This week in /saved

I’m still playing catch-up when it comes to all these new blogs i’m following, all the people i followed via Twitter and so on. This week has been a busy one, for me, so some nice posts might have slipped- which i guess is always true, because it possibly is impossible to follow all these great blogs out there.

Bloggers and Media

This topic carried on through this week, as well. We already saw people chime in who know both sides of the medal, this week Syp from Biobreak also took a turn and offered an interesting perspective on the matter.

Ravious from Killtenrats thinks MMO journalists should concentrate on being less a part of a games’ PR and keep the dev studios more on their feet. He wants MMO press to be “needed” instead of “wanted”.

Ironweakness shares the opinion that on Massively, there were authors who are from a range of play styles and Massively served as a kind of good example in letting every opinion be valid and important in a discussion. He thinks that in a blogging community, this wouldn’t happen as much.

The last one ties in with another discussion that went on some time ago where someone mentioned that bloggers rarely seem to disagree. I’m so sorry, i can’t find the source right now and i’m pretty tight on time, so i’ll maybe get around to sharing a link when i find it.

More than pixels

There’s also been a discussion if online relationships are somewhat different than real life relationships. Belghast thinks it’s only different if you make it different, while Braxwolf thinks online relationships lack multiple things that real-life relationships have, while having some advantages, as well. I think he’s of the opinion that they lack depth.

My view on this, in short: i always try to treat pixels as people- everything else wouldn’t be true, after all there’s another player playing on the other end. But i’m not equating online friends to real life friends, this doesn’t work- have you tried to explain to a non-gamer who calls you once every several weeks that you can’t talk right now because you’re in a group? Yeah, i tried and it didn’t go so well. I’ll try and keep appointments, but really, when a friend’s standing at the door i’m not going to tell him to go away because it’s Guild EQ2 time.

Daybreak

Daybreak Games have been a topic this week- i guess there’s a good roundup out there. I haven’t shared my opinion on the topic because….i have none. Or i had none. I don’t know, i guess i was and am slightly worried, because investment firms aren’t very good for the longterm health of the companies they buy, in my opinion. But then Daybreak decides to let Dave Georgeson and Linda “Brasse” go- and, forgive me, i’m not a longterm fan of SOE/Everquest and haven’t followed the games religiously, but come on! These names, i do know. I know Dave’s face, he was very enthusiastic about the games he lead, which is always a good thing. In my opinion, letting these two people go was a poor decision and i have to wonder if they didn’t know that already- or might it be true that they stood against something that Daybreak wants to do in their games and had to be removed?

Anyway, here are the opinions of people who know more about the subject than i do.

Syp from Biobreak

Moxie, the battle priestess

Syl, the MMO Gypsie

Bhagpuss, Full Inventory

General

There have been other great posts, as well. First of all, i love how Syp tells his gameplay experiences- it’s just one way to do it, mind you, but i like how they are quick to read and entertaining, as well, with all these pictures.

J3w3l from Healing the masses took a look at the new content in Firefall, while Wilhelm Arcturus took an outlook on SWTOR’s 2015 and Telwyn went and did some advanced solo dungeons in Everquest 2 (looking forward to those!). A completely different approach was taken by Belghast, who shares the best games he isn’t playing.

And then, Massively Overpowered’s Eliot, who also writes the shaman class column for Blizzardwatch, was very mean, at least in my book. He shared his view on the Enhancement Shaman as the last true hybrid. I loved playing the Druid as a hybrid and i’d love to experience something similar again, so i was quite tempted to see if what he writes is true.

 

Darn it, my list is filling up again

Now, concerning myself. I started this Blog with a few games and a resolution for myself: i’d pick one of three candidate games- ArcheAge, EQ Next or The Repopulation, stick to my choice and keep this blog as a journal-type recording of how i got to select the MMORPG in question and how i experienced it when it released. In the meantime, i wanted to stick at least to my resolution, since i don’t have much time and wanted to experience at least one MMORPG to the fullest before moving on.

Moving on, though, has become somewhat unlikely. I still look forward to all three of these games, but something’s telling me they won’t be exactly what i’m looking for, as well.

Plus, there’s another thing: the sticking to one MMORPG at a time doesn’t work for me. First, i chose Rift, but Rift being what Rift is, it still didn’t provide me with the experience i was looking for. Many people describe Rift as being quite soulless- and i think for me, this is the problem with the title, although the accusation doesn’t hold itself when you enter expansion terrain. The content of Storm Legion has lots of soul.

So i moved on from Rift to find a surprise- Final Fantasy XIV, a game that has lots of soul, as well. I can’t see a downside to this selection- the game is an experience coming quite close to what i’m looking for- there are things i like very much- the dependency on others in economic matters as well as progression, the fact that gold sinks >= gold fountains (the balance has yet to be found, though), it is great.

As an addition, Firefall offers a different game experience- quite action oriented, quick, and a deep experience nonetheless. Plus, at this stage, it suits very well as a second MMORPG- there’s still lots of development to be done, it will not be provided very quick and vertical progression is not very long. I still like Firefall a lot, even if i didn’t get around to play it for quite some time.

The same goes for FF14, i have to admit. It’s been more than a week ago that i played it; there has been real life stuff in the way, other hobbies (watching football/soccer), meeting real friends at the weekend, so all in all, i clocked 8 hours game time last week, 6 of which have been in FF14, while the other two feature a new, old newcomer and my biggest surprise in released MMORPGs from last year: the Secret World.

Hanging out in Kingsmouth

This week, it looks like TSW will win the fight for my gaming time. In general, i think this is a good thing- see, i did buy the grand master pack shortly after release, but really didn’t play it enough to justify the expense, and i am generous on that front. While Funcom didn’t devalue the lifetime subscription in my book, i didn’t do as well on my end. So playing it again is a positive in this regard.

As in many others. The Secret World is a much underappreciated effort done by Funcom. It’s an MMORPG with loads of good stories in it, a good, but not very good, fighting experience, a great way of progression- at least for non-raiders and/or content locusts and some very interesting mechanics above that. What FF14 is for 2013, TSW was in 2012- the biggest positive surprise in MMORPG gaming in my book.

I haven’t really decided yet whether i’m going with my “old” character on the english RP server or with the new one on the german server. The german server seems to be business as usual for german servers- it’s quite silent and not so very populated, but i have to say i enjoy Sword+Fist more than Sword+Assault rifle. Also, i enjoy taking my time in the zones i visited earlier, but the decision to stick it out with the new character could turn into a bad decision when i realize that progression is too slow, when i remember all the missions and know how much of that is still waiting for me before i enter new territory.

So, all in all, i’m back up to three MMORPGs- Final Fantasy 14, Firefall and The Secret World. It seems i’ll achieve none of my goals when starting this blog, but at least the third reason for opening it up at the time i did will present itself soon enough- the Newbie Blogger Initiative 2 is going to start in a few days, this time mentored by the two sites Contains Moderate Peril and T.R. Red Skies. I wanted to join that, so i probably will, because i think this initiative is a great way to encourage new bloggers like me and foster the MMORPG/gaming community.

Edit: i’ve decided on continuing my “old” character, Eliza “Lisah” Ruben, on Arcadia and updated the Group up – page accordingly. As always, feel free to contact me in- or out of game.

Doing it wrong

Yesterday, i read the massively opinion column titled “Maybe it’s time to admit you don’t like MMOs” and it made me think- about the general perception of MMOs, their communities and my interaction with other players in the games themselves.

I came to the conclusion that i’m doing it wrong- i mean, in Final Fantasy 14 i am member in what seems to be a great linkshell/free company. My interactions with the other members have been saying “hi” and “bye” as well as one dungeon run, which was fun. In Firefall, i had fun doing stuff with one or two other players, but when our army grew to be bigger than the squad size of Firefall, i became reluctant to log in.

Finding excuses for solo-play

Now, i know what this blog’s title suggests, so i am aware of how these games are meant to be played, but there always seem to be obstacles to experience these games this way. For me, it comes down to:

• Voice Chat. I don’t like voice chat. Yet, in many guilds using it is de facto mandatory. In my Rift guild, for example, guild chat would always just entail fragments of conversations that happened in voice chat. Yes, i might use voice chat once in a while, but don’t expect me to launch it with the game. I might want to listen to music/podcasts or whatever. Voice chat directly affects my ability to relax and enjoy an evening of leisure.
• Log-In times. We have a toddler in the house. When he screams, i’m afk. When my wife needs assistance, i’m afk. Often, when i log in, i don’t know how long it will be- it could be 2 hours, but it could also be 15 minutes. I don’t want to ruin someone else’s evening by signing up for a dungeon run i can’t finish- or doing something in the party and let them wait for my return in a quest hub.
• My own mood. I play these games to relax. I take my time, i play them slow- my Conjurer in FF14 is level 22 now and will remain there for a time because i want to catch up with my botanist and weaver classes. If i were to group up with my level 22 i could suddenly find myself being at level 30 without progressing in the storyline and my crafting jobs getting far behind. Playing at my own pace in groups becomes running after someone else very quick. I wouldn’t want that.
• Other people’s progress. I’m slow, others aren’t. One reason i haven’t done very much with my linkshell is that many are in their 40s or at max level (they played 1.0) and therefore what they do isn’t available to me.
• Other people’s playtimes. I guess this goes hand-in-hand with my last point, but there’s more than just the progression. I’m always somewhat surprised that even players who call themselves “casual” play 4 hours each day. As i mentioned, i average at about 10-15 hours a week and i consider that playing quite a lot. In Firefall, i saw how others in my army spent every free minute available to them in the game- when i see that, i think to myself how quickly they’re going to burn out and leave the game- and true enough, last week the guild leader played 2 and a half hours Firefall. As i said, right now i think Firefall is a great game, but you have to consume it bite-sized, or you’ll be burnt out when the really cool features come into play.

Resolutions

Good excuses, right? Well, no, maybe not. Maybe, if i don’t want to play with others i should just start up one of my many single player games i didn’t finish (or pretty much didn’t even start them). Sure, MMORPGs nowadays are soloable and especially the gathering and crafting bits of FF14 lend themselves very good to solo-play.

Maybe i should just scrap crafting first and just level my most advanced class to 50 as quick as possible. But then i wouldn’t be able to craft equipment for myself during the levelling process. Also, endgame is usually not what i’m playing these games for. When i reached endgame in Rift in June 2011 i just quit- doing daily quests or repeating the same dungeons over and over again doesn’t appeal to me. Levelling as quick as possible is also not what i’m there for. So that’s not going to work.

I made a resolution, nonetheless. I want to party more, and usually, when i do, i get something out of it. The other day i helped another player in a really dense spawn point- he was going to fill his hunting log, but no matter how he’d do it, he would pull 3-4 enemies to get to his targets. So, as a healer, i asked him what he wanted to do, grouped up and helped him achieve his goal. One more member on my friendslist.

So i want to do that some more- go around with open eyes and help players i see having trouble. I did that before, as well, but it was a case of throwing out one or two heals and going my way. Also, i should ask in linkshell chat if somebody wants to group up- either for my most advanced class or for some of the classes i want to play down the line. I mean, there’s many of them. Just for adventuring classes, i aim to play:

• Conjurer
• Arcanist
• Thaumaturge
• Archer
• Pugilist
• Lancer
• Gladiator

All this to get the jobs of White Mage, Black Mage, Bard, Monk and Scholar- more or less in that order.

Making (and keeping) friends

One problem, of course, is that none of my friends play MMORPGs. Many players just enjoy group content with either real life friends or acquaintances from the game(s) they’re playing- none of the two are available to me, for different reasons, many of them my own fault. If you jump around in games and guilds very much, you’ll have a hard time making “online friends”. And when you do make them and let the connections somehow fall apart (as i did with the guild i co-founded in GW2), that’s your own fault, as well. Maybe i’ll talk more about that last mistake some time.

This blog

Now, there’s a topic for a series of blog posts that fits right into this blog’s title. Party business- how to put the multiplayer part back into MMORPGs from the perspective of a casual player.

I haven’t written for some time, because when commenting around at the last post i realized that the reason i started this blog- or the topics i wanted to cover- aren’t really hot anymore. EQ Next is a thing of the past- i’ll look into it again either when SOE scraps P7S1 or when i cave in and decide that making an account there isn’t the end of the world. With EQN, there’s another thing: i can’t shake the feeling that this will play very GW2-like. ArcheAge seems to become a lot more themeparky than expected and The Repopulation seems still to be far off.

Final Fantasy 14 caught me by surprise- i didn’t expect to enjoy it so much, but as you can see above, i have goals that last for quite some time- for me, at least- and i didn’t even mention crafting. But i’ll have to put some thought into how i’m going to develop this blog further, since it really doesn’t bother anyone what i’m doing in my MMO and so the journal-type i was using isn’t of much interest. That’s not to say i won’t continue like that, but there will be another theme to my blogging, and right now i think it’s going to be somewhat community-focused, which might be an odd thing to do for someone who’s doing it wrong.

Firefall is a great addition

Forget what i said. It’s no use to choose to stick to just one game/MMO at a time, when said MMO doesn’t satisfy all your gaming needs. It makes sense to stick to as few MMORPGs as possible, though, because game hopping as a casual player doesn’t really help anybody- not if you like your MMORPGs to have depth, a wide array of activities and longevity- which is, for me, a cornerstone and one of the main reasons i like the genre.

But sometimes, a game comes along, that fits the scenario you’re in very well. For me, this game is Firefall. While Final Fantasy XIV ARR with its truckloads full of content is my main-MMORPG for now, there are times when a change of pace is in order- or when there’s launch- or patch day and i know i won’t be able to play FF14 (i tried, yesterday, but wasn’t able to login, as expected).

Our army continues to grow, i think we are 8 now. With the restriction of 20 characters per army, there’s no reason to go out recruiting or anything. We guess we’ll fill the other 12 seats naturally with time. We went out and did some ARES missions, thumpers and one Tornado in a full squad, which was fun.

Yesterday was a bad day, though, because my main game had launch day issues and Firefall had Patchday issues. We had some fun regardless.

Now, here are the reasons why Firefall is a great addition to my MMO-diet:

Easy to get in and play

You don’t have to prepare very much in this game if you just want to have some fun- log in, join the online guildmates or place a thumper if you are on your own. Or just run around, do ARES missions or invasions or whatever. You can jump right into the action.

Somewhere in New Eden

Still deep

While it’s easy to get in, there are a lot of things to grasp in this game- how does crafting work? What do i need to jump into melding pockets or the instanced area? You can upgrade your equipment and so on. There is a lot to do, but you don’t feel forced to do that quickly, because you are not missing out on gameplay features just because you haven’t progressed very far. Sure, crafting the key to the instance or the pockets might take some time, but there’s no hurry.

Don’t powergame your way through it

If you play this game to “reach the end”, beat it or just to progress your character, you will be finished with Firefall in no time- and chances are you’ll be burned out when the game will be in shape for “release” and miss out on something great. Red5 have a plan, but it will take time to implement it. Firefall is a very fun game, and if you’re having fun, play it all you want- there’s enough to explore, beautiful landscapes, great missions and content, but when you set out to “beat” the game, i’ve got a feeling it will be over very quick.

A vision

Red5 has a vision for this game, and they try to stick to it. This is one thing that makes a good MMORPG- and Red5 are willing to hold their position- the durability system is one thing where one can see that- some, or many, players didn’t like the introduction of breaking items because it made the game “grindy”, but Red5 feel it is a good thing to have in their game and i tend to agree- without removing items out of the economy, there will be no economy. And also, this gives players “something to do”, because Red5 won’t be able to provide content at a very quick pace.

All in all, i’m looking forward to Open Beta stage 2 and the future of the game- with this developer, i’m quite optimistic. I don’t know when Red5 will reach a state of the game where they are comfortable to call it “V1.0”, but i think, they will arrive there and the game will be very good by then.

When you add FF14 on top of that, right now, i am one happy gamer (who would be even happier if i could play FF14 or understand Square’s account management system).

Game Time: Firefall and Final Fantasy 14 weekend

Last week i was a MMORPG player without a game. That’s not a new state for me, i’m in that waiting phase for almost 3 years now. Of course i’ve played MMORPGs, but without much dedication. Then, incidentally, a friend of mine started playing Firefall and decided to inject some life into the game and a longstanding, but gamewise inactive guild on friday. And there’s also the early access to Final Fantasy XIV.

Firefall

We created an Army for us and frankly, i didn’t expect others to join us. Part of that has to do with our more recent history of going into and out of games in quite a rapid succession, so many members lost faith in the community being able to form an active guild. While some of the members are close, they started viewing the community as forum-only. Not surprisingly, forum activity is quite low nowadays. Surprisingly, for now we seem to have grown to 5 members, if i counted correctly, with two invites pending. I guess we’ll see a first result in about two weeks- if we are still playing the game, and do so together, we have achieved something.

Firefall is not very beginner friendly, besides there being a tutorial and beginner missions. Once you are in the world, you’ll begin wandering around freely and some things are not self-explanatory. For instance, there’s this type of ARES mission where you have to bring some coloured items with you and it seems to me that the mission fails when you don’t have those items. But i wouldn’t know where to get them. Some other members tried starting a race and had to realize they don’t know how to summon a vehicle yet.

I guess it’d be fun with a vehicle

Mind you, finding out stuff is part of the fun to be had in this game. I’m looking forward to more of this game. What i like here, is:

• while it’s not easy to understand the game mechanics, it is an easy game to pick up and have some fun with others. Without level- and gear restrictions, you can play together as you want
• it seems there is content for almost any group size- even with ARES missions or other singleplayer content, there’s nothing wrong with some other people being around
• getting to know the mechanics is fun

Final Fantasy XIV

On the other hand, there’s Final Fantasy XIV ARR. With the early access beginning on saturday, i clocked about 6 hours this weekend and my good feelings about this MMORPG are getting deeper. My newest discovery are story missions that take place in an instanced battle area. For now, i’ve met about three of these, and i guess the first one’s just an introduction to the feature while it gets more difficult afterwards. These quests actually consist of more or less just one fight- but i met a group of bandits, had the mission fail on me because i didn’t realize one of the enemies is a healer (the mob’s tag had been the same as the other mobs’ tags- you had to look at the enemy to find out he’s a healer).

After continuing this quest chain you come to a fight with “bird-men” – my first try failed here, as well. You go into this fight with a group of rangers and there are many enemies around- i have no idea how to succeed here- i guess there would be two options to try out next: bring the main guy down and hope that the mission will succeed or concentrate on healing the rangers. I’m not very confident one of these approaches will do the trick, though, so i’ll be looking forward to figure out what to do.

Up there

 

And this is great- first, the mission feels epic in scope- i don’t know why that is, but i guess it comes down to the fact that you’re not supposed to be the “chosen” to free the land from all evil, but just an adventurer lending a hand. The mission and quest texts, not only in this one, support that- there are also NPCs that are annoyed by all those adventurers around. The whole game supports you in immersing yourself in the experience.

I’ll have to change my goals, though, mainly because i learned that you’ll get retainer access only with level 20 (don’t know whether this means doing the Level 20 story mission or getting to the level), so i’ll do as follows:

• Bring the Conjurer to Level 20 to get retainer access
• Go to Limsa Lominsa and enter the Arcanist guild
• Go to Ul’dah and enter the Weaver guild
• Level Arcanist, Botanic and Weaver to 20

So yes, there’s much to do and it will take some time to reach these goals.

Game time: Firefall

Whoa, now that was interesting. I tried to get into Firefall two or three times before, without success- i think mainly because i didn’t really know what to do. Firefalls PvE is entirely dynamic, in this game you have to go out and seek out the fun yourselves.

But when a member of a german multigaming community where i’m in asked for some people to join him so he can found an Army and show the Army tag ingame, i went in with him. And that made a whole lot of a difference. First, regarding that community: i’m with them since Global Agenda released early 2010- they are a really casual bunch. So casual, in fact, that they didn’t bother building up a guild in any game since SWTOR.

My personal opinion is that this is a pity and they/we should be represented in the games we do play. It’s a guild with some history- they made a name for themselves as a RP-focused guild in Tabula Rasa as well as Vanguard and Fallen Earth, but it’s not easy organizing those who are still active in this community in a single guild. But sometimes i still watch the forums and am in direct contact with the leader- which is the one who asked for support in Firefall.

So in i went. It’s not really easy getting the grip of the user interface and the underlying mechanics in Firefall- it’s quite a special game, but when we went out to do some ARES missions, i had fun immediately. Playing in groups and/or guilds always makes MMORPGs more fun. At first, it was a confusing, because he always saw missions i didn’t see and didn’t know why i didn’t see them on my map. It became clear that one has to find the SIN uplinks to have missions pop up in the corresponding area.

Firefall is quite beautiful

I had to leave after we had some fun in the world and while trying to figure out how to spend my XP- in Firefall, you use your experience points directly to progress the battleframe (class) you earned that experience with. When i returned, i changed over to engineer and went out to level the engineer, which i guess is my preferred battleframe. In the course of two hours, i was once again in a pickup group (which makes for 2 times in a week compared to 0 times the rest of the year) and we had some fun with squad thumping and a melding tornado. Both of which were insane action.

Afterwards, i set out to get the SIN uplinks- each one of them grants a generous amount of experience and i think it’s a good way to make a start in this game- by “unlocking” missions of all areas. I logged out having gained 100k XP in the engineer battleframe and after an evening of immense- and intense fun.

There’s quite of a downside, though: i can’t really see them making money. The game is in open beta and free-to-play right now, and of course they sell “starter packs” and sold founder packs before. But the ingame cash store is….well, this game is too free. You can buy some XP boosts, a lot of fun items and two types of transportation for “red beans”, their shop currency. One doesn’t have to buy anything. If i understand correctly, some battleframes are going to be sold, as well, so there might be that.

Another thing that bothered me: with my founder pack i also bought 20$ worth of red beans- 168 of them. The motorcycle you can buy for red beans, as well as what you’d call a “teleport to home”-skill in normal MMORPGs cost 175 red beans, so…yeah. By all means, though, 20$ for this game is a steal, and i shouldn’t be too hesitant to stock up on red beans. Furthermore, you can craft this vehicle in game, as well. It costs about 200k chrystanite- a resource gained by defeating enemies and doing missions- after yesterdays session, i had 3k of them. It would take some time to get the vehicle, or, you know, i could just buy it.

Now, Firefall is not “main MMO” material for me, it somewhat to free and too restricted at the same time for that. But i am sure this hasn’t been the last time i logged in- i’m really looking forward to seeing New Eden again (isn’t that what the EVE “world” is called?).

First of all, though: today’s early access day 🙂 I’ve added a contact page to this blog, so feel free to hit me up in one of the games i’m playing, on steam or via raptr.