Come to Gaze Upon Me, Have You?

Two things that bother me:
1. Essential game functions that can only be performed with arcane /commands. This is a sign of a poor interface. Star Wars Galaxies had about a hundred of these, if I remember correctly.

2. The use of these /commands in forum posts. You know, when someone makes a post and the next person replies with "/boggle" or somesuch. It is ten times worse when they are used in spoken conversation.

However, since this was an EQ2 blog, I have used culture-appropriate terminology. Yes, if it was not obvious, I am no longer posting here. I will explain why. Last year, I started a game design consulting company. I do basically what I have done here--pick apart games and game concepts and figure out how to make them better. It takes a lot of work to keep it going, which gives me less time to write (for free, anyway), and certainly no time to keep playing EQ2. In addition, it's not a good idea for me to talk about issues that directly involve my clients or their competitors.

I've said in the past that the whole trade skill system in EQ2 should be scrapped, preferably in favor of some sort of mini-game that is specific to each crafting skill. This would make trade skills more fun and less susceptible to bots, both of which are severe problems right now.

Anyway, that will mostly likely never happen. So, looking at the current system, there is one obvious improvement to be made: instant recipe filtering. You would have a couple text boxes where the user can type things in, and an item box next to each text box where the user can drop an item. When something is typed into the "Product" box, all recipe names containing that string would be displayed. Same thing for "Ingredient" box. Or you can just drop a product or ingredient in your inventory (it also remains there) into the item boxes for the same effect.

So let's say you had some extra pristine tanned stretch of leathers in your inventory. You could type in "tanned stretch of leather" into the ingredient box, and all recipes that use that component would be displayed. Now you have a much easier time finding a recipe you can use.

Or perhaps you are looking for a certain recipe--say, "steel rapier". It will take you a good amount of time and effort to find that recipe in your list of hundreds, if you even have it. Allowing a search/filter, where you can just type in "steel rapier" and immediately see the recipe, would simplify and speed up this process significantly.

One of my earlier posts talked about how difficult it was to provide enough engrossing content to keep players entertained for a long period of time. This difficulty, in my opinion, is the primary reason that MMO players get bored and quit, chase stats, or stir up trouble.

I also talked about some rather normal, unexciting, and uncreative means of squeezing the most out of your content creation dollar. Now it's time to get into the ways to "cheat" your way past these financial limitations.

One tactic is to get players to provide content for you. This can be done as directly as in Neverwinter Nights, where developers give players a toolset and let them create add-ons for the game, or as subtlely as making direct competition between players part of the game content, as World of Warcraft has done with Battlegrounds (Battlegrounds, for those three or four of you who are in the dark, is basically WoW's take on Counterstrike). Both of these methods intrigue me, especially pitting players against each other (because this kind of content creation can be done by anyone, not just those intelligent and motivated enough to learn and use a toolset).

Role-playing games are primarily about variety, and they need to offer the player the opportunity to explore new places, interact with new characters, progress though storylines, etc. These aspects of the game are what necessitate such huge amounts of content. On the other hand, games like chess or Battlefield 1942 don't need nearly as much hand-designed content to offer the same amount of replayability because of two things: 1) the game rules and mechanics allow for a near-limitless variety of actions and 2) the unpredictability (and possibly, intelligence) of a human opponent's actions keep the game fresh and challenging.

In addition to the aforementioned World of Warcraft, Guild Wars also uses player vs. player combat to keep its players entertained, although it is not a subscription game. Most MMORPGs do rely heavily on the appeal of social interaction (another way for players to provide content), but for many players, chatting and making online friends are not appealing features, just necessary evils that must be endured for the sake of playing and advancing in a persistent-character game.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

There are ranked and unranked Battlefield 2 servers, with ranked servers hosted by EA and available for a fee to anyone else.

The difference between the two types of servers is that on ranked servers, your performances earn you rank (obvious) and allow you to unlock new weapon kits for each of the different roles (classes) in the game.

Of course, people are doing what any EQ-seasoned powergamer worth his salt would have been doing from day 1: powerleveling their stats.

Step 1: Find a medic buddy
Step 2: Find a victim on the other team (willing victims preferred, but not required)
Step 3: Kill victim (with a knife, preferably, to conserve ammo)
Step 4: Have medic buddy revive victim
Step 5: Repeat steps 3-4 for several hours
Step 6: Woot! Ding! Grats! LOL!

Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? The only thing it needs to be competitive with most MMOs is to make it so that you have to stab the enemy a couple dozen times before he dies. And maybe make the enemy a goblin or something.

I don't want to go on the cart.

Between moving, starting a new company, and getting ready for a few weeks in Europe, I've had my hands full. No time for EQII, much less the ol' blog.

Well, maybe just a little bit of time. I noticed that a lot of the loot that was previously group-only is now available as solo loot. I've also noticed that there are some non-raid-loot items out there that are substantially different from other items of the same tier. That is good. I'm still not seeing much besides the same old stat bonuses, though. After Diablo 2 raised the bar with all sorts of interesting items, it's tough to settle for the rather plain loot from EQ2, Guild Wars, and so on.

In other news, I made $13 selling 50 gold on the Station Exchange. The realization that I could exchange my Norrath currency for $2000 U.S. currency has yet to be counterbalanced by a good "integrity of the game" argument. Supporting it, however, are the recent purchase of $1500 worth of furniture and a severe case of techno-lust for the Dell 2405FPW.

The "Pre-Launch" for Station Exchange started yesterday. I went ahead and put up a couple things for auction. Very easy and convenient, although it is a lot more expensive than similar services. I think that if they lower the prices a little, the competition will soon be out of the EQII items business. Supposedly, the number of people wanting to move to the Exchange servers has been very high, so I expect to see more than 2 Exchange-enabled servers when the service launches for real.

There was a Producer's Letter put out not too long ago. The summary: "Hey...all that stuff you asked for in Beta...well, we don't think it's stupid and unnecessary anymore. Now give us money for our next adventure pack."

Scheduled for September.

Here's the link: http://everquest.station.sony.com/dod/

And the marketing copy:

On the surface, as the battle between Firionia Vie and Lanys T’Vyl continues to rage throughout the lands of Nektulos, an expedition of Qeynosian miners breached the barrier of Darkhollow. Only then was the first werewolf seen and the first human bitten. Now a new evil begins to emerge from the underground; far beneath the surface of Norrath. Join EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow and journey into a world of immorality and devastation, a world that has existed purely as a vast wilderness filled with intelligent predators, destruction and disease. Go forth with courage as the terror that lies deep within these grounds must not be allowed to spread to the surface – to Norrath.

EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow will have you adventuring in raw, bleak caverns and facing the most formidable monsters yet! Featuring 5 new feral predators, spectacular new underground environments and countless new missions, raids and events!

Monster Missions: Play EverQuest as you never have before and see Norrath through the eyes of some of its fearsome and powerful creatures as you step into their form to do battle against their ancient foes! Change into a creature with different abilities from your own to experience. Experience EverQuest lore first hand through the eyes of another character in Monster Missions and unlock the ability to use more powerful monsters!

Spirit Shrouds: Adventure with your friends of any levels. Spirit Shrouds will allow
you to play as a creature at any level below your own. So don the form of a lower level creature and join your friends in battle while earning experience for your normal character!

Evolving Items: Earn new items that advance as you use them, becoming more powerful over time and unlocking hidden abilities and wield intelligent items with a personality of their own!

New Missions: Battle your way through over 60 new missions.

New Creatures, New Environments and New Encounters: Over 30 unique creatures and 7 Zones, 15 Small Instances, with a re-envisioned Nektulos Forest.

New Crafting, Spells, Items and More: New items and tradeskill recipes! Also new spells and alternate advancement abilities

Spirit shrouds are obviously a variation on the EQ2 mentor system, and the monster missions sound very similar to the arena combat planned for the EQ2 expansion (changing into creatures).

The evolving items feature sounds interesting to me for two reasons. One, the "personality" aspect means that items have something to offer besides stats; if this is done right, it will decrease the incentive for users to play the number-crunching game and will increase immersion. Two, it relieves users of the burden of having to play in un-fun ways to upgrade their items. By that, I mean that EQ normally requires you to repeat actions (raids, camping, grinding, etc.) dozens or hundreds of times for you to upgrade a particular item. Often, these actions are fun the first few times but grow tedious after a while. If items grow more powerful as you play in whatever way you find enjoyable, then you can have fun and advance at the same time, which is a combination all too rare in MMOs.