F2P Transition + Skirmish Mode

July 31st, 2010

Back in June, when LOTRO's F2P announcement was all new and exciting, I got in touch with Turbine PR to ask them some questions about the game. Maybe my questions were too tough, because they never got back to me with any answers, but they did send me into the game to see how it is now, so I can offer some before and after comparison thoughts. Although I never got any answers to my questions from Turbine, I'm going to take a stab at answering them myself now that I've had a good bit of first-hand experience of the current status of LOTRO.

My first question was kind of an obvious one: Why? Why give up subscriptions and go to F2P? I drew a comparison between DDO's ailing playerbase prior to that game's switch versus LOTRO's apparently still healthy numbers. Could LOTRO really gather enough players who would pay enough in microtransactions to offset the cost of hosting the servers for all the free users? Then it occurred to me: LOTRO was going F2P in order to boost subscription rates.

You see, Turbine's F2P model doesn't replace subscriptions, instead it adds a free to play layer over it. Turbine maintains a "VIP" subscription offer, which essentially unlocks all the game content for as long as you subscribe, giving the game the same sort of "feel" as being in a traditional P2P game. I previously argued that subscriptions are better than F2P when you're only playing a short time, based on DDO's quest pack vs VIP treatment. Would the same logic apply to LOTRO, considering that LOTRO is selling access to quests in zones, rather than the zones themselves?

After taking a closer look at the comparison page between Free and VIP, I saw another few layers that make subscriptions far more appealing in LOTRO. For one thing, only VIPs get Rest XP (double XP for a while after not playing) and only VIPs can spend Destiny Points (various temporary buffs; however I suspect similar things will be for sale in the Turbine Store). Another big issue was the gold cap, with free to play users capped at 2 gold, but then I noticed that non-VIPs can purchase a gold cap removal, so maybe that's not as big an incentive to go VIP as I had suspected.

At any rate, the F2P treatment for LOTRO seems to make a lot more sense now, as I can certainly see a lot of free players paying for a VIP subscription for as long as they're active in the game. Buying quest packs can be irksome, because one of the nice things in LOTRO is just going around and doing whatever quest catches your fancy. On the other hand, I wonder what happens in the end-game; once you've completed all the quests, do you just cancel your subscription and buy the one or two end-game dungeons that you raid or whatever? To be honest, I'm not sure what LOTRO's end game is like.

There's another issue I wanted to discuss though, and that's Skirmishes. Skirmishes are awesome. Skirmishes are short instanced battles that you can enter from anywhere in the game world, can be tailored for 1 to 12 players, sport 3 difficulty levels, and provide you with "skirmish marks", a generic currency that can be spent on gear and other rewards from skirmish vendors. When I first encountered the system I thought it was a PVP system, like WoW's battlegrounds, but it's not: it's PVE content. Also, whenever you're in a skirmish, you also get a skirmish companion, a customizable "pet" for which you can purchase (with skirmish marks) classes, skills, and appearance modifiers.

Skirmishes are the perfect answer to the "I only have half an hour but I want to have some fun" problem in a lot of MMORPGs. If you're in a good kinship, chances are you can call out for some friends, throw a small (or large!) group together in moments, and charge into a skirmish from wherever everyone happens to be in the game world; no need for pesky gathering together! The only downside to skirmishes is that the system only becomes available to players when they reach level 30. I hope that Turbine adds some more skirmishes to allow lower level players into the system, as I think this could help boost retention significantly if F2P players are abandoning the game before reaching level 30.

Posted by: Soulrift

Did you find this interesting? Send your feedback to the Author by filling in the fields below:

My Own Vision of Abyssea

July 25th, 2010

Sorry for the delay in posting this. Last week was another FFXI tour, this time for the July update and the new Vision of Abyssea add-on pack. There's a lot of new and interesting stuff, including new areas, new battle systems, lots of new gear, not to mention higher levels and more abilities for (almost) everyone.

Two of the new abilities I got to see were for Black Mage and Scholar. Black Mages got a sort of "mana shield" ability, letting them use their huge mana pools to survive a few hits if they "accidentally" (cough cough) pull aggro from a monster. To help them not pull aggro, Scholars now have the Libra ability, which displays how much hate everyone in the party has for the targetted monster. I also saw a few new job traits and abilities for Warriors, giving them some bonuses to make them better tanks, or to do more damage at the expense of crit when they're dps-spec.

One of the biggest additions with Vision of Abyssea are the new Abyssean zones, sort of parallel universes of existing areas. They work as timed dungeons: you zone into a staging area, talk to an NPC, and you get a 30 minute buff that lets you "exist" in the parallel world. Then, off you go to kill monsters and and collect a new type of currency, the abbysean equivalent of conquest points. Though, once your timer is up *poof* you get teleported back to the real world.

So the new expansion is based less on a set of story missions and more about combat zones. This has been building up a lot recently. Treasures of Aht Urghan gave players Besieged and Assaults. In Wings of the Goddess, Campaign gave players the opportunity to participate in big battles without having to spend three hours beforehand looking for a group. The new Conflux Battlefields, added in July, work upon this success and have become a sort of "public BCNM" for up to 36 players.

The new battlefields are set in the same areas that you got to see in Wings of the Goddess cutscenes, but now is the first time you get to adventure into them. They're full of monsters that drop temporary items to boost your powers, and the big monsters drop valuable synthesis materials for players who helped out in killing it (such as by dealing damage or healing other players), much in the same way as the campaign mechanic.

If you're a player considering returning, now's a great time. The biggest news is that, for the first time since Promy, the level cap has been raised: from 75 to 80. Whole new job traits and abilities, spells, and - of course - job/subjob combinations at 80/40. I think the cap is going up even higher in upcoming updates, too. Also, a lot of the new content I've seen looks even more accessible for high-level players, so dusting off your old level 75 and getting back into it should be easy and rewarding.

Posted by: Soulrift

Feedback Success! Questions Answered!

June 30th, 2010

Well my article on Final Fantasy XIV finally sparked some interest in my site, though perhaps cross-linking at Gamasutra helped, as did getting cross-cross linked to FFXIV Base. Hi Brandon! Anyhow, also successful was my integration of the feedback form into the main window. I got lots more feedback entries there, though the majority were... blank :(

I did get one interesting bit of feedback though, a question from Drew, asking about how potions and healing spells will work in FFXIV. I did state that health would not "regenerate" during combat; however, I should clarify that it doesn't automatically regenerate while you fight. I'm sure you can regain health with healing spells, potions, and the like, just like FFXI. I think the more shocking difference between FFXI (and presumably FFXIV) to other MMORPGs is that your mana doesn't regenerate during combat (aside from spells or potions that boost it), meaning that you can't just spam spells endlessly.

On a completely unrelated note, the release date for FFXIV has been announced at either Sept 22nd, Sept 30th, or something else thereabouts, depending on which site you check. I emailed the PR company for confirmation, but no response as yet. Once I find out for sure, I'll post an update.

Posted by: Soulrift

FFXIV: Alpha and Beta comparison

June 25th, 2010

A very pleasant discovery in my mailbox: a video comparing the Alpha and Beta versions of Final Fantasy XIV. I'm uploading it to soulrift.com for you to download, should you wish to see it for yourself. Just click here to download. The graphical differences between the two are notable, and quite nice, but overall just little bits of improvement here and there. Of far, FAR greater interest to me was the clip of combat at the end of the video, which revealed a number of very interesting details about combat in FFXIV.

click for full size

So, where do I begin? Number one is the new stamina bar system. This is like the ultimate evolution of the Active Time Battle gauge that has slowly been growing in Final Fantasy games for over 10 years. The ATB gauge in Final Fantasy games up to 12 have acted as a "turn" system: when the bar fills up, your character can take one of any kind of action. In FFXIII, characters have 3-5 ATB gauge "blocks" that slowly fill up, allowing your character to take one or more actions that fill up those blocks. EG: 4 blocks means 4 1-block skills, 2 2-block skills, 1 3-block and 1 1-block, etc.

But Final Fantasy XIV has gotten rid of arbitrary action sized and now presents an ATB Gauge where actions of any size can use up a "chunk" of stamina. The video only shows two skills so far, and while it's possible that the designers are intentionally limiting their skills to certain fixed sizes of stamina bar usage, there's no strict reason why they'd have to. They could make skills that use any amount of stamina in that bar, meaning that skill timers are visibly represented by the usage bar size rather than a set of numbers. Effects like haste and slow can now work in two ways: by causing the bar to fill up faster or slower (like traditional haste/slow effects in prior FF games) but can now be applied to specific skills (FFXI's merit points anyone?) by causing the block of used stamina to grow or shrink. I think this is simply fantastic. No more of that garbage global cooldown from WoW!

Of further interest is the new action bar system. 10-button action bars have become a stable in MMOs (well, 12 button bars these days...) and FFXIV have incorporated them in full force, along with multiple bars you can switch through. This isn't too different from the shortcut bars in FFXI, but instead of only showing up when you hold a key and only showing small text descriptions, they're now fully visible, with icons, and important information like re-use timers (see the 20 second timer when she uses provoke?) and TP and MP costs.

The TP costs are of particular interest. In FFXI TP built up whenever you attacked and you could only use it in 100, 200, and 300 blocks, emptying the gauge entirely. Now, different skills use TP like mana. Note that when she uses TP to cast Red Lotus, the remaining TP is saved for the next skill. Also, "basic" attacks that don't cost TP are all live, so instead of simply auto-attacking, you'll actively chose the attack to use. While this might mean a lot of hitting the same button over and over, hopefully you'll have enough basic attacks with meaningful differences to keep combat exciting and interesting. Note in the video she switches between stab and slash to build up TP.

A few more things I noticed: HP and MP do not regenerate during the fight, which means these points will work much like they did in Final Fantasy XI: presumably you have to rest after fights to refill the bars. Enemy health bar shows up as you might expect, but new are little icons underneath the bar to show status effects (such as provoked). All in all, I'm hugely excited about combat in Final Fantasy XIV. This could finally be the MMORPG that revolutionized the "tab-and-autoattack" combat mechanic that has been sucking the excitement out of combat since Everquest.

Posted by: Soulrift

Frosty Free Month of Everquest II

June 9th, 2010

I just heard that Fileplanet is offering 30 days of free access to Everquest II to promote the new Halas content that was just released. I've poked around in the new Halas housing (very nice!) but I haven't really taken the time to roll up a new character to do the starting zone. This is a great opportunity for anyone who hasn't played EQ2 to give it a try though, as there's no strings attached to downloading and playing the 30-day trial.

As far as the nitty gritty of the deal, I take it they're essentially giving away a Shadow Odyssey retail pack, which includes EQ2 and all the expansions EXCEPT for the latest one, Sentinel's Fate. This deal works just like a retail box: you just have to pay the subscription fee to keep playing. However, if you really get into the game, you'll want the new expansion, so I guess that's where they expect to make their retail sale. Still, there's a ton to do in EQ2 between level 1 and 80, so by the time you're worrying about that 81-90 grind that I discussed in depth some months ago, actually getting around to buying the game shouldn't be much of a concern!

If you do decide to try out EQ2, make sure to look me up in game: the status bar on the right side of my site has up-to-date info on finding me in the games I play, including my main EQ2 character, Pyria, on the Lucan d'Lere server. Drop by, say hi, and tell me what you think of Halas!

Posted by: Soulrift

FFXI: Abyssea Promo stuffs

June 9th, 2010

Got an update about FFXI's new add-on scenario, Vision of Abyssea, in my email box so I thought I'd share. By and large, you can get information straight from Squeenix's site, which includes oddities such as requiring the Rise of the Zilart and Wings of the Goddess expansions, but no word of Chains of Promathia or Treasures of Aht Urghan. Huh, go figure.

Oh, and a neat promo picture to share!

The weapons on display at the promo site are very nifty, though I wonder how difficulty they'll be to obtain. From what I gather, these sets of add-ons are focusing on battles, rather than story missions, so it'll be an interesting change of pace from the previously released scenarios. At only $9.99 each, they're less than a month's subscription anyways, so everyone may as well pick them up and see!

Posted by: Soulrift

WAR Weariness

June 8th, 2010

I'm usually the kind of MMORPG gamer that enjoys the grind. I've actually been enjoying grinding up my Hunter in DAoC: I can meander about and kill monsters and adventure through a short dungeon with the result of getting a level or two. I'm already 40 and I'm only just starting to feel the tedium set in as the last ten levels are, if I recall correctly, much longer than the first forty. Anyhow, I'm not at all feeling the same way about my Chosen in Warhammer Online. He's stuck at 28 (or 29?) and I can barely cleave an elf in twain before I grumble about how this isn't going fast enough.

The problem isn't just the speed of it, it's the methodology of it. Actually, it's a similar problem I had in EQ2: I don't enjoy grinding quests as much as I enjoy grinding kills or dungeons. Quests are irritatingly tedious: it's not enough to do them, you have to puzzle through them, and not in a fun sort of puzzle-solving way. It's more a "decode the esoteric quest hints and map markers" sort of way.

The worst part of questing is how you have to keep going back to turn them in, or when you get several quests in the same area but not at the same time so you have to revisit it. The thing that bugs me about quest grinding is the inefficiency of it all. Killing monsters is efficient: you dispatch one and move on to the next. You don't have to go back to a guard three towns away and click through 10 pages of meaningless dialogue before getting back to the fun part of the game (the "playing it" part).

WAR's Public Quests are a lot of fun, but they just don't generate enough XP to be grind-worthy. I'd love it if you could get to 50 by just doing PQs. Well, enough of this rant, WAR's got enough problems with PVP and population as it is. Not even sure how much the grind affects the population numbers; I'd suspect probably not by much...

Posted by: Soulrift

Steam Sure Has Saved Me a Bundle

June 7th, 2010

This is largely a response to a news post at Gamasutra that described the psychology of Steam Bundles. Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with Steam bundles themselves other than having bought the Half Life 2 Silver bundle, which included the original HL and a number of original and "sourced-up" remakes that I never owned, having only played them at net cafés or friends' houses. With the exception of the Deathmatch games, I wanted everything in the bundle and got good use out of it all. Other bundles? Nope. Every other bundle I've seen either included too much junk or games I already had.

Rather, I want to address one of the points made in the original Gamasutra article, that of "sales." There's another psychological effect at play, one that doesn't seem to apply to most Americans, but has certainly caught on to Quebecers. I read an article long ago comparing "brand loyalty" versus "sales" marketing strategies, and for the life of me I wish I could find it again to prop my argument up with a reference. Basically, the article suggested that in some markets, the use of "prizes" and "contests" build brand loyalty which in turn drives sales of those products; in other areas, brand loyalty is extremely difficult to buy because consumers are only interested in getting the best "deal", no matter which brand meets the need. Moreover, in such areas where consumers are driven by a sales mentality, the sales mindset becomes so strong that they will often refuse to buy a product not on sale, since they know that, in a few weeks, it will go on sale. The drive to buy a product is rarely strong enough to encourage a non-sale purchase, but rather merely strong enough to buy a "less than the best" sale price.

As a very common home-grown example I grew up with, a box of 12 cans of soft drink will normally sell for $5.99, but will go on sale anywhere from $5/box to $2.50/box. Generally, the $3/box was the upper range of "normal price" and anything over that was expensive. If you were really feeling the pressure for some pop, you might break out the wallet at $3.33 or $3.49 a box, and $3.99 was the upper limit for those emergency "we're throwing a party and we need pop NOW" situations. Anything higher than $4 and you'd just go without.

The thing is, the frequency of sales on Steam has really driven home the same mentality in Steam games. When I saw the new expansion for Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising, I said: hey, great. I want that. Now I just have to wait for it to go on sale. I waited and, sure enough, it went on sale. Bam. 50% off. Steam's predictable sales cycle saved me $15, which is still a bit more than I'd have liked to pay; I'd rather have taken it for $10. Maybe there'll be a 66% off sale in a few months and I'll be going "tisk, I should have waited" but I guess even my patience has limits.

Anyhow, my rebuttal to Jamie Madigan is: how many of Steam's customers refuse to pay full price and wait for products they want to go on sale because of Steam's predictable sales cycle? The psychology of sales and bundles goes both ways.

Posted by: Soulrift