me to this day and I consider it some of the best text I've ever assembled.

 This blog has officially started. It has been a process of thought pulling at my mind for a while. I play these games we call MMORPGs, but I don't even know if "play" is the correct word to describe it anymore. I live and breath these games. They are more than an escape from my mediocre life. Fun is no longer the driving factor. Social interaction with like minded nerds and geeks; people whom live through their in game characters as though it was version 2.0 of themselves.

 The words are as true today as they were back then.  The major change for me, to be honest, is that I've grown up in the 18 years since I started this blog.  I was single with way more time than I knew what to do with back then.  Now I have a family (my oldest is starting high school this week!!!!).  Then or now though I love my MMORPGs!

 I've also chilled out a bit from those early days.  As noted in my first blog post there was a lot of energy devoted to "the game of choice! Room for debate among the flooded market of MMORPGs and the denizens that inhabit them. From baseless flame fests on the far reaches of the most bizarre gaming message boards; to developer's beloved Customer Feedback Forms." While I still feel passionately for or against certain games the idea of a "flame fest" is no longer appealing.  I am much more likely these days to just "let it go" or be positive in support of games others enjoy that I do not (gasp!).

 Ironically I am just not as heartless as I once was.  Double irony that my name was never really meant to be about being heartless; I was really just into Kingdom Hearts at the time I had to change from my old nickname.  In Kingdom Hearts the bad guys are referred to as "heartless" and they looked cool so I went with it.

 And so it begins... again... and now you know a little more about who I was and who I am now :)

Featuring Cheshiregaming

 On this fine Blaugust day we jumped down to another newbie to Blaugust 2023 and checked in on Cheshiregaming.

 The post I jumped into was Bloodstone Fen Meta which made me a bit nostalgic for Guild Wars 2.  Not for Bloodstone Fen but just for the "nice little touches" that Guild Wars 2 has to offer.  Most notably from a blogging perspective the ability to share information like a map waypoint that a player can use in game is cool.  So many neat little quality of life things that Guild Wars 2 features; wish some other games would follow suit!

 If you are looking for some Guild Wars 2 blogging then keep on digging into Cheshiregaming.

Sexy OPR win!

 

Oh snap; here we go! Palia beta!

 Here we go!

It's TiPalia time!

 On the fourth day of Blaugust 2023... something something something... Tipa shares some thoughts on Palia's closed beta.  It's TiPalia time!

 Tipa starts out comparing Palia to Free Realms:

"Free Realms, in particular, I miss. Like Gatheryn (which won’t really mean anything because I doubt few ever actually played it), Free Realms was a collection of minigames that were based off popular arcade games and casual PC/Mobile games." - Tipa

 Well I happen to be one of the folks that did play Free Realms (see my tagged posts) but I have no idea what Gatheryn is/was.  I started skeptical with Free Realms but then enjoyed a few hours before throwing my hands up at the number of times the game asked for a credit card (oh SOE how I miss ragging on you -- little did we know you were just ahead of your time).

 Tipa continues to discuss how Palia is less "do anything you want" like Free Realms and more guided as someone would expect from a traditional theme park MMORPG.  Players get quests and go about the non-combat equivalent of "kill ten rats" (Palia has no combat outside of hunting creatures like deer).

 From the quests players move onto gathering materials to then build various things on their plot.  Building things requires materials, blueprints, and time.  Lots of time from Tipa's account.  As Palia described the game after her initial few hours:

But right now, just a couple hours in, it reminds me most of EverQuest 2’s crafting. You go outside and mine, gather, fish and hunt, then do some crafting.

  I have some more general thoughts on Palia which I am debating whether to share.  Why am I debating?  Because I got my closed beta invite this morning so figure I would be best served to actually try it before saying anything further (even though my comments are out there in various places).

 

Perilous MMO Tropes

 Roger Edwards (aka Mr Peril) of Contains Moderate Peril has been posting about MMO tropes.  For the third day of Blaugust I sat down and read a few of these trope posts and I have some thoughts.

The posts:

• Death
• Running All the Way
• "Kill Ten Rats" and Fetch Quests

 First; these are all great bathroom reads. Second; Roger is an amazing blogger.  Platitudes out of the way let's get to the tropes.

“The MMO genre is rife with its own set of tropes; recurring themes and motifs that have become established and ubiquitous. All of which are ideal material for a hastily produced, lazily conceived, recurring blog post”.

Death

  If there is an MMO trope that encapsulates the history of MMOs it is certainly death mechanics.  In Roger's post he covers the history of death in MMORPGs: from the "corpse runs" of early games like Everquest to the modern "Death is now treated as a minor penalty that temporarily inconveniences you." as Roger puts it.

 In my older age (40+) I tend to lean towards the modern inconvenience approach and I think it is appropriate for today's market.  Every year it seems like a new MMO project gets started talking about the "good ole' days" of corpse runs and death penalties.  None of those MMOs end up going anywhere.

 Death, as outlined by Roger, is a "means by which to teach the player that they’re doing something wrong and that they need to rethink their strategy."  Slapping a penalty on top of that creates friction and friction is what frustrates players.  Frustrated players don't stick around to play a game because there is a dozen other games on the market that will better respect their time. 

 Losing is enough of a penalty for most players.  Games would be wise to let us take our lump and get on playing again.

Running All the Way

 Running is an MMO trope and like Death it has a history with MMOs.  Large worlds and long travel times were a feature in the early days.  Now long travel times are just an inconvenience.  Roger makes a solid point when looking at single player games.

 "Single player games seem to handle travel differently and certainly have some advantages. I envy the fact that a game like Grand Theft Auto V or Red Dead Redemption 2 provide the players with access to public transport."

 The answer for MMOs doesn't always have to be to add mounts and "public transport" is a great concept.  Some games do it; there were flight paths in World of Warcraft that are the equivalent of Roger's Red Dead Redemption 2 reference "riding the train between towns in RDR2 as it is very restful and highlights for a few minutes the detail of the open world."

  Public transport or player-controlled mounts (which are really just faster travel) the key is the same as death: don't add friction. Friction will piss gamers off and they will walk (ha!) from the game.  There are too many great games on the market to be bored to death traveling in a game. 

"Kill Ten Rats" and Fetch Quests

 I almost spit out my coffee when I read this:

"The MMORPG genre is a curious subset of video games. Not only is it predicated on violence against the individual, institutions and “others”, as so many video games are but also species-specific genocide and general mass extinction of fauna and flora."

 There is no truer statement to encapsulate what modern MMORPGs expect of their players.  Most games are designed around the concept of wiping out entire generations of enemies and then doing it all over again.  And again. And again. And again.  And again. And... you get the idea: grind!

 Some may not know this but Ultima Online launched originally with a model where "mobs" were limited and once killed they didn't just respawn.  If a deer was killed and harvest that was it.  In addition there was a predator/prey system; kill a rabbit and a wolf goes hungry.  Kill the wolf and rabbits could take over the world.

 As you may expect it didn't last long.  Player's killed everything in sight and the system fell apart to be replaced by the never-ending respawn system that is the norm.

 In regards to "kill ten rats" I do have a personal preference.  I would like to see game focus more on smaller but more difficult encounters.  Leave the "kill waves of enemies in a single blow" to the Path of Exile's of the world.  Move away from grinding endless respawns of the same creature.  Instead make me work to defeat one enemy and figure out a way to still reward me for trying even if I die.

From mastodon.social to gamepad.club

My Mastodon account @heartlessgamer@mastodon.social is now moved to @heartlessgamer@gamepad.club

I am digging this Fediverse thing and being able to move around and keep followers as I go!

Gamer Lady Plays New World

 For the second day of Blaugust 2023 we are checking in on Gamer Lady who logged back in to play some New World.

I am happy to say that Amazon has made some significant changes to New World and I’m pleasantly surprised at how much fun I’ve been having. 

 Gamer Lady is still in the leveling process (level 38) so is not in the end game loops.  She is also going through the updated main story quest which she is giving positive nods towards.  Personally I didn't like the changed questline as it's very different than the original, but glad to see others enjoying it.

 I also have to chuckle a bit as early in the post she explains "you’ll know that inventory management is a big deal for me when it comes to enjoying a game" and then later "The gear drops also feel generous and I’ve been able to pick up and try out every type of weapon in the game as I’ve done quests."  

 Oh my sweet summer child! Eventually that generosity of drops turns into inventory management hell as in the end game New World drops so much crap that takes up space and has to be dealt with that there is no doubt a number of players that have quit over having to deal with inventory management!

 Anyways; Blaugust rolls on.  Jump over and say hey to Gamer Lady.

On the first day of Blaugust... new bloggers!

 On the first day of Blaugust my true love gave to me... a brand new blogger!  Part of Blaugust is to encourage other's to get into blogging.  So today I rolled the dice and scrolled down the Blaugust "newbie" list to find a participant just getting their feet wet.

 That brought me to BogusMeatFactory and their blog The Video Game Obscura. You can read their introduction blog post here.  And what do we have here...

So what does an overly optimistic enthusiast that still plays video games breaching forty years old care about?

 Yes! Another 40 something game blogger!  Welcome to the freaking club BogusMeatFactory.