Profile: ShrikeSWG
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• • Why no real PvP in this game?

  • [color=#ffff00]'It was a stroke of luck that isildur cut the one ring from his hand and banished him. If you knew anything about the lore you would know this.'
     
    [color=#ffffff]How was this a 'stroke of luck?' After many, many years of brutal warfare, where thousands of warriors from each side perished (including Anarion [Isildur's brother]) all the way from the Dagorlad to Mt. Doom itself, the Armies of Gil-Galad and Elendil ultimately forced Sauron into combat. This, however, cost them their lives (Gil-Galad most gruesomely, when Sauron, whose hand 'was black and burned like fire' apparently got his mits onto the elf lord).
    [color=#ffffff]The implication was, by the time Elendil and Gil-Galad were slain, Sauron was subdued to extent that Isildur was able to trot on up and cut the ring from his hand (completely contrary to what is shown in PJ's on-screen interpretation).
    I'm not sure how that was a fluke. Isildur clearly knew exactly what the One Ring was, and by cutting it from Sauron's finger, he broke the Dark Lord's power. There's nothing freakish about the act - Isildur was facing a beaten-down-but-hardly-dead Sauron, and after little slicey-slice, Sauron appeared, for all intents and purposes, dead. That sounds calculated; not random or by chance.
    <Mod edit>

  • Posted: 7/23/08 5:26 PM
    Lord of the Rings Online
• • Why no real PvP in this game?

  • 'If you think PvP is all about ganking in the open, then you're sorely mistaken.  There are many different aspects of it, such as instanced Battlegrounds in WoW, or mini games in AoC.  In LotRO, it's regulated to one zone only.'
    Uh, 'real' PvP is about ganking in the open. It's about being given a free hand to hurt a member of another faction who stumbles across your path, any time, anywhere.
    Also, people asserting that the conclusion of LotR being written in stone, thusly justifying the lack of 'real' PvP, are full of it. Sure, Sauron is going to ultimately lose, but that doesn't mean that he didn't prevail occasionally. Certainly, he won some battles outside the core storylines featured in the books. If he didn't, than why is everyone terrified of him? If Sauron and his armies didn't occasionally roll over anyone, why is everyone (including Gandalf) afraid to even say his name? I know that if my arch nemesis had gone 0 for his last 15,634 battles, I wouldn't exactly be quaking in my boots, even if I was facing 3-to-1 or 5-to-1 or whatever odds.
    Let's look at SWG as an example. SWG had a very open PvP system. It also has a written-in-stone outcome for the Empire. Did that stop Imperial players from trying to win, despite the fact that their ultimate fate is pretty much locked in? Nope, it didn't.
    LotR's conclusion is most definitely a final and ultimate victory for Gondor and the Fellowship, but I seriously doubt that would stop players from launching, say, a hundred-warg assault on Bree, or a Goblin attack on Rivendel. What you fail to acknowledge (or maybe just choose to ignore) is that Turbine has already violated the lore in so many ways that my guess is that Tolkien, glaring down from heaven, is already quite affronted.
    <Mod edit>

  • Posted: 7/23/08 2:26 PM
    Lord of the Rings Online
• • I came, I played (again), I left... (again)

  • 'Did they speak more German than English in battles?'

    Yes, actually. We got an English sentence maybe once every two-to-three minutes out of the guy - the rest of the time, he was chatting it up in Deutsch.

    The whole thing was ridiculous, though. The first, second and third rates were heavily engaged almost immediately after the battle started. Those of us in fourth rates (me) and heavy frigates were strung out in a line to the west, supposedly to 'cut off their escape.' We sat there (and this is not an exageration) for a good 20 minutes while the line ships mowed down the opposition. We didn't even fire a shot until a little over three minutes before the ship combat portion of the battle ended.

    It was very clear that the 'plan' we utilized was designed to grant those people in the heavies most of the glory, and to get the faster and lighter ships out of the way. I only got 2 MOVs for my patience, and there's a good chance that some people in the line got none. Afterwards, I realized I should of held up my middle finger and broke formation.

    But, again, I feel like this is the same, typical elitist BS that I've seen all too frequently in that game. Just to reiterate, I must emphasize - if anyone reading this is thinking of playing PotBS: save your money. This title is a loser.

  • Posted: 7/21/08 3:02 PM
    Pirates of the Burning Sea
• • No Issue With an All-Jedi Game

  • Provided that the KotOR MMO follows the pattern established by its predecessors, I have no doubt that its player base will be ruled by a strong group of Jedi and Sith. While some people cringe at this likelyhood, I applaud it loudly for two big reasons:

    1) It's lore-correct

    KotOR (conveniently) takes place during a brief era in the SW history where Jedi and Sith were relatively commonplace. Full-on battles between Sith and Jedi were far from unheard of, and the question of who would emerge to dominate the next 5,000 years was hardly a certainty for quite a while. People with bad memories of SWG's Jedi surge probably get sick thinking about it, but I have no problem at all with the idea; because it's true to the lore.

    2) More importantly, it's what you want (even if you don't know it)

    Yeah, that's right - everyone who wants this game to succeed should welcome the everpresence of Jedi.

    Why? Well, it's my belief that the holocron BS was actually the massive, critical flub that marked the beginning of the end for SWG. You might remember that, since release, people had been looking for the 'mythical' way to unlock the FS slot. Many predicted that if they visited some of the strange ruins that dotted the surface of several planets, that the secret of the Jedi would eventually reveal itself to them. I myself can remember discovering a Sith altar in the far NW corner of Corellia and thinking I'd stumbled onto something big.

    When the holocron bunk was announced, I (and many other people) were pissed about the elementary nature of the move, and instantly lost a lot of respect for SOE's design team.

    But here's the real issue: SOE decided to design the Jedi all wrong. They spoke constantly about godlike class limited by permadeath and a fear of discovery. What they should have done (since Jedi were eventually made a normal class, acknowledging what should have been obvious) was to recognize that:

    1) Everyone who loves SW loves either Jedi or Sith (or both).

    2) Most people playing a SW game with Jedi are going to want a Jedi character.

    3) Making such a character a 'god' is a sure way to make certain that people will want one even more.

    4) Star Wars sans Jedi is pretty much not Star Wars.

    5) People who play MMOs want to regard themselves as the 'hero' of the story, even if they aren't. The Jedi are (basically) the heroes of Star Wars, with a few notable exceptions

    When you cobble all those facts together, you get this terrible recipe for disaster.

    Jedi should have been treated like Mages and Paladins in WoW: 'Hero' classes from Warcraft III that were made equal to other classes who have no lore history. Therefore, Jedi should have been some starting class with burst DPS, some minor healing, but also some form of inherent weakness.

    It's also worth mentioning that 'average' Jedi aren't gods. The Jedi and Sith seen in the movies are the best Jedi of their era. Obi-Wan and Anakin and Luke and Sidious weren't just Joe Shmoes with no future: they were the Michael Jordans or Babe Ruths of their religions. Look at the battle on Geonosis as an example: like 100 Jedi get flattened by robots. Granted, there are lot of robots, but that hardly seems godlike to me. It's no big shocker that Anakin, Obi-Wan and Mace all pull through without a scratch.

    So what SOE did was to build a system (at least initially) where every friggin' 'normal' Jedi was as powerful as Vader on steroids. It demonstrated both just how out of touch they were with the lore of their own product and, of equal importance, just how poor they were regarding the design and operation of MMOs, long before more devastating missteps revealed this pattern to most of the gaming world's population.

    So, if KotOR Online has Jedis in spades, and if it's taken as a granted fact that they are balanced against other classes, I welcome the news with big smiles. Make a Jedi killable by a smuggler or a bounty hunter or whatever. That's perfectly fine with me. If it's done right, Bioware will avoid the devastation of SOE's initial (and crucial) false step.

  • Posted: 7/21/08 5:12 AM
    Star Wars Galaxies
• • I came, I played (again), I left... (again)

  • 

    I renewed PotBS about three weeks ago, and played the hell out of it up until two days ago. Previously, I had played the game from release up until around mid March.

    I can honestly say that I wish I hadn't wasted my 15 bucks renewing.

    Positives:

    1) Insurance

    Similar to EVE Online (although not a perfect mirror, unfortunately), ships in PotBS are automatically given insurance once a deed has been handed in. Now, when ships are sunk and their final durability is lost, a player will be refunded a set percentage of a predetermined value (I.E.: not what you paid, what the devs think it's worth), plus fittings.

    2) Fewer servers

    In April, the FLS devs finally caught on to the disaster brewing right under their noses, and cut the game's server numbers in half. Characters were forced to transfer to four remaining servers. As bad as this sounds, it had the positive affect of consolidating a shrinking player base, and making the game more playable for those people who remained.

    3) More readily available line ships

    Societies have quickly discovered that, if even 9 or 10 people work hard at it, a first rate can be produced in just a few months. Nowadays, it's not uncommon to see a guild with all first and second rates pulling into a PB and just dominating. I would count this as a positive, if only because as recently as 4 months ago, the heavies were considered near-unattainable.

    Negatives:

    1) PvP Fears

    Despite the addition of insurance, people are still loathe to risk their ships in combat. As previously mentioned, insurance in PotBS can hardly compare to that in EVE. When you lose a first rate worth, say, 15,000,000 dubloons, you can expect to regain barely 5 mil on the pay out. Therefore, big ships are rarely used except in PBs, and a healthy majority of the playerbase still skirts redzones, same as they did at launch. Had insurance been present when the game debuted, people might not have been quite so risk averse... but the pattern - now well-imbeded - has been tough to break, and PvP (particularly of a breed one might consider 'fair') is still rare.

    2) Hostility

    As pointed out before, ship loss is still a bad sting, and this has led to a good deal of hostility in PBs. On Antigua (the server that my former server was basically rolled into), the PBs for the British are, strangely enough, mostly governed by a couple of fairly high end German societies. A few days before quitting, I attended one of their PBs. Despite the fact that we were absolutely flattening our opponents, the battle leader screamed at many of those in attendance for (what I would consider) really, really minor slip-ups. This continued well past the point when our victory was ever in doubt. If there was the slightest chance that this guy's second rate was going to get scratched or dented in even the most incidental way, and you turned two seconds too early, or didn't target switch fast enough, or whatever, this guy was going to rip you apart over vent, calling you out by name.

    I've seen this garbage before in other MMOs, but only in situations where the two individuals were in the same guild. My take on that is if you sign up for a guild like that, and let someone talk to you in such a manner, than it's your own fault. But here, where PBs are such a cobbled-together collection of players, to scream at some random stranger for making a minor flub is outrageous. And don't pass this off as some minor complaint about an isolated issue - PotBS has behavior like this in spades.

    3) Runaway games

    Nothing has been done to give a losing faction some even minor hope of retaking the map. As one faction innevitably comes to dominate the Caribbean, they can gradually shut off the ability of other factions to produce products (most notably, large ships). This means that, as one side conquers, they gain power in an increasingly dominant arc.

    4) Lineships for pirates

    Outside of the bucaneers, nobody thinks this is a good idea. FLS has decided to grant pirates heavy ships that essentially equate to the power of second rates. The factions were balanced around the idea that pirates, as rogues who couldn't have the big boats, would be gifted fairly strong powers (ridiculously fast ships, the ability to steal vessels and pay nothing, overpowered ship combat and av. combat abilities, etc). With lineships, these previously balanced abilities will soon become disgustingly OP. So, this is wonderful news for you peg-legged, eyepatch-wearing types, but just a disaster for the rest of the player base. Expect FLS to take months to fix it, if they ever do.

    5) Loss of server identity and continuity

    I can only speak for the Brits on Antigua, but many of us that came from Bonny can remember a well-coordinated faction that dominated all discussions as to who ruled the server. On Antigua, we're working with players from 4 or 5 closed servers, and the result has been chaos.

    So, yeah, I am really, really sorry that I resubbed. This was a bad game before, and it really has not improved. There is still virtually no endgame outside of PBs, and these are always basically the same challenge, repeated over and over again. It's like you're playing World of Warcraft, but the single piece of endgame content is Alterac Valley, and you can really only average 3 battles every 2 or so days.

    Take my advice and find something else to play.

     

     

  • Posted: 7/21/08 4:33 AM
    Pirates of the Burning Sea