character-development
Latest
The Daily Grind: What do you expect from an MMO expansion?
When World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor expansion was revealed last month, I was stoked to see what will be included but disappointed to see what will not -- namely, a new class or race. Admittedly, not every WoW expansion has seen these two additions, but each one has seen one or the other. It's not a rule, spoken or otherwise; it's just become something that folks expect. Thinking it over, I also found that I expect several additions in any expansion for any games: some sort of new landmass to explore, new gear to wear, and usually some new mechanic or skill for character development. In WoW, I'd certainly expect a level cap bump too, though I'd grumble about powercreep in most others (don't go getting any ideas, Guild Wars 2)! Let's put aside quibbles over the line between expansions and patches today and just focus on expansions. What, specifically, do you expect out of a content release that a studio labels an "expansion"? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Elder Scrolls Online shows off the process of building a character in a new video
One of the key features of The Elder Scrolls Online is building a character the way you want to play. It's been stated time and again that the game will allow you to build the sort of character you want rather than force you into a predefined setup. But what does the process look like in action? Well, why don't you just jump past the break and watch a new video showing off exactly how characters develop over time? When you choose a race and class at character creation, you gain access to one racial skill line and three class-based skill lines, but you also have access to a plethora of other skill lines so that neither race nor class forces you into a certain role. As you level, you gain skill points and attribute points, allowing you to customize your abilities as well as your individual distribution among survivability, magical skill, and weapon-based resources. Not to mention all of the other skill lines you can find over the course of play. For a more detailed look, jump on past the break to take a look at the full video.
Ten things to love and hate about Path of Exile
Grinding Gear Games' Path of Exile officially launched last week after a long open beta. Like so many similar titles trailing in Blizzard's wake, it's a dungeon-crawly pseudo-MMO that skirts the boundary between sinking to "just another Diablo clone" and rising above the genre. Some journalists are praising it as Diablo II's rightful heir, while others are putting it aside in favor of their weatherbeaten copies of Titan Quest, which better satisfy their urge to click-click-click. The reality is usually somewhere in the middle of these extremes, but extremes are fun. So let's examine the top 10 things we love and hate about Path of Exile.
The Daily Grind: Why do you like character development and progression?
I dislike MMO progression. No, seriously. I dislike it mainly because it feels like a job and I already have a couple of those. If I could start every MMORPG at max level and just explore the world and/or enjoy the narrative I would do so without thinking twice about all the grindy, repetitive "gameplay" I'd be missing. See, I play video games to have certain experiences that I can't have in meatspace. I can't very well drive a GT40, hunt bounties in the Old West, or customize my own spaceship outside of gaming. But I can climb a career ladder toward a distant and theoretically rewarding end goal in real life, so I don't see the appeal of doing it in games. Obviously, though, some people love progression and character development. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that most people love them, at least in this genre, because almost every game uses them as a core mechanic. And assuming you're one of those people, today's Daily Grind question is for you. Why do you like character development and progression? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Storyboard: A second descent into madness
I had a lot of stuff to talk about on the subject of madness. As it happens, I had so much to talk about that I elected to split it up into two columns instead of writing one monster, scratching and crawling about in a lone column's space. And as I sat down to write this column, I realized that I have an entire column's worth of things to say about a single facet of madness: acting mad. Herein we come to the meat of what bothers me about madness as most players use it: It winds up getting used as something wacky. It's an excuse to do things that are wild and unpredictable because your character is so crazy. That bothers me because there's so much to be done with madness and so many ways to make it an interesting character trait. It's not something for casual or shallow use.
New Defiance developer diary explains what makes an MMO shooter
If you like playing an MMO but also like shooting things, you may enjoy the gameplay underpinning Defiance quite a bit. The latest developer diary for the game might be answering questions you hadn't asked, however, as it's focused on explaining how the game blends the MMO and shooter genres together into a cohesive whole. But there are still interesting tidbits about the game, including a look at vehicles and character advancement. Characters advance partly through the acquisition of powerful new weapons, which is almost a given based on the nature of the game. Weapons are also heavily customizable, with visible differences between stock weapons and customized versions. Players will also be able to acquire points to spend on special abilities of varying types, although points can be swapped into different abilities later on. If you want a more in-depth look at the game, click on past the break to view the full development diary. [Source: Trion Worlds press release]
Know Your Lore: What exactly is up with women in Warcraft lore?
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Between Rossi, myself, and those who came before us, there have been a metric ton of Know Your Lore columns. If you're wondering exactly how many, I suggest you take a look at our lore guide for a categorized list of them all. Occasionally, I'll go back and look through the list just to see what we've missed and what needs to be filled in or updated from old columns. And I've been looking at that lore guide and going over the things in it, and I keep noticing one really particular thing about it. There are hardly any women on that list. There's a scant handful compared to all the other heroes and villains and history and everything else on it. And it's not that women don't exist in the Warcraft universe -- they're all over the place, honestly. It's that there is only a handful worth of them that have enough character development and story to warrant dedicating a column to them. To which I say wait a minute, what is up with that?
Is height a requirement for a serious character?
I'm 5 feet 3 inches tall. When I wear heels, I call them my tall shoes because they make me tall. Not taller, because that would indicate that there were some degree of tallness to begin with. Trying on platform shoes is an exercise in seeing the world through the eyes of someone tall enough to see all the things without standing on their tiptoes. My kitchen is organized by "things I need", "things I don't use often," and "things I put on the top shelf because I'll never use them anyway." There is an upper third of my closet that is nothing but stuff I should save but will never pull out and look at in at least five years. That said, it's not bad being short, either. I never hit my head on door frames or overhead lights. Low ceilings don't particularly bother me, aside from design aesthetic. I can fit into literally any car on the market; there's never a problem having to squish my legs under a steering wheel. Plane seats have plenty of room for my legs, which is great on long flights. I have smaller hands, so my dad constantly asks me to pull things out of tight spaces, thread needles, or mess around with teeny-tiny wires and screws. That said, it's continually kind of weird to look at all the short races in video games and see characters that aren't taken particularly seriously.
Help your roleplay character along with a character questionnaire
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW. Who are you? It's the single most important question you can ask about the character you're roleplaying. When making a character, all too often roleplayers tend to focus on one element over any other, whether it's appearance or an accent or that one thing that their character is after. But presenting a character with nothing behind them other than that one focus usually results in a character that's a little boring, a little stale, one-dimensional. This is where questionnaires come in. You've likely seen variants of these types of questionnaires on roleplaying forums, and they seemed like a fun game. But they aren't just for fun -- these questionnaires are also incredibly useful character development tools. And if you take time to think about your answers, they can provide a lot of helpful insights that will help you answer that all-important question -- who are you?
Storyboard: The hook brings you back
We're told, at a young age, not to judge a book by its cover. The problem with that statement is that when you're out buying a book, the cover is pretty much all you have to go by. Publishers understand that, and while a great book can overcome a lackluster cover, pretty much every book goes out of its way to try to attract your immediate attention. There are entire schools of thought on cover design for precisely that reason. The same goes for your characters in a roleplaying setting. You can develop a deep and engaging character with a lot of different potential stories, but without something to draw in other players, no one will ever know. You need something to get other players curious, something to get them invested and interested in what you want to do. You need a way to show them from the beginning that this isn't just another generic warrior or mage or whatever. You need a hook.
Storyboard: Navel-gazing cardboard cutouts
When you create a character for roleplaying, most of the time your creation is something of a mess. He or she has a huge pile of issues, regrets, fears, mental blind spots, and possibly even physical ailments that should have a lasting impact on telling stories and creating drama. And your goal as a player is to take all of those flaws into account to tell stories about someone less than perfect, whose imperfections you can hopefully see even if the character can't. Unfortunately for everyone, there are two very compelling ways to do this, and neither one of them is right or wrong or even evident at a glance. It's only by roleplaying with someone for a while that you get a sense of what she's aiming for, and it often turns out to be after it's too late to do anything. You might be going for character arcs or character development, and the two are frequently incompatible over the long term.
Storyboard: Rubicons
It was a great time for a character to die. The problem is that roleplaying isn't a novel. Ms. Lady's character had just had one of her eyes put out, had been left to die by the people she had been working for, and was blubbering for her life to another woman who had every reason to take that life. That other woman, D, had been betrayed twice over by the newly minted cyclops. She was a spy, and she had every reason to tie up a loose end by killing Ms. Lady's character. But she wouldn't do it without permission out-of-character. And Ms. Lady turned to me and asked, "So... should I let her die?" It's not always a matter of death. But your characters will face their own rubicons, moments when their lives will be changed irrevocably if they step forward. The question is, when do you take that step? When do you march forward into a permanent change, and when do you take a step back and let the opportunity pass?
Storyboard: Mistakes I know I was making
When I write this column, I talk a lot about what works within the context of roleplaying. I make suggestions, declare certain things as being bad ideas, and otherwise make a point of speaking as someone who knows what he is doing. This is not unfounded; I've been playing MMOs for eight years and roleplaying for fifteen, so I at least have some benefit of experience to work with. But a lot of the conclusions I've reached and the ideas that I've formed have been the result of trying something, failing, and learning from the experience. Today, I'm going to look back to three characters whom I played, characters I was excited about, characters who absolutely failed to work. Beyond just that, however, I want to talk about why they failed to work and what I might have done to overcome their innate problems and make them fun to play after all. These are points I've touched on before, definitely, but it never hurts to fit these things into an actual context.
Storyboard: Making it worse
Last week, I talked about how cross-eyed the whole roleplaying dynamic looks when compared to MMO progression models as a whole. Some of you probably looked at that column and shook your head in confusion, either because you don't roleplay or because you have a much lighter method for RP (which is perfectly fine -- I wrote a little while back about the fact that there's a lot of RP that covers a very wide band). Others probably looked at my litany of recent misery-inducing events in my character's life and wanted to know how to get to that same point. The former group I can't help a whole lot, but the latter group is the focus of today's column. If you know you want to get your favorite characters up into a tree while being pelted by rocks, you need an idea of what sort of rocks make the best projectiles and what the worst trees are to climb down. So let's take a look at ensuring that your character pretty much fails at everything he or she tries to do -- and how to succeed after all.
The Road to Mordor: Not all who wander are lost
These are exciting times for Lord of the Rings Online, for sure. The Fellowship -- and hundreds of thousands of groupies following in its wake -- has moved south, and we are growing ever closer to Mordor and Mt. Doom. In a month, Middle-earth will grow significantly with the addition of Rise of Isengard, and level-capped players will suddenly have a whole new buffet of content to devour. It's also a good era for exposure for the game, as plenty of people will get to see the expansion at Gamescom and PAX, not to mention those already in the beta proper. While we haven't heard anything about the game's finances or player numbers lately, there's no reason to believe that it's not still going strong. That said, I want to take a step back today, as I sometimes do, and look at the larger picture. How is LotRO positioned against the current competition and the heavy-hitters yet to come? What does Turbine need to be working on over the next year or two? Are we just wandering aimlessly, or is the path laid out for journey for a long time to come?
Hyperspace Beacon: For over a thousand generations...
I know this column has covered a lot of lore in its nine months -- wow, nine months! I can't believe it's been that long. We have discussed the Empires of the past and future, the Jedi's rise and fall, and the lore behind each of the eight classes. Cultures have been examined and specific characters have been spotlighted in this column. But how important is all this backstory to Star Wars: The Old Republic? Is my bad-ass bounty hunter even going to care what a gray Jedi is? He sure isn't going to give a bantha's butt about the color of the Jedi's lightsaber. I know you're going to tell me, "But Larry, you're a roleplayer. You know how important lore is!" I do; it is important. But how much lore is too much? Even as a roleplayer, I have found that sometimes knowing too much can be detrimental to the roleplay experience. On top of that, how horrible is it, especially as a new roleplayer, to have someone tell you that you can't wear black as an Imperial officer unless you're a member of the Stormtrooper Corps. Crap! Now I have redo everything! What I'd like to discuss today are some essential pieces of lore the average person living in The Old Republic should know, so that I can give existing roleplayers a different perspective on how to handle their characters' knowledge. If you're floating in the middle saying to yourself, "I'm not really a roleplayer, but I do like a game with a good story," keep reading. You and the vast majority of future SWTOR players will definitely get something out of this.
Hyperspace Beacon: It's against my programming to impersonate a deity
We all know what god-mode means from Doom, right? It pretty much meant that you could mow through all the monsters without blinking an eye, you had every weapon at your disposal, and you could not get hurt. What if we were to take this god-mode idea, move it away from game mechanics, and apply it toward character development in an RPG? To be honest, we would get the main character in most RPGs, right? Taking a look at the main character in my favorite BioWare game, Commander Shepard from Mass Effect 2, we find that she (yes, Shepard was a woman, and you can't tell me otherwise) is the best at what she does and is pretty close to flawless. Wouldn't you agree? She wins every battle, and the galaxy (as noted in the Mass Effect 3 trailer) is counting on her to save it from destruction. In literary terms, we call this a Mary Sue. It is a situation in which the author exemplifies himself in the main character of the story. These stories tend to be boring or ridiculous because the main character can do no wrong no matter how preposterous or illogical his decisions may be. If you read comic books, Wolverine (in my opinion) is a prime example of this. What happens if we take this concept and put it in a setting where there are thousands of people playing the same game or even competing in some cases? You get a bunch of gods competing for the same throne in a no-win situation. BioWare has said that our character in Star Wars: The Old Republic is not going to be just any Bounty Hunter (or Smuggler or Trooper) but the best Bounty Hunter. How is that going to impact the story and our interactions with other players from an in-character perspective? For a game that is "putting the RP back in the MMORPG," this is dangerous ground.
Hyperspace Beacon: Life in the Force
"Remember, concentrate on the moment. Feel, don't think. Trust your instincts," was the sage advice Qui-Gon Jinn gave to Anakin Skywalker just before the Boonta Eve podrace. On the surface, this appears to be a common statement heard from Jedi. After all, Obi-Wan did say something similar when training Luke Skywalker: "I suggest you try it again, Luke. This time, let go your conscious self and act on instinct." However, not all Jedi believed the same thing. Obi-Wan's statement in Revenge of the Sith seems to suggest that Sith are single-minded, in contrast to a Jedi's open-mind: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes." We roleplayers do not have all the answers to canon and character development, but there are many of us who study our character philosophy deeply. Despite this, our Jedi characters tend to come across as stiff and one-dimensional. By contrast, Sith characters seem to have personality and variety. Of course, there will always be the Sith who are all broody and who stand in the corner of a cantina being "evil." However, if a Jedi developed a personality other than that of a sage monk, he was automatically labeled a "gray Jedi" -- or even "dark Jedi" if his personality was extremely vivid. I would like to question this philosophy. Is there more than one way of thinking among the Jedi, like Obi-Wan suggested? Are the Sith absolute? And most importantly, are the Jedi in Star Wars: The Old Republic going to be as one-dimensional as the Council members of Episode I? Follow me after the break to read my thoughts, then please, comment to discuss this further. Spoiler Alert: I am going to talk about some specifics from the Decieved novel, but I will not give away the ending.
Champions Online previews the new Archetype system
When Champions Online first announced that it was joining the ranks of other games offering a no-subscription option, it included a mention that free members would be locked into archetypes. Archetypes were described in broad strokes as a chance for players to develop along the lines of famous heroes from comics, with a locked progression path but the same basic power level. While the development team hasn't yet expounded on what the precise archetypes will be, it has put together a short description about the differences players can expect between the normal free-form heroes and the coming archetype heroes. As it turns out, archetypes will end up with slightly fewer overall powers than freeform heroes but with the same general power level. The preview explains the split as being one of versatility -- freeform heroes will be able to take many roles, but archetype heroes will perform one role well and that's it. If you're one of the players looking forward to trying Champions Online as free-to-play, or if you're just interested in the new build system, take a look at the full rundown and keep your eyes peeled for the coming details on the archetypes themselves.
Storyboard: Problem children, part the second
Creating characters is hard work. It's hard enough when you're just concerned with making a really cool melee character who can kick other melee characters up and down the block, and it gets infinitely harder when you're trying to put together something that at least looks like a three-dimensional individual at the right angle. That having been said, there are certain ideas that are just problematic, character types that might seem like a good idea when you're staring at the screen but become a really bad one as soon as you hit "create." Our last look at problem characters focused on the sort that you know you're creating at the time, the sort that sound nifty in your head but cause some serious problems in actual play. This time we're looking at the other side, the sort of thing that's far easier to notice while interacting with characters rather than while creating them. But it's still well worth keeping these types in mind so that if you start traveling down these roads, you can make a turn. On to the problem children!
