RPG Archives - Page 10 of 10 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Role-Playing

October 12, 2013October 12, 2013 by Belghast

Make Believe

This is a topic I have kicked around for awhile, and been uncertain of when exactly I wanted to use it. I have a rather conflicted relationship with role-playing. Essentially every person that plays a video game to at least some extent pretends to be someone else while they are playing it. Even if it is just changing your own world view just enough to accept that you can shoot laser beams out of your eyes… or jump in mid air. Role-playing however takes this simple “being someone else” a whole lot further. The average role-player generates a whole series of motivations and outlooks for their character fleshing them out into a real virtual personality.

I find this whole process extremely interesting, and I have always gotten along extremely well with serious role-players. I think this starts back when I found the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Manual in a locker at the end of school one year. From that point onwards pen and paper games colored my destiny. The thing is… or me they were always a game, not really a way of looking at the world. While some of my friends geeked out on figuring out a series of complex motivations for their character… I just wanted to grab a sword and slaughter endless goblins in search for big treasure and even bigger weapons.

Role-playing

While I love the theory of role-playing, and I will always gravitate towards a role-playing community… or a role-playing server… I am not actually a role-player. The above image is a collage of my characters from multiple games. You will notice a distinct pattern among them because in essence they are all exactly the same character. Belghast is essentailly the “super me”, an idealized version of myself and the way I wish I actually looked. While I do rock a moustache and goatee I have always wished my hair was black instead of the odd mishmash of brown, blond, with little bits of red especially in my beard.

Additionally I have always wished I had the type of head shape to support a pony-tail and make it look natural. However when I have tried it in the past, it hangs off my head like a top-knot so I only end up looking like a very fat samurai. It is in online games that I can fix the flaws in my own appearance and great this idealized version of myself. The games that allow me to create this appearance are ultimately games I really enjoy playing, however the ones that do not really support it.. ultimately are not as enjoyable for me and fall by the wayside. Namely I am looking at the Asian-styled games with their pretty boy appearances.

The thing is… there is no actual “character” of Belghast. Just like I use online games to revise my own appearance, to a lesser extent I revise my character and pump them into each of these avatars. While I keep all the good traits, like empathy and compassion… I get rid of my more conflicted and cerebral nature so that I can essentially become a man of action and not so much a man of constant indecision. The funny thing is… over the years of playing this character it has made the real person behind it more confident, less likely to mire down in over evaluation and more likely to take actions and risks. I feel like being a leader in online games has in turn made me more of a leader in real life, or at least have more confidence to lead.

Shoot First, Ask Questions Never

While so many of my life long friends are serious role-players, there is so much about their nature that I just do not understand. This has come to light lately while we are playing Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. In this game you are actually penalized for rolling multiple characters, since one character can literally do everything in the game. However as they approach the game… each of their internalized characters has a specific thing they do, and sensibilities. So for them it is extremely jarring to see their mage archetype wielding a sword as a gladiator. For me… it just keeps me from having to create three clones of myself like I did in The Secret World.

The end result is that many of them are splitting their focus between different characters, or in the case of a few of them creating a melee character and a caster character to keep from destroying their mental picture of what each character should be. So much of me just doesn’t understand why it matters. I respect the fact that it does matter to them, but since I always play the same character regardless of what game or class I am playing… it all feels so esoteric to me.

In-Character

The concept of role-playing inside of a game is also mostly lost on me. In every RP focused game there has been some spot where players gather together to talk amongst themselves in character. While I think it is extremely cool that people do this… I have never really understood it. Character dialog has always been the part of pen and paper role-playing that I was least interested in. I am that guy in ever campaign that always wants to blow the informants head off and search the corpse for clues… rather than try and ferret the information out of them with dialog. As a result I am the character with the highest body count, and the most well armed.

By a similar fashion.. I just can’t understand standing around in Stormwind talking about dragons that you have killed… when I could be out in the world killing new ones. I get fidgety when I go too long without combat in and MMO. I have developed this notorious reputation for always being in combat at exactly the wrong time. If the party pauses even for a moment… I am off pulling something else… and as a tank I have a long line of really amazing healers that enable these bad decisions. But nothing about this personal make-up is conducive to sitting around a hub and having long drawn out conversations “in-character”.

The Community

So as I said at the beginning of this post… I have deeply conflicted feelings about role-playing in general. On one hand, I will always gravitate towards a Role-playing server, simply because I feel that role-players as a whole are far more community minded. As a result a RP server will have all of the social structure I am used to… crafters guilds, event planners, friendly, helpful and mostly mature gamers that will in turn make my gaming experience more enjoyable. So as a result I support role-playing in whatever form it takes. If someone talks to me in character, I try my damnedest to respond back in character to not break the narrative.

However there will never be a time at which I actually seek out role-playing. If I know a guild or a raid stays in character constant, I will actively shy away from it. One of my really great friends had an amazing RP guild in WoW… but I did a dungeon run with them once… and after seeing that they chose to run dungeons in character… it was not a thing I ever repeated. It feels very foreign to me, and gets in the way of my constantly causing mayhem style of play. The thing is… I thought it was super cool that they had a group of individuals that wanted to do that, so while I was along for the ride I tried my damnedest not to break their run.

So I love Role-players, I love that people exist that can create such vivid make believe worlds that they can sustain similarly vibrant characters. I however am not one of them, but I don’t have to be a dancer to admire the beauty of ballet, and in a similar fashion I do not have to be an RPer to admire the fact that they exist. So as a result I will always be a supporter of the practice, even if I am not a participator. I hope games continue to support role-playing as a community rule-set, and I will continue to rabidly report all those horrible non-character names out there. I feel that games that support multiple play-styles and points of view to be the best, so here is hoping that games in the future will not forget that.

Sponsors Unite

October 2, 2013 by Belghast

Class of 2013

Yesterday the 2013 Newbie Blogger Initiative officially kicked off and the new blogs are starting to trickle into the forum. Yesterday I updated my blogroll to include the five blogs that had signed up to date, and over the night another two have joined the fray. Here is hoping that the effort will continue to grow throughout the month. Last time we ended up with I believe 110 new blogs starting the process, so we have a long ways to go before we see those numbers.

I will update my blogroll accordingly later today… but currently this years crop looks a little something like this…

Check them out and give them some link love.

Sponsors Unite

Similarly, yesterday kicked off quite a number of “advice” posts from the sponsors. Like always these varied in topic greatly covering general tips, where to find inspiration, and various technical tidbits. I am sure in the coming days we will be seeing a lot more of these posts but so far here is the run down of topics that were posted as of this morning.

I am sure as the month rolls on, we will see quite a few more sponsor posts as well. I think for the first day, the program was pretty well represented. My goal is to do a short daily synopsis of what all has been happening on the days I am not posting an advice article myself.

Heroic Characters

A few days ago I had posted about the fact that October 1st was the beginning of the ability to create a free Heroic Character in Everquest 2. Most of us initially thought this was for subscribers only… or in EQ2 nomenclature “Gold Members”. However yesterday Stargrace of MMO Quests pointed out that ANYONE can log in and create a free level 85 character during the October 1st – October 15th period. Additionally they have once again tightened the reins of the free to play restrictions. Previously it was extremely frustrating to play a free to play character, because you could not equip Legendary or higher items… which meant that essentially you could not equip anything that came from a dungeon or most world drops.

With the introduction of Heroic Characters, all of these item locks are gone… as are the various items that were sold on the store to unlock the ability to equip them. Additionally as of yesterdays patch… much like they did in the past with other expansions… Destiny of Velious is now included for free. This gives you access to content up to level 95, and covers all of the newer zones added into the game. They have also broken up the Age of Discovery features into bite sized chunks that allow you to gobble up only the pieces you want, for example you can buy access to mercenaries only, or just the beastlord class. Since they are removing some of the appeal for remaining a gold member, they have added in a permanent +15% coin loot bonus and +10% mount speed bonus to all existing gold members. They have also mentioned they will be adding more perks into the equation to keep maintaining gold level a valuable thing.

The Swash and Berserker

Wanting to take advantage of the free promotion, I logged in both of my accounts last night and created and or upsized characters on each. For some time I had been trying to level a dps character on my main account, and had created Belgrifter a Ratonga Swashbuckler. Namely the Swash is a very high survival dps, and I was having a decent time leveling him. Ultimately I ran into the same roadblock I ran into with all of my characters however. Once you have had flight in EQ2, you simply do not want to level a character without it. So essentially I was stuck with a decision… either grind up tradeskills or grind up levels. I managed to push him up to 55 before something shiny caught my eye and I abandoned the effort.

Since I could not really see myself returning to playing him until I had flight… I decided to go ahead and use that accounts token to super size my Ratonga. The gear that they give you is extremely nice… far nicer than the gear I have ever started velious content in before. I seriously doubt if I will replace any of it during the Othimir quests, it seems to be on par with that level of item. The weapon choices were a little wonky, giving me a sword and a mace… but I can live with that. The big problem is I have NEVER used a mace on my rat… but they auto leveled all of my weapon skills for me… so that really is not a problem.

If you look at the image from the above paragraph you will see Belglaive my new 85 Iksar Bezerker. On my second account I mostly had support classes, as I used to regularly dual box before the release of Mercenaries. As a result I really did not have anything “tanky” on that account. If I ever wanted to dual box again, I figure it would end up extremely handy to have access to a tank, and Bezerker is the one I have never really played to high levels. I have a very small dwarven one on my main account, but I think he is somewhere in the 30s. The best thing is… the changes give me full access again to my Dark Elf Warden, since I had stopped playing him due to the item restrictions and not wanting to maintain a second subscription.

Wrapping Up

The ability to create a free level 85 character is an extremely amazing offer. If you have ever considered playing EQ2, I highly suggest you make an account during the 1-15 period and create a level 85 even if you do not intend to play it right now. You can do a lot of cool stuff with an 85, and even use it to feed lower level characters items. I have always loved EQ2, and I will admit the prospect of fresh high level characters has gotten me pumped about playing it some again. Just not sure how often I will do so… given my current addiction to Final Fantasy XIV. If you do end up rolling characters, I highly suggest Antonia Bayle the Roleplaying server. It has probably the best community I have seen in any game… other than potentially Landroval in LOTRO.

The Secret World Impressions

May 14, 2012May 12, 2012 by Belghast

[update] The beta weekend continues Friday 5/18.

At this point I have spent about 6 hours in total running around in Funcom’s latest MMO, The Secret World. Up to this point I hadn’t really fully decided if I liked the game or not. From what I am seeing floating around, seems like most people are having similar mixed emotions. The game is an odd mixture of really good elements, and horrifically bad elements. Up to now I wasn’t quite sure if the good were good enough to make me ignore the bad.

The Ugly and Awkward

The Secret World focuses heavily on the story of this dark setting. The problem is, the cut scenes and voice acting that make up the otherwise well written story are tragically bad. The motion of the characters are rigid and mannequin-like as then bend in impossibly puppet like directions. The voice acting varies greatly between extremely well done, to tragically confused accents.

The saddest part about this is that the dialog is actually extremely well written. The characters are interesting enough to make you take note of them and remember their names. They weave a story of a world gone wrong. Instead of giving it to you in a sea of quest text that you likely wont ever read, you have to draw it out of the characters a line at a time. In traditional roleplaying game fashion, each question has multiple answers, and talking to the NPC yields different results each time. When you have heard all the possible results, a green check mark shows up at the end of the prompt.

So the game world is intricate and engaging, but you are forced to sit through a sequence of awkward cut scenes and often times lousy voice overs to get to the meat of the game. In SWTOR you could skip through the voice over, and still be able to read the text by hitting the spacebar. Unfortunately right now there is no option like this, and you are forced to make a decision between sitting patiently through the rough movies, or skipping them entirely with the escape key and having no clue what is actually going on.

The biggest detractor the game has right now is the fact that in order to get into any action at all, I had to sit through literally 45 minutes of cut scenes and fed ex quests in London before I could actually go do anything interesting. I’ve heard this intro was unique to the beta weekend, and I really hope they either greatly reduce it, or remove it entirely. Once you get to Kingsmouth the game becomes fun and interesting, but up to that point you feel like you are having to suffer through a mile of bad road.

The Really Good

The atmosphere of the game is amazing. When you land in Kingsmouth you are surrounding by a town besieged by zombies and other things that go bump in the night. Little gatherings of survivors fight to stay alive in the midst of the ravenous hordes. The game feels like a really good World of Darkness gaming session. I was expecting to need to roll 7d10 for Initiative at any moment. It has been years since a game made me physically jump, and as I wandered around the small town, I jumped several times as a zombie horde rushed out of hiding at me.

The game is pretty much standard role playing game fare, talk to NPCs, get a quest and them complete it by following on screen guidance. Where the game differs greatly however is the fact that your standard MMO trope of batching up a bunch of quests simply does not work here. The system really is designed for you to focus on a single quest, and then follow it through to its logical conclusion. When you pick up additional quests they go into a 6 quest queue, but only one can be actively worked on at a given time.

I actually found myself taking notes as I played, trying to remember where I had seen quest objects in the world to interact with and accept the quest after I finished the one I was on. I found a severed arm, a damaged pda, a suspicious body, forgotten mail, all beckoning me to figure out what exactly was up with each. Over the hours of play, I have been working my way through a laundry list of objectives I found both from various NPCs and out in the “wild”.

Level-less system still has levels

I went into the beta assuming this would be the case, but there is no such thing as a level-less system. While there is no magical number that appears on your character, there is a mechanism in place that determines how well you perform verses the various mobs. I have not entirely reasoned out how it works, but it seems as you gain more Skill Points and Anima Points you gain additional hit points. So essentially, the number of points you have accumulated roughly equates to your level.

Monsters in the world have a “con”, just like they do in any other game. White mobs are roughly equivalent to your own level, and Yellow are much harder. I’ve heard there are other colors that denote different relations, but to this point I have not encountered them. Normal mobs are marked with a dot, if you see more than one icon on their nameplate, it means they come as part of a group. I’ve run into several mobs that are marked with a flag, and they seem to be some form of a mini-boss classification.

Atmosphere: Dice Included

So essentially you have all the same characteristics of a traditional mmo, they are just wrapped in a more pen and paper dynamic. Honestly the entire game feels like it came from one of my late night Werewolf: The Apocalypse sessions, tracking down the taint of the Wyrm. One of the first equipable items I got as a drop, were Dice. I can see several different games here. Parts of it feel like Matrix Online, other parts like Grand Theft Auto 3, and even others like the early PSX Survival Horror titles.

As I walk down the foggy streets near the shore, I had multiple flashbacks to playing Silent Hill. Honestly so far I have yet to see any reason why this game has to be an MMO at all. The atmosphere is great, I love the town, the abandoned cars, and the crude fortifications the survivors have thrown up. One of the early quests I did involved helping the Sherriff defend the barricades against hordes of oncoming zombies. Each time a new wave would spawn in the distance, a “tornado” siren would start up warning against their arrival.

Forgettable Combat

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I had withheld my opinion on whether or not I was able to look past the bad and see the good. As I have played the game more, around hour three, it started growing on me. I can see the potential I guess. The game is still very rough, there are a good number of awkward and confused things about it, but there is also a good deal of raw intricacy there. Part of the reason why I love Everquest 2 so much, is because the game exudes depth, and even in one small coastal town I can see depth to spare.

There are going to be several folks that will be turned off as a whole by the game. I’m nearing the end of at least one of the skill trees, and to this point combat is still wholesale forgettable. I went with a blades build, that overall feels much like the Katana Scrapper in City of Heroes. So far however, it seems like my PBAOE resource builder attack, is somewhat of an I-Win button. I can run into a pack of zombies and just brainlessly spam it until I win a prize.

When I face bigger baddies, I have to use more or two other attacks, but overall the combat is pretty mindless. So long as I am careful with what I attack, and watch out for drawn areas on the ground to avoid, I can pretty much defeat anything without much issue. That isn’t to say that I have not taken more than my fair share of deaths. Before I had the basics of the “con” system explained to me, I was trying to take down mini bosses and much higher level monsters that I could realistically handle. The big problem is, nowhere during the tutorial does it ever explain how you should actually play the game.

The Rundown

So far I really like what I see. I like the look and feel of the world. Unfortunately the game has a long way to go before it will be ready for the bulk of the MMO market. By the large number of negative reviews I have already seen this weekend, the game is just accessible enough for most people. Personally I am looking for games more like EQ2, and less like WoW/Rift/SWTOR. So all the extra fluff this game has, really appeals to me, and I can look past some of the akward combat and cutscenes for the time being.

What has me most concerned is the fact that this game is supposedly shipping in roughly a months time. Based on the multiple alphas and betas I have participated in over the years, I see multiple months worth of solid work here. If this title launches as it is, I am afraid it will fail to find a stable market. I know now that I will likely play it when it launches, but I will also be playing EQ2, GW2, and probably others. The game has to be a bit more polished than it is now if it hopes to win even my full attention.

I am looking forward to spending more time working through Kingsmouth. I hope by the next beta, we see a good amount of polish applied. I am really hoping that they can poke and prod and tweak everything to make the overall experience better. They’ve nailed the atmosphere, and they have some really good writing, the delivery just gets lost in all the lousy animation. Hopefully they will work on all of this, because I see a game that will be really fun if they do.

Ultimately the final challenge will be in pumping out the content. SWTOR was a fun theme park ride, but after riding the roller coaster to completion three times, I just don’t care to ride it any more. The storytelling, voice, and cinematics were an amazing tour de force. When the story is over however, there just was nothing left I cared to do. The Secret World will have to find a way to avoid the same trap WoW, Rift and SWTOR didn’t. The end game has to be something other than raiding, pvp and dailies. Here is to hoping they find a way to make the game stay relevant once you reach the ultimate cap.