I think this is important. As designers in this modern age, and especially as our game worlds grow more open ended, we must let our players know what type of consequence is going to result from their actions, but we can’t or shouldn’t simply tell them what happens next. Appropriate and well constructed pre-decision feedback is going to be key to opening up more than just being good or evil in these open world choice filled titles going forward, and while I don’t think Fallout 3 is necessarily unique or first in this regard I believe the emphasis placed is important to note.

Core Game:

• Focus on action oriented combat.
• Old school bosses, player stats give an edge but it’s all about patterns of attack and defense (similar to WoW bosses as well).
• On the fly situational customization adds an element of strategic problem solving.

Supporting Elements:

• Fetch quest system to unlock new purchasable items. Essentially side quests, worth doing if you’re stuck on a boss and just need a little edge or want to complete 100% of the game but otherwise ignorable. They augment the core mechanics well by encouraging some replay of old areas and exploration of content.
• Glyph acquisition has a lot of interesting varieties, which made for some interesting puzzles and encounters.

Things That Make Me Go ‘Erg’:

[Disclaimer: I generally find my tastes mesh with a 'core' audience, so some of these things might make the game more appealing to the dedicated fans.]

• The manual is woefully inadequate, I’ve had to use gamefaqs constantly to figure out how the game systems work (stats, drops, glyphs).
• Poor sense of flow. Some of the generic monsters at one point in the game are way too hard for when you hit them, and later on the game gets much easier than it is early game. This is probably due to the fact that I started to understand the game better and could better exploit weaknesses in my opponents.
• Inconsistently teaches new skills before they are needed. Some are built in very well, but there’s a few such as breaking walls and stealing glyphs from enemies that are esoteric and I only learned to do these things because I came across it on gamefaqs.

Things I Liked:

• As above, boss fights feel like WoW raids and old school ‘hard’ games. Challenging and almost certainly failed on the first few times, but victory feels earned and rewarding.
• Generic monsters generally do a good job of being engaging without being too hard or too easy.
• The presentation of the game is fantastic. The art and animations spare no expense and the world in which it takes place is compelling.
• It has a leveling up system which clearly provides progress without being required or breaking the game. If you do spend time ‘grinding’ levels it does seem to overpower you, but playing through naturally feels comfortable and leveling up can give that edge.

Overall it has kept me going for a good 7 hours at this point and while I haven’t yet beat it I intend to see it through to the end. It’s a worthy addition to the Castlevania franchise and anyone looking to get their action rpg fix will find it in Order of Ecclesia.

First of all is Scott Jennings’ recent post about the solution his team was taking (and more importantly, why they were taking it) to gold farming is must read.

And secondly is Joe Ludwig’s post, Where does the money go? Asking and answering the ever important question of why the hell these games take so much money to make.

The first was a game called Packrat - a game in which your objective is to collect 5 cards out of a set of 10 or more and ‘vault’ them. Vaulting a set prevents their theft, and thieving is otherwise the name of the game. While you can attempt to lock down your cards through playing mini-games, otherwise all cards in your collection are open for thievery by your friends and acquaintances (with the caveat that they must leave something in return of roughly equal or greater value). In addition as you explore your friends collections you can happen upon coins (to purchase additional cards) or even new random cards altogether. This ‘random drop’ element along with the ever changing collections possessed by any of the active players gives a game a great ‘one more click’ feel to it while keeping the mechanics incredibly simple.

The other game I’ve recently become hooked on is D&D Tiny Adventures. Essentially it’s Progress Quest with a little extra flavor (you manually equip gear, you choose the adventure to go on, and you can use 2 potions per adventure), but boy is it compelling. With a few clicks you can achieve an hour of progress. Come back after a lunch break to a sack full of look and 20% of a level, or use potions to micromanage your way through a more challenging adventure while you, say, write a blog post. In addition it plays to the social strengths of Facebook by allowing you to buff or heal your friends as you feel compelled to give them a helping hand, but is simultaniously completely soloable. D&D Tiny Adventures boils the muchkin aspect of D&D down to its barest and most casual essence, and that is a powerful thing.

Will WAR hit WoW level player numbers? Of course not. But the folks over at Mythic knew what their game was at its core, and that is what it takes to compete and make some money. I laude them on delivering on an experience that is both distinct and enjoyable, and if any of you out there are playing on the Ostermark server Destruction side and could use some heals look up Gibbonz the goblin shaman and I’ll toss some WAAAUGH your way.

If I see one more rant going off about how the latest MMO just isn’t ‘polished’ like WoW is, I’m going to swear off reading internet MMO rants entirely (and why would I want to do this, they’re just so much fun). But before I do that, hear my plea.

This term, polish, has become such a catch all term for overall quality and presentation that it has become utterly and completely devoid of meaning (if it ever had it in the first place) and useless as a term with which to critique a title. Next time you have the urge to go on a rant after the honeymoon is over and describe the latest MMO you’re never going to play again as ‘needing polish’, please, for the sake of all of us who might think you have something worthwhile to say, take a another moment to figure out what you actually mean and say it. If you mean that the play control is rough, that it has the balance is broken, or that there are more bugs than a Texas state park in August (trust me on this one, it’s a lot…), then go ahead and tell us what is broken or unfinished. Trust me, we’d love to hear exactly how you’re bored at the high end because there isn’t a faction or token grind to keep you busy, but we’re never going to know that if you are hiding behind these meaningless phrases. So until next time just remember, when criticizing that next MMO which just somehow doesn’t live up to the hype, dig a bit deeper than the word of the day and we’ll all be just that much better for it.

Breaking the Tower is a mini-RTS about, well, breaking the tower. The reason I dig this game so much is sheer simplicity. The graphics are simple, the mechanics are simple, and the goal is simple - and yet, despite the simplicity, there is still an element of strategy and I still enjoy seeing my little village grow and develop. This game is an excellent example of elegant game design.

Link.

I’m going to go ahead and pull accessibility out of the lineup there and state that not only is it the most important, but that it vastly outranks any of the other reasons as the number 1 reason WoW is the success it is today.

Lets get the easy one out of the way first - Yes, WoW has low system requirements. We’re looking at a greater potential market, if I can’t play your game, I’m not going to buy it. This is absolutely true, but it only lays the foundation.

The second point I’d raise is that Blizzard’s polish machine is driven by a desire for maximum flow. The quest driven and immaculately designed content keeps up a constant level of reward and newly engaging experiences (including new abilities, locales, monsters, story, etc). WoW content expects zero expertise from the player and then grabs on and ramps up at a well defined pace, not letting go until at least max level.

And if we were talking about a single player game we could leave off there and you’d have the same recipe used by pretty much every mainstream title to date, but no, we’re talking about an MMO, and as such there’s one more key element which if utilized correctly will pull in a new player like none other - the human element. What is better than having someone invested in my game? Having someone else who is invested in keeping that person around. Even without heavy incentivization (which for the record, I ultimately agree with Damion vis a vis the ramifications), WoW’s highly rewarding group oriented content generates an environment in which the more friends I have the more successful I am, so not only do I want to tell my friends about this great new game I’m playing but I want them to have as enjoyable and trouble free play experience as possible so they’ll play long enough to join up with me (oh, and how about that quicker leveling curve? not an accident).

The interesting part of all of this is the push and pull going on with the design. Solo content drives flow as an inherently more controllable user experience, but adding in the group dynamic drives utility generated from getting your friends in game with you. One thing is clear though, anyone looking to even come close to matching the success of WoW needs to looking at mirroring this balancing act because no amount of ‘innovation’ or big name licensing will overcome a game that isn’t open to the new user.