Casual Thoughts from a Semi-Retired Philosopher

I play MMOs as an alternative to TV. Sometimes it even turns into quality time with the girlfriend. Most of the time it's a distraction from doing something productive or meaningful.

Author: Hluill

There's a debate raging on the forums about a need for a "Good PvP-centered Game".  Why do I hang out on a PvP forum?  I do have masocistic tendancies, but I would love to see a good PvP game as well.  I just don't they can exist, considering developers, marketers and fans.

I deleted my response as it started to get really long.

 I cannot believe that I read all seventeen pages...  I feel a little less intelligent now.  Heck, I don't even know what the debates are about anymore.

I thought I understood the question, to which I answered no, by the way.  I answered no because there are enough PvP-centered games out there, cool ones, too.   I realize that they are not MMOrPGs.  I realize that the top sellers are not PvP centered.  In PvP-centered games, people seem centered on PvPing, surprisingly enough.  Stuff like crafting, house decorating, exploring and the other stuff for the RPG part of MMORPG, all fall by the wayside.  If somebody whines because they got ganked while decorating their house, they're dismissed for being a Carebear.  I think Mortal Online is a great example of an MMO trying to have a cool world system, but if you don't like PvP, it sucks to play (unless you like killing weasels, chopping wood and getting mugged).

The other problem with PvP is combat mechanics.  Since the early D&D days, they've sucked.  They're written by geeks who intellectualize mortal struggles but probably don't even know how to make a fist.  At some point in most rule systems, more advanced characters are immune to their lessers' attacks.  Sure, a full suit of chainmail (the uber gear a millenium ago) greatly reduced one's chances of dying in combat, but, number one: it did not reduce them to zero, and two: it didn't mean one didn't get knocked unconscious and held hostage or killed later.  Point is: that lowbie wood cutter?  Yeah, he should have a chance of taking you and all your uberness down. 

Another factor is that ganking is called a well-coordinated attack in the real world.  Sometimes it's an ambush, or raid or a deliberate attack.  It's about killing the enemy while he's still sleeping, surprised or distracted.  If I don't have an unreasonable advantage, then I ain't fighting.  And even with that unreasonable advantage, I still know I could lose.  But where's the fun in playing a game where one has to be in sneaky-sneaky, stalky-stalky mode all the time?  Maybe that's the thrill die-hard PvPers crave.  I have a hard time believe that it's that popular.

So, for anybody unfamiliar with my blogs, I am going to make this point absolutely clear, again: The first rule of combat is that anybody can kill anybody.  If the game does not allow for Uber-elite guy in top-teir gear to be owned by lowbie in rags with a rock, then your combat-system is for sissies.  Go back to sucking your thumb.  History is filled with examples of the top guys getting owned.  Sometimes it's a fluke, sometimes it's a well executed ambush.  Sometimes the top guy just spends too much time reading his own PR and believing it.  Yeah, boom, you're dead.

I've been playing this game for over SEVEN years now!  Wow, kind of sad.  It's fun to log in and mindlessly gather, or group with the girl and the daughter and run a dungeon.  It's fun tweaking my toons with gear and Alternate Acheivements.  I've been experimenting with other classes recently.  Shocking though it may be, classes other than berserkers and brigands can be fun to play.  I've even rolled up a couple of healers AND had fun playing them.  I am having a lot of fun with my baby ShadowKnight.  I still don't like paladins.

But as I take my baby avatars exploring, I can't help but remember the old days.  See, my friends from old EQ talked me into making the switch, so I had an instant group.  One needed a group then, even for the open, overland zones like Antonica and the Commonlands.  Mobs were tough and leveling was slow.  There were no Alternate Advancements and one had to retrieve one's shard after losing a fight.  I have a fond memory of making my first cup of watery coffee out of dog spit.

The game has come a long way since then.  We all have mounts, fast ones.  Or one can rent a griffon or horse to ride through mob-filled zones now.  There's a stable outside the Temple of Cazic-Thule, stables throughout Zek and even Lavastorm!  I remember helping to build the griffon towers in the Nektulos.  And remember the quests one had to do in order to use them.  

Anybody can solo anything and legendary gear drops off mundane quests and mobs.  And legendary items now add hundreds to one's attributes, of which only two matter.  Gone are the days of needing a group to help with the level-twenty armor quest.  Heck, my baby alts have been soloing Heritage Quests, at level.  

Gone are the days of balancing attributes for speed and power and health and avoidance.  Fighter?  Strength!  Scout?  Agility!  Priest?  Wisdom!  Mage?  Intelligence!  And, of course, everyone needs Stamina!  One can recognize the old quest rewards because they still have what are now contradictory attribute bonuses on them, like agility and intelligence.   Yeah, the only intelligence required is deciding which appearence gear to equip or where to put that rug.   If the game gets any simpler, I may teach my dog to play.  He'd make a great Beast Lord.

Good Ol' J-boots!  The quest for them was epic and horrendous in EQ.  There was a version available with one of the box sets.  But they were awesome, like a twenty-percent-movement-speed increase.  That was epic.

I remember them as well in EQ2.  The Heritage quest for them still exists, I think.  My Brigand did it back in the day and wore them for years.  

See, J-boots, with their twenty-percent movement-speed increase, were awesome because mounts were higher-level items and a pain in the ass to get and use.

Now awesome, maintenance-free mounts are solo-quest rewards at twentieth level!  Mounts double movement speed.  Who need to bother with a Heritage Quest?

Yeah, sounds like I am whining.  I am.  I am also shaking my cane at those damn kids playing on my lawn...

More than whining, is observing of the trend, in which J-boots are a mile-marker sign.  Remember when stamps were only six cents?  As a historian, I love gages like that.  They communicate consequential and correlative relationships.

So what are the J-boots telling us?  They're telling us we don't have the time to jog through our favorite games.  We need to gallop through them.  We need to hurry through the zones and the quests and the hubs.  We don't have the time to waste with walking ingame...

Huh, our game time is so valuable that we need it to be productive?

There are villages in Africa where washing laundry is considered a leisure activity.  Here in the advanced and civilized world, we shouldn't even relax while recreating.  Productive game time...  I remember when that would be considered paradoxical.  Now our need to squeeze the most out of our game time finds us riding to the broker and the merchant and the mender, even though they are now right next to each other.

What's really interesting is we'll still spend hours organizing our Raid, or perusing gear and stats, or running the same instance repeatedly.  We don't have the time to /walk, /wave, or even /nod, but we can be found standing in front of the broker, mounted, for hours.

Yeah, I remember my first pair of Journeyman's Boots, in both EQs.  I remember corpse runs and Looking For Group too.

One of the problems with PvP is game design itself: Levels, Hitpoints, Gear.

The lowbie doesn't stand a chance against even a mediocre PKer.

As I've posted before, in the real combat, anybody can kill anybody.  The kitted-out commando can be killed by a kid with brick.  Combat Helicopters can be brought down with Kmart RPGs.  Seventy-ton Tanks can be flipped by crap surplus cobbled together in a shed.  Skyscrapers can be toppled by guys with a box-cutters.

Depending on perspective, these can be generalized as "Lucky Shots."  The success of such attacks is related to winning the lottery.  There are ways to increase the odds, but it's still a gamble.  Some die because their bootlaces hung-up on a tie-down buckle.  Some survive because a primer miss-fired.

Our Digital and PnP Systems can't cope with the randomn quirkieness of reality.  Even "Skill-based" games still have lowbies unable to effectively fight back or even defend themselves.

And why the heck is the guy decked out like a minor knight even bothering with a peasent in the first place?

Mechanics aside, digital worlds cannot emulate the true nature of violence. Violence, particularly lethal violence, contains severe mental, emotional and abstract dynamics, of which we have no concept.   This is not the place to discuss such things, but maybe it should be.

/tangental rant on

 Like digital games, our civilized worlds have abstracted and trivialized reality.  We have allowed ourselves to ignore the foundation levels of Maslow's Pyramid (http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/hierarchyneeds.htm).  Our forebearers have truly made the world a "better" place.  We don't know what it means to survive or what that includes.  We've seperated ourselves from that which gives our lives meaning or real purpose.  Why else would we waste our time in fantasy worlds where killing is fun?  The fact that we have the "free" time to do such boggles the mind. 

The concept of "Free Time" is ludicrous in itself.  Our time existing in this corporeal form is limited, yet we label our time as work and play, priority and chillin', on or off, busy or free.  But we all know that nothing is free; everything has its price, and we all will pay, one way or another.

Think beyond work and bills, and consider real living.  Consider real things of value, like joy, love, friendship, eye-smiles and uncontrolled laughter.  We've blind-folded ourselves with comfort and safety.  We wonder why narcotics is a trillion-dollar industry.

I'll end my rant with a simple truth I've discovered in my wanderings:  The World Of Man is filled with Greed, Corruption and Pain.  Faith is our only Solace.  Love is our only Hope, and Unending Labor is our only Reward.

/tangental rant off

Like our socio-legal-economic systems, PvP systems are mechanically flawed.  They will always contain the exploiters and the exploited, it's the natural way of things.  And until these games remove the immunities given by levels and skills, PvP will be continue to be silly and aggravating.

My girlfriend told me about it and I haven't researched it all.  According to her, and she knows everything and is always right, LotRO is getting a new expansion in a few months.  It's going to feature Rohan and mounted fighting.  

Sounds cool.  I can't wait to visit Helm's Deep and Edoras.

But wait, what level is it?

Turbine is raising the level cap, again.

My main hasn't even levelled enough to explore the last (two) expansions.

Yeah, I am a loser newb, what some might go so far as to call a casual player.  It's not tlike it's that hard to level.  But I am trying hard not to outlevel the girlfriend, and she's still working on Lothlorien Reputation.  And I like playing with her, in and out of game.

Biologics aside, What the F*@#?

Why is this beautiful and fun game going down this road?

I winced when Turbine increased the stat-mods on gear.  I sighed when they raised the level-cap, the first time.  I shuddered when they introduced Rune-Keepers...

Granted, with every shake and jerk, there were also some cool things, like exploring Moria and Lothlorien.

But some of the cool, original content is now super trivial, like the Old Forest.  And with increased level cap, Angmar will be a joke now.

So, cool new expansion, but it won't change my play experience for a long while.

Even in socialist states, there are people who live in glass palaces.  They have home-entertainment sytems, which rival theatres, made by laborers, who can't afford electricity.  Their pets eat better than the most of the world.

Disparity.  There has been a lot of focus on disparity lately.  We live in a world with different realities based on economic status.  It's the way things are.  Every now and then there is an upheaval, a revolution and the status quo is disrupted a bit, but, to quote the Who's Won't get Fooled Again: "Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss."

Why am I blogging about this Here?

This isn't a rant about WoW or the mega-corporations in the gaming industry, or about executives with seven-figure salaries

I just spent fifty plat on a new, fable, master-crafted sword for my berserker.  

This brings two points to mind:

First: it took me weeks to make fifty plat, yet the auction channel is continuously filled with items going for hundreds of plat.  The broker is filled items similarly priced items.  The inflation curve has left me behind.  I got a great deal on the sword purchase.

Which leads me to my second point: There's a whole section of the game that I can't play.  I can't afford the gear.  I don't have the time/money/motivation.  But, gosh, that fabeled, master-crafted sword is nice.  Killing heroics with one swing is so cool.  It's like playing a different game.  It's makes me wonder what it's like to be an elite gamer, decked out in the epic gear.  

Yeah, I admit to being resentful.  I admit to being dissapointed that there are huge aspects of these games which I will never experience.  And I get really irked when these elites start telling me how the game should be played, how my toons should be spec'ed and geared.  Wouldn't it be cool to have the ultra-rare, collectable lunch box so I can eat with the cool kids?  I am brown-bagging it on an unmaxxed toon in quested gear.

I am even tempted to think it is unfair.

But I grew up with an older brother, so I learned early on that life is anything but fair.

I remind myself that there will always be disparity.  It's just weird being on the lower end of it in a digital, fantasy world.  But I shouldn't resent other players just because they have more time/money/motivation to invest in the game.  

I will continue to resent, however, people living in glass palaces telling me not to throw stones.

Yep, been spending waaaay too much time in game.  Got into the EQ2-Frostfell frenzy over the holidays, leveling up crafters, training apprentices, restocking the guild bank, grinding reputation so we can pay the rent on the guild hall, and trying to grind Alternate Advancements.  I am spending all this time trying to keep my guild house in order, meanwhile my real house still needs the dishes washed and the floors vacuumed.

~sighs~

It's so easy to be overwhelmed by details.  I am detailed-oriented sort of guy -- a life-saving quality in my military mind.  So it's too easy for me to fret over having enough reactants, or rares, or critical mitigation, or speed.  These games are designed so that I will fret over this stuff, and thus play more.

So, I have to pay attention to that stuff but ignore that my toon is holding her sword wrong?  Or that crafting dislocates her shoulders? Or ignore that I am spending countless hours mining dirt, which is a key ingredient in her food, of all things?

I remember when EQ2 was in development.  I remember reading the marketing blurbs about how SOE did motion-capture to make the animations all cool and real and all.  Huh, I guess the motion capture wasn't done using people who knew how to hold a two-hander or stand at a workbench.

And why is my toon at a workbench?  To make better gear!  It's all about the gear.  Gotta have better gear!  This game becomes no fun if your toons' gear ain't up to date.  And if you want to hang out with the cool kids, it better be the uber gear, made out of ultra rares and the epic-boss raid-loot.  And gear ain't only about armor and weapons, your toon better have a complete set of jewelry and that rag-doll made out of ultra-rare rags.  And all that stuff better be adorned.   And now there is ultra-uber, raid-required food and drink!  Hence I am mining a lot of dirt, which my guild's provisioner informs me is a required ingredient in many foods.  Makes the mouth water, doesn't it?  Can I have extra dirt with that, please?

Reminds me when I used toilet paper to thicken my field ration, but that is another story.

"Your strength is only 1k and your Crit.-Mit. is only 120%?  Noob!"  Yeah, I haven't raided in a long time.  And I am certainly not dedicated enough to join the guilds that do.  I am still trying to grind my 86th-level berserker to her 200th AA.  Yeah, and my CM is more like 60%.  Feel my noobness and tremble.

So the dividing gulf between me and the uber crowd grows increasly wider, increased divisions in a game that is supposed to be played together.  My guild barely groups anymore.  Last time we played in the same Real-World room, we were in different zones, on different quests.  So sad.

Yep, been plugged in waaaay too much.  Time to take the dog for a run.

I spent the weekend traveling with the girlfriend and her daughter.  The daughter is a huge fan of Monster Play.  Well, what the heck, I have an old Blackarrow from my early days, let's log in and give him a whirl.

Okay, first and foremost, we had fun.  We died a lot, got a bit frustrated at times, but we had fun.  And I ranked (leveled, sort of) my Blackarrow.  We mainly defended Tol Ascarnen against Freep zergs, retaking bridges as needed.  She played a warg, which could work well with my blackarrow.  Well, sometimes we timed my ranged attacks with her sneaky stuns.

We even got mom into the fray.  She gave up quickly on her spider and rolled up a defiler, the monster's healer class.  She had fun with it, when she didn't take her deaths too personally.

Now for a bit of the rant:

I am cool with the Freeps completely owning me.  I have no problem accepting the fact that the Free Peoples of Middle Earth are more powerful than us Creeps in forces of Mordor.  Yep, they easily win in a one on one, even two on ones.  If they have some skill, a lone Freep can even take down three Creeps.  But jeez, what gets frustrating is spending the whole fight stunned, watching the moral drop.  It's like most of the Freep classes can chain stun or something.  It especially galled me to get owned by lone Runekeepers, the lore-breaking, magic-user class.  But hey, that's just my lore-nazi opinion.  

And, ranking up, I discovered that I have to spend Destiny Points to get the new skills.  Well, my account was hacked not long ago so I have nearly none (why the hacker used most of my DP, I am not sure).  So I have to grind some quests to get enough to get my new ability.  Grinding quests in a warzone, populated by players that can own me, is a really frustrating activity.

Okay, so it it wasn't as much fun as Warhammer.  But, it certainly wasn't as frustrating as Mortal, or Age of Conan.  Now I just have to get motivated to do those quests.

I am actually loving this game. It isn't the the PvP twitch-fest that I'd thought it'd be. Sure, been ganked a few times, but the ganker didn't even loot my stuff. Really, they were some righteous kills and I wasn't paying attention, chasing deer or rabbits or whatever.

My real frustration with the game is my ISP being unreliable and not allowing me to paly more.

Now, I come from the Themepark scene (what else is there?), so I admit that I miss having my hand held. But, there needs to be something for the newbie to do besides gather for cuprum.

It seems the "way" to spend one's newbie time is to gather for stats and curprum, so one can buy books so one can gather and skill up. It's real hard to skill up by just training, though it is possible. But, really, it's more productive to read about archery than to actually practice it? In some cases the only way to get the skill at all is to read the book...

Now, there's the mushroom guy. Why can't the fighter tutor have some exchange for one as well? Do such and such and get money or gear or what not. I know, I know, that's quest.

But how is that different from gathering mushrooms for cuprum? Or doing the deer or wood or rock runs? I would like to have an activity for those of us that want to be warriors, something other than watching my axe swing against a tree ad nausea...