Ultimate Nerds Comics

YOU, Johnson, who keeps speaking in the third person about people in front of him.

Here’s the comic.

-Malec2b(Alec)

Unfortunately the comic will be delayed a bit more since the new semester has started.  We should be back with comics soon though.

I’m away from home and will not be able to upload the comics for today or Wednesday.  Comics will return Friday afternoon.

-Malec2b(Alec)

Alright, after some playing of the game, I’ve updated the rules to allow for a more balanced experience.

I have also removed Optional Trades from the game.  They were rather ineffectual and we’re nearly always a bad move.  I may add them in again if I find a way to balance them.  I have also added the option to use one of your deck trades at the very end of the game, right after the timer ends. There are also a few more small rule changes in there.  I’ve italicized the rule changes.

Here are the updated rules:

Trades:  A card game for 3 or more players

Each player gets 7 cards.  A time limit is chosen (5 minutes is standard).  The goal of the game is to have the lowest total when you add up your cards at the end of the time limit.  Aces count as one, jacks as 11, queens as 12, and kings as 13.  You exchange cards by making trades.

There are three types of trades:

Mandatory Trade:  You pick 2-4 cards from your hand and place them face down and declare who you want to trade with.  However many cards you trade, you then pick half that many of your opponents (rounding down, eg. if you trade 3 cards, you choose 1, if you trade 4 cards, you choose 2) at random.  They then pick half (rounding up) of their cards to make it so that an equal amount of cards are being traded both ways.

Trade with the Deck:  You are limited in any given game of Trades to 3 Trades with the Deck, in which you choose one of your cards, put it at the bottom of the deck, then pick a card from the top and put it in your hand.  If you save one of your deck trades until the end of the game, you can make one deck trade after regular trading has ended.

You can either take turns declaring trades, or you can make it a free-for-all where anyone can declare a trade at any time (if you declare a trade with someone who is already trading, your trade starts after theirs ends.)  I’ve found that taking turns works best for groups of three players, and free-for-all works best with larger groups, especially when there are an even number of players, however, it is the choice of the players which one of these styles is used.

You cannot trade away the exact same cards you got in a previous trade (if you got 3 cards in your last trade, you can only trade away two of those cards during your next trade.)  This rule keeps the same few cards from getting constantly passed around the table.

You cannot trade with the same person you just traded with, unless they have traded with someone else since your last trade.

The game ends when the time limit is reached.  Any players who still have deck trades left can make one trade with the deck each at this point, as mentioned in the deck trade rules.  Then the players add up their cards and the person with the lowest total wins.

This is still only a rough version of the rules.  I’m probably going to continue to play-test it and improve it.  If anyone plays the game and finds any loopholes in the rules, or any imbalance issues, then please comment on this thread for incorporation in the next version.

Hope you enjoy!

I have a love/hate relationship with MMORPGs.  I’m really quite fascinated in the concept behind them, but I find them to fall into the same pitfalls over and over.

I have been a patron (or addict if you will) of such varied MMORPGs as Everquest, City of Heroes and World of Warcraft.  I say varied sarcastically, for, you see, these are all pretty much the same game with a different coat of paint.  You complete quests that involve going somewhere and defeating a bunch of generic enemies possibly  in a dungeon of some sort, you have a row at the bottom of the screen of special attacks to augment your auto attack, you gain experience, you get money and items, etc…  Sure there were some slight variations (CoH took out the auto attacks and most of the money and stuff).

The problem here is that this isn’t actually very compelling gameplay.  There is very little action or reflexes involved and, at least at the lower and middle levels, very little strategy.  The latter is caused by a lack of enemies where strategy is all that important.  You fight generic creatures.  They have a certain amount of HP.  The only strategy involved is dealing enough damage to get their HP down to zero without dieing yourself.  You don’t have to exploit weaknesses (they don’t really have any specific weaknesses), you don’t have to plan ahead(other than to decide to use your fireball again once it recharges since it deals extra damage), you don’t have to use the environment to your advantage (in fact you can’t, the environment is there to look pretty and enemy attacks can go through trees).  You just attack with your best spells you can afford and take potions if you need to, then repeat it until you gain a level and go on to fight different generic enemies.

Now I know that strategies do come into play in the high levels with raids and such, but that leaves the entire early-to-mid-game seriously lacking in interesting gameplay.  Would you really accept that in a single player game?  However, the addictiveness of the rewards system, plus the social aspect(and, during the early game, this means mostly the occasional pick-up group) keeps players going.  If they are particularly good at the genre, they push through to the higher levels.  If they are not as good, they make it to about level 20, then quit, feeling like they’ve wasted a lot of time and money.

There are also a lot of free MMOs that have been popping up online recently.  I have tried a few of these and am in fact currently playing one called Mabinogi (I’ll discuss this game later), and they seem to suffer from pretty much the same problems as the big budget MMOs.  Rather than try to make up for the low budget with innovation, they have the same grind, same fighting system and less production value.  They often just seem to have more shiny things to collect by killing X amount of small angry creature.

Now that I’ve said all of that, I’ll say what I think needs changing in MMOs to make them a good genre, along with what games if any that I’ve seen are moving in the right direction.

1. Spread content throughout the levels:  As far as I see it, you don’t make a good game by cramming 50% of the content into the last 10% of the game.  I don’t ever remember playing Legend of Zelda and having to slog through the 40 grayish-brown temples before getting to the forest temple.  I don’t remember playing portal and having to go through the Aperture Science Test Subject Application Program for 20 hours before getting to the actual 4 hour game.  Make sure that the game is interesting at all stages, or else you’re going to loose alot of players from boredom before they get to the good part.

Is anyone doing this?  Well, Guild Wars made a good move by doing two things:  first of all, it let you skip to the highest level at the start, and secondly, it made the levels before that work as a sort of story mode which played almost like a regular Multiplayer RPG without all the messy MMO bits.

2. Focus more on social elements:  This should be pretty obvious.  If I’m paying 15 dollars a month for the privilege of playing with thousands of other players, make interactions with those other players an integral part of the game all the way through.  First of all, make it more important to form parties.  I don’t care if you’re saying you’re making the game more friendly for people who want to solo!  If I wanted to solo my way through an RPG, I’D PLAY A SINGLE PLAYER RPG SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR A SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE.  Secondly, make more non, group interactions.  Let the players be creative and spread what they make through the game world.  Make players able to fill rolls that NPCs generally fill.  Let them open shops, or give quests, or become mayor of a city!  Also, make higher specialization of players.  Make it so that characters have special skills that are actively sought out by other characters to help them out.

Are there any games doing this?  Well, on the first count, Guild Wars made it pretty much necessary to make groups for the missions.  Meanwhile, on the second count, Mabinogi allows players to create their own music and play it in game.  However the composing system isn’t particularly good or easy to use, but it’s a start.  They also allow players to open up small shops.

3.   Give the player important strategic decisions:  First of all, make interesting challenges.  Don’t think in terms of a series of enemies to fight past.  Think in terms of encounters like from D&D.  You’ve got a room which could have any combination of puzzles, enemies, traps and environment pieces.  Make positioning important.  Reward the player for getting higher ground, or finding cover, or flanking the opponents, being able to use the environment to their advantage in some way.  Make the enemies have special traits that you need to understand and combat.  Make the player’s abilities distinct and unique, with emergent strategies and combos forming out of how you use them.  Maybe even involve real time action!  Let the player dodge and counter for crying out loud!  Internet connections have improved quite a bit and lag is no longer as much of an issue.  The point is, make the player use their heads, and possible make them use their quick thinking and reflexes.

Does anyone do this?  Mabinogi makes at least some attempt by making it so that you have to use your skills to counter your opponent’s skills, but the system is slow and rather simplistic.

Make a more coherent fantasy world:  Why is it that RP servers on an MMO just involve slightly less L33t speak?  I think that actually RPing in an MMO could be fun, but it breaks realism if everyone else isn’t bothering.  RP servers should be ENFORCED!  If a GM catches a PC speaking out of character in general chat, they can suspend them for a day or something.  I’m not suggesting they do this on all servers, but at least on RP servers.  Isn’t that sort of the point!  Also, more of a sense of danger and emediacy could help to make a immersive world.  If you are lost in a dark raining jungle, with dark forms with glowing red eyes moving menacingly between the trees and your only hope for returning to civilization is that guy next to you, that is going to be a pretty immersive experience.  However, now think of what would happen in that situation in a current MMO…you’d wander towards the city, run into a creature higher level and then, because of how stat based the game is, you character would die and respawn RIGHT NEXT TO THE CITY!  That saved quite a bit of trouble!

Does anyone do this?  Not that I’ve seen!

Maybe even use totally different gameplay:  I mean, honestly, expiriment.  If even Blizzard can only use traditional MMO gameplay to make a pretty OK game, then think about how bad the knockoffs are going to be!  I can understand why the big budget MMOs aren’t willing to take that kid of risk (I don’t like it, but I realize that’s how big companies work).  However, for the low budget, free MMOs out there, this is just unacceptable.  The point of having a low budget is to be free to expiriment and innovate with less financial risk!  Make an MMO with action gameplay, or Full PvP, or no NPCs (I really want to see an MMO where every single character is a PC and the world still functions).  Be creative!

Has anyone done this?  Not to a suitible extent that I’ve seen.

So there you go.  That’s my oppinion on MMOs.  I’m hoping Champions Online will fix at least some of these problems when it launches.  I think the MMO genre has great potential, but it has a lot of built in problems that developers seem to be ignoring rather than adressing.  I’ll probably write a followup to this eventually talking about some more possible solutions, as well as some trends I’ve seen that could be hopefull.

-Malec2b(Alec)

Ben’s comic Fisticuffs! has returned.  You can find it by clicking on the fiticuffs! tab near the top of the website. or by clicking here.

-Malec2b(Alec)