Stop the DRM

When will companies learn that their draconian efforts to prevent piracy only serves to hurt their paying customers which directly affects their bottom line!!

Companies, you must stop counting pirated copies of your software as “lost revenue” — it’s not! Someone who is willing to pirate software isn’t willing to pay for it.. EVER! So you never had their money in the first place..

You’re trying so hard to capture that imagined lost revenue that it’s blinding you to how badly you’re screwing yourselves and your real customers..

Equating the number of pirated copies of your software directly to dollars is retarded.. More over, implementing these harsh DRM models only serves to prevent the honest players from playing your games, which effectively assures that you’re going to lose real money in the form of people who actually DO buy your games going else where..

Let take the new Silent Hunter 5 game as an example.. SH5 (a game with a lot of bugs and other issues that already pisses paying customers off) comes with the new DRM which forces you to be connected to the internet 100% of the time. The new system which the Ubisoft exec’s spin as being a positive thing for the customer is constantly phoning home to make sure you’re still allowed to play the game.. The game you purchased.

If at any time during your play period the connection to the mother ship fails, you stop playing the game. You can’t save your game.. You can’t do anything.. Effectively the game you purchased goes into cripple ware mode.. This is bullshit.

The hacker community took one good look at that and said “F’to you Ubi” and hacked it within the first 24 hours of release.. These people had no intention of buying the game in the first place so who does it actually hurt?

ME! If I’m playing the game that I purchased and I go on a road trip with my laptop, I can’t play it.. The hacker can.. he can play just fine..

If I am playing the game that I purchased at home and for whatever reason my internet goes out (it happens), I’m screwed.. Not the hacker.. He can keep playing..

So.. whats my recourse? Nothing.. I’m just shit out of luck.. I have to either accept their crappy DRM because apparently they think I’m the problem, or not buy the game in the first place.. The hacker doesn’t care, he isn’t troubled by these problems at all and in no way has the DRM affected him at all..

DRM only punishes the paying customer! Ubisoft is trying like hell to spin their new DRM in a positive light, but it’s not.. they claim that it’s “A platform of online services for PC titles offering gamers a more in-depth gaming experience as well as providing an innovative solution for reducing PC game piracy.” HUH?!

How did you do either of those things? It does absolutely NOTHING to offer me a more in-depth gaming experience and in fact does the opposite in that suddenly I have this invasive piece of software on my system that prevents me from playing at all from time to time.. I paid for the game, yet I’m punished.

And it doesn’t prevent or even reduce software piracy considering it was hacked out in the first 24 hours. The hackers never even notice the games DRM, it doesn’t bother them in the slightest..

At this point you’re actually encouraging people like me to hack the game because your own DRM is preventing the honest player from playing the game he paid for.. That’s right.. your DRM which is there to prevent piracy is actually encouraging piracy because otherwise we can’t play the game.. Good job genius..

You’re so busy counting the imaginary lost dollars you’re missing the fact that your real dollars are heading out the door.. The proof is in the pudding.. Your current sales for this year are down by over 20% and I have to think you only have yourselves to blame..

I realize fully that the “higher ups” are the ones making these decisions, but someone MUST stand up and tell them why DRM is not the right solution.. If you guys don’t stop the DRM shenanigans you guys are going to hemorrhage not money, but customers..

1. The people playing are douche bags
2. Just like SC1, the game is wildly out of balance

I’m playing in the friend and family beta and STILL the people I play against are rabid pricks..  People say all the time that MMO (WoW specifically) players are rude and jerks, and I have to say they are nothing compared to the Starcraft players..   It’s like all the lame ass epeen stuff you see in MMO’s that a player does over the course of the year or two he plays the game is compressed into one 20 minute game and so they have to be extra big douche bags just to be sure you know how uber they are and how much you suck..

I want to play any game of this nature against my friends or coworkers, and no one else.. I don’t want to have to suffer the fanboy jackasses who feel the need to tell you how much you suck every five minutes just to make themselves feel better..   I mean seriously how pathetic are you that you have to continually tell others they suck to make yourself feel better..

My second point is the balance issue..  I’m sorry but I always felt Starcraft 1 was out of balance..   Well guess what.. Starcraft 2 is also unbalanced..  And you’d think that Blizzard might take it as a clue that if everyone is playing one race, and no one is playing another race.. there’s a reason for it.

I just got finished playing a 2v2 game in which the opponents partner quit about 10 seconds into the game..  So it was actually a 2v1 game with 2 Zerg players versus 1 Terran player.

I always play Zerg, and this was the VERY FIRST TIME I had seen another player intentionally play Zerg..  In all the other games I have played so far, everyone plays Terran..  Clue one that Terran are over powered is that everyone plays them.. I have seen a few folks play protoss but not many..

And We played for something like 45 minutes, two Zerg versus one Terran and couldn’t beat him.  2v1 and we lost.    We used up ALL the resources on the map and weren’t able to get him out of his bolt hole..   Yes.. ALL of the resources.. I had 6 bases by the end of the game and my partner had 4..  The opponent just proceeded to nuke us into oblivion and all the attacking we did in the world did no good what so ever..

He had SWARMS of stuff flying and running around, was poking us from all sides as well as a continual nuke spam, and was mounting an impossible defense of our combined and organized attacks..  And he only ever had 2 bases.. He also had ample time to tell us how much we sucked..

I know I’m not great at this game.. but I’m not that darn bad.. and my partner seemed to know what he was doing..  I think it’s a pretty clear case of one side being over powered..

I tried to ask the Terran player what he was doing and he proceeded to tell me how great he was and how my parents should be embarrassed they gave birth to me…   This is a friend or a family member of a Blizzard employee..   Fine.. Fuck you.. You can have this game, I don’t want it..

Apple Fanboy

I understand brand loyalty, but Apple fanatics take it to extremes..  Buying something just because it has an Apple logo on the side is ludicrous..  Recently I had (via a forum) a conversation with someone who was in the market for a new monitor and they had their heart set on either the 24″ or 30″ Apple Cinema Display..   I pointed out the 28″ monitor that I use and offered it as a possible alternative simply because the ACD’s are stupidly expensive..

I told him that my monitor was much less than the 30″ ACD he was leaning towards, and in fact you could likely get 6 of mine for one of those.. Plus I pointed out that the majority of the stats for my monitor was actually better than the ACD.  To which he said that the monitor I used was cheap and ugly.   And compared the Apple Cinema Display to a fine bottle of wine, where as my monitor was a cheap sixpack.

What a pretentious douche..  He completely discounts my suggestion not on merit.. not on facts like specs or technical reasons.. No.. but because the Apple product is a fine bottle of wine, where as mine is a single out of a cheap six pack..  Wow..  The level of snobbery amazes me..  Hey buddy, you’re douchebag is showing..

Fine.. its his money, if he wants to blow almost two thousand dollars on something that he could get for three hundred.. go for it..  My mistake for trying to be helpful..  I gotta say though blind loyalty like that is retarded..  Buying something just because its the most expensive doesn’t guarantee its the best.. And buying something just so you can say you have one is equally dumb..  Fools and their money..  Most likely all you’re buying is that Apple logo..

Having said all this, I love my Mac Mini and the Apple products I use.. I have several.. I just would never purchase one of their monitors due to them being outlandishly expensive..  And for me the biggest thing that keeps me from buying more Apple products are the fanboys like this who are so snobby and stuck up it’s painful to deal with them.  And to think I actually tried to help this “genius”..

Apple needs to reinvent their image cause frankly that shit puts people off..

Latest Image

So I have always liked submarines, I think they are pretty neat.  I have wanted to create a 3D sub for a while and finally decided to get started on one..  Instead of going with a more modern design I went with one of the most popular submarine designs of old; the German type VII.   I also have to admit that another reason for this design is that I like the game “Silent Hunter” and the fifth installment of the game is coming out this year.

As I work on it, I’ll post images here to show where I am at and as with all my other posts the top most image will show the latest image or render.

I’m creating this entirely in Modo 401 using my Wacom tablet with the intent to make it as photo-realistic as possible.  That’s gonna be tough because it will force me to model everything in sub-d and it will really make me have to pay very special attention to my models materials, the shader tree and lighting..

The first 3 or 4 hours was scouring the net trying to find a set of plans for this boat.  Believe it or not it was harder than one might think..

The initial shape

+3 hours – Getting the initial shape - After getting my work area setup and getting the backdrops in place I was able to do this.  Not perfect, but not a bad start for getting the basic body shape down.  Next I’m going to try to form the outer hull actually into the bulb shape you see there.. for now that’s an additional mesh just sitting there.

Shape Refinement

+3 hours – Shape refinement – So I know it doesn’t look much different but it is.. I have refined the hull shape a lot so that now the top deck area is actually the shape it should be for holding the conning tower and what not.  But more importantly I have actually added those side bulges to the model such that they are part of the main layer and can be subdivided nicely.  No more having one model poke through another model.  Ding! “You have gained a level!”

It may sound like a simple thing but it’s actually complex if you’re coming from hard body modeling to subdivision modeling.

Front Wire Cutters

+3 hours – Front wire cutters – So I spent the better part of these three hours getting the front wire cutters (I guess that’s what they are) looking right under subd and making sure they smoothly transitioned into the rest of the mesh.  Good times.  It took longer than I wanted because I had some serious symmetry issues that I wasn’t sure how to sort out.  Thankfully, Modo has a Symmetry tool that does it all for you!  It’s just magic.. No clue how the hell that works.

I have also been researching what I want the top part of the boat to look like.. I wanted to keep the boat as accurate as possible and my research has lead me to believe that every fricken one of these boats was different..  For some reason I had it in my mind that manufacturing back then would be similar to how it is today.. But I guess I have to keep in mind that these things were built one at a time and each one was hand crafted.. So they tend to be a tad different from one another..

The more I work on this the more I think I would really like to visit a real one of these if for no other reason than to just gawk at it..

Conning Tower

+ 5 hours – The beginnings of a conning tower - I started and restarted this conning tower probably 10 times and even now I’m not 100% happy with it.   I kept going back and forth with the design as well as the number of tiers it would have.  This one has 2 which means this is a type VII-C or later as it will have two flak guns as opposed to only one.

It’s been hard to find plans with anything close to this so a lot of what I am doing comes from this kit built by Guillermo Martinez Baz..  Nice looking model Guillermo..

The shape of the tower has a lot of gentle curves and odd shapes so I have had to play with and learn the falloff tools a lot better in modo.. It was a great learning experience but I didn’t get a lot of work done for the 5 hours I spent on it..

Also the more I study Guillermo’s real world plastic model, the more I think my model is way off in some places..  My decking at the top of the model for example isn’t correct by a long shot.  Probably want I’m going to do is actually build an inner cigar shaped tube where the people would be to get some idea of why the exterior is shaped the way it is..

First Actual Render

+2 hours – The first actual render – So here you have the very first render of my entirely incomplete Type VII-C German U-Boat.  My goal is to have it render out with that underwater look but for now I’m going to make it really bright so I can see all the defects..

I still have a very long way to go.. I’m still working on the conning tower area as that will have a lot of detail.  I need to merge the two layers too so that the conning tower actually connects to the sub body, as right now they don’t.  Still having fun!  That’s what counts..

Details and Lighting

+4 hours – Adding detail and lighting – So there isn’t much of a change to the model here other than for details that are hard to see, and the obvious lighting differences.  I’m going to be making the necessary detail changes to the model to make it look better and better slowly over time, but I’m also going to be working on texturing and lighting while I can.

I have also learned that its not necessary to make everything part of the main mesh.. It’s okay to have sub-d elements in different layers so long as it looks okay.  The idea being if in the real world something is made of a single piece of metal then sure one layer is appropriate, otherwise more than one is fine..

Tail Features

+7 hours – Tail Features – I have spent a good portion of the day working on the tail features of my sub as well as generally mucking around with the over all look of the boat.   But primarily, the rear dive plains, propeller shafts, rudders, supports, struts..etc..  I have a long way to go but this put a nice dent into the rear features that up to this point were completely missing.

During this process it occurred to me that I don’t know which way the props should be twisted.. And I kind of assumed that they counter rotate.. So if that is way off some one please tell me..  The rudders are actually to scale according to the plans I have but damn they look big.. And my plans arent accurate at all with how far apart the propellers are, and so I did my best to “Guesstimate” and I think I blew it..  They seem a little too close together..

The more I work on this thing the more I hate how some of it has come out.. I spent such a long time getting those side bulges working and now I think they are too prominent..  The top decking is all wrong too in a few places..   Still I know I should give myself a break.. I mean this wont be a perfect thing no matter how hard I try.. I just don’t have the skills yet..  But I am going to work at it..  But my dreams of making this thing photo realistic likely wont happen at all..

And I haven’t even started to ruin the textures..

+10 hours – Still going! – Okay so I don’t have a picture this update..  I’m in the process of correcting a horrible mistake I made..   At some point I subdivided the entire main hull and it caused a lot of odd rendering artifacts.. I was pretty upset that I had done this at first because apparently I did it days ago and didn’t even notice!  Luckily I make daily backups of my model and I work in a lot of layers.. so thankfully its only a matter of using the old hull and bringing it back up to date, preferably without making the same mistake..

Yay for rails

+5 hours – Yay for rails – I’m guessing todays installment was roughly five hours worth of work..  Hard to say really in that it wasn’t a straight piece of work..  It’s really a continuation of work I did last night, and what little work I did today in between bug fixing for work which has been going on at a rabid pace..  Every hour or two I spend 20 minutes or so on the model… The bug fixing is killing me so this makes a nice change of pace..

In this update you’ll see I’m starting to add lots and lots of railing everywhere… Ah good times..  I have also completely fixed the ugly striation crap that managed to work its way into the model because I was a dolt and did something stupid..

Part of this fix was also to correct some big errors with the conning tower.. I still have a lot of work to do.. but its coming along nicely..

Steel Rope

+5 hours – Steel Rope – I just got done spending the better part of the entire 5 hours learning to make rope.  3D rope that is..  The sub has quite a lot of steel rope hanging from various points on the hull and I wanted to get that to look right.

At first I just created a really long cylinder and sliced it up with the intent of just adding a 3D texture or displacement to make it look like strands of steel rope.. but it just looked crappy.. So, I had to actually create stranded rope..  This took me a long time and I had to get pretty intimate with Modo’s Twist tool and the Soft Move tool..

I still think the way I ultimately did it, was the wrong way..  I should have used a path and cloned a single rope piece along that path, but it didn’t work..  No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t get the curve clone tool to output something that looked reasonable..  Plus it was REALLY laggy bringing modo to a stop trying to clone a <1000 polygon item 100 times..  100,000 polygons isn’t that heavy so I have no idea why it was struggling so hard with it.. I also tried to use a custom python script suggested to me on the modo forums called CurveDeformer, but it failed too.. (in odd ways) .. SO I was left to my own devices..

It took me too long to do this though.. I mean seriously ~5 hours to figure out this ONE thing.. sheesh..

Steel Rope Details

+3 hours – Steel Rope Detail – So I spent the majority of this time getting the steel rope finished on the back side of the boat.  It now hangs correctly between the two rail uprights on the back of the boat in such a way as to imply weight..  In the tail of the boat it rides over the risers in a ring then down into a hull point where its anchored.  And its simply wrapped around the lower conning tower platform rail and clamped together using a pair of wire clamps.  This isn’t how it was actually done, but I thought having the wire simply wrapped around the rail and secured with a couple wire clamps made it look more real..   Very excited as to how it turned out.. I think it looks fantastic..

This model is starting to get rather beefy.. It’s already a 5 meg file and renders out at over 3 million polygons, 15 million with subsampling turned on.  I call that starting to get heavy..  I know that a lot of the models the big boys work with are vast by comparison, but then so is the hardware they use..

Gonna keep working on this thing.. I haven’t been playing any games at all since I started this project, its kept me that entertained.. Tomorrow I’m going to continue poking the detail holes in the side of the boat.. Good times.

Poking holes

+8 hours – Poking holes in the model – For todays installment of “make a sub” I have been concentrating on poking holes in the side of the main hull mesh. It’s actually exceedingly difficult because of the non-linear off axis subd modeling method I’m using, combined with round holes.. I have to say so far so good! I have a lot more holes to poke, and I need to add inner piping and details that could be visible from the outside.. This means I need to build a very basic model of what the internal cigar tube will look like and the basic support structures.. I have no clue what those actually should look like so I might just make it up..

Waist Steel Cable

I also spent a chunk of my time adding the waist steel cables to the waist railings.. I went to a lot of trouble too wrapping the cable around the railings in a believable way.. I think it turned out pretty damn good if I do say so myself.. Though looking at it now in some areas I should have added a tad more twist to the cable, but since each cable is actually a strand of six cylinders its a pain in the rump to go back and change it now.. I’m really glad I went this route though as opposed to the one cylinder that gets textured into wire.. The actual twisted polygons while heavy in terms of polycount, really adds a lot in terms of details..

I have to say I’m still have a great deal of fun making this model.. that bodes very well.. Typically when I do these things, they last for a couple of weeks before I want to move on to something else, but this model is really inspiring me to keep going.. It’s been really cool seeing how each piece comes together to add up to more and more detail.. Every so often I scroll up to the top of this post and look at where it started and then look at where I am.. I realize I have a long way to go, but I have come a LONG way..

I want to find some more pictures of real Type VII’s up close so I can get a good idea of what the hull plating should actually look like. I dunno if I should model that or just texture it.. I’ll likely model the rivets, but texture the plates.. we shall see..

At this point this model is easily the most complex and well done model I have done to date.. Not only that but its by far the largest in terms of polygon count, file size.. render time..etc..

Conning Tower Details

+10 hours – Conning Tower Details – So after a day or two break I am back at it and have added a lot of detail to the conning tower.  I have a lot more I want to do and shall continue to work on it..  For this installment I have added several rails around the front of the tower for hand holds, as well as adding several doors and panels with hinges and handles..   I’m likely adding way too much in the way of details in that no one will ever see some of it.. I mean whats the likelihood someone will zoom all the way in to a single hinge on one of those doors..  heh but hey what the hell..

It’s a learning process as much as it is anything else..  I mean I want this thing to look good and having a high-poly model that renders out well is the beginnings of that..

The real issue at this point is that the model is getting big enough that rendering it is starting to run me out of memory..  Any form of adaptive subdivision is right out of the question..   Plus I can only do one or two renders before I have to reload the model fresh.. memory leak I guess..  It’s only mildly annoying..

The Arjuna theme is outstanding..  I especially like that it works in the exact same way as EOS and so theme switching is 100% seamless!  Thank you guys a bunch.. This is awesome..

I highly recommend this theme, or the EOS theme.

Star Trek Online Review

Firstly I want to say that I personally think it’s extremely hard to judge a game entirely by the first 15 levels.. Any MMO to date that one cares to name changes drastically as you play across the level range and to judge that game by the first couple levels is simply foolish. You haven’t experienced the whole of the game.. So I’m going to post my review about it, but I want you to keep in mind that there are going to be a lot of things I simply haven’t done yet..

Also, there are a lot of people on the forums bashing the game for one reason or another, some reasons are valid, some aren’t. I would argue that most of those people really haven’t truly experienced the game in its fullest, but at the same time I will concede the point that if it doesn’t appeal to them early on, it may not later either and that they should just move on without the flames.

What you’re not seeing on the forums is the influx of praise or posts by people who are largely happy, not because they don’t exist but rather because the complainers are typically a lot more vocal minority.. People that complain loudly are typically those people who think they are righteous and have entitlement issues..  They are “right and by god you’re gonna know my opinion..”

So with that — here’s my righteous opinion on the the first 15 levels of fed play and the first 12 or so of Klingon.. I only really have 2 major complaints.

But first some general over arching comments — please keep in mind there is no order to my thoughts;

The server’s are completely flooded and Cryptic wasn’t ready for the load.. Completely understandable if you consider that they just opened up the beta for quite possibly the single most popular science fiction IP on the planet. (Is star trek more popular than star wars? I don’t actually know..) They are aware of the issue and have stated repeatedly that they are taking action to fix it. Kudos guys.

I have seen people bitch that “this has been the worst beta ever” and that simply isn’t true.  Not even close.  I’m pretty sure Anarchy Online still holds that title firmly, and likely will forever..  In fact I don’t really think this beta has been all that bad considering the volume of traffic they are getting.. Sure there are queues, server lag, and disconnects but all of those are brought about by the volume of players..  In fact the majority of the issues the game has can likely be traced back to simple server lag due to volume.

Is it bug free?  no.   But then neither is WoW or EQ and those games have been out for years. I don’t really understand why people expect a brand new game to be bug free.. *shrug*  I do take it as a very positive sign that they have patched the game every night during the open beta..  That implies to me that they are actively working on the issues which is great.

I think the game graphics look good.. I have seen quite a few threads on the forums about how they graphics look poor, and I just don’t agree. It doesn’t look photo realistic like some of the very early preview teaser images did years ago, but that’s okay.. It looks good and succeeds in suspending my disbelief into thinking I’m playing a game in a Star Trek universe.

The UI is good though the map system needs to be better explained. It took me a while to understand the area map and the galaxy map and why some systems were in my system list some of the time, and not in my list other parts of the time..etc.. It’s easy once you understand it but completely confusing while you don’t..  Lack of documentation or explanation is almost a theme in this game..

The skills are confusing but mostly because they don’t explain what they do well enough. It also doesn’t explain well enough things like your characters class to ship class combination’s.. Is it a bad idea to be an engineer, in a science ship? Why? If it is bad that means if you go science you’re stuck in the same 2 ships for 20 levels.. ouch.. (maybe longer, I don’t know what ships are available at T3)

What does +18 in Science Vessel Captain actually do for me? Games like WoW, Eve, and even Champions to some degree have a LOT of math behind it.. This game clearly does too but you don’t really expose that math to the players in a clear way. A lot of players, myself included, actually enjoy pondering the right character build and the best way we can achieve what it is we want to such a degree as to actually build spreadsheets.. Eve is a game totally about spreadsheets ( a little too spreadsheety at times ) and players love that.. Expose those numbers to us.. Let us know what skilling up something actually does, or all of those skills you invested all that time in to create for us mean nothing.

I’m sure all of these things will be documented eventually but right now it smacks of information that the developers all know and think of as obvious where as the players coming to it for the first time just stand there confused.   Documentation is your friend.

The ground combat is a little weak right now and I personally think it’s boring, repetitive and painfully scripted but I think it will develop over time.  It very much smacks of CoH door missions and that system needs more versatility.  Give players options that change the outcome.. etc..   I can’t say as I enjoy the ground combat much though because every game to date has been about ground combat.  I’m much more interested in the space combat, that being said they still have a lot of work to do on the ground if they plan to serve both..

As to space combat, Right now I can say I really enjoy it though it gets very “samey” pretty quickly.    I think that’s largely due to the fact that I have experienced basically 4 ships total..  And flying around seeing nothing (mostly) but Miranda ships get’s old..

Personally I hope there are a lot more ships in the game come release. I love how the ships are customizable but there still aren’t enough chassis and what not to choose from. Maybe that gets better later on, but in the beginning its weak as you have 1 ship. Then when you level up to get your tier two ships, you have a choice of three technically but since you already decided your officer type (tactical, engineer or science) you only really have 1 logical choice.

I think players identify with their avatars a lot more than most game creators take into account and as such they need to give us even more options.  Plus the ability to add fleet markings would be handy.  It’s minor I know, but it helps establish community and a sense of pride which is important in an MMO.

I could make a long list of other complaints like, why did they go with left and right versus port and starboard.. Or why isn’t there any Klingon PVE play etc.. but really at this point I’d rather talk about whats there than what’s NOT there.. So with that — I have two complaints:

Major Complaint One — One of the worst mistakes they could make in this game is the same thing that in my mind killed the City franchise and Champions.. I’m gonna call it “Mission leveling” for the lack of a better term. The concept is this; You get a mission and the more people that do the mission with you, the harder the mission gets. So if you solo a mission you fight one or two weak mobs, but if you bring a whole group suddenly its 3 or 4 hard hitting bosses and several weaker mobs..etc..

Sounds like a good idea on the surface, but CoH and CO proved it to be a horrible idea because it actually encourages players to NOT group.. this kills the need for “community”.. More over it gives players no sense of accomplishment because they know a mission is simply a cake walk if they solo it. There should be things in the game that require groups and missions should be statically leveled.  Do away with this balancing thing..It’s a failed experiment..

You should be able to get missions that are so hard you can’t do it without help.. Missions that scale like they do is just a bad design and this is the third time they have done it..

A mission that is the same level as you, should present you with mobs that are roughly the same as you.. If it’s a higher level mission they should be harder hitting.. if it’s lower level they should be weaker..etc..

I realize that this is very much the WoW and EQ model for doing quests but it has stood the test of time and it’s a known..  Right now I can’t help but think they have broken this very simple concept.

Major Complaint Two –  I want crafting.. I want to be able to harvest asteroids like in Eve and create stuff.. I can’t fathom an MMO game that has virtually no crafting system what so ever..  And sorry but the current system they have that they say is like crafting simply isn’t.

Mindlessly warping around a mission looking for the various anomolies that you get crap from that let you turn in for an upgraded item.. yeah that’s not crafting.. I hope they fix that..

In the end there is a little bit of the “city of star trek” that I was worried about in my earlier post.  There is a little bit of champions in it.. there is a little of city in it.. etc..  Cryptic is going with what they know.. But they might have enough of a winner here because its sort of two games in one (space and ground) and with the addition of PVP in both places you sorta have 4 games in one..  Now consider the ability to play both sides, federation or klingon and now its x2 again..

There might be enough different options to keep this game going for a while.. I’m enjoying it for now at least..

Star Trek Online

Why I think they might actually have gotten it right.

Firstly, I was really worried when I found out the end game for STO would be PVP-centric.  That just doesn’t really work normally for any number of reasons which I wont go into just yet.. Traditionally if you look at all the major (even minor) MMO’s out there that have tried, you’ll see that they have generally failed or aren’t entirely PVP based.. Eve Online being one that hasn’t failed and does really well, but I believe that’s largely due to being the only game in it’s market. By and large however, PVP only games just don’t do that well with the masses..

I believe that there are 4 primary reasons for PVP being problematic in most games:

1. PVP allows Player X to have an immediate and often negative impact on Player Y’s game play experience. This means that Player Y could possibly have his game play impacted by another player in such a way as to prevent him from enjoying or even advancing in the game. Removing the “fun” from the game for Player Y entirely.

2. Good PVP and Smart PVP are two mutually exclusive concepts. “Good” PVP is playing against another person where things are evenly matched in terms of player skills, character skills, gear, etc.. The fight is even odds and could go either way and as such, is a “fair” fight.. “Smart” PVP is employing any tactic that would give the player any form of advantage over the intended target — fairness doesn’t enter into it. In fact the more unfair the fight is, the better.  Since most players always try to play smartly, the target of that doesn’t have fun.

3. Everyone loses eventually, and most players lose most of the time. This is simply math and has been proven time and again. In any PVP engagement, you will eventually lose. And most players, yes you too, lose most of the time. It’s a mathematical inevitability.  People don’t like to lose as it’s not fun.

4. Character skills and gear out weigh, player skills and gear every time. In most PVP games it just about always pans out that the higher level and better equipped character will simply dominate the lower level character, regardless of the players skill or equipment. So no matter how awesome you are on your level 45 warlock, that level 50 paladin will simply slaughter you while watching TV and eating some pizza.. not fun.

Why are these things bad?  Well first of all you might have noticed I used “fun” in each point.  Games are first and foremost about fun.  If you aren’t having fun then most likely you’re not going to play very long.

I think someone at cryptic looked at these facts and made the right decision to make PVP opt-in only.  Let’s look at each issue in turn;

The first one can actually punish a player, just for playing the game. They might be having fun mining asteroids for example, wanting nothing to do with other people only to have their experience tainted by someone else..  I think most hard core PVP players completely miss the fact that what is fun for them, isn’t the same thing as what’s fun for everyone else and games are first and foremost about fun for everyone.  STO has made PVP an opt-in system so that you must knowingly go to the various PVP zones in order to do any form of PVP.  If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

This opt-in methodology also largely solves the second issue. You can’t be gate camped or ganked or griefed by a roaming pack of players in the regular world.. You must go into the PVP area where you acknowledge the possibility and most likely will bring your own posse..

If you know PVP is opt-in, then you wont mind losing on occasion.  STO makes the PVP very “Zerg” like in that if you do lose, you just respawn and off you go again.. So really dying a lot doesn’t matter all that much. So who cares if you lose more than you win.. It’s still fun!

And so far the ship buffs/abilities and stats don’t really seem to matter.   In my lowbie T1 Miranda class ship I was able to take out T2 ships in PVP.  I don’t know if this was due to my better understanding of shield and power management or if my equipment was better or if I was a better player..  Or if I was just lucky!  But right now it seems like player skill actually matters a great deal more than everything else..

I think it could work here..

A lot of folks are bitching about not having open realm PVP though and those people irritate me..

Their primary complaint is that they should be able to attack any other player at any time.. And they always gloss it over with reasons why it would be canonically correct in a Star Trek universe..blah blah blah..

Let’s be clear;  the only people that would disagree with the opt-in PVP system are the PVP players who are the ones most offended by the notion that they some how do something “unfair” by attacking people that aren’t as skilled, have no desire to participate, or who aren’t in anyway ready for the PVP conflict they are suddenly thrust into without any option.   Simply put,  they are griefers who enjoy ruining other peoples game by taking out the easy target.

I’m an old school PVP player from EVE online.  I have also PVP’d in EQ and WoW so I know where I’m coming from here.

In EVE when I went into a fight, I made damn sure it was going to be a fight I was going to win or at least had a good chance of winning.  If I didn’t think it would go my way, I would unass the AO ASAP.

If I was going to steal jet can’s (Yes I did that..) I made sure my target was someone I knew I could steal from without being instakilled.   When camping a gate in EVE I wouldn’t do it alone, but rather would bring a whole crew — why?  ’cause I wanted to win!

It’s just smart PVP — don’t engage in a fight you can’t win.  The same notion is employed by modern day generals when waging war..  Don’t play fair!!  Smart PVP will never be fair if the PVP’er knows what he is doing. A fair fight will get you killed every time.

There are a lot of players though who will never want to be apart of that world.. they want to play the game to have fun, and not PVP and they should be allowed to do so.   For them the fun is playing against the system and NPC’s.. It’s the same reason why raiding end game bosses in WoW and EQ is fun.. It’s the challenge of beating the system..   Whether you, the hard core PVP’er, agree is completely immaterial.

Thus when you attack them unprovoked in systems that allow for that, they rightly call you a griefer because you’re interrupting their fun.    I have griefed in my time, and been griefed.. so I understand..

The game designers in STO have rightly realized that it’s an absolute imperitive to make the game fun for as many people as possible, and to do that PVP must be opt-in.  It’s the only way to keep the largest portion of the population happy.

The simple fact of the matter is, if you attack someone who doesn’t want to be attacked then you’re negatively affecting their game play.  And the larger picture is;  Doing so will in many cases drive those players away from the game, which means now you’re negatively affecting the developing studio’s bottom line.  “Carebears”, a term I hate, are by far the largest segment of the market and keeping them happy keeps the game afloat.

Kudos Cryptic.

I weighed all the numbers and researched all the sites and came to the conclusion that the only thing the X10 had over the Nexus One was the price tag.   From what one site was guessing the SE offering was going to be pretty pricey.  Plus, SE has done a lot to customize their interface but I think they are over doing it a tad.  It looks cool, sure but every video I watched showed the interface to be laggy and/or buggy.  And while I’m sure it was still very early in their development cycle it still put me off.

The Nexus One had all the features I wanted in a modern package, using a new modern OS with all the amenities at what I figure is a reasonable price.  Plus, it’s built by Google who employ developers and engineers who are just as geeky as I am, so I was pretty sure it would be good.  I wasn’t disappointed.

I can honestly say this is the best device I have ever had.   I love it.   I ordered the phone the day it was released, and had it in my hands 2 days later thanks to Google’s free over night FedEx shipping, complete with my custom engraving on the back..   Engraving meant that I wouldn’t be able to return it if I didn’t like it, so that was a bit of a concern while I was ordering it but if I knew then what I know now it would have been an easy choice.   At the time I was thinking that getting one without a way to return it was risky..

The price was good.  I decided to get the $179 version instead of buying the unlocked one.  I may regret that later as typically I always get unlocked.. but the more I looked at it there was no point to getting it unlocked as it only really supported the 3G frequencies of one network.  So.. $179 it was..   Not a bad price at all when you consider isuppli estimates the phone cost google roughly $174.15 to make it in the first place.

Honestly, in all this I think Google’s biggest mistake is not having some place where people can put their hands on a device.   I’m told customer support is pretty lacking too unfortunately..  I’m pretty sure that google simple wasn’t prepared for the demand..  But really they need to go ahead and get this device into the hands of stores.. Let people pick it up!   Most likely you’ve gotten all the early adopters you’re going to get, now is the time to shuffle it out to the stores so the masses can get a hold of it.

I think if the hold outs just got the device in their hands they’d see that the device itself is rock solid.  I love how everything just works.  Little things that were an issue with the iphone (granted it’s a gen one iphone) this phone doesn’t have.   Everything just works.

Streaming Music from a site of my choosing ( http://di.fm highly recommended ) ?  Yeah that works..  Streaming music that requires an authentication?  Yeah that works..  Straight to your A2DP stereo bluetooth headset?  yeah that works..  Put the phone down and leave it for 2 hours while you’re doing something else.. come back and just poke play on your headset to resume?  Yeah.. that works too..   Been listening to some vocal trance the whole time I wrote this, and I’ve been wandering around the house a bit too..

None of that worked on my iphone.   And the bluetooth antenna rocks btw.. my iphone to headset pairing was weak and kinda crappy.. Not here — the pairing is good and I have yet to have static or noise creep in unlike on the iphone.

Just more examples of how good the hardware is.  I think google really was trying to build the cadillac of phones.    When ordering, I was concerned about the make of the product — I was worried it would be flimsy or weak in some ways but its not at all.  The hardware feels solid though it does suffer the same “greasy screen” issues that all modern phones suffer.  I will say this for the iphone, it felt solid.  This phone feels the same way.  It’s a teeny-tiny bit larger than the iphone so it doesn’t fit in the belt case I like.. damn it.. heh but the weight is about the same.

The new OLED screen is amazing.  Sitting next to my iPhone at with the N1 at half brightness, its much brighter than the iphone.  In fact it makes the iphones screen look dull by comparison.

I think android 2.1 works great, I have yet to run into any problems..  I have read that some people have found bugs but I haven’t seen any..  Maybe I don’t know what to look for.. I dunno.

The call quality is good and more importantly the audio levels are high enough I can hear in a noisy room.  One of my main complaints with my iphone was that if there was ANY ambient noise I simply couldn’t hear someone on the phone, and the speaker phone was a joke.  The speaker phone on the Nexus still isn’t as loud as I would like, but its far better than the iphone.    My Nokia Communicator had a GREAT speakerphone.. clearly phone makers need to contact the nokia folks and find out how its done..

Like I keep saying.. it just works.. yay!

Issues as I see them so far;

Googles grand plan is to change the face of the cell phone industry by offering a device that can doesn’t limit you to a carrier.  Amen Brother.   But then they tether it to T-Mobile?  I can’t help but think that this was a mistake.   In my opinion the number 1 killer of the iPhone was AT&T.  Here in the Austin area the network is so saturated that it doesn’t work.  AT&T simply wasn’t ready to handle the influx of customers that the iPhone generated.  T-Mobile (formerly VoiceStream) will suffer the same problem if the Nexus is even remotely as popular as the iphone was when it hit the market.

I know they are releasing other versions of the phone to other carriers, but how does that change what we have today?  You’re still locked to a network.   More over, even if you purchased the unlocked version of the phone you’re still tied to one network due to 3G frequencies ..etc..  For example;  Right now this phone won’t work with AT&T’s 3G network. Period.

We shall see..

It’s still a new offering and I was a day one adopter so I don’t know if this is a fair criticism on my part, but there are ZERO accessories for this sucker.  I know give it a month.. but still.  I want a stand.. some carrying case options.. some screen protection options..etc..

What the hell is the point of the track ball?   I’m worried about the track ball popping out or in some way breaking.. It’s the only part of the phone that concerns me because it kinda sticks out.    And it really seems to serve no purpose..   Again it’s something that folks can use so we will likely see games that use it soon.

I just had another complaint pop into and out of my head before I could write it down and now I can’t remember what it was.. damn it..

It’s not perfect.. but it’s a wonderful device.

I hate the question “Is it the iphone killer”.. that’s just a retarded question.. It’s a damn good device, hows that?  I think for googles first try, its awesome and worth every penny.

As of this writing the price of gold is at $1120 an ounce which is an all time high.  That alone should be your first indication that;  Now is not the time to buy gold!

The price of Gold is where it’s at right now because of the economy and because gold sellers are driving the cost up through fear.  They want you to go buy their gold so that they make money.  Period.  They don’t give a crap about the economy, your we being or future or any of the other BS they try to sling on the commercials.  Stated simply, they are in the business of making money and they are trying to do so at your expense.

The only “winner” when you buy gold at these prices are the companies selling the gold as they will make out like bandits having sold gold to you at over a thousand dollars an ounce. You wont be saving money, instead you’ll be giving your money to these unscrupulous companies who are doing their best through fear to drive the price as high as it can go before it crashes.  And it will crash.  Let me explain why;

See.. Gold is a commodity and a standard.  As such, it’s value never really changes.  What changes is the dollars value in relation to the gold.. So when you see golds value go up, what you’re actually seeing is the dollar go down.  When you have say 10 ounces of gold worth $3000, and suddenly that prices shoots to $10000 what you’re actually seeing is the value of the dollar shoot down.  10 ounces of gold is still just 10 ounces of gold.

When the dollar strengthens again (as it always does) you’ll see the price of gold go back down to something more reasonable.  This is why I say gold WILL crash..  that means that the folks who purchased gold at $1120 an ounce will take it on the chin..

I’m not saying that you should never buy gold.. Actually I think gold can be a good thing to buy, but only when the dollar is very strong (and thus the price of gold is lower).

Some might wonder why the single most popular science fiction franchise in the history of media has taken so long to be turned into an MMO, myself included — But I think it’s a better use of our efforts to instead not speculate too much on the why of it but rather to channel that raw emotion and energy into the heart felt desire for STO to not suck.

Let’s be honest here, Cryptic Studios is very good at bringing out games that look kinda keen, but have zero long term playability.   City of Heroes and City of Villains suffered from this, and the successor Champions Online (City of Champions?) was even worse.   They looked great, but for whatever reason they just didn’t have the sticking power to keep players interested.

Will STO be the same thing?  Look good initially and maybe be fun for a week or two, but rapidly drag down into a grind-tastic mess?  God I hope not..

I can’t actually put my finger on what it is about CoH/CoV and CO that make them lose their fun.  I will say that of the three, I think City of Villains was the best with regards to game play but that was primarily due to the controller character architecture.  What can I say; I enjoyed having a pack of zombies at my disposal..

Game play wise though, all of them got very boring and repeatative very very quickly.

One of the main cool points about the game was the ability to make all your characters 100% unique, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if that was part of it’s downfall too..  When you look at games that have a more ridgid class structure you end up having a sort of community around that class, and with that community you have competition.  “Oh yeah? Well I’m a better Warlock than you are.. and I’ll prove it!!”  etc..

Players end up putting a lot of time and effort in to trying to make their cookie cutter class stand out from all the other cookie cutter classes.  That in and of itself forces a person to form a bond or an identity with their character making them want to keep playing..

When you can start your characters virtual life as being 100% unique, you have one less thing to strive for..  So while it’s really cool I can go out of my way to make my character look completely different.. it doesn’t lend itself to longevity..

This also completely ruins the whole sense of community around a given class which is a problem.. What’s more community is completely thrashed by the total lack of classes where group play happens..  The open architecture of characters, while initially cool, makes group forming painful because suddenly you can’t say “We need a healer” and know that there are only 3 or 4 basic classes that heal..

STO appears to have classes with regards to ships; tanks, dps, and support ships.  So that’s a damn good sign.  I’m hoping the realize the issues I described above and are working to correct the issue.. But I still have fears about the game as a whole..

For example; I absolutely cringe at the notion of wandering around a space station and having random NPC’s run up and yell about how awesome I am like they did in CoH/CoV and CO..  Please rip that page out of the CoH/CoV/CO hand book and burn it..

I also worry that the game’s look (read: graphics) are dated even before the game has been released.  Cryptic has always intentionally made their games sort of “middle of the road” with regards to hardware requirements so it’s very likely that the game will not be super high quality, but even so they screen shots look very lack-luster.   These could all be beta shots with poor textures or something, but I doubt it.

I’m the first to admit that gameplay comes over graphics every time though, so if the game play is good then I can forgive just about any graphics decisions.. But then they aren’t known for their game play so its easy to jump to conclusions..

I guess my greatest fear is that Star Trek Online will end up being “City of Star Trek” and will be to Star Trek, what the original Star Wars MMO was to Star Wars. (Read: Horrible)