Mystic Worlds

Star Citizen - This is my hanger. This is my ship.

Viewing holotable in my hanger

I’ve said it many times. I’m more in love with the idea of EVE Online than the actual game play I experience. When I’m in “that” particular mood, drifting among the stars is relaxing and inspiring. For me it's undefinable but there’s some sexy about EVE. Before I played the game, I'd read a good bit of EVE fiction and lore. In preparation for the 9th expansion, Empyrean Age, I purchased and read  the companion novel.

The first time I played Star Trek Online I recall wishing that EVE were a combination of what I liked in STO and the best of EVE. I wanted an avatar in EVE. I wanted space stations with players scurrying around. I wanted to walk up to a player or corporation owned kiosk to purchase goods. Maybe even see fights break out amongst rivals. I wanted to fly my ship, not point and click to navigate. More than any of that, I wanted the PVE missions amped up +100 - more story driven and representative of the amazing wealth of lore and player history. But that’s not EVE Online and STO had too many things I disliked to be its replacement.

Maybe this Time

Based on what I’ve read and seen, I believe Star Citizen might be the combination of features that will suit me better in a massive space sim title. On the surface, it’s promising to have the things I liked in STO and wished were in EVE instead. At the very least, it will have a single player campaign to deliver a solo “leveling” experience that is story driven and will have some impact on my character out in the persistent world. For that piece alone, I’d pay the box price. There’s also a ton of lore and serialized fiction being pumped out to read, something I enjoy greatly. It’s the kind of content that can keep me interested for quite some time, as long as the quality holds.

EVE FW, EQN Landmark, Hearthstone, Star Citizen

EVE Faction Warfare

I definitely should have considered that I play EVE in spurts before joining Faction Warfare. I have more moments where I’m not looking for an adrenalin rush, than moments where I am. I haven’t played in a couple of weeks. Work and getting my shop ready for spring and summer having commandeered much of my free time, I don’t have the availability needed to get involved with pre-planned activities in EVE. My free time, mood and temperament seem to be counterproductive to participating in long term gaming commitments.

I must be doing it wrong! Before disappearing, I was still struggling with knowing for sure when it was safe to make the first hit in FW. Several times I had the advantage, having seen the ship on the scanner as I was nearing the area. However, they were not in my overview because they were cloaked and by the time I checked the pilot info to see their status, they’d started the engagement. Once I was saved when another friendly arrived. Another time, I just barely escaped.

EQN Landmark Beta

Across several mini sessions I’ve completed my first build – exterior and interior. It was fun. I enjoyed creating custom props much more than building structures. I think the template tool is great but I’d prefer if it, and all of the tools, handled micro voxels versus the manual way I have now discovered people are making them. My issue is that your ability to manipulate custom props is limited - rotate (some) and scale (not at all).  So once I create an object comprised of micro voxels it's difficult to turn that into something else or re-use it beyond the base micro voxel.  I dont have the patience for it.

My current assessment is that while I enjoyed constructing my claim, I had zero desire to knock it all down and start over – make something else. The world feels too dead, barren and lacking in visible player life to inspire me to “hang around”. Most of the time I played EQNL, I felt like I was in an offline building sim not a sandbox that supported other players. I saw what others had created when I passed by but VERY RARELY did I see actual signs of life. Sure it’s alpha but I’ve done many and this is the first one where it feels empty.  And yet, all the claims are taken. :-\

Without the usual MMO PVE traps and tropes, I think players will be online in spurts to farm and build. Cooperative building and new biomes will bring people back in numbers for a bit but I don’t expect to see constant hordes of players online in these zones. Consequently, I don’t know if it will give me what I need to sustain an interest. I will certainly build a “home”, maybe small town or street when it goes live and put my favorite templates on the market. But at this point, I’m not seeing what’s going to make me stick around for a long period of time other than checking in every so often to tinker with new templates.  Good thing it's free to play. I won't need to make that stay subscribed or unsubscribe decision.

Is 30-days worth 50 bucks?

In the past couple of years I’ve purchased several games where my subscription only lasted a couple of months after release.  Age of Conan and Aion both earned that distinction.  I feel like 60 days of enjoyment is worth box price + 1 month subscription, beyond the 30-days that typically comes with the purchase, if I enjoyed it so much that I clocked a lot of hours  However, if your enjoyment wanes before you even complete the 30-days for free, was it worth the $50+ box price?  I’m not so sure.

Playing casually as my time permits these days, being involved in a game for only 30 days probably means I played less than 40 hours in total.  And obviously, that time played wasn’t all that great for me at least, or I wouldn’t bail so early.  50-dollars here, 50-dollars there, starts to add up.  Star Trek Online wins the award for shortest play-time for a subscription game.  I’d canceled my pre-order but forgotten that I’d ordered a copy for my son and/or nephew to share, until it arrived. 

I thought the BETA was enjoyable if you took STO for what it was – not so much MMO as cooperative play.  There was also lots of little busy work for progressing your character, your ship and your bridge officers.  Space combat was really fun and usually exciting, combined with passable land combat I thought, “Eh, it’s enough for now.”  Unfortunately, what happened was a more rapid decline in a desire to play.  I was having a similar experience as I had with Aion but worse.  I had fun when I bothered to log into the game to play.  However, nothing excited me enough that it drew me to bother signing in to play.

EQ2 could be my future, Allods is a keeper, ROM back on the menu and STO on hold.

In another 18 months EQ2 might be home

News is in, EQ2 is adding Battlegrounds.  At this rate, in another year or so, EQ2 will probably have most of what I want for my main-stay MMO.  I'm not being sarcastic either. If the game continues adding in the things I enjoy, the fact that I don't like the questing system will become increasingly over shadowed.  I can't run back to a subscription at this point because the PVP is for max level characters only.  Boo!  Besides which, they need to get through the PVP issues nerfing PVE skills, class balancing, crowd control whining and twink drama that have plagued WOW BGs since forever.  Yeah, I'll skip the initial onslaught of teeth gnashing and QQ.  Grats EQ2!

I canceled my STO pre-order

As much as I enjoy being there with the opening day masses, another week of the BETA left me feeling more uneasy about the game's future. In the past couple of years, I've bought too many games that I was sincerely excited about but didn't last long after the 30 days that came with the box, to go with the lower percentage of lasting past the 30 days, for a game that I'm only marginally enthused over. 

The 180 on the skill cap mechanic was the tipping point for two reasons.  First - class skill tree design in a game with infinite skill points is VERY different from a game DESIGNED FOR FINITE SKILL POINTS.  From what I can tell, the decision has changed without an overhaul and/or thorough review AND TESTING of impact.  You won't know how gimped the situation is until nearer to max level.  Second - Skill, attribute and item descriptions are so poor, it's hard to know if you're even making the right choices for your class, role and spec.  Poor documentation is tolerable when you have an infinite supply of skill points to spend but unacceptable when you don't.

Star Trek Online - Does Randomly Generated Content Get Stale?

I don't know if the randomly generated mission zones will become stale over time.  Right now, they're anything but.  I find the space combat very white-knuckle.  The over powered NPCs in the space combat missions is what makes my heart race.  Like W101, the content scales based on the number of participants.  However, you're always out numbered and flying noob ships against NPC cruisers is a battle.  You go in knowing that you're outclassed and out-gunned.  The question is, what are you going to do about it? 

Some groups know how to handle the situation and we complete the mission with no deaths.  Other groups struggle and ships get popped left, right and center until they stop charging in alone and let someone else get things going.  In either case, no one is communicating in chat, myself included.  Action trumps words and the players who have a clue about to do go for it. 

In a recent "State of the Game" letter to the players, the Alpha strike behavior of the NPCs has been deemed unintentional and will be fixed before release.  I hope they don't tone them down too much.  It's space.  It's war.  Shit - err, death happens in space.  So far there's no death penalty so I don't see what the problem is anyway.  With a DP that isn't lose your ship and it's gone permanently, I'd rather have exciting over-powered NPCs, instead of easy encounters that we'll be repeating.

I WISH I'd thought to record the mission previous to this one.  OMG, what an insane ride.  I'm damaged spec'd but acting as a tank in many groups and doing pulls when no one else seems up to the job.  I definitely won't go DPS for Live.  So far, I'm liking the tank role in space even though I've never wanted to tank in other games.  I'd like to try out the science/support ship role too.

It's also exciting to realize that I'll be able to play with anyone without worrying about what server people created there characters on.  I don't know how easy it will be reality, to get together with people you know.  For all I know the tools in place to facilitate such grouping might be inadequate or crude.  But at least the whole rick-roll of starting over to get on the right server with friends and acquaintances won't exist.

Star Trek Online Open Beta
Noob in Space - Lowbie PVE Mission

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The Rise of Coop-Play Styled MMOs

Personal definition of a MMO gaming experience
When I think MMO, I think of an open minimally instanced virtual world where players co-exist with infinite opportunities to interact with each other while carrying out game objectives.  Everyone that is on the same server, and in the same zone, is in the ONLY version of that zone.  And while existing within that world, the primary use of transitions (load screens) is for changing zones or entering into dungeons for group content.  This is what I consider the best case scenario.  I’ve only played three MMOs that came close to this ideal - Asheron’s Call 2, EVE Online and World of Warcraft.

I’ve come to accept other divides in virtual content that require the immersion wrecking load-screens, such as, the way EQ2 zones you into the different sections of a city, crafting workshops and instanced player housing.  Other games zone you into structures they expect may be heavily populated.  I can live with these sub-divisions of content.  But make no mistake, I’m never entertained while watching load screens.