Oedipus_Tex

I am on The Secret World now. I like it a lot, while at the same time I have a creeping feeling I won't be staying around forever.

In terms of atmosphere, it's tops. I love that it's not a typical fantasy MMO. The character creation is just okay (and wow is the in-game shopping interface terrible).

On the really negative side, IMO, while puzzles are fine in theory, puzzles within an MMO atmosphere mean running over huge expanses of physical space at a very slow rate, and constantly fighting off enemies. I have died dozens of times not because fights are really hard but because I am so frequently chased down by enemies while just trying to get from place to place without stopping to pull each enemy individually and spend 45 seconds to kill them one by one.

I thought the first zone was very well done for the most part. The zombies are spaced out enough that you can (mostly) avoid them. The second zone has enemies all over the place and constantly sends you through them, and its the SAME enemies over and over and over. The game really needs to branch out more IMO.

There are a few major highlights. There was one mission where I got sent into a parking garage. The lights go out, plunging me into darkness, with the only light available coming from a headlamp. I confess I'm a nervous person in general, but the first time a zombie popped out from behind a parked car in the darkness and lassoed by character I jumped about 50 fifty feet.

The "puzzle" missions themselves can be really hit or miss. I mostly end up skipping them because I find the solutions WAAAAY too obscure and often counter intuitive. For example, in one, I was given an object in my inventory and vague instructions that said I needed to "decode" it. I was somehow supposed to know that to do this, I needed to first double click another object in my inventory (which contains about 70 items which are almost impossible to tell apart). Moreover, this object was in my inventory from a previous quest. I did enjoy games like Maniac Mansion back in the day but The Secret World is just all over the place in terms of what is fair game to include in the "puzzle." If the puzzle at least gave you some basic parameters (items in your inventory, for example) they would be much more satisfying. The terrible, terrible inventory management system makes anything involving items really difficult to manage and it's often not even clear that a mission has provided you with an object.

The Secret World is also really big on instant death mechanics. Holy crap. I have lost count of the number of missions where with no telegraphing whatsoever, I have been one shot by touching an electrified object, or (in one case) a boss with a 4000 HP attack that I'm supposed to use line of sight to dodge. How do you find out you need to line of sight it to progress? You have to either cheat and read ahead of time, or die to it. A few of the puzzles are better, but there are so many that rely on those sorts of cheap mechanics. It's not so much about the fact that they instantly kill me, as the fact that in this "puzzle based" game, there is no hint given that you will instantly until you encounter it (for example, the boss with the instant death attack just plays a purple cloud animation before it goes off, and I only found out what it was and how to avoid it because of the message boards).

The game does show a lot of promise. I just hope it lasts long enough to really expand.

I have no insider information, but my guess is that the actual lines of code and resource files that implement CoH features are probably owned by NCSoft.

For me, a blend of Diablo 2 and Neverwinter Nights would set a basic ideal model.

I don't care whether an overworld exists or not. It doesn't in D2. It does in CoX1, but mainly as a hub. But in terms of development focus, I would concentrate on making the core of the game 1-8 to player instances, with the following characteristics:
- Support for dynamic lighting
- Support for recolorable tiles within maps (floor, walls etc)
- Support for "costuming" an instance (changing posters, doors, light fixtures, etc)
- Stong scripting support for mission writing, as per Neverwinter Nights (which allows script events to be tied to a trigger, a clickable, an NPC, or the map, with hooks for OnDeath, OnAwareOfPlayer, OnPulse, OnCreatureEnter, OnCreatureExit, and so on).


For handling the social element:
- "Social" maps like Pocket D and Atlas Park for collaborating, with a player limit of 300 or however many can fit. These maps have an interface that makes interaction with other players easier.
- Chat rooms from which you can launch a new instance or mission. You can recruit from here, and view other peoples characters. See Diablo 2.
- Ability to see who is playing what instances from the "chat" utility. See Diablo 2 again. Games can be made private for people who don't want to share.
- In general, little focus on the menial task of running to a mission door. Once the team is recruited in the chat utility, you can launch the mission instantly. However, the mission itself may involve an instance where you need to run through the outdoor area to get to (or locate) the warehouse or whatever if running to the door is relevant
- Message boards can be read within the game. A small thing but IMO potentially effective at reinforcing community.



Some other possible specifics and wishes:
- If possible, XML-based power and class definitions. (One parameter could be scriptResource, which points to a script to be used for handling more delicate
elements that are too complicated for the base XML.)
- Ability to summon characters you are currently not playing as allies in the place of pets, using rough rules for character cloning (and putting some limitations on abilities)

I don't know about their profits.

What I do know is that if you're planning to sunset a service, it might be a good idea to make sure your susbidiaries are in the loop enough that they aren't hyping that same service up. There is a graceful way to sign off and there is the total mess NCSoft created for themselves here.

A lot of the fighting back and forth seems to be focusing on the financial incentives and not on the way they did it. I don't care about boycotts or getting revenge. I do still think this has made them look incompetent.

To be honest, I don't have a lot of hope about "saving" this game. The mode I'm in now is trying to set a bottom line for companies about this mishandling and why it is NOT acceptable to accept payment from players for expansion packs on week and announce a three month cutoff date for the game a week later. NCSoft will get my sympathy when they show an ounce of respect for me or the investments I've made in them.

In GW2 you can at least use spaces to create a first and last name. I got in on day 2 and ended up with names that weren't completely awful, but they weren't what I really wanted. I picked up The Secret World recently and not only does it have the global name requirement, you can't use spaces, and you are allowed only one dash. It took me around a day to find a name I could live with, by visiting various websites and compiling massive lists of possibilities.

Neither game as far as I can tell has a mechanic to let you "test" name availability before you generate the character, so because I felt different appearances should go with different names, I tested with a generic character until I got a hit, then backed up, deleted the character, and regenerated with the look I wanted while hauling butt back through the process so I wouldn't lose the name while I decided on my look.


RE: GW2 leveling, I can echo Remus' comments about feeling underleveled and stuck. I got stuck in the Human zone at around level 9. I'm about 10 to 12 hours in and am around level 11 or 12. I haven't found hearts that are my level, so my leveling experience has been sloooowly running toward any events that happen (and arriving in time to get a silver or bronze level award) and picking up onions and lettuce. I guess I could try to craft things, in the same way that I guess I could try to play Farmville. The aesthetics of the game and the nature of the events are so Rift-redux that it's hard to keep my eyes from glossing over. I have a powerful and nagging sensation that I've done all of this before.

The heart quests themselves are pure WoW and Rift, except with more forgiveable conditions. Where in WoW you might have 1 quest where you need to kill 10 wolves and another where you feed 3 cows, in GW2 you have both combined into one quest. The event system is exactly like Rift except with (much needed) player level scaling. However, exactly like Rift, the events happen so frequently that other players tend to just ignore them after a while.


RE: combat, at some point over the last 5 years, game developers have decided that every MMO player wants to play a WoW Rogue. You can see this trend everywhere. The thing is, these games are also still enamored with the tightly controlled DPS model of WoW that allows "balanced" raiding and PVP. What this means in essence is that all of these button inputs are really just a prerequisite for dealing the same amount of damage you would have back when powers were just a click. Same thing with "dodging." I feel like I need to master the controls not so I can perform exceptionally well, but so that I can do the standard amount of DPS and mitigation that was pre-calculated as the approved amount of output for my class.

I'm surprised no one really talks about Rift anymore. Well, not "surprised," but no one really talks about it. It reminds me of GW2 powerfully. I wonder if they ever found a way to make their events matter more. I see some potential solutions in GW2, and a lot of the same issues.\


Meanwhile: what is the deal with these next gen MMOs and global character names across all servers? TSW is the major offender here but GW isn't too far behind. Call me crazy but IMO it shouldn't take 50 tries to get an alias you're okay with possibly being stuck with for the next few years.

FWIW I finally tried Secret World (on the recommendation of an ex-CoHer I ran into last night). I'm prepared to give it the weirdest of compliments: IMO it has the best sound design of an MMO I've played in years, at least so far. I don't want to give too many spoilers but the music and sound effects are just so effective for setting the tone of a "horror/suspense movie." The enemies I've encountered so far also seem to attack you in big groups sort of like CoH, but I haven't made it that far yet.

There might be something about this game that ends up not "doing" it for me in the long run (the character creation tool is just "okay" but at least your abilities aren't tied to your outfit), but at least initially its been very refreshing. For me, Guild Wars was like walking into a revamped Rift and (at least so far) I haven't been able to stay logged into that for more than 30 minutes at a time. YMMV.

IMO Guild Wars, Rift, and WoW all more or less have similar worlds. There are some specifics that differ but you could yank any of the classes or races from one of those games and place it in the other game and it would work just as well, with fairly few modifications. The world aesthetics are full of sweeping vistas littered with "Renaissance fair" towns that co-exist alongside improbable robotics.

I don't know what label to put on it. I'm tempted to just say it's its own style--the "WoW-ian magitech genre." Magitech is certainly not new, but IMO the.. uh.. "style viewport" of those three games caters to a specific flavor of anacronism. WoW is a bit "zanier" in its approach but its basically the same thing.

IMO the genres are totally different in that Katy Perry is "totally different" from Britney Spears. I don't mean any disrespect in that statement, it just feels like a subtle distinction.

Kind of a bizarre topic to vote on. Sort of like putting to a public vote: Should video games exist?

And a whole bunch of people would vote No on that too.

(Semi unrelated side note: I think it's funny that a number of people who think video games are silly think its completely normal to scream at a television when sports are on.)

I think it would be helpful to clearly indicate which of the two different or three different discussions everyone is responding to here. I'm guility of glossing them over myself.



One question involved legal action for handling being charged for services not provided, e.g. being charged for 12 months of service when only 3 more will be provided. IMO this is just a standard service dispute, no different than a dispute with your cable company or Ticketmaster. Again I don't have much to say about this, because its not my money, and not my place to tell anyone what their money is worth. In my completely not-legal-advice opinion, there isn't much of a case here. It just looks really bad in the public relations sense for NCSoft to cancel a game and not have answers to such a basic question.



The other question involves the probability of NCSoft sending you a Cease and Desist order for reusing your City of Heroes characters elsewhere. (And to which I was primarily directing my latter responses.)

I am NOT a lawyer. I am a content creator who has consulted lawyers and publishers over this question out of similar concerns. I am also a former volunteer small-time creator of multiplayer content (in which role I personally voluntarily signed away some copyright to a commercial game under a work-for-hire contract, as described elsewhere in this thread).

IMO the biggest risk to someone worried about their CoH characters is not NCSoft coming after you with an IP claim on your character. It's that creating a character in an MMO is likely not sufficient proof of copyright for either NCSoft or for you. For example, someone could grab the banner in my post below and create a comic series starring 4 or 5 of those characters, and there's probably little I could do about it. (I say "probably" because as Arcanaville explains, it's not possible to bank on a for-sure answer.)

Anyway, my main advice is not really legal, its practical. If you are concerned someone might steal your character, do not showcase it in an MMO. It's not that NCSoft is likely to send you a Cease and Desist letter, its that you are showing your ideas using a medium that establishes an extremely weak copyright or trademark claim at best. Only put anything into the game you're okay with possibly being lifted from you.

Deleting the character from the game likely does not provide you any extra protection in any case.

Not sure about graphical games. But for some text games, yes.

For example, the game Dragonrealms is absolutely enormous. Some areas are highly populated. But there are areas that are both extremely remote and difficult to access (they may require skill checks to even get to). It's possible to disappear there for a large span of time if you don't want to be found. The game is semi-realistic in that that can be dangerous, and you wouldn't want to live out there forever (you'd need to return to semi-civilization to regain favor from the gods if you happened to die out there a lot). It might also be helpful to know a person or two out there, because there are risks. But persons dedicated to role playing that style can (and have) pulled it off.

There are also a couple of wilderness areas you wouldn't want to stay in. I recall an extremely dangerous area that forced players to crawl on their knees, (a combat penalty among some other things), that is crawling with wolves, and that delivers nerve damage over time. Also some generally just really scary areas. Traversing them is a mark of pride among players dedicated to exploring.


PS it may be helpful to add why someone might not want to be found. The game has consent-based PVP. What this means is that there are no actual mechanics that prevent players from attacking each other. Players can technically attack each other at any time. However, the game's policy states that you cannot just run around killing people. The other player has to implicitly consent to the attack. For example, pickpocketing another player is considered to grant consent. So is being a Necromancer and being "outted" in town. If either of these things happen, you may need to take off running in case the person decides to try to kill you. That's when you hope your knowledge of the landscape and ability to climb and swim is better than theirs.

Back when Force Field used to make you cast shields individually, if someone was being particularly annoying, I would occasionally intentionally place the "elemental" shield on them twice and skip the "s/l" one. Works best if you only skip them occasionally, right when they are charging into a big pack of enemies.