Star Trek Online: Lohlunat Festival 2019 Controversy
Yesterday Cryptic posted details of the forthcoming summer event, known in Star Trek Online parlance as the Lohlunat Festival 2019. As usual there’s a Tier 6 ship to be earned through daily missions along with a ton of cosmetic items. Emotes are popular with players and so this event also includes several that can be used in space via your starship, giving “Captains” further means of expressing themselves. At first glance, there’s nothing exceptional about this bundle of goodies. Nor nothing controversial. However, the devil is in the detail, as developer’s Cryptic subsequently found out.
Hoard It or Spend It?
This posts stems from a recent experience I had in Star Trek Online but it is not a matter that is exclusive to that MMO. This is a subject that is pertinent to any multiplayer game that has an in-game currency and an economy driven by player activity. I’m not referring to single player games where you can use a console command to give you infinite wealth, such as Skyrim. This is about currencies that are earned in-game through grinding missions, selling gear and other assets to NPCs and trading via the auction house. It’s about how we as player perceive that virtual money and our relationship with it.
A Month in Gaming
As I suspected in my last post, my gaming activities were somewhat curtailed throughout May due to both my parents being ill. However, the time I did manage to spend in-game was both therapeutic and relaxing. For me, I’ve never really seen gaming as escapism, although I appreciate it certainly is for others. One of the aspects it offers, along with a degree of challenge and entertainment, is a release from stress and the pressures of one’s daily life. Perhaps that is why I enjoyed Sniper Elite V2 Remastered so much, because not only is it a thoroughly absorbing game, it also provides a sense of catharsis. I’ve already written about the game in some detail, along with my thoughts about the ongoing “remaster versus remake” debate. However, I would add that I enjoyed it so much I re-installed the sequel, Sniper Elite III, which I haven’t played since it’s release in 2014. This also proved to be an enjoyable undertaking, again for the self-same reasons.
A Month in Gaming
So what have I been up to in April gaming wise? Oh, yes there was this. Mounted combat for the Guardian class is awful. There. I said it. As I’m not a LOTRO “altoholic” my only previous experience with mounted combat was with my Lore-master. Most of their skills are ranged which makes the fights less tedious and time consuming. And you get a combat pet which helps the proceeding slightly, but overall, it’s not that much fun. However fighting via your war steed with a Guardian is a ponderous grind. You have to be in close proximity to your foe to hit them and half the time they are running around you, conspicuously out of range. Sure there’s a skill that brings them next to you for a short period of time but as a level 85 Guardian’s DPS output is distinctly average at this point in the levelling curve, it’s a long, arduous slog to kill anything. My solution has been to summon my skirmish soldier who is an Archer and to use them in conjunction with my own bow to shoot down mounted foes while on foot. This still takes time but is quicker than doing it from horse back.
LOTRO: Vales of Anduin Preview
Update 24: Vales of Anduin is currently available for preview along with an initial build of the new 64-Bit game client for LOTRO, on the Bullroarer test server. The new virtue configuration system is among the many revisions that are included in this forthcoming update. The following change also raised a wry smile. Renaming the "Laketown Outhouse" to the more era appropriate "Laketown Boghouse". As ever there are extensive patch notes available on the official forums and players are once again reminded that this is not the final version of the update and therefore everything can potentially change.
When LOTRO Gets It Right
As I previously mentioned, Dunland is far from the most enthralling region in LOTRO. Aesthetically speaking the zone is quite varied but that is not where the problem lies. The trials and tribulations of the various Dunlending tribes does not make for the most engaging narrative. So in the last few days I’ve been doggedly playing through the Epic Story and a selection of regional quests, so I can simply move my High Elf Guardian forward. However, I subsequently arrived at Nan Curunír and remembered that that I was playing through the third expansion for LOTRO; The Rise of Isengard. And things began to change for the better. Because the game content at this point includes some innovative story lines within an iconic setting and is a clear example of when this MMO gets things right.
A Month in Gaming
My gaming time was somewhat erratic throughout March. Therefore when I did log in to an MMO I tended to pursue daily repeatable activities and linear quests. Content that could be easily managed and did not require a great degree of planning or concentration. My High Elf Guardian in The Lord of the Rings Online is currently level 72 and the PVE content I’m playing through is about five or so levels below that, so unless I make an obvious mistake, the risk of “defeat” is not high. I’ve also used these short periods of gaming to do further inventory management in Star Trek Online. My current policy for surplus items is to either pass it on to an alt if possible, sell it via in game auctions or just vendor it. It’s remarkable the number of items you accrue in MMOs that you out grow or simply never get around to using. Outside of MMOs, I simply did some game installation housekeeping. It seems there’s always a patch that need to be downloaded and installed.
A Lack of Excitement
“Do you still get excited about upcoming MMORPGs?” asked Massively Overpowered today. My first reaction was to say something flippant, so I left the following comment. “As I’ve got older, I’ve swapped excitement for schadenfreude. The ROI is far better”. However, upon mature reflection I think there’s more to this enquiry than meets the eye and that it requires a more thorough response. Because the more I think about it there seems to be a total lack of excitement from my perspective about any new MMORPG currently in development and more importantly, for those that I currently play. Both of which (The Lord of the Rings Online and Star Trek Online) have released a road map for the year ahead. Is a lack of any excitement indicative of an issue with me or with the genre of games that I have made a major part of my leisure time?
Why Am I Doing This?
"Why am I doing this?" is the question currently posed over at KeenandGraev.com and it certainly makes for some interesting introspection and personal reflection. Most gamers have at some point found themselves carrying out some arbitrary task in a game, pausing and then musing as to why they have chosen to do something as mundane and possibly even as tedious as “kill 10 rats” or “pick up nails” (yes, I’m looking at you LOTRO). Regardless of whether such mechanics are right or wrong, lazy or “classic”, grinding is an inherent aspect of most video games, especially the MMO genre. Players burn through narrative driven quest content far too quickly, therefore there has to be systems to slow player progress down and make then repeat content. However, the point of the original post isn’t to debate whether grinding is right or wrong. It’s about what you as a player do next when you finally ask yourself this question.
Star Trek Online: City on the Edge of Never
Out of the original seventy-nine episodes of Star Trek, one of the most respected and beloved is The City of the Edge of Forever. Written by Harlan Ellison the story is one of the more thoughtful and tragic in Trek Canon. It was also the first episode to feature a temporal plotline. Doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) accidently receives an overdose of medication and flees the Enterprise while in a delusional state. Beaming down to an alien planet he uses a temporal gateway (The Guardian of Forever) to travels back in time to earth during the Great Depression. By doing so he accidentally changes history. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) follow him through the gateway to New York in hope of correcting the timeline. While awaiting the arrival of McCoy, Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) who runs the 21st Street Mission. However he and Spock soon determine that to restore the timeline they must allow her to die.
LOTRO: Thoughts on the Current Downtime
As I am writing this post, the popular MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online has been offline since 2:00 AM EST on 6th March (7:00 AM GMT). The game servers, website and account portal are offline for maintenance and it would appear that the actually physical hardware is being relocated within the datacentre that Standing Stone Games uses. Like any complex IT project of this nature there are always potential problems and it would appear that some have occurred as the initial 22 hours projected down time has now become nearly 3 days. Naturally this has had an impact upon the LOTRO community as Friday evening is often prime gaming time. From SSG’s perspective the extended outage is not good for business or community relations and so they have been using social media to keep players informed.
Cryptic to Close the Foundry
Cryptic have announced that they will be removing the Foundry from both Star Trek Online and Neverwinter on April 11th. The Foundry was first introduced to STO back in 2011 and has proven a popular means for players to create and share their own missions, using in-game assets. Cryptic state in their press release that “the legacy knowledge required to maintain the Foundry at our quality standards is no longer available”. This is a roundabout way of saying that the member of staff responsible for curating and quality testing the service has no left the company. Naturally, Cryptic has stated that they will acknowledge those players who have contributed to the Foundry over the years by handing out various virtual trinkets and baubles. There has been quite a strong reaction of the STO subreddit as no one like to see content removed from a game. However, the isn’t a black and white as it first appears, because the Foundry has been broken for a while.
A Month in Gaming
Every other video game blogger I know writes a monthly summary of what they’ve been playing and then details what they hope to achieve in-game over the next four weeks. It’s a very effective example of blogging as it’s easily to relate to and it’s nice to see what everyone else is focusing their “gaming attention” on. So I’ve decided to do the same. It’s a relatively straight forward post to write and it also makes collating an end of year analysis of my gaming habits a lot easier. So here is a broad breakdown of what I got up to last month, gaming wise.
Death in MMOs
There was a post today over at Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog, which raised the subject of “corpse runs” in old school MMOS such as Ultima Online. In-game death came with penalties back then and there was the prospect of XP loss or that your corpse could be looted, and you could potentially lose rare gear. It got me thinking because I’ve never played an MMO that has had, to my mind, such harsh sanctions. In fact game mechanics such as permadeath, corpse runs, and the loss of equipment will put me off playing any such game that has them. I suspect that unless you’re a player who is particularly motivated by achievement, competitiveness and challenge, then such systems are seen mainly as an inconvenience and impediment.
Star Trek Online: Non-Combat Missions
One of the commonest laments you’ll hear from Star Trek Online devotees is that the game is too orientated around confrontation and combat; there aren’t enough diplomatic, exploration and general non-combat missions in the game. It’s a matter I have mixed feelings about, because if you watch Star Trek TOS, then Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise didn’t always live up to the ideals that The Federation extols. However, this did change in later shows. I certainly wouldn’t be averse to having more non-combat missions in the game, although they would have to be of some substance to merit my interest. The removal of the Exploration Cluster missions from STO, in July summer 2014 was justified in my opinion, as they were somewhat arbitrary. However, if you take content out of a game, then it would be preferable to see something else put back in its place.
LOTRO: A Lesson in Semantics
It’s always nice to know what a video game developer has in mind, especially given the currently volatility of the MMO market. Most of the MMO related news of late has been regarding studio closures and job layoffs. So the arrival of a new Producer’s Letter from Rob Ciccolini (AKA Severlin) is at first glance most welcome. Communication is not exactly Standing Stone Games greatest strength and there hasn’t been a great deal of news filtering down to the player base in the last six months. So this missive is welcome, as it does broadly feature this year’s road map for LOTRO. Furthermore, the details are interesting with further content and systems changes in development. As a long time LOTRO player who purchased the Legacy Bundle in December 2018, I want the MMO to continue grow and evolve.
Auto Manage
As someone who plays video games for fun, rather than competitively, there are many common mechanics that I don’t care for or that I’m broadly indifferent to. These usually tend to be fiddly, time consuming tasks such as inventory management or having to excessively (a very subjective term) fine tune gear. The Legendary Item system in LOTRO being a great example of this. I fully appreciate that there are players who really dig this sort of thing and I am not in any way advocating that they have their “fun” taken away. However, what I would like to see in more games, especially MMOs, is the ability to auto manage some of these systems. To be able to just click a button and have the peace of mind that the most relevant item in my inventory will be equipped by default.
MMOs I No Longer Play
I started playing MMORPGs over a decade ago, at a point when the genre was growing. It seemed at one point that every developer wanted to produce the game that usurped World of Warcrafts crown. I therefore ended up trying many of these massively multiplayer online games yet ended up sticking with few. All too often many of these titles were too generic or had an inherent flaw or flaws that killed my enjoyment. Sometimes it was just a case that the game just didn’t chime with me. Naturally over time, I have revisited some of these MMOs and a few have become a mainstay of my gaming activities. The Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online and The Elder Scrolls online are three such examples. Yet there are numerous other games from this genre that I have not returned to or if I have, I still found them to be problematic, so they have not become part of my leisure activities.
The Elder Scrolls Online and Addons
After recently watching several friends stream The Elder Scrolls Online, I have re-installed the game (funny how that often happens). I played quite consistently last spring and the game finally “clicked” for me. The narrative driven structure is something I enjoy, and I also like way you can pick and choose the content you undertake. So after letting the 70.9 GB game client download overnight, I fired up the game yesterday and found my level 50 High Elf Sorcerer in Auridon, where I left them last Easter. The first thing that immediately stood out was the plain vanilla default UI, which is minimalist to say the least. After a heavy sigh, I realised that if I wanted to continue efficiently playing ESO I would have to install a bunch of addons via Minion. The only minor problem was that after replacing my Hard Drive last November, despite backing up most data, I had not made a note of which addons I was using. Luckily, a friend who still had the game installed went through their current installation, so I was able to collate a suitable list.
Emotes, the "Carlton Dance" and Copyright
Actor Alfonso Ribeiro has been told he cannot copyright the "Carlton Dance" his character performed in the hit US sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Ribeiro, who played Will Smith's pretentious cousin Carlton Banks in the popular TV show, had tried to sue both Take-Two Interactive and Epic Games over use of the routine as an emote in the video games NBA2K16 and Fortnite. The US Copyright Office's denial of the claim was revealed in a motion to dismiss Ribeiro's lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive. Although a court is not bound by the determination, it is very likely that it will take it into consideration. A hearing on the motion to dismiss the lawsuit is scheduled for 18th March. If successful it will effectively end any current legal action taken by Mr Ribeiro and potentially set a precedence for any future lawsuits of this nature. Or will it?