Oh, THAT Button

Figured out why I failed one of the Crater Lake missions - I hadn't radioed in to HQ to complete it and trigger the next part of the chain. As a matter of fact, I'd never even seen the "Radio HQ" button until I went back in, completed the mission again, and scrutinized the mission log to find out what went wrong. I think that was my first actual radio mission, and had NO idea how it worked. Well, now I do!

In happier news, I successfully completed all the Crater Lake missions, this time solo. I'm sort of glad I had a squad to take out the mortars with, the first time, but I was able to avoid them this time and get everything that remained done. I'm halfway to 14, though, so I'm not sure I'll finish the ToO before 15. Oh, well.

Now that I figured out how to do the damned thing, I think the instance was actually quite fun. It wasn't scripted at all that I could tell, but the missions were laid out such that it had a very nice flow and felt like a coherent storyline. I'd heard really good things about TR's instances from friends, and am happy to find myself in agreement :)

Inside My Head

Great article at IGN about playing Sarah Morrison, with the three devs who trade off playing her in-game. The "expanding her character as we go along" sort of dynamic is one that's always really drawn me to the roleplaying side of MMOs, even if I'm REALLY bad at RP.

And by bad, I mean I'm antisocial and quiet at the best of times, so I tend to do all my roleplaying inside my own head. All of my MMO characters have fleshed-out backstories to greater or lesser degrees, but I'm the only person who knows them. It's still a pretty big part of my fondness for any given MMO, though.

Fleshing out the history and relationships between my characters and figuring out their place in the world gives my creative brain something to do while muscle memory drives most of the gameplay. Some games make this easier than others - contrast Ultima Online, where I could play a half-mad shepherd priest who ranted about the Virtues while running around barefoot and praying fanatically at shrines while being followed by a docile herd of goats, to World of Warcraft, where about the quirkiest thing I can do is collect booze (no, really - my rogue has a bag and a half full of quest reward flasks and beer-stein maces) or play a Retribution paladin (which I don't, actually.)

City of Heroes was probably the best for RP, of my previous MMOs. It had detailed and cohesive worldbuilding and a plausible framework for the characters to fit into. There weren't very many restrictions on the actual character appearance/backstory/whatever, but the world itself was fairly restricted - you play a hero involved in the struggle against evil, both banal and profound. That restriction, in my mind, actually makes RP easier - and more fun. It feels less like pointless wankery and more like just interacting with the world.

Tabula Rasa works for me in much the same way that CoH did - I have a definite framework to build my character in, but I can imagine whatever motivations and history I want to. Instead of the fabulous costume creator, there are the "ethical parables" - they're minor touches, and they seem to be almost impact-free in terms of actual gameplay, but so far they've been the hooks to hang my character development on. (Well, that and the cloning system, which I swear I started playing with at least 48 hours before reading Old Man's War.)

Why is this important, since it only takes place in my head? I don't know if it is, to anyone else - certainly of the above list, the least RP-friendly game is doing the best. But for me, if I can thoroughly develop a character or two - story-wise, not gameplay-wise - I'm pretty damn hooked. I still mourn for my UO character Itarion, deleted untimely, and his descendent Jeremiah, sold off on eBay in a fit of madness. I've been playing UO for ten damn years. I have an incredibly high level of investment in that game - those characters, partly, but also just that world, in which I've created a whole epic saga spanning generations. We don't have enough data on longevity and MMOs to make generalizations about this level of commitment and a game's long-term success, but I know it makes a difference in how invested I get in a game.

First Instance

Ran Crater Lake tonight - did it a little bit fast, seem to have missed an objective. One of the squad had clearly done it before and was moving right along, but I don't really feel like I learned it. It was interesting, certainly - and would probably be very hard to solo at 12 - but I think I'm going to run it again, solo, to try to figure out what I missed.

Predators

Took 'em out - actually wasn't that bad. Three shots with a rifle from behind, and boom! That puts me at instances-only with my soldier, just in time for me to fly home and spend some uninterrupted time playing. The short-session nature of this game works when I never have more than half an hour before someone needs the computer, or we're going to eat, or something, but I am rather looking forward to doing some serious catassing after all this family time.

Stilwater

So I decided to go for it, and my in-character TR adventures are now available at stilwater.blogspot.com. I'll probably keep doing out-of-character updates here, because it requires different brain cells.

Speaking of which, I'm through with all but the instances in Wilderness (well, that and killing a trio of Predators, which I haven't really attempted since the one embarrassing failure.) I did the assaults today - that was interesting, but also sort of frustrating, as I clearly couldn't succeed solo, and even retrieving the tokens was risky. I've seen a lot of requests to make the tokens pop into your pack instead of staying on the corpse as loot, and I can see why.

Also ran a few missions with my Specialist - Pinhole Falls was vastly easier now that I know the trick to fighting Miasmas. Picked up a couple of Logos, hit level 6 with him, did the parable mission that I wanted to write a post about. Since Jeri's at the instances-only part of Wilderness, I'll probably play him more. He's definitely fun to write about - thinking about what it would be like to be a clone, and an opposite-gender clone at that, is neat. (Jeri, on the other hand, is well on her way to being the stereotypical nutbar sniper. Also fun, but in a different way.)

The tier-and-clone system makes for interesting character development - I honestly have no idea what Jaxon will ultimately be, but I can pick whatever works for his character at each point. I like that. I like it a LOT. I mean, if he ends up being too broken to be an effective soldier, he can even be my crafter alt :P

(Note to self: Write an essay about the psychology of clones in TR's world. Along with the class review and the Wilderness review, I suppose.)

More Checkboxes

I got all of my LZ defender tokens about ten minutes after I made yesterday's post, and switched to Imperial Valley. Wow, it's much more intense there - more Bane, less downtime. The shotgun-berserker method doesn't work as well there - too many groups sniping from too many different directions. For the last wave I found a sniper's perch in the hills above the city and just used my rifle - took almost no damage, and when I ran out of targets and dropped down to collect my tokens, the plains were positively littered with my kills.

I got my Bot Stomper title in the course of the CP defense, then took out the last handful of Xanx. All I need for the ToO now are the instances, which I probably won't get to until I get back home, and CP assaults. I'm not sure how easy those will be - certainly Wilderness 1 is well defended, but the other instances may be more likely to get overrun.

The official site's latest promotion is HIGHLY tempting - it would be a great way to polish my fiction-writing chops. I'm going to think about it for a few days, but perhaps I'll create a sister blog to this one just for in-character musings.

Control Points

I'm at my parents' house this week, so my playing time will be sporadic. I hopped on yesterday and just hung out at Landing Zone, defending. It was fun - the first couple waves I died several times, but I got the hang of it and my token-to-death ratio went way up. (Shotguns FTW!) I could wish for the assaults to be somewhat more frequent, but when they come, they are intense. Word on the wire is that the higher-level control point assaults are waaay more difficult - looking forward to those.

About 25 more tokens for me, then I'll hit the imperial valley CP for a while, see how it differs.

The Unblogroll

I'm not at all interested in maintaining a blogroll of any sort, but I find myself annoyed that not enough people are talking about what I want to talk about. I may not be the only one, so I'm going to (probably periodically) make a list of sites that I'm reading:

RGTR.com - The official site, non-intuitive name and all.
TR Stratics - Stratics has been doing this a while and generally has a clue. Also, reasonable forums, if you like that sort of thing.
Planet TR - Also reasonably-populated forums.
Tentonhammer's portal - We'll see if they keep it up, but they have a bunch of guides, interviews, etc at the moment.
Zeus Character Builder - Very handy

That's what I've been hitting so far - if anyone's found a well-written blog or three, I'd love to see it.

Squadding Up

I bounced around a bit last night, looking for a base being assaulted, then I decided to go take out the three Devils for the medicine mission. There were five or six people hanging around, and each time the three bastards spawned, we'd blow the hell out of them, and presumably somebody got credit. After the third or fourth repetition, when I realized I'd only gotten one credit and didn't know which one it was for, I asked everyone if they were in a squad. They weren't, so I issued invites, and the next round, we all got credit. How brilliant is that? *eyeroll*

I really like the sort of ad-hoc cooperation that I'm finding - you hear the whine of a Bane dropship, you drop what you're doing to blow the crap out of the enemy, and so does anyone else who happens to be nearby. I haven't seen a single complaint about "kill-stealing" - we're at war, and the point is to fight the crusties, not each other. However, I could wish for a different kind of kill-credit, where multiple solo people could get credit for one kill - or perhaps the playerbase just needs to get used to squadding up. Why not? The XP gets split anyway, and the loot drops aren't worth fighting over - besides, I just set them to "free-for-all" and let them fall where they may. Worked fine, no one complained.

After that, I turned in the quest, got the ethical-choice quest (I'm not going to spoil those here,) and defended a base for a while. Waiting around for an assault? Exactly as boring as you'd expect. The assault itself? High-adrenaline fun! AoE damage rocks - shotty, shrapnel, shotty, shotty, all dead! The laser chaingun came in handy on the Kael, who are immune to physical, but otherwise it was the shotgun all the way.

Still just 11, and I think I'm running out of Wilderness quests, but I have a lot of base assault/defense tokens to collect. Plus I need to kill those predators - I tried one, but it smoked me as soon as it noticed me. Need a different strategy for those dudes, it appears. I also kinda want to spend some time on my specialist - my MMO strategy is usually "create a character, play 5 hours or so, figure out what I've done wrong, create a new character, do it again." I'm going to keep my main, inefficiencies and all, but I'm looking forward to a smoother run of the Wilderness pretty soon.

Hey, Readers!

It looks like talking about TR is much more interesting than talking about WoW, at least at the moment - I have commenters! Welcome, all!

I changed the tagline, and will no doubt feel much guiltier when I don't post for a while. (That doesn't mean I'll necessarily post more often, but at least I'll feel guilty about it.)

No TR yesterday - went to bed early. Plan to play some tonght, though. I'm thinking that I'll do a Soldier class review when I hit 14.99, and/or a Wilderness zone review.

Oh, and check out the Recruit a Friend program - a three-day trial isn't long, but if you've got friends on the fence it might be just enough.

Sniping

Well, that was fun. My new strategy for that quest worked perfectly (talk to NPC to spawn mobs; run like hell up the ramp to the first platform; snipe.) The get in-have fun-get out model worked wonderfully - I was moving as soon as the loading screen finished, and I turned in two quests with no more than about a minute of downtime. So not only did I go to the grocery store and cook meals for the next week, I hit 11 as well :)

More TR

Played TR and Civ III, alternating, all weekend. Civ III is an addiction - TR is fast becoming an obsession.

I never like playing ranged characters, unless the ranged combat is pretty visceral. Most MMOs don't do it for me. Guild Wars did - or perhaps the melee just sucked, I can't remember - and TR does, too. I'm beginning to think I might like Sniper better than Spy.

Got another level or two, finished most of my non-instanced quests, and completed a few Targets of Opportunity goals. Kept banging my head against one quest where five or six Xanx (big, web-shooting, evil spiders) spawn practically on top of me. I can't quite clear them out before they pin me down and armor-ignore me to death. I have a plan, though - we'll see.

Next up, the rest of the ToOs, including hanging out and defending some control points for a while. I've gotten a token here or there as I've stopped by, but haven't spent any concentrated effort on it.

Man, I'm digging this game - and, from the tone of various forums, so are a lot of other people. I haven't seen so much positivity since the last time I looked at the Darkfall forums - and hey, this game has actually shipped!

Tabula Rasa

I was apprehensive about this game - I love Garriott's previous work (see previous, re: UO) but he hasn't shipped a game since I graduated high school, and I was afraid he might have lost his touch. Or his mind - a sci-fi mock-shooter? I mean, really.

But I sucked it up, bought the (shiny, gorgeous) collector's edition, and... haven't been able to put it down. Let me make no bones about it - all marketing spin aside, it's an MMO. Quests, stats, skills, titles, instances - nothing has leapt out at me so far as being completely revolutionary. But there are a couple of things that make it worth a try, in my opinion:

- It's a different theme. Military sci-fi, rather than fantasy. Aliens rather than monsters. Guns rather than swords. As much as I dig fantasy, I am heartily tired of it, and this is a nice change. I played Auto Assault some (may it rest in peace!) and other than squishing pedestrians, the sci-fi theme was the good bit. TR's is even better done, plus it's prettier and runs better. The storyline itself is solid and fully-realized, from the dogtags and orders sheet in the CE, to the NPCs engaging the enemy and shouting orders, warnings, and "Oh shit!" just like real soldiers, to the interesting Supreme Hippie benevolent aliens that gave all the player characters spiffy powers.

- Combat is fast-paced and highly interactive - and fun! The only other MMO that felt as exciting as this was City of Heroes, which had extensive knockback mechanics that made combat feel much more real than the "hit button-watch particle effect-see floaty number" combat system that most other MMOs offer. TR's combat is mostly ranged at the low levels, but positioning and cover are really important, and I end up moving, retargeting, crouching, charging in for a critical kill (your opponent stands there, dazed, and if you run in you can kick its head off for double XP!) backing up, and whipping out the shotty for a couple of hits of click-BOOM, sometimes all in the same fight. I like interactive combat - it's why I prefer a backstab rogue, because I like having to think about positioning, and work at it to maximize my effectiveness. But WoW has NOTHING on TR for dynamic, fast-paced combat.

- The Cloning system. It's sort of a gimmick, but it's perfect for me. I like alts - a lot - but I don't love re-running the first ten levels half a dozen times to find out what the gameplay differences are at the high levels. The cloning system allows you to copy your character at all the class-branching decision points, and not backtrack nearly as much. I also like not having to pick a class straight off - I am pretty sure my main is going Spy, because hey, backstabbing! But if I change my mind, I can - at any point - and not lose ground.

- Garriott's signature "ethical parables." Branching quest chains, where the choices you make affect how different people and groups see you. I've only hit one so far, but it worked. They usually do, for me. I went with my gut on the actual decision, and then found myself feeling nervous as I went back to the original quest giver to tell him what I'd decided. It's a level of engagement that WoW has never managed (which I've bitched about before) and it does a great job of getting me invested in my character and the world.

- Exploration and badgewhoring: I'm a classic "Explorer"-type MMO player. I like to see things, collect things, and check things off a list. TR's "Targets of Opportunity" system is tailor-made for players like me. (Think CoH-style badges, but better organized.)

I haven't really played with the dynamic Control Point battles yet (self-scaling constant fighting around a base) but I've heard good things about them. I've also heard that the instances are lots of fun. I can't see myself getting sucked backed into WoW with patch 2.3, even though it buffs my rogue stupid high, so I'll probably be reporting on my adventures in TR for a while.

(Edited to add, thanks for the link, TR team! :) )

Betrayal

So I got a shiny new computer, and installed a whole bunch of games I had lying around. As a result, I haven't touched WoW in at least a week. Since my alternative activities have been a) untagged and b) generally rogue-like, I'll blog about them here until such time as I find it necessary to change the blog tag line or I go back to playing WoW.

Guild Wars:

I'd played Guild Wars obsessively for a month when it came out, then got distracted and haven't really come back to it. I never got past level 15 or so. When I heard about Eye of the North, I decided to give it another spin.

My ranger-mesmer is still pretty cool, and I got the hang of playing her in just a few minutes. I still love the AI minions that actually do what they're supposed to. I finished one quest, felt satisfied, and... got distracted. Again. So far I haven't come back to it. But hey, no monthly fee, so it'll wait.

Civilization III:

I actually wanted to play Civ 4 (which performed like a dog on my old box) but I could only find disk 2. Civ III was handy, so I popped that in instead, and promptly lost track of... about a week. God, these games are horribly addictive. It took me a couple frustrating games to remember my l33t Chieftain-level skills, but I've been playing for half an hour or so every morning, taking over the world. It's fun, and I'm going to try to pace myself.

Ultima Online:

The Invasion of Magincia has totally sucked me back in - my love for UO was cemented years and years ago during the invasion of Trinsic, and this one brings back fond memories. My heretofore-neglected paladin is getting a workout, and I've even gotten around to sorting out some template issues on my crafters. I haven't been logging a ton of hours, but I pop in every other day at least.

Tabula Rasa:

I've been playing TR every night this week, so I'm going to pull a review of that into its own post. Short version: it rocks.