Archive for February, 2008
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Sins of the Sins of A Solar Empire
This game had the potential to finally usurp Master of Orion 2 as the grand-daddy ultimate space strategy 4x simulator of all time and it totally blew it. The gameplay is wonderful, the graphics are pristine, the flow of the game is good, solid and challenging. But the epic feel that comes with taking your civilization from barely out of newly discovering faster-than-light technology at Warp 1 and the monstro-behemoth moon-sized Eater o’ Stars style space stations is nowhere to be found. In Sins of a Solar Empire, you basically take your space-faring folk from “decent space peeps” to “pretty good space peeps” from start to end with no major technological eclipsing of other races to be found. This, in sharp contract to MOO2, where you start off as partially sentient goo and end up with the galactic power to shape energy at will into small planetoids and hurl them through the universe at your diplomatic opponents. The scope just isn’t there.
Actually, I’m going to go out on a limb and classify Sins as an RTS rather than a 4X. All the RTS elements are there, in full force, even the rush. And I take back what I said about Master of Orion 2 being the grand-daddy of 4xers. The rarely mentioned game by Empire called “Stars!” was the true grandpa to the genre, and no one has quite grasped that level of brilliance since.
In Stars!, you could fully customize your race, anything from robotic silicoids to energy-beings that could only live on starbases instead of planets. To colonize a world in the seemingly endless galaxy, you had to ensure that the gravity, temperature and radation were within the thresholds for your population to survive. You could fling mineral packets to and fro with planetary mass drivers, set up stargates to travel between distant worlds within a single turn, bomb and invade other cultures and subjugate them to your galactic will. Minefields, ramscoops, lasers, precision targeting computers, terraforming as an act of war, strip-mining and biological and genetic warfare. What a freaking glorious game that was.
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Rares Markets
Quick item of note I’d like to cover really quickly before it passes into the oblivion that is external to my limited mental RAM.
Firstly, the rares market in any MMO is complete and utter bullshit. Rares, and the uncommon nature of items, gear, furniture and objects of interest that have absolutely no effect on the balance or outcome of the game’s linear (or non-linear) progression exist as illusory economic components in a false market. Please take a moment to grasp that. A “rare” that comes into existence is arbitrarily assigned a value based on the artificial demand placed on the desire for that given “rare”. This is a communal value, not expressed in terms of net gain (such as an epic weapon), nor consumability, nor any other value aside from simple banal aesthetic.
The rares market in any virtual economy is one of smoke and mirrors. Price for the item in question only exists so long as there is demand for it. Because the item exists outside the typical economy, most of the time it has no base value from which to obtain a derivative. The rares I am referring to are the oddly shaped “rock” and “horse dung” and “bright purple robe”. Items which one would assume would not be worth hundreds, even occasionally thousands of dollars, yet are. Rares like these exist as anomalies, unintended and forgotten elements of a gamescape. In the same category, are however the limited release items, objects only given out at certain times or for certain reasons, obtained in some arcane way a given number of years ago. Less valueable, but still considered rares in the overall market under discussion.
So far, from my experience in live events, community management, and as a player, I personally advocate a direct and total destruction of any extant rares market in any virtual world. Rares markets marginalize player segments, and while the common excuse of “preservation of history” is valid, it is nevertheless a useless arguement to make when you take into account that the majority of those “historical items” are bugged, accidental, or incidental instances of crowning favoritism. The rares market, through strictly desire-based valuation, causes inflation of the game’s currency. A rare serves as a potential repository of a set quantity of currency, variant on demand, that stored up generates inflation.
For example, take into account the history of the Raiment of the Zessler Guard, a specially-hued simple green robe I gave out while serving as Event Moderator for the UO server Legends. For being present during the Britannian Invasion lead by the powerful necromancer noble, Erik Zessler, those present were given a robe from his own hand to indicate their allegiance to the cause. Literally hundreds were given out. I came to understand that more revenue was being generated from the server transfers to and from than was actually being expended on the contracts with the EMs. Several years later, the Raiment of the Zessler Guard goes for 35-60 million gold in UO ($50-$80). Despite the initial flood of the market and the devaluation of any existing rare robes on the server, as a rare, the robe represents a inflation of 60 million gold each. That’s 6,000,000,000 total at a rough estimate of $9,000.
Quick summation, a targeted saturation of a rares market can increase the health of the virtual economy and lower the marginalization of player segments.
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
The Crucifiction Effect
Spotted this in this evening’s Ultima Online House of Commons. Kudos and huzzah! Apparently, Draconi, one of the designers for Ultima Online, discovered an illegal scripter and very publically annihilated his house in Luna. Burned it down to absolute ruins and put up a scarecrow in effigy of the “traitor”. The community response was a glorious outpouring of elated glee.
Not to get all Machiavellian on all ya’lls (too late?), but this is one of those really fun things that, when done infrequently, can really help amp up the level of goodwill in a game. I use the term “crucifiction effect” to describe the exact mechanics and overall impact such a harsh and public treatment of a player can have. When you look at the judicial system of Rome, and the way things worked in the realm of Caesar, my own liberal bleeding heart sentimentalities aside, crucifictions worked.
After conquering a new province, or as punishment for various crimes, the Romans would very publically punish, to the greatest extent imaginable (with a minimum of fuss on their part) an antagonist by nailing them to a big ol’ piece of wood. This generally had the psychological effect of making the other antagonists fearful, subservient and obedient, while simultaneously bringing pleasure and a sense of righteous justice to the Roman citizenry. Moving that example forward to the wilderness of virtual worlds - crucifiction in practice works wonders.
Another example of this, apart from UO’s, could be earlier in 2007, when credit spammers in SWG were confronted suddenly by Dark Jedi that landed on their heads and discovered that they had been made overt, and attackable. And another, lighter example - notice how Blizzard seems to wait until it has an impressive number of bans (50,000, 100,000) before laying them out in one fell swoop for maximum effect of iron-fisted justice? Major, public, harsh action against that segment of the player population intent on doing the most damage to the game.
I think the trend towards this type of “vengeful hand of god” treatment of troublesome players is a wonderful thing, for the same reason that many players in online games do. When a virtual world, threatened by encroaching violators who would see the economy rended to shreds for personal gain and the stability and core value of the service shaken under their ministrations, that world’s architects should react as violently as possible. “There are too many of them, and not enough us to fight them” is often cited as excuse for a passive permission for these cretins to continue their unseemly work.
Often true, but an occasional and very public obliteration of a handful of them can really do wonders for goodwill and to make others think twice about going over to the dark side.