Gamenikki

Well... I've been silent, so here's one of the items I've been working on.

http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?user_file_id=703036

These are a collection of 30 maps made in the Smash Brothers Brawl Level editor. More information about the maps is included on an html file in the download, and also here:

http://zerias.blogspot.com/2008/04/ssbb-maps-update.html

Have Fun.

Okay, badly phrased middle line of mine aside... It seems that CrossFire Linux support in Fglrx could be arriving possibly in March. Even if your not a hard-core gamer, this might be important news as OEM's like Dell, Lenovo (formerly IBM), and HP move more Linux desktops out into the market.

Unfortunately, for now we don't have one of the new 3870 X2's on hand to test with, so we can't tell you how it runs.

Forum Posting Source: 3D Realms.

Well, the promised teaser is now available, from several locations, such as Eurogamer, and in both HD and non-hd formats.

Thing is, the last time a trailer of any kind was released was somewhere back around in 2001. Duke Nukem Forever has been through more engine changes than TopGear's old Suzuki Liana's, and more delays than Half-Life 2, Smash Brothers Brawl, and the past 3 console Zelda's combined. DNF has been the chart topper for vaporware lists for literal years, and in some cases has been given an honorary #1 position just to get it off the list. So, hopefully we'll be forgiven for not taking a new trailer too seriously.

That being said, Prey was also in the same position when such a trailer was shown, and that turned out pretty good... if you could overlook the complete absence of any AI in the game... And while I couldn't ever label myself a fan of the Duke, I find myself hoping that this isn't another feint.

Source : Icculus.org

Considering that we just posted our review of UT3, it seems fitting that the server news would shortly follow.

Also concerning UT3, AGEIA has spoken to Phoronix and stated that no, they are not responsible for the delay in the Linux Client for UT3. While no driver for their Physics Processor is available for Linux, their Software Developers Kit does support the platform, which it would since several PlayStation 3 games are powered by AGEIA physics

This was actually accounced a couple days ago on Blogger , but repeating it here since there are just a couple days left to ship this out before Christmas.

One of my media rigs is up for sale. It's an AthlonXp 2500+ overclocked to 3200+ by default. Abit NF7-S 2.0 motherboard. Complete Specs are located here. Asking price is $500 which includes 3 day shipping, and a keyboard and mouse... sorry, no monitor. Contact email is of course jason at gamenikki dot com.

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Also, Tabula Rasa has been out for a while now, and the performance problems reported in our review have largely been addressed. This isn't a formal going over, so we'll keep it short. Right now the game is in a serious state of overhaul as various abilities and skills are swapped around and some of the classes are re-worked. The basic concept hasn't changed, but there are some concerns about forward development.

My personal concern about Tabula Rasa is that the General (Mr. Garriott) and other developers will focus on adding end-game PvP content and designing the game around the Guild Wars model of high-level player versus player combat. I find myself heavily disagreeing with many players who want Tabula Rasa to go full-on PvP for the end game, as I think it's a recipe for failure. We'll probably go a little bit more in depth again with Tabula Rasa next year.

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Continuing the NCSoft related news, City of Heroes rolled out Issue 11, as well as more costume designs and a couple of new power sets. I've been playing a Dual Blades / Willpower scrapper and my first reaction is that the sets aren't that bad. I'm still a little ticked on a personal level that fire melee for Blasters hasn't been re-worked... but I'll live with it.

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Someone also asked in an email why Bioshock and CoD4 were not mentioned when we reviewed Metroid Prime 3 and UT3 for the years best First Person Shooter. The quick response for Bioshock is that Bioshock shipped with the equivalent of a malicious root kit which culminated in the current 5*5 install scheme, which is 5 computers with 5 re-installs each. Even so, due to the customer service problems surrounding Bioshock, it essentially was never up for contention. On CoD4, yes, it is quite an excellent first person shooter. However, like UT3, it falters, in perhaps a critical area. So, yes, we do have a review for CoD4 on the way.

Report by Agence France Presse

I think Nintendo may have set a record for having one of the longest officially support products in the history of electronics. I can't think of any other software or hardware vendor that would have still had an offer to repair something 24 years old. I am also willing to bet that most gamers who have a NES were probably not aware that Nintendo was still officially fixing the consoles.

For many of us, the NES already left a daily part of our life a few years ago, but the Virtual Console brought it back. For many others, the NES was never a part of their entry into gaming, but with Virtual Console, it can be.

Now if only we can get Nintendo to print a Wii disc containing all of the virtual console titles we've already purchased so we can have a hard-backup.

Authors note: this was originally written and posted to the queue on Tuesday the 23rd, when the patch was released. There was another patch during the End-of-beta event that did not address these issues. Going into the retail launch this week, the issues were still present as of the end-of-beta

With Tabula Rasa in open beta now for pre-orders I've been laying a lot of time into the game. A full preview will come next week as the game approaches Retail launch on the November the 2nd. For now though, I wanted to comment on the most recent beta patch, issued today. Now, I've played Tabula Rasa since the E3 Business Summit. It was the basis of the 5 part What part of Beta is not understood? and Inherent Imbalance entries. I really want to love the game, but the last patch is complete and utter junk.



Basically, several basic missions which have been broken for weeks were not fixed. Various weapon balances, which were working perfectly, were re-adjusted. Some of the changes didn't affect my character at all, such as the changes made to the Netguns and Rocket Launchers. The netguns, meant to hold enemies in place, had damage and holding power severely reduced, but were given a 3 shot clip. However, the combination of all 3 shots is nowhere near the amount of damage that the gun used to do. Rocket Launchers had their heat output adjusted up, which means that the weapons overheat and lockup / jam more often, which lowers the condition of the weapons. On first glance, Rocket Launchers were not the only weapons to have their heat outputs jacked up, my shotguns and polarity guns were approaching lock up point much more rapidly.



Specifically to my player, I found that EMP bombs had been hit with the "Nerf and Nothing" bat again. A quick explanation, EMP bombs are drop bombs that heavily damage shielded objects and mechanical constructs. Like other weapons they are classed by level. Class IV EMP grenades can be obtained at Lvl 20.



Now, I currently am playing a Specialist class Sapper. Because of my weapon choices I need EMP bombs to drop shields and take down huge robots.



In the previous version of Tabula Rasa a class IV EMP Bomb was capable of completely removing the shield on a lvl 23 Strider (big robot). In the version released today? A Class IV EMP bomb barely dropped the shield to 30%, and by the time another bomb could be prepped and dropped, the Strider had already regenerated its shields back up to 100%. This was with an A.F.S. Heavy Mech (big NPC with chainguns) and an A.F.S. Cannon (mounted NPC class cannon) ALSO firing on the Strider.



Now, what makes this much worse is that the location of this event was right outside the Wormhole base on the Torden Plains, which is a 20~25 zone. A player just entering the zone is only going to be able to get Class IV EMP bombs. If it isn't obvious, a player with only Class IV EMP Bombs is effectively neutralized from fighting Striders... which, oh by the way, camp outside the gates.



Striders were not always such a big problem to players. When I started playing the Tabula Rasa closed beta I could remove Strider Shields with a lightning bolt... only with the current version, Striders are immune from lightning.



I feel sure players of other class have other Nerf and Nothing incidents going on, but there are other issues that I directly encountered. An early mission set is given by an NPC called Dr. Soji. One of Dr. Soji's missions, Xanx for the Help was broken, and fixed in the previous version of Tabula Rasa. However, the following mission Dr. Soji gave, Predatory was found to be broken. After a HotFix release and the new patch... Predatory is STILL broken.



The final issue that killed my interest in the game also occurred in the Torden Plains. In the previous version of Tabula Rasa a class of enemies called the Atta were found to be over-healthed. Basically, it seems that somebody added a 0 to the end of the Atta health count by misplacing a decimal point. In today's patch? Yes, the Atta are still way over-healthed.



It isn't often that I see the term lagtastic used in official patch notes, so I'll quote it.



Mires should be less lagtastic.



Initial reports from people in the Mires? Nope. Still laggy.



So, I've pretty much been soured on Tabula Rasa with the latest patch, and I think I know why. The developers don't know when to stop. Striders were fine 4months ago. They didn't need to change... somebody changed them.



Weapons and Ammo usages were fine 4months ago. They didn't need to change... somebody changed them.



Weapon balances that were just about fine just 2 days ago... many of which only maybe needed tweaks of 1%-2% in any direction... Somebody heavily changed those.



Picking up Paint off of enemies was fine 4 months ago... That didn't need to change.. somebody changed that so that players have to craft paint now. (we'll explain later in the less ranty preview)



There is no need, nor requirement, for any MMO to have an auction house.... An auction house is being put in. Destination Games didn't learn a lesson from CoH/CoV. An Auction house in the Sci-Fi field is a BAD IDEA. World of Warcraft and EverQuest can keep their auction trolls. We don't need them!



At some point somebody needs to speak up and say "That's enough, we're good" and QUIT MESSING AROUND WITH THE CODE.



Yes, I still think Tabula Rasa is a much better game than Sony's Planetside, but my gut feeling is that if Destination Games can't get a handle on when to stop tweaking and modifying, Planetside may just become attractive again.

Guitar Hero III is now perhaps one of my least liked titles, ever, in the market of video games. I'd actually go so far as to say that I dislike the title almost as much as Omikron: Nomad Soul.

Why?

Because the end-game music has been leaked. It is The Devil went down to Georgia.

Thing is, I am from Georgia. That song gets remixed and redone by just about every single concert artist that passes through here, just about the same way Alabama always gets Sweet Home Alabama redone by everybody who has a stop there. I've heard some pretty bad takes on the Devil Went Down to Georgia, and I've heard renditions on acoustic and electric guitars that can stand head to head with Charlie's fiddle playing.

So, when this Georgia Boy says that Guitar Hero III's Devil went down to Georgia is the worst rendition he has ever heard? I hope that clarifies just how bad the rendition is.

What really strikes me about the rendition is that most of Guitar Hero's music tends to be pretty faithful to the original material when re-recorded by in house musicians. That the end music now completely abandons it's source material and goes for something that would sound appropriate coming from Impellitteri's Pedal to the Metal release, probably is an indication of exactly how much influence Harmonix had on previous titles.

Without Harmonix though, and with the music that is known, Guitar Hero III has paled even further compared to Rock Band.

Which of course will make Josh happy since he didn't get me to play it out at the E3 Summit. (trust me, believe it or not, he's deadly with that microphone.

Okami's paintbrushing seemed like a natural fit for the DS far back when the game was first shown on the PS2. With the revelation of the Wii Controls it seemed that Okami would be better off as a Wii title. Like Sonic coming to Brawl, Okami coming to the Wii is no longer a rumor or a dream. It's happening. For some reason we missed covering the Playstation 2 release, probably due to the fact that by the time we got done playing it we forgot that we were supposed to write something about the game, but Wii will not be missing this version.

http://www.opera.com/products/devices/nintendo/wii/features/

Wii really don't have anything to add to this announcement, other than Wii are glad to see it come about.

Jokes aside, this is a pretty major upgrade. USB keyboard support was one of the major features that was missing from the Opera Beta and Opera Launch editions. Integration with the Wii Message board for link transfers is another major feature that has long been requested by Wii Owners. All in all then, this is a pretty solid update for Wii Owners.

If you aren't keeping tabs on the official SuperSmash Bros Brawl website Smash Bros. DOJO!, you should. Today's news? Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog is in the Brawl. Not photoshops this go around!

Valve's Job Listing.

While not a direct confirmation that Half-Life 2 would have a native Linux client, Valve's job posting has already caused a significant ruckus in the W.I.N.E. and Cedega circles. While Valve has offered Linux based servers for years, gamers attempting to play Valve games have long come up against brick walls. Even when games are made to work under W.I.N.E. or Cedega, using advanced features in Steam is generally a problem.

The news is also significant because of how Steam is sometimes viewed. Steam is often referred to as APT For Windows. APT is one of the applications behind Debian Linux that makes installing new problems as simple as point and click. Steam works a lot like APT in that clicking on a game in Steam downloads the title and runs through the initial configuration without the user ever having to see the installer or choose file locations.

Steam might be the answer that publishers have looked for in bringing games to the Linux Platform. Currently, when developers like Epic and IDSoftware bring games to Linux, there is a bit of command line work involved in getting the game up and running. That is a large factor when trying to bring games to casual players who really don't want to have look at a Bash Console.

Steam, however, can easily take the same approach as Cedega has taken. Cedega currently offers 5 different Native package installers that are built for specific versions of Linux. Gamers pick the package that their system uses, and install Cedega with their package manager. Then Cedega takes care of managing the Windows installs.

Valve, in the same way, can offer multiple different Steam Startup files to download. Once the application is installed though, Steam takes over from there. The process works, Cedega has proven that.

Where this could get really interesting is if Valve allows Steam to be pre-installed and distributed in a Linux Distribution. We'll ask.

Source is AMD's news room.

AMD's official press release only states that AIGLX support is due in Q4 2007, so later this year. However, Phoronix seems to have let the cat out of the bag in an interview with Mark Shuttleworth. AIGLX support will be part of the October 8.42 driver set release.

So why is AIGLX support important? Well,we'd have to direct you to RedHat's Page on the Technology for a full answer, but the short version goes something like.

Real. 3D.& Desktop. Youtube video if that helps.

Source : http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/sep07/09-04SilverlightPR.mspx

Now, this is one of the most shameless grabs for credit that I've ever seen. Microsoft states that they are going to work with Novell to help develop Moonlight.

From the moonlight blog, posted on Jun 21, the development team had already implemented Silverlight. In fact, they had implemented Silverlight support in just 21 days.

August would have made 2 months since the Moonlight project had the SIlverlight protocols. It is now Sept 4th, obviously after August 21st...

So, more than two months after the Moonlight developers implemented Silverlight, Microsoft says they intend to help them implement Silverlight. Yeah. I don't think so.

In some aspects, the giving of a 9 to Metroid Prime 3 hurt. The game really nails everything it does perfectly. I imagine that Retro Studios was quite proud of the work they did implementing the Galactic Federation Marines and the multiple cut scenes of the Marines duking it out with pirates. Prime 3 was overall, a first for many events within a Metroid title, as well as a Nintendo title overall. For the first time in Metroid History the Ship could be used in battle, and was used. For the first time Players got a sense of the world in which Samus live in, both from the view of what they saw in playing it, as well as reading what the Galactic Federation said about the previous ventures.

Metroid Prime 3 is also the first Nintendo game to feature in-game skill point rewards. Performing cool actions, or just plain stupid stuff, can earn the player a skill point. The Skill points can then be sent to friends in the Wii Address book and turned into Green Tokens. Green tokens allow players to unlock extra bonus material, such as pictures, or the abilities to take in-game screen shots. While achievements have been on a competing console for quite a while, this is the first time Nintendo has ever done anything like that.

What also hurt is that Prime 3 is just about the best First Person Shooter I've ever played, and I've played more than I honestly care to remember. The WiiMote and Nunchuck combination really worked well together. This, however, brings up the statement that the only thing keeping Prime 3 from already having FPS of the year is Unreal Tournament 3. One of the quick shot reactions is to point at Bioshock. Well, Bioshock isn't even up for consideration due to it's Draconian Digital Rights Management. Bioshock installs the equivalent of a rootkit into Windows systems and originally had a 2x2 policy. Two installs, and two reinstalls on the same computer. After the opening public relations disaster, the rootkit was updated to be 5x5. Five installs with 5 reinstalls. That still doesn't change the fact that the game ships with a freaking rootkit for Windows. Because of that factor, Bioshock is not going to be a game I would review. The draconian restrictions on the games usage would give it an automatic score of Zero. About the only way Bioshock would be reviewed is if 2kgames publishes a Linux client without the Digital Rights Management.

Back to Metroid though, the game really does deserve a 10. It's that good... It just, it isn't Metroid. At least it's not the Metroid that I'm familiar with, and I've only skipped playing Prime: Hunters. That being said, if Prime 3 is the model for Metroid games to come, it's certainly a design choice I could live with. I prefer the adventure portion and the puzzle solving more, but having something that can wipe Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R.'s single player campaigns?

One of the items not focused on in the main review is the AI. The AI of enemy combatants really was spectacular as pirates with broken armor ran to get out of line of sight and fully armored pirates charged to the front and got right in my face. Flyers worked together in another map as one went on the offensive, and the other flyer went to undo a switch that had been pulled. Later maps had pirates with an attack that would shut off hypermode. As a couple of armored pirates moved into attack, a pirate with the shutdown ability stayed on a high platform, and without fail, activating hypermode drew him out to shut hypermode off.

Anyways, I think it says something for Retro's abilities that the only other notable FPS this year that Prime 3 has to worry about is UT3. Epic has been designing First Person Shooters for a lot longer than Retro Studios has been around. The Unreal engine is one of the most popular, if not most licensed, engines in use in games today. The previous Unreal Tournament that we reviewed was Unreal Tournament 2003, which earned itself a 9 at the hands of Dave.

The primary difference though is that Unreal Tournament generally focus's on Multiplayer match-ups, while Prime 3 is single player only. Which brings up another point of interest for the future of the Metroid Series. Retro has done multiplayer with Metroid Primebefore as Prime 2: Echosincluded split screen multiplayer. However, the controls of Prime 3 are distinctly split screen hostile. Nintendo developer NST launched Metroid Prime: Hunters for the DS, which from my understanding, had only a limited single player campaign, but was focused in large part on multiplayer. In the same manner, a Hunters game for the Wii is a distinct possibility. I can easily see NST and Retro releasing a Hunters title with short campaigns that follow the 3 other hunters in Prime 3 through the opening sequence and up to their corruption, as well as offering up online multiplayer modes. From my point of view this would help as a tide over during a slow month or sales season when no other major projects are due.

Lastly, there is the question of where will Metroid go from here? The Prime series has been officially completed. If I remember correctly, I believe that Metroid Prime was set before the events in the original NES game, and the events were supposed to lead right up to the start of the NES game. However, Prime 3's special ending indicates that there might be one or two other stories in between the ending of the game and the NES original. However, the ending of Prime 3 also would explain why Samus has to get her ball function back to start with in the NES Metroid. Alternatively, Nintendo could look at setting Samus after the events of Fusion, or further down the timeline, or have the next game start somebody completely different than Samus. Granted, that last option would probably result in public lynchings of whoever made the decision...

Okay, now that the Dungeon Runners review is live, time for a little bit more about it in a more relaxed fashion. Personally, Dungeon Runners is a better game than the 6 scoring would indicate. In order to test the teaming aspects of the game I recruited a couple of assistants from City of Heroes. However, our average playtime probably only lasted maybe 30 or 40 minutes before we agreed that we'd rather be kicking Rikti butt. While we liked a lot of the features that Dungeon Runners implemented, it had a similar problem to Auto Assault. We didn't like it enough to keep playing it.

We also each wound up having different complaints about how the combat system worked, although our biggest complaint ultimatly kept coming back to targeting. Too often we would engage in battle and my mage would launch an attack that half of the enemies would be immune to. Figuring out what enemy did what to each attack was a general pain in the mob combat. Progessing further into the game sort of solves the combat issue as better skills and abilities are made available. If one attack doesn't work, try another. For about the first 15 or so levels though, I'd say the combat system will drive new players bonkers. The real problem is that most gameplay judgements are made within the first 10 levels of any MMO. E.g., in City of Hereos, the death penalty is turned on at level 10. At that point the developers presume that most players have a good handle on what their avatars are, and are supposed to do. If new players can last long enough, the gameplay and targeting really don't matter. The question is, how long will the new players last in playing?

There were several soft factors however that, well, drove us away. One of the factors not covered in the review is that we couldn't find a way to close the chat window. That was something we couldn't say we were overly fond of. Even when we went into an instance we couldn't find a way to turn the blasted world chat off. Now, I thought that the whining in the global chat on *still beta game* was bad. Dungeon Runners made the *still beta game's* global chat participants look like Rocket Scientists.

Another soft factor occured when using the random team joins. There were a couple of times in which I went solo into Dungeon Runners, hit the auto search, joined a team, and was told something to the effect that the team was waiting on somebody else to log in, would I please leave. That was a decided turn off.

Anyways, as the review stated, upon the release of a native Linux client for Dungeon Runners, we'll go back and look at it again. The game has had a pretty aggressive patching schedule, and the first content expansion went live after the initial review was completed.

Recently I decided to reload F.E.A.R. Combat into Windows to try some of the fan created maps. While testing F.E.A.R. I began to encounter some problems on one of the test systems. The test system was running an x1950 Pro with a 19" 4:3 LCD from HP, and a 19" 16:10 LCD from Sceptre. As the graphics card could be a potential problem point, the first step in testing is to replace it with another card. So, out from storage came a Geforce 7900 GT KO.

Upon loading up the Geforce drivers I ran into different problem. I couldn't get the correct screen resolution for the Sceptre, which has a native resolution of 1440 x 900. The resolutions offered by the Geforce driver went 1360 x 768 right to 1600 x 900 with nothing in-between. Okay, no big deal, the Geforce Drivers allow setting custom resolutions and refresh rates. So, hard code the 1440 x 900 resolution in... and it failed. The Geforce drivers would not enable the resolution. Okay, fine, maybe there is a known bug with the drivers, so off to Nvidia.com to check the release notes.

The release notes for the ForceWare 162 drivers didn't mention any problems with 1440 x 900 resolutions. Nor did the release notes for the ForceWare 97.78 release, or the release notes for the 91.47 release from last year. However, searches for 1440 netted, well, a less than interesting result. The results were 1920 x 1440, 3840 x 1440, and 1280 x 1440.

There were no entries for the 1440 x 900 resolution on any Nvidia driver that I checked. A quick search with the terms 1440 site:download.nvidia.com/XFree86 and 1440 site:download.nvidia.com/Windows also netted no results for the 1440 x 900 resolution. As far as I can tell, Nvidia doesn't support the resolution at all.

Now, why is this such a big deal? Well, for starters, Newegg.com lists 48 different monitors for sale with the recommended resolution of... you guessed it, 1440 x 900. Out of the 26 wide screen LCD monitors WalMart offers... 12 of them have a native resolution of ... 1440 x 900. Out of the 32 Widescreen monitors Best Buy had searchable... 12 had resolutions of 1440 x 900.

Now, I can do market research all day long and find out who all offers Widescreen monitors with resolutions of 1440 x 900, and list the exact model numbers, but that would be overkill. The reality is, every single major monitor maker offers a monitor in 1440 x 900. Every single one. Almost all minor LCD manufacturers I could find also had offerings with 1440 x 900 resolution panels.

For Nvidia to not support the format at all? Isn't just tacky. It is outright lunacy. If a user is buying a widescreen monitor in the 17"-23" range from any major manufacturer, there is a greater than 1 in 3 chance that the monitor will have a resolution of 1440 x 900.

The Good news is, both AMD's and Intel's graphics cards do support the resolution. So, just don't buy an Nvidia card and everything should be fine.

Oh, and as to my own problem? Seems to have been a corrupted driver or something. A wipe of the Catalyst 8.36 driver and performance was back to normal.

One of the major reasons to play a game that is inherently imbalanced is that there is a spot for several different types of players. One of the standout features of Planetside so many years ago was the inclusion of Engineer and Medic classes, as well as driver certifications. While most of the game was focused on the Player Versus Player combat, players didn't necessarily have to be VT-Grumpy-Bunny or Fatal1ty in order to level and play the game. Players with slower Internet connections could still be useful in scouting missions, wandering deep behind enemy lines or taking towers far away from the lag filled main battle.

Players who took aiming lessons from Star Wars Storm Troopers could find a spot tagging along on a squad healing allies, or reviving downed allies. As there was a need for players in Max Armor to go crashing into the next base or tower, there was a need for engineers to stay behind and repair turrets, lay down land mines, place localized mini-turrets, and put up motion sensors. Just as pilots were needed up in the air for bombing runs and galaxy drops, drivers were needed for ANT runs in order to fill the NTU silos.

In a similar manner City of Heroes / City of Villains also offers different players different ways to play the game. Fans of Real Time Strategy games will probably find more enjoyment in the micro management available to a villainous Mastermind. Players who love to sneak around the shadows will find the Stalker an excellent choice for covert actions. Players who love leaping into the middle of a mob and pounding the living daylights out of an enemy that cons purple will find enjoyment in the Tank class. Players who are good at keeping track of other players and managing the battles will find the Controller and Defender classes more suited to their interests.

If an inherently imbalanced game offers so many different choices and playing styles then, why do many developers strive to balance the games? Most of the time it is because a development team does not have a clear idea of what the game is, or where it is going. One of the chief complaints laid against Planetside is that development team chased after what was popular, rather than what was Planetside. The game was collectively ruined in pursuit of changing a persistent campaign based MMO into a session based game similar to Unreal or Quake.

So, why would developers not want to make an inherently imbalanced game? Simple answer, Player Versus Player content. Player Versus Player content generally doesn't work in a game that is inherently imbalanced, especially with games that only have 2 sides to choose from. City of Heroes stands as a good example of these problems at work. The entire concept of the game builds upon each player complementing another player. A stalker is not equivalent to a scrapper. A brute is not equivalent to a tank. A corrupter is not a controller or a defender. I've gone into this subject in depth before.

So, this raises the question of why does PvP work in a game like Planetside that is also inherently imbalanced? Imagine for a second the game of Jankenpon, or rock / paper / scissors. Rock is beaten by paper, paper is beaten by scissors, and scissors are beaten by paper. In the same way, having 3 classes in an inherently imbalanced MMO provides a balancing factor in and of itself. What happens if a Magrider, a Prowler, and a Vanguard all met in a field? The Magrider isn't as powerful as the Vanguard, but the Magrider has a superior movement ability. The Vanguard has the most powerful cannon, but is awfully slow to move around. The Prowler has a slightly weaker cannon, but a higher rate of fire than the others.

A beta of the game provides realistic feedback about how such encounters would work. Is the Magrider too fast for the Vanguard and Prowler to hit? Is the Vanguard's gun too powerful? Is the Prowlers rate of fire too high? What happens if the Magrider and Vanguard team up? What happens if the Prowler and Vanguard team up?

Beta's are designed to answer these types of questions. Players may not like the answers they get during the beta, but all of the data that is generated is used to balance the game within the intentional imbalance. The result is that when playing a beta, players should expect to find things they don't like, or problems that just don't make sense, and report the issues.

Now, as stated at the beginning, much of this has been thinly veiled at an MMO that is in the works right now. Hopefully the development team will realize from the beta feedback that PvP content is not going to work in the MMO, and that the current PvP plans should just be scrapped outright. MMO's do not need to have PvP in order to be successful. City of Heroes proved this a long time ago, even before I joined.

So... one final question. Does anybody NOT understand the concept of beta now?

What exactly is Inherent Imbalance? Inherent Imbalance refers to a design of a game where the abilities and powers of the classes are intentionally different and clearly complement each other. Since I am more familiar with City of Heroes, it will stand as the example. In City of Heroes the 5 default classes are Tank, Scrapper, Blaster, Defender, and Controller. If it helps, imagine these classes as being the 5 points on a typical star.

The job of the Tank is to aggravate enemies and maintain their attention, known as holding aggro. The Tank does this with a combination of a Taunt, melee, and Point Blank Area of Affect attacks, and is backed up with the highest health amount and self buffs. On the Stone and Ice tanks the Point Blank Area of Affect attacks include status modifiers that slow or immobilize opponents.

The job of the scrapper is to damage opponents up close. They do this with a high number of close range melee attacks and some lighter defense powers compared to tanks. However Scrappers also can get a time limited defensive power at higher levels that allows them an easy out when they get over their heads. The games design is that Scrappers will never be able to take the same amount of damage as a tank... but that they can deal out more damage than a tank.

The job of the blaster is to just damage opponents. They do this with a power set made up mostly of attacks with next to no defense powers. There are some anomalies in the blasters where some classes have Point Blank Area of Affect Taunts, not something a character with a really low health bonus and no native status protection needs.

The defender shares ranged attacks with the blaster class, albeit with weaker versions. However, Defenders also buff and heal the team, forming an opposite position to the tank who only self buffs. Defenders are able to fill in the weak points in the other classes, giving Blasters the status protection desperately needed for large encounters, and filling in the chinks on the armor of a scrapper.

The controller forms an opposite to the Tank, Blaster, and Defender. While controllers may have one or two team buffs that defenders have, the buffs are not as strong as a Defenders. In a similar manner, Blasters and Defenders ranged attacks are more powerful than controllers. However, controllers can change the status of their opponents, putting opponents to sleep, holding opponents in place, dropping the defense, slowing the opponent and so on. The status changing effects are much more powerful than other classes. Where as the Stone tank can only reliably immobilize minions with mud pots, immobilizing a mob of lieutenants is nothing to a controller.

So, each class is inherently different. Balancing the classes so that they are equal is impossible. Balancing the classes so that they complement each other is possible. One of the most controversial changes made to the game involved the Fire Aura power called Burn, which does an extremely high amount of damage over time. Burn was modified with a -mob run so that NPC opponents would take off running away when Burn was dropped. This nullified one of the most powerful attacks available to Fire Tanks. However, by teaming with a controller who can hold mobs in place with ease, a fire tank can grab aggro, let the enemies group up, let the controller hold everything down, then drop Burn. A lot of Fire Tank players never grasped that the fundamental use of Burn was changed in order to focus on the team play and inter balance of the group, rather than emphasize one single player's abilities.

The point of many a beta is to iron out the inherent imbalance of the classes. Another example from City of Heroes came from the lack of people playing certain classes like Defender and Corrupter. In order to make the classes more desirable to play some of the ancillary attack powers had their damages adjusted upwards. When the development team felt enough people were playing the classes again, the power ratios were lowered to their original design levels. Even so, many of the players affected expressed madness that their characters had been unfairly nerfed, with few taking the time to examine why the changes had been made to begin with.

One of the major problems a MMO in testing right now faces is many players who are looking for the best class to play. Attempting to explain to the players that there is no best class, that each type of class does something differently than other classes, seems to fall on rather deaf ears. Many players openly spam the Global chat with statements to the affect of Why play that class, my chosen class is much better. These players are going to be in for a rude awakening as the game is completed and they find that all of the classes will be needed in battle. Not just one or two.

If making a game that is inherently imbalanced seems like a hard thing to do, it is. Many players will chase after equal balance between classes, expecting to be able to do something with one class that can be done in another class. So, why play an Inherently Imbalanced game?

Part of the problem with MMO Beta's is that the developers may have a hard time communicating what they want from the players. To reference my own history with Cox Communications after Katrina and Rita smacked into Louisiana and Texas... What we, collectively, were looking for in hurricane affected zones (reads: All serviced territories) was the location of downed lines, cut lines, and property damage. We, collectively, were not interested in hearing from one or two people that couldn't get the WWE to broadcast to their roofless house. We also were not interested in having somebody in a Hurricane affected zone calling up and asking for a service truck for a problem that predated the Hurricane strikes.

In the same way, I highly doubt that any developers working on an MMO in closed beta are interested in hearing about how uber somebody's stalker was and how the class needs to be nerfed. Concerns about class and character balance are a distant second to engine and technical problems. A question that needs to be asked then is this: What is the average Beta tester looking for in a game?

Lets accept, for the sake of argument again, that the average player expects the Beta to be the fully featured final product that is in the last stages of tweaking before launch. To this type of player class and character issues are the primary concern. To these players problems like missing textures, inoperable weapons, broken missions, glitchy graphics, and memory leaks are icons that the game is going to be horrible, and that everybody else should promptly go play their title of choice.

From my point of view, the developers are more interested in hearing about broken quests, map data that does not load properly, missions assigned incorrectly, out of level range missions, invincible enemies or enemies that take far more damage than their challenge rating, memory leaks in the code, and graphics glitches. Other issues can cover mission requirements that can lead to bugs. For example, lets say a player has to destroy 4 helicopters then call in an orbital strike. The player joins a team that has this mission, and the team has already destroyed the 4 helicopters. The new player joins as the orbital strike is called in, and the orbital strike condition is fulfilled on the players mission list. But, because the player did not destroy the 4 helicopters first, the mission cannot be completed. These are the kinds of things that developers are expecting to be filed in /bug or /petition reports. That is the reason for having a Beta, so that more systems, and more players, are available to give the game a work over.

This is not to say that class balance and character balance issues are not concerns. If a level 25 character is able to consistently defeat level 35 mobs while soloing, then yes, that class is in need of an overhaul. This leads into another expectation from average testers, many of whom are looking for buffs or nerfs to specific classes of players. Any changes at all made to the most powerful character class is inherently bad, and there is only one reason or way to play the game.

From the developers point of view, a Beta release gives real data on how damage is dealt out, how well cover works, the aggro ratios for damage, the Point Blank modifiers on ranged weaponry, and so on. While it can be argued that all the various combat and support factors can be calculated before hand, no plan survives first contact with players. A good example is found in Planetside's Jackhammer weapon for the New Conglomerate. The developers had balanced the Jackhammer so that it's entire average DPS (damage per second) would be about the same as other heavy weapons from the Terran Republic and Vanu. While the Jackhammer could triple shot, effectively one shot killing lightly armored opponents, the reload time would enable any living target to get away or possibly return fire. However, New Conglomerate Players began combining the Jackhammer triple shot with Surge, a sprint function. These players would run in under Surge, fire, and run right back out a door. With the lag computations, and client side hit system, this meant that many NC Jackhammer users could effectively triple shot a target, and be gone before they (the NC player) actually appeared on the screen. Experts would bunny hop while surging and using the Jackhammer, creating an effectively impossible to hit target under the lag computations. Others would combine the surge exploit with another exploit. On heavier armor, NC players could have two Jackhammers, one in each holster. Planetside's method of handling weapon switching meant that NC Players could triple shot one jackhammer, hit the button for the second Jackhammer, and immediately triple shot the second Jackhammer, creating a 6 shot frenzy.

This is not to say that other empires in Planetside did not exploit various game functions, but it should illustrate the point of unexpected damage combinations. The surge tricks and the double weapon tricks were not outright cheats or hacks to the gameplay. However, they did exploit the existing gameplay in a method that the developers had not originally intended. One of the aspects of a Beta release of a game is to iron out such possibly unintended combinations or exploits that use the existing code structure. This is even harder in games that are Inherent Imbalance.