Current Gaming and MMOs

[achtungexplosiv]

At the moment, I'm not hardcore into any one thing. My general game usage is based around my 3DS while I'm out and about, which keeps me sane on my commutes and when I have a quiet lunch, and my home PC. On the 3DS I'm usually playing Ghost Recon; at home I'm often bouncing about on Minecraft. It's one of those lull periods I get where I'm not intensely focused on somthing in particular, and end up casually playing a few different games depending on the people I game with and their availability. Until recently I was up to my eyeballs in MMOs and I suppose could describe myself as 'between games' at the moment.


General MMO-flavoured notes

I've become an MMO gamer over the years, after initially being highly critical of a genre of game which, as I saw it, you had to re-buy the damn thing every month. The reasons for my change of tune are twofold:

Firstly, MMOs tend to be huge games with a lot of variety in scope, long character progression, plenty to see and do, a lot of freedom to explore, experiment and generally mess around with a wide variety of ways to play such as player vs game content, player vs player, combat, crafting, social activities etc. As living worlds that in theory are updated by their creators with new content and changes, this mitigated the 'subscription fee' niggle I had had.

Secondly, MMOs have communities; the people you play with in groupings of varying size and arrangement in order to accomplish things, so it's a social affair in which friendships can develop. It goes beyond in-game activities into forum participation, websites resource creation and the development of third-party tools that give rise to smartphone apps, wikis, theorycrafting with equipment listings and so on. The entire process can be very rewarding.

Both of those aspects appeal very strongly to me and I've had many years of good times with the genre. A quick overview of my time:

I started out with Eve Online in 2004 some time before the first big expansion, Exodus, was released. That's one hell of a baptism of fire, believe me. Internet spaceships appealed to my interests because I'm a sci-fi fan and I had a few friends that were playing it at the time. After some years and many adventures both good and bad, I burned out and decided to give it a break. I have returned to Eve off and on over the years and am currently subbed (just about) despite the CCP debacles of late.

After some time experimenting with other games, I found myself really getting into Anarchy Online which I had first come accross in 2006 shortly before the release of the Lost Eden expansion. I realise that this way round of playing those two games was arse-backwards to most others, but hey. Several more years of good and bad were spent here doing it all until I suffered a similar burnout and developed an extremely jaded view of FUncom (putting the FU in fun).

Some more random games later (most recently Rift, which I am still technically subbed to but no one I played with still plays and I'm bored on my own) I find myself adrift once more.

At a later point I'll do a more detailed write up of each game, including the various other games I played and didn't stick with for one reason or another.

Comments

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I played a lot of minecraft until about 2 weeks ago. I still enjoy it, but I find single player boring after a while and I have yet to find a multiplayer server I truly feel at home on. Most of the servers are completely empty or they're so full that they have to extremely limit what you can do or everyone lags out.

I've recently unsubbed from EVE as well. Again. I keep flitting back to it, determined that I will like it this time, but I always have the same problems. I find it difficult to make any ISK as I'm trapped in Empire, but I can't go to low-sec because I can't afford the losses learning to PvP. On top of that PvE is so bloody dull! Every single mission is just a variation on flying to some empty space and shooting down some slightly different looking ships, and once you figure out how to beat an individual mission it takes absolutely all the (minimal) challenge out of it entirely! :-/ As for mining, that will always be dull (corp mining operations slightly less so for some reason). With all of the above already wearing me down the latest CCP Incident was the straw that broke the camels back.

I briefly considered returning to Anarchy Online. Then I remembered what a horrible grindfest it was, even with the expansions that give a million times more XP per kill than the froob areas. In fact I've not played AO since before they started buffing the graphics I think. Sadly even with the graphics buff it's never going to be as pretty as many newer games.

I haven't tried Rift. After being completely burned by getting FFXIV and Aion when they were new and being so totally let down I wasn't willing to try it a third time.

There are no other MMOs that really grab my attention at the moment. I think I'm very much a niche market though, I want an in-depth crafting system that is also not so overly complex that you need a manual to understand what's going on and doesn't require you grinding on mobs to pick up rare items, but where the items you make are also of use and aren't superceded immediately by any old tat you pick up off the next mob. I'm all for item-degradation in games as a way for there to always be a market for new items, it would certainly make end-game content for WoW clones interesting if their uber-gear was time limited and required you to keep re-acquiring it. I am also completely over PvP, but only because it's always rife with griefers who gank individuals in large packs and/ or are completely over-powered in levels and gear. If PvP in MMOs had a more balanced playing field (such as being completely unable to attack someone X levels below you rather than the kill simply being worthless) I would find it much more interesting.

Umm, anyway, I think I'll stop ranting up your comments now. :p

[achtungexplosiv.livejournal.com]

Public servers for minecraft, ew *shudder*. I play with a couple of friends of mine usually, otherwise I faff about solo and go off exploring or trying to build something weird and random. Will likely do a post that's Minecraft-shaped in the very near future.

Eve PvE has a lot more to it than it used to but it's not necessarily obvious. Have you run a new character through the new player thingy then the various newbie missions yet? Using probes to find tasty hidden stuff is nice. Scan down a hacking site, get phats. Missions are mostly tedious, though they have been trying to add more than give you choices about what to do to complete them, or that are fun and silly (the level 1 Air Show mission chain, for example).

As for the recent CCP farce... well that's worthy of a post or 6 of it's own, it really is. Real *facepalm* stuff.

AO has better methods of gaining XP these days, such as daily missions with high rewards and the various quest chains (e.g. garden keys, bronto burger etc) now give decent rewards as well. The biggest trouble at the moment is hardly anyone around to team with unless you have friends/org. I'm not playing it at present.

Rift surprised me by being a fantasy-genre WoW clone that I didn't instantly loathe. FF14 looked terrible fromt he get go so I've kept away. If they do a free trial I'll give it a look out of curiosity though. Aion I did attempt to try, but after a 13Gb DL and install it wouldn't accept my account details. I faffed with it for ages trying to get it to work before giving up.

it's funny you mention level-restricted PvP because AO has exactly that andwhilst the actual level ranges need a serious kick up the arse, it's nice not to have 220s camping and ganking TL1 lowbies.

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to convince some people to play minecraft with me, but they're either uninterested in the game or they already have a group of friends they play with. People and their stupid friend groups. Pah! ;) The public servers are pretty awful, but I also like the constant chatter that goes on. Sometimes the conversations are even interesting!

I haven't made a new character in EVE for a long time so haven't tried any of the newbie bits that have been added. I am totally not in the mood to hang about EVE right now, but if/ when I'm on my next attempt to get in to it I'll give it a go. Unless the game spontaneously implodes before then... *eyes the forums* Yes, definitely a post or 6 of it's own.

AO was already having issues with finding a team last time I played. You pretty much had to solo your first 100 levels and then it was grind on those big not-heckler demon things. It was so long ago I've forgotten. Of course AO is now getting on in game terms and has a playerbase heavily skewed to high level characters as a result, so not being able to find a group doesn't surprise me in the least.

FF14 feels almost exactly like a prettier but ultimately borked version of FF11. They also insist on it being cross-platform with a console so the UI is (or was) a horrible abomination that is clunky for both sides. In fact it's so borked you can buy it for £5 on Amazon now. There are currently no subscription fees for FF14 because if there were no one would play it, but they are apparently working hard to fix it. Aion is also very pretty, I quite liked their crafting system too (even though it was simple and you actually made a loss on every item created :-/), but it is (or was) a complete and utter grindfest. Quests were few and far between, loot drops were so low you were lucky to fill half a bag in several hours of grinding, which also meant you never had enough cash to buy anything and especially not to buy off your death penalties (which would keep accumulating with each death). Also ever present faction PvP with warp portals to the other factions newbie areas meant ganking was almost impossible to avoid. HOWEVER, I do have to state I quit both of these games months ago and so their current state may be very different. With Aion at least they probably now have more quests (it's unreasonable to expect WoW levels of quest coverage, though we all do), and I think I heard somewhere that they were making changes to their "PvPvE" system, but I haven't really read up on any of that yet.

I want to try Rift, but there's no point as it'll have the same sort of end-game content as WoW and I fail to find the fun in grinding for better gear simply so I can grind for even better gear until the next expansion hits with fresh content. Though WoW also suffers with making the lower levels too easy in an attempt to get people up to the higher levels quicker. If Rift is quite difficult to level in then it would probably hold my attention longer as I'm way more about the journey than the destination.

Heh. I forgot about that. AO does do some things right :)

One day the most perfect, shining example of an MMO will be created, and on that day I will have my cryogenically preserved body resurrected by science so I can witness it. ;)

[achtungexplosiv.livejournal.com]

Are you on Steam? If so toss me your username. Can see about some sort of muckabout server thing for Minecraft then, though I selectively run my server so it wouldn't be something I'd leave on all the time.

I'd take the eve-o forums with a pillar of salt. That said there's a lot of valid concerns there, but it's like finding a diamond in the pigmuck.

AO does do something things very right, yes, which is why it held me for so long and why I'm not completely severing my ties with it. At this point, however, only the release of the new engine, rebalance and new player experience will make me want to login to take a good look.

In the case of Rift, I avoided the rush to endgame so I could focus on doing everything that you could do beforehand. Sadly many folks I played with were in the initial rush to hit the end so I got a bit left behind, and when they burned out of raiding and moved on I still hadn't got there yet. I'll do a Rift write-up soon.

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I do have Steam! (After refusing to install it for an age, I forget why now). Same username. I hardly ever remember to log in though because it doesn't start up with my computer and I haven't been playing many of my games through it lately.

Oh, absolutely! I learnt that lesson a long time ago. If you believed everything on the eve-o forums right now you'd be expecting CCP to spontaneously catch fire whilst announcing the immediate closure of the game due to crippling subscription loss. :)

AO is right enough that I did consider re-downloading it, but, again, it's a bit of a lonely grindfest. I think that deep down I don't really want to play AO itself any more, instead I want to play something that takes all the best ideas from it and mixes it up in to something new and interesting. I suspect I want that from a lot of games though, not just AO.

*Nods* I understand that. Often happens with me in level based MMOs when I start "lagging behind" the pack in the middle levels because I'd rather do an interesting looking quest or go exploring than grind XP in a totally optimised way.

Looking forward to your Rift write-up. :)

[achtungexplosiv.livejournal.com]

Friended you on Steam. I have my Steam set to autologin on bootup so if my PC is on, I'm on Steam. It's my primary communications tool these days ;-)

Give me a prod and I can pop up a Minecraft map of somekind.