Triumph of the Federation Flagship-class Cruiser

Federation Vice Admiral Green Armadillo has hit Star Trek Online's level cap, rank 50.  With this comes the right to finally pilot the birthday present that lured me into the game for the anniversary week in the first place - Odyssey Class Cruiser.  This ship is the model of the year 2409's USS Enterprise-F, and the ship looks the part with the traditional saucer and two warp nacelles sticking off the back. 

There are fancier versions available in the cash shop - science, tactical, and engineering variants at $25 each or $50 for the set of three, with a bonus set of consoles for those who want the bundle.  While I suppose that special perks, like the ability to separate the saucer section or launch fighter minipets are amusing, nothing seems that deficient about the baseline model.  It's a cruiser, which is the ship class I wanted to fly anyway, it has a highly flexible officer layout with a Universal Lieutenant Commander slot, and it even has an special ability doubling the time players can spend in "slipstream drive", a sprint feature used to travel more quickly across the non-combat sector map.

I've been naming my ships PVD-1 through PVD-5, but I decided on a whim - since perhaps this ship will be with me for a while - to give this one a more proper name.  So was christened the USS Faydwer, NCC-190312 (i.e. 19 March 2012).  Time will tell what tales lie ahead for the ship and her crew. 

Legacy of the Server

One of the quirks to my decision to wait a bit on the SWTOR launch - with new graphics cards launching over the next month, it made sense to delay purchasing the graphics card for my new machine - is that I will have a bit more information than those who showed up on day one.  Case in point, a pair of great posts by Psynister describing the practical effects of the new legacy system.  If I'm going to play through say 2-3 characters' stories, this type of information is very valuable in helping secure the best perks for my alts.

Perhaps it isn't worth changing my class or race choices to max out perks - though it definitely sounds like there's an advantage to getting characters to 50 one at a time versus working them in parallel.  However, this does call attention to a huge decision that I will need to make before I even get as far as picking a race and class.  While most other games are working to get away from the traditional server structure with creative transfers, sharding, and cross-server groups, Bioware is doubling down on the approach from ten years ago.  The Legacy system creates an incentive structure that strongly encourages players to stay put wherever they've ended up.

While you can't judge a game by its forums, I find reports of low populations on at least some servers, posted at the official forums, reasonably credible.  This does not mean that the sky is falling or the game is failing - just that throwing additional servers at the launch day rush is not a viable longterm approach to distributing players.  If anything, I wonder the Bioware's guild pre-registration plan may have hurt matters - servers that got large number of pre-release guilds may be more stable in the long-term than servers that got rolled out on launch day and occupied by tourists fleeing the queues (who are more likely to vanish 30 days later).

As a late-comer, I will have the luxury of being able to research the state of the servers six months post launch BEFORE investing time setting up camp on a new server.  (If any of you who are actually playing TOR have opinions on this topic I'd appreciate them, though it will probably be another month or two before TOR can crack my crowded calendar.)  Meanwhile, whatever the system's other faults, at least they started keeping track of the "legacy exp" at launch so that players who showed up early can get credit for their accomplishments to date.  I just wonder how many of those players will find themselves regretting decisions of server, class, or race that were made before they had even zoned in to kill their first Jedi/Sith rat-equivalent.

Update: MMO-Mechanics has the first post I've seen summarizing the things that the Legacy system will offer in patch 1.2 (currently testing) and patch 1.3.  (They had to powerlevel on the test server to unlock the system and get screenshots.)  Interesting perks, including earlier access to mounts, enhancements to your companions (who also offer buffs to your alts), etc. 

You Are What You Sell

It seems these days that you can learn a lot about a game by examining what exactly it is in the business of selling.  MMO Studios are by their own admission still working out the kinks of non-subscription models.  One of these questions is what exactly the developer should be adding when they're making money off of what sells, where the more traditional subscription model would have been more concerned with what has an overall effect on the game experience.

• As I mentioned yesterday, STO expanded its duty officer system in a way that expands the need for new types of officers that weren't previously in the game.  This sells more duty officer slot unlocks, possibly more inventory unlocks, and potentially the random duty officer packs in the cash shop.
• After not having any new high level content in the November paid expansion box, the EQ2 team is rolling out a new zone with an increase in level cap in April's content patch.  A higher cap presumably means a complete gear reset, which means more gear unlock tokens for the non-subscriber. 
• Part of DDO's expansion pre-order rollout is a new tome that persists through true resurrection and offers a hefty experience boost - a tome that's also available in the DDO store for a whopping 1595 Turbine Points.  (Regular tomes that boost stats have also been changed to persist through true reincarnation.)  The presale packs also include existing content.  It appears that Turbine sees the sale of content - and additional trips through that content on new characters (including the new class) - as one of the big draws of their game.  (In fairness, the wide-open class system does make this a selling point.)
• When I look at something like Aion's free to play rollout with funny acronyms and nebulous details, I'm puzzled about what exactly it is they are selling (and why anyone would buy it). 

At the risk of picking on SOE (who seem to have an unfortunate habit of running into major issues that can't reasonably be blamed on the actual developers, such as their parent corporation selling the rights to the European service to a random German company or last year's hacking debacle), the catch is more with what does not get done.  Yes, EQ2's new patch has a fair amount of stuff in it, but the game is also now down to three scheduled updates this year - barely above Blizzard's notorious slow pace, but Blizzard's base releases have way more content to start with. 

The issue is that it is very hard to show any short term return on the marginal investment of putting more effort towards content patches.  By contrast, it's very easy to show increased revenue from adding some new microtransaction or whatnot.  You can eventually do enough damage to your brand name to affect player retention - Eve did this in a very short span last year, while I'd suggest the state of EQ2 has been more of a slow drain that is much harder to note on a budget spreadsheet. 

By contrast, we do still have the last subscription titles standing - WoW, Rift and SWTOR primarily - that are sticking to the model of selling game time and nothing else that affects gameplay.  Item shop purchases remain largely optional, while game boxes only go down in price over time - the fee is the one constant in this world, for better or worse. None of which is to say that this model is more democratic - it's hard to show a specific reason for a marginal drop in subscriber numbers in the same way that it's hard to "vote against" a cash store purchase that people other than yourself are buying. 

What exactly is your game of choice selling?  Is it something that you are happy purchasing, or, if not, do you feel that the game may be going in a direction you don't like because you are not the source of its income?

STO At 40 And 30

My steady progression through Star Trek Online's levels continues, as my main hit level 40, qualifying for another ship upgrade.  Ironically, on the same day, I got my Klingon alt to level 30, a task I'd prioritized in order to snag the launch week reward for completing the Bajor featured episode series.  A few thoughts as I near the game's level cap.

The Business Model
I did end up ordering a cheap retail box online to subscribe for one month, in order to unlock various perks for my character, including inventory, bank, and bridge officer slots.  I also picked up some Cryptic points so that I could purchase an upgrade of 100 slots to my duty officer roster.  (Note on this: I was credited 400 Cryptic points as a subscriber, but not until a day or so after I entered my retail key.  I'd be more irked about this, except that my total investment in the game so far stands at $11.40.)  How much these upgrades matter is open to debate. 

It's possible to run the duty officer system at the basic 100 slots, but you will have to ditch low quality officers, and may not have the slots to keep a full contingent - i.e. there will likely missions you cannot do for lack of versatility.  This factor is at least somewhat intentional to the system's design.  A recent free patch add a bunch of Deep Space Nine related missions which tend to require new traits found on new duty officers.  The line between more of a good thing and expansion for the sake of selling more slots (and more random officer packs to the so-inclined) is thin, and will undoubtedly be tested under the free to play business model. 

The inventory slots are a bit more optional.  I like to have more of them because I'm currently carrying around thirty six slots worth of crafting materials (which I keep on my person because I can't remember what each tier is called otherwise) and commodities.  My need for both of these things is tied closely to the amount of duty officer missions I run (way more than the "normal" gameplay), as these missions tend to either generate or require items.

As to the bridge officer slots,  I definitely have more than the minimum that I would need (currently 10 and counting), and a player who wants to fly a single specific ship can definitely get by with the free number.  The main thing you get for having more slots is versatility, if you want to run more than one kind of ship, or have spare officers to swap out on a mission-by-mission basis. 

Versatility
On paper, STO does not have a ton of versatility in character class - there are only three "classes", and many of your abilities are derived from your bridge crew.  That said, there is more depth to the system than may first appear.

Each ship type limits not only the class of officers (i.e. tactical, science, or engineering) but also the rank of abilities they can use.  If my ship has a slot for a Commander Rank engineer, I might want an officer with Rank 3 Directed Energy Modulation as their top rank ability, and that officer would not want to waste their Lieutenant skill slot on Rank 1 of the same skill.  By contrast, if I hop into an escort class ship where the only engineering slot is capped at lieutenant, I may want a separate officer with the rank 1 skill, so that I have the skill available if I want it. 

The not yet fully equipped USS PVD-5

The other dilemma I faced was what ship to choose with my level 40 selection.  Level 50 ships are upgrades over these, but not spectacularly so, and most of these ships are cash-store exclusive.  My first choice would otherwise have been a cruiser, but I have a free level 50 cruiser waiting in my bank from the second anniversary event.  Given how quickly I'm leveling, it made more sense to snag either a science or a tactical vessel since I could continue to use that at endgame if I wanted to.

I ended up picking the Fleet Escort tactical vessel.  This unpaid ship comes with bridge slots for two tactical officers, two engineering officers, and one science officer.  By contrast, the paid ships in the store tend to carry three tactical slots, which is more damage than you need at the expense of versatility.  By comparison, if I actually decide to run with a science vessel it will be because I want to have maximum scientific utility options (debuffs, unique attacks, etc), in which case it might make sense to pay for a store ship (which has three science officer slots but only one each for tactical and engineering). 

Pacing the content
I've heard complaints previously that leveling is "too fast" in the upper levels.  On the one hand, I can see where they are coming from - I have a number of missions left in the very first Klingon War episode arc, and will likely hit 50 before I complete them.  In particular, I think I only did a single mission that actually involved flying my ship during the entire level 40 range - a span where your three options are highly iconic variants of the ships from TNG, DS9, and Voyager. 

That said, this also means that I will have significant amounts of new (to me, not to the game) story content available to do beyond the game's level cap. Is this approach harmful to my longterm enjoyment of the game?  No idea.  As of now, though, this game has been my primary game for over a month running and I've got plenty of stuff left to do.  That's not a bad mark compared to many MMO's out there these days. 

Scroll of Resurrection: Game Vs World

While I was struggling with internet access issues last week, Blizzard announced that they'd gone ahead and implemented that crazy idea EQ2's David Georgeson kicked around last year - a free boost to level 80, but only as a promotion for lapsed subscribers.  MMO Melting Pot has two posts rounding up the blog reaction so far, and even this list only scratches the surface. 

The conflict
This debate emphasizes the split between MMO's as games versus MMO's as worlds.  As a game, the correct answer to the question "can I play with my friends?" is always yes.  By contrast, the very structure of the persistent online world is full of "no" answers to that question. 

• Wrong server/faction?  No.  
• Wrong class?  No.  
• Wrong spec/group role?  No.  
• Wrong level?  No.  
• Not enough gear?  No.
• Don't own enough expansions?  No.  
• Not located in the right location (back in the days when traveling across the world could take all night)?  No.  

For the players who primarily see the MMO as a world, all of these answers are the entire reason to play the game.  What is the point of playing a game where everything you have worked so hard for will be given away for free as the next promotion?  For the players who want to play with their friends, all of theeeese answers are what's keeping them from playing the game.  If there is fault in the new system, it's that it's still too limited - current players need not apply, while even the fortunate former subscribers must grind out five levels and whatever gear they need to join their friends at endgame.

A solution worth trying?
In the short term, I think there are legitimate questions about whether this approach will work or is a good idea.  As Azuriel points out, some of these goodies represent money left on the table for Blizzard, and it's not clear how many of the returning players Blizzard will be able to retain.  That said, I think it was overdue for someone to try this, and Blizzard is one of the best positioned, even after the rough year. 

As long as entire segments of the game - such as solo content, non-raid group content, etc - are reduced to a prerequisite that raiders must complete to be allowed to advance, there will be consequences to the way that players who actually want to use this content are able to experience it.  In Cataclysm, Blizzard expended a staggering amount of resources on new leveling content that even their core demographic for this material - longtime players like myself with high nostalgia value and willingness to roll alts - can't use the content because the rush to level cap ruined the exp curve for everyone else. 

As damaging as paying to skip to max level (the next logical step in this progression) may be to the MMO's, I think the consequences of continued inaction may be worse. 

The Business Model of Neal Stephenson's T'Rain

I picked up Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Reamde, hoping for creative ideas on virtual worlds and business models.  Unfortunately, the book spends way more time than I would have preferred on random modern day gun battles - which are less interesting in the world of 201X than they are in his more famous cyberpunk works where there are more gadgets for the characters to play with. 

The novel features a fictional virtual world called T'Rain - a subscription MMO with a currency that is fully exchangeable into real money, with professional gold farmers/sellers as a core demographic.  Players can subscribe with a credit card, in which case the money from any purchases or sales of gold are settled directly to the card.  There is also an option for "self-sustaining" accounts to pay their subscription fee in gold.  The details aren't fully fleshed out - this is a novel, not a design document.  Still, there are some interesting ideas to be found here.

The Exchange Rate 

The game's lore presents the act of selling gold for real world money as the character sacrificing that gold to a local deity in the hopes of receiving good fortune, while the magical appearance of gold when the player invokes their credit card is similarly presented in-game as divine intervention.  That said, I'm assuming that under the hood is a functioning currency exchange in which every purchase represents a swap of gold and cash between two customers for several reasons:

• The book spends a lot of time discussing how, rather than having infinitely respawning mobs appear in the world with cash on hand, T'Rain was modeled by geologists.  Gold must be mined by player-owned miners.  (Presumably, monsters obtain gold by killing NPC merchants players pay for stuff?)  This entire discussion becomes moot if the amount of gold in the world isn't constant.
• If you can both pay your subscription in gold and have the company pay you money for your excess gold, it's possible to have customers that are an actual net loss of money.  While there are theoretical situations in which this might be okay - perhaps if a dozen players subscribe THINKING they can be that one guy who turns a profit, or because they enjoy trying to kill that person in game - the whole quagmire is easy to avoid if the company doesn't gamble its own money.  
• From the company's perspective, it makes more sense to require players to convert their gold into a constant amount of dollars to pay the subscription fee, as compared to accepting a constant amount of gold and attempting to sell said gold (or generate new gold) to other players.

That said, this approach means a floating exchange rate, which may delay transactions and will, more importantly, impose limits on the amount of money that players can change out in one fell swoop. 

Star Trek Online's Currency Exchange - as of the time of the screenshot, anyone looking to sell much more than $1000 worth of Cryptic points is going to begin shifting the exchange rate downwards. 

Effects of Gold Farming on the Currency Market
It's explicitly stated that a character parked in a "home zone", such as a mine, will be safe and will automatically perform certain "bot-haviors", such as mining gold.  It's also stated that literal Chinese Gold Farmers will have large number of these fully legal bots, all paying their subscriptions with gold naturally, and operating at a net profit. 

Less clear is how much effort/risk this requires on the part of the player.  The implication is that more remote home zone sites are likely to be more profitable mining locations.  The player must somehow safely transport the gold to a money changer to collect their profits, and it is stated that the amount of gold you can purchase for $73 is a lot of money in T'Rain terms. 

The question becomes crucial because of the time - and to a lesser extent risk - curve.  If any player can maintain one or more characters at a net profit (in gold or real money) for limited time and low risk, this will have obvious negative effects on the value of gold (at least until players have picked the world of T'Rain clean of its geologically modeled mineral reserves).  The theory is that with lower cost of living/per capita income, you might have parts of the world where even a small net positive cash flow in dollars would be enough for a gold farmer to live on.  Putting this into practice is a very delicate balance of having it be easy enough for someone to rely on the profession for their real world income but hard enough that the potential purchasers of gold don't just roll up another mining bot of their own instead. 

Subscription Fee As Incentive
The other interesting tidbit is that T'rain's subscription fees are charged on a per-character basis, and are based on character class.  No specific numbers are given, but it is stated that someone intending to play a powerful Warrior-mage is paying much more than it costs for a literal Chinese Gold Farmer to run a character as a mining-bot. This in turn creates some unintended social trends, as players with less real-world money run around as cheaper horse-archers or other more basic classes.

Metaphorically, one could argue that we have similar systems in non-subscription games today, where the conventional wisdom is that the overwhelming majority of players pay nothing and the stereotypical minority overspends to provide most of the revenue. 

As far as the class balance question, I suppose lower subscription fees are amongst the few things we have NOT yet seen anyone try to get people to play less popular roles like tanks or healers.  Perhaps turning the system on its head and just charging people more to be DPS is a good solution.  Or, perhaps it's shortsighted - do you really want players choosing based on price, disliking the game experience, and quitting outright? 

The Fictional Virtual World
At the end of the day, the actual experience of playing T'rain sounds not unlike the notorious space free-for-all of Eve Online.  You have the potential for full looting in PVP, players betraying their factions, skill training based on real world time, and others - my guess is Stephenson drew some inspiration from that world.  Overall, though, I can't give the book any more than a mixed review because of how little time the characters spend in the virtual world that's supposedly the book's focus.  

Long-Standing LOTRO Design Issue Fixed For Added Fee

Via Zubon at Kill Ten Rats comes word that Turbine is finally addressing its addiction to adding an endless number of alternate currency tokens which take up space in player bags.  The fix will be going directly to the game's cash store. 

State of the Token

The barter items remaining in my character's bank AFTER the change to rep items last fall.

Every world event, faction, and game system in Middle Earth has its own tokens, creating an assault on player bagspace that has been an ongoing issue in the game since its launch.  I was able to free up free up fourteen slots in my bank when tokens that are used solely for reputation were turned into instant consumables last year, but I still have eighteen slots' worth of barter items, event currencies, etc.  Many of these are bound to character and difficult to replace if I simply pitched them, as they are earned through daily quests or group dungeon runs.  It's also worth noting that I have yet to enter the current expansion content; I'm not aware of whether there are more tokens, but I'd be shocked if there aren't any. 

While LOTRO does offer various ways to increase your bank storage (both in-game and through the store), there's nothing you can do to increase the storage on your character once you have unlocked the premium bagslots (either by paying for the unlocks, or, more economically, by subscribing for a single month).  You can bank the things, with varying degrees of inconvenience in terms of proximity between banks and the relevant reward vendors, but there's no help for the tokens that you are currently acquiring from quests, dungeons, etc.

The solution
Details are incomplete, but the forum thread Zubon found says that the new system will allow all of the items to go into the existing barter wallet.  The posts say that the wallet is also going account-wide, which is marginally useful in terms of gear for alts, or perhaps funneling dungeon currency to a different character.  For comparison, EQ2's shared bank, which is free for subscribers and a one-time $5 fee for nonsubscribers, allows transfer of currencies (all of which are heirloom and can be stashed in a free currency tab) function at no additional charge.

In all fairness, this trend of implementing fixes for longstanding complaints about the game's features - including travel, inventory management, and grindy kill deeds - and putting them in the cash shop is not new.  The Turbine hybrid free to play model remains one of the friendliest in the industry when it comes to non-subscribers - I spend way less per time /played in Turbine's games than I do under any subscription model, even with the occasional quality of life purchase. 

That said, these kinds of "convenience" features would be included in the base game under pretty much every other company out there.  This one unlock will eat up the entire 1000 TP "bonus" included in Turbine's middle tier expansion packages for a $10-20 additional upsell fee.  For the game's subscribers (who I maintain pay more over the long run, given Turbine's expansion pricing strategy), the unlock consumes two months' worth of the stipend meant to offset the increasing number of cosmetic, consumable, and functional features that are going straight to the cash shop.  Like Zubon, promotions like this actively make me less excited to be a Turbine customer.