Fabulous Red Hair is not a Game Mechanic, Either

Raph Koster has a post up that seems to explain why I like DDO so much compared to other games. Provided you squint at it a little bit, and relabel some of the nodes. It's called "Narrative is not a Game Mechanic".

He develops a picture language that has yellow circles as user inputs, black boxes to represent the 'black box' of game mechanics, and blue squares to represent feedback. All of these are necessary to have a game:

Cut the input, and you have a screensaver.
Cut the problem inside the black box, and you have a slideshow.
Cut the feedback, and you have something ridiculously confusing that no one will tolerate.

You can diagram the structure of a game thusly, with the size of the boxes representing the complexity or weight of the components. Here's a sample.



Feedback can take the form of narrative action: point the camera at a window and press A and you get a fast cutscene of Batman gliding off the rooftop just ahead of the explosion! That's a small input, a small black box, and a big feedback.

Raph points out that this leads to a problem: The narrative cutscene gets old pretty fast. You've seen it before. Due to a well known process known as "hedonic adaptation" fun things lose some of their fun through repetition. (Or is that systematic desensitization?)

Ok, most of the MMO's I've played don't rely all that heavily on narrative feedback. Yeah, there's some cutscenes, and a nice death animation, but the big feedback comes in the loot. And I think that has the same problem, if a bit slower. What turned me off of EQ2 was exactly this: Going into an instance with a group had absolutely zero focus on the black box. The inputs were well determined and done as quickly as possible to get the loot. But the loot was random, so mostly you didn't get the loot that you wanted (How many times did I do Vault of Eternal Slumber, never to get Praetor's Guard?)

The simple terminology for this is "I hate grinding".

Ok, so most of the instances I run in DDO don't drop anything I actually upgrade to. But they are interesting. One reason for this is that the game system itself is interesting. And that's true because it's D&D. It was developed to be interesting on the tabletop, where there is no cinematic cutscenes. Although there is, to be fair, loot. Well, at least sometimes. My daughter's game is notoriously lean on the loot.

We get rewards: success. Sometimes its obvious what to do, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes (in DDO) we have to try again, or snatch things back from the Precipice of Wipe. That's just darn fun when you can pull that off.

Granted there is also the more visceral, media-based feedback: Holding a dance contest in the middle of the dungeon to see which demon is the best dancer ranks right up there. It's just fun to see them dancing when Karayasama uses Otto's (Theoretically) Resistable Dance. It's also fun to see which outfits show off the fabulous red hair to best advantage. But those sorts of things existed in EQ2, as well. They probably aren't quite enough to drive continuing subscription on their own, and they aren't game mechanics.

The striking thing to me is that as black boxes go, DDO isn't very black at all, maybe 18% neutral gray. At least to me, the D&D mechanics are second nature and public. There is a die roll, but that's the only element that is unpredictable. Everything else is based on mechanics from the tabletop RPG, where how everything works is spelled out.

Yet, it's still fun. Interest comes from not knowing what the mobs will do, and not knowing whether your spells or swings will miss, hit, or crit. Reacting in the moment is the joy.

The past few Mondays, Karayasama, Johnson (the cleric) and Marty (my tank with thief tendencies), have been running instances in Sentinels of Stormreach. And we have been tearing them up on Normal difficulty. Maybe it's time to move to Hard? Our ease surprises me a bit. Different groups have had more difficulty with these instances, particularly the Bazaar. (Remember how I mentioned the Precipice of Wipe?). We blasted through it. Not that it wasn't complex, it was just that we handled it.

Does this mean we're going to get bored with DDO and stop playing? Well, it might. We play a lot less. Karaya is playing SWTOR now, and I'm stuck on Skyrim. I'm not sure what Phritz is doing, and Lobilya is playing Skyrim, too.

Where Rage and Zen Coexist

Rita, aka Karaya, in a comment on my last post:

I definitely agree with your assessment that I work in that rage-to-master realm. Though I think there are two sides to that coin, and you and I each represent a side. This is really just an amusing brain-tangent; obviously the world isn't so categorical as this mental construct:

When I used to play Soul Calibur games all night with my friends, two of us were clearly the best players: Foley and me. For those who don't know, Soul Calibur is a console fighting game series, like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat (Though far superior to either, imo). I was unequivocally regarded as the best player in the group - the one to beat. But once I got into my groove, Foley still had a chance of beating me in any given fight. He was the only one. And everyone else pretty much dreaded having to play either one of us.

There's a huge psychological component to SC when you know your opponent as well as my friends know each other. You really get insight into the way that person thinks in a high-pressure, fast-paced contest over the course of milliseconds. You develop an instinct for anticipating her/his next move. Not to mention, we played so much of that game that our respective characters became extensions of our own limbs, really. So it was all about the mental game.

Now, as the night went on and we played battle after battle against each other, we'd get warmed up and start thinking and reacting faster. And faster still, to keep up with each other.

At our peaks - in our grooves, if you will - we each had a distinct method of mental processing.

Foley's method we called "Synapses", following a battle during which he commented that his "synapses [had] to fire faster to keep up!" His processing during our battles would take place consciously. He had to focus on my movements and keep his knowledge of my idiosyncrasies in mind, and make constant active decisions to counter my actions.

My method we called "Zen". Once I got in my groove, my processing mostly seemed to take place subconsciously. In fact, at times I had to be careful not to actually focus on anything, as I'd risk "thinking too much". I would tend to stare *through* the screen and watch both our characters in my peripheral vision. I would act and react instinctively.

Somehow I see a bit of a parallel when I compare you and me in the role of MMO enchanter. And I think it's most visible in DDO, illustrated by our choices of Wizard and Sorcerer, respectively.

You tend to study the situation at hand and try to consciously choose your tools and strategies to match it. When you fail, your reaction tends to be "I brought the wrong tools" or "I had the wrong plan", and you adjust accordingly.

I go into a situation with the same set of tools every time and no real plan. Because my tools (spells) are always the same, they're practically extensions of my body. I don't do much planning 'cause I hold myself to the standard that my skill should be sharp enough to handle any situation on the fly. When I fail, my reaction is "This is a worthy foe" or "My skill is lacking and must be honed further".

So in our approach to the spider cave, I see you focusing on the spawn cycles, the wandering patterns, the placement of mobs in that particular situation. Then you consider your tools and draw up an over-arching strategy (subject to adjustment, of course).

I, on the other hand, focus on my reaction time, my awareness, my instinctive understanding of myself and the fundamental mechanics of the game. In my mind, if those items are sharp enough, I will be victorious.

Now regardless of where each of us *focuses*, obviously there is overlap in our experiences. And both of us failed many times and then eventually succeeded. It's just interesting to consider the contrast of styles between the two high elf enchanters of Glory ;)

The difference she describes is real. I've played Soulcalibur a bit. Mostly I played Xiang Wa. I would never try to beat anyone with speed and reaction time, but rather with "timing" or what is called "meiei" in many martial arts. I would look for "gaps" or opportunities and hit them.

This involves some cognition. But it needs to go down into the "fast path" of the brain to execute. So I wouldn't make too much of the differences, we're more the same than different.

The graphic at the top is the Zen Mistress' keyboard layout for DDO, which she shared with me a little while ago, as described for her cleric. It is wildly remapped from the "out of the box" layout. I adapted this for my DDO characters, and it's starting to work, though it's a strange position to have my hands in relative to the keyboard.

No Rez Options for You!

SOE announced today that Everquest II will go "Free to Play. Your Way". I don't think they are talking about me. I like the DDO FTP model much better than what SOE is offering. All servers will convert to a FTP model wherein aspects of gameplay are restricted except for those accounts paying the monthly fee.

Because of the strenuous objections of the current playerbase to anything that smells of "pay to win", SOE is not going to offer the following items in the RMT store which had been in the FTP-dedicated servers:

• Power potion


• Health potion


• Self-rez scroll


• Wand of Obliteration


• Rune of Devastation


• Mastercrafted Equipment (all)


• Tradeskill Components

Some of the items on this list are standards in DDO. Rez tokens, power and health potions, for example. Mastercrafted equipment seems kind of a problem for those hoping to make ingame currency from selling these items. So I can see dropping that. Tradeskill components? As in raw materials? That's kind of crazy that they sold that, but sure, spend your money if you don't want to go gathering.

I just don't care about this stuff the way I used to. But lots of the EQ2 players seemed to still. At a guess, they are operating out of a sense of competition (in a PVE game). It's not like EVE where every aspect of it is PVP. If someone else has success by spending more money, so what? How does that impact you? Prestige I'd guess. But we've had people cheating - remember the ghosting scandal? - in EQ2 for a long time for nothing but the prestige of being the first or the "uber" guild on the server.

The thing that really kills the FTP plan for me is the restrictions on Silver accounts. See below:



[I'm stealing bandwitdth from The Ancient Gaming Noob for that chart. Wilhelm, let me know if my meager traffic is a problem and I'll self-host. I'm mostly feeling lazy.]

With a Silver (never mind Free) account, I can pay extra if the package doesn't include the race or class I want. (But the fabulous red hair comes for free!). However: I can't have Master-level abilities. I can't get Legendary and Fabled drops. I can't have more ingame coin than 20 gold (!) per character level. I can't have more than 40 quests in my journal. My access to the broker would be "Restricted". And I can't send in-game mail.

In short, Toldain would very hamstrung as a Silver toon. Most of his gear and abilities would downgrade. Most of his fabulous wealth (which came from manufacturing and playing the jewelry/spells market) would be gone, or maybe just inaccessible.

So, for him, my choice would be: go back to the old subscription, at what appears to be a slightly higher price, or go home.

Ok, I kind of get that they are worried about spam from gold-sellers. But wow. You can't send mail on a Silver account? Can't you just charge a few coppers for an ingame mail?


*******

Back to that competition thing. Today the news also broke that Zynga executed a "take-back" of stock options from some of its early employees. There's this story, which says that the executives were motivated to avoid a "Google Chef" moment. [If you didn't know, Charlie Ayers, the first chef Google hired, left the company after its IPO with $20 million. I say, good for you, Charlie!]

But this story says that the motivation was to make Zynga a "meritocracy". [Hat tip to Psychochild for pointing it out.] I'm doubtful. The story isn't sourced, but it reads like it came straight from the keyboard of Zynga's president, Marc Pincus. According to it, Pincus was deciding to demote people rather than fire them. What a great guy! Let's just say that he has a track record of being psychologically manipulative, given how their games work.

In Silicon Valley, early employees get bigger stock grants. That's just how it works, and when a company IPO's some people will get more money than other folks think they "deserve". And that bothers some people. Let's set aside whether Marc Pincus is one of those people who is bothered.

It has been my impression that game companies have sort of a license to abuse their workers, based on the fact that the workers often think that working as a gamedev is the greatest job in the world, and something they would do for free. But the particulars of this case, only the employees at Zynga know.

I play DDO now (and I've started back with Vanguard, but that's another post). The idea that someone is buying RMT hirelings and rez potions and buffs doesn't bother me in the slightest. It doesn't take away from my accomplishments at all. That's what's at the core of the "Free to Play. Your Way". Current players don't want to see their accomplishments cheapened. But that's inevitable, it happens even without rez potions, as people level up.

I once was on their side, but I don't see the point any more, not in a PVE game. Your game is not my game. Live and let live.

I Didn't Start the Fire, But She Stood In It, Asking For Healing

Our Monday night group started Ruins of Threnal this week. The group we had rocked the first half hard. In attendance were Marty (Officially Martinier dePasolai) Fighter 5/Rogue 5 - Plate tank and backup sneaker. Lobilya, Rogue 8 (or 9, I forget). Karayasama, sorceress 12(?) and dance queen, and Worstof, Ranger 9ish, he with heavy repeating crossbow.

Anyway, the dps laid down was amazing to me. I had run this before with Toldain, Jonnson (a cleric 9), and Vironet (Ranger 9). Our only real dps was Vironet, except when Tolly steps in with a lightning bolt or something. The difference was startling. Karayasama did not bother charming anything, stuff died too quickly. She did however, infect many an outsider with disco fever.

Flesh reavers, by the way, look ridiculous when they dance. Gargoyles, on the other hand, are pretty decent dancers, the wings really add that extra something. I really want to see a beholder dancing now, though that would mean someone would have to get within melee range of one, which could be a problem. The best way we've found to kill beholders is to hide behind a rock while Vironet does the "pop up and shoot" thing.

But there are no beholders in the first half of Threnal. Lots of stuff that died really fast and hard. I'm not really sure why that is, but everything was working that night. I think our focus and coordination was better, and we were more patient. Lobilya would sneak in the vanguard, about 10 yards ahead of me (as Marty). She's spot something, call it out, and we'd stop and let them come to us.

The first one in would typically try to rush past me at the "weak underbelly". I'm guessing it didn't like all those bolts that Worstof was throwing at it. (I think he probably used up 2000 bolts on the evening). I would trip it, and as often as not, it would fall on its face, at which point I (and sometimes Lobilya) would hack it to little bits. Sometimes it would start dancing. Either way, it was clumsy. Once in a while, it would fall down, and then immediately spring up dancing. Karayasama is apparently the equivalent of Gene Kelly singing "Gotta dance!"

We had two cleric hirelings along. Mine was Marissa, I think her name is. After fighting our way through some rough caves, there is a section that looks more like a dwelling place, with smooth walls and grates on the floor at intersections. Grates that shoot fire out of them every so often.

Now, most people have enough sense to stop doing something that hurts. Not Marissa. She would stand on the grate in the fire, taking damage, and she would say, "I'm going to need healing soon."

...

Never mind that "you are the healer!" Get out of the fire, for Marr's sake!

The issues with hirelings haven't gone away, and honestly, this particular problem wasn't recently introduced, it's always been there. AI is hard. Once I attended a talk where Ed Feigenbaum, then the chairman of the Stanford Computer Science Department claimed that in five years, there would be no more need for programmers because AI would take care of anything.

That was in roughly 1982. AI is hard, harder than you think. Even if you think it's hard.

I wish Psychochild all the luck in the world. We need better AIs in gaming. I would like hirelings with enough sense to get out of the fire that is killing them, and to heal themselves rather than asking for healing. It might well be that user-created AI's are the way to go, and that's what Storybricks is meant to support.

I've played one Final Fantasy game, I think it was 11 or maybe 12. Anyway, you could program AI's for your group of characters. There was a prioritized list of "if-then" rules. All of the form "If is true then perform on

As you progressed in the game, you got the ability to get more interesting and useful conditions and targets. Actions were typically actions that you could do by hand, switching to that character and doing it by hand.

I like this. I haven't seen much followup, but I haven't played subsequent FF games (It was a bit too grindy for me). It suits the programmer that I am quite well. But most people aren't programmers, so I don't know if there's much popular acceptance.

However, imagine if I could make a similar AI for my DDO healer hireling and share it with others, even sell it for in-game currency? It relieves the gamedevs of trying to do it, and gives me a source of ingame income. I'm all over that.

Just be sure to give me a "dance" action I can put into the AI.

I Came Here To Be Podkilled: Ataraxia's Kingdom Edition

Ok, ok, there aren't any pods in DDO. I didn't get podkilled. I did get TPK'ed, though. Wiped, if you will. "PK" could stand for "player kill" or "pod kill", after all.

This happened last week, in Ataraxia's Kingdom. And in the spirit of ICHTBPK, I resolved to blog about failure, just so that you, dear reader, will get some fun out of my misery.

It happened last week. Yours truly, he of fabulous crimson follicles; Lobilya, trap-mechanic and general back-stabber, Cheeves, a Paladin 6/Rogue 3/Confused lots, and Vironet, Ranger 9.

It didn't end well. It didn't even start well. Our hirelings (level 9 clerics), were very aggressive and pulled too many mobs. And at other times, they would go inactive and do nothing until given a command, even though they were set to "guard" or so on. Summoned creatures were similar. This was the overland zone in Ataraxia's Haven, before we ever got to the dungeon. We also had a kind of "scatter in many directions" issue, and a few deaths. I learned, much to my irritation that in spite of being called "Wildmen", they aren't, in fact Persons, and are not susceptible to Charm Person. Charm Monster wasn't working all that great, either.

The Duergar also swarmed us, but at least they could be charmed. However, I was somewhat slow to target and cast, that didn't help. But we struggled by, helped enormously by having cleric hirelings who could raise dead, and finally made it to the dungeon.

The first part consisted mostly of killing Scrags, a kind of sea troll. That wasn't too bad, but I was running very low of spell points. We had decided to do the dungeon on hard. After all, someone (Vironet?) had done it before, and thought it wasn't too bad. I ran very low of spell points. There was only one rest shrine in the zone, and it being Hard, I could only use it once.

But we managed the Scrags, and we managed to get the two keys that would get us into the lighthouse to where Ataraxia was being held prisoner. That's when the truly horrible stuff happened. In the next room, we got swarmed by Duergar. Including a named. I charmed several of them, but had trouble picking out the enemies from the friends in the melee. It didn't help that several of them both had very good sneaking ability, and a very good ability to see through our invisibilty/sneak/etc.

Vironet started backing off and kiting a Duergar Assassin, or so she thought. To me, she was kiting the named. Unfortunately, the named caught up to her and offed her, then went snuck. We had a discussion:

Me: "Did that named get you?"
Her: "I wasn't kiting the named, it was an assassin."
Me: "The named ran right past me after you."
Her: "I never saw him."

So, we were all dead, but some of us were close to the rez shrine. Like me. I rezzed my cleric hireling. I made myself invisible, then went to look for Vironet. Something like the following happened. I told the cleric to rez her, and an assassin materialized, saw through my invis, and one-shotted me with a backstab. I'm dead now, out of reach of the rez shrine. Vironet gets raised and the named appears in similar fashion and offs her, I don't think it was a one-shot, nobody is quite as wimpy as Elf of Paper. Quoth she, "Oh, there's the named."

Now we're all dead, and too far from the rez shrine. So we declare a wipe and recall. A short break and we want to try again. This time on Normal difficulty.

It isn't quite a replay, we get a little farther. In fact, we wiped when we entered the final room, had the door close behind us, and get swarmed by Duergar, including many Flamestrikes.

Ok, the mood of the group is getting a little sour. So we look for something else. Cheeves says, "Hey there's a quest we can do in the Harbor, something about outsiders invading. It's way over our head. Beholders are everywhere. Ice Flensers and Blood Reavers, too.

There were some fun aspects to it. Opening the first door, a troop of Fiendish Kobolds comes running down the hall at us, turns and runs through the door and disappears. They had no concern for us, they were fleeing in terror. My reaction was, "Dangit I can't target them, dang, dang, dang, HEY! Hahahahaha!"

The other fun bit is getting shot at repeatedly by Beholder eye-beams that had NO EFFECT ON ME WHATSOEVER! Muahahaha! I had my saves buffed, and my Deathblock robe on, and was bouncing around getting shot at repeatedly while others were actually shooting it. It all ended in tears, though, when I rolled a 1 or something on my save and was disintegrated. (By the way, I dinged 11 last night and can cast disintegrate now. And I'm just itching for some payback!) We mostly ended up dead and watching Vironet kite things around until one of the dungeon's tricks spawned a crowd that she couldn't manage on her own. Third wipe of the evening.

I won't say we were undaunted, there was some serious daunting going on. But we wanted a win now, pretty bad. And we got it by doing The Church and the Cult in House Phiarlan. We investigated the Temple of Vol, and discovered a horror at the end, a vampire! Our battle with him was epic, he'd turn into bats and disappear for a while, and then reappear elsewhere. He also blinded me. But it didn't matter, I could tab target him and shoot him anyway.

My biggest damage spell is Lightning Bolt. I have a hat that increases it's damage by 40%, and it usually hits for about 70. Unfortunately, Adran ir'Karsmore (the vampire) has rogue levels and Improved Evasion, and even when he failed to evade, he has some giant damage resistance, so even when I hit him, I did maybe 10 points of damage. So I went with the tried and true standby - Magic Missile. That did a little better. But we got him, and our feelings were saved, if not our honor.


*************

This week we redid the Ataraxia quest and were successful. But the party composition changed. Cheeves swapped out for Jonnson, Cleric 9. And we added Special Guest Star Jaliera, red-headed high elf Paladin 8. (She looks so much like me, you'd almost think we're related or something.) And we rocked it. I did much better targeting and charming, etc, because I'm using a new keyboard setup. More on that in a later post.

The main difference was control of engagement. We did much better at letting mobs come to us. With one fewer hireling and a person doing healing, we were much more solid on that front. So, we rocked the joint, freed Ataraxia, and then climbed to the top of the lighthouse to enjoy the spectacular view of the island, and do a little victory dance. Later, we did the other dungeon in Ataraxia's Haven, with similar success. What a difference a week makes.

Haywire Disco!

This week our instance group took on Haywire Foundry, the last normal quest of Vault of Night.

The usual suspects were there again from last week - my fighter/thief Marty, the thief thief Lobilya Sackfill, Mr. "Have reapeating heavy crossbow, will travel" Worstof, and the incomparable Karayasama.

Karayasama's usual sorcerous tricks had be modified this week since the Haywire foundry has almost nothing that qualifies as a "person", being populated mostly by warforged, and mechanical dogs, in this mithril defenders. With the occasional ooze and elemental. So "charm person" and "dominate person" are out.

Instead, we had an attack of dance fever. More than once, we'd get 15-20 seconds into a combat and all the warforged attacking us would be dancing. I believe this is an application of Otto's Resistable Dance, but it seemed pretty irresistable when Karayasama was playing the tune. Do you know how easy it is to beat the crap out of someone who is doing a fairly awkward version of "The Twist".

But the warforged got their licks in. A couple of times, it seems that I felt tired, and just took a little nap, right there on the foundry floor. Mmmm, that felt good. Do you suppose those mutterings and gestures that warforged was making had anything to do it. I sure felt tired.

Nevertheless we got deep into the foundry without too much trouble. We defeated the three iron golems (with mithril defender companions) in the locked puzzle chamber by kiting them around and slowly eliminating them. Given that we are about level 9 now, there were a few deaths, but they weren't really a problem.

But then there's the destruct button.

Once you hit this sucker, it's hell-for-leather to the exit. Well, the real problem is, it's not actually to the exit, though it's near the exit. So you can't use Dimension Door to solve this problem. Such a pity...

No, you have to climb up pipes over lava, fend off maybe 20 Mithril Defenders, run down corridors, not fall into the collapsing pit and make it through the blast door before it closes. I did not make it. I was the first to climb up the pipes, but I waited there for the others, when I should have been tanking and killing a few mithril defenders to clear the way some. But I first waited, and then ran through them. Their damage plus the traps I hit did me in about 2/3rds of the way through.

Lobilya had a floor collapse into a pit of lava beneath her. She could perch on a rock, but the "Grease" spewed by the Mithril Defenders meant that she kept slipping off of it into the lava and taking damage. She died.

Worstof was slower than me, but made it through to the blast doors. Which had already closed. Either because of time, or because Karayasama had gone through them already. When the countdown expired, he died.


Karayasama made it through the blast doors, but got singed by all the fire elementals that spawn during the explosion. Her pet was able to eventually kill them all. But we were all dead, and with no rez shrine nearby. Cleric hirelings had succumbed, too.

Now as it turns out, the final chamber, where Karayasama had died was in the same large chamber that we entered through, after fighting an earth elemental and a couple of fire elementals. To finish the dungeon, you must cross this room on a high catwalk and grab an item in a small room.

So, this is what we did: Lobiliya recalled, and hired a level 9 cleric. Worstof dismissed his to make room. Lobilya re-enters and goes to the big chamber below where Karayasama's ghost is. Karayasama drops down (in ghost form, you get feather fall for free, what's going to happen? You might die?) and gets Raise Dead cast on her. But Karayasama does not confirm the rez until she is pulled back to her soulstone - up high above the chamber. Then the rez is in, the item is grabbed and the dungeon is completed.

Now that's winning ugly.

We don't really have enough people to do the raid that comes next, so this was probably the last we'll see of Vault of Night for a while. Though Lobilya suggested that if we each bring a hireling that will be 8 characters ... Maybe with a few more? (I have no idea what raid content is like in DDO).

Next we'll probably start on Ataraxia's Haven.

How Do You Spell Death? B-E-H-O-L-D-E-R

Monday we challenged the third adventure in the Vault of Night series in DDO. I was playing Martinier de Pasolai. Marty is a split fighter/thief who first started out as a character in the obscure tabletop system known as Throwing Stones. That game represented your character as dice. Each side had one of three colors - red, silver or gold. Each color was worth one point in a stat - Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. The idea behind Marty was that he was a melee fighter but his stats were balanced. I started with four dice, one each of a highly imbalanced and one balanced. So I had the same score in all my stats. Intelligence was used for initiative, so he had good initiative. After that, when I leveled up by gaining a new stone, I only added dice that had two sides of each color.

So he had a bit of rogue and even bard (mostly just persuasion) in him. I was surprised to find that, in that system, he was really good at counterattacking, and knocking people to the ground or disarming him. A typical fight would go thus: Marty would hold off three guys, Patrick (a caster) would befuddle, paralyze, or otherwise drop other opponents into a pit, and Lucy would charge around the battlefield, leaving grease spots behind her.

Often, when those three guys attacked Marty, they would all fall down. This was fun. But Marty's personality was fun, too. He was a "gladiator" - think professional wrestling done with armor in an arena. Some of the fights were fixed and Marty was the guy to "make sure the public had a good time and didn't cotton on to the idea that the outcome was, er, predetermined"

Anyway, this doesn't translate to D&D or consequently DDO very well, but I have gone with - highish INT and CHA, split fighter/thief (5/5 after last nights ding!) . In DDO he is a trap mechanic with no spot whatsoever, and is good with Bluff (bluff pulling rocks!) He has Combat Expertise, which he loves, and Improved Trip, which he also loves, and Improved Feint, which seems less useful.

Also, he's dabbling in Use Magic Device, and he has the Least Dragonmark of Finding. So he often picks up wands in dungeons that he can use.

All of this stuff is probably way off the "power curve". He has very low hit points for a plate tank of his level, for example. If he was keeping and holding aggro, the sneak attack dice he gets wouldn't be as useful. However, it is all to frequently the case in DDO that whatever target "cannot be influenced". Say, all undead, for starters.

But Marty has multiple "attack modes", and this came in useful last night, as we were doing The Jungle of Khyber, quest 3 in the Vault of Night series. With Marty were Karayasama (she who dominates), Lobilya, halfling thief, and Worstof, Phritz' ranger (he of the repeating heavy crossbow).

The Jungle of Khyber isn't a jungle at all, but a cave (the opening to it is in a jungle, though!). Our mission is to track down, and rescue Veil, a drow rogue who is being pursued by a construct from the plane of Law, an Inevitable. Last week, we wiped when we pulled too many of the drow at once. This is a problem the encounter intends to give you, as the drow wander around a lot, and the archers among them love to retreat back up the corridor, leaving you to chase them or be filled full of holes. Meanwhile their casters will drop Flamestrikes on you.

But we got through that stuff this week, with a little more care, a little more caution and some better firepower. Marty is very effective against casters, but he has to go into "caster mode". He switches out his normal +2 adamantine plate for some studded leather with spell resistance. He sneaks up on said caster, trips him with a sneak attack, and proceeds to beat him mercilessly (sneak attack damage applies while they are prone!). This works pretty well. Also, I get my evasion, so some of their area attacks miss me altogether.

The next area brought us beholders. Ugh. We see a beholder up ahead, buff up and I charge. I engage it, but I'm dropped by a disintegrate thrown by the SECOND beholder who was down a side passage. Karayasama gets one of the beholders charmed, and it kills the other one. Since we have ninth level cleric hirelings along, I am rezzed and all's right with the world. With the help of a minor globe of invulnerability, we circle the remaining beholder and drop it quickly when the charm comes off.

We manage the beholders in the next cavern pretty well, mostly by "popup" missile fire. My cleric hireling threw in a flame strike or two for good measure.

After that there were more drow, and those were pretty much ok as we avoided the worst of the swarming. Next is a giant chamber with a waterfall and a high cave with extra mobs and experience. I missed the jump to the extra stuff so stood below and watched as my comrades first killed one mob, then got slagged by the other. Fortunately they were able to get rezzes even as I had to take an paniced phone call from my daughter who is college regarding finances. It seems her first of the month deposit hadn't showed up yet.

Five minutes later, we take a ride on a geyser and fight some more drow, and I get another phone call from said daughter to the effect of "never mind, the money just showed up." Evidently, these things post at 11pm PDT.

The penultimate chamber (sadly, there's really no way to score "penultimate" Words With Friends, is there?) is a killer. There's a main chamber with a few drow guarding it. No problem, right? There's a small room to the right with a rez/rest shrine. Onward, to the left is a door, behind which and around a corner lie three nameds: a drow caster, a troll, and a beholder.

The caster was easy. I bluff pulled him ran back around the corner to the main chamber. He chased me, fired a lighting bolt which seems to have missed everyone, and died to our combined fire.

The rest was not so easy. I attempted a bluff pull of the troll, but the beholder joined him. What ensued was 2-3 minutes of chaos as we battled the beholder and troll, died and rezzed at the shrine to do battle again. Sometimes the deaths were immediate. One time, I was hit for 200 points of damage, which I presume was from a Disintegrate. Under tabletop rules, we calculated that this meant that the caster level of that beholder was at least 17th. Or else there's some kind of spell critical hit rule. This little intermezzo often resulted in the beholder sitting in the room with the rez shrine. Bad, but we managed to get him a little farther away.

The action hit a pause when we were mostly all dead and wondering what to do. Lobilya was back in the chamber where the nameds had started, at negative hit points. But the troll had followed her. We thought he might be camping her, but when she hit -10 and died for real, he didn't move. So we had managed to split the two of them, after all.

Ok, we can get this now. We all rezzed and mobbed the beholder, who went down - after dealing out just a few more fingers of death, negative levels, and disintegrates. We then waited for all the death debuffs to expire. I had six, I think. For a minute after you rez at a rez shrine, you lose a "level" - hit points, and base attack bonus and saves, mostly. These don't count concurrently, so I waited 6 minutes as each one expired and my hit point total slowly climbed back up to its normal, anemic (for a plate tank) level.

Then we fought the troll, who was also pretty easy by himself.

After that, The Inevitable was anti-climactic. Some of us had done it before, and knew enough to bring weapons that could actually damage him. I tried to hold him in his starting room with a shield wall, but after pausing briefly, he squeezed around me and started chasing ... someone. Probably Karayasama. We kited him. Nobody died, I think. At one point he turned on my cleric hireling, who did not have the sense to run away and kite him. He hit her with some kind of area effect stun where he hit the ground. But she didn't go down and he soon got bored and went back to chasing someone else. Meanwhile we are chipping away at him getting "glancing blows" often. Since he ignored me (Intimidate does not appear to influence him). I turned my Combat Expertise off, and just chased him like a wild man, poking him with my brand new +1 Anarchic Rapier.

Eventually he fell, and we gave a cheer, and logged off. It's a long dungeon.

Karaya Rocks - Team of One Edition

I got this message on Facebook from Karaya, detailing how she swapped out her three levels of Rogue for Sorceror levels. (We're talking DDO here) She's Sorceror 11 now:

So I lesser reincarnated Karaya today. She has Dominate Person now, along with a plethora of other new tricks.

We did the Ruined Halls in Kundarak as a test run of my new powers. And by "we", I mean Anvil, Bearded Devil, Hobgoblin Cleric, Hobgoblin Infiltrator, Trogolodyte Warlock and me. Quite the pickup group, no?

Last night she described to us a bit of how she sets up her hotkeys. For example "Tab targeting" isn't on the Tab key any more, but on the numeric keypad. I assume other powers are nearby as well, moved from the QWERTY number keys to the numeric keypad, so that one hand can drive and the other can target and cast.

What Has Tolly Been Up To Lately?

Posting has been sparse, but gaming hasn't. I thought I'd give a quick once-over of the gaming I've been doing.

• I've been playing a little City of Heroes on Mrs. Darkwater's account. I kind of don't want to start a paid account when they are so close to launching a FTP feature. I have made two characters. One is a ninja named Kenji, who is a 15th century Ninja brought forward in time by the Nakamura family to battle a grave threat to humanity. Natural based katana user, with the defense/speed powers, and he's a good guy.
  
  The other is a mage who uses Domination powers and has fabulous red hair. Figuring out his name is an exercise left to the reader. This has been fun, since the control aspects are a kind of gameplay I like. Fighting multiple opponents this way is a lot like juggling.



• I've continued to play DDO. Most recently, this Monday, Phritz, Lobilya, Karaya and I ran through Stromvaulds Mine and Stormreach Outpost. Phritz, Karaya and I did it several months ago with different characters. This run was a lot easier, even though we completely forgot how to deal with the final encounter of Stormreach Outpost. So there was a wipe thingie there, but we figured it out and rebounded victoriously. I love this sort of thing, as I've said before. Lobilya (aka Mrs. Darkwater) finally unlocked the Drow race on her account, and she's now working on leveling one up. Or maybe two. Even Spawn of Tolly 2 is getting back into DDO after a long hiatus.



• I'm finally giving Civ V a rest. I managed to win a game on Immortal difficulty and a duel map. I was the Ottomans, my opponent was Catherine. We each had our own continent. I used the Ottoman's ability to recruit barbarian ships to build a navy that gained absolute sea mastery, and then managed to take Catherine's capital for the win. I love Janissaries.
  
  I tried several times to win a game with Rameses that focused on building wonders more than killing everyone. I did not find this to be possible. I'm taking a break from this now.



• Instead I downloaded from Steam the Sid Meier Track Pack, consisting of Railroads, Railroad Tycoon II Platinum, and RR Tycoon III. I've started in on Railroads and it's a whale of a good time. I love watching the trains run all over the place. Just today I found out about a game called OpenTTD (based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe). That game looks dangerous.



• There's been the usual assortment of tabletop RPG. Game systems include 4e, 3.5, Pathfinder (a new purchase for us) and Hero Systems.

It's pretty clear that it's going to continue to be difficult for me to play much Eve Online, despite how much I like it. As an economic building/trading/selling game, it has no equal. But it requires a lot of time in predictable chunks, and my time does not seem to come in predictable chunks.

The Xorian is Deciphered

Last night we tackled a DDO quest called The Xorian Cipher. It's described as level 8, very long, and extreme challenge. We played it on Normal difficulty.

In attendance were Karayasama (Sorcerer 7, Thief 3), Profundo (Bard 9, played by Phritz), Thio (Fighter 6 or 7, played by Lobilya), and your favorite 3000-year old (Wizard level 10). I brought along Tower, a level 8 fighter hireling, and Profundo brought a level 9 cleric hireling to fill out the group. Tower is warforged, so I can heal him, and I've focused some enhancements and gear on doing that well. Profundo's healer gave us the ability to raise dead during the heat of battle. This was quite useful.

I died a lot. In this dungeon there are maybe a dozen rifts, which spawn these strange black glowing energy globes. They wander around aimlessly, and if they touch you they cast a random spell on you. And I do mean random. We got Bull's Strength, Enfeeblement, giant heals, Polar Rays for 100 hit points (that was one death for me), and Stone to Flesh (another one, after something else beat the crap out of me).

There are runes near each rift that allow you to close it, activated by either high Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. We had all three available. But finding the runes and getting them turned off while there are cultists and undead chasing you isn't the easiest.

The craziest fight came late in the dungeon where we were forced to split up, standing on each of four pedestals to proceed further. Karayasama and I went one way, and Profundo and Thio the other. Karayasama and I managed to clear through a couple of encounters without too much trouble - making a few opponents switch sides at the beginning of battle can do that - and found ourselves in a high arched opening overlooking a giant hall with skeletal archers, a rift, and four named undead who shot lightning bolts.

Profundo and Thio had made it to this hall and were having serious trouble. Thio dropped early. Profundo had survived, with the help of his healer. I summoned my teleporting devil, hoping he would jump down and join in. But he was reluctant. I stood in the doorway as close to the edge as I could, trying to get him to engage. The archers evidently had arrows that did a sonic with a stun, or one of the nameds could do that. I stood there like a fool while they drilled me. Well, I stood there like a fool before that, too, but never mind. I died and the demon did not engage. Quoth Karayasama, "Tolly, you have to dodge in and out, don't just stand there!"

Now that I'm dead, I jump down into the chamber and order Tower to engage. He's doing ok, but he can't manage by himself and eventually he dies.

Ok, things are bad. I think at some point maybe Karayasama got tagged too, I'm not really sure. But it turns out that down a long hall leading from the big chamber is a rest shrine and a rez shrine. The first time I try it, I am tantalizingly close, the cursor even changes to the correct icon, but I'm recalled to my soul stone before I can click. The next two tries are not as close. The fourth time I make it, and my hair is once again red and fabulous. (Rezzing is great for split ends!) I rest and recharge all my mana, too. I call Tower back and he rezzes. I get another summoned creature (another devil, in fact). Profundo, I think has stayed alive, or rezzed himself. We push back down the hallway, killing skeletons, but avoiding the nameds. I grabbed someone's stone, maybe Karayasama's and run it back to the shrine. Profundo grabs the other one.

We're all back in the game, and I start putting up electrical resistance and protection. Which is good because the nameds have decided to chase us into the shrine area. But the resistances are enough to turn the tide and we prevail. However, the orbs from the rift claim another victim - Thio - and we pause to turn off the rift before we recover Thio's soulstone.

When the dungeon is cleared there is jubilation. That was sloppy, to be sure, but we pulled it out, turning what seemed to be disaster into success, though success with a high repair bill.

The last fight went easier, though I died due to stupidly throwing multiple lightning bolts at the named hellhound right from the start. Doh! Fortunately nobody else was so stupid, the hireling raised me, and we grabbed the loot and did a victory dance!

This is how I like to dungeon. I don't demand that stuff be completely fresh - Karayasama had done part of the dungeon before, and helped us speed things along. But it's the polar opposite of what running instances in EQ2 had become: Pull all the mobs in the room and burn them down. No real danger or risk. Any puzzles or lore are completed by someone else that had done the instance dozens of times before I can even read them.

I understand the mentality, and if I had ground through an instance a dozen times or more, I'd be in a hurry. Because I would be farming them for drops or points or whatever, and feeling impatient. But I don't play D&D or RPG's to farm, I play them for adventure. Running something for the fiftieth time and concentrating on efficiency is kind of the opposite of adventure.

Not that there isn't a place for that. That's more the realm of economic/strategy gameplay. Such as mission-running or ratting in EVE. Of course you're repeating it, the mission itself isn't the adventure.

Scary Beholders

Lately, Phritz (playing as the dwarven bard Profundo) and Karaya (Playing her badass drow rogue Veltena) and my redheaded self have been playing through an adventure pack in DDO known as "The Vault of Night".

Barrow d'Kunderak, in house Kunderak, wants to get his band adventuring party back together again, and asks you to contact his old partners. We did the first two earlier, and in "Prison of the Mind" we ran into beholders. And went splat.

I'm level 8, and Profundo, and I think Veltena are both level 7. So we're a bit under level for these adventures. "Prison of the Mind" ended with a fight with a high level caster that kept casting Disintegrate at us. And no, he never ran out of spell points. Boo!

We beat him, and the beholders, but it was ugly and involved a lot of reviving and drinking of grape juice in bars to regain my spell points.

Which set us up for doing the next step last Wednesday night. We had to travel through the "Gateway to Khyber" zone to do the "Jungle of Khyber" quest. Which was in a cave, not a jungle.


It wasn't in Afghanistan either. Though it maybe vaguely looked something like Khyber pass, pictured at right.

(I have a congenital defect that seems to render me incapable of taking screenshots during an adventure, so the picture of Khyber Pass will have to do. Anyway...)

We zoned into "Gateway to Khyber" We started across a big bridge. It had fallen down, so we had to go back and try the trail. I tried the trail on the right, while Profundo and Veltena tried the trail to the other right. Somehow we were spotted by trolls and attacked about the time I caught up with them. Veltena's hireling healer died. Oops! Assorted bad pulls later, and one nasty trick where some trolls spawn right in a perfect place to stand while you single pull from the next group later, and most of us had managed to die at least once. But we found the entrance and were in. They are trolls after all, we can handle trolls.

Bluff pulling is standard procedure for us. When Veltena bluff pulls trolls, I think it goes something like this: "Come over here big boy, I've got something to show you!"

Once inside, things are still pretty rocky. We lose the healer again at a point where there are drow archers and a mage in elevated positions where we can't melee them. The mage loves to throw ice storms and fireballs at us. We wipe.

So we have to go again, from the beginning. "Gateway to Khyber" goes much more smoothly this time, we have the zone down, and Veltena is still sexy. And she doesn't need a philtre of bluff +30.

We get past the drow mage on the catwalk like this: Veltena throws a dagger at him then dodges out of the way of the return shot of ice storm, fireball or whatever. Eventually he dies. I was dead all the while; during the fight in the previous room I moved a bit too close to the door to the room with that mage. I believe a transcript of the session might go something like this:

Me: "What the....? The ceiling is falling on me!!!? Ouch! Aughhhhhh!"

Veltena: "That was an ice storm, Tolly"

Me: [Silence because I'm dead]

But we get past the trolls and the drow and then we run into beholders. Tower, my melee hireling, can do pretty well against them, as long as he saves versus disintegrate. Unlike me, though, he can survive it if he doesn't. I can't take 187 points of damage, that's about 3x my maximum hit points. Another favorite beholder ability of mine is the anti-magic ray. I get hit with one of those and I'm a spectator. And they are quite liberal with it.

But some of these beholders are in spots where you can't melee them easily. And they won't pull to you either, they will just sit at range and throw disintegrate at you, with negative levels and anti-magic instead of fries as a side dish.

This is where Veltena remarked, "I really like how they made beholders really scary in this game, as opposed to in EQ" Who can remember going to East Karana and just trashing those stupid plushy versions of beholders? These are not your mother's beholders.

Veltena uses the dagger-and-dodge method to take a few more of these out. And we come to a room with a named troll in it, a drow caster, and a named beholder. The drow caster is bluffable, and comes around the corner expecting a warm embrace from Veltena. And he gets one, sort of. One down. The other two are more difficult. But our cause is aided by the fact that there is a resurrection shrine nearby. Of course, your redheaded correspondent stupidly trained the mobs into the room with the rez shrine, only to die there and leave them guarding it. Fortunately, Tower was able to rez and train them back out before dying. Eventually we dropped the beholder, mostly by letting Tower melee him with me repairing Tower.

And then the troll was more straightforward, though tough. Those last two were DC 19 and 17 respectively if memory serves.
(UPDATE: Rita/Veletena claims that the named beholder was CR 17 and the troll was only CR 12. She's probably right.)

And then we were on to the final battle of this dungeon, fighting the gigantic golem named Inevitable, who is pursuing Veil, the rogue that once was part of Barrow's adventuring party. Well, it turns out she's a vampire now, but that doesn't really matter, since she's just going to stand in this circle of protection while we fight the giant golem, M'kay?

The golem bested us. There's no way to revive, since once you start the encounter, all the doors are locked shut. While Tower was meleeing, I alternated between casting Cure Serious and using my wand of Cure Critical Wounds, because I avoid some recast timers that way. It still wasn't enough, I couldn't keep up. Once Tower dropped. I got off a couple of damage spells which found their mark, and Inevitable started chasing me. This went on for quite a while, but Veltena wasn't really able to stick any damage on the golem. Note for future runs: we need Anarchic weapons to avoid Inevitable's damage resistance. I'm not sure how Profundo died. I think it was 2am in my time zone by then, and we called it rather than run the whole two dungeons a third time. But next time we'll get him!

Last Night in Stormcleave Outpost

Last night, I got to do one of my favorite things in MMORPG's - go through content completely cold, and a little under powered. It makes for exciting times, and this was no exception.

Wednesday is our regular guild night in DDO. When Karaya finally logged in, after a long evening (for her) of roller derby, we decided to try Stormcleave Outpost, a level 8 quest given in an inn in House Deneith. There were three of us, Phritz, Karaya and me. None of us had done it before, and it said it would probably take a group, so that was perfect.

Karaya played Veltena, her level 7 drow rogue. Phritz brought Profundo, who is a dwarf, level 7, and most of those levels are bard. And of course, there was yours truly, he of 3000 years, 8 wizard levels and fabulous red hair.

I brought along the fighter hireling Tower, because he's warforged, and I can heal him pretty well. Also, I've taken a feat that gives my hirelings, charmed creatures, and summoned creatures all a boost to their stats. Add a Bull's Strength to Tower and he's a serious force on the battlefield. And I can stay invisible, which keeps me from getting killed. Mostly.

Phritz brought a drow cleric, I don't remember his name, though.

The first part of the fun, for me anyway, was figuring what spells to hang. I didn't look up the zone on the internet, I just read what the quest giver said about it, which was that giants and their minions were invading Stormcleave Outpost, and could we please help?

Giants probably have good Fort saves and bad Reflex saves. Will saves could go either way. I guessed that they would not be subject to Charm Person, but would be vulnerable to Suggestion, so I prepped that. I also prepped Grease, because I liked the idea of seeing giants falling down. Profundo wasn't so happy with me though, since more than once I sent him sliding toward pools of lava, though never actually into one. Dwarfs are supposed to be tough to knock over, right?

I had just found the special material components for Stoneskin so I prepared that along with Wall of Fire, just to switch from my usual of Summon Monster IV and my energy protection spell, which didn't seem likely to be useful.

I also ditched all the spells specific to controlling undead. Woops! We no sooner got into the outpost when the guards started telling us about the necromancer and his minions that we needed to kill. Oh well, thinks I, I still have Wall of Fire, that will do a number on the undead.

Double Woops!

When we finally got to the necromancer and the undead, they were "charbone" or something like that, and invulnerable to fire. Things got pretty dicey in the final wave of maybe 6 or so of them, but to my surprise, I was able to charm the boss (well, really he was a sub-boss) and he killed all of the rest of the skeletons for us. At which point he fell easily to Tower, Profundo, and a lightning bolt or two from me. (Veltena was a ghost at that time, succumbing to the wave of charbones, I think.)

But I get a bit ahead of myself. We entered the zone and had to search for the entrance to the dungeon and some optional quest goals. We wandered around a bit, killing some kobolds, and clearing a camp of ogres that was there for no reason other than to get us to spend our resources to no great purpose. Kills do count toward bonus experience, if you manage to finish the mission, that is.

Things went ok outside the main dungeon and inside as well for most of the run. Our standard operating procedure was to have Veltena single pull ogres, minotaurs or giants singly using Bluff. Her hide/sneak skills were handy in scouting out new situations as well. We had some trouble with pets and dwarfs getting too close to the action and pulling multiples, which is when Mesmerize and Suggestion came in to play. On single pulls, though, I let Tower do all of my work for me.

We had a few deaths which were easily fixed at nearby rez shrines, and we were doing ok resource wise too. Though our bags were becoming very full, because we were picking up a lot of stuff to advance the quest.

We had to light 8 runed towers, and this powered up a portal that took us to the final boss. There, it turned out that four shards we had found were keys to debuffing the final boss. There were four rooms with force fields over them, and lit crystals. Four corresponding crystals were behind the General, the biggest giant of them all.

Remember that bit about dwarfs gettiing too close and pulling too much? Some dwarf with us ran a bit too close and pulled the general. I tried to tank him with Tower, but Tower did not last very long, that guy hits hard. In short, we wiped.

However, we were able to revive and come back in before the zone reset and tried again. This time we were able to deactivate the crystals and pull the mobs from the rooms thus opened up back into the tunnel and kill them one by one. Veltena did the bulk of the work here, sneaking and hiding and taunting.

At this point we tackled the General and while I could say he went down so easy it was disappointing, I would be lying. It felt good. Mostly I healed Tower until he died.

I wonder how one would approach that final room if one's party could not sneak pull the way Veltena was. Usually there is more than one way to handle things. Perhaps the General is mezzable? Or maybe a good fighter with a good cleric behind her could tank him when blocking with a tower shield, using Intimidate to keep aggro while the rest of the group cleared the other rooms? There are lots of possibilities, not the least of which would be to simply wait a few levels and then just tank and spank your way through it.

I love this open-ended aspect of DDO. There's always more than one way to do things. And depending on who you are, some things will be hard and others will be easy. Most of all, I love that I can mez named mobs. Or charm them and have them kill all of their own minions. EQ2 would never let me do that. That's gonna stay with me for a while.

If you are interested in this kind of play, drop me a line. Flame of the West is small, and probably going to stay that way, but we have room for a few more crazy people who like to be unorthodox and creative. We're on the Ghallanda server; drop me a line.

Circles and Arrows and a Photograph on the Back of Each One

One of the first things I noticed when I first started playing EQ2 was how behavioral it was. There was a pleasing tone, and a gfx display when you leveled. There was another sound every time one of your skills improved. There was audio cues, reward and punishment, for countering an event while crafting, and another sound for completing a quality tier during a crafting encounter. The electrons staged a celebration on your computer whenever you actually completed a recipe.

All of this seemed great. And it extended to quests, too. Completing quests got you rewards, experience and loot and praise.

So what did I do in response to all this? Basically, I trained myself to ignore it. I couldn't have told you why back then, but it seemed too much like I was being manipulated, being pulled toward a game-playing behavior that I didn't like. We know that now as The Grind. I leveled more slowly than many people, and did horrible grindy book quests, and tried to solo as an Illusionist back when that was hard and our DPS sucked. I avoided trying to maximize my DPS, preferring to try to maximize my ability to control an encounter. Unfortunately, this put me at odds with most of the rest of the players and the game designers as well. Eventually I gave in and respecced to high DPS. In EQ2.

Tipa posts today on "How I Killed MMO's (Can FFXIV give them a rez?)"

I don’t want to wait. I want to skip the boring parts and get right to the fun parts. Boring time is time I could spend doing something else. I don’t even bother pretending, when I start a new MMO, that I’m there for the long haul. Wizard101 has been the exception, here. I sub to WoW for a couple months every year or so, plan and enjoy some F2P RPGs until something else comes up, but — I’m going to be playing any given game only a few weeks, I’m never even going to see whatever end game you have cooked up. The first time the game gets boring for me, I’m gone.

There's some discussion of quest-text skipping, too. Tipa mentioned wanting to to skip through the cinematic story parts of the latest Rock Band edition at Best Buy. Because that's not relevant to getting the reward. But the part that made my day was this:

This is pretty consistent with research on intrinsic motivation. Children who are rewarded for drawing pictures tend to not draw pictures except when they are rewarded, and generally lose interest after a while. The link earlier in this paragraph is to an article with the subtitle "Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain."

When I think of my career, I realize that I did as much as I possibly could to keep my intrinsic interest, and my creativity, alive. I need to get paid for working, it's true, and I wanted to be paid fairly. These things got discussed twice a year, at salary time. The rest of the time, I mostly ignored my pay when it came my work. I worked on things that advanced corporate goals, to be sure, but those goals were also in accord with my own personal goals and interests.

But this isn't always the case with games. I've been the grinder, at one time grinding out writs in Lavastorm to level the guild and to gain faction with the Concordium. I've skipped quest text myself.

The game makers seem to be catching on to this. EVE is famous for how sandboxy it is, and how little direction it gives its players. My current frustration with EVE is that it isn't quite sandboxy enough. I'd like to be able to produce new in-game items, such as an item named "A Lock of Toldain's Fabulous Red Hair", and hand it out as a gag. I'd like to be the only person in the game who could produce an authentic version of it, too. But I'm fine with someone else being able to produce a good counterfeit of it. That could produce fun, in the hands of people who want to play.

There are some serious technical issues with this: If every player did this, It would create massive problems in their databases. But I'm impressed with stories like this, where a very good time is had by all using only dice, blocks, graph paper, a few reference books, and a heaping helping of imagination.

It has been argued that the all-too-literal 3D gfx realizations of modern gaming leave too little to the imagination. But it doesn't have to be so. There are definitely games that think of themselves as canvas and palette.

As far as FFXIV goes, Tipa writes that it seems to lead one around by the nose a lot less. There seems to be a story in there, but you are going to have to go out and find it. I don't think this is quite the "canvas and palette" idea.

As regards DDO, which is what I'm mostly playing these days, there are some leanings. Yes, the game is entirely structured around quests and instances. However, the problems posed in these quests are somewhat open ended. You can go through the instances in "Hulk Smash!" mode. Or you can be more of a manipulator, such as Karaya "You're on my team NOW" Nydusi. (Ok, ok, I know you spelled your name that way in some game or another.) There isn't just one way to deal with any trap either. They can be jumped over, disarmed, tumbled through, resisted, or just plain tanked. In most cases. Each one is different. But there isn't one way to solve it. Sometimes Feather Fall is just what you need to deal with some situation or get the treasure. It's not that I care that much about getting the treasure, but it's that figuring out how to do it is fun.

Or another case in point: Soloing a wizard in DDO. The fundamental problem is that not only do you have few hit points and bad AC, you don't even have enough spell points to kill every mob in the instance. (This is in contrast to sorcerors, who probably do have enough spell points.) So, you are going to have to do something more creative. I've found one style that works pretty well, but there are probably more.

Have I ever given up and looked at the answer on the internet? Not once. As Tipa says:

I could go the web and find the next step already written out for me, with guides and arrows and hints and suggestions and 8×10 glossy pictures with a paragraph on the back explaining each one in great detail with times and dates and ….

Ahem. I think you mean "8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one"

(What can I say? I am that guy. I am the original "that guy". This sort of thing is bound to happen when you are 3000 years old.)

But it's a good point. There's one dungeon, early on, that I still don't quite understand all of how it works: What's that lever for? But maybe I will figure it out one day. And that will feel really good. And I'll be happy for them, but irritated that they got it first.

May you all have a Thanksgiving dinner that can't be beat.

And the Hairstyle is Perfect!

I've taken up a new MMO - new for me, anyway - Dungeons and Dragons Online. Dungeons and Dragons isn't new to me. For some reason, my wife and younger child both started playing this a few weeks ago. It's free to download and start playing, and they just couldn't stop talking about it. So I thought I'd get some firsthand experience with the "free to play" model, and see how my old friend translated to a MMORPG.

I'm loving it.

The "free to play" model doesn't seem terribly intrusive. Especially on the newbie island, you get reminded a lot that there is stuff to buy, but that tails off in Stormreach. Since I'm a cheapskate and a purist, I resist buying things to make adventuring easier. About the only things I'd consider paying for are new adventure packs and races/classes. Except the only race you have to pay for are drow and well, gosh. That's not really my style. Why be a drow when you can be a high elf? Yes, yes, I know, Drizzt and all that. But tortured, angsty, complicated vampires dark elves yearning to be good? Not really my thing.

But classes, on the other hand...You need to pay extra to play monk or favored soul, a variant of cleric. These have my interest. As alts of course.

Toldain, in DDO, is a wizard (now 4th level) specializing in enchantment magics.

There are some things in DDO that I find highly refreshing, and counter to trends. There are traps, and locked doors and chests. There are secret doors. The skills that you have matter. The game brings back a whole category of gameplay that was a staple of tabletop D&D - traps and secret doors. First you have to have someone out there who can notice danger - the Spot skill. Then you need someone who can search to find exactly where the trap is, or where that secret door is. Finally, once you can see the trap, you have a question as to what to do about it.

Some traps can be jumped over, or timed. They might have the "dropping blade" variety, and so you can try and time it to run through without being hit. Or you can bring someone along who can disable the trap, provided they've brought thieves tools. Or maybe you just avoid the whole thing. Meaningful strategic options, yum!

Speaking of meaningful strategic options, the wizard gameplay definitely highlights strategy as well. But let's talk about how the wizard/sorceror split plays out in the online version first. In tabletop D&D, wizards had a big book of all the spells they knew, out of which a few were prepared for the day. Each prepared spell was cast exactly once, if you wanted to cast Magic Missle more than once, you had to prepare it more than once. And at first level, you were likely to have no more than three prepared spells. The rest of the time you threw darts at the monsters from behind the fighter. Sorcerors, on the other hand, had no spell book. They could cast maybe four spells a day, but each casting could be any of the limited number of spells that they had in their head. This differentiation was introduced in D&D's 3rd edition, and provided a neat solution for accommodating different playstyles. For players and campaigns with more of a "we don't know what's coming next" feel, sorcerors worked better, but if you had the sort of campaign where you had a rough idea of what might be coming, and liked planning ahead, wizard filled the bill.

In DDO, casting 3 spells before resting would be severely limiting. Combats go much faster than they do on the tabletop, so the game needs to be tweaked appropriately. Thus there are spell points, and old and familiar idea. Wizards prepare spells in taverns or at rest shrines, and may cast each prepared spell as many times as their spell points permit. Spell points, along with hit points are refreshed in town and in taverns, and at rest shrines in dungeons.

Sorcerors, on the other hand, may cast any spell they know, provided they have spell points. But they can't scribe new spells from scrolls, like wizards can. However, they have probably twice as many spell points. So, they tend to use the same tactics in every dungeon.

In experimenting, I first tried making Toldain as a sorceror. After all, they use Charisma as their best ability score, and charm is my middle name. Toldain Charm Darkwater, right there on the birth certificate. Really! However, the first village features battles with Sahuagin, who, as monstrous humanoids, are not subject to Charm Person. Oops, one of my two first-level spells just became useless. This has something to do with why the game calls this path for the sorceror "extremely difficult" to solo.

So I'm a wizard. I get to think about what the dungeon I'm about to run in might/does contain, and which spells to use, and which tactics. Actual strategic thinking!

Gameplay for other classes also features some strategic thinking, as to choice of gear and supplies. Clerics and Paladins must also prepare spells.

DDO seems to embrace the idea of tactics in a way that few MMO's do. For example, terrain. Once upon a time, in Everquest, there was path-kiting. Miniscule wrinkles in terrain would make mobs take strange detours, while you could plug them. Mobs would also walk through walls to come and eat you, which seems unfair, since we couldn't walk though the walls. Finally, in DDO, mobs will block players as well as other mobs. And the pathing is much better.

The typical thing that you would see in an MMO is that a mob that is at range with no path to you would teleport to you, or even be able to hit you despite a large difference in altitude. Not so in DDO. If you want to stand the fighter in the doorway, and throw daggers from behind him, go for it! But be warned, taunt mechanics are somewhat weaker, though not completely gone. Use terrain and movement more, and taunt less.

But the mobs are using terrain, too. They will place ranged attackers on high inaccessible points, and force you to engage them in ranged combat, or have someone climb up to them. Climbing and jumping seem to have increased value, and points spent on the Jump skill will make you jump higher and farther. The game has a bit of a Legends of Zelda feel in many dungeons, where you need to find the right lever to pull in order to open the next door. And it has a bit of the qualities of a platform rpg, a la Prince of Persia, with the jumping around.

And there's a very different attitude toward sneaking. Sneaking is not seen as bypassing content, but as part of the fun. In the first part of Stormreach, there's even one dungeon in which the point is to steal something without killing more than 6 of the lookouts. You do not get experience for killing random mobs, but for accomplishing objectives. Which makes sneaking past things make a whole lot of sense.

There are other dungeons with a focus on traps, and at least a few with some genuine puzzles to solve. They don't seem to worry about the fact that one can look online to solve them. (So far I haven't, why spoil the fun?)

As you can tell, I'm really liking the game. I like the art choices, and the gameplay choices. I think it's an evolutionary step forward, even as it tries to bring what's fun about D&D into the MMO sphere. But the best part of all, the thing that makes it precious to me above all others (at least for now) is that my youngest child will actually play D&D Online with me.