Archive for MMO

55 results.
Apr15

Auric Survival

by Rindis on April 15, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I finished off Act 2 of Heart of Thorns last week, and then spent a while exploring the rest of the Auric Basin. It’s a lot more accessible than Verdant Brink, so we got further faster, though we still gave out at about the 80% mark. I think there’s a few more places we can get to, but we have seen a few that are specifically gated by the high level gliding skill.

Auric Basin is also a lot less dangerous than Verdant Brink, even though some paths are ‘walk 5 yards, clear out nest of pocket raptors, walk 5 yards, clear out nest of pocket raptors…’. I’m still very happy from the other night when we got deposited on a small ledge with no apparent purpose that I realized it was a jump point to a series of updrafts that took us a fair distance on the gliders. (Usually I just trail after Smudge, who has a much better idea of where we’re going than I do.)

The centerpiece of the map is the city of Tarir, which is apparently the center of Glint’s plan to get the world through the current rise of the Elder Dragons. The story takes you there, introduces the Exalted, and finally ties off Glint’s egg (for now). Periodically, Mordremoth assaults the city, and defending against that is a meta-event that dominates the entire map. Since it revolves around getting outer defenses up and running first, it acts a bit like the Pact assault in Silverwastes, but with a timer instead of being controlled by player actions, which makes it not nearly as satisfying. (I have yet to see a ‘win’ in the defense, though Smudge has seen it a couple times.)

One of the major problems HoT is having is that the new zones are tied up in big meta events that are pure timer based, and can’t be soloed, making the zones unpopular, and driving players away…. Overall, Auric Basin is a lot easier to deal with than Verdant Brink, but any place an event is happening needs at least three people present, or it’s just not survivable.

A final thing that has been bugging me is that they keep showing fragments of introductions to the new classes and specializations in HoT. At the beginning of HoT, Rytlock makes a grand re-entrance, and is obviously a Revenant (the new class) now, and a big deal is made of his abilities. And then it’s never mentioned again. One branch of the meta-events in Auric Basin talks about the druids, and gives a bit of lore for past druids. And then it drops, with no hints of where the learning for current druids is coming from.

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Apr04

Verdant Mastery

by Rindis on April 4, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I finished Act 1 of HoT last Tuesday.

The story is continuing to be good, though it’s switched tracks again, and is only giving tiny snippets of had been the primary focus through the end of Season 2.

At some point, it’s going to be interesting to go through all of this as a non-Sylvari, as both this and Season 2 have been good at acknowledging the fact that there’s an extra personal impact here. And at other times, they ignore it, and I’m the only Sylvari that everyone’s still willing to trust.

How they present the story has evolved a bit, and it’s obvious that they’ve enhanced the engine some. It used to be that any time your character had dialog, GW2 would go into a type of cutscene for it. Those are largely gone now. Also, dialog are often triggered by proximity, which would happen inside of story instances, but these are happening out in the main world now.

So, the presentation is a lot smoother, though you don’t get to see the models up close and pretty as much.

Pretty much the first thing they do is introduce the new Mastery system, which stands in for levels in HoT. It looks like there’s an interesting mix of things in the masteries, part content-gating, and part new mechanics like the gliders. A very interesting wrinkle is that there’s ‘red’ mastery points for the original game’s areas, and ‘green’ mastery points in the HoT areas (these line up with the color of the logos for both), which means they can keep expanding the system with new expansions without going down the path of ever-escalating levels that all the other MMOs have used. You still gain experience, and when you gain a ‘level’ you get the new mastery. …If you have the Mastery Points to pay for it, which get awarded for story completion, and achievements, and so on. Smudge and I have a bunch of red points stored up already, but the higher ranks of any one mastery category get expensive, so they’ll probably give out on us mid-way through.

All of Act 1 happens in the first new HoT zone, Verdant Brink, which we’re still exploring. It kind of sprawls and goes all over the place, roughly in three levels, so it’s bit hard to navigate, even with the new gliders to help out.

And it’s dangerous. There’s a day/night cycle that works a little bit like the sandstorms in Dry Top, but instead of just cutting down visibility and making certain boss encounters available, the entire zone gets a lot tougher at night, and there’s events to try and secure base camps and get supplies to them to make them safer. I’d kind of like to get a chance to really go through that on a map determined to hold things, but so far we just see people blow through, and abandon a lot of secured camps.

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Mar28

Maguuma Wastes

by Rindis on March 28, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I recently finished off the Season 2 storyline in Guild Wars 2. Overall, I think they did a better job than with the original story, though it’s still by no means perfect.

Also, there was a final bit of living world events that came after the story, that we saw parts of back when we got involved right after the original game became free. The living world idea is really nice, but it does cause all sorts of entanglements, and it kind of locks out newer players, who don’t know what’s going on. The repayable storyline used here is a big step forward, but they still manage to drop important events.

The story is divided up into 8 parts, and 4 deal with one new map (Dry Top) and 4 with a second (Silverwastes). These are naturally the toughest-high level maps available without buying the game. An interesting idea is that after completing each story bit, you can go back in and try for extra achievements. Doing all the achievements in any one part gets you extra gear and an extra mastery point (doing it the first time also gives you one).

The story starts fairly abruptly, partially because the Zephyrites are a group important to the plot, but were introduced in one of the Living World parts not included. Season 2 begins with word that something happened to them out in the wastelands west of the previously developed world, and the players go in to find out what.

(And note, I’m going to have minor spoilerage from now on, if you’re concerned about that.)

Mostly, the story continues to feature the new set of characters developed in Season 1, with Destiny’s Edge being at most peripherally involved until later, and the immediate story line follows fairly closely on from Season 1, filling in the background of Scarlet Briar, the main villain from there. As the story progresses, it quite naturally flows into the threat of the newly-awakened Elder Dragon Mordremoth.

Dry Top is heavily featured in the first two parts of the story, and is an interesting idea in zone design. Largely a badlands-type area, there’s lots of sheer cliffs and the like. ArenaNet put in an entirely new mechanic of crystals that you can touch for movement bonuses. Either a fast dash, a high jump, or a long jump. However, these have several annoyances, such as the fact that they replace your normal toolbar temporarily, meaning that you can land in combat, and not be able to fight at first. The high jump is just a boosted version of the normal jump, but doesn’t use the same control, etc.

However, its certainly an interesting experiment with zone design, and mostly you don’t need the crystals to get around, unless you’re exploring the nooks and crannies (and going after the achievements related to doing so…), where it becomes one giant jump puzzle.

Another interesting part of Dry Top is the sandstorm. On a fixed schedule, a sandstorm blows in, reducing vision, and spawning extra monsters. Between storms, every event completed in the zone increases the outsider’s (player’s) favor with the stranded Zepherites and they provide more goods (including unique items and the like), and the awards of special in-zone currency goes up with the current level of favor. Also, some extra events during the sandstorm are tied to the current favor level. So, event-wise, it’s organized around a regular cycle of events where anything anyone does helps everyone.

The next two parts leave Dry Top behind, and focus on getting getting the world leaders together to discuss the danger of Mordremoth, who seems to have a longer reach than the other active Elder Dragons. Most of the side questing here focuses on the Charr, which delayed Smudge and I as we had not been to any of the lower-level Charr areas. The summit itself forms the climax of the first half of Season 2, and features a fairly nasty fight (tougher than anything from the ending sequence of the original story).

The second half introduces the Silverwastes, which is another example of interesting zone design. Instead of a set schedule of events, the players help out with the Pact’s efforts to destroy a powerful lieutenant of Mordremoth. The assault cycles through a few distinct phases, but the timing is based on player actions. If there’s not many players available, the first phase will go slowly, and while the later parts will eventually be reached, it will go poorly. If there’s lots of players available, the events will cycle through fairly fast. It makes the Silverwastes a very intense go-go-go environment to adventure in, and the amount of loot rewarded is hard to believe (or sort through…).

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t do as good of a job introducing the outlines of the zone as a whole, possibly because there’s just less differentiation between areas other than the gigantic Skritt caverns.

Again, the later parts of the story start turning aside from the new zone. At the same time, it starts exploring a lot of lore, dealing with the dragon Glint who was introduced back in the final expansion of the original game, and was killed in the backstory for GW2. Caithe steals a (previously unknown) egg of Glint’s, which sends the player off on a long search for both. This takes up the last couple of parts of the story. Season 2 ends on a suitably climatic note, with the Pact pressing forward with a (too cliche) doomed attempt to kill Mordremoth… but the actual explanation of what Caithe’s doing, and where the egg is now that the player is chasing after for the last quarter of the Season is still unanswered. The entire last part of the story is full of really tough fights. I wish the end of the original story had been more like the end sequence here.

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Jan17

Champion of Orr

by Rindis on January 17, 2016 at 12:39 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I are still playing and enjoying Guild Wars 2 these many months later. Just last week we hit a big milestone in the form of the end of the original story.

Of course, we hit the level maximum of 80 quite some time ago, but we’ve been slowly exploring the world, and advancing the story as we go. For about a month now, we’ve been working through the stronghold of the enemy, the ruined nation of Orr. I have to say that was handled quite well; it’s a creepy, dangerous place, without being at all cliche about it.

The story itself was a little more standard, with a number of different missions as the Pact works it’s way across the landscape of Orr, introducing important people, and killing a number of those off. There’s not a lot of real plot twists here, but the progression is well done. This all leads up to a mission/dungeon dealing with the Big Bad Guy, the elder dragon of death and darkness: Zaitan.

Who has a bad case of ‘someone started drawing and never stopped’.

I’m not so happy with the dungeon. A number of cliches pop up in this one, and there’s not a lot of real fighting. Given that this is the only dungeon required for the storyline, it makes sense that it is easier, as it may get a lot of people unused to them. But I’m unhappy with the amount of… non-fighting fighting (manning cannons, which I would like better if this wasn’t just a wait for the target to become available, and mash the button, unlike every other time GW2 does something like this), and the pacing, which is too rushed to talk to the NPCs in places, and leaves you just waiting around in others. I imagine the explorable mode will more than make up for it….

I was also less than happy with the immediately preceding mission, which was a lot easier than I felt something that climatic should be. On the other hand, the ending sequence when you win was very good. Also, the final epilogue of the story is… huge. Pretty much every surviving NPC of the story is there and talkable. The requisite celebration is there, and you can join in, and they remind you that Zaitan is not the only world-ending problem out there.

Smudge and I have since gone through the summary of the first part of the Living World (season 1) both in-game, and the extensive one on the wiki. It’s a pity we can’t go through it directly, but at least ArenaNet caught on and made season 2 playable after the fact.

I also think that the continuing story is another area where GW2 has been doing better than most of the other MMOs we’ve encountered. When World of Warcraft was released, there were plans for a number of areas that weren’t in the game yet, and a number of hooks were in the storyline. Most prominent were the nagas and murlocks which were noted as having just arrived from the deeper oceans in the places where they were encountered. The implications were that something was up, and the Maelstrom was a planned area of expansion. All of this got pretty much paved over and permanently ignored in Cataclysm. Neverwinter starts with the siege of the city by the forces of Valendra, but much of the plotline in the game barely touches on it. It’s pretty obvious that ArenaNet is still following, in some form, their original vision for the narrative arc of GW2. I kind of wonder what they’ll do as the number of elder dragons available diminishes, but so far, they’re nicely focused.

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Sep13

Levelling in MMOs

by Rindis on September 13, 2015 at 3:36 pm
Posted In: MMO

There was a time when hitting level 10 was a big deal. It was time to consider settling down, establishing a keep, and retiring from active adventuring.

2015-09-12_00001My main character in Guild Wars 2 gained 5 levels yesterday.

Now, I will point out that it makes a lot of sense for computer games to have a lot more levels in their structure than any RPG. Gaining a level is something of an accounting exercise, and with the computer handling the numbers, more accounting is not a large burden.

However, MMOs are supposed to be a group activity, and the end game (where levels are no longer important) is where it is easiest to find a large pool of people with the same level of capability. Before that point, unless you are purposefully staying in-step with a friend it can be very difficult to find appropriate content for two people. This helps feed into a ‘must get through everything now’ mentality, that causes developers to warp the design by promoting faster leveling than the content is designed for. This feeds everyone into the ‘end content’, even though that tends to be one of the most tedious parts of the game, and is characterized by extremely slow, incremental gains in ability, instead of constant sense of growth from the main part of the game.

The emerging answer to the underlying problem is level-scaling, first seen in City of Heroes, with the sidekick system. Neverwinter has this for some of their more recent content, but… I can’t say it works. I don’t know what they’re doing when they reduce a character in effective level, but it doesn’t make much difference, with a high-level character tearing through the lower-level monsters. Guild Wars 2 has a much more extensive system, where every section of the world has its own maximum level that you are reduced to. It does have an effect, but while not as pronounced as in Neverwinter, over-level characters are still more effective than ones just at the maximum level.

The most effective, and most annoying, version I’ve seen is in Final Fantasy XIV, which will disable abilities that are too high level for your current effective level. Considering that it has the usual ‘arrange your own ability bar’ style design, having your hand-crafted ability set disrupted gets frustrating.

Back to yesterday’s adventures, the main annoyance I’m feeling is that I’ve been spending a lot of time in the alternate low-level areas (because of map-completion achievements, and a need for low-level crafting materials). Normally, this means extremely slow experience gain, as it gets scaled down for being ‘too easy’. But it seems like Guild Wars 2 does not do this, leading to much faster level advancement than I’m really looking for at the moment. Lunysa is now around level 40, and has yet to see any content past about level 22. I’d really prefer that the level advancement be slower, so I don’t feel like I’m rushing towards an end goal that is not part of what I’m currently doing.

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Sep06

Free Game Eats Free Time

by Rindis on September 6, 2015 at 9:49 am
Posted In: MMO

Guild Wars 2 is now a couple years old, and coming out with their first expansion. Since the game has always been ‘pay once, no subscription’, they’ve decided to make a slightly limited version of the base game free, and encourage everyone to just buy Heart of Thorns, due out in a month.

Smudge and I tried out the game during a couple free weekends two years ago, and kind of bounced off the game. We had a lot of trouble at first, had fun the second day, and then found ourselves frustrated all over again when we came back during the second free weekend. After that, while it was tempting, we just couldn’t go for it, if we needed to re-learn every time.

This last week, we tried again, and… didn’t really have any trouble. It’s been taking us a while to really get up to speed on a lot of nuance, but we didn’t just bounce off the system this time, for whatever reason.

From the first, I thought that GW2 was a very forward-looking design, and I hope that it will be influential in the next generation of MMOs, even when I don’t agree with everything they’ve done.

Questing is where I have the most trouble. There are quest givers who want various things done, do them get a reward. But, you never have to talk to them, just get in range, and a corner pop-up will give the basics of what’s needed, and show a progress bar. The fact that you can do any of a number of things to complete the quest, instead of ‘kill exactly x of critter a, kill exactly y of critter b, and bring me exactly z of this plant’ is great. But, I prefer my RPGs to be heavier on the RP side of things (quest dialogs and conversation trees was the strongest part of SW:TOR, and what I want to see more of), and while you can talk to the quest person, and get a good conversation explaining everything, it is possible to get the complete while doing something completely different, locking you out of that conversation.

Speaking of other things to do, GW2 has a event system that I like. NPCs will go out and do things, get into trouble, and need help. These generally have some good… stage plays to go with them, and are fun, and anyone can join in at any time (many are also specifically kicked off by player action). I’ve come to the realization that these are the real quests in GW2, even though they’re obviously descended from the ‘rift event’ idea of Rift, these are much more dynamic and better thought out.

The map has various things to do scattered around it, points of interest to visit, vistas to see, quests to do. Despite the last being called ‘quests’, they’re really just another type of generally-accessible bit of content to visit. And all these points have done a lot to help get me to explore the world. (Something I like in theory, but often don’t do so well on.) And as it turns out, there’s still plenty of things for the people who like to explore to find that aren’t just part of the checklist, this is just the basics.

Another thing that has taken some re-thinking on my part to understand is character development. The first thing that GW2 shows off is that each weapon you pick up has a completely separate set of skills associated with it, and your character can act very differently depending on what weapon(s) you’re using. After a bit of fun with that, I had disappointment that it doesn’t take long to acquire all the various weapon skills. Deciding what you like, what you want to use and master will take some more time, but the exploration of this neat weapon system is disappointingly short. What I realized is that the idea is to introduce that, then move into various non-weapon skills, and then into specializations, and have your character grow through these different systems. But I’d still prefer to see the weapon skill continue to grow and evolve as you progress.

On the other hand, all of this is instantly changeable. The specializations especially are like the skill trees in traditional MMOs like WoW, but instead of permanently picking a path, you can always rearrange things (starting with your used weapon!) to take on a different role. I just wish you could save off a couple combinations so you can more efficiently go into ‘party healing mode’ or whatever.

So, yeah, I’m enjoying Guild Wars 2 right now. More than I thought I’d be after my first couple experiences.

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Feb09

And Goodbye to Another MMO….

by Rindis on February 9, 2015 at 8:39 pm
Posted In: MMO

It’s been a while since I’ve said much about ArcheAge here. Some of that is my usual habit of wandering away after a little bit, even while Smudge continues on.

And that did happen here, but….

Both Smudge and I have been interested by the largish crafting system, which is fairly well done. The property owning, and the farms as a source for most of the materials you need is appreciated.

But then they gate it in annoying ways. Higher level/useful items generally need something that has to be gotten through running a trade pack from one continent to the other. That is designed to put you at risk in PvP—and one of the major guilds on the server recently went largely pirate (separate from either of the two factions in the game).

Smudge doesn’t care for PvP at the best of times. I technically like it… in more contemplative settings (board games…), but in a high-action setting where you’re being forced into it because something else completely is at stake (the future of your crafting), yeah. High-stress fox is unhappy fox.

My eventual judgement was that the crafting system existed to give the PvPers a fantasy adventure sandbox to run around in. i.e., instead of coming up with a bunch of random NPC/monsters to encounter and fight, they made sure there were random PCs to encounter and fight.

There’s been some bugs that have existed since Alpha without being acknowledged (I ran into one: one of the alchemy potions is supposed to be craftable on the basic alchemy workstations, and is listed that way in-game; but it’s missing from the list when you actually use the table), so we’ve been determined not spend money on the game. But while it is technically Free to Play, to own land, you have to be a Patron. You can do that by buying APEX with in-game currency, but the price has been going up by leaps and bounds, from ~60 gold around game launch (just about six months ago) to ~750 gold last week. Of course, all APEX have to be bought with real money by someone, and then you can sell it for in-game money, but this shows that the idea of ‘whales’ buying APEX so they can sell them to buy in-game stuff isn’t working. I’ve been wondering if they just haven’t kept the attention of big spenders or what.

Smudge has been involved in a guild for a while, which kind of expanded out of control, and drama kept happening with other guilds as a result, but the main people were good.

But, in general, ArcheAge has one of the poorer MMO communities we’ve seen, and it’s just been getting worse. The good people we know gave up on questing around level 30 (when the quests force you into PvP-land), and getting a group together for less than max-difficulty dungeons is difficult (not that there’s many dungeons to begin with). In fact, there’s a fair amount of dismissal of doing quests in general, and while there was a decent number of RP-interested people on the server to begin with, they were basically the first to go.

And the last straw for Smudge was seeing a group of guys complaining in general chat about not being able to have sex with their wives while they were asleep. >.<

Anyway, here’s a picture from happier times:

ArcheAge Screen Shot

This is a New Year’s group shot of the main members of the Night Owls guild (been meaning to post this for ages). My alt, Frasissa is the female Firran in the center, and Smudge’s alt/guildie LingLi is to her right. Several of the guild’s ships are in the background, and the symbol on most of the sails is the guild logo Smudge did.

We’re not sure what’s up next for us. Smudge is in the final stages of crunch time of getting To Kill A Dragon #4 out.

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Dec02

Server Downtime For Fun & Profit

by Rindis on December 2, 2014 at 2:55 pm
Posted In: MMO

Trion (the company behind the English version of ArcheAge) can’t seem to catch a break. They were having lots of network latency on the servers (enough so that they ended up with overlapping properties because of server confusion!), so they started a cycle of unscheduled maintenance.

On a Sunday.

It’s now Tuesday, and they still have a few servers down, but most of them are going again. Lucius (where Smudge and I are) came back up Monday night, and it was interesting to be in an area that usually has a half-dozen+ people standing around and be the only one. Things started filling in, but it was still much less busy than I’m used to. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to see Marianople with only a few people in it. I might have been able to enjoy the scenery rather than watch my machine struggle.

One of the things that’s been in our quest log for a bit is a… tutorial quest for trading with the other continent. If you’ve seen my previous posts, and the trouble we’ve had with that, you can see why we haven’t done the quest, even though the quest complete is comparatively easy. Just getting into the port at all is a complete, even if you don’t live to complete the run. Anyway, with things fairly light for the moment, we decided to try it now, before all the gankers were present. The voyage took a little time, but we got in and got to turn in the trade packs (lots of Charcoal Stabilizer! yay!). And just after we did so, a large ship full of reds came in and charged for us. We ported back home.

In the more normal news (before being interrupted by the server downtime), we’ve actually been questing in the first of the PvP zones, and haven’t been bothered much. (One red tried to kill me in town. He thought he’d be far enough out of range of the guards, but I wasn’t and they reacted to the attack on me and killed him in about four shots.)

I’ve completed crafting Gau’s level-34 set, and am just beginning on mine. The thing is, past level 34 gear we need different components that are largely beyond us. We’ve set up an aquafarm (yes, you can farm corals and the like too in this game), to get some of the ingredients, but the alchemy skill required is crazy. We may be stuck at this point, gear-wise, for a bit. The next project is getting a farm tractor anyway. It’s slower than using the ship, but carries two additional trade packs, so it should make Smudge’s trade runs for money more efficient.

 

Meanwhile, we’ve also been spending some time on Neverwinter lately (the best bad game). On Sunday, Smudge was on an alt and found a big world dragon fight in a mid-level zone that hadn’t been there before, and called me in. I managed to find the list of these fights (there’s five) and we went through them. Looks like they’re from the most recent module, and they added them on to various existing zones, starting in the 20s. The early ones have the monsters rated as ‘skulls’ (instead of a level), which generally means everyone is normalized to a baseline level equivalent (though higher levels still have gear and ability advantages).

The last one…? Hoo boy, the challenge ramps up, and the last one in the set is tough. We had a fair number of people in the fight, and they were needed. I died twice from not being quite fast enough, but since you come back very close to the fight, I got back in and helped finish it off.

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Nov11

Voyage of The Saucy Vixen

by Rindis on November 11, 2014 at 9:55 pm
Posted In: MMO

Smudge and I are still continuing through ArcheAge. One disappointment is that the number of dungeons seems to be pretty small. We’re currently level 33+, and have only seen one (for level 20) so far.

At least we had a good time with that one. It had a three-person limit, and Smudge and I were able to two man it pretty well. It was really challenging, but we like that, and two-manning dungeons was one of the things we really enjoyed in Neverwinter.

And then we hit the final boss. Nopenopenope. Fast, lots of damage… and then his minions show up. Only two, but our efforts just kind of collapsed at that point. But, there’s a daily quest to ‘mentor’ someone by taking them through the dungeon when you’re at level 30+. The next night we were mentored by a friendly level 47… that didn’t leave us much to do. There was also a quest to kill (/loot) the final boss three times, which we eventually managed on our own, but it was a nicely tough fight all the way.

Smudge has been variously determinately chasing after the ‘free’ subscription, and despairing of the same. Two APEX turns into enough in-store credit to buy a month’s subscription, plus a little left over. But APEX are generated by people spending real money to get them, so they can auction them in-game for gold. They were about 60g each, and then went up to about 110g when Trion banned a massive number of gold farmers and hack accounts, and with a recent content addition shot up to 200g for a day, and is now about 130g+. Smudge caught up to them at the 110g mark, and is currently in Patron status, which gets her into the housing and farming content.

I’ve gotten both of us into the second tier crafted sets (level 24), and here’s Eseria’s current outfit, with the faction capital of Marianople in the background (with some draw distance problems…). One of the things that truly impresses me with the game is the architecture. Much of the time, it doesn’t draw a whole lot of attention to itself, and feels like the same old faux-medieval that most fantasy games present. And that is true. But most fantasy worlds in games fall apart when it comes time to do fortifications. Here, however, ArcheAge has done a really good job, at least on the western continent, which is more European in style. The city walls are in the style of real medieval city and castle walls, and look like they mean business.

With that crafting goal done, we looked over all the various demands on our crafting, and decided we needed a ship. We’re needing Opaque Polish and Small Leaf Pigment to advance some of the crafting quest/tutorials, and the third set of crafted gear needs them. These need Charcoal Stabilizers to make, and the only way to get that is by doing trade runs to the other (unfriendly) continent. We could row across the ocean to there… eventually. And there’s pirates (PC), and monsters, and all around jerks. So a ship is much faster and safer.

As it turns out the basic fast transport (adventurer’s cutter) is pretty reasonable. So, I bought the plans, we gathered the materials, and then we built a ship.

First, you place the drydock:

Then you add supplies of wood:

Iron:

And cloth:

And then you have to spend labor to build the ship, in three parts:

I had been a little disappointed. I had been hoping for something little more truly drydock-like. So, I was surprised when I ‘took possession’ of the finished ship, and the center dropped away as a ramp, and the ship slid down while fireworks went off. (They should have demanded a bottle of champagne as a material for that part!)

And here’s The Saucy Vixen on it’s maiden voyage:

Sunday night we did a gold-earning run with The Saucy Vixen which reduced the time needed from ~45 minutes to ~25. Nice!

However, the real point is to go to the other continent, where everyone is hostile, other than a handful of merchants, and get Charcoal Stabilizer instead of gold.

One article we saw gave the idea of crafting a pack, dumping it in a little-known area of coast line, logging onto your character on the other side, sail over with a different pack, find and pick up the pack you left (and leaving the one you had), sail back, profit, log onto the first character, pick up the pack, profit!

With two people on Skype, this gets a lot easier. But still more exciting than I wanted.

So on Monday night I make up a trade pack, and set off… and as I’m approaching the enemy shore, another cutter came into view… who turned and gave chase. I couldn’t dodge him, and he got his harpoon into me and used it to tow me closer.

But… he hadn’t quite thought this through. He was alone on his ship like I was. So the only thing that kept us together while I was under full sail was his harpoon (you can’t man that and pilot the ship at the same time), and he apparently couldn’t cast at me (not sure if his range wasn’t good enough, or if the harpoon was too much of a full time job). So, he eventually gave up after I towed him most of the way home.

After that, I straightened out, and headed back, trying for a slightly different approach angle if he was still around. And… ran right back into him! However, I had come in behind him, and got out of draw distance before he could turn around.

And then I ran into seabugs. One leapt onto the ship, and nearly killed me before I got enough distance for him to want to let go and leave me.

After that, I made my third approach to the continent, and spotted a different cutter. I mentioned this to Smudge, who asked, “Does it have a white wing on the sail?”

I couldn’t see what exactly was on the sail, but it was certainly white. We were close enough to both be able to see the same ship! I passed behind it, and it continued on its way, possibly relieved that I wasn’t attacking him. I went on shore, Lingli and I traded packs, and I set off for home.

I headed for Crescent Throne, since it’s the city who’s location I know the best from the coastline. I was sailing along the shore, enjoying the sights, fairly close in, with a junk (warship) sitting along the shore.

It started occurring to me that this probably wasn’t an NPC ship (there are a few scattered around), when a merchant ship appeared in front of me.

I have a problem that when under sudden pressure, my thought processes can just shred apart completely. It’s a major reason why I prefer turn-based games. I was thinking I should take drastic evasive action just in case, but couldn’t get myself to do more than just a couple minor course corrections before it rammed into me, bringing me to a halt.

Before I could really get going again, a level 50 with a purple name tag leaped on board. Green is friendly, blue is your own party, yellow is neutral, red is hostile, including all opposite faction characters. Purple is someone from your own faction that is capable of attacking anyone.

At 17 levels under, the fight went as you might expect, though it went longer than I would think. He was either taking it cautious with incapacitating abilities, or playing with/testing me. I died. In shallow water, so they recovered the pack. The good news is that the crafter of the pack always gets 20% of the sale price, so Lingli still got that much.

I had opportunities to react, if I could have thought of what I wanted to do. There’s a ship-buff that keeps people from boarding for a short time. Presumably, that would have worked. I have a ‘force push’ ability that, if he didn’t just resist it outright, would have knocked him over the railing. Then it’s superior maneuvering and speed to get away.

But there was nothing left to do but rez at the statue of Nui…. in the middle of the enemy continent! As near as I can figure it based the point of resurrection off of the last bit of land I’d touched.

Thankfully, it was a very obscure area, and there’s no fighting at the rez statues. It was tempting to stay and see if I could become a tourist attraction. (See the only Elf on Haranya!) ^_^

But Recall took me home, no trouble.

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Oct19

Continuing ArcheAge Thoughts…

by Rindis on October 19, 2014 at 12:57 pm
Posted In: MMO

Note: Some of this is cribbed from various videogamegeek posts….

ArcheAge is a new FTP MMORPG from Korean Developer XL Games and published by Trion (Rift). Smudge and I tried it out during open Beta, and have been playing for the past couple weeks. The fact that it’s an Asian MMO shows. The questing isn’t nearly as hopeless as the cheap Asian MMOs that we’ve tried, but is not overly inspired, and wallows in ‘all NPCs are helpless’ problems.

But, the main plots aren’t bad (there are four races, each of which has its own plotline). Post-beta, we’ve been playing with the Elves, and sadly, Smudge reports it’s probably the weakest story of the bunch (alt-itis strikes). Anyway, in addition to lots and lots of related sidequests, you get a main line which puts your character through some sort of coming-of-age arc. There’s not a lot of exploration per se, as all the maps are fully revealed to begin with. Quest locations are generally clearly marked on the map, and arrows on the ground around your character tell you what direction to go in. This can be somewhat disappointing, but I’ve also been frustrated too many times by quests that had bad directions to want to complain.

The modeling and world aren’t bad, but do suffer greatly in comparison to such good looking games as FF XIV and SW:TOR.  Also, both of our systems tend to struggle with the graphics (FF XIV easily wins ‘best looks with least effort’, at the cost of splitting up the world into lots of separate zones that require load screens). I’ve been having recurrent problems with performance, and right now it seems like I have to switch the game in or out of windowed mode after each time I reboot the system, or my performance is crippled. No idea why, just that it works. The fact that it is an Asian MMO rears its head here too, as there are excessive amounts of boob jiggle on the female characters (which tends to be a Japanese/Korean thing). Cheesecake armor is in full flood, with many (not all, though) outfits being much skimpier on females.

This is the beginning Elvish outfit, which is quite nice (though it needs silver buckle shoes). Since then, I’ve had three miniskirts and one robe. The outfits look nice, even with a miniskirt, and it’s not as if cloth armor is meant for physical protection anyway. (Actually, they are pants. Just check the item name! It says ‘pants’ right there!) But… yeah. And the heavier armors tend towards the same problem, where it gets really bad (the game has gotten close to a chainmail bikini top).

Character progression is with ten ‘skillsets’, of which you pick three to make your class, and choose between purchasing the available skills in each with skill points as you level up. It looks like you could get everything in one, and about half of another with the total number of skill points at max level (50). Gau (Smudge’s main) is a Templar (Vitalism/Defense/Auramancy), high defense with buff ability, and Eseria (me) is a Demonologist (Sorcery/Occultism/Witchcraft) with high magic damage and ‘curses’ (debuffs, I think). If anything requires lots of physical damage, we could be in trouble. Gau is having trouble tanking, but is just now starting to grow into actual tanking skills like taunts.

The first real grouping quest you see is an ‘elite’ quest around level 12 that happens twice per game-world ‘day’. You show up, you try to kill 30 of whatever shows up for your race/zone’s quest, and at with the new-game weight of lots of low-level characters, it’s over in moments. Thankfully, everyone generally gets into a raid group together to share credit, but it’s in no way satisfying at this point. The first dungeon showed up around level 20, and has a three person limit, which is the smallest I’ve ever seen, but from the way it was said, presumably the character limit will vary from dungeon to dungeon. With some work and a few deaths, Smudge and I got through it all with some really tense fights… until the final boss. He was just too fast for us to deal with, and then he got help…. There’s a daily quest to ‘mentor’ someone by taking them through the dungeon when you’re at level 30+. We’ve now been mentored by a friendly level 47… and that didn’t leave us much to do. ^_^; There’s also a ‘mentoree’ daily quest for the dungeon, but sadly, only one person gets the reward at a time, so Smudge has done it, but I haven’t.

The initial mounts come fairly early in the game, and can each take two people, so one of us can ride on the other’s mount, and not get lost, or just ride while getting a drink or something, and not have to worry about getting scraped off while on follow. In fact, the world is generally interactive. Lots of chairs to sit in. Lamps that can be turned on and off. Ladders to climb. Small lakes have rowboats in them, that you can actually row around in. (They can take two people too.)

And there’s lots of minerals to mine, trees to uproot or chop down, flowers to pick…. Not only can you can gather a lot of things in the wild, you’re supposed to set up a farm for most others, where you wait for them to mature, and then harvest them (multiple times for some things, like grapes). Full farm functionality is reserved for subscribers, which I wish they’d made clear during the tutorial quest, especially as it’s obviously where they sunk a lot of development effort.

This all feeds into a fairly standard crafting system, if a bit more elaborate than usual. But, you can also create trade packs, which are bundles of a large number of an item (like 100 cloth), which are worn on the back, and cause movement to be a slow walk. These are then run to locations in other zones for a large amount of money (the further away, the more it’s worth). And then there’s mules, and cars and ships that can carry a number of these trade packs (you even get your own rowboat of the type I mentioned before). I’ve seen a fair number of the transport cars go by lately, so it’s getting used. It’s kind of like the trading mini-game of the original Traveller has been ported into an MMO mold.

You can do this without a subscription, but you’re stuck doing it in uncontrolled areas where anyone can come along and take it. But he gets ‘crime points’, and he can be accused of theft, and put on trial, which has it’s own chat channel. The judge is a bot, but the jury isn’t, and you can end up stuck in prison for a while. (The record we’ve seen is 969 minutes! That’s time logged in, on that character, stuck in prison.)

Overall, I’m rating it as a slightly below average MMO right now, though it seems like all the stuff they put effort into is really meant for high levels.

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