DDO: Wizard versatility

First dungeon run last night: We encountered a locked door that neither I nor my cleric hireling could open. No problem. Once we had killed all the monsters we headed back to the nearest shrine and after a quick rest I swapped out "Melfs Acid Arrow" for "Knock" a spell which allows me to open locks.

In a second dungeon we were stopped by a door which had a minimum strength requirement to open. Again no problem - another visit to a shrine allowed me to swap in "Bulls Strength" a buff spell which gave me the strength I needed to open the door.

Versatility is the hallmark of a Wizard. Without question Sorcerers are better at casting spells. Both Wizards and Sorcerers can choose from the same list of arcane spells but sorcerers cast faster and they have more spell points which allows them to go on casting longer. Sorcerers cannot however swap spells mid mission. In fact they can only swap spells once every few days and they pay dearly to do so. Wizards can swap their spells freely in any tavern and they can swap after resting at a shrine during a mission. Shrines are on a fairly long cooldown but in an emergency there is the option of leaving the dungeon,  popping into the nearest tavern and legging it back before the dungeon resets.

If you have any one job you want doing a Sorcerer can probably do it better than a Wizard. The Wizard on the other hand brings the advantage of far greater flexibility.  That flexibility is a huge advantage to a solo player. As a wizard I can use spells that help make up for the lack of a rogue or a warrior in my party but a sorcerer would be unwilling to waste a valuable slot on such rarely used spells.

DDO: Look after the copper and the gold will look after itself. NOT!

Dungeons and Dragons online has possibly the most confusing currency system of any game I have yet played.

In the first instance there are too many types of coins: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Copper. Copper is useless. Even at level 1 everything costs silver or gold and by level 3 I routinely buy things that cost 100's or 1000's of gold.

The next problem is that the multiplier between tiers of coin is only 10 as opposed to the more usual 100. I am sure I will eventually get used to this but even after two weeks playing I still need to remind myself that 50 silver is  equal in value to 5 gold.

The NPCs vendors don't help the situation by routinely ignoring platinum when quoting prices. The ingredients to inscribe a level 2 spell for example are quoted at 420 gold instead of 42 platinum.

Finally and perhaps the most confusing thing of all is that your purse does not automatically convert coins to the largest denomination. For example my purse might contain: 21 Platinum, 194 Gold, 211 Silver and 384 Copper. Can I afford to buy level 2 inscription materials which are quoted at 420 gold? 

Is this some kind of slavish adherence to the AD&D ruleset? I don't know but how hard can it be to implement a simple algorithm to add up the coins in your purse?

By the way the answer is yes. I can afford the inscription materials and I will have 0 platinum, 8 gold, 9 silver and 4 copper left over. 

Not So Free Realms

Thank you to Green Armadillo for highlighting the fact that Free Realms is going to put a barrier in at level 5 beyond which you must be a subscriber to advance. As Green Armadillo himself puts it:

"Free Realms is now all but officially a subscription game with a free trial, rather than a free to play game with an item shop and optional subscription"

I know very little about Free Realms having only played one character up to (coincidentally) level 5 but on the face of it this is a staggering move. For quite some time it has appeared that microtransactions were an unstoppable force which would eventually signal the death of the subscription model. Turbine's recent move of DDO from compulsory to optional subscriptions has reportedly been a big success. Sony are the only company I have heard of moving back towards a compulsory subscription model.

Without more information it is hard to read this. I assume Sony are doing it because they think it will make them more money but is this because they have decided that their non subscription players are costing them more than they are worth? If so this has implications for all Free to Play Games.As one of the commenters to Green Armadillo asks "So F2P does not work then?"

Torchlight Is not For me

Lets face it, when it boils down to it every computer game is a pointless waste of time. Some games try to hide this fact with engaging story lines and complex game-play. Torchlight on the other hand celebrates its pointlessness and glorifies in it. It is the very incarnation of progress quest with added button pressing and better graphics. Meet monster, press button,  kill monster,  loot better gear, level up, meet tougher monster .... repeat. There are some embellishments involving pets, enchanting and gems but the essence remains unchanged. The game's quests and dungeons may be scripted but they just as easily be procedurally generated from what I have seen of the demo.

I know that a lot of people love this.   Wilhelm2451 and other bloggers whose opinions I respect are full of the game's praises but I still don't get it. I don't care if it follows in the illustrious foosteps of Diablo, Dungeon Siege, Titan Quest and its own direct antecedent Fate. I find the game boring.

There are times when we all can use a bit of mindless button mashing but I think that this market segment is very well covered by free to play flash games. To my mind both Sonny and Monsters Den have more depth than I have seen in Torchlight.

EDIT: On second reading my post above comes across more negatively than is warranted. For balance I should point out that Torchlight is very well made with a very well polished interface.The combat though repetitive is well done and the sounds in particular are very satisfying. The game is actually a lot of fun to play at first. Its just that I find this type of game play gets repetitive. Perhaps my biggest complaint is that it remains compulsive long after it has ceased being entertaining.

DDO: Autwind Where's your Trousers? (I hate Ooze)

You may wonder why Autwind Horogood, that precocious scholar of the arcane arts, is running around Stormreach in his underwear. If you are astute you may even have noticed the distinct lack of an imposing wizardly staff in his hands.

How has this sorry state of affairs come to pass? Oozes. That is what has led to this.  Squelchy slimy fetid oozes.

Autwind is working his way through a quest arc set in the Kobold infested tunnels of Storm-reach waterworks. Things went well enough for the first couple of missions and large numbers of Kobold were slaughtered.The third mission is set in Clan Tunnelworm's lair and these particular Kobolds are rather remiss in their housekeeping. The lair is filled with rapidly respawning grey oozing creatures. Not only are these oozes immune to my fiery magics they also exude an acidic slime which dissolves weapons and clothing. One minute Autwind was a powerful wizard commanding terrible arcane forces,the next minute he was standing in his underwear looking at the broken fragments of his staff. Autwind managed to complete the instance anyway with the help of his trusty hireling cleric but running around naked in a dangerous lair is no fun.

The repair bills for this are probably going to bankrupt me. I have already spent most of my cash learning new spells (surprisingly expensive by the way) and I amn't getting enough loot from these missions to cover the repairs. This may indeed mark the end of my career as a solo adventurer. Its not just that the missions are getting harder it is also that the economics of DDO seem to be firmly stacked against soloing. Most of the loot from an adventure comes from chests and quest rewards. As far as I can tell these are independent of party size. No /roll is required here, everybody gets to loot the chest. The solo adventurer takes longer to complete a mission and has a much higher repair bill but only gets the same rewards.  

Reasons I will not be buying Modern Warfare 2 on the 12th November

I have bought every Call of Duty game available for the PC. I think that Call of Duty Modern Warfare was a stunning achievement which raised the bar for both single and multiplayer gaming. I am very much looking forward to playing Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2 but I will not be buying it on the release date of 12th November. These are my reasons why.

Partly it is because the dedicated server issue has upset me. It not just because I think it is a bad decision although the case against it is strong. What really really upsets me is the response from Infinity Ward representatives. This sounds like a company that has no respect for PC gamers. I am a PC gamer.

Even more important that the dedicated server issue though is the price of the game. Quite simply €60 is more than I am prepared to pay to download this game. In a recent comment to an RPS article a poster called Bhazor summed up my feelings about game pricing almost perfectly:

"But I wouldn’t say this was budget priced but more rid range. To me budget is £0-£9.99, mid range is £10-£25, full price is £26-£34 and £35 is taking the piss Infinity Ward. Anything over £10 requires at least one reviewer I trust saying I need this."

Of course companies are allowed to charge whatever they like for their products. I have no doubt that Activision has a room full of MBA graduates who can justify this price tag. I also fully expect that the game will make a truckload of money even without Bhazor's custom and mine. I do wonder though if they might not make more money by lowering the price. Steam's experiments with weekend deals and Turbine's experience with DDO unlimited seem to indicate that there is plenty of room to increase revenue by lowering game prices. For digitally distributed games the marginal cost per unit is very low so any increase in revenue has a big impact on bottom line profit.