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'The Last of Us Part II' gets ultra-difficult Grounded and permadeath modes
As with the original game, Grounded mode tries to make the game’s intense violence even more realistic.
Suba Games is interested in resurrecting Wizardry Online
Could Wizardry Online make a comeback in North America and Europe after being shut down by SOE last year? It's an outlying possibility, as a fan push and a positive response by publisher Suba Games have indicated interest in such a move. Fans struck up a player petition to revive Wizardry Online in the West, prompting Suba to affirm that it is interested as well. "It's always great to see people passionate enough to pool together and try to have their voices heard," Suba CM Xjmas posted on the studio's forums. "In this case, I want to let you know you all have been heard and Suba is interested in reviving this game. They have actually made contact with the developer but have yet to conclude an outcome with them yet." Such a resurrection is familiar territory to Suba; the publisher recently spearheaded an effort to bring Dream of Mirror Online back to life following that game's sunset. You can watch the Wizardry Online player petition video after the break.
Shards Online adds permadeath ruleset
Shards Online's Kickstarter campaign is on fire, having blown past its $50K fundraising goal and now plowing through stretch goals. With eight days to go on the campaign, who knows how far it'll get, but there's one thing for certain: Thanks to passing the $80,000 mark, the fantasy sandbox will incorporate permadeath into some of its server rulesets. For the stretch goal, the developers wrote, "We will add an extra official ruleset to Alpha One with increased skill gains and permanent death! Not only will we have this ruleset running on some of our official servers, but players will be able to run these rules on their own community servers."
Salem updates inheritance and witchcraft in October
Your characters are going to die if you play Salem. That's the nature of the game. It's an open PvP sandbox with permanent death mechanics; your end is forever waiting just around the corner. So doesn't it make sense to prepare for your demise by setting up your inheritance ahead of time? The game's October patch allows you to do just that, improving the inheritance mechanics and allowing heirs to pick up more resources from a player who plans in advance for the inevitable. The October patch also adds the start of the game's witchcraft mechanics and sees a number of under-the-hood polish changes, like a reworking of player character skeletons, which will be invisible to most players but significant to the team moving forward. That's in addition to a variety of other fixes and improvements; check out the full list of updates to see what your character can do while on the road to the grave. [Thanks to Chrysillis for the tip!]
EVE Evolved: Could permadeath work in EVE?
Permadeath has been one of the most contentuous features in online gaming since as far back as I can remember. The feeling of permanently losing a character you've spent months training up and playing with because of a single mistake or lag spike would be horrifying to most people, yet the idea continues to intrigue both players and developers. Diablo II's Hardcore mode is probably the most successful permadeath mechanic in an online game to date, separating the hardcore players onto a different server so that they develop their own game economy and leaderboard. Several MMOs have experimented with permadeath servers or mechanics over the years, but they're almost always reverted as failures. In a recent presentation at EVE Vegas 2014, EVE Online developer CCP Rise discussed the idea of permadeath characters as something he's wanted to add to the game for the past few years. This is particularly problematic for EVE as the game uses passive time-based skill training and the whole game takes place on one massive shard. The hardcore players would need to have enough incentive to risk their characters' lives on a daily basis, their abilities would have to be balanced with non-hardcore players, and abuse of the system to suicide gank players would need to be handled. But if those problems are tackled, is it possible that there's a place for permadeath in EVE? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at how permadeath could be added to EVE Online without disrupting the rest of the game.
EVE Vegas 2014 roundup: Tech 3 destroyers, permadeath and more
An event that started out several years ago as an impromptu EVE Online player gathering, EVE Vegas has grown so large that this year it was was officially taken over by developer CCP Games. This year's event was organised like a mini-Fanfest, with Executive Producer Andie Nordgren's keynote address and some interesting talks from both players and developers. Players got a chance to compare notes with developers on the game's recent progress, CCP let out a few exciting reveals, and the whole event was streamed live to viewers at home for free. This year's big reveal was a new tech 3 Tactical Destroyer ship class that can transform into one of several tactical configurations mid-fight to boost power to the engines, shields, or weapons as required. We also heard rumblings of new "glass cannon" weapons that deal increased damage but lower your ship's damage resistances, and CCP tested the public response to the controversial idea of adding permadeath characters to EVE. Player talks were equally informative, giving insights into the world of nullsec Fleet Command and the custom Region Commander software that the game's biggest coalitions use to maintain their grip on power. If you missed out on the event, read on for links to Massively's coverage of the stream or to watch the stream recordings for yourself.
EVE Vegas 2014: CCP on the new player experience and permadeath
Every time some huge scandal or record-breaking battle erupts in EVE Online, thousands of new players flood into the game ready to create epic stories of their own. Confronted with a confusing interface and a practically mandatory tutorial that takes most of the day to complete, most of those players, unsurprisingly, don't stick around. The past few updates have improved things by adding tooltips to the main UI elements and introducing a new notification system, but there's more to come. At EVE Vegas 2014 this weekend, CCP Rise discussed his plans for a new Opportunities system that will replace the tutorial. To help design the system, developers got together groups of gamers who had never played before and dropped them into EVE with little to no instructions. The playtests highlighted a lack of action compared to expectations and showed how confusing things like the map, station UI, and hangar inventory system can be for newcomers. Many of these problems are very easily fixed and may even be solved in one of the two remaining patches this year. In an interesting move, Rise went on to talk about his idea to add a form of permadeath to EVE Online. Although you lose your ship when you die in EVE, it's actually only a financial loss as your character is reborn in a fresh clone. What Rise wants is for people to make new mortal characters with no clones and a fixed number of skillpoints to allocate to skills. It's possible that this could close the gap between old and new players by allowing newbies to purchase single lives with the focused combat skills of a veteran. This isn't something that will be introduced any time soon or even that's definitely coming, but the fact that CCP is talking about the idea publicly now is intriguing.
The Game Archaeologist: Ironman modes and elective permadeath
One facet of video games that's been around almost since the very beginning is the difficulty level. This has allowed the player to choose how hard or easy a game would be from the onset, influencing factors such as the number of enemies, hardiness of bad guys, fragility of the player character, and available loot (or lack of it). I used to love how some of those '90s shareware titles would mock me for picking easy, sometimes portraying my character wearing a baby bonnet and sucking its thumb. Real gamers, the devs implied, go tough or go home. With a few exceptions, MMOs operate on a fixed level of difficulty for all of their players. Instead of assigning blanket difficulty client-side, the game world portions difficulty into areas, usually according to level or activity. Some games have instances with adjustable difficulty levels, but past that what you get is also what I get. This might be changing. A very fringe but dedicated group of players have championed such ideas as elective ironman and permadeath modes for their MMOs, and at least one studio is responding positively to that desire. Would you choose to make your MMO experience harder than everyone else in exchange for nothing more than a bigger challenge and a more "realistic" experience?
Wizardry Online is now... Wizardry Offline
The MMO world mourned Vanguard's sunset yesterday, but as The Ancient Gaming Noob reminded us, Vanguard wasn't the only MMO SOE shuttered in July. Wizardry Online also closed its doors permanently last night, bringing to a end one of the stranger games SOE has published in its long career. Over on the official forums, where players have been posting their goodbyes, a player named Dremlock published a video of the game's last moments. We've included it below (start at about 1:29:00 to see the final curtain call).
Origins of Malu will offer F2P with limited lives and permadeath
Origins of Malu has a few interesting ideas regarding its business model that Burning Dog laid out today in a post. The studio prefaced the plan by assuring fans that the title will have "no pay-to-win, no matter what." The game will offer a hybrid business model, with both subscription and free-to-play options. Sub fees will be "low" and come with bonuses and store currency. If you opt for the free-to-play angle, you'll only have a certain number of lives per day. Spend all of your lives, and you'll either need to stop playing for the day, buy more, or play with the risk of facing permadeath. Free-to-play won't be restricted otherwise, but may contain ads on the loading screen. Burning Dog said that some of the items that it will sell in its cash shop are housing items, vanity gear, lives, and pets.
Salem prepares for full wipe
The end of the world is nigh for Salem and it's rankling more than a few players' sensibilities. Earlier this month, the developers announced that they will be conducting a full wipe of Salem in an upcoming patch. This will reset the map and delete all characters in order to condense the population onto a single server. Currently the game is running on multiple servers, which the devs deem as "overestablished." Players are upset that the sandbox MMO is being wiped in light of the team previously promising that it wouldn't do such a thing. Seatribe is sympathetic but resolute: "We did not arrive at this decision lightly. We have considered all our options and for various reasons found them wanting." The good news is that the patch will add in plenty of new features and tweaks, including a rework of the gluttony system, improvements to character proficiencies, and the implementation of a new map generator. Every item that characters purchased from the store beforehand will be restored to them once the patch goes live. [Thanks to Nine for the tip!]
The Daily Grind: Have you ever killed off an MMO character?
Eliot's last Storyboard column about killing off characters in MMORPGs got me thinking how rare that practice is outside of permadeath MMOs, both in RP and a literal sense. It's rare that I delete a serious character that wasn't just a bank mule or throwaway toon, and in fact, the one time I did so, I did it for roleplay effect, killing her off for a story and deleting her for good. I don't think it's too common among my friends, either. In fact, I remember a hung-over guildie logging in one morning, shocked to discover that in a drunken rage the night before, he'd deleted his alchemist. I think that moment in time made me covet my characters; I'm almost afraid to delete them even if I never play them, lest I change my mind later. In City of Heroes, for example, I frequently moved abandoned characters to remote servers just in case. But other folks delete to dramatize roleplay, to get attention, to ensure they can't return, or to ensure a clean slate if they ever do return. What about you guys -- have you ever killed off or deleted a "serious" MMO character? And can I have your stuff? 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 Daily Grind: Which of the recent SOE shutdowns will prove the most influential?
SOE is putting down four of its MMOs this year, and while this has been discussed to death here and elsewhere over the past few days, one thing I haven't seen is any chatter about the legacies -- good or bad -- of Vanguard, Free Realms, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Wizardry Online. So, let's talk about that now. Which of these four games do you think will prove the most influential in the long run? Why? 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!
SOE shuttering Vanguard, Clone Wars, Free Realms, and Wizardry [Updated]
SOE is closing down four of its MMOs. Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures and Free Realms will close on March 31st. Vanguard and Wizardry Online will bow out on July 31st. "At Sony Online Entertainment, we are always evaluating our portfolio to ensure we're providing players with the best gameplay experiences," the company said via press release. "At times, as part of this commitment, we have to make the difficult decision to sunset a game so we can refocus our resources on other areas in the best interest of our company and player community." SOE CEO John Smedley will be fielding questions on Reddit at 6:00 p.m. EST. We'll update you with the link when it's live. [Update]: Smedley's Reddit AMA
MMO Mechanics: Exploring death mechanics
They say death must come to us all, and that inevitability extends to our characters in MMOs. The death of our characters may be inconvenient when we want to plough through content, but penalising failure is an essential part of any MMO and further incentivises success by making you learn from your mistakes. As much as players crave gratification through rewards and progression, they also need to feel that such progress has been well-earned and greatly deserved. Rewards become that much sweeter when we must risk something to secure them, and failure without consequence would render the gains made in our favourite MMOs insignificant. Without a considerable death penalty, it becomes possible to mindlessly crush content through brute force. I don't know about you, but I don't find fun in bashing my skull repeatedly with a rock in an attempt to crack it! In this week's MMO Mechanics, I compare various death penalties and the effects they have on the MMOs that employ them. I'll explore just how tangible death penalties such as corpse running, gear durability loss, and XP drain make our character's demise feel.
EVE Evolved: Designing EVE Onland, part 1
When I'm not playing or writing about EVE Online, I can usually be found huddled over my computer typing lines of code into a compiler and chipping away at bugs that make varying degrees of sense. Designing my own hardcore space game is a really fun challenge and very fulfilling work, but I have a dirty little game dev secret: I've actually always wanted to make a fantasy game. While the budget and personnel required to take on a project the scale of an MMO remain quite far outside my grasp for the moment, it's still fun to think about how I might design such a game if the opportunity arose. The MMO genre seems to be heading for a sandbox revolution this year, and there's no bigger sandbox than EVE Online, but could all of EVE's gameplay translate to a fantasy game? EVE is probably the most atypical MMO out there, maintaining a subscription-based single-shard PvP sandbox in a genre that's typically headed in the exact opposite direction. There are several new sci-fi sandboxes on the way that may or may not qualify as massively multiplayer titles, but the vast majority of MMO gamers still prefer to keep their feet on the ground in fantasy lands. I often find myself wondering how much of EVE Online's core gameplay is possible only because of its setting -- and how much could actually be applied to a fantasy MMO. Not only should it be possible to adapt most of what makes EVE great to a modern land-based game, but many of the mechanics sandbox gamers now attribute almost solely to EVE actually started life in classic fantasy MMOs like Ultima Online. In this week's unusual EVE Evolved, I'd like to start a game design thought experiment as I delve into the hypothetical world of EVE Onland.
Trials of Ascension starting Kickstarter campaign on October 21st
"True permadeath" sandbox MMO Trials of Ascension has finally set a date for the start of its Kickstarter campaign: October 21st. Over the past few months, the team has been gauging interest in the project, promising a crowdfunding campaign if enough folks seemed behind it. Apparently there were and so here we are. Trials of Ascension features a complex fantasy environment full of crafting, building, and consequences for one's actions. Players will have to create their own spell books to use magic and will face the real possibility of being wounded and afflicted long after a battle is over. [Thanks to Android for the tip!]
Free for All: The Castle Doctrine takes griefing and grieving to a new level
The Castle Doctrine, the new pseudo-MMO by indie star Jason Rohrer, asks players to fill the shoes of a paranoid home owner who needs to protect his wife, kids, and home at almost any cost. Even the title of the game is based on a law that states that a person has the right to use force to defend personal space or abode, which should help you understand what Rohrer is trying to create. If you look at his official blog, you'll find out that his family was the victim of a dog attack while living in a New Mexico neighborhood. His experiences led to the creation of this art project. In the game, players build up home defenses but also try to break into neighbor's houses, dodging menacing dogs and traps. Imagine a game that plays a bit like tower defense with permadeath: If you are unsuccessful in breaking in to a house, you have to start over with a brand-new home and family. Of course, the title has brewed plenty of controversy, especially considering that you can play only as a man and that the highest in-game payout comes when you murder someone else's wife. The game is a man-on-man murder simulation where the woman and children are all property.
Wizardry Online hit by duping and hacking, bans issued
Some things never presage good news. Case in point: Wizardry Online has been hit with what appears to be a round of hacking and item duping, leading to hyperinflation and a great deal of player outrage on the forums. Exact figures about how much gold was dumped into the economy are hard to come by, but most players seem to agree that it's a matter of several million gold sometimes foisted on unwitting victims. After claiming that the matter was being investigated, Sony Online Entertainment representatives locked some of the threads related to the topic while simply stating that suspensions had been issued and further discussion did not help the community. No statements have yet been issued regarding permanent bans or any potential rollbacks to the environment. What long-term effects this will have on the game's viability remain unclear, although several players are protesting SOE's apparent lack of action quite vigorously.
Paradox Interactive drops Salem; Seatribe to continue development
If a game has spent a year in beta with no launch in sight, good things are not generally around the corner. So it goes for Salem, the early-America-themed permadeath sandbox MMO. Paradox Interactive has decided to separate from the title altogether, leaving all costs and work associated with the game in the hands of the two-man development team at Seatribe. The split will be final on July 8th, with a slow phase-out in place until then. According to the official announcement, both Paradox Interactive and Seatribe feel that this decision is for the health of the game now and in the future, and there are no immediate plans for a shutdown or anything of the sort. Players will be given a discount coupon for Paradox Interactive's online store and a free bundle of Salem's microtransaction currency. What happens with the game after the handover is complete remains to be seen. [Thanks to Chrysillis for the tip!]