Pumping Irony

See what I did there?

As I mentioned recently, Star Trek Online‘s test servers have been reassigned. The RedShirt server, which is usually for internal testing or invitation-only Quality Assurance testing, is now assigned as the public test server. Tribble has been reassigned as the F2P Beta server, and that’s where I’ve been spending all my time with STO lately.

Unlike most MMO betas, which are nothing more than marketing speak for glorified free trials, the F2P Beta hearkens back to the late 20th century where, by golly, beta meant beta! So much stuff is broken, it isn’t even funny. If nothing else, this goes to show how many seemingly unrelated systems in an MMO end up being related after all. These things are complicated under the hood! I’ve lost count how many bug reports I have filed already, and several more that I’m debating filing or not because I know other testers have already filed them.

One minor, but cool, graphical overhaul is that the Bajoran wormhole is now visible from inside DS9!

Bridge Officer (“BOff”) AI is broken in the current build in the respect that your BOffs will no longer automatically perform CPR on incapacitated team members when out of combat, so you have to manually resuscitate your team on away missions. Items from a future event somehow ended up in the loot table, so we occasionally pick them up. No big deal other than everyone wonders what they’re for. If you’re quick enough you can sell them for 50 Energy Credits each, otherwise you’ll soon see a notification that you “used” the item and it vanishes from your inventory. There are plenty of others, mostly small bugs and glitches.

R&D (crafting) has been altered so that players can only make odd-numbered tier items. I can’t even imagine the reason for this, unless it’s to force purchasing dilithium in the C-Store (see the Dilithium Conspiracy a couple paragraphs down) but I typically R&D gear for my ship every tier then use badges of exploration to outfit my away team. This not only is a drastic change, it nearly makes R&D completely useless until reaching level cap.

The big show-stopper is broken missions. Unlike the current game, the F2P game will be very story line-dependent for leveling, and the mission journal UI has been updated appropriately for this. The good part of this is that each story line will be given in a linear manner, so we can play through a continuous story to its conclusion rather than the current live game where it’s not always clear which missions are related. The bad thing is that if a mission breaks, your progression comes to a dead halt. Not good. The very first story arc in the game has a mission that is broken in the current build, for example. At the end, you fight an Undine dreadnought ship. The glitch is that it keeps spitting out smaller ships who quickly overwhelm and destroy the player’s ship. Over and over. The workaround for this is to team with other players. Ha! Teaming with other players? In an MMO? Whodathunkit? But, as with most group content (and this is supposed to be a solo mission) finding other players isn’t always easy. Luckily, I had already joined a pretty large and active fleet on Tribble so four guys joined me — one of whom had played for over 24 hours straight, no sleep, no breaks, to reach Vice Admiral! — so we scaled ourselves to the highest team member (VA) and took out the dreadnought in record time. There are apparently other broken missions as well. I keep reading the complaints on the test chat but haven’t reached them yet. But hey, this is why we’re Beta Testing, right?

The other big deal is the new Dilithium currency. I dislike the name, simply for role-play purposes I don’t think trading dilithium makes sense from a canon or lore perspective (but I’m no big Trek fanatic, so maybe it does?) but I was really excited to have the currencies whittled down. In the live game, there are so many that become useless as you level up but you still have all these leftover marks and badges. The only use for them is to go ahead and barter for gear then sell the gear for Energy Credits. Or, I suppose barter them to twink an alt? Now everything will use Dilithium, so no feeling of “wasted” badges and marks leftover. In the current system, you’ll get one large payment of Dilithium when you get promoted to the next rank, starting with Commander. The “glitch” (quotation marks because it isn’t truly a glitch) in the system as I write this is upgrading your starship. In the live game, when you earn a promotion you also receive a token for a free ship of the appropriate tier you were just promoted to. Those tokens are gone now; everything will be bought with dilithium. Cryptic says the intent is for your promotion payment to roughly equal 80% of the cost of the starship, and it’s your responsibility to come up with the other 20%. However, in the current beta build, the other means of acquiring dilithium are not in the game yet. So, in order to afford your Tier 3 (Commander rank) ship, you have to fly your Tier 2 (Lt. Commander) ship all the way to Captain, where you would normally pick up your Tier 4 ship. Essentially, we’re always one tier behind. I suppose on the plus side, this certainly makes space combat more difficult! The flip side for the F2P Conspiracy Theorists is that ships will also be available in the C-Store, so it will be a choice of grinding for the extra 20% dilithium or just buying your ship with Cryptic Points. Also, keep in mind, gear that was formerly bartered for badges will now also use dilithium. And the stuff is expensive! The Test Store gets patched in tomorrow so I’ll see if Cryptic also patches in some other ways of earning dilithium in-game before I put on my “pay to win” foil hat.

Aside from the changes to the existing game, we’re also testing the new feature we’ve been looking forward to for months: Duty Officers! (“DOff”)

Beginning at Lt. Commander, grade 2 (level 12) you receive a mission to receive your first batch of 20 duty officers. From there, bring up the new Duty Officer UI and assign them to positions on your ship or send them on assignments. There are a ton of different types of duty officers, some including civilians (even prisoners in your ship’s brig) with various areas of expertise in addition to the Starfleet (and coming soon, Klingon Defense Force!) officers.

For Starship Duty, you can assign up to five duty officers to provide essentially passive buffs or special “proc” to your normal build. I’m still working with my first batch of duty officers, so I’ve only assigned two to ship duty. One provides a chance of partially recharging my ship’s shields if I use the Brace for Impact ability, while the other reduces the refresh time on Transwarps. I’ve seen several other “proc”-style duty officer abilities but they did not apply to my tactical officer abilities (duty officers will not “proc” for bridge officers, by the way).

Duty Officer Assignments are as varied as the officers themselves. Each has a chance for success, critical success, failure or disaster. Rewards vary as well, but the big deal is the new progression, Commendation XP (“CXP”). Some assignments can reward various types of CXP per the assignment type, such as Military, Science, Trade, and so forth. There are even diplomatic assignments that will reward your captain with Diplomacy XP (“DXP”) to help with his diplomacy progression. Others may reward items such as R&D data samples, a piece of gear, or the new prototype schematics which can in turn be used for shipboard assignments.

As your duty officers successfully complete assignments that award CXP or DXP, your commendation tier in that area will increase, opening up new (and riskier) assignments, as well as “leveling up” your duty officers if I am understanding it correctly. Failure will put that duty officer in sickbay for a certain period of time, so he is unable to be used for other assignments, and I think I read that disaster could possibly result in your duty officer being killed. Permanently. So this could certainly be a risk versus reward system when we get into the Duty Officer “end game.”

Duty Officer assignments also occur in real time. Some of the simpler ones may only take 10 to 30 minutes. I’ve done several of those already. Others take 1 to 8 hours that I’ve seen so far. Still others take 1 to 3 days. Days! Yes, this means duty officer assignments continue when you are offline. For example, after receiving my initial complement of DOffs, I beamed down to Starfleet Academy where a 3-day assignment to recruit another cadre of DOffs was available. I still have 2 days remaining on that. I was also enroute to a mission yesterday when the test channel lit up that the Sirius sector block had a recruitment for an Andorian duty officer, so I warped to Sirius to get that, which also turned out to be a 3-day assignment.

So in essence, the Duty Officer mechanic is more of a long-term system to work towards some minor build customization (I don’t play EQ2 so can’t say how analogous this is to “alternate advancement”), coupled with some limited offline progression of sorts.

All in all, STO F2P looks to be interesting once they get the bugs ironed out and full details on how Dilithium is going to work both in general and alongside the C-Store.

So I’m coming in late to the MOBA party. Technically, I was in the beta for Stunlock and Funcom’s Bloodline Champions but I didn’t know what the hell a MOBA was, what the point of the game or genre was, or what the hell was happening. Seemed pretty stupid to me so I stopped playing the beta shortly after the tutorial. I just installed the game again yesterday and had the exact same impression and re-uninstalled it.

Riot’s League of Legends is the most popular MOBA from what I can tell. It’s just about the only one I see people talking about, anyway. I tried it a few times and don’t really understand it, I’ll admit. In fact, I’ve made four attempts at the tutorial and each time end up getting bored and frustrated and exited the game.

Still, being the stubborn contrarian that I am, I download another MOBA, Petroglyph’s Rise of Immortals, which released last week. For all intents and purposes, RoI could be seen as pretty much a direct copy or clone of LoL, yet there’s something more appealing about RoI for me. Couldn’t even begin to tell you what, though, other than the graphics aren’t cartoony ripoffs of Warcraft 3…

Oakstout has been addicted to LoL for the past month or so, and he’s offered to get me in game for a bit of an LoL 101 course but our schedules have conflicted. Until last night. I popped in and he showed me the basics concepts of what was going on and some of the terms involved. He started up an AI bot match and away we went!

So I got to learn the very basic of the basics of LoL gameplay and some of the terms. I’d never heard “jungling” before so that was a new one. After the intro match against a couple AI, we joined a few friends of his in a 5v5 PvE match, so still fighting the AI to help ease me into more advanced team play and avoiding the troll kiddies who get off on calling everyone names.

I played a champion named Nocturne, who I chose because he looked cool on the selection screen. Couldn’t tell you anything about him, though, other than I think he was primarily melee. I didn’t dislike playing him, at least, so there’s that.

Here’s what gets me about MOBAs though: if I’m supposed to be this badass champion, why are the champions such pussies? “Don’t use your abilities to kill creeps, just auto-attack.” Huh? But this guy has a cool ability, watch! Kablooey! Then they’re ultimately supposed to be PvP games, right? But it feels like the second you see another player, you turn tail, run and hide until he goes away so I can jump out of the brush and gank his creeps. That’s some epic badassery right there!

As I said, I don’t get it. There’s obviously something very simple staring me in the face and I’m just not seeing it.

It’s been much the same story over in RoI. I did manage to make it through the tutorial there, on the first attempt even! But in the 1v1 AI practice map, I have yet to ever come close to winning or even feeling like I made any progress at all. On the plus side, I took all of Oak and Co.’s tips last night and applied them to RoI while Oak and Genda were playing … a beta that I’d better not say they’re playing but I’ll just say I could hear Oak’s mouse rapidly click click click click click click click click click click click clicking away…

The RoI practice map has the two bases on opposite sides of the map and a single lane. Very straightforward. Problem is every map I get to the enemy turret and then it seems like a stalemate for roughly 25 minutes or so then we slowly get pushed back until eventually we’re stuck in our own base, the AI has destroyed our turret and we’re getting zerged, like so:

Finally, however, after trying to absorb all the guys’ tips last night in LoL, I was able to push past that turret and defeat the AI!

I still don’t fully understand MOBAs and honestly, the overhead gameplay doesn’t do much for me. I prefer RoI’s art style and graphical effects over LoL, so of the two I’m more inclined to login to RoI. I also feel RoI’s in-game upgrade shop is better streamlined than LoL’s. Really, for me, the only thing LoL has an advantage on is being able to hold the right mouse button down and your champion will continue moving and following the cursor where in RoI you have to click for every move.

Not sure I’ll ever really fully “get into” MOBAs at least the current generation. Now, when the Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes MOBA comes out, I may change my tune but a huge part of that is it’s from a third-person perspective rather than overhead. Beta commentary also says the matches are more action-packed and shorter in duration, which is also music to my ears. But we’ll see once I get to try it myself.

Cryptic put up a new Public Test server, named RedShirt, last night which, for the time being, will take the place of the Tribble test server. Tribble will be utilized as a Beta Tech server for the next few months as Cryptic prepares the Duty Officer system and even bigger, the Free-to-Play (F2P) conversion. They didn’t say otherwise, but I will go out on a limb and assume that once F2P goes live, RedShirt will go back to being an internal test server and Tribble back to our public test server.

Community Rep “StormShade” made the announcement yesterday afternoon in the forums:

Hey gang!

Those of you have had access to Tribble will now have access to a new server, “Public Test (Redshirt)”. This server will be taking the place of Tribble as our test server for all builds that are heading to our live environment, Holodeck, while we prepare Tribble for an upcoming beta, and make use of that server during the beta.

If you currently have access to Tribble, you shouldn’t need to do anything other than transfer a character to STO Public Test, and resume testing as normal. If you don’t have access to Tribble yet, you can gain access to both Tribble, and STO Public Test, by following the steps outlined in this handy FAQ.

Thanks, and happy testing!

The Star Trek Online Team

Those of us already playing, however, caught the update prior to the announcement as RedShirt was stealthily added to the launcher.

Currently, RedShirt is a duplicate copy of Tribble. Monday, however, Tribble gets wiped — all characters, etc. will be gone! — as the new beta build gets implemented. Presumptions, both my own and other players who read forums more, gleaned from the vague forum notes about Monday’s update are that it will be the Duty Officer system, which sounds like requires new methods of inter-system mechanics, which is why Tribble is being wiped.

Cryptic recently pumped out their latest content — Borg Red Alerts — onto Star Trek Online‘s live server, Holodeck last week.

The official page I linked lists enough information to give the gist of how they can work, but I’ll go into a bit more detail here.

These Red Alerts are very similar to the Deep Space Encounters already in Star Trek Online but unlike a DSE, the Borg incursions are not stationary. Once per hour, the Borg send invasion forces into random sector blocks, and random instances of that sector block. For example, if there are enough players in the Regulus sector block to create three instances, the Borg might invade instance #2 but not #1 or #3. So in a sense, I could probably compare the Borg incursions to the random rift events in Rift, I think.

If you are in a sector block (and correct instance) that is being invaded, in the “low priority interaction” box on your UI (where the astrometrics toggle and other switches are found) a big flashing ALERT! Distress Call! button appears. If you click the button, your senior tactical officer will inform you of the situation and ask if you want to assist. An affirmative response will load you into the encounter instance, which has a maximum of five players.

First, and perhaps most importantly, any post-tutorial rank captain of either faction is eligible to participate in the Red Alerts! The battles themselves take place in instanced space, and the players and Borg NPCs are scaled — to an extent — to that encounter, so it makes for fantastic content for low-level players to rub elbows with the admiralty and still contribute. Not only do these battles scale to accommodate the full range of players, they are also cross-faction, as the Borg are a threat to both the Federation and the Klingon Defense Force so these Borg incursions are one of the few times Starfleet and KDF players can team up to fight a common enemy. Having said that, while I’ve been having a blast taking my Commander grade 4 tactical officer into these red alerts, it can get a little frustrating when you have captains joining who are still Ensigns flying their Miranda light frigates. Scaling or not, a Miranda simply doesn’t have enough weapons and console slots, and the other players have to make up for it or fail the encounter.

There are no incursions into the Eta Eridani, Gamma Orionis, or Pelia sector blocks. Every other sector block is fair game. Incursions are typically level 45. Players will be scaled up or down accordingly. However, there are two exceptions: encounters in the Zeta Andromeda sector block are level 51, but players less than level 45 will only be scaled up to 45. (I’ve heard joining a team with a Vice Admiral will scale you all the way to 51, though but have not tested to confirm this.) Players higher than 45 will maintain their level (unless they join a team and scale down to a lower level teammate). Encounters in the Orellius sector block are level 53 and again, lower level players will only be scaled up to level 45. So these two sector blocks will provide the highest level of challenge out of all the red alerts.

Once in the encounter, you’re in a wise space with a lot of Borg ships that are thankfully spaced apart enough to separate the battles. The first challenge is to defeat four Borg squadrons within 15 minutes. Succeeding at that will trigger the next phase: a huge Borg unimatrix command ship warps in, accompanied by various probes. The command ship itself is inspired by V’ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and apparently Gene Roddenberry hinted that the Borg created V’ger. Regardless, it’s becoming common to hear the command ship referred to in-game as “B’ger.” At the start of the battle with the Borg capital ship, it is imperative to eliminate its regeneration probes first, otherwise you can blast away ’til the cows come home, but those things will keep the command ship healed. The other probe types can safely be ignored. The command ship can also fire huge plasma energy blasts which need to be taken out before they hit another player (or a player runs into them) as one hit can destroy a player’s ship.

There are eleven sector blocks which get incursions, and each has its own accolade and daily mission, so chasing incursions nets you eleven dailies. The reward is either a level appropriate (random) item, or a level-appropriate badge. I choose the badge every time because I know those can be used to get new gear, whereas there’s a high chance I won’t be able (or won’t want) to use the random item awarded. In addition to the eleven sector accolades, there is a meta-accolade for defeating all the command ships, ten in all. The command ship in any given red alert is randomly chosen so you never know which one will show up. There’s also an accolade for destroying 2,000 (yes, you read that correctly, two thousand) Borg vessels plus the accolades that were already in the game for destroying Borg ships, taking plasma damage, and so on, so these Red Alerts certainly give the Accolade Hunters out there some goals to strive for.

The space incursions are Phase 1 of the Borg system update. Phase 2 will be ground incursions, which will be interesting since the Borg are tougher on the ground now and their shields adapt like we saw on the tv series. Phase 3 will be revamped versions of the Borg Special Task Force (STF) missions, which are end-game missions for only players, no bridge officer companions. Then Phase 4 which is the Into the Hive STF where players finally fight the Borg Queen. Phase 4 is hopefully scheduled by the end of the year, or at least prior to Season 5 launching, so take your best guess then work backwards from there to guesstimate when the other phases might arrive, at least until Cryptic makes the official announcements.

Final thoughts:

One one hand it’s almost difficult to say these Borg incursions are “new content” per se, since the basic tech for them has been in the game all along. They could be looked at as “merely” randomly placed cross-faction Deep Space Encounters (DSEs). Like anything else in an MMO, including STO, concentrating too much on a single activity gets old. Grinding exploration missions, or patrol missions, or chasing Borg Red Alerts all day can get old real fast. But for someone like myself who likes to switch up between various activities, a sudden Red Alert in my sector block is a welcome change of events. The randomness and overall presentation of the Red Alerts can make them feel like “new content,” though and I suppose perception matters a great deal in that context.

It’s a shame there is no global notification system for these incursions. One would think that if these were that big a deal and the Borg were that big a threat, that Starfleet and the Klingon High Command would be sending out fleet-wide alerts to all captains. Instead, we only see the alert if we are in the sector block (and correct instance of that sector block) being invaded. To alleviate that, two players created and run a custom global chat named REDALERT that is strictly for reporting incursions, so if you’re into chasing after them, for now that is the best way to find out where the Borg are invading at any given moment.

My only real negative point to Red Alerts is that, unlike DSEs, players are not auto-teamed. When it’s only a 5-player battle it would certainly be helpful to not only have everyone scaled to the same point (especially on the two higher-level incursions) but speaking as a science captain who flies a science vessel for buffs and heals and working on an assault cruiser for higher spot healing on shields, I have one helluva time targeting ships I’m not teamed with, or even having a clue what their ship status is unless that ship happens to have my target’s aggro. I, for one, enjoy being auto-teamed in DSEs and I think it would certainly be helpful in these Borg incursions.

Finally, these Borg Red Alerts have one goal above all else: to be FUN.

Mission Accomplished!

I am still on yet another of my MMO Malaise breaks, which tend to be rather lengthy, but I did login to Star Trek Online last night and got a couple very nice surprises!

First, as soon as Arwellyn loaded in, the following Accolade popped up:

That’s the 400 Day Accolade! A few other things scrolled by onscreen very quickly so I checked the Accolade tab in the Journal to see what exactly it is.

Free respec token? Nice! I don’t think I’ve used any yet (probably need to once I come back and attempt some of the Fleet Actions and Special Task Forces) so one more added to my stack is appreciated.

Captain’s Table? No clue what that is. Should I care?

Captain’s Yacht! Now we’re talkin’ baby! Arwellyn was already in Earth Spacedock so she strolled over to the shipyard and turned in her token to get the sleek new personal yacht shuttle.

Sweet, eh? As Arwellyn was flying around ESD and I was trying to line up camera angles for screen shots, I swung around and saw she had the Arkenstone flying towards Earth. I was about to suggest she alter course then remembered Cryptic was supposed to be working on Starfleet Academy. I haven’t been paying attention to MMO news, even for the ones I play, so I wasn’t sure if it was in-game yet or not. Sure enough, the control to beam down to the Academy appeared on the UI! Off to the transporter room we went, and…

Starfleet Academy is truly a gorgeous zone! Check the scenery! Shuttles zip by overhead and of course the ubiquitous San Francisco bridge in the backdrop. No, you can’t jump the fences and explore. That would be cool someday, though.

Arwellyn ran around the entire zone checking out the sights. There are several memorial plaques placed all over the Academy zone that give historical information about the Academy. Reading them all rewards another Accolade!

Finally, after exploring the outside zone, time to enter the Academy building itself. The interior reminds me of an airport almost. There are NPCs waiting in turnstiles as if to buy tickets, though the vendor NPC is the tailor variety to change up one’s costume. At the far end is a bar, the 602 Club with two bartender NPC vendors.

Arwellyn did some exploring and Starfleet Academy even has three Holodecks! Want one!

Mechanic-wise, the Holodeck simply lets players select previous missions to replay, the same as the terminal in the captain’s ready room on a starship does. But it’s a friggin’ Holodeck! What might be neat,though at the risk of being considered a mandatory content gate, would be to say, have players craft a Holodeck (whether that makes sense or not is immaterial, bear with me) in order to play specific Holodeck content such as the TNG episodes where Picard played 1940′s-era detective Dixon Hill, and other episodes on the series that took place in Holodeck environments. Sort of alternate adventures that don’t have anything to do with the overarching storylines occurring in STO’s space sectors. Of course, that could also allow for more environments, etc. available for Foundry authors to create their own content as well.

The 602 Club is apparently going to be another of STO’s role-player’s hangouts, just like Quark’s bar on Deep Space 9. Indeed, for the time being, the entirety of the Starfleet Academy is what Cryptic calls a “social gameplay” environment. I don’t think (could be mistaken; again, I haven’t kept up on MMO news) the new Federation tutorial that starts in the Academy is in-game yet, so there’s no actual content to play here yet. Just run around, enjoy the view, read the plaques for the accolade and perhaps role-play at the 602 Club. In the photo above, you can clearly make out two vendor NPCs who sell drinks. There are a couple other NPCs there too, the others were players role-playing. Even the bartender on the left facing the wall was a player! He was playing the chatty bartender role and even went through the motions of going to the wall there to mix the drinks while talking it up then walking back to the customer with their drink and a smile. Funny stuff.

In preparation for Skyrim, I’ve been dedicating myself to finishing Oblivion over the past month. I’ve had the game (GOTY version) for over a year but it just didn’t resonate with me at first. Neither did Fallout 3, for that matter.

But I buckled down, sucked it up, and pulled it off! I completed the Oblivion main story last week then immediately started the Shivering Isles expansion and Thursday night, I finished that as well, earning 100% completion for the game!

I’ve done my share of complaining about the game here, on Google+ and mumbling to myself the entire time playing the game, but I’ll admit the past few weeks where I was getting close to end of the main story then doing the expansion that the game had grown on me in a few ways. At the very least, I think I can see why, or at least some aspects of why, so many players hold it in such high esteem. So I’ll take this opportunity to share the two aspects of the game that stood out for me — the leveling system, and the world itself — and their pros and cons.

Leveling.

I’ve lost count how many times and for how many years I’ve griped about vertical leveling, primarily in multi-player RPGs. So, Oblivion “leveling the world” with you is right up my alley. Oh, I’ve read many complaints that Bethesda screwed up the algorithm in Oblivion and a gimped character would get to the point they could not continue. Honestly, I was expecting to be that person, but I never really had the slightest problem; quite the opposite, in fact.

Proponents of vertical leveling most often put forth the claim they enjoy going back to lower level zones and being more powerful or going back and thumping down a boss who defeated or frustrated them earlier in the game. Trust me, I’m all for that! But I want to defeat that boss not because I simply out-leveled him to the point where he’s grey and doesn’t even know I’m there like an MMO would do, but because I went out and increased my character’s knowledge and abilities beyond where they were. That boss still puts up a fight, he still fights the same way he did earlier, but now I have more to work with to defeat him which makes the victory so much more satisfying than waltzing up to a now-grey mob and one-shotting it with my auto-attack.

Where Oblivion falls flat is feedback. I finished the Oblivion story at level 19 and Shivering Isles at 21 — which could be considered low-level? No idea, really. At no point during leveling did I ever get any visual or otherwise feedback that my skills or abilities were increasing other than the drum beat and text notification saying they had. For me, a good part of leveling and acquiring new skills and increasing known skills is that I get to see the results of my character gradually becoming a badass. I like flashy moves, and I’m not going to apologize for it. One huge problem is that Oblivion is only really playable in first-person view, which is already cheesy as hell for a fantasy game, but makes it pretty much impossible to show off new melee moves. You’re stuck with stiff Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots melee the whole time.

So that leaves magic. Mages get some super-cool flashy spells, right? Again, I finished at level 21 so I had neither enough magicka (174 at level 21) nor high enough level in any particular school of magic to cast any of the spells that sounded cool. I hot-keyed a few spells that I used most, like Protection and Restore Health, but once I was able to cast Flash Bolt fairly early on, that was the most damaging spell I was ever able to use, and that’s not really saying much. The only skill I can look back on and perhaps see an improvement during game play is Sneak. I ended up doing pretty much every dungeon, etc. in Sneak mode so by the end of the game I could sneak by NPCs easily even relatively close to them what I would consider moderate or better lighting. If I was fast enough, I could jump out from behind a wall or pillar right in front of their face and still get the 6x damage surprise attack. So there was that, and it did come in handy a couple times, but in my book being able to stealth closer ranks considerably lower on the badass scale than, say, dodging an attack, counter-attacking by tossing them in the air then leaping into the air, blades twirling, and pounding them into the dungeon floor with my sword piercing their chest in a flashy (perhaps in slow-motion even, on occasion) critical finishing move. Just sayin’…

Finally I’ll talk about the leveling mechanic itself. It was a tremendous drag. I’m out adventuring, slinging spells, seeing notifications that my skill increased in Alteration or Destruction magic, or my Security (lockpicking) increased but… none of that mattered. Only the ones listed as Major Skills contributed to leveling. My Blade skill can determine my level? Block and Light Armor? The only way to increase those is to, respectively, block attacks (duh) or stand there and get smacked around. Hey, I stood still and let this monster beat the hell out of me and guess what? DING! Makes no sense at all. Growing my skills in magic does not help me level, but repairing my equipment does? Huh? The end result is that I ended up spending a lot of time grinding skills, in the worst sense of the phrase. I wanted a better healing spell but my Restoration magic wasn’t high enough so I stood around casting the only one I did know until my magicka was drained (three casts), let it recharge, then cast again until Restoration reached the minimum level for the next heal spell. I had to do that for any number of skills I wanted to increase for various reasons not to mention grinding the Major Skills just to level up. A couple weeks ago I was doing exactly that but also grinding Athletics so I ran laps in Bruma jumping and casting a heal spell. If I was going for “immersion” can you imagine how silly a so-called hero would look running in circles jumping while casting spells on himself?

Continuing with that theme, I remember last year I wanted to increase my Sneak fairly early on. Sneak only increases if there are other people around who could potentially see you and you have to be in motion, not standing still hiding. So I did the equivalent of “macroing” the skill: I put my character into Sneak facing a corner in Imperial City and wrapped a rubber band around the analog stick so he’d constantly walk into the corner. I left for an hour or so to get lunch and run some errands and when I came home, my Sneak skill was pretty much where I wanted it. Now that is some compelling and immersive gameplay right there! /snark

The World

I’ll start with “the world” in the larger scheme of things, and what most of us probably think about when someone says that anyway. I am reminded of the recent 40-minute dev video for Big Huge Games 38 Studios (sorry, I can never resist doing that) upcoming RPG, Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning where the developers said “open world” means different things to different people. In Oblivion, “open world” means there are no “zones” to load in and out of and seems to have the overall philosophy that “if you can see it, you can (most likely) go there.” In and of itself, it’s great to just “be” in an RPG world, see something off in the distance and say “hey, I wonder what’s there?” and lo and behold, you can go find out! My primary problem with the game is a near-total lack of diversity. Nearly all of Cyrodiil looks identical, covered in the same grass with the same trees, same rocks, same forts and ruins (re-use of limited assets is very noticeable here), and so forth. The two notable exceptions are Bruma, to the north near Skyrim, which is more bleak with some spotty, dirty snow on the ground, and there’s no mistaking Imperial City for any other town in the game. Otherwise, if I was blindfolded and someone loaded up a random area or town in Oblivion, I’d be extremely hard-pressed to open my eyes and know where I was. To accompany the visual lack of diversity, the audio is also lacking. Now, I love me some Jeremy Soule and what little music I did hear in Oblivion was good (though I’d consider it on the weaker end of his compositions) but there was so very little music. It seemed there was only one track that played in the world (there may have been two, but if so they sounded too similar), one for towns, one for dungeons, one for in-combat state. If there were more, the tracks certainly weren’t varied enough for me to notice and remember them. I love a lot of video game music, especially in RPGs, but if all I hear for hours and hours are the same few tracks, well, that’s why people eventually turn the music off and listen to their own choice of music instead.

I still haven’t quite decided if I would say that exploration is “rewarded” in Oblivion. There are a lot of POIs to discover on the map. While roaming the wilderness any POI within a certain distance will have an icon on your compass HUD so it’s easy to look at the map and notice you haven’t been there yet, and set off to discover that location. But the only reward is the text notification that “You discovered [insert POI here]” which is certainly a “micro-woot!” stimulus but that’s it, really. I think there are over a hundred dungeons in the game, but very few of them have a “point” within the game (ie. for the story, for side quests, or for my character) other than to loot stuff for gold or grind your skills to level. Indeed, I found the main use for discovering POIs was simply to have fast-travel points when I’d get a story quest so I wouldn’t have as far to run. Having said that, a fair number of those dungeons had quite intricate layouts so it was rewarding in a way to figure out how to progress through them; ie. how do I open this gate, what triggers this trap and can I disarm it, how do I get to a certain area, and so on.

What I did like is that dungeons don’t reset, per se. The monsters don’t just respawn. If I clear a dungeon (or not, even) then over time as the dungeon is not seeing use from us pesky adventurers (excuse me, pesky adventurer since there’s no co-op) monsters will gradually start moving back in.

Speaking of dungeons, they are way too dark. I had to maximize the brightness setting and even then had to use some form of light in the dungeons to see where I was going most of the time. My character was a khajiit so he had the racial Eye of Night ability but believe me, it got old real fast running through blue dungeon after blue dungeon. Of course, had I not been playing a stealthy character, I could have just used a torch or Starlight spell so that I could appreciate the natural look and feel to the dungeons at the cost of every monster charging me immediately. The dungeon crawler in me loves these things and I want to experience them as the designers built them, not coated in hues of blue. There should be some sort of middle ground where it can be dark but not so dark that I have to crank the brightness, close the curtains and turn off all the lights to play and then still end up having to use some sort of light or night-vision ability. There’s “immersion” and there’s “inconvenient pain in the ass.”

Finally, most non-guard and non-monster NPCs have their own little lives. No static MMO pez dispenser statue NPCs here, no sir! Many have their daily schedules such as from 8am to noon, she visits the chapel, then from noon to 2pm she’s at the local Inn for lunch, but not on this day of the week, and so on. Oblivion is also a “no punctuation marks over quest NPCs” game so that could be a nightmare without the POI pointer on your compass, but purely for the sake of “immersion” or attempting to create a “living” virtual world, I simply love this feature!

My last real beef with the game is that you end up becoming the “guild master” for every guild in the game. The Dark Brotherhood (assassins), Fighter’s Guild, Mages’ Guild, Thieves’ Guild plus the Imperial City Arena, too. That makes absolutely zero sense to me, but neither does being a “master adventurer” and a “master craftsman” in MMOs. However, since sadly my experience in Oblivion was weighed by more negative experiences than positives, I was in a purely Achievement Hunter mindset just to get it over with, complete 100% of the achievements and move on with life, so in that single context I was glad I was able to do them all in a single play-through. Unfortunate, but there it is.

Originally, I had planned to jump into Fallout 3 (which I last played in May, 2009) and start that over (ugh) to finish it before Skyrim but after Oblivion for a month or so, I think I just need a break from Bethesda instead so I’ll be fresh for Skyrim in November.

I was driving to work last week listening to Hair Nation (shush, just shush!) and the DJ mentioned that a hoped-for Dokken reunion fell through, with vocalist Don Dokken being the holdout. The other three original band members formed their own group called Tooth and Nail (also the title of Dokken’s 1984 album) and their first album is titled Dump the Chump. While I’m curious to see what Lynch, Pilson and Brown put together, it’s a shame to see one of my favorite 80’s bands still behaving like babies 25 years later. They’re all in their 50’s, Don being the oldest at 58. [Editing note: here we see a double-standard on my part, since one of my signature lines since high school, and one that I still live by today, is “Age is a state of mind.”] “Dump the Chump?” Really? Even back in the 80’s there were plenty of stories about their in-fighting. But you know what? Listen to the music and the performances, and I think that conflict is part of what made the songs so good. Everything had more “bite” to it, and I’ve always felt some of the internal conflict with the band also led to some of their best creativity and performances – when it was kept at a controlled level. Get out of control, as rock stars are prone to do, and you get antics like Guns ‘n Roses destroying hotels and urinating in the aisle on airplanes.

The first band that made me consider the value of conflict was Van Halen. Listening to the songs from the original lineup with David Lee Roth and you can again hear the music had more “bite” than it did after Diamond Dave left the group. Eddie’s guitar sound was certainly more raw and his soloing (and his overplaying and “noodling” as he called it) was more off-the-cuff, almost as if he was channeling his frustrations into a creative outlet. Again, plenty of stories over the DLR years of in-fighting. Once Sammy Hagar entered the picture, I got the impression Eddie was more confident as leader of the band and more into composing and arranging his music. The early years with Sammy was one big happy party with everyone getting along, and while they certainly did put out some great songs in the “Van Hagar” years, there was also something missing. The “bite” was gone.

Shifting forward in time, one example of a lack of conflict doing more harm than good was my appearance in Episode #30 of the Shut Up, We’re Talking! podcast. While I never thought the show was “bad” by any means, it was at the time the lowest-rated episode (and highest number of comments, if I recall) simply because there was no conflict at all between the guests. None. Nada. Zero. Zip. Zilch. I’m sure it was just purely coincidence, but every topic on the agenda Darren, Karen, John and myself all agreed upon. There wasn’t even the hint of a dissenting opinion, not even for the sake of playing Devil’s Advocate. The listener’s didn’t like it. And I have no choice to agree. I personally will not listen to a podcast with only one host, because there is no discussion and therefore no liveliness and no source for conflict to generate creativity. Even with podcasts with multiple hosts, I tend to not enjoy shows where all the hosts share the same background in whatever the topic is about (usually gaming). I’ve said before that in MMOs I personally prefer to be in guilds with a varied roster of personalities, not just a bunch of “gamer dudes” always having the same “gamer dude” discussions. Give me some non-gamers, some housewives, some CEO’s, some MMA fighters, anything but people who mimic my own background or interests. Similarly, I rank podcasts higher when hosts include both males and females. That discourse alone is plenty of entertainment value because you’re guaranteed to have different backgrounds influencing their opinions and preferences.

Paul (Oakstout) has brought up a few times recently that he thinks a gaming-oriented podcast hosted by himself, Aaron and me would be a good idea. I always burst into laughter, saying he just wants my blog bombed with hate mail when people hear me vocalizing just how opinionated I am. But he says he thinks it’s interesting because while the three of us often enjoy the same (or at least similar) games, nearly 100% of the time we enjoy them for completely different reasons and don’t always see eye-to-eye on the others’ preferences. For my two cents, while I have had some creative (and silly) ideas for podcasts before, there is no way I’m going to be co-hosting with my little punk-ass voice up against Mr. Guitarist/Songwriter Aaron and his deep babe-magnet voice. Yes, I am precisely that shallow! Not to mention, as stated above in my own personal listening preferences, it would be three dudes being dudes. An aural sausage-fest. That is not something I’d want to listen to, much less take the time to record, edit, and produce. Harry Potter wouldn’t have been as special if it were “The Adventures of Ron and Harry,” now would it? The addition of Hermione and her perspective was what solidified them as friends and an interesting band of adventurers. A few dudes waggling their wands is just that – it takes a woman to turn it into magic…

Sorry for the lack of updates the past couple weeks. I was very busy with work since I had vacation coming up and haven’t been taking my laptop either, so no gaming on the overnights.

Vacation ended up being more impromptu than we like, but it worked out fine.

Plan A was an Alaska cruise. I had an interline discount for a seven night cruise with an outside cabin for $300! Unfortunately, it required more time than I had for vacation when you count traveling to Anchorage, starting the cruise in Seward then getting home from Vancouver. We needed two more days off than I had. Maybe next time.

Plan B was flying to San Juan for a Caribbean cruise that hit all (or most) of the Virgin Islands. Unfortunately, that cruise ran the week prior to my vacation, then is running this week, but not during the week I had off.

Plan C was skipping the cruise and just going to a resort in the Caribbean. Destinations to choose from were Aruba, Grand Cayman or one of the Virgin Islands (St. Martin or St. Thomas). I ended up picking Grand Cayman since we’d spent a few hours there on a cruise excursion a few years ago.

If anyone’s interested, I can write about the trip and the island later. Getting ready to start a trip in a bit so no time to go into it now. Just wanted to check in and let my couple readers know I’m still out here.

The July 2011 edition of Ask Cryptic for Star Trek Online is up and once again, Executive Producer Dan Stahl does an excellent job of fielding player questions (50 this month) regarding the game. Considering how busy the team is on finishing up Season 4 for its launch in a couple days, I’m impressed Dan took the time out beforehand to do this.

Bits of revealed information that appeal to me include:

• The next Feature Episode will take place around Deep Space 9, and the team hopes to get the Federation DS9 Fleet Action fixed up and back on the queue as well. The FE will also open up some missions in the Gamma Quadrant!
• Season 4 adds a new starbase for both Federation and KDF!
• The team is definitely looking at adding more sector blocks but Stahl has his R&D team looking at whether or not they can remove all the sector block instances in favor of a single, massive open space. If the tech works, he hopes they can include that change for Season 5! How freakin’ cool would that be?
• Season 4 did a complete overhaul to Kits and ranged combat on the ground, but didn’t touch melee. Prior to Season 5, the team hopes to overhaul melee to finish out ground combat.
• End Game. Not that there is currently much of an end-game to STO but that is becoming a priority now that Season 4 is about ready. They’re working on rebalancing and overhauling the existing STF’s first, adding hourly Borg Incursions, four new Fleet Actions coming in Season 4, then hopefully continuing with more end-game content. Sweet! I hope to do some of these someday, though I’ll either have to PUG or join a fleet that’s more active than our little blogger fleet, I fear.
• The new Qo’nos should go live with Season 4, and Starfleet Academy is planned for the end of this month as well. Each will be used for new tutorials for Federation or Klingon characters, and each new area will ship with Foundry hooks so that UGC authors can build missions in those new settings. Sounds like they’re also working on a Kobiyashi Maru scenario for the Academy tutorial also.

Plenty more good questions and answers from Dan Stahl. Go read the whole thing! As always, he is a shining beacon of a good role model for communicating with players.

I had planned on asking a question too since Vivox just launched in Champions Online and should go live with Season 4 in a couple days so I wondered whether Cryptic would allow players to create custom Vivox channels that could be used out-of-game. They allow players to participate on custom chat channels with any XMPP chat client such as Pidgin, and Vivox had their standalone client, Voon. The operative word there is “had,” unfortunately. Before asking my question, I thought it would be wise to check if Voon was still around (I still have it installed on my system) but apparently Vivox stopped development. Oh well.

[Note: Apologies for being a week late posting this. Life and work, ya know? Issue 5 will also be a week late.]

Warning: Spoilers!

The web intro for Issue 4 reads:

Having defeated the Army of Horrors, the UNTIL troopers took shelter in a cave. But they’re not alone. Unable to resist the Horrors that followed, the soldiers are now being marched away in captivity. The heroes must pursue this group through a twisting cave that descends into the depths of the Qliphothic Realm where they find there is more than one reason to be afraid of the dark…

One strange thing with Issue 4 is the title. The web site calls it “Bad Dreams Are Made of This” (thumbs up for the Eurythmics’ nod) however when picking up the mission from UNTIL Liason Bradley, the mission itself is titled “Descent Into Darkness” while the “Bad Dreams” part merely gives a clue of the mission’s nature. Clear as mud? Anyway…

We left off last week after rescuing three groups of UNTIL survivors in the Qliphothic Realm. The third cave had some intense fighting at the end, though sacrificing the osprey helped quite a bit, as did having Ripper and his VIPER team — a tenuous alliance at best, however. Only a single survivor, a trooper named Schmidt emerged from the cave, however, delivering the news that horrors had entered the cave from tunnels within and taken the other survivors to one of the nearby towers. Drayvin is tasked with pursuing them into the cave and attempting to rescue the survivors.

Shortly into the cave, Drayvin defeats a few patrolling horrors then the cavern opens into a larger chamber. A cut-scene shows the UNTIL survivors being marched into a side tunnel. A demonic lady exuding dark energies gives order to a hulking brute demon to seal the tunnel after they make their escape. The brute, a Nightmare Demolisher, pounds the tunnel entrance until it caves in. The cut-scene ends just as he notices Drayvin. The brute is rated at weak master villain so just enough of a challenge that Drayvin needed to activate his force shield for extra protection and block a few times. Otherwise the Lock and Load buff boosted his concussor beam and mini-gun damage enough with that first extended blast to drain the Demolisher’s health most of the way before Drayvin had to start blocking and evading.

After defeating the brute, Drayvin finds another yet another tunnel that has been sealed, but looks like he can get through. Schmidt runs down to warn Drayvin that they had sent scouts down that tunnel and they never returned, so they sealed the tunnel themselves. Mumbling something about pansies, Drayvin locked his mini-gun and concussor beams onto the boulder and blasted it into gravel.

Another open cavern hosts a slew of demon types, including the classic large, red, winged type called a Bale, master villain rated, who does a running charge toward Drayvin then blasts the area with fire. What’s the rule here? Oh yes…

Defeating the Bale and other demons, Drayvin runs down the corridor at the opposite end where he meets a demonic trio. A Maleficia, with a Brother and Initiate behind her, warns Drayvin he has entered the domain of Demoisella Nocturne, Mistress of Nightmares. Scoffing at her suggestion of turning around or being destroyed, Drayvin (who has been playing Duke Nukem Forever at HQ…) replied with a husky “Come get some!” before opening up on the trio with all his weapons.

The next set of corridors is a three-way fork, but the middle is blocked my stalactites and stalagmites. At each end of the other two are demons surrounding a dark energy vortex with one of the UNTIL survivors inside. Defeating all the demons who are conducting the vortex rituals allows Drayvin to get close but the only way to break the vortex and rescue each survivor is to enter the deadly nightmare Demoisella Nocturne has them trapped in.

The first survivor Drayvin found was Elspeth “Ellie” Macalister. Nocturne has her trapped in a dream memory from her childhood. Her mother, Edna, had fallen ill to a degenerative brain disease and killed Ellie’s father, Agnus, in a fit of dementia then tried to kill Ellie. The disease is hereditary so Ellie fears she will also fall to the same madness someday. The dream opens with little Ellie trying to wake her dead father whose body lies on the living room couch. The entire house has been warped by Nocturne’s nightmare ritual and everything is bathed in a deep red hue. What appear to be tentacles line the floor and walls, which pulse and quiver in a creepy manner. Tiny bubbles of dark energy float about like ash. This dream sequence is a mini-game. Edna patrols, looking for Elspeth to kill her. Nocturne’s dreams are lethal so if Edna finds Ellie, she will die both in the dream and in reality. Edna seems oblivious to Drayvin’s presence so we simply have to lead Ellie to her room safely. Ellie will hide behind curtains or furniture while Drayvin has to find another spot for her to hide in while Edna patrols the room. When it’s safe, we call Ellie’s name (in local chat) and she runs to us and hides. Once in the hallway, Edna reappears with a new patrol path to figure out. After a few hallways and sneaking Ellie past Edna, Ellie arrives upstairs in her bedroom safely. Now Edna notices Drayvin! Ellie is out of the dream but Drayvin must defeat Edna to escape himself.

At the other nightmare vortex, Jarek Kovar is trapped in a shameful memory that occurred early in his UNTIL career. His sergeant, Thompson, had told Kovar to remain alert and not touch anything but he clumsily bumped into a control panel. Lights flickered, portals opened and he heard shooting as creatures began shambling out of the portals and attacked his squad-mates. Afraid and confused, Kovar hid instead of fighting with his unit, and now fears they are dead. It’s a… Zombie Nightmare!

This dream sequence is all black-and-white with a very mild “static interference” graphical effect, as if the dream were being viewed from security camera footage. No mini-game here, just fight the zombies and reach Sgt. Thompson. Drayvin and Kovar run through the laboratory complex, blasting reanimated zombies to bits then finally finding an injured Sgt. Thompson holed up in one of the larger labs. After Thompson and Kovar have a brief conversation, a zombie horde converges into the lab! The three of us blasted away until finally it became apparent that the reanimation formula was unstable; as we blew the final one in the lab to giblets, all the other zombies who were enroute to the lab disintegrated. Nightmare safely completed, allowing Drayvin and Kovar to return to reality.

The stalactites and stalagmites blocking the center cavern retract into the ceiling and floor, opening a large chamber. Demoisella Nocturne is here and she’s rather unhappy with Drayvin for interrupting her nightmare rituals. More threats of doom and everlasting torment, yada yada. Drayvin had one final one-liner quote in him, moving up the ladder to Duke Nukem’s original inspiration: Bruce Campbell! Looking Nocturne square in the eye, he purses his lips in a mock kiss and taunts “Yo, she-bitch! Let’s go!”

Oh, but Nocturne has another trick up her sleeve! Before Drayvin can defeat her, she stuns him then summons an altar-like portal into the cavern. Peering into Drayvin’s fears, she taunts him that it’s too late for the other UNTIL survivors; they are out of reach and being held in the tower of her master, Luther Black. Nocturne dares Drayvin to follow her…

To be continued…

Final thoughts: Issue 4 felt shorter overall. For the most part, the combat was pretty easy solo and every time a “boss-ish” rated mob came along, Lock and Load had cooled down. That being said, Drayvin did suffer one or two defeats over the course of Issue 4 so it wasn’t a total faceroll. Ellie’s dream sequence mini-game was neat, and the closer to her room we got, the more creepy the environment became. The floor and walls pulsed faster, and everything became gradually darker with each room or hallway. It did take me several minutes to figure out what I was supposed to do and how to make Ellie run to the next hiding spot. Some of the hiding spots were obvious and could be seen from a distance, others seemed like they could only be seen from certain angles. The other dream sequence was very straight-forward and I don’t remember any special mob types among the zombie horde, so other than the fact they were coming to us it was a fairly standard encounter.

The good news — I hope — is that we’re finally going into one of those towers in Issue 5! They look so cool from the outside, I just hope I’m not disappointed next week when I get inside. Only two Issues to go until Aftershock concludes (each Comic Series is six Issues in length), so I’d imagine the final confrontation will be defeating Luther Black, who I’d guess will be introduced in Issue 5.

As always, here’s a Picasa gallery of Issue 4 with additional screen shots.