Black Ops II | Multiplayer

I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of the Call of Duty franchise per se but I’ve owned every edition since COD4: Modern Warfare. I mainly enjoy the campaigns because the hyper-fast multiplayer always sets off my temper. I didn’t really care for the multiplayer at all in MW or MW2. That changed with Black Ops two years ago, though. I loved every single map, I loved the way the game played, I loved the heavy guitar riff before each match. It was great. The only real negatives at the time were the same complaints I have in every Call of Duty: iffy netcode (no dedicated servers on consoles anyway), quickscoping, noob tubing, and poor sound effects. My usual multiplayer crew of Aaron and Oakstout bought every single Map Pack DLC (multiplayer, not zombies) for Black Ops and thoroughly had a blast for a several months.

When Modern Warfare 3 came out last year, I initially didn’t plan on picking it up since I wasn’t finished with Black Ops yet. I hadn’t (still haven’t) Prestiged and I hadn’t even loaded up the single-player campaign for it yet. But Aaron and Oak wanted MW3 right away so I got it. Even though I was pretty much accustomed to Black Ops by then, MW3 really set off my temper again by seeming even faster paced. Not sure where the line is, but I felt MW3 crossed it. I did eventually get used to MW3 and now I can go back and forth between it and Black Ops with no real problems. I even subscribed to the Call of Duty Elite service to get all the DLC. One thing I’d never done in a shooter before that I do constantly in MW3 is Hardcore mode. In MW3 it’s called Hardcore Ricochet so that if you shoot your own teammates, the damage is ricocheted back to you as a penalty, including killing yourself. When I went back to Black Ops and tried it, I learned there was no penalty and quite frequently my own teammates would shoot me just to get me out of their line of sight for a kill. Douches.

It’s another November, so another annual edition of the Call of Duty franchise, this time Black Ops II. I knew when it was first announced that I’d be picking it up with no reservations like I’d had with MW3 for no other reason than its near-future setting. Back in the day, Battlefield 2142 was my all-time favorite shooter. Most recently I really enjoyed Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I know it got ripped up in the reviews but I thoroughly had a blast in the campaign and I really enjoy the multiplayer specifically because it’s nothing like a Battlefield or Call of Duty experience. I don’t care much for PC shooters anymore (too out of practice plus the RSI in my wrist) but Ghost Recon Online is very similar to Future Soldier and it’s actually not bad so far.

Anyway, I’ve spent a few hours with Black Ops II multiplayer now. Up to level 20 or 21, and thought I’d share my thoughts so far.

Without a doubt, this is the most polished Call of Duty multiplayer experience to date. Quickscoping is still in the game, and I’d love to beat the design team upside the head but so far it hasn’t gotten out of hand here. The new progression/unlock system seems almost like a refinement of what both Black Ops and MW3 did but combined. Scorestreaks are wonderful for players like myself who can’t sit around for 18 hours a day practicing, so every little thing I can do to increase my score can help me get a Scorestreak. In previous COD games, I very rarely unlocked the first Killstreak because I’m usually dead before I can count to ten. Now playing as a team and capturing objectives in Domination, or every dog tag I pick up in Kill Confirmed, even putting up a UAV Scorestreak will help my overall score towards the next Scorestreak. Sure, players are still going for kills first and foremost and all COD games are KDR-focused but I feel Black Ops II goes a long way towards letting players of various skill levels and play styles experience some of the high-end special attacks they might never have been able to see in previous games.

One of the first things I noticed when I joined a match is the sound. I’ve been griping since MW about the poor quality sound effects in COD titles. The franchise is practically a money printing factory, why can’t they afford good sounds? Finally, Treyarch upped the ante and holy shit does Black Ops II sound fantastic! The weapon sounds have some punch and oh, dear lord the explosion sounds are simply glorious! They’ll rumble your subwoofers just the way you like it, baby. For some reason, the lobby music reminds me of the theme for Bill Maher’s Real Time on HBO but… whatever. Sound-wise, my only gripe is a minor one: the “level up” sound isn’t very prominent at all so half the time if I didn’t catch the badge pop up saying my rank had increased, I’d have no idea. Black Ops and MW3 both had very cool and obvious “ding!” sounds that I liked.

More polish: the floating text is very crisp and clear and rendered in an attractive font. When you get any type of “special” accomplishment like a Double Kill, or Headshot a little badge will flash in the upper center of the UI, also very attractive and polished in its presentation. The lobby has a spinning globe that shows where the concentrations of global players are, which is a neat touch. I think the Halo games did something similar and it’s a nice little bonus feature I enjoy checking out in between matches. Another fantastic move on the Xbox is a simplified Mute option. Normally, to avoid the cesspool of Public Voice Chat, I will create an Xbox Live Party for myself so I never hear anyone. MW3, however, is either glitched or coded against me doing that while the game is running. I can create the Party but I’ll still hear all the Public chat unless I create the Party prior to running the game. Black Ops II lets me press X and mute everyone not in my party (lower case “p” to signify the in-game party of friends, not an Xbox Live Party which is cross-game chat) the only thing is that it doesn’t continually update itself between matches. Any new players who weren’t auto-muted already, I’ll have to click the option again but still, that’s better than having to mute everyone one at a time.

Hardcore mode is currently lacking, so we’ve not been bothering with it yet. Hopefully it will get updated with better playlists, though as far as I can tell, Treyarch did not include Ricochet or any other mechanism to penalize friendly fire griefing, so if that’s the case, I may end up just sticking with the Core playlists. Oh, another thing I’m liking so far is that even in Core it doesn’t seem to take a full magazine to kill everyone like it did in every other COD. A few hits and for the most part, I’ve got ‘em unless they had the Flak Jacket perk. So, for the first time pretty much ever, I’m enjoying and preferring Core over Hardcore, at least for now.

So, no real complaints about Black Ops II specifically other than my list of complaints with regards to the entire franchise, some of which I listed above. Really happy I picked this up, it will probably become my multiplayer shooter of choice. Undecided if I’ll get the Season Pass since I’ve never really been a fan of the Zombie mode but maybe I’ll grab the guys sometime and give it an honest chance before I make a decision.

Black Ops II multiplayer: highly recommended!

Hopeful for Halo 4

The Halo games have always been a point of contention with me. On the one hand, I do enjoy the setting, its lore, all the vehicles and so forth. Playing them always has memorable moments; for example, taking down a Scarab for the first time put a smile on my face that didn’t falter for some time. On the other hand, I’ve always found the floatiness of the controls to be off-putting, not to mention Halo uses a somewhat unintuitive control scheme that no other shooter franchise does, and that can be frustrating. It’s nothing that can’t be overcome with a few rounds of practice, but it’s aggravating considering practically every other shooter franchise has adopted what has very nearly become a gold standard control scheme that makes it easy to jump from game to game without too much confusion.

The very little multiplayer Halo experience I’ve had so far have always been on these little maps that, combined with the floaty controls and the design for wild jumps and grenade tossing, plus the weapon pickups located at specific locations on the map (also one of many gripes I have with Gears of War Versus multiplayer), reminds me too much of Ye Olde Shooters like Unreal Tournament and Quake 2. I loved those back then, but I’ve grown beyond arena shooters period, and I’ve come to prefer the RPG Lite progression and loadout schemes modern shooters use.

I’d always planned to pick up Halo 4 but recently canceled my pre-order just because I already have stacks of Xbox 360 games waiting to be finished, plus the recent addition of Borderlands 2 and I’m anxiously awaiting Far Cry 3 as I mentioned recently.

But then 343 Industries unleashed the Infinity Multiplayer ViDoc on Halo Waypoint…

And I immediately hopped on Amazon to reinstate my pre-order! Progression and loadouts, huge team-based, objective-oriented maps, narrative in the multiplayer, not to mention the new cooperative Spartan Ops mode. Hell yeah, I’m in!

I’ve been playing a little Halo: Reach the past few days just to practice up on the whole Halo multiplayer vibe. I discovered the Big Team Battles playlist which is essentially Team DeathMatch but on larger maps that also include vehicles. There are no objectives that I’ve noticed but it’s at least been something I can learn to enjoy in its own right and separate from the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises I usually play.

The campaign and Spartan Ops are a natural attraction for me, especially since it appears 343i have put some serious effort into bumping up the narrative in this new game. Hopefully the new multiplayer will be something I enjoy and continue coming back to next year.

I do feel it’s such an incredible shame that a decade later and all the lore written on the factions of the Halo universe that we’re still playing Spartan versus Spartan in (apparently?) holographic simulation battles. I think a bigger Battlefield-style game where we can choose our faction and a persistent online strategic territorial conquest campaign would blow the crap out of the Red vs. Blue stuff Halo has been doing all this time.

Fingers Crossed for Far Cry 3

I’ve had the original Far Cry since it released, though at the time my PC didn’t run it wonderfully and in the eight years since I’ve had plenty of other games to take my attention – especially the Massively Multiplayer variety – not to mention the RSI in my wrist that prevents me from playing shooters (or anything that requires me using the mouse the entire time, such as Torchlight 2) so needless to say I’ve never gotten around to playing it. [However, as I write this, it’s in the process of installing so who knows!]

What I have been playing lately is Far Cry 2 on the Xbox 360. I still haven’t figured out why it’s called “Far Cry” because it is nothing like the first game other than two very basic aspects: it’s a first-person shooter, and you’re a mercenary. How can it be a sequel to Far Cry if it is in no way whatsoever related to it? The only answer: Ubisoft owns the IP and whored it out to their own development studio.

There’s been plenty of complaints about Far Cry 2 that I’ve read, most of which boil down to “repetitive missions,” “superhuman AI” (the AI isn’t good at all, but enemies can spot and shoot you from ridiculous range) and “wtf with the respawning enemies?” I whole-heartedly agree with those, and for the Xbox I can add “crappy controls” and “horrible shooting mechanic” (which is not good when your game’s genre is “shooter”). Part of the poor shooting mechanic is directly related to the lousy controls, though. But for me, they make this the single most frustrating shooter I think I’ve ever played on any platform. It’s nearly impossible to control without aiming assist, and the aiming assist is the poorest implementation I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile the controls are actively fighting against you. When you first try to move the camera with the right stick, there is a resistance so it won’t move accurately right away. Then once it gets going, there’s a momentum effect so I end up flailing the camera all over the place trying to aim. Picture a PC-platform FPS player the very first time he ever tries to play a console shooter, and that’s what you’ve got with Far Cry 2 and I’m an experienced console shooter for nearly a decade thanks to the aforementioned RSI.

If I had to split things up I’d say that even though I’m finding the African setting a bit boring, the team who designed the world and came up with some of the environmental concepts (it has a dynamic weather system, a day-night cycle, and environmental effects such as catching grass and trees on fire which is always fun) did a fantastic job. But the programmers who handled the controls, shooting and interface weren’t up to the task.

So when I watch videos for the upcoming Far Cry 3 I’m paying more attention to how they’ve addressed my complaints of Far Cry 2 than anything else. I think they’ve pulled it off. Just from watching game play videos, I’m going to say Far Cry 3 will be essentially a continuation of what they tried to do in Far Cry 2 (without actually being a sequel to that game either…) but with everything fixed this time. The controls look spot-on this time, and also appear to have adopted “genre standard” on the console platform. Shooting and movement is fast and fluid, and despite the multiplayer appearing for all intents and purposes to be a “Call of Duty clone” it looks fun enough, and certainly better than Far Cry 2 which has hands-down the worst multiplayer I’ve ever had the misfortune of experiencing. I’d rather play nothing but Medal of Honor (2010) multiplayer, which is universally slammed as being very poor, than ever set foot in Far Cry 2 multiplayer again. But hey, it did have a map editor, which you pretty much never see these days, especially on a console platform.

Ideally what I’d like out of Far Cry 3 is “Skyrim with guns.” And just from the game play videos, I think Ubisoft Montreal might be coming fairly close to that for me. In addition to all the “wacky enemies” (which seems to be the whole theme of the game: “How many wacky ways can you kill our wacky enemies?”) there’s wildlife which can actually be hostile this time (both predator animals and prey if you anger them) and you can skin the animals to learn recipes, so it wouldn’t surprise me if maybe there are plants to gather to create health potions too. Maybe. Either way, what I want is a Skyrim-like sandboxy virtual world to blow up as I wish. Now, I think once you finish all the developer-written story quests in Skyrim, the Radiant quest system continues to randomly generate tasks for you, so you could effectively play Skyrim forever. I suspect once I finish the story in Far Cry 3, the game is over and done. I doubt I can make a home and get traveling NPC companions either, but at least there is a faction system this in Far Cry 3 and building up reputation and taking over enemy outposts will let a friendly faction move in.

I don’t think Far Cry 3 will quite achieve my loft dream of “Skyrim with guns.” But it just might come close… We’ll find out in early December!

Borderlands 2

Like millions of others players (seriously: biggest selling launch of 2012, forecast to be fourth best-selling game of 2012) I am happily exploring new areas of Pandora, and gleefully shooting its hostile denizens.

Everything we loved about the first game has been improved upon and turned to eleven in the sequel. I’ve chuckled or outright laughed out loud at the humor more times in my 26 hours (according to Raptr) so far than I have in quite a long time in a video game.

One of my favorite aspects is that I’m even enjoying the game solo. In Borderlands I didn’t so much care to play solo, but had a blast co-op. I can’t even put my finger on what has changed, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my solo time. Of course, co-op is far more fun, as well as more challenging and rewarding.

My only real complaint so far is the reload time. I’m only up to level 19 so far, and just to the point in the story where I unlocked the fourth weapon slot yesterday, but it seem every single weapon I’ve found (that was worth using) has ridiculously stupid reload times. Hence, I’ve put a ton of Badass Tokens into reload speed if that category is available.

If I had to list a second, minor complaint, it’s that Eridium doesn’t auto-loot like gold does. It’s a currency, and of course I want it and need it! So fly into my wallet!

I’ve never cared for Diablo-style games (mostly due to the overhead view and mouse control) but the Borderlands twist of putting it into a shooter really does it for me. I still haven’t finished the “General Knoxx” and “Claptrap Revolution” DLC from the first game, but right now my priority is getting to level cap in Borderlands 2, along with racking up as many of the challenges as I can along the way, before Aaron and I nab a couple of the AGErs to finish up the Borderlands 1 game and 100% the Achievements.

Gearbox has promised four DLC campaigns for Borderlands 2 (yes, I will get the Season Pass) and if the “Mechromancer” DLC sells well enough (what do they consider “well enough” considering all the pre-orders – which set a pre-order record for 2K Games — get it free?) they want to create new character classes as additional DLC (ie. not part of the Season Pass). So I anticipate plenty of extra Borderlands 2 play time over the next couple years.

If Lady Luck is kind to me, I’ll get that wrapped up before December 4th when Far Cry 3 arrives!

Two and a Half Games (Completed)

Outside the MMO side of things with Star Trek Online, Guild Wars 2, The Secret World and random dabbling in Allods Online, I have well over sixty games for the Xbox 360, only a couple of which I’ve ever finished.

Last month I completed the Ghost Recon: Future Soldier campaign and thoroughly enjoyed it every step of the way. The multi-player is still a bit glitchy and desperately needs patching, but the campaign was a lot of fun for me. It wasn’t old-school Ghost Recon (which I didn’t play back then anyway, my PC couldn’t handle it at the time) nor was it anything like the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter series which I absolutely loved. Future Soldier is its own thing, and I was fine with that.

Syndicate

So far this month, I finally got around to finishing Syndicate last week. When I first got the game, I made it about halfway through the campaign before a combination of focusing more on other games then when I’d put the Syndicate disc in, it was to play co-op, which I played a fair amount of. Last week I figured it was time to start knocking some titles off my Unfinished List so Syndicate ended up first in line. I’d have to say from an overall view, Syndicate was on the mediocre side, slightly above the middle of mediocrity. Back when the co-op demo came out, Aaron and I both spoke of how the AI was very good. After more playing of the campaign, plus playing co-op with four players rather than just the two of us, I’ll revise that statement and say the AI is a bit on the aggressive side, very good at tracking you down and advancing on you, rather than “good” AI. Same for Mass Effect 3 for that matter. Boss fights were their own thing altogether, and many of them were frustrating affairs but soon enough you get into a pattern of breaching, circle strafing and hiding. One thing I discovered during co-op is that while you may have to get fairly close to start a breach, if you hold the button, you can turn away and run to hide as far away as you want and the breach will complete as long as you don’t let go of the button. Handy! I still have a few level-specific achievements to go back and get someday, but as for the campaign, I’m happy to have Syndicate completed finally.

Medal of Honor

Yesterday morning I finished Medal of Honor, the 2010 franchise reboot. I picked it up cheap several months ago on the recommendation of both Aaron and Wiqd who both said the campaign was excellent. They were right! I started the game Monday on Hard difficulty and made it to the last mission Tuesday evening. It’s a short campaign, though that’s sadly typical of most shooters these days. At the time of completion yesterday morning, Raptr had me tracked at a total of seven hours with MoH, but that includes possibly an hour total of multiplayer back when I first got the game (yes, the multiplayer is really as bad as reviews said) so I’ll just say six hours start to finish for me on Hard difficulty, and I felt I was taking it slow and cautiously plus several instances of dying and having to repeat from the last checkpoint. Considering I got the game for $20 even the six hours in the campaign I felt were worth the price of admission. The campaign was really a lot of fun and while it did feature many scripted set-pieces that were very Hollywood in nature, it felt more toned down and realistic. Exciting, yet believable, not the Michael Bay level of high adrenaline ridiculousness that the Call of Duty franchise specializes in. I did more of a review on Google+ yesterday which I won’t repeat here, but suffice to say from a technical standpoint MoH had its share of cons in addition to the pros, and I hope Danger Close learned from them for the upcoming sequel.

Next?

I’ve already decided the next game (another shooter, go figure) to tick off my list will be Operation Flashpoint: Red River. Like Syndicate, I was roughly halfway through the game, but after finishing Medal of Honor yesterday, I put in Red River and now I’m only two missions from the end. I’d still love to see how the online works but I only have one friend with the game. I also picked up the Leviathan DLC for Mass Effect 3 which has three achievements (one is missable) so I may plan on doing that Sunday. After that, it’s anything goes. I’ve been very slowly plugging away one quest at a time in Fallout 3 but I can’t really say I enjoy that game so I tend to play one quest then put it away for a month or more. I have so many half-started games it’s not even funny, and more on the way. I should really pick up Divinity 2 again and finish that, I think I was just over halfway finished last year when other games took me away from it.

3X: Month 1 Update

That’s just about as uncreative a title as I’ve come up with in awhile. /whap self. Also, my Google-fu has failed me for several months now – I am unable to write a blog post in Chrome. I can set all the options, etc. but I cannot type in the text window. I’ve tried deleting the cache and everything else, and every WordPress forum post I’ve read so far comes up empty and gets closed with no resolution. I’ve installed a few plugins but I can’t use them from Live Writer obviously.

Ok, so here we go with a status update on my attempt at juggling multiple MMOs and still hoping to feel like I’m getting somewhere and investing myself in the experience.

Star Trek Online

No new content since the Season 6 release last month, so I’m still mostly doing dailies for the 8,000 Dilithium per day. I was doing STFs a couple months ago and I have two of the three MACO ground pieces, but I’ve petered out a bit so getting the final piece to unlock the MACO Armor costume will take awhile. Otherwise, I try to get some Fleet Marks to help out our little starbase, especially during the Fleet Mark Events. During the day I’m often the only one on but sometimes in the evenings there might be enough fleet-mates online to queue ourselves up as a team, which is a lot of fun.

Allods Online

I know right? Petter mentioned something about Allods on Twitter, and I still had it installed from last year so what the heck, I patched it up and played a few hours earlier in the month. I actually had some fun but decided that I wasn’t in quite the same place as last year so I made a new character. Exact same role – Healer – but instead of the Xadaganian (Human for the Empire faction) Inquisitor, I now have an Arisen (Undead Cyborg?) Heretic that I’ve been playing on and off during down times and he is now level 13 or so as of last week.

I got into a group and completed the XAES instance. I think there were three, maybe four players, plus we all used our freebie Mercenary Contract to summon an AI to help us out. Very straightforward instance, no real surprises but that’s what I’d expect from a low level instance. Allods will be something I just do on the side every now and again, mostly out of curiosity plus it gives me a chance to see how a built-for-F2P game ends up and where the item shop starts coming into play. My impression has always been that item shops are always end-game requirements, though I’ve read about some that ramp up the XP curve so much around the mid-game that buying XP boosts becomes almost required. We’ll see. I didn’t play during the controversial launch that plagues Allods to this day even though all the prices were permanently reduced and the item shop death penalty has been removed. I will say for a straight up F2P game, Allods has the most impressive engine I’ve seen.

TERA

Earlier in the month, TERA had their Suit Up for Summer event, which involved finding glowing chests in coastal regions of the game, then being the first player to whack that chest to open it and receive a random reward. So, yes, just like the game content itself, this was a grind dealing with the random loot generation until I finally got the swim suit for my Baraka Lancer. In the meantime I did find some of the more in-demand suits such as the Castanic Female which sold for a hefty sum on the Auction House, so I now have plenty of gold to buy more Glyphs to experiment with my build a bit.

Last week, the Argon Queen update went live which added PvP Battlegrounds for level-capped players, and the game’s first raid. Also introduced is a new mechanic for Lancers and Warriors called Resolve. It adds a third bar to our vitals for us to manage, and for Lancers will force many of us, myself included, to alter our play style to fit the new mechanic because now our Resolve will diminish while using Stand Fast, our block ability. Up to now, many Lancers would “turtle” where they’d run up and use Challenging Shout (taunt) then Stand Fast taking the hits. Each hit you took while blocking slowly depleted your Mana, and if you turtled too long, you wouldn’t have enough Mana to activate one of your abilities, most importantly another Challenging Shout when you inevitably lost aggro since you’d been standing still blocking the whole time. I’ll admit, I often turtled in instances mostly because while leveling I don’t need to repeat instances to learn the enemy attack patterns, but I only held Stand Fast when I knew I was going to be taking hits. Once the boss wasn’t doing an obvious tell, I was busy smacking him to build more aggro and regenerate Mana. Resolve, on the other hand, begins depleting the moment we go into Stand Fast so it’s going to force Lancers to become much more active. To help with that, the patch also removed the one-second cooldown for Stand Fast, which burned me in almost every instance or group BAM fight so far because if you press the right mouse button to block before it finished, there’s no warning that it’s not ready, you simply stand there wide open for attack, which comes a few milliseconds later and you’re knocked down for a few seconds, taking quite a bit of damage in the process and that’s valuable time you could be losing aggro to your dps classes and possibly the healer now that you need to be topped off again (healing generates a ton of aggro in TERA). Finally, the patch also added two new skills for the Lancer: Backstep, which several (all?) of the other classes have, is just what it sounds like, an ability to jump backwards out of harm’s way. This can be useful in a couple ways for a Lancer. First, the obvious if you’re perhaps low on Resolve and you have aggro but can’t afford to block right that second, you can jump back to give you a few more seconds of Resolve regeneration while the boss comes to you. Second, you can use it to get behind the boss by exploiting the mechanics behind it. If you very quickly swivel your camera so the boss is behind you then do Backstep, you jump backwards through the boss where you have a few seconds to pound on him from the rear for bonus backstab damage! The new Wallop skill has your Lancer jump forward and slam his shield into the ground for a chance of knocking the enemies to the ground. Used on its own, it has a semi-lengthy (for TERA anyway) cast time, but if used as a combo with other opening skills it becomes nearly instant-cast.

The Secret World

I’ve had one hell of a time having fun in TSW, mostly due to a poor choice of weapons when I first created my Templar, then having to repeat the content over and over again while I experimented with other weapons. A few days ago, I switched out of Blades into Pistols and kept Blood Magic. I’m honestly not sure what synergy those two have, but I did find someone’s build they called a Battle Cleric. I went with it because it used all Inner Ring (beginner) abilities from both weapons except for one advanced Outer Ring ability which didn’t take too long to acquire since it was the only one I had to set a goal for. Now that I have this build, I can concentrate on working on some of the pre-made Decks and building my character up. I still feel he’s fairly inadequate but that seems to be mostly a gear thing. Very little gear drops in Kingsmouth, it’s most quest rewards to prevent farming. So I’m QL3 gear with a few still QL2 because I haven’t found replacements. I can deal with most of the Kingsmouth mobs one on one, but if a second one enters the fray I’m in trouble, and three I’m dead if I can’t get away. Since I end up doing a lot of circle-strafing, it can be easy to accidentally pick up new mobs that were nearby so it’s a bit touchy still.

Yesterday, I did finally manage to get enough of the quests done to open up the Dead in the Water quests which took me to the first instance, the Wreck of the Polaris. Like the game world, the instance exudes atmosphere and mood and I found it refreshing for a first instance to actually require some situational awareness and used some basic mechanics rather than the typical tank and spank that most MMOs go for with their very first group instance. My favorite part was the cut scene towards the end where I thought we were done then a very Cthulhu-looking monster flies up and swats our helicopter to the ground, forcing us to fight him. That was fun, and I had to switch to mainly healing a lot of the time (learning experience, I actually had no idea the couple Blood Magic spells would work on other players) so apparently Pistols/Blood is a DPS/Support build. I can get behind that!

Guild Wars 2

I’ve always enjoyed Guild Wars so picking up GW2 was no surprise. However, I was not planning on getting it right away. I figured I already had enough game-wise, work-wise and life-wise on my plate. But at the last minute I caved and bought the Digital Deluxe edition and spent a fair amount of time playing over the weekend in the head start launch. I hadn’t spent any time getting into the GW2 hype or educating myself about the various classes, but several months ago one of the players I follow on Google+ did her own rundown and convinced me to go for the Guardian class. I’m enjoying it so far and have no desire to start rolling alts anytime soon.

My main character in Guild Wars was always my Monk, Benjeth Lorhall so in deciding on the Guardian class, I also decided to continue Benjeth’s legacy. So here is Jheryvin Lorhall. The Guardian class in general seems inspired by the Paragon from the first game, while adding mostly melee weapons to the mix rather than throwing spears. That’s fine, the Paragon ended up being my favorite secondary character. Despite my loathing for RPG PvP, I do hope to become involved with World vs. World in GW2. I’m beyond terrible with melee PvP in particular so I was thrilled to learn the Guardian has some great support skills using a staff! He also gets some scepter skills which is another ranged weapon but aside from unlocking all the skills, I didn’t spend any time really learning which situations the scepter would be preferred.

I may do a proper writeup of my GW2 experiences, but I do have a couple of negative points:

First, the weapon skill unlocks. I am given to understand that during beta unlocking weapon skills was a lengthy and time-consuming process and that very late in beta it was adjusted to its current fast process. It hasn’t taken me more than five minutes to unlock every skill on any particular weapon, which begs the question: why bother with the unlocks at all? Second, since (apparently?) all weapon skills are hard-locked and I’ll never get more skills for a weapon, I am already feeling a bit limited. I get a staff, five minutes tops I have all five skills and that’s all I ever get. And I’m only level 2 or 3 at the time with 77 more levels to go. Yes, I can unlock character skills and switch those up but even then, the mystery and exploration of skills from Guild Wars is gone. I press H to open up the Hero UI and right there every skill I can ever unlock is before me. I can just sit there at level 1 and plan things out and once I have that plan, I can spend the additional skill points I get unlocking the rest for completion. That just doesn’t feel Guild Warsy to me.

Second, the dynamic events. Mind you, I am enjoying them where I didn’t care for the Public Quests in Warhammer. There are plenty of them and they’re quite varied in style so far. However, even with the backwards-only level scaling, GW2 is still a vertical progression theme park world and I do have concerns that once the initial rush is over, the lower level zones will start having population issues. With my job, I can only play a couple times per week. I experienced drastic low population issues within the first three weeks of both WAR and SWTOR which was a major factor in my cancelation of both those games. One does not cancel GW2 at least, but my concern is that I may have trouble getting XP to level in a week or few. I hope that’s not the case, but I feel it is a valid concern nonetheless at this point in time.

Tri-Gaming

Back in June, Syp over at Bio Break decided he was going to continue playing his favorite three MMOs and came up with a three-quest plan, which he later revised to a time block plan per game.

I’ve been playing three MMOs lately myself — yes, me playing MMOs again! — and for now I’ve decided to stick with these three with occasional dips into a few others, plus my Xbox 360 gaming of course.

The MMOs I’m putting on the pedestal?

Star Trek Online, naturally, since it’s the one I write about most and probably my favorite game on PC at the moment. I don’t play STO “like an MMO” per se, meaning I don’t go into it necessarily with the same attitude that I would most other MMOs I decide to stick with. I can just jump into STO and do my dailies, or do some STFs or Fleet Events, chat or role-play and I’m good, no worrying about “MMO Stuff.”

TERA! I’m on the three-month subscription plan but – as predicted – all the blogger / Twitter / G+ people I played with that first month jumped ship when Guild Wars 2 started running their Beta Weekends, plus The Secret World was finishing up beta and they were all doing that as well. Last week I fired up TERA again, and ya know, despite being the linear Diku treadmill, I just really enjoy the game and I enjoy the hell out of the Lancer class. So I’m planning on sticking with it for now and reaching end-game.

The Secret World. This was an impulse purchase, namely because I’d been ignoring all the information about the game but in the end some of my online friends whose opinions I value most got the Lifetime so I broke down and got one too on launch day without so much as having watched a single video of gameplay. Totally sight-unseen. And… it’s… different. In a good way – no, in a great way! But… There’s always a “but…” isn’t there? I’m really not digging the combat or the faux “weapon combo = class” setup. I’d read on someone’s TSW beta blog (I could have swore it was Syp but he said it absolutely wasn’t) that Assault Rifle and Blade was a good combo so as soon as the game installed, that’s what I did. Afterwards, some Cabal-mates told me that might indeed be a good combo for one of the other factions (do skills differ between factions?) but not so much for Templars. I love shooters, so when I’m using an Assault Rifle the last thing I want to see is some slow action that fires a single shot. That’s what sniper rifles are for. My finishers were automatic, and they were fun if they worked and critted, but otherwise I totally was not enjoying the AR/Blade mix, it felt ineffective with very little survivability. So… a bunch of wasted Skill Points right there. Now I’m starting over with Blood magic but keeping Blades for now. So I’m still in Kingsmouth Town repeating every mission I can find to build up points in Blood, plus apparently I need to put points into my Talismans so I can equip better gear. TSW is already a very slow game, and aside from combat (at least the low / noob combat) not being very interesting or even fun, I feel like I’m spinning my wheels that I am not in any way, shape or form ready or able to progress to anything new yet so I have to repeat the same quests I did the first time. There are some other things I could complain about but really haven’t put them into coherent thoughts and words yet. But – another but! – when my Cabal is active and at least chatting TSW doesn’t seem as lonely and it’s definitely something I’m willing to continue for the story and seeing how Funcom and Ragnar Tornquist’s team put all the paranormal conspiracy theories and all sorts of horror literature into a single lore-filled world. I have to imagine that once I finally earn enough Skill Points and Ability Points, I’ll be able to put together some decks that start getting fun and useful. So in the end, I think I’ll be happy with the Lifetime purchase and do plan on sticking with TSW.

STO: Season 6: Fleet Starbase Test 1

Two of the new PvE group content (No Win Scenario, a space combat survival mode, and the ground-based Colony Invasion) has been on the Tribble Test Shard for a couple weeks now, but yesterday the first update to what will be the real meat of Season 6 was pushed to Tribble: Fleet Starbases!

Here are the full patch notes for ST.20.20120617b.6 at Google Docs. As far as I know, they are not officially posted in forum or non-Google Docs format yet and probably won’t be until at least Monday when the Cryptic folk come back to work.

The update covers three things: New Group Content (both Public and Fleet-only), several new UI changes, then of course the Starbases themselves along with the starbase advancement system.

This post will be a huge wall of text and image-intensive, so I’ll put a break here to make it easier on the folk who don’t want to render the whole thing.

Continue reading →

STO: Fiasco at the Account Page

Yesterday was a very traumatic day for Star Trek Online players, at least the dedicated ones. Perfect World Entertainment’s acquisition of Cryptic Studios was finalized roughly ten months ago, and all this time we’ve been able to login with either our Cryptic accounts or our Perfect World accounts, if we had one. No problem, and it seems most of the pre-PWE players just preferred to stick with our Cryptic accounts. Tuesday, however, the STO website was down for nearly a full day and when it reappeared, it had been moved over to PWE’s domain – no longer startrekonline.com but now sto.perfectworld.com — and now requires a PWE account to login to your account or to post on the forums. To login to play the game, though, we can still use our Cryptic accounts. For now.

The forums were also switched to PWE’s system, and most players are extremely unhappy about the way they look, the way they operate, but most importantly because of the way the account linking was handled.

For example, I did have an old PWE account because years ago I tried their main MMO Perfect World, and somehow my account name was the same as my first character’s name. I can’t remember if I did that (not sure why I would because if I post on a forum it’s almost always under my usual handle) or if it just happened out of the blue via some automated process. Now, the good thing is that Cryptic and Perfect World did take care to reserve everyone’s Cryptic @handle so regardless how I login now, in-game I still appear as the same @handle I always have so friends, fleet-mates, and others still know who I am. But… my account name is now the old ugly stupid name I had on the original PWE account, and I am fairly certain that is also my forum name now, which will probably prevent me from ever posting on the forums ever again.

Cryptic/PWE did post a FAQ about Account Linking on the main STO site, and are currently running a promotion for, as the jaded players are calling it, a [Box of Useless Crap]. Snarky, but not inaccurate, as it turns out. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, I figured my days of logging in under the Cryptic account were numbered (I’m surprised they’ve allowed it to go on as long as they have) I took the plunge yesterday and linked my account. The [Promotional Gift Box] tooltip reads:

Opening the box, the loot tables rewarded me thusly:

5,000 Dilithium Ore would take me, at most, about an hour to earn on my own. I’ll always take more dilithium but this amount is less than we’re allowed to refine per day.

All my characters are at the level cap, so the Skill Points are meaningless for now as well.

I suppose the catch here is that when we get down to it, PWE didn’t have to offer us any incentives whatsoever, so I guess even this small promotion is something. In the near future when they force the accounts to merge, nothing will be offered, which is why I chose to bite the bullet and do it now.

The two combat buff items, who knows, maybe I’ll use them in a Ground Special Task Force (STF) or something with the fleet once Season 6 arrives and we’re defending our Fleet Starbase or something.

Finally, the [Promotional Weapon Box] awarded this:

Not sure I really have a use for this either, though I do like Transphasic Torpedoes, generally speaking. Also this is of Very Rare (purple) quality with the [CrtD]x3 modifier. This item is currently selling for 2 million credits on the Exchange and there are only two of them available. So there just might be a third one on the Exchange in a few minutes! :razz:

STO: Deep Stahl Nine

Last Friday, Star Trek Online Creative Director Daniel Stahl scheduled a community chat in Quark’s bar on Deep Space Nine and hosted a Q&A session in the REDALERT chat channel. Mr. Stahl was also joined by Perfect World’s Brandon Felczer, the game’s Community Manager.

I copied and pasted everything @dstahl said in chat, unless he repeated his answers to questions or said something not relevant to the game, which wasn’t much.

I will attempt to organize everything here for this post. Fingers are crossed, since I’m on my tablet and copying from the Evernote app to the flaky-as-always WordPress app, then rearranging per topic if possible. I did not copy the player questions, however. Most responses should be obvious what the questions were, but there are two instances where I did put Q&A and wrote the gist of the question asked so the response would be clear.

Season 6 and beyond; STFs:

@dstahl: Season 6 will be posted to TRIBBLE over the next 3 weeks… release to HOLODECK IN JULY


@dstahl: re: Featured Episodes in the Future: We are going to be focusing on Story content for Season 7 (releasing laster this year)


@dstahl: RE: Crafting update – it is schedule to be somewhere between S7 and S8 — probably around Feb is my guess (all dates subject to change of course)


@dstahl: re: S7 story – it is going to focus on one of the 3 main stories in STO as well as a specific enemy group


@dstahl: RE: Crafting update – it is schedule to be somewhere between S7 and S8 — probably around Feb is my guess (all dates subject to change of course)


@dstahl: RE: New VO – there is some new VO in Season 6, and we will continue to include it whenever our budgets allow.


@dstahl: RE: Moving Crafting to Ships – look for changes similar to this to be tied to the crafting update planned for between S7 and S8


@dstahl: RE: STF Currency simplification – that is a feature on the docket for Season 7


@dstahl: RE: EDCs, STFS and REewards – we are tackling this issue in S7


@dstahl: re: STF timer – we are evaluating. Many of the new queue missions in S6 use variants of this – we will collect feedback and adjust post S6


@dstahl: RE: Time gated content – yes there will be less in the future – we are making a big change to this in S6


@dstahl: re: New STFs – nearly all the new queued missions in Season 6 are meant to be challenging group combat for 5 to 20 players.


@dstahl: re: Into the Hive: Gozer definitely has plans and is waiting for schedule approval

New Ships:

@dstahl: RE: KDF version of Armitage – that is a possibility – there are quite a few ships coming with the Starbase progression – so if you don’t see something you like when S6 hits, then we can consider it…


@dstahl: RE: new Science ships – there is one specific Science ship we’ve been talking about forever that has finally been approved and will be coming this year (not allowed to say which one yet)


@dstahl: re: Vesta – maybe ;)


@dstahl: re: Vesta – it is in the pipeline – no eta yet, still working out details


@dstahl: RE: Voyager ship pack – it is on our list of “ship packs” and I believe is near the top


@dstahl: RE: Sovereign class bridge – we don’t have it on the schedule yet, but there is rumor of a sov variant coming soon


@dstahl: re: Sovereign – it is coming soon


@dstahl: RE: D’deridex in a lockbox: That ship will be part of any future plan for a playable Romulan species and not a lockbox


@dstahl: re: new ship designs – yes new ship designs are planned – we have a few refits and retrofits to get out as well


@dstahl: re: Next Ship – is a special ship appearing in the next doff pack – Reinforcements Duty Officer Pack


@dstahl: re: Ship Testing – yes there was a big post-mortem about the Armitage – we continue to have issues like this and are making changes


@dstahl: RE: More small craft – we are waiting for a new feature to set default small craft – once in – more small craft inbound


@dstahl: RE: Ships/Free Ships – there will be all types of ships continually added to the game – some as soon as S6 tied to Fleet Advancement Tiers


@dstahl: RE: Ships from other ST games: unfortunately no, our license is for movies and tv shows owned by CBS


@dstahl: RE: Voyager and TNG bundles – those are both planned – no eta

PvP:

@dstahl: The PvP Maps Gozer has been working on are waiting on some software that won’t be ready until Season 6 ships -once we get that – then we can start putting the new PvP test maps on TRIBBLE


@dstahl: re: PVP – we have a dedicated specialist revamping PVP to allow cross faction matches and any level bolstering. We are starting with a space arena revampt and going from there – post S6


@dstahl: re: PVP leaderboards – these are planned for the PVP update


@dstahl: Re: PvP in China – we have Gozer working on PVP because we want PVP to be better and it can be.

KDF Content and Updates:

@dstahl: re: KDF Season – not currently. We areinstead focusing on more KDF content for max level players intead of levels 1-18 because 90%+ of all players are max level


@dstahl: re: KDF Content – we are focused on all faction end game content for the forseable future – no plans to do KDF levels 1 -18 at the moment


@dstahl: RE: New KDF Uniforms – yes a new fleet uniform (which is awesome) is coming in S6


@dstahl: re: Kits for KDF – this is a bigger issue with how KDF costumes were made – there is a long term goal to make this happen and it goes along with the kit revamp we want todo


@dstahl: re: Hair and Hair Fixes – no eta – this is on the Character Art lead to resolve, but no firm plan yet

Foundry:

@dstahl: RE: Foundry – Season 6 is going to be a great boost for the Foundry. Small nice to have features and a new codebase designed to get us to room-by-room interiors in the future.


@dstahl: RE: Foundry Spotlight – is going to be getting more formal support after Season 6 releases


@dstahl: re: More Decor points – we are reserving this for when we get Foundry room-by-room editing. It has teh features you’re talking about


@dstahl: re: increasing team size in Foundry missions – that is a very great suggestion that I’m going to pass on to the devs.


@dstahl: re: new Foundry interiors – yes, we have an artist tagging as many as they can to get ready for S6 release


@dstahl: re: new chat system – not in the works yet – but I’ve heard rumor of Chat coming to Foundry


Q:
have you considered a FOUNDRY TOKEN Store (like STF or LOBI stores?) -> play Foundry mission get token > turn in for loot etc…


A:
@dstahl: RE: Foundry Token Store – great idea – something I’ll share with the leads

Fleets and Starbases:

@dstahl: RE: Starbase Interior layouts – while they will not be customizable at launch, there will be exclusive projects that are time-sensitive which will unlock new cool decorations


@dstahl: re: Ship Interior Holodecks – we want to see these in Quarks, Starbases, and Ship interiors – no timeframe yet


@dstahl: re: Fleet Starbase Shipyard functionality – you will be able to buy new ship varients, but not customize further than you already can.


@dstahl: re: Cross Faction Fleets – currently we aren’t allowing this, but have discussed ways it could happen in the future


@dstahl: re: Civilian traffic and attire – we are working on this right now but focused around your Starbase


@dstahl: re: M12 gear tokens – Fleet Advancement will help with this


@dstahl: re: more reusable combat pets – there are new operational assets with Fleet Starbases that will add more variety

Character Advancement, etc.:

@dstahl: re: Fleet Admiral Rank – we are looking at the skillpoint cap right now and working on our timetable for rank increases. Look for news on this in the near future.


@dstahl: re: Future Ranks – Fleet Admiral and/or other specializations


@dstahl: RE: BOFFS more relevant at end game – yes. this is a big feature reserved for the rank of Fleet Admiral – we want to see Away Teams in space – where BOFFS command ships that help you


@dstahl: re: more biography space – we have a special web team working on a complete revamp of the offline character profile which may include more bio space and lots more features


@dstahl: re: First Contact Space Suits – yes they are coming


@dstahl: re: Crew uniform – this was something we were hoping to get into S6, but it is still not happening yet.


@dstahl: re: Accessibility options for Captains – brilliant idea! bummer we don’t have anything like that yet…


@dstahl: RE: More captain skills – these new skills will be tied to additional ranks and/or personal advancement system


@dstahl: re: holstered weapons while at rest – this has been tested internally – we want to do it and are testing systems to make it happen


@dstahl: re: 1 universal station – this is the planned functionality of your #1 when you obtain future ranks

Miscellaneous:

@dstahl: RE: Accolade UI – there has been some discussions and white board mock ups, but nothing more concrete than that yet.

@dstahl: re: Account linking – there is an account linking promo in the works so you’ll get another chance to link accounts soon.

@dstahl: RE: Silver access to emotes – we are reviewing emotes soon and trying to get that all squared away

@dstahl: RE: Death Animation in Space – We have toyed around with the idea (disabled ship). It is something we can consider for the future.

@dstahl: re: Customizable Ground Kits – this is high on Al’s list of features but is not on the schedule right now

@dstahl: re: New species – yes you can expect several new species every year.

@dstahl: re: more bank slots – we will be offering more shared bank slots in Season 6 along with Bind on Account changes to some items

@dstahl: RE: Account Shared Currencies – We are evaluating those currencies for use with Account Shared Bank now, and you’ll see this change when Season 6 goes live in July

@dstahl: re: Cat hair styles – not currently on the schedule – it is up to Matt if he can get to this outside of everythign else we are working on

@dstahl: re: Specialized inventory – inventory could use an overhaul – nothing on the schedule currently but its a good idea

@dstahl: re: Re-Trait Tokens – Another feature on Al’s to do list – but no date when it is happening yet

@dstahl: re: unbind tokens – we are not planning this – but we are planning to evaluate if some items should be account bound instead

@dstahl: re: Lock box break – we will continue to offer lock boxes, but as you’ve noticed we are trying new and various ways to implement them. Look for more changes in S6 including the Lobi store

@dstahl: re: Reinforcements Duty Officer Pack – it will replace the DS9 Cadre and it has a chance of a new ship that has some special qualities


@dstahl: re: DOFF Packs replacing lock boxes – not yet, but we are definitely experimenting with the right way to bundle items

@dstahl: re: Porthos [non-combat pet] – I’ve heard rumor one of the animators is working on this in their spare time – we’ll see if it really happens

@dstahl: RE: minigames – these require bored software engineers to get made – right now we have them too busy with bugs and features

@dstahl: re: STO in China – it is being evaluated, but no decision yet

@dstahl: re: visiting the gamma quadrant – someday, but there are several sectors in line before it

@dstahl: RE: Tholians – I just saw the latest models – they look absolutely amazing – they are crystaline and nearly see through in various light – very nasty

@dstahl: re: [The STO] Team Focus – we have various people working on various tasks all the time – our schedules look like an excel monster – but we do focus on specific releases and the makup of those releases


Q:
What are the top 3 items the STO team is working on?


A:
@dstahl: re: Top 3 Systems, Top 3 Stories: Crafting, Traits, PvP, Foundry, Advancement – Iconians, Remans, Sela, War, Unification


@dstahl: re: bugs: there are still lots of bugs here and there and I don’t have status on each one – we do have QA going through all old bugs to clean out the system and regress issues to determine priority

@dstahl: re: Boff Power Searching on exchange – it is not on the schedule yet, but planned

@dstahl: re: Gold Perks or SB Advancement – nothing specific, but we do plan to add more perks in the future

@dstahl: re: Flight simulator controls (aka true 3D) – never


@dstahl: re: “real” FPS on ground – not possible in this engine – what we have now is the closest we were able to get


@dstahl: re: New Engines – we do not have any new engines planned for STO, but we do have engineers continually working with Video Card makers to constantly improve our existing engine.


@dstahl: re: DX11 mesh errors – we have recently hired a new engineer to help coordinate the video devs and address issues like this.