Category: Editorials

Working Out A Bounty System


A bounty system is to sandbox MMOs like peanut butter to fluff on a sandwich perhaps with a glass of cold milk on the side (soy or almond if you prefer). While the sandbox purists will say that developers should just allow players to run their own bounty system, because risk is just part of the experience, having some infrastructure in-game can be very helpful without restricting freedoms. Ensuring the person claiming the bounty actually made the kill, and that the bounty holder must pay up.

But it feels like the developers are just setting themselves up for abuse with current bounty systems, so I’d like to offer a few of my own thoughts on a bounty system. They are just my thoughts, they could be wrong.

1. Money In, Money Out.

I think most players will agree that a bounty system is specifically a player to player affair. I hate you because you kill me a lot, you talk crap in chat, or perhaps you just crossed an angry person with a lot of expendable cash. So I’m not entirely sure why some MMOs don’t have a 1:1 input to output ratio on bounty levels.

As a gamer, I take issue with government subsidized murder to deal with personal squabbles. If xXx Leg0la$ xXx wants me dead because I stuck my sword in his head and stole all forty of his apple pies, he can do so without asking companies like Aventurine to help him buy a bounty hunter, ie: my friend who kills me and splits the reward. Even more importantly, removing the glut will prevent people from using the bounty system to get rich, with the money coming from nowhere.

Ultimately, a bounty system should be a transfer of wealth, not a generator of it. It should act as an arbiter, essentially, to prove the kill and distribute the reward.

2. The Bounty System Will Be Gamed, Regardless.

How do you keep someone like myself from gaming your bounty system? Simple: You can’t. And that is something that developers will need to understand going forward if you’re going to make this an enjoyable system and not a convoluted, overreaching and unenjoyable mess. A bounty system is a social system, and you’re up against geniuses in social engineering.

But even on a 1:1 ratio as mentioned above, you won’t stop the system from being gamed. When a player has a bounty on their heads, they will simply allow themselves to be killed by a clan member and split the profits. Prevent their clan from gathering the reward? They will set up a mule, outside of the clan, to get the kill. Allow only trusted/known people to gather the reward? Well then you’ve just negated the point in making the system official, if the person is known well enough that they could just as well be trusted on the honor system.

And enough on gaming the bounty poster, what about the bounty pursuant? Set up a clan member as a trap by throwing a massive bounty on his head, and when lone hunters show up to kill him, the group jumps out and just thrashes him. In RuneScape they do something like this by having everyone stand on one square, giving the illusion that there is only one person.

So your system is going to be gamed, one way or another, but at least in the world I’ve created it isn’t being abused to generate wealth out of nowhere.

3. Have Some Fun With It.

Here is my ideal bounty system for a game like Mortal Online or Darkfall. Players naturally drop something identifying when they die, let’s say their head or a finger. Whatever the object is, it decays and disappears after a short period of time, let’s say 24 hours from the time of death, to prevent players from gathering them in large quantities and simply hoarding them until the appropriate bounty is posted.

I, as the bounty poster, give my bounty notice and reward to the broker, we’ll call him that creepy guy in the back alley on the edge of town. You, as the hunter, go to him to see who is on the menu. When you kill your target, gather his head/finger as proof, and bring it to the creep, he pays you the reward. And naturally you are free to keep the loot from the person you killed as an extra reward.

Simple, minimalist. An NPC to act as an arbiter and nothing more.

Phantasy Star Universe Sunsets


For Western players, the Phantasy Star Universe has already been over. Originally launched in 2006, Sega first began the MMO’s eventual closure by shutting down the North American and European servers on the PC and Playstation 2 in March 2010. Following, PS2 support in Japan was discontinued in April 2011, and just this month we saw the closure of the Xbox360 servers. Well, yesterday the game has finally come to a close with the closure of Japan’s remaining Phantasy Star Universe servers.

Any remaining Guardian Cash for players will be refunded as Phantasy Star Online 2 credit or as Webmoney AC. The shut down was originally announced at the end of July, and for the last month of service, players were granted access to PSU’s premium course for free.

Guild Wars 2 Talks Bots, Gold Farmers, And Bans


As many players of Guild Wars 2 will tell you, a recent explosion in botting has blown into a serious problem for Arenanet and its community. In a post on the official forums, Security Coordinator Mike Lewis went on to discuss recent bans and action taken by Arenanet to curb the legion of bots currently taking up space in his game. Over the past week alone, Arenanet has banned over 1600 bots, and are currently tracking the most commonly used bots while gathering information on additional programs.

We are actively improving our means of detecting ‘bot’ activity in the game automatically. This includes tools for our customer support team to help them verify ‘botting’ reports and efficiently issue account terminations. Recently we have also hired a team of data specialists who will be helping us create more effective tools for analyzing reports of ‘botting.’

Sadly, many of the bots being used are likely through stolen accounts. Remember to practice safe surfing, kids. And if a bot approaches you on the street, don’t get into his van.

(Source: Guild Wars Forums)

RuneScape Reverses, Apologizes For Bans


Here on the internet, we go by a policy of stuff happens. Unless you are licensing your engine in which case the blame can be placed on the engine creator. And when it comes to big updates like Jagex’s latest bot buster, you could also go by the Texas rule of you can’t make an omelette without accidentally shooting a customer or two. So when Jagex implemented a recent update, the result was a number of players being falsely banned.

Unfortunately, whilst updating our systems, a human error occurred which resulted in the accidental banning of a selection of online accounts. These bans have now been reverted and we will be rebooting the servers shortly to ensure that all accounts can log in as normal.

Some players are still reporting that their accounts have yet to be unbanned due to this mistake.

(Source: Facebook)

A Quick Look At Ultimate Collector


I have to admit: When I saw that Richard Garriot’s new game was a Facebook social title, my heart sank. And then when I found out he was partnering with Zynga, the force of sudden massive compression caused my heart to tear itself inside out. Luckily, through the magic of modern science and a genetics laboratory hidden under my storage room, I have plenty of spares in case I need to set up another long winded joke that goes nowhere.

Richard Garriot’s Ultimate Collector (currently in beta) was a difficult game for me to convince myself to start playing, let alone write a quick look of. If there is one faction of the gaming industry that manages to boil my blood, it is the thousands of Facebook ad-driven, nickel and dime, pay-now-or-annoy-your-friends, energy driven games, that pass themselves off as enjoyable to anyone other than the most casual of gamers, housewives, and people with a lot of expendable money and not a lot of sense in how to spend it. Unfortunately for Ultimate Collector, it is not not one of those games. But hear me out.

Ultimate Collector was quite possibly conceived by a hoarder, and as someone whose habits border somewhere between pack rat and hoarder, I can’t honestly comment. But what struck me once I got to playing after a while was that every item in this game is a real, living, object. Apart from the trinkets which serve as quick cash, every serious sale you make is a real, true to life, branded toy. It could be a Gameboy Color, a copy of Paula Dean’s 1000 Ways to Fry Butter cookbook, Beanie Babies, pull toys from the 50’s, and more. In fact, someone who enjoys nostalgia may find the sheer number of items available in Ultimate Collector to make the game worth playing.

You might even be able to find Richard Garriot’s Ultima games. Oh and Tabula Rasa (never heard of it, personally).

As you play, you’ll find that Ultimate Collector can be viewed in virtually brain dead mode, or you can play with a bit of strategy and foresight and really rake in the dough. When you buy an item, you lower the asking price by finding flaws, while raising your profit on resale by finding virtues. By recycling your less profitable goods rather than selling them, you retrieve parts that can be used to fix the more profitable items, making them even more profitable. So the game is about finding the balance in what is worth spending your energy in appraising, what is worth buying for spare parts, and what you should just leave in the bin.

But now we have to get to the part about the cash shop. Ultimate Collector is, after all, an energy based Facebook game, and that means every action has a cost. Each time you rummage through a bin, that’s an energy. Every time you appraise an item (five times per item), that’s an energy. Don’t want to wait for the auction to finish? That’s a Portcash (cash shop money). Don’t want to wait until tomorrow to gain your energy back? You can also spend Portcash on that. Although you gain an energy every few minutes, so the wait to refill your bar is just a few hours if not less.

And for what it’s worth, Ultimate Collector does try to throw a bone by increasing your maximum energy with leveling, and throwing Portcash at the player every now and then. Additionally, buying and selling goods raises your experience in that particular field, which in turn results in more free appraisals saving the user more energy. So there is the feeling that, while corporate won out in the end, the folks on the development side at least tried to give the user a break.

And if you are playing casually, you likely won’t spend a dime on Ultimate Collector anyway. With the way I play, I log in once or twice a day to salvage someone’s garage sale, bring the goods back to my house and see how much money I’ve made from the previous day’s sales, and then put the new stuff up for sale. For me, however, Ultimate Collector is more than just a Facebook game. It is a sign that Richard Garriot has gone back to the man I once knew and always anticipated his next announcement with held breath. The guy who made games that were basic yet filled with depth, were created with an obsessive amount of attention to detail, and occasionally make you wonder if the creator was insane from the start. Ultimate Collector has renewed the faith in Richard Garriot that I lost when Tabula Rasa went down in flames as its development team struggled to keep it alive.

I am really looking forward to seeing Ultimate RPG.

Video of the ___: Save City of Heroes


The hope for City of Heroes grows bleak, but that doesn’t mean the community has given up hope. Since NCSoft’s surprise announcement that City of Heroes would shut down later this year, players have rallied all over the web to keep the superhero MMO online and fighting crime. Or causing it, depending on your stature. City of Heroes player Tim The Enchanter has posted a video entitled “Save City of Heroes,” combining music, in-game footage, and an array of news headlines and podcast audio related to the movement.

Currently the change.org petition to save City of Heroes has gathered over nineteen thousand signatures. So far NCSoft hasn’t said much at all apart from detailing reimbursement plans. But the fans will not go out without a fight.

Sign Up For Wizardry Online Beta


Wizardry Online marks a noted change in direction at Sony Online Entertainment. Produced by Gamepot and reportedly 30 years in the making, Wizardry Online bills itself as a hardcore MMO with little in the way of patience or sympathy for its players. As the website describes it:

With the risk of permadeath always looming, players group with trusted allies to survive. Using skill based combat, and a little bit of luck, players battle to defeat amazing anime creatures, cheat death, and live to tell the world!

And starting today, players are able to sign up for the Wizardry Online beta. If you’ve signed up for SOE betas in the past, you already know what you are doing. Otherwise, you will need a Sony Online Entertainment account. If selected, your account will be validated rather than a key being sent out. Wizardry Online is scheduled to go live in 2012, and will be free to play.

(Source: Wizardry Website)

A Fair Criticism Of Guild Wars 2


I love Guild Wars 2, but my love is not without its fair share of annoyance. So while my previous articles have been about bumping up the MMO, I am using this space to discuss a couple of my gripes with Arenanet.

1. The Game Isn’t Dynamic

I have a problem with MMOs calling their systems dynamic, because the catch-phrase that has caught on is that anything not-static must be dynamic. Warhammer Online tried this with public quests, when in reality they were simply multi-stage regular quests with timers attached to them. Tabula Rasa tried this with base assaults, and Rift claimed that its rifts we’re also dynamic.

Anything that can be put up on a schedule is not dynamic, and Guild Wars 2 is about as predictable as it gets without going back to the standard MMO quest model. The events are dynamic in the sense that they are not available 100% of the time, but apart from the zones run on a recurring treadmill, one with alternate paths that all lead to the same destination, before looping around at the beginning and starting all over.

But this doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyment of Guild Wars 2, it is just a poorly worded phrase, like how Tim Horton’s “cappuccino” comes in a bag and is powdered.

2. The Trading Post Needs Work

The trading post is massive, a technological marvel that Arenanet should be immensely proud of. That said, when this behemoth goes down, boy does it go down hard, bringing down some other features with it. And the Trading Post isn’t just down for an hour or two, when it crashes it has remained offline for days on end.

But the trading post has a massive load on its back, so let’s go further than connectivity issues. It took a while to understand why there were thousands of high priced orders for certain cooking ingredients but no buyers, before I realized that the trading post lists account-bound goods. And while you can’t sell account-based goods on the store, you can still place orders to purchase them, I expect from Santa Claus.

In its current state, the trading post is rather bloated and not very user friendly.

3. Discovery Crafting Became Obnoxious

I mentioned in my reviews of Guild Wars 2 that discovery crafting is likely the best part of crafting, at least as far as cooking goes. It gives a reason to travel and complete the map, as certain materials can only be obtained by vendors unlocked by finishing heart events. And even your crafted goods can be further used as their own crafting resources.

But previously, the discovery window only displayed items from your inventory. So my method of crafting became to store goods that were above my level and could not be used. In an update, Arenanet made crafting easier by allowing the bank and collection box to be pulled from. At the same time, this cluttered up the discovery page with all of the items you can’t use, removing any sort of filtering system (apart from deleting the items).

Again, I’m not trying to point out fatal flaws with Guild Wars, since frankly I don’t believe there are any.

4. Cooking Produces A Lot Of The Same

I love discovery crafting, and not just because my psychiatrist says I have the symptoms of a hoarder with none of his means of acquiring items. But to wrap up this list of mostly crafting based whine, while you can create everything from white chocolate cake to peppered steak, strawberry pie and at least a couple hundred things in between, the food itself generally doesn’t offer anything other than nourishment and bonus experience.

Perhaps if different foods offered a greater variety in boosts, cooked items would be in greater demand. Of course I could be completely wrong and foods far higher level than myself may offer the diversity I so wish for.

Falling Out #14: Well, They Are Asian


Remember folks: When western companies make similar games, it’s just creative license. When a Korean company does it, it is criminal theft.

The more you know.

Runic Has No Plans For A Torchlight MMO


We’ve talked before about the possibility of a Torchlight MMO, and while Runic has hinted at the possibility of an MMO before, nothing has been set in stone. Unfortunately, it looks like the odds of an MMO based in the dungeon-crawling universe are slim. In an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, Travis Baldree (President) commented that there are no plans currently for a Torchlight MMO, at least for the moment.

“I’ll be frank, we have no plans to jump into that right now. The landscape is a little different than a few years ago, and creating the amount of content we did for Torchlight 2 was a supreme effort with a team this size. Taking on an MMO immediately afterward is not our current desire.”

So it seems that the Torchlight MMO may just be wishful thinking at this point. Still, I can’t blame the folks at Runic for wanting to do something different after working on the Torchlight series for so long.

(Source: Reddit)