About Simon Potter

Here are my most recent posts:

You are here: Home / Archives for Simon Potter

Rise Of The Hutt Cartel – Early Thoughts

March 29, 2013 by

and-another-thing‘And Another Thing’ is a regular column where one of the Oceanic Gamer team get an issue off their chest. If you’ve got a pet peeve or controversial issue you’d like to write about, drop us a line.

Finally the cone of silence lifts and we can finally spill some beans on Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Big question first, ‘Is it worth it?’ Easy answer: Yes, yes, yes.

So what’s it like? It is polished, visually impressive and a great boost to the game. While we’ll be talking about the game more as the release draws closer, I’ll limit myself to sharing a little of SWTOR’s outstanding feature – storytelling, or swtorytelling. Sorry.

As most of us already know, while this is Chapter 4 of SWTOR, it’s not Chapter 4 of your class story. This expansion is faction based, or a world arc if you prefer, so you just get to see events from your own side’s standpoint. There is a lot less voiceover in this chapter, with only significant missions threatening the health of your space bar. Incidental missions are, for the most part handled through terminals and, in my opinion, it’s an improvement. Quality voice acting is a good thing, but you can have too much of it. Especially when it blurs the significance of the mission. It’s a little like typing an entire email in bold capitals – it’s hard for anything to stand out. RoTHC doesn’t suffer from that and it definitely helps smooth out the story telling now there’s less background noise.

As to the quality of the story, it would be hard to complain. To the extent of the opportunityI had to play (thanks Eric), it felt at least as good as anything previously in the game. There is nothing that hints of reduced resources or a cash grab as some of the more cynical have suggested.

Filed Under: General News, SWTOR Tagged With:

PS4 Launch Roundup: My Take

February 21, 2013 by

and-another-thing
‘And Another Thing’ is a semi-regular look at key events or issues in the gaming industry. Written by Flash Point podcast co-host, dedicated tweeter and all round good guy Simon Potter – drop him a line if you want to suggest future columns.

After a two hour media spectacular in New York which brought parts of the internet to a standstill, Sony have begun the next phase of the Console Wars and announced the PS4.

What will it look like? We don’t know yet. How much will it cost? Again, they haven’t said. What we do know is that it will hit shops Christmas 2013 and that E3 is going to be Sony’s next media blitzkrieg.

The good news is Sony learnt their lesson from the Cell processor and the Emotion engine. Based on the x86 architecture, this machine is going to be a comparative breeze to code for (we saw it running Unreal 4), which eats into one of XBox’s big advantages. The upshot is the PS4 has an army of game developers behind it (‘a console designed by game developers for game developers’).

Obviously it’s easy to get swept away in the reality distortion bubble that these things create, but you are still left with an overwhelming sense that devs are genuinely excited about the new platform, and that means games. Lots of games.

So what about those games? Usually you only see tech demos at such hype-fests but we did get to see some real gameplay this time, specifically Killzone Shadow Fall. Not only did it look startling, even through an overloaded video stream, it also gave some solid evidence of the investment and momentum already in the industry. All the big players were there, MediaMolecule, Activision and their subs Blizzard (Diablo III) and Bungie (Destiny… squeeee!), Sucker Punch, Capcom, Square Enix and others. It really felt like an abundance of riches, just like they wanted it to.

Some interesting facts revealed:

  • You can suspend gameplay then jump back in later without reloading
  • A secondary chip allows background downloads, even when the console is off.
  • Heavy social integration – spectator mode and ‘share’ button.
  • With built in Gaikai tech, the PS4 becomes a games server to your Vita (and potentially other hardware, like mobiles and tablets)
  • Play a game while you download it from the PSN – no more demo downloads to try.
  • PS3 games not natively supported or emulated.
  • Current project to allow you to play PS3, 2 and 1 games on the PS4 or any other hardware through Gaikai tech (how that works with preowned is anyone’s guess).
  • Predictive game downloads (the PS4 knows what new games you’d like before you do)
  • The Dualshock 4 and stereoscopic camera, although whether this is the final look, is uncertain (PS3 boomerang)
Things not revealed
  • Whether online gaming will remain free or be folded into PS+
  • If a pre-owned market for PS4 titles can exist
  • Cost and appearance

 
It’s hard to say whether Microsoft’s job is made easier by Sony announcing first, but if I had to guess I’d say harder. As was pointed out by the founder of the original Xbox project  in his blog Stupid, Stupid, xBox!!, MS have been laser fixed on integrating their ecosystem across multiple devices. In doing that they’ve made the Xbox into a media/advertising hub. In other words they’ve de-emphasised the games.

What wonders Xbox 720 has in store is a mystery for the moment, but if Redmond isn’t feeling a little nervous right now, they’re not paying attention.

Filed Under: Game-Related, Gaming Technology, General News, Op-Ed Tagged With:

SWTOR: Server Merges Take 2

September 19, 2012 by

Last night, BioWare continued its concentration of players into ever fewer servers in both the European and North American zones.

This process started in June where they tried to lure people across to the designated ‘destination’ servers with promises of vanity treats. Unsurprisingly, not everyone nibbled at these virtual goodies and stubbornly stayed where they were. Last night the forced evictions occurred and all the remaining holdouts got corralled into their new, higher population residence. That wasn’t surprising and we all knew it was coming. What did raise a couple of eyebrows was that the number of destination servers had actually shrunk. North America now only has eight, down from twelve in the original merger strategy. European servers also lost two of their former destination servers.

Obviously this means that those unlucky enough to have had naming issues when they moved to The Fatman, Corellian Run, Canderous Ordo or Drooga’s Pleasure Barge are now faced with a further round of name conflicts as they settle in to their new, new homes. Even more concerning, Bioware has only just started the ‘High Population Server’ testing, which suggests that further mergers may be in the near future. The other possibility is that this infrastructure is for the move to F2P, but even if that’s the only reason it’s there it still doesn’t rule out further consolidation or redistribution of the existing player based, subbed or not.

One of the pluses to come with the mergers is an increase in character slots from eight to twelve. Players in the EU and North America can now grow their in-game family of alts if they choose, although that’s not the reason for the increase in space. For the most part it’s a basic solution to accomodate players who have more than eight characters spread across multiple servers. Even if you have more than twelve you will still be able to access them but won’t be able to create new characters until you reduce your count to below twelve.

It goes without saying (but I will anyway) that APAC players immediately noticed that we haven’t seen the character slot increase, although Bioware have advised that they intend for us to get them.

This begs the question ‘what else will we get?’ Since the additional slots came as a solution for one problem created with the server merger, something we’ve not experienced, will the increase in slots come with our own three servers being folded into one?

Time will tell. Either way you might want to create some placeholder characters, just in case.

Filed Under: General News, Servers, SWTOR Tagged With:

SWTOR: Grinding The Gears

August 29, 2012 by
There’s nothing so embarrassing as trying to go up a hill in the wrong gear. You can hear the engine struggle and have to endure the amused smiles from passengers in other cars as they bomb past you. Unless you are a complete idiot, you will change down gears.

This is clearly BioWare Austin’s revised philosophy as BioWare’s Executive Producer for Live Services, Jeff Hickman, has pointed out in a recent interview with Zam.com.  Lets face it, BW has become notorious for offering up big promises of things ‘coming soon’ but for the most part it’s been a bad case of over-promising and under-delivering. It look like this is changing – hopefully.

While his responses include the usual soft peddle and PR spin where he tries to paint the move of offering a F2P tier as a considered move that’s part of a larger strategy guided by keen observation of the market place (as opposed to the market pushing them towards a cliff), he also offers some interesting morsels that will appear to hint at better days to come for the struggling MMO.

The first thing to mention is that Jeff Hickman overall sounds like a man who wants to make things right. If that is reflective of the general attitude in Austin then good things might be about to happen. There had been fears expressed by some that EA/Bioware might just throw token resources at the game to keep it ticking over but not put any great effort into re-energising it. However it sounds, to me at least, that a shift in focus and attitude has occurred and with it some actual progress.

The six-week update schedule, if they stick to it, should be achievable especially since they’ve already got a significant amount of content mapped out and built ahead of time according to Daniel Erickson. DC Universe Online manages updates roughly every month, so lets consider this a likely eventuality.

Now, onto Space combat. While many are vocal about this being an irrelevant and seldom touched part of the game, recent figures indicate that it’s popular.  While Hickman confirmed that hard mode missions would be available, he was decidedly evasive about any other developments saying only that there was a dedicated space team working on ‘lots of interesting things’. Granted that smacks of ‘coming soon’ but in the overall context of the interview it sounds more substantial to me. Apropos of nothing? Maybe, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say I think this sounds promising.

Then of course we have the much derided Great Acquisition Race. While many found this frustrating and far too short-lived, Hickman said it was full of foreshadowing and hinted at where the story was headed. Again, this at least confirms that Makeb, as a class-generic zone isn’t all we have in store. There is more story to come and for many of us, that remains the main attraction of the game. Once again, it sounds hopeful.

Granted, there’s nothing rock-solid here and SWTOR has plummeted from keenly anticipated WoW killer to being written off as ‘a miss’ in the last EA earnings call. But this may be a blessing in disguise. Perhaps now that internal and external expectations have crashed, the game has a little breathing space to consolidate, reappraise and rebuild without the intense scrutiny and pressure. Perhaps there’s less need for the vague promises that gamers always assumed were directed at them but were merely coded messages to the stock market. Those messages caused most of us a lot of frustration and while I thought I was beyond believing or caring, this interview still leaves me oddly hopeful.

Even with so much else in the market right now, SWTOR can still turn things around. It will never have ten million subs but it can find its niche. SWTOR still has a lot to offer and under the right leadership there’s no reason it shouldn’t continue to develop and mature into a game with a substantial, stable player community. With luck it might even evolve into the game it was always intended to be before EA pushed it out of the womb prematurely.

[Image via Free Images Archive]

Filed Under: General News, Opinion, SWTOR Tagged With: , ,

SWTOR: How many Cartel Coins to the Drachma?

August 27, 2012 by

Money. We all need it, we all use it. Without money we couldn’t get what we need, or more frequently what we merely desire. As we’ve all learnt over the past few years, the value of any currency bobs about like a dead Gungan in a fast flowing river, so what type of currency you get makes all the difference. What can you buy with it? Is it a silver dollar or a Zimbabwean dollar?

Which brings me to the bright and shiny new currency, Cartel Coins, that are part of BioWare’s new brand of bling to retain existing players and win back some of the jaded masses. By their own admission, they are struggling to keep people’s interest, either because players have become bored with the existing content, the game doesn’t play the way they want or offer the playstyle they like. Even worse, new games like Guild Wars 2 or upcoming expansions for existing games (WoW, Rift) are proving far more enticing.
The idea of rewarding those of us who are sticking with SWTOR with a rapidly increasing pile of virtual dosh is a good one and they’ve given us a rough idea of the sorts of things we can buy,  but they’ve given us no idea of our money pile’s relative value.

First of all, lets get a rough idea of how many coins you may have in your pocket when F2P and the new store finally hit. By my admittedly wonky math skills:

SWTOR goes free to play ‘this fall’, that being a period between Sept 22 and Dec 20. Pandaria comes out Sept 25. While I doubt BioWare are thinking that F2P can compete, they may still release it about the same time in order to reduce or mitigate churn. However it may be they wait until after this (perhaps for strategic reasons – or perhaps because they won’t be ready), but at a guess it would be late October when they can get a little more traction in the average gamer’s hummingbird attention span. After all, any uptick in numbers (F2P plus subbed players) they can get in the approach to and during the holiday season would be good news to report in the February Q3 2013 earnings call, since F2P subscriber numbers could be counted as forecastable income through micro-transaction earnings.

Back to my earlier point, assuming that you have been a paid subscriber  from Jan 20 2012 (after your free 30 days elapsed) through to say Oct 20 2012 you will have 150 coins per month up to Jul 31 (6×150=900) and 200 per month (3×200=900) after that, until F2P occurs (e.g. Oct 20). If you got the CE there’s an extra 1000. So what will 1800 (or 2800) cartel coins buy you? That’s the big unknown and the septic splinter in my dewback’s foot. Will it buy you a set of orange armour? Half a dozen stims? A vanity pet and a title? A mega awesome 200% mount or a 90% one that looks like a lawnmower and kicks you off whenever a level 10 trash mob gives you a dirty look? -cough- Grand Acquisition Race

Anyone who remembers the fine promises of the Collector’s Edition vendor will recall that not only did they never put anything new or interesting in there (EVER!), they actually took stuff out. Can BioWare be trusted? Not based on previous performance. I’d like to believe them, I’d like to trust them, but I can’t muster the strength anymore. In any case the entire premise is consistent with much of BioWare’s communication lately: broad promises with little detail. Perhaps by the one year anniversary we’ll all look back at the first turbulent year and smile knowing that all is now well and the worst is behind us. I’d like to think so.

To sum up, the real question is this: can something be an incentive when its value or worth is a complete mystery? Is this just a poorly defined carrot offered to those on the fence while the Devs and number crunchers scramble behind the scenes to work out how the hell this is all going to work? Or is this part of a considered strategy?

It’s an impossible question to answer, which is why I’m not going to try, but speculation is fun, it drives Reddit contributors insane and at the very least this is a matter that I think we all need to consider. If you are still playing the game and loving it, the cash donation of Cartel Coins is icing on a delicious cake. If the cake is starting to taste a little stale though, no amount of icing is going to help.

Filed Under: General News, Opinion, SWTOR Tagged With: ,

SWTOR F2P: Caution, Diatribe Ahead

August 1, 2012 by
As promised, key members of our team are going to give their thoughts on today’s announcement. First cab off the rank: Simon Potter.
There’s a time for being charitable and understanding and there’s a time to just say what you think… guess which this is?
Clue… I am angry, people.

In my humble opinion, F2P isn’t the news although I welcome the change, if it’s done right. 

Bioware have plenty of good examples to follow and SWTOR should enjoy the growth and ongoing success of DCUO and LotRO. If they screw it up, they only have themselves to blame.

What really burns my brisket about this announcement is the mealy mouthed obfuscation from various spokespeople regarding this inevitable model shift. While they were just following orders, it’s perfectly clear that the weasel words were to cloud the issue so this announcement could be married to the EA earnings call yesterday. Perhaps they value their shareholders opinion and good wishes more than players? I think it’s a distinct possibility.

All the while BioWare maintain the ‘if we don’t talk about it, then no one will notice’, which I will be honest is really beginning to grate. Since BioWare have fired most of their community team, it’s no surprise that their communication has gone from uneven to non-existent to insulting. However at least one person at EA is honest, if not with player then with the investors. In the earnings call Frank Gibeau, President, EA Labels, referred to SWTOR as ‘a miss’. Well, that puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

To sum things up, if BioWare expect to keep the sudden influx of new and returning players informed, they will need to lift their community communication dramatically and perhaps try to be a little more honest and open. Too much spin makes people dizzy and nauseous.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, let me assure you I still love SWTOR and am looking forward to the upcoming announced content, assuming we ever see it. After all they’ve promised a number of things that have yet to materialise. The game is only just beginning to hit its stride and I’m certain it will be a longterm survivor.

I still hate Taris though. 
Filed Under: General News, Opinion, SWTOR

Another Take On Guild Wars 2

July 25, 2012 by

Beta test weekends are tricky devils especially the final one, because you know its a stress test by another name. Not only that, but a wobbly first impression can put you off the game, even though you know it’s not necessarily representative of the final product.

With SWTOR, my first impression was not good. In fact it was so bad I can cancelled my CE preorder.

I’m not about to do that with Guild Wars 2. First up, a caveat. I only got to play for about an hour and a half, so this is superficial at
best. Also I knew next to nothing so I had no expectations at all, a complete tabula rasa.

Initial impression were promising with an elegant painted style that is throughout the UI and immediately marks the game out as something different. The character creation screens are logical and flexible enough to tweak your character to your satisfaction. Controls are fairly standard and even though it was a stress test weekend, there was no lag that I noticed, despite plenty of other players rushing about.

Conversations with quest givers are animated, but instead of trying to integrate them into the gameplay, you are gently lifted out of it as your avatar and the quest-giver hold their exchange in front of an elegant background.

Combat is engaging and fun, some strategy is a good idea as button mashing, even at an early level, not only gets tedious but won’t give you the best effect. One aspect of the game I particularly liked was that you are not made to feel like you are on some heavily scripted linear progression, a long standing frustration I have with some other games. Here, you don’t get led around by the nose but are encouraged to explore what appears to be a sprawling environment and locate events and quest-givers with only limited support from the map.

Even though I had such a limited time to try the game and despite not being hit over the head with plot points, I still found myself being drawn into the story. So that’s another tick.

Finally lets talk quickly about the graphics. One word – sweet! GW2 isn’t having to wrestle with a relatively untried engine. It looks
excellent, with detailed textures and draw distances that always remind you that it’s a big world out there. Considering I’m still using a creaky ATI 4850 and didn’t bother to tweak any settings I could quite happily pick up where I left off without touching a thing.

While I don’t doubt there are flaws, bugs and other irritations that I’ve yet to discover, I can honestly say I’m looking forward to
returning and waking my toothy cat guy from where he is currently laying down and sleeping deeply.

Filed Under: General News, Guild Wars 2 Tagged With: ,

An Open Letter From A Completionist

July 18, 2012 by

Dear Mr Triangle,

As a bit of a obsessive completionist, I have the tendency to play every mission, explore every area and will not leave a planet until every one of you cursed equilateral demons has your creamy green filling. The idea of leaving anything undone or undiscovered fills me with horror. So you and your kind make for a long time between drinks at the Class Story Fountain. If you’ve ever watched a drama series on broadcast TV, then re-watched it on DVD you’ll know how those week long pauses dull detail and erode ambience.

So I decided to focus on closing those gaps to a minimum with a new alt while my bounty hunter went on a skiing holiday to Hoth. Obviously I went for a different class, that way I get to peek behind red force shields I haven’t been through yet. After all, I’m still a completionist. Thus, from my triangle frustration was born a new Sith Assassin, master of side-quest-avoidance, disdainer of completing World Stories and wearer of dresses. A Sith born of hatred. Appropriate, don’t you think?

First, let me describe the joy of ignoring the majority of your parasitic brethren as they hang impotently above quest givers. Most of them are now redundant, because, for whatever reason (maybe it’s because I’m awesome) progression through the class story has been fairly easy and a lot of fun. My ship was delivered promptly at level 13, Tatooine tasted my thruster exhaust just on level 25 and Alderaan at 29. World quest arcs have effectively ceased to exist and, with their passing, class quests are almost seamless. The erratic accent of my Sith Master sending me forth, still rings fresh in my ears as I return to report success.

While I certainly don’t advise anyone to blow off so much lovingly crafted content on primary playthrough, I can highly recommend disregarding you accursed hollow cornchips with at least one alt.

Obviously there’s a downside to all this. Up until now my method of gearing has been to find orange loot I like, then use the commendations from side quests to spec them up. Since my inquisitor doesn’t have that option he has to rely on PvP, operations and a good dose of space combat.  This is no bad thing because (as a solo player by nature) it’s forced me to explore aspects of the game I’ve previously been able to ignore.

So that’s what I’ve learned from avoiding you Benbenet’s of Grind and it’s that personal revelation that’s the whole point of this missive. If you play an alt, why not alt your play style as well? There are a lot of paths to level 50 – some faster, some less so, but they all have something to offer.  Retooling your strategies freshens the game up and proves Bioware has a point when they say you can play the game the way you want. Okay, that’s not strictly true as I can’t play Pazaak yet, but there’s more than one way to flay this particular feline.

As for my dress-wearing Inquisitor, he will continue to inflict evil as he explores the galaxy, all the while keeping his eyes open for a decent pair of pants.

So how do you play the game? What’s your modus operandi? I’d love to know, so why not leave a comment and tell us your pet strategy?

Filed Under: General News, Opinion, SWTOR Tagged With:

These are not the factions you’re looking for!

July 2, 2012 by

A long, long time ago in a land far away, there was a beautiful princess, handsome rogue, black knight, evil king and a brave lad about to take his first steps on a great adventure. Oh, did I mention the menacing castle, wise wizard and two bumbling dwarves for comic relief. Sound familiar? It should because Mr Lucas not only lifted a classic fairytale template but the childlike morality that goes with it. So, in SWTOR you tend to be pushed to one moral pole or the other in order to benefit from alignment rewards.

This was not always the plan though. Back in the hazy genesis of the game there was talk of having three factions: saintly, chewing-the-scenery evil and normal people just looking to make a buck. But as the game evolved that went the way of other ambitious ideas and we ended up with the binary factions each gaining one of the neutral classes. Perhaps they didn’t want to stray too far from WoW’s recipe or maybe three factions was more work than they could handle.

The ghost of the third faction still haunts the corridors of BioWare Austin, as has been acknowledged by the promise of neutral gear sometime in the indeterminate future. So, to draw a long bow, perhaps a third faction is a concept that could be dusted off and re-examined because the game could certainly benefit from it.

Now before I go further, this is a mental exercise so don’t go flaming about problematic details, we’re painting with broad strokes here. So grab some Giggledust and lets go down the rabbit hole…

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first, since much of the ground work is already in the game. The neutral faction already has two classes: Bounty Hunter and Smuggler. Now if my math is correct that leaves us a class short. Rather than introduce a new one I’m going to suggest ‘Revanites’ where neutraly aligned Republic and Empire plays could defect to, but probably not until level 50 once the class story is out of the way. Why complicate things.

Now we need a capital. What’s appropriate and easy? Hutt Space in one form or another predates either The Empire or The Republic and Nar Shaddaa rivaled Coruscant as a trade hub until the Kyyr system’s star went supernova and destroyed the Ootmian Pabol trade route, so we’ve got our capital city. Unless BioWare feel like building Bilbousa. Nah, didn’t think so.

So what’s the point of having a neutral faction? In a word – Endgame. To avoid changing too much of the existing game during levelling, specifically voiceover and story, a neutral faction would really exist to create added gameplay dynamics in warzones and, if it’s ever fixed, open-world PvP. Potentially it could help balance factions by allowing the two smaller ones to team up against the largest. Or not. Wholesale slaughter can be fun too.

More to the point, since endgame content is still a bit thin it gives Bioware the opportunity to develop new material that will make level 50 gameplay more compelling and stand out from other offerings in the genre.

Before I wrap this up, I’ll just say again, this is purely a ‘what-if’, it’s not fully thought through because I’m not a game designer. I also understand there would be a lot of work to make it happen, so don’t waste your time pointing that sort of thing out. But taking all that into consideration, why not join in this flight of fancy and tell us what would you like to see if a third faction was a possibility?

Throw a comment in below!

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With: ,

Unexpected Maintenance Part 2: Tonight

June 29, 2012 by

UPDATE: Make that 7pm-11pm AEST now…

It’s no fun to report that for the second night in a row we’re facing a maintenance downtime. This one’s meant to definitely be staying within the four hour timeframe – here’s hoping.

Times:

AEST: 5pm-9pm
AWST: 3pm-7pm
NZST: 7pm-11pm

The full details:

We will be deploying a patch and performing an unscheduled maintenance this Friday, June 29th, 2012. Patch notes will be made available shortly after the servers come back up.

The servers and SWTOR.com will be down for four hours on Friday, June 29th, 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST). There is a possibility that the maintenance window (start & stop times) may shift later than posted here. If that occurs, we will update the messaging immediately. All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours, but could be extended.

After the maintenance, please login via the launcher to download the latest patch. If your launcher was open during the maintenance, you must close and reopen it for a fresh login.

Maintenance

Date: Friday, June 29th, 2012

Time: 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST).

There is a possibility that the maintenance window (start & stop times) may shift later than posted here. If that occurs, we will update the messaging immediately.

All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This game maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours.

Filed Under: News, Servers Tagged With:

The Wrong Revolution?

June 21, 2012 by

MMORPG is a stale genre in many respects. Leveling, crafting, gathering. It’s all very familiar – electronic Dungeons & Dragons®. So when a new one appears we all hope that it’s got something new to offer, something improved, perhaps revolutionary. SWTOR promised this with the ‘fourth pillar’ of story and voice. It’s definitely made the leveling process more interesting and immersive so long as you don’t mind having your character and path heavily defined for you. But once you reach endgame this fourth pillar effectively vanishes, leaving you with the same ol’ tripod – a notoriously unstable configuration, particularly if the legs are different lengths.

Which is why two recent MMOs have got me thinking about whether BioWare really chose the right thing to pour so much time, energy and money into. I’m talking about Tera and Day Z.

Tera was launched in South Korea in January 2011 and in North America May this year. It runs on the time- tested Unreal 3 engine. Unlike SWTOR, the producers (Bluehole Studio) have made no attempt to reduce grind or draw you into a rich compelling story. What they have done is bring a third person shooter-style aiming system into an MMO, along with distinctive play styles and strategies for each class. I don’t need to tell you that this can remain fun and interesting long after the leveling process ends. Despite a total lack of innovation in most other areas, many admit it’s still damn fun and compelling. People want to try new classes because they each offer a something substantial and distinctive, not just different animations and light effects.

Day Z is completely different. A mod for ARMA II (plus its expansion Operation Arrowhead), Day Z runs on the propriatory Real Virtuality 3 engine and throws you into a zombie infested, post apocalyptic landscape (254 km.sq). You have some basic supplies, a weapon and zombies… so many zombies. Scattered about this enourmous landscape are fellow players who may help you, or just as likely kill you for the pittance in your backpack.

Every step you take, every choice you make has real consequences, it’s all about survival. But it’s not for everyone. There’s no crafting, no slick UI, no map (you WILL get lost… alot) or any of the plush velvet luxuries that many MMO players now demand. There’s no attempt at plot, but there are plenty of stories – all tales of player’s experiences – some are intense and no wonder. It’s just you, your wits and a little blind luck. This is a brutal, unforgiving place and it’s massively popular. So much so it’s pushed ARMA II sales up, even to the top of Steam’s sales chart. Not bad for a product still in alpha.

So where does that leave us? In fairness to BioWare, the world has changed a lot since SWTOR was conceived in early 2008. Back then K.Rudd had just apologised to the Stolen Generation and the Global Financial Crisis had yet to start biting. The world has changed a little since then, but not within SWTOR’s masterplan it seems, although that may change very soon. Only time will tell if the ‘fourth pillar’ was the right move or just a footnote in MMO evolution.

The real question is “where to from here?”. Maintain the ‘fourth pillar’ by continuing your personal story? Desperately add extra content for endgame? Re-examine the current market and make some hard choices? In all honesty, since it’s hard to tell what resourcing EA/Bioware have available for SWTOR, it’s hard to say – especially after the Austin studio lost somewhere around 120 fulltime staff (as best we can tell).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sick of the game, nor am I downhearted about its future, but I’m not going to gloss over existing problems. I believe that, with the world economy and reduced staff resources, BioWare need to decide who their core player base is and focus on improving the game for them. They will lose players but they’ll certainly gain many others.

In the meantime, we’ll just have to sit back and hope we see more openness and transparency in BioWare’s communication with their fans. They should remember that, like your character has a health bar, any business has a trust bar and that SOB drops fast and recharges very, very slowly.

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With:

All Roads Lead to Rodia

June 18, 2012 by

Any of you familiar with the movies knows that the empire of Vader’s day isn’t the alien inclusive, warm and fuzzy Sith playground of SWTOR. Aliens are not tolerated in Palpatine’s version – it’s often referred to as a ‘humans only club’ and in some ways SWTOR is just as exclusive to humans.

Wait, did I just say that SWTOR is inclusive but it’s not? Contradictory much?

Let me explain. From the beginning, BioWare have had a pretty clear idea of what they would and would not do. Playable and romanceable races are one of those areas where they think they know best. Some they have relaxed (decisions having real consequences, others they have stuck to (player characters must be as human-like as possible).

While for some games a new playable race meets strong reactions for and against, you know you’re doing something reeeeally wrong when it’s met with a resounding “meh”. Cathars are humans with a re-skin – nothing newsworthy there. I mean, we all loved it when that Cathar character in The Empire Strikes Back grabbed the blaster and…. oh…. wait there weren’t any Cathars. This is a race that exists nowhere except in comic books and as a companion in the original KoTOR. Aside from the fact it’s an easy race to make playable since they’ll fit existing armor, there’s no good reason to add them. Lazy or panicked addition, I can’t really tell. Although their unremarked deletion from the video now playing on swtor.com could be a clue (see before and after), so let’s add ‘confused’ to the list. Now, if it had been Trandoshians, that would be news. Instead this seems more a case of activity trying to look like movement.

I’m not beating up Bioware for their assertion that for a character to be relatable it must closely resemble a human, particularly the face. After all, the less like us things look in the animal kingdom, the more likely it is to have its own classification of phobia. But it’s not a universal truth and it’s a lazy assumption. Personality can be injected into anything either by the creator or observer. For example, the first exercise a prospective animator will often be faced with is the flour sack. Think the flying carpet from Disney’s Aladdin. It’s not a nuanced performance, but you know what it’s thinking. Not convinced? I’ve one word for you. Well, four letters actually: R2D2. Perhaps BioWare have heard of him.

For a tripodic pepper pot, that droid has more personality in his little canister body than Mr Lucas managed to inject in most of the characters in the new trilogy combined. Now I’m not saying there’s much subtlety there either. R2′s vocal expressions are broad and much of what we pickup from him are the generous reactions provided by other cast members, but that’s the point. In an RPG you don’t need your alt to provide much, because you as a player do that. We are very good at anthropomorphising things. We do it all the time with our pets. Projecting real feelings is second nature – some of us even manage to do it with politicians. Most players don’t need the emotional telegraphing. If you are a hard core raider you won’t miss it and if you enjoy RP you don’t need it.

In writing and other creative fields there is the precept of ‘be prepared to murder your darlings’. No, it’s not recommending infanticide, but how you must be prepared to sacrifice cherished notions for the sake of the greater work’s quality. The idea of players not being able to relate to their Trandoshian bounty hunter or Rodian consular is flat out wrong.

If BioWare want to give people an added, meaningful reason to create alts and play other story lines, they need to wake up and smell the blue milk.

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With:
«Older Posts

Polls

What impact will the announced oceanic SWTOR server closures have on you?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Archives