RPG Articles

I can’t speak for the whole republic of the interwebs, but let me tell you when I download games from file shares rather than buy them.

1) No longer available. Such as Metal Fatigue. Fucking Psygnosis and their convoluted fucking corporate death.

2) I’ve bought the game, but it has DRM, which is irritating. Especially if you’re trying to use wine to run it under linux.

3) There’s no fucking demo available.

4) I bought the game, then had the disc get nuked.

Allow me to harp on point 3 there, ok? A number of studios have embraced Steam like services, which is fantastic, and the internet has been used to deploy patches for a long time now, yet demos of things are still so fucking rare, which is a shame. Green House Games seems to have this pegged, but for a lot of titles we either never see a demo or only get one months and months after release. So, in lieu of that, I download the illegal versions. Why? Because if I’m shelling out $40 to $60 I’d like to know if something is going to make me vomit or not.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a short list of titles I can think of doing this way then purchasing

Mechwarrior 4 (and all the expansions)
Dawn of War, plus the extortions, I mean expansions
Supreme Commander + Forged Alliance
Il2 Sturmovik

There’s others that I’m pretty sure about, but not enough to put it on paper.

I’ve been playing some Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance the last few days and it’s got me thinking about economies in games.

In SupCom you have three resources: Mass, Energy, and Your Last God-damned Nerve. You spend the entire game with a mess of power, but struggle constantly for Mass. It takes a brilliant game and dulls it. I realize that it can be made to work, and that it can add a good drama factor, but realistically this is only true on the fairly large maps. For a quick-ish game on a small or medium map it’s a pain in the ass.

In Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Arrakis you had two resources: Power (from windtraps for some reason) and spice. Spice converted to money over a small period of time. Power was not terribly insistent, so you just built some windtraps and had at it. From there you just had to manage your harvesters, but this largely automatic. All you had to really worry about was defending your harvesters. It worked brilliantly.

Rise of Legends was interesting. You had Wealth (or Energy for the Cuotl) and Timonium. The pacing and scale of the game worked with the map design in such a way that while your economy could be disrupted it wasn’t such a constant threat that it became the deciding factor of play. Also, I rocked with the Cuotl (at least amongst my loser friends).

Now for my favorite.

Metal Fatigue. You had two resources: Energy and Manpower. Manpower came simply from building units to thaw your crew, so it didn’t even feel like a resource. Energy could be extracted from lava pools or solar panels. Lava pools could run out, but replenished over time. It required no transport, power went directly to your base from the gathering unit. This model provided the edge of resource protection and expansion, but with absolutely no hassle.

Anyway. I was just woolgathering on the subject.

So, I tested my map routine with a second star. The star positions and everything just fine, but the label doesn’t. Have to work on that.

I’ve been programming a crude clone of Master of Orion. I mean, sure, I’ll be adding my own spin on it, but at the core of its being it is simply that.

I’ve gotten pretty far in a short amount of time. The map structure is laid out, all in XML so it’s easy to edit and apply to other data parsing tools. Mechanisms to lay stars out in a visual map, and give them name labels, are also in place and working (knock on wood) wonderfully. A lot of underlying data structures are roughed out. Oh, and a routine to figure out what star you’ve clicked on is in place. I might be able to do this a different way that’s more efficient, but I’m not certain yet.

What the hell is wrong with you idiots? You have a title that is virtually guaranteed to push units, and a lot of them, so you add some bullshit to it, in an effort to make it tough to steal.

Let me inform anyone that hasn’t figured this out- Any game that isn’t online only, and probably a few that are, has copy protection broken within a day or two of release, if not before. I don’t know how much it costs to license crap like secuROM, or how much time it takes to actually lace it into a software release, but I’m willing to bet it’s not insubstantial. You should roll that money into something useful, like Christmas bonuses for the code monkeys and art guys.

Want to know when I’ve had trouble with copy protection? It’s always been on games I’ve bought, and I always download cracks for them. Always. The reasons for this are twofold-

A) If a game installs every resource it needs to my hard drive, why the hell should I dig out a disc to play?
B) Copy protection is oddball software, and causes oddball issues at oddball times.

Some companies take the approach of patching the copy protection out shortly after release, which is commendable, but begs the question of why they bothered paying for the privilege of loading this crud just to work on removing it. Allow me to assure you that it does dick all in regards to stopping zero day pirate releases over the interwebs. Nor does it stop the only real problem with piracy, which is “companies” selling hacked copies to the naive, which I can least see as you losing a sale on.

You guys really shouldn’t worry about it. Implement some basic online key checking, with phone backup, to keep the retards happy, and forget about it. It won’t stop it, but you’ll stop having to spend so much money and effort on it.

I saw some trailer for Warhammer Online, and my first thought was “Why do all MMOs look more or less like ass?”.

City of Heroes- Was actually rather attractive, but even something attractive loses all appeal when you copy and paste it across the universe. Initially I was like “The characters are awesome looking, and the actual levels are really good”, but like everything else about the game it all became dull and repetitious eventually. Animations were good, but used without variation ad nauseum.

EVE Online- EVE has the distinction of being one of the few MMO games, in my admittedly limited experience, to improve it’s looks over time, but it still lags pretty far behind. Ships got prettier, and maybe bases, all well behind what you can really do, but acceptable for a smaller company, but things like planets, stars, and various cosmic phenomena never really went anywhere.

Ryzom- Not the ugliest, but not pretty. It had a stylish design going for it, but precious few polygons to render it. The ability creation was very interesting, but the grinding was akin to sand blasting your own rectum.

Guild Wars- This game was actually pretty attractive, but the animations were terrible. Then there was the play mechanics, which became so overbearingly awful that it was enough to gag me. I feel bad to this day that I talked two friends into playing it with me, based on my short couple of hours with it, during the fun part.

World of Warcraft- Is colorful, I’ll give it that. That’s all I can give it though. Suffers from massive cookie cutter syndrome and poor animations.

Anarchy Online- Is hideous to look directly at. The only thing I’ve seen that’s uglier is Second Life.

Sure, these games all need a large player base to thrive, I get that, but graphics are adjustable. I’m just suggesting that the art departments should shoot higher.

Apparently this was percolating deeper, however, and started me thinking of why these games always frustrate me into leaving. It hit me suddenly, just minutes before this post was started.

They aren’t games. At best they are free-form play. A game has a rather singular defining characteristic- at least one win condition. You get to level 80 or whatever, and have you won or lost anything? No, not really. You’re better than people that haven’t been playing as much, but that’s not winning really, it’s more like a bizarre twist on the way seniority works in unions. In EVE you can lose assets, but to most players it’ll never set them back enough to matter. In City of Heroes it’s not like ignoring Perez Park meant the gangs would get stronger, or flood into the city, nor could you ever make any sector safe, regardless of what you did or how diligent you were. These games are only games at the individual combat scale, which are only there to feed the mechanism of leveling/gearing up. There is no super game to it, just one tiny game that you repeat over and over.

Another massive issue is that combat is incredibly similar to rock paper scissors. Guild Wars actually had a lot of interesting ways to get around this, with a very malleable approach to abilities, so you at least had the swarm of interacting options you’d find in most RTS games. Such as this power trumps that power, but not when you back it with this other power, and so on. Not perfect, but at least it was an attempt. City of Heroes had a lot of this issue. I mostly played what was called a Fire Blaster. He was a devastating gHod of atomic flame, but anything remotely like cold killed him within a couple of hits usually. This would have been acceptable to me if I were resistant to fire, but fire just did normal damage, not extra damage like cold. Still, with a couple of varigated teammates and some fast reflexes for running away, you could mostly cope. Far from ideal, but not absolutely crushing. EVE is probably the worst offender. You don’t know it, but when you leave the station you’ve already won or lost your next combat. Without a well honed fleet there was nothing but raw chance of choice to decide it. If you took one defensive item, you couldn’t really take another, or you could but at the expensive of a very significant chunk of offensive ability, and it wasn’t just that it would be hard, it’s that it would be over.

The last really big issue, that I can think of now as sleep looms large, is that these game worlds are called persistent, but really they should be called static. Nothing can be changed by you except for some minor conditions with other players, such as killing them and looting some stuff. EVE tries to get around this with player owned stations and uncharted systems, but it’s such a massive pain in the ass that you have to be in a really big group to even think of it. Every other game, that I can think of right now, does dumb shit like give you an apartment or headquarters to decorate. Oh, thank gHod, I can fling fire from my eyes or summon demonic servants, allowing me to make my big impact on the world by choosing a floral wallpaper print.

So, what should be the goal, in this asshole’s opinion? Well, for one thing, do a good job on the art. Don’t waste time testing the bleeding edge, but for fuck’s sake try not to make your game look dated right out of the box. The next is that there has to be something like large scope win/loss conditions. I think some companies should setup a massive game with a definite lifespan. Say two or three years. Then you make it very dynamic, and very much leading to various points. Don’t force a conclusion, let the play decide how it goes. Something much more like a traditional pen and paper approach, at least in spirit. Make it a story. Remember that soap operas go on and on repetively and that stories have endings, because they actually make an impact when you experience them. After those couple years, have something else in the pipe ready to go, rewarding your players with bonuses or whatever based on their characters from the previous game. My next idea would be to embrace the sandbox. Acknowledge that it’s free form play instead of overlaying ridiculous crap to pretend it’s a game. In theory you could say Second Life tries this, but it’s too awful to qualify as anything but waste heat. Seriously though, give the players a toolset that’ll yield unpredictable results and let them do to each other whatever they can with those tools. Lastly would be a sort of pendulum status game. You start of weak, then scheme, bluster, or power through until you’ve built something up, only to lose it when another player usurps or destroys you. This is something like what EVE does, but it’s important to remember that games, while based on winning and losing, need to be fun. Make it so that being clever can win the day, incorporate some of those sandbox tools and ideas, but within a larger playing field.

Ok. Bed now.

Aaron suggested I try Second Life, for some reason that I can’t clearly recall. Since I’ve done nothing but rag on it, I figured, ok, fine, let’s be fair here and actually try it.

Now I’m sitting here, looking at the avatar selection menu, and all I can suspect is that Aaron wants to observe my brain herniating. I should point out to him that when I die, I will undoubtedly be sitting on his furniture when I lose control of my bladder and bowels.

Seriously though, these avatars? Wow.

but I’m really tired of these “expansions”, which are the entire game but require you to have the previous games installed to play as the units from those games. Seriously now.

Sure, there’s an unlocker utility, made by a fan, that allows you to just put in your keys and all that, but come on. This sort of thing is just a pain in the ass. At most I’d expect the game to ask for my keys, and at best it just wouldn’t matter that much.

Feh. Everyone everywhere seems to get more retarded every day.

Conceptually, I love video games. Have since my first exposure, shortly after being able to walk semi-reliably. But over the last couple of years I’ve noticed that I feel punished by the games I’m playing. Honestly it’s impossible for me to tell if it’s me or them.

Let’s start with FPS games. These used to be games I didn’t like, but then grew on me, and now I honestly can’t give a damn about. Doom, Quake, and all of their sequels were nothing but nonsense. Later I discovered Unreal Tournament, which had a certain organic flow to its twitch gameplay, and I was hooked. Followed up by Rebel’s excellent AvP, and the cool but somehow lesser AvP2 from… damned if I can recall. Somewhere in there Deus Ex came out, which aside from the multiplayer was one of the finest FPSs ever made. Now? I dunno. It all feels drab. Bioshock really sealed it for me. The game, from the Irrational guys, had a lot of hype, meaning you have to deduct at least 30% from your expectations, but even after that it was a pile of crap. Sure, it was just a demo, but this is supposed to be the next big game? All this talk about dynamic interactions, and organic play elements, and all you get is a stream of tightly scripted events. Ok.. well.. maybe this environment interaction stuff is hot. No, no I’d say it was pretty standard. Bumping junk over is, well, not that impressive. At one point I used the fire ability, torching some stuff, and noticed that a bottle of booze had some flames on it. I could still drink it, and they just went out pretty shortly. Woot. You have this lightning power, which stuns the weaker enemies. Not kills, despite being lightning, but stuns. Unless they’re in a puddle of water, then they die. Multiples of them will die. Beats the hell out of me why that would be. Then there’s these powers themselves. It’s just magic. The whole thing is just a magic system based on being a crazed junkie. Actually, that would be more interesting, but I digress. Made me want to go and find a copy of Parasite Eve. Sure, it was an RPG, but at least I could fiddle with my gun and all my powers were appropriate to the genre.

So, next are the RPGs. This is a lot like complaining about Santa Claus, because there just aren’t any. The few that do make it to release are either total crap, an MMO (see total crap), or a “hybrid game” (see total crap). Like Oblivion. I wanted to like it. I did. But what the hell man? “Part first person shooter, part RPG, part retard coddler, this one has everything!!”. The game ran like crap, on any system I saw it on, then proceeded to be an endless parade of the same crap. Add that to a “dynamic challenge” system that rewarded you for not leveling and you get a steamy pile of stink. I get depressed thinking about the next Fallout game. MMOs are… sad. I currently play EvE online, but I think I’m cancelling it. Games that rely on socializing, and most of them make that the primary object now, are just weird and sad. Click… type at retards I don’t know…. click… more typing…. hey you were interesting, bet you never login under this account anymore… click… what the hell is the goal here…. click… I think I’m gonna go see a movie….. cancel account.

Then there’s the RTS games. Amongst my earliest favorite games was Dune 2000. Then there were all those awful Command & Conquer games, and the mind numbing Starcraft. Then I caught a break and Emperor:Battle for Dune came out. Neither game was perfect, what is, but both captured a lot of cool elements and flow of play that few others ever have. Sure, people that memorize build orders, click out a thousand orders a minute, and exploit odd mechanics to optimize unit survival can win that way, but unlike other RTS games of the time, that wasn’t the only way to play. You could strategize some, rather than pick a strong unit and churn out a billion. Also, units didn’t have weird powers that had to be individually managed in order to be effective. Then came along Dawn of War, and later Supreme Commander. Excellent games, but frustrating for me. Dawn of War was hard to play with random unit spam. You had fairly small numbers of units, and a great overall balance. Then each revision and expansion eroded that to death. The Tau/Necron expansion pretty much sealed it. I knew it was over when my hyperactive friend started being able to churn out a billion units before I had five. Patched by the committee of people that hate non-repetitive tasks. Supreme Commander started off good, but a handful of super powerful, but standard, units with little to counter them with have upset the cart for me. There just isn’t any reason for me to play it anymore. I don’t want to right click 50 times a second to make my units survive an attack. I don’t want to face a flight of 50 gunships and have them be absolutely impossible to stop. Yet, these are, and will, be the ideas that get enhanced, because that’s how all these people “play”. Not with thought, but with trial, error, and memorization. Not being an ant, this doesn’t appeal to me.  The flipside of this sort of gameplay is something like Metal Fatigue, but it had a severe fatal flaw- a game could last forever. I’m all for epic, but forever is a bit much when you can’t save a multiplayer session. It also doesn’t work right with SP2 under XP, so it’s right out the damned window.

Is it me? I dunno. It doesn’t matter much either way I suppose.

So, some folks have been arrested.

Going after pirates and counterfeiters, while a huge waste of energy, is something I can understand, but going after mod chip people? Why do console people think that we’re renting this stuff from them? There’s a few reasons to mod a console-

• Play burned games. This is not to even say pirated games, but rather any game burned to a disc, such as a pirated image or backup.
• Make the device more useful, such as with a music player, movie player, and/or networking capabilities.
• Because someone likes to play import titles, and you’ve imposed an unreasonable and arbitrary restriction on that.

Seriously though, if you buy something, you can modify it. Sure, sometimes you have to be mindful of state or federal regulations, such as tuning a car or mucking with radio gear, but Dodge wouldn’t bother harassing people for adding a high flow filter, or cold air intake.

Then we get to something that always bothers me about these piracy issues. The “sales lost” numbers. Lost? You think they were all going to be sales homie? I’ve downloaded a lot of stuff for the PC over the years, and let me tell you, of the hundreds of games I’ve tried that way, only like 3 have ever been anything good. Know what I did then? Bought them, because it’s nice to support people that make something good. That and a lot easier to get updates, play online, or get support. Demos don’t cut it, usually, and ads are virtually worthless, for anything let alone something as “feel” driven as a game. It’d be like finding a warehouse of Crash Bandicoot bootlegs, sure you can talk about how “this would have been a trillion dollars in sales!!”, but in reality only like 4 copies of the game sold. Ever. Not because of piracy, but because it was bad. This isn’t like drugs or counterfeit money, where you have a guaranteed market.