You’ll recall that yesterday I wrote about Everquest 2’s new producer, Smokejumper, making this statement on the removal of mounted combat:
Well, I guess it’s time to stick my head in the dragon’s mouth. Here goes nuthin’.
I’ve played with the system as it is currently on Live (rather extensively). I’ve also played the system that is on Test now.
It’s basically a change about “what looks best”.
The fact is, the Live solution doesn’t look very good. Especially if you’re playing a character with radical animations, like a Monk.
Also, we already have the conceit in the game, for things like climbing and swimming, where your mount turns off/on.
Additionally, there is no way that we can add the literally hundreds of necessary anims and hunks of code to make combat look spectacular while on a mount. (At least not with our existing task load for future features.)
So, the solution is to turn off the mount while in combat. You may ask, “When does the mount off/on occur?”
1) It doesn’t happen if you’re just aggroed. It only happens if YOU attack something.
2) We’re going to massage the code a bit (soon) so that your mount doesn’t immediately pop back in until a few seconds after you destroy your current opponent. That way, if you’re not using AoEs, the mount doesn’t keep popping back in before you can switch to a new target and continue fighting.
This system allows you to continue seeing the great combat animations and makes the game more visually appealing for all players.
Regarding the “/showmount” request…that’s not something we want to do either. If you’re getting the speed boost, other players should know why that’s occuring.
Regarding a graphics option to show the mount even while you’re in combat, we’re not doing that either. This is an aesthetic decision that keeps the game more attractive for all players. The currently munged animations that occur while riding look like (well, actually “are”) a bug. Since we don’t have time to create all the extra anims required to fix that in the perfect way (which would also make it *much* harder for us to create new mounts in the future because they would need all those extra anims also), we’re going to have to go with this solution.
We fully realize this won’t please all players, but it will result in a better looking game for most players, so that’s why we’re making the change.
Things looked dark, with the idea of a /showmount command or player-controlled switch being ruled out entirely.
However, we’ve just had this second Smokejumper post:
Late-breaking news on this feature! Basically, we hear ya. Here’s the details:
1) Mounts will still be suspended while in combat…by default.
2) However, there will also be a new graphic option that lets you set your view of mounts to one of three settings:
a) Default (mount disappears during combat, reappearing 5 seconds after you are out of combat).
b) You never see mounts at all. (Useful in raid situations or for low-end machines that are trying to get better framerate.)
c) You always see mounts, even during combat. (Useful for folks that like the way things look now and want to continue seeing things that way.)
NOTE: The mount settings are client-only, so they only affect what *you* see, not what everyone else sees. Their view is affected by their own personal setting.
Make sense?
Firstly, obviously it’s fantastic that we get to keep mounted combat. More importantly though, it is encouraging that he has shown himself willing to listen to reason, and put the extra effort in to create a solution that will leave everybody happy.
Now we just have to save the Isles. Perhaps we can persuade him to take the sensible player-choice-orientated approach to that too.
There are two horrible decisions in the current Everquest 2 test-build that are being protested strongly by the playerbase. You’ll find them both at the top of the patch notes.
GENERAL
* Qeynos and Freeport have been disabled as starting cities.
* Mounts will now be temporarily suspended while in combat.
They’re similar, in a way, in that they both take things away from the game, instead of add new choices. We were already somewhat aware of the threat to Qeynos and Freeport, and I have discussed my opposition to that change in this post.
We have been able to fight while mounted, if I remember rightly, since the beginning of the game. Back then, Paladins even had some combat moves that could only be executed while mounted, so mounted combat was always the intention, and an important feature of EQ2. The animations if you’re on the back of a horse or other animal look fine, and if you’re standing on a flying carpet then they’re exactly the same as if you were standing on the ground, except for, you know, that you’re standing on your awesome flying carpet.
Now your mount is going to vanish every time you enter combat. Nobody was asking for this. Even the raiders, who are concerned with lag, just wanted to be able to turn mounts off for raids, not for the entire world.
Mounted combat is a feature that most MMOs would kill for. How can it be that SOE is prepared to give it up so easily? I love my mounts. I was even going to post about my very newest, the Hotwired Gnomish Hoverpad, and quite how awesome it is. Not feeling quite so enthused now, seeing as Maltheas won’t be able to do this any more:
Everquest 2 Mounted Combat - Enjoy it while you can.
There has been a response to player unhappiness from Smokejumper. My comments are in green:
Well, I guess it’s time to stick my head in the dragon’s mouth. Here goes nuthin’.
I’ve played with the system as it is currently on Live (rather extensively). I’ve also played the system that is on Test now.
It’s basically a change about “what looks best”.
The fact is, the Live solution doesn’t look very good. Especially if you’re playing a character with radical animations, like a Monk. It looks bad in your opinion. In the opinion of the players it was working fine. Even the folks with kicks looked perfectly fine on flying carpets. Fighting on the back of your mount is cool, and makes some of us happy.
Also, we already have the conceit in the game, for things like climbing and swimming, where your mount turns off/on.
Additionally, there is no way that we can add the literally hundreds of necessary anims and hunks of code to make combat look spectacular while on a mount. (At least not with our existing task load for future features.)
So, the solution is to turn off the mount while in combat. You may ask, “When does the mount off/on occur?”
1) It doesn’t happen if you’re just aggroed. It only happens if YOU attack something.
2) We’re going to massage the code a bit (soon) so that your mount doesn’t immediately pop back in until a few seconds after you destroy your current opponent. That way, if you’re not using AoEs, the mount doesn’t keep popping back in before you can switch to a new target and continue fighting.So we get to see even less of our mounts.
This system allows you to continue seeing the great combat animations and makes the game more visually appealing for all players.If we cared so much about seeing the “great combat animations” then we’d get off our horse. We already see them when fighting in dungeons (mounts are disabled in indoor zones), so having some variety when outside was nice.
Regarding the “/showmount” request…that’s not something we want to do either. If you’re getting the speed boost, other players should know why that’s occuring.That’s an utterly spurious argument. The game is packed to the gills with items that increase run speed, such as the Earing of the Solstice and the Journeyman Boots. Other players can’t see them, so that is no argument whatsoever for not having a /showmount command. You may well have a reason not to implement the /showmount command, but it certainly can’t be that.
Regarding a graphics option to show the mount even while you’re in combat, we’re not doing that either. This is an aesthetic decision that keeps the game more attractive for all players. The currently munged animations that occur while riding look like (well, actually “are”) a bug. Since we don’t have time to create all the extra anims required to fix that in the perfect way (which would also make it *much* harder for us to create new mounts in the future because they would need all those extra anims also), we’re going to have to go with this solution. Why? Why has this suddenly become so important?
We fully realize this won’t please all players, but it will result in a better looking game for most players, so that’s why we’re making the change.. Having our mounts pinging back and forth into existence is NOT aesthetically pleasing.
Elsewhere, Cronyn had this to say about the Qeynos/Freeport issue:
Hey folks. I understand that many of you would like to see the old starting islands remain, but I’d like to explain the decision, at least so you see where we were coming from.
Primarily, the starting islands and following content, simply put, are not up to the standards of the newer starting cities. Players who start in these zones are at a disadvantage when compared to players who start in the newer zones. In the more recent starting zones, the play experience is laid out better, with improved loot and quests. From an art and design standpoint, the islands were great five years ago when the game launched, but the game has changed and improved in many ways and we don’t feel the newbie islands are as good as they should be today. Then update the loot. How long would it take to change the stats on some items?
A great positive effect of having four starting zones is that it helps focus players into areas with other people, and encourages interaction and community. The current content revamp helps players travel along a common path as they level up, so that they will more likely come across other people, and form relationships, form communities, and experience the game when it’s at its best – with friends. Making sure they have this chance by focusing them into content we feel is strong is one of the goals with turning off the islands as well.If you follow that logic, then I guess this is just the first of many zones to be removed. Anything not on this newfangled golden path had better watch out.
Finally, I’d like to say that we are not planning to abandon Freeport and Qeynos. However, we’d like to repurpose them somewhat into content destinations rather than starting points. A good deal of overarching content deals with these cities directly, and we’d like to create even more content that basically turns these into important quest and activity hubs, so to speak – I can’t go into it too much right now (although you saw some of what I mean during the destruction of Freeport live event), but there’s definitely an idea on how we’d like them to be presented going forward. The legacy content that is there (especially the racial quests) are not being removed, but we’ve been discussing ways to make this content more functional overall.
Anyway, we really appreciate all of the feedback, and we hope you can see why we felt this was a necessary change.
The other thing these changes have in common is that the solution chosen to the perceived problem has been the one that requires least effort, rather than fixing or making something new. If the newbie islands are truly lacking, than the proper thing to do would be to bring them up to speed, not to just cast them aside.
Nobody was asking for either of these changes, and we’re being utterly ignored and overruled. I am beginning to wonder why they have a feedback forum at all if we’re just going to be told that father knows best. We’re not being listened to, and it feels like many of the reasons being given have been made up after the fact to justify the decisions. It is feeling at the moment like some sort of “old is bad” ideology has crept into the thinking. Possibly because most of the people who made the original content have moved on, and people are naturally more supportive of content they were involved in making.
This would be a good moment for our new Producer, Dave Georgeson, to make an appearance. In a recent interview, Zam asked him:
ZAM: Have you yet gone and thrown out any of the plans that were on the table as of last Wednesday?
Dave: No. I will go so far as to say that any of the short term plans are not going to be changed a bit. The farther it gets from today the more impact I’ll have on what’s actually happening. But I would expect it to be a month or two before any kind of shifts the I’m making will have any kind of difference in what we’re doing on the game.
This is your opportunity, Mr Georgeson, to show that you are willing to listen to us. It would be unfortunate for you to spend the first month of your reign standing by and letting this happen.
I would rather have written that post about how fun the new tinkered mount is. I’d like to be planning to rave about Halas. As it stands, the breezy and dubiously argued way that player feedback is being discounted is the thing I’m thinking about most when I consider EQ2 at the moment.
Update: It turns out Smokejumper IS Dave Georgeson. I find that EQ2’s producer would have said what he did in his comment on mounted combat to be deeply discouraging.
Shipping containers. They’re ubiquitous, be they filled with frozen lamb, children’s clothing, or some plastic crap destined for Walmart. Or are they filled with doom? Beware, as from now on, shipping containers are… MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE!
Somewhere in Russia, a new plot is born. Well, not so much a plot as a marketing video for weapons of doom from munitions firm Novator. It has better production values than most Saturday morning cartoon shows.
Seriously, who decided that selling shipping containers that transform into cruise missile launchers on the open market was a good idea? This is a genuine product being shown off at the Defence Services Asia exhibition in Malaysia. I sure wouldn’t want to be the blue coloured country in that video. Team blue are clearly the bad guys for having their weapons of mass destruction in plain sight, not like team red, who kept their military build-up a complete secret. Thanks, Novator!
It’s a genuinely awful idea that does nothing to make the world a safer place. Not to mention that somewhere, someone is yelling “I said I wanted to go on a cruise with Club Med, not get a cruise missile from Club-K!”. They’re retailing at between 10 and 20 million dollars, depending on what optional extras you go for, putting them in the price range of almost any evil genius, plus they’re very easy to ship!
What offends me most of all though is how they have blatantly made the truck look like Optimus Prime, bringing the greatest hero of my generation into disrepute. The Autobot leader is a being of infinite courage and wisdom who would have no part in this scheme. I suspect a Decepticon plot. Unwise to mess with The Prime, in this earthling’s opinion. For he is…. MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE!
Warforged are a race specific to Eberron, the setting for Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online. Constructs built with one purpose in mind; the waging of war. Their creators were a little too clever for their own good, and in their pursuit of building walking weapons that would be able to make good decisions without direction, they accidentally managed to imbue them with sentience. For a while this wasn’t too much of a problem, as the Warforged were happy to do what they were told, which mostly involved hitting whoever they were told to.
The problem with sentience is that eventually you start wonder exactly why you’re hitting these people, and why you have to do what the shouty person tells you anyway. As the outside world realised that Warforged were indeed people, rather than simple machines, the public became uncomfortable on a number of grounds. As a result, at the end of the war, Warforged were given the same rights as any other sentient being, most importantly “self-ownership”. At the same time, the House Cannith creation forges which produced them were destroyed.
That leaves today’s Warforged in an odd position. There will never be any more of them (unless rumours of surviving forges are to be believed), but they do not age, and are fairly robust. Having known little more than war for their short lives, and having not been taught anything beyond what was of use to their masters, they are now sent out into the world, possessed with an insatiable curiosity, and a desire to become more than they have been.
So it was that Armonica the Warforged arrived on the continent of Xen’drik. Wandering for a time, seeking purpose, until one day he happened upon a musician playing in Stormreach’s marketplace. So taken with the beauty of the song was he that he decided, there and then, that he was going to be a bard, making music for all to hear!
Warforged, on the whole, are not very good musicians. Their stat modifiers are +2 Constitution, -2 Wisdom, and -2 Charisma, leaving them weak in the very stat that a Bard needs most, charisma. Nevertheless, what they lack in natural talent they make up for in enthusiasm, and before too long Armonica was playing bass lute in a local band.
He only knows three chords so far, but he plays them well.
In DDO the great strength of the Warforged is their immunities. Poison, disease, energy draining, sleep, exhaustion, nausea, and paralysis simply do not affect them. Neither do they need to breathe, so have no fear of water. They also have enhancements and feats that will increase their damage resistance. The main downside (apart from Rust Monsters) to avoiding so many of adventuring’s nuisances is that healing spells do not affect them as strongly. Starting out, a heal will only fix 50% of what it would on a fully organic being, though there are enhancements that a Warforged can take to raise that amount. There is also a line of wizardly repair spells, mirroring the clerical cures, that do have a full affect on them, which makes a Warforged wizard or sorcerer quite an interesting proposition.
Unfortunately, their difficulty to heal has made them somewhat unpopular with the more closed-minded of Eberron’s flesh-based population. This is not really fair, as while an individual heal does fix them less than otherwise, they also require less fixing in the first place. Happily, as a bard Armonica has some healing spells, so it tends not to be an issue.
Warforged are not one of the basic races available under the Free to Play scheme, costing 595 Turbine Points at normal prices. They’re so “Eberonny” though that I could not resist splashing out, especially as I was used to having them available to me as a subscriber in Europe.
He’s actually Rogue 1, Fighter 1, Bard 1 at the moment, but the majority of his levels going forward will be bard. I find it difficult to create a character that doesn’t have the ability to deal with at least some of the traps and locks that will present themselves. The level of fighter was to unlock a wide range of weaponry, and also for the free feat, which I took glee in spending on the Exotic Weapon Proficiency of Great Crossbow, which could just as easily be called a small ballista.
He’s the only character I’ve gotten into Massively’s OnedAwesome guild so far. If you see him, give him a wave, and remember to be kind to your Warforged colleagues, as they’re the ones who’ll be dragging your life crystals back to the shrine when you all get cloudkilled.
I’ve been trying to not pay too much attention to Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, so as to not get caught up in the incredible amount of hype surrounding it, but I have to admit it, this video makes me really excited.
What excites me most in this video is the way that lightsabers appear to be synchronised with everything else that is going on around them. They seem to really clash, and block incoming fire. If that is truly how it will work ingame then I think it is a massive step in making MMO combat feel genuinely immersive.
My main worry is that they may have made lightsabers so awesome-looking that nobody wants to play any of the other classes. Flamethrowers and bombs have their own coolness factor, of course, but I didn’t spend my childhood making their sound effects while whirling sticks around at great risk to all nearby eyeballs. It was lightsabers all the way.
We’ll almost all want to play a Jedi or Sith. Such is our birthright. But we’ll still probably be annoyed by how many Jedi there are everywhere.
A couple of weeks ago, many players of Mythic’s games found themselves billed multiple times, in some cases racking up hundreds of dollars worth of payments. Needless to say, they were not best pleased.
Today the Executive Producer of DAOC and WAR released letters of apology, and detailed the compensation that players will receive.
The letters are the same until you get to the bottom, and the game specific compensation. The shared portion of the letters is as follows:
Hello everyone,
Two weeks ago, a serious event occurred which resulted in the unintended billing of some of our customers. For this and any difficulties the event caused, we are truly sorry and today we wish to explain what happened, and to make a renewed commitment to your trust and security. We have taken this very seriously. In our 15 year history, trust has been the foundation of our relationship with the gaming community and we intend to rebuild that trust.
Between March 18 and April 7, our payment gateway, experienced a processing flaw that was beyond the scope of our control. Instead of being submitted for processing once, some transactions were submitted multiple times, resulting in some people being charged multiple times. On April 8, we determined what had happened and acted with urgency to arrange for bulk reversal of all erroneous charges. The majority of players saw the refund within 2-3 business days. Some banks did not post refunds until a few days later, a delay that was contingent on the banking institution. We worked quickly to inform affected players of the situation and understand the frustration this waiting period may have caused.
As a result of this event, we significantly increased customer service staffing who have been working with all impacted subscribers to waive any overdraft fees. The majority of the banks have waived these fees as they recognize the unusual nature of this event. In the rare cases that the banks have not reversed the charges, EA is covering the fee.
Once the corrective action was completed, we turned our attention to analyzing the problem in more detail. We determined the root cause, developed a definitive fix and implemented monitoring precautions that will allow us to prevent similar situations from reoccurring. These steps have been in place since April 13 with no further issues.
To be clear, at no point during this event was there a security breach or was subscriber account information compromised.
For both games players will receive double xp, renown, realm points, or bounty points (as appropriate for each game) for the next 2 weeks. Each character you have will receive two tokens that they will be able to redeem for in game items. This will apply to all players, not just the ones affected by the billing issue.
For Warhammer Online the choices will be:
* Bottomless Chaos Black Dye
* Bottomless Skull White Dye
* Imperial Griffon Mount (Order)
* Enslaved Manticore Mount (Destruction)
* WAR Tract – earn a free level
* Choose from any of these pets – Order: Imperial Hunting Hound or Dwarf Keg Handler; Destruction: Warlord’s Fell Hound or the Goblin Bar-Back.
* Change your appearance with any of these illusion items: Skaven Skin Cloak (skaven), Kossar’s Helm (bear), or the Signet of the Cursed Company (skeleton)
For Dark Age of Camelot they’re:
* Bottomless Black Dye
* Bottomless Crimson Dye (Albion), Hunter Green Dye (Hibernia), and Royal Blue Dye (Midgard)
* A selection of rare mounts: The Fire Steed, Clockwork Steed, and Storm Steed
* Choose from any of these pets – Clockwork Cat, a Mini-Dragon, and a pet of your realm.
* Vegas Round Table Trophy
* The Old Dragon Head Trophies of Smoldering Golestandt (Albion), Frozen Gjalpinulva (Midgard), and Glimmering Culldurach (Hibernia)
Some pretty awesome sounding goodies there. For folks who weren’t affected by the issue, it’ll be like Christmas day. I wonder though if those who were affected may have preferred some real world compensation for something that caused them very real world problems, or at least some game time. In-game rewards are only really much use to you if you didn’t stop playing as a result of having your bank account plundered. In the case of those who had more than $500 taken out of their account I’d suggest never billing them again, by giving them a lifetime subscription.
Interesting to note is that the Warhammer compensation items are recycled from other rewards schemes, or elsewhere in the game.:
* The Kossar’s Helm was from a code that came with Red Alert III.
* The Skaven Skin Cloak was a reward for attending Games Day 2008.
* The Signet of the Cursed Company was given to the 200 most active participants in the Road to War viral advertising campaign.
* The Imperial Hunting Hound, Warlord’s Fell Hound, Imperial Griffon Mount, and Enslaved Manticore Mount are rewards from the Recruit a Friend program.
* Dwarf Keg Handler and Goblin Bar-Back were rare drops during the Keg End event.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about MMO profits, spurred on by the Celestial Steed Kerfuffle. About how subscription fees have not gone up in line with inflation, so companies have to find other ways of increasing their income. It is felt that consumers would not be willing to pay more than the industry standard of $14.99, so other ways need to be found to get them to hand over cash.
I’m not sure if that is really true.
If a company promised to not view their customers as an exploitable resource, neither selling ingame items or services for real cash, or through gambling systems such as loot cards within collectable cardgames. Thus keeping the game world separate to the real world, all subscribers being treated equally, regardless of their disposable income. Customers would know exactly how much the game would cost them each month.
If they promised not to exploit their employees, paying them properly and not expecting ungodly amounts of unpaid overtime for the privilege of working in the gaming industry, and allowed this to be verified by an independent monitor.
If they did these things, assuming it was a game I wanted to play, I would be willing to pay $25 a month subscription. Not because I think that a game that didn’t exploit either customers or employees would necessarily need to charge that much to be profitable, but because I suspect the only way I could persuade a corporation to do so would be through bribery.
It’s like Fairtrade coffee. I’m prepared to pay extra for an ethical product.
I couldn’t afford to do that for more than one game, mind you.
