Move over Ronald Regan, Cryptic is soon going to be called “The Great Communicator”.  For those of you who are not Star Trek Online fans (and why not) or are not in the know, Cryptic Studios launched a new feature yesterday called the Engineering Forums.  Now you know long have to wonder what “Goes on behind closed doors” – Now you know (see below).   As you can see below, Cryptic has divided the forum into three different arenas.  “In Testing” is something that you will normally see within 2 weeks. They also tell us what they are looking at and what is in development.

Some of the more exciting areas to me are the changes for crafting in development, the new ships at the top tier (I am rooting for some industrial ships to go along with crafting). Best of all are the new fleet actions! 

Having made admiral I am not sure whether I am happy or sad that the Crystalline Entity can no longer be “one shotted”.  It was going to be sort of a “rite of passage” for me having reached the top tier. The big decision to be made, of course, once I made admiral was to decide what sort of ship to chose.  The practical side of me said chose the recon science ship.  Then I saw the list below and realized that it would be some time before I could expect to win at pvp on the Federation side.  So throwing caution to the wind I opted for the largest ship out there.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted for Julie Whitefeather by the Webmaster)

Testing

• Respec options
• Ground anomalies are not consistently giving the correct level resources
• PVP Queue updates
• Fleet Actions will be level banded so that players in the map are within range of each other to make scoring fairer.
• Renaming your account @name
• AI pathing and mission fixes for Cage of Fire (Bajoran Fire Caves)
• Unique items should not be allowed to be equipped multiple times on the same character.
• Klingon stores selling items for the wrong currency
• Leveling up and Promotion bugs
• Klingon skill tree review to remove reference to Fed skills
• Additional Federation and Klingon Bridges
• Klingon Star Cluster missions
• Additional Star Cluster mission types
• Klingon ship customization for T0 and T5 ships
• New Fleet Actions and Fleet Action updates for both Fed/Klingon (DS9 Invasion, Gorn Minefield, Breaking the Planet, Romulan Temple, Crystalline Entity)
• Borg Special Task Forces (For Fed and Klingon players)
• Klingon access to Borg Sector
• Multi-faction Borg Deepspace encounters (Fed+Klg players vs Borg)
• More emotes
• More Fed and Klingon ship variants at top tiers
• New Klingon Cruiser
• Race specific transporter FX
• Off Duty Outfits
• Updates to the ship selection rooms
• Removing the bug where missions would sometimes get stuck in partial complete progress
• Rereleasing iPVP maps
• Players getting trapped in geometry in the mission TRAPPED

Under Investigation

• Loading screens freezing the client
• Players will sometimes encounter mobs much higher than expected in Deepspace encounters
• Skill descriptions that are confusing or incorrect (on a per case basis)
• Latency when moving around inventory
• Long load times when entering Sol System or Earth Space Dock
• /Stuck command not working in all cases
• Objective griefing on the Borg Hunt PVP maps
• Klingon stores not selling expected items
• Weapon beam FX do not stop and attach to the player as they move around the map
• Admiral Zelle issues on the Divide et Impera mission
• Temple Offerings mission is not completing properly
• Updating the timers on Klingon repeatable missions
• Faction settings are not being applied properly and powers like “Seduce” can be misused
• Stealth powers allow interactions that bypass content
• Problems when applying pips to costumes

In Development

• Death Penalty Options
• Memory Alpha/Crafting
• Cross level teaming
• Multi-Faction “Neutral” social areas
• Improvements to Repeatable Mission UI
• Updating player status windows to show the proper ship silhouettes
• Better notification when players are at the skillcap and skillpoints are converted to BOFF points
• More non-combat mission varieties
• Options to make missions more difficult
• More replayable mission types
• Ability to trade bridge officers
• Revamp of commodity missions

When Allods Online announced their cash shop prices, the swath of complaints would have cut through solid steel.  Now, as we all know (at least those who read the news service that carries the No Prisoners, No Mercy show – Virgin Worlds) Gpotato announced changes to their cash shop for Allods Online:

 Dear Allods Community,

We are happy to announce that we will be making revisions to a majority of the Allods Online item shop. These changes will go live sometime during the week of March 1st.

We would also like to extend a thanks to all of our players who have submitted constructive feedback through email and the forums. The team has reviewed each one of the hundreds of submissions we’ve received. We’ve restructured the pricing based upon your feedback in conjunction with the data we’ve reviewed and communication with our developer. Consequently, we’ve revised pricing so that more people can participate in this feature of the game.

Thank you all for your constructive feedback and support. Please continue to send us your thoughts to allods_suggestions@gala-net.com, and we look forward to seeing you in the game!

Sincerely,
The Allods Team

As nebulous as the wording of the announcement is, this just may be good news for all of you Allods fans out there.  On the other hand (see hand reaching out of toilet in the picture above) I wouldn’t exactly call this a matter of “being responsive” to the community.  This is the same “Allods Team” that originally announced the drastic increase in prices was intentional, despite the general outcry.  No doubt somewhere back in the home office, someone on the Allods Team that holds the purse strings saw the very real possibility of the game going down the toilet and decided that maybe…just maybe…they shouldn’t flush an otherwise great game down the toilet.

Thereby hangs a tale…

And thereby hangs a tale, as the immortal bard would have said.  Imagine if you will you walk into a auto dealership, or perhaps even the home office in Detroit.  You march in to the office of the president of General Motors – no appointment, no pleases, no “mother may I” and plop yourself down opposite that is, no doubt, an expansive desk so large that you could easily build a football stadium on it and still have room left over to subdivide lots.

Pointing out of what just may be a window with a view that shows the factory below it  stretching out like a vast kingdom, You look the  CEO dead in the eye and say the following…

“You see all those red cars down there, coming off the assembly line?  I don’t care if you have already run 10 thousand of them off the assembly line, call them all back. I don’t like the slope of the roof and I want you to change it.”

No, of course, there is a very real possibility that you would have been arrested simply for trespassing.  That is, of course, unless you happen to be the government representative that has been in charge of the last two bailouts of General Motors.  Other than that,  the only way you are likely to get off of the trespassing charge is by pleading not guilty by way of insanity - and the simple fact that you just suggested changing the design of a car after GM ran off 10 thousand of the same model means you just might win your case for mental instability.

Lets take it one step further, and closer to home.

Most people are acquainted with the term “buyer’s remorse”. For those of you who are not, that is when you buy something and find out shortly thereafter that the same item went on sale.  In fact, there are many people who seem to enjoy buyers remorse because you often see the same people (and sometimes across the breakfast table on Sundays) looking through the advertisements trying to see if your recent purchase went on sale.  Some retailers have become so conscious of this that they offer price guarantees.

Now imagine if you will that you have just purchased that shiny new computer.  You know the one. That same computer you have had your eye on for the last month. Yes, thats the one…the  one with speed that rivals a Cray supercomputer and more ram than the Sahara desert has grains of sand.   You finally decided to break down (and believe me at the prices most retailers offer you would have had to have a breakdown) and you buy it.   You take it, and the second mortgage that was necessary to buy it home.  The next Sunday you are in the mood for some angst and you purposefully go looking to see if it is on sale.   The results of your search show that in the ensuing week since your purchase, the pace of technology being what it is, your brand new computer, your brand new expensive computer has been replaced by a pocket calculator with more computing power.  Later that day finds you marching into the office of the store manager demanding a refund…

Only to be told that the reason you got the computer at such a “reasonable” price to begin with was that it was on sale.  Now you realize at this point that the whole reason your shiny new computer, which is now more useful as a boat anchor, was that the unscrupulous store manager was trying to unload them because he knew that in one weeks time they would be worth a load of dingo dung. Now in the real world, if the purchase really did cost the same as a second mortgage, and the retailer under such circumstances refused to refund your money, he would soon find himself charged with fraud by the local attorney generals office so fast it would set land speed records.  In more reasonable circumstances you simply found the computer that you bought for $900 dollars went on sale the next week for $850 dollars and there are a good many retailers that would give you store credit for the difference.

But make the same demand on a nation wide basis?

Well you can just kiss that demand goodbye before the words even leave your mouth me bucko, because the result would then be “business is business.”  But what if the same demand where made of a game publisher (assuming that publisher doesn’t have the name Activision in it anywhere and isn’t headed up by Mr. Bobby Kotick).  Lets say…oh, I don’t know, lets just pull a name out of the air and say “Atari”.   The good folks at Atari know that they are in turn owned by what is (at least in many estimates) a French company that just happens to be the largest manufacturer of video games in the world.  Now they know that the people who own their company didn’t get to be the largest manufacturer of video games in the entire world by putting up with low profit margins.   Needing to make a few more dollars to reimburse what was no doubt a very expensive game to produce they decided to have a sale, and as a result offer sixty days of free game time along with it.

If this where any other industry other than the video game industry this would no doubt be considered par for the course.   But if there is one thing that the Allods debacle has given us that is that when players really do speak their mind as one and demand that changes be made they will be made…for better or for worse. 

But what if Atari didn’t back down? What if all those Star Trek Online players out there decided to raise so much hell that Satan himself would have decided he didn’t like the competition? What if they simply decided to say “O.K. everyone out of the pool” and pull the plug on the game? Never happen? Think about the game “Gods and Heroes” that was already in closed beta and being developed by Perpetual Entertainment – you know those people who were originally developing Star Trek Online – Perpetual Entertainment pulled the plug. 

I am happy that companies like Cryptic listen to thier target market; and that they are doing no matter what some detractors may say.  It’s great that game developers take action on when demands are made.  But it can go to far, because game developement by committee doesn’t work when most of the “committeed members” don’t work for the developer.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

No Prisoners, No Mercy show 54 allowed us the privilege of having a round table discussion…a meeting of the minds between the game development community and the blogging community.  In the course of discussion immersion in video games, one of the major subjects for the show, we discussed sound. Our friend R.W. Harper told us how he started out making sound for his games using Sound Forge and now they have recording studios for each project.  Sound, he confirmed, is one of the major ways to achieve immersion.

Many players of my acquaintance turn the sound off altogether and turn on their mp3 player. On one occasion that practice elicited a response from a guildie that was wont to repeat this practice, “You mean this game has sound?” For me, however, if the sound can’t be heard a major part of the virtual reality is gone.  It is much the same principle as a professionally prepared meal – as any good chef will tell you a major part of the meal is how it is presented.

No matter what you may personally think of Turbine Studios, or their Lord of the Rings game, whoever is doing sound for that game does a fantastic job.  Even small touches can have a large impact on your perceptions of virtual reality, even when you don’t intentionally notice it.  Try this  some time…ride your horse (or pony if you are a hobbit) down a dirt path in the Shire where the road comes to a wooden bridge.  Notice how the sound of your horse’s hooves changes when they reach the bridge and go back to their muffled state when they reach the dirt path again.

When sound becomes even more important…

As many of you have noticed, I am sure, medium wherein we enjoy our media are beginning to merge.  There was a time when a comic book was something you had to decide if you wanted to read while you head your popsicle – now they are the subject of major motion pictures.  And even the way those major motion pictures are produced has changed drastically in the last decade, finally reaching its zenith in movies like “Avatar.”  For those one or two of you out there that have not seen this amazing film, here is a excerpt from an article that tells how it was produced:

 “Recording takes place on a spare motion-capture stage called the volume. Actors wear skin-tight bodysuits with reflective makers; every movement is tracked by an array of more than 100 fixed cameras. A specialized head-rig camera records the actor’s face and eyes.

‘The virtual camera is always active,’ explained Avatar producer Jon Landau. Gone is the need for camera and lighting setups, makeup retouches and need to be shot repeatedly from different camera angles. Instead the camera data are fed into a computer that creates a 3-D replica of the actor’s every movement, and the directors can just add his camera moves – from any perspective – digitally.’” – The animated acting of avatar by Rachel Abramowitz, Tribune Newspapers

Apparently there are some members of the movie industry that do not consider the actor behind the image capture as acting.  Many people whose job it is to know better still do not consider that actor who gives life through voice and motion to the animated version of themselves as an actor at all. Here is what the talented actor who played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy had to say about it:

 “’If you don’t have the performance, the rest is dressing,’ Serkis said. ‘You can’t enhance a bad performance with animation. You can’t dial it up, lift the lip or the eyebrow. It has to be right at the core moment. For actors to not recognize performance capture as acting is bad and disrespectful. It’s also Luddite.’” – Andy Serkis (who played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movie Trilogy) The animated acting of avatar by Rachel Abramowitz, Tribune Newspapers

As media merge in such an astounding fashion, where animation becomes to real that you have to study the screen to tell where the live action ends, and the computer graphics begin, Jeff Bridges gives us a view of what may be the wave of the future:

“’I’m sure they could do it not with they wanted. Actors will kind of be a thing of the past,’ Bridges [actor Jeff Bridges] told Tribune Newspapers the day nominations were announced. ‘We’ll be turned into combinations. A director will be able to say, ‘I want 60 percent Clooney; give me 10 percent Bridges; and throw some Charles Bronson there. They’ll come up with a new guy who will look like nobody who has ever lived and person or thing will be huge’ he said.” – The animated acting of avatar by Rachel Abramowitz, Tribune Newspapers

“What has this got to do with video games?” you might ask yourself.  Well, in a word – everything.  As the ability to produce ever more realistic virtual worlds progresses (and game developers these days often seem anxious to push the envelope of computer power needed to portray those virtual worlds) sound becomes more important than many people realize.  Consider the first 20 levels of Age of Conan Online.  Anyone who has ever played the game will tell you how amazed and immersed they were by those levels, and a major contributing factor was all the voice over work by talented actors.

The issue I would love to explore at some point in the future is just where the actor ends and the computer programmer’s art begins…and are the two merging in to one?

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(Posted by the Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)

For those of you who can’t wait for the Itunes/Virgin Worlds release of the latest edition of the No Prisoners,. No Mercy show…wait no more! Show 54 is available on early release.  You can find this show available here.   There ios also a link under “podcasts” on the right hand side of the page.

This week the game development community meets the blogging community in a round table discussion about immersion in video games.  The week we welcome to the show game developer R.W. Harper from Lorewriter.com.  From the blogger community we welcome Saylah from Mystic Worlds, Tipa from West Karana, Syp from Bio Break, and of course, the show hosts Julie Whitefeather and Fran Kosac.

We hope you enjoy listening to the show as much as we did producing it.

Sister Frances has an expression that has always held true…if you want to know who your friends are, ask them to help you move.  Not only has it held true, but when I first became a nun, someone I had only seen at Sunday services, someone whom I barely knew, showed up on moving day and simply said, “I heard you are moving, I’m hear to help.”

That is a true friend…

But there are many other types of friends that pass through our lives, making impressions – and to them I raise a cigar (if only a virtual one at the moment) with a cheer of “Absent friends!”.  Why a cigar? Thereby lies a tale…

One of the friends  I had once we shall call Harry Yablan, mostly because that’s his name.  I doubt Harry is reading this at the moment because when I asked Harry about the internet his typical reply was, “the internet is a place for scammers to scam other scammers.”   While I don’t agree with Harry, I will say that there was, believe it or not, a time of my life when my hands rarely touched a keyboard that wasn’t connected to a word processor – and the time in my life when I knew Harry was one of those times.

For those of you who still have an imagination, and have not been bereft of it by game developers who are wont to do our imagining for us, think of that place where you have been most comfortable.  Now add to that place a ray of warm sunshine and perhaps even in your pet sleeping in the sun.  Now surround yourself with good friends and good conversation – that was Harry’s Place.  

Harry’s place was more than a cigar shop, it was a cross roads of humanity. More, it was a symposium for conversation, wit and philosophy that even the great Plato would have been proud to call a second home.  Some people have back fences, others have bowling allies, I had Harry’s place. I can think of no other place where I would be able to spend an evening with an Air force combat pilot, the Chief of Patrolmen for the City of Chicago (retired), the commissioner of Streets and Sanitation for the City of Chicago (retired), and a rabbinical student all in the same room. Each night Harry would put on a fresh pot of coffee, cigars and pipes would be lit with carefully practiced precision and ceremony, and the couches surrounding the big screen television would be occupied by people from all walks of life.

 

This is the point at which some of our readers may be looking for a tie in with gaming.  For those of you who need a moral, a lesson or some such purpose other than the simple conveyance of a feeling and tribute to absent friends, here it is…

 

In one of the Star Trek Movies (I will let you look up which one) Spock’s brother tries to heal Captain Kirk’s emotional pain.  The famous captain immediately protests, saying, “I need my pain, its part of who I am.”  Whether memories are painful, pleasant or simply the remembrance of a feeling, they are part of who we are.  John F. Kennedy once said, “The knowledge of the past prepares us for the events of the future.”  In a very real way that includes all our memories. Like Captain Kirk said, it’s part of who we are.

 

See you online,

 

Julie Whitefeather

Every time I go to work I always stop to talk to person who sells the Chicago Tribune at the train station.  Today the subject of conversation was that giant of Chicago Journalism, Mike Royko.  He was the Pulitzer Prize winning author that made names such as Slats Grobnik, Dr. I.M. Kookie and the Billy Goat Tavern famous.

What brought this all to mind, and made it more than a passing conversation (albeit with an interesting person with which to converse) is a recent article by Tobold entitled “Why non-consensual pvp will remain a niche.”  You can read it here , excerpts are below:

PvP is best when it is “fair”, which usually means somehow symetrical. Equal number of players on each side, with equal power. – Tobold

Non-consensual PvP is like sitting down for a game of chess with a human opponent and finding that your opponent brought a .45 revolver – Tobold

Now on the face of it all I tend to agree. Before we go on I will note that when he said, “…otherwise he’ll use his superior intelligence to gank you when you are defenseless” my initial thought was that might rarely equates with intellect, the two usually being inversely related if not downright mutually exclusive.  After reflecting upon the words, it occurred to me that Tobold simply meant that the ganker was more intelligent than the game ai (artificial intelligence) – again I would tend to disagree, but that is not the point.  Then what is the point you might ask?

The point is gankers need love too.

If Mike Royko can explore alternative viewpoints through fictional characters, the staff here at No Prisoners, No Mercy can (and has) as well.  With that in mind let’s create a fictional ganker – we can call him Sunyar “Sunny” Grozdins. Now let’s take Sunny and put him in a real situation:

Back when I was still active in Ultima Online I was grinding away on the mobs on the Fellucia side (the side of each server to where pvp’ers had been flung in contempt). I was afk (away from keyboard) for a short while; after all real life sometimes must take precedence over virtual worlds, even if in the form of brief sorties in search of a place to relieve one’s bladder. When I came back to the keyboard Sunny had ganked my defenseless character and headed back into the wilds of Britannia.  Now the astute reader will note that I was ganked while afk and wonder how I found out that the culprit was Sunny Grozdins. It seems that Sunny and I both had a mutual acquaintance, and stranger still, was that acquaintance was a GM.  In the course of a conversation, Sunny found out from our GM friend that I am, in reality, a nun.  The immediate response, I am told, was “OH MY GOD I KILLED A NUN I AM GOING TO HELL!!!”

Sunny apologized profusely through our mutual GM friend.  The message I sent back was simply that he didn’t kill me he killed a character.  I assured him that if it made him feel any better I would hunt him down and return the favor by ganking him right back.

The story and the reaction by the ganker may be real; however I don’t really know the ganker’s name (fictional or otherwise) as my GM friend never told me.  But imagine the situation from Sunny’s viewpoint…

Here is a poor sole that had faith in the anonymity of the internet.  The way it is supposed to be is no harm, no foul.  Through a twist of fate that anonymity was suddenly, and cruelly broken.  Sunny depends on that anonymity; he needs that outlet. After all he couldn’t very well go about ganking people, nor even shouting phrases such as “nom, nom, nom” in real life could he? Well – not without getting his ass kicked around the block at least, and more probably ending up as the cell mate of someone who is 6 foot five inches, weight, 200 pounds (all muscle) and is nick named “killer”.

Worst still, is that tort law (at least in Illinois) appears to be changing according to the local papers. The anonymity to make scurrilous comments relating to someone’s dubious parentage under guise of a pseudonym may no longer be protected if a local politician has her way.

At this juncture we can’t help but feel pity for poor Sunny who’s is beset on all sides be influences that would take away one of the few simple pleasures he has in life.  If Tobold is right that niche that is non-consensual pvp may be harder and harder to find as economic times worsen.  If the court systems have their way it may that kicking someone’s butt around the block virtually could one day involve as much risk as trying to do it while facing down someone who is perfectly capbable of kicking Sunny’s butt right back…all he wants to do is be left alone to be able to kick butt without having his name taken.

What is a poor ganker to do? Gankers need love too.

(posted by: Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)

Having worked my way up to Commander, and nearly captain (sounds like a child who is 5 “AND A HALF” doesn’t it?) I finally made use of all the Star Trek Online (STO) crafting materials that I have been saving…

And it was not long thereafter that I shot them all out the airlock.

Now rather than simply writing an article denigrating crafting in what is one of my favorite games, I will offer a few observations and a solution or two.  But first let’s start with our earlier article which really did denigrate Player versus Player (pvp) in Star Trek Online.

This last weekend I decided to indulge in a bit more abuse…I mean pvp.  As the Feds were lined up, waiting for all five players to log in to the arena, one player said, “I can’t wait to leave the pvp in this tier behind me.”  Now I could have pointed out that simply attaining the rank of captain doesn’t mean the pvp would be any better.  The simplest solution to the unbalanced pvp would be a pvp only buff for the Federation side only.  The main problem being that any time the Federation players engage in pvp they are easy targets for the Klingon players, and the largest culprits, despite what the “my e-peen is bigger than yours” crowd wants desperately to believe, are weak shields compared to Klingon DPS.  The buff would simply be a buff that could be given by a science ship to increase the shield strength (pvp only) that would be active only while in the arena.  This buff would be similar to the flasks (a type of potion for you non-wow players) in World of Warcraft that persist through death of the character.  This would also have the effect of making the player who chooses to fly a Science ship more valuable instead of eliciting the response “O.K. who brought a science ship to a cruiser fight?” So far the experienced of the staff is limited to the first three tiers and the virtual thumb on the scale is still firmly placed on the Klingon side. I heard rumors in the wind (read forums) that the pendulum swings back toward the Feds briefly in Tier 4 and that “corrects” itself in Tier 5.  This being the case (if it is) the buff would only work for the ships that are used in Tiers 1 through 3 – However, the answer still seems to be in balancing the shields and the ability to penetrate them to make the fight not only fair, but last a bit longer.

To craft, or not to craft, that is the question…

There are many players, myself included, who enjoy crafting in games.  Many players, including some of our regular guests on the No Prisoners, No Mercy show, who will quit a game if it doesn’t have good pvp.   It is important to note, at this point, that “good” crafting doesn’t necessarily mean “complicated” crafting.  The crafting system in Vanguard, for me at least, was complex and so much of a pain in the posterior that I couldn’t sit down for a month after I finally quit playing (which was about the same time that Brad McQuaid did a number on the Sigil employees.).

Crafting in STO is just about lifted directly from Champions Online.  Briefly it works like that: Go out and scan for anomalies as you travel through space.   You will then obtain an inventory full of icons that represent data, artifacts and whatnot.  This isn’t where the system fails.

Where the Star Trek Online system fails, and that is not to say it doesn’t function – it does, it’s simply worthless, is the next step.  All the crafting system amounts to is taking an item you already have in hand (say a medium hypo spray) and turn it, along with your collected data, in to a vendor and receive back an item of the next higher grade.  In other words, all you are really doing is going through a length process to obtain items that are easily obtain through other means – such as on the “auction house” or as pvp rewards.

Imitation is not always bad.

Despite the usual hue and cry of “It’s a wow clone” (and in the case of many writers it seems to be the case of they simply can’t think of anything better to write) this is one time where imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery but a darn good idea.

If Cryptic is going to “take a note” from crafting in another game, it shouldn’t be from their own game – Champions Online.  If you are going to borrow, borrow from someone who has been doing crafting and industry correctly for a LONG time…

Eve Online

When it comes to crafting the folks at CCP do it right. Quite simply there is little that can equal their crafting system.  To begin with, crafting shouldn’t not be something added in as if to say “Oh yes, and maybe we should have crafting” (sort of the way Turbine initially did pvp in Lord of the Rings Online). Crafting should be desirable. There are many people, myself included, who would make it a major occupation.  Viewing crafting this way is beneficial for the developers and the publishers because, while there are many people who will quit a game with bad crafting, there are also many players who will stay in a game just because  it has good crafting, even when other parts of the game irritate the crap out of them (like Eve Online).

More depth

Crafting needs to have depth. It can’t simply be a matter of turn something in to a vendor for a better goody. The crafter should be able to go out and get the raw materials and create something of value in the game. Too often this turns out to be potions/hypo sprays and the like that are simply a few scraps thrown at the table of crafters.   There is an opportunity here that Cryptic can seize.  If they are going to introduce new ships into Star Trek Online there two ways it can, and should, be done.  First, make those ships craftable, and ONLY craftable. They should not be for sale anywhere in the game other than on the auction house created by crafters. Those ships, and their components, should be the top of the line, the best of the best. It should be what players want and long for.  This is also the point at which those ships, incredibly difficult to make in the first place, could be sale for a MODEST sum in the cash shop.  Not for a small fortune as Gpotato is doing, as they busily price themselves out of the market.

And that’s the way it is, on February 22, 2010

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

SIDE NOTE:

As a side note, here is one of the many, many spam messages our filter catches:

Hey great blog, I discovered your website when doing some study on some methods to develop my site. I was just wondering which spam software program you employ for comments because I get lots on my blogs.

The answer, of course, is the same spam filter that caught this automatic spam message.  Then there is the recent spam from a website that promised eternal youth in pill form that offered the following:

Thanks for sharing! it is good to encourage people to comment, not just reading. The only reason I writing blog rather than diary is because of the feedback.

At lest its better than the standard “Great blog, I have been looking for a site like this, I couldn’t agree more”…

*Gets out her professional project manager’s hat and puts it on*

Good morning class,

 Today we are going to learn lessons that even long time professional game developers sometimes fail  to learn. Did you all bring your texts? Very good. Please turn to page 20 of the March issue of PCGamer Magazine.  Mr. No Prisoners, No Mercy Webmaster will you read for us?

webmaster: Yes ma’am.  The article is entitled “Serious Business”. It is part of a regular feature entitled “Dev Man Talking.” This month features Mr. David Brevik, Studio Director for Gazillion Entertainment. (I think he’s a smart man Ms. Whitefeather). Anyway the article is about “How do developers strike a balance between profit and artistry – former Diablo Lead Designer shares his wisdom.

Julie: Very good webmaster. Please  read the last sentence for us all.

Webmaster: Yes Ma’am. It says, “In the end, everyone wants their games to succeed.  Finding the balance between our pure artistic game concept and the realities of business will be the only way to create the complete circle of yin and yang.”

*Julie continues*

Okay class, pay attention. Today we are going to learn about price versus demand.  Everyone knows that factors like supply and demand affect the price a developer can attain for a given product.  In the video game industry, the supply of virtual goods is infinite.  The primary determinants of demand will, therefore be price, and of course the quality of the product.  Look at the chart I have put on the board class.   There you will see where Activision/Blizzard has priced their cute Panderan Monk pet.  Remember a month or so ago when every assho…every person and his brother flew into a rage about the price of a monk costing ten dollars? Now if we have done our studying we know that Blizzard sold enough of the Panderan Monks, that by donating 50% of the sales (which by the way some dirtballs have complained about) that they have raised $1.1 Million dollars for the Make-A-Wish foundation. The reason for this is that by pricing the monk at an affordable level of ten dollars the Activision/Blizzard corporation remained in what is called the inelastic portion of their demand curve. And what does that mean Webmaster?

Webmaster: Inelastic demand is when an increase in price causes a smaller percentage decrease in quanitity demanded.

Julie: Very good Mr. Webmaster. Now take a look at the demand curve for the Allods Online Cash shop.  Note the recent and drastic increase in prices that the developer Gpotato has stated is not an error.  Note the level 10 rune that our friend Keen from Keen and Graev’s gaming blog said cost six thousand eight hundred and ninety dollars.  Can you say six THOUSAND class?

Entire class:  SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS

Julie: Very good class, I knew you could. 

Webmaster:  Times are tough teacher, Gpotato must think we have money coming out of our ass!

Julie: Yes, that’s funny that you should put it quite that way Mr. Webmaster. Now lets look at the price demand curve again.  The Allods Online cash  shop is far into what is called the elastic portion of their demand curve. What does that mean Mr. Webmaster?

Webmaster: That’s where an increase in prices causes a greater percentage decrease in the quantity demanded.

Julie: Very good.  And with such dramatic increases in price where have the profits for Allods online gone Mr. Webmaster?

Webmaster: In the toilet with the rest of the crap.

Julie: And?

Webmaster: And unless they wake up, and pull their collective heads out of their bums, unless they have a parent corporation that is floating in cash, like say a drug cartel, they can kiss their game goodbye.

Julie: Very good Mr. Webmaster. Go to the head of the class.

Would that the title of the article were actually possible. Sadly, it is not. But if Electronic Arts can engage in fake marketing, we thought we could do a bit of it ourselves, if only for a moment.

Most of the time we here on the No Prisoners, No Mercy staff will not denigrate a game sight unseen. Most of the time we are willing to cut the developers and publishers  some slack until the “horse is well out of the gate.”

But this is not one of those times.

Let us start with a review of the game Dante’s Inferno developed by Visceral Games, published by Electronic Arts and released on February 9, 2010 in North America.  Let us lay some review on you from people who have spent time with the game, all the way through the single player game in fact, whose opinion we trust – Joystiq:

“It won’t call you names, but Dante’s Inferno will offend. Whether intentional on Visceral Games’ part or not – and in truth it’ll be a combination of the two – you’ll not enjoy every minute in Lucifer’s lair. The abhorrence begins with Limbo, the lair of unbaptized babies. When the first infant emerged crying from the hollowed-out womb of a female effigy (which is lying underneath the gaze of a fiery devil) we questioned whether we wanted to keep playing. As it waddled forward on wobbly legs our only option was to take a scythe to it. It’s easily the most disturbing moment we’ve ever witnessed on a console and one that’ll understandably upset a lot of people.” – Matthew Pellett for Joystiq.com, God of War tumbles from Mount Olympus into the depths of Hell

If this weren’t enough to turn your stomach, how about a few more excerpts from the same review that will make you turn off your console and return the game.  You can read the entire review here - further excerpts from the review below:

Dante’s also offends with its numbing repetition. Nothing epitomises Hell quite like the invisible barrier. The laziest of all gaming mechanics, it’s capable of marring almost any experience when used without limitations.

Dante is fighting through Hell to save his murdered lover Beatrice and return her to Heaven. He’s so foul, though, that his overarching tale of redemption is ineffectual blubber.

The journey through the underworld is a whistlestop tour of all the epic poem’s major sights with plenty of dull filler in between. You’re whisked through the nine circles at such a pace that the major areas of Hell act as little more than footnotes punctuating lengthy nothingness. For every boss fight there are a dozen identical rope-swings and cliffs to rappel down. The sensation that you’re not exploring Hell so much as its maintenance tunnels is inescapable.

Maddeningly there are often glimpses of interesting goings-on in the distance or at the corner of the screen, but because the camera’s locked to rails the best sights seem hidden from you.

First let us say that if you are going to make a game that purposefully attempts to offend more people, in more cultural categories than we thought was humanly possible, and do it with a single game…

Well let’s just say that you might want to at least make your product a bit less akin to the mount sized pile of dingo dung that has begun to pollute retailer’s shelves all over North America.  Thankfully we were not able to find a picture of the opening moments of the game when you are given the task of killing unbaptized babies.  Most people are aware that there is even an “achievement”  (if you can call it that) for killing babies called “Bad Nanny”.

At this juncture we are still trying to make up our minds about this game. What puzzles us the most is trying to fathom what is worse – a game that is as offensive as this one is, a game that basically defecates all over a classic piece of literature, or the fact that it does both and is, apparently, mind numbing and fraught with tedium.  Our biggest question upon which we find ourselves pondering, however, is when the Dante character reaches the last plane of Hell, is there a special place for the people who developed and marketed this game?  You will pardon us now while we take a copy of the game out behind the barn and shoot it. Hopefully it won’t come back as a zombie – things like this are just tough to kill.

See you online,

The Webmaster

Allods… Street Thug Online

A recent post by Keen, from Keen and Graev’s gaming blog caught our eye, in reference to the cash shop for Allods Online which is a “free to play” game, and apparently not even out of open beta yet. You can read the post here.  Here is an excerpt:

“Everything in the cash shop has had a zero added to the end.  Mistake?  I do not know.  It seems like an awfully big mistake to make, especially when you’re open for business.  A medium bag that was $2 is now $20 (that’s $20 for 6 extra slots folks), and a level 10 rune that was $689 is now $6,890. ”- Keen

I had to look at that about three times before I was sure I had read it.  Even if $6,890.00 (presumably U.S. Dollars) is a mistake, there isn’t anything, anywhere, in any game for which we would pay $689 dollars, let alone six thousand eight hundred eighty nine dollars.  And people have complained about a $10.00 panderan monk in World of Warcraft?

Until we saw the video clip by Keen steering their astral ship, even though we played the game in closed beta, while the graphics where fantastic the game was a bit of a yawner for us. In the end, no matter how inovative a game is, no matter how fantastic the artwork if those are representative of the prices its not a cash shop…its a thug on a darkened street corner asking you to hand over your money.

George Orwell’s Classic novel 1984 may be a few decades out of date – but that is in name only.  When news of the draconic digital rights management (DRM) scheme crossed our news feed this morning, the first thing that popped into our minds is “resistance is futile.”  Now it may be that we have been playing way too much Star Trek Online lately (can there be too much of such a good thing really?) but I certainly feel as if Ubisoft is asking to assimilate our computers. Here is an excerpt from an Arstechnica article on the issue:

“Ubisoft has long had some controversial ideas about how DRM should be used, but when PC Gamer was given a review copy of Assassin’s Creed 2 on the PC it seemed as if the reality was going to be much worse than what opponents to DRM had feared: the game requires an always-on ‘Net connection and constant communication with the home server. If your connection is dropped, the game kicks you out, and you lose any progress you had made since your last save.”

You can read the entire article here.

It was not that long ago that  Electronic Arts (EA) insisted on shipping some of its games along with the Securom DRM meant to etch itself indelibly onto our hard drives like some digital version of the 10 commandments screaming “You shall not pirate video games.” But at least then the game was still portable.

Now Ubisoft is shipping a game with digital rights management that should come with its own prison guard and a coupon for a mandatory prison tattoo that says “I am a thief” Does something of this nature prevent piracy of video games? Will it boost profits? Take a look at what Electronic Arts did with Spore…in the end it turned it into one of the most pirated video games of all time. It was only then that EA said, “Well maybe we will be magnanimous and rescind our edict.”

Color us foolish, but one of the major points of a single player game, at least for us, is to be able to play the game where there is no internet connection.  But not anymore – if Ubisoft has their way we will be able to kiss that crap goodbye.

Message to Ubisoft – usually we get kissed first

See you online, just never with another Ubisoft game.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team