DAW: Trion

Continuing with Developer Appreciation Week, today I wanted to thank the Rift team at Trion.

It feels strange highlight a game that I’m not currently playing, even more so since my subscription lapsed about a week ago. But that has everything to do with lack of time and nothing to do with the game itself. Rift occupies an odd niche in my gaming ecosystem. I played it rabidly at launch and hit the level cap with the initial wave of players. Then my guild collapsed and so did my interest in playing.

I’ve tried since to recapture my initial interest but have yet to succeed. Even after only a couple months’ absence, the game feels completely different because of the speed and volume of Trion’s updates. The Rift team is constantly tuning and adjusting the game, and they are also adding new content faster than any MMO developer I’ve ever seen. At some point in the future, when I next return to Telara, I expect it to feel like a new game.

Thanks Trion, you’ve set the standard for MMO live teams.

This is the third year for Developer Appreciation Week, started by Scary from ScaryWorlds.com head on over an check out his posts.

Developer Appreciation Week

I don’t envy game developers, and especially not those making MMOs. It’s an impossible task, trying to make everyone happy at the same time.

I was playing STO the recently and in the general chat people were discussing the new mining daily that was implemented. I’ve played it myself and had fun bouncing around the asteroid, playing the beam alignment mini-game. I never once thought about how much dilithium I was earning or how much time it was taking. Rarely do I ever think of the word efficient while playing a game. Not the players I was reading though. They were complaining about how little they got from it and they’d be better off doing other dailies to get dilithium. Fun for them was getting the most dilithium or skill points, etc., per hour spent in the game.

There’s very little overlap between players like me and min-max players, so I want to put out a general thanks to all game developers that have to grapple with pleasing everyone all the time. Thanks for everything you do.

This is the third year for Developer Appreciation Week, started by Scary from ScaryWorlds.com head on over an check out his posts.

Mass Effect 3: No Spoilers

I’m not going to give any spoilers or talk about the ending (see here for that), I just want to address the story and game mechanic changes from ME2 to ME3 and give my general impressions.

Story

There was one often asked question when Mass Effect 2 was released that’s been making the rounds again, “Should I play from the beginning or just start at 3?” My recommendation from then is as true if not more so:

You don’t have to play the first to enjoy the second, but it is a better experience having played both.

The game is much better if you’ve played both 1 and 2. There’s two entire games worth of emotional investment in the characters and events. This is one of the few video game series where I’ve laughed so much, and it’s the only game I can think of that’s made me tear up. And ME3 did it twice.

I have been consistently impressed and amazed with how many characters from previous game I ran into. I got to see how people I helped from both prior games had gotten on with their lives and what difference my Shepard’s actions had made in their situations. My only regret was that it’s been so long since I played the first game that I often had to be reminded (conveniently enough there was always an option via in-game dialog) who they were.

One disappointment for me was how few crew from either the previous two games were available to return to my ship for use on missions. The extended dialogs available on the ship are great, but there are also some awesome lines available during the missions. Of course all of the ones that were most important to me were there, but after the wide selection available in ME2, the mission team selection screen seemed a little empty.

Combat

For the most part, the combat in ME3 is the same as ME2. You have powers to set an ammo type, thermal clips to handle reloads, and a cover system.

You are no longer restricted to certain weapon types because of your class though. Instead all weapons have a weight value, and the more you carry the slower your powers recharge and become available again. I really liked this as it let my Soldier Shepard load up on several different types of weapons to handle sniping, general combat, and close range situations, and accept a hit to how fast powers became available again. Had I been playing an Adept or something similar, I could’ve gone the other route and just carried the lightest pistol possible and had super fast power recharges.

The weapon customization system has also a changed. You can add two upgrades to any weapon. Upgrades can be found on missions or purchased (either at the Citadel or through your armory once you’ve visited a Citadel store the first time). I especially liked that you could put a scope on any weapon and have a scope sight when you actually aimed it. For someone like myself, who’s not all that accurate with a sniper rifle, having a pistol with a scope and damage upgrade was really good as a high rate of fire rifle replacement.

The pace of combat has sped up. Enemies will use grenades to force you out of cover (and vice versa), so tactical movement become much more important.

Speaking of cover, I’ve read a lot of reviews complaining about the fact that going into and out of cover as well as jumping from one cover spot to another shares the same button as sprinting. While I got caught on that a few times myself, I didn’t find it frustrating. I imagine that has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t play shooters often. Mass Effect is a hybrid RPG/shooter (action?) game and as such doesn’t do either as well as a more specialized game does. Someone who doesn’t play a lot of shooters won’t notice the rough edges as much.

Multiplayer

I was really not happy about the addition of multiplayer to the game. It felt to me like something that EA was pushing so they’d have a way to add more revenue streams, like selling multiplayer maps. After seeing some of the videos I was a little less leary of the idea though, and I tried to keep in mind the lessons I learned from ME2 that the PR tone of a game often has little to do with the tone of the game itself (such as the aweful Jack promo videos).

Just after the game released, there was a bit of drama related to War Assets versus Readiness where people were upset that you had to play the multiplayer in order to get the best ending. Basically BioWare designed the system so that for every fleet or unit you recruit to the effort to free Earth you get points. However the points are adjusted by a readiness percentage, with the idea being that the more combat practice units get the more effective they’ll be. This incentivises people to play the multiplayer, which a lot of people didn’t want to do.

For myself, I had planned to give the multiplayer a shot, and I’m super glad I did because it turned out to be a lot of fun. How much fun? My final playtime for the single player game was roughly 32 hours. My overall playtime is 66 hours (or at least it was when I wrote this), and I’ve been continuing to play even after beating the game when my Galactic Readiness doesn’t mean anything.

I’m enjoying it so much because it’s co-operative multiplayer not competitive. You’re on a four person team fighting through 11 waves of enemies. You can revive fallen comrades for a short time and anyone who gets killed before they can be revived automatically revives between the waves.

An interesting side-effect of playing the multiplayer is I’ve gotten a chance to play the non-soldier classes, and this has started me considering additional play throughs of ME3 to try out the other classes in the full game.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve loved ME1 and/or ME2 but haven’t picked up ME3, you should. I know there’s a lot of drama around the final minutes of the game but that’s 15 minutes out of 32 hours, and even then it’s a matter of personal taste. Lot’s of people like the ending, lot’s of people don’t, but there’s only one way to find out for yourself.

Enterprise-D and NX-01

Just wanted to share some quick shots of other ships I’m getting started on and/or working up to.

The Enterprise-D will be the largest model I’ve worked on yet, so the detail paining and assembly should be easier. Although, it may just provide a different set of challenges. The decals for this one will likely be more difficult.

The NX-01 is my favorite and the model I’m working up to. It’s a 1:1000 scale so it’ll be the biggest of any of the models I’m planning to work on. I’ve also bought a painting mask for it so I’ll be able to skip doing a lot of the larger decals.

 

Assembling the Enterprise-A

After finishing spray painting the base colors for the NCC-1701-A, it was time to build the sub-assemblies, do some detail painting, and then attach the saucer to the engineering hull.

 

I’m not particularly proud of black highlights on the front of the nacelles, but I’m hoping that the decals that cover most of the part will help clean up the edges.

The Constitution-class refit is going to be staying in spacedock for a while, I’m planning to get back to the Excelsior model and do the decals next. After the TOS model’s tiny decals I want to practice on a larger model and the A is about midway between the two.

Day One DLC Effect

Found this in my Evernote drafts, pretend like I posted this a week ago as I’d intended to. Obviously I need to work harder on my resolution not to publish and not over-edit or leave stuff in drafts forever.

I’ve been catching up on my news feeds today and just ran across the drama about Mass Effect 3’s day one DLC, From Ashes. After listening to Total Biscuit and reading various posts, I’m left wondering why there wasn’t the same huge deal made out of the Warden’s Keep DLC for Dragon Age. I don’t remember blogging about it, but I remember being pretty pissed off that somehow there was DLC available for a game on the same day it launches.

I’m very curious to see how this DLC integrates into Mass Effect 3, but it can’t possibly be worse than Dragon Age: Origins where you actually had a quest prompt that then redirected you to the store.

Regardless of the realities of scheduling, where developers actually have time between completing a game and when the game ship to implement new content for digital distribution, it just feels like the design of the game was scaled back and I’m not getting the complete package for my initial money paid. Logical or not, it would be better for developers to hold DLC until after the first week or two as suggested by John Walker on RPS.

For myself, I had pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition from Amazon months ago (the day it was announce actually) so I’ll be getting this DLC gratis. I ordered the Collector’s Edition because I love the series. Were I waiting for launch day to pick up a regular copy, this DLC wouldn’t have changed my mind about just getting the basic edition.

I understand that some people feel like this content will be integral to the story and so they’ll be missing out unless they pay the additional dollars. This may be true, but frankly I doubt it will be that central to things, and once I’m done with the game I don’t really think I’ll miss whether or not there was one additional character on my crew. Honestly, I’m a tiny bit glad it will be available at launch, I think I would’ve enjoyed having Kasumi along on more missions rather than just the Stolen Memories DLC.

Finishing the NCC-1701

Finally finished my TOS era Enterprise.  When last I mentioned her, I had completed painting and assembly with several significant mishaps, also known as learning experiences. The completed ship was a little misshapen but turned out better than I had expected. But it wasn’t done as I still had a sheet of decals to apply, something I was dreading doing.

Turns out I was worried about the wrong things. My childhood memories of model building include lots of instances of getting stickers applied crooked and then torn or bent as I tried to peel them off and reapply them. Modern models do it a little differently and it wasn’t clear until I started how they really worked.

The instructions state you need to cut a decal from the sheet and then soak it in water for about 20 seconds. Then you slide it from the backing paper and apply it. For most people, that might sound pretty clear but for me it was confusing. Do I lay the whole thing on the model and then slid the paper out from under? How would I pull on the backing paper and still keep the decal from moving? The application process sounded pretty iffy. Thankfully the reality of applying the decals was much simpler.

After trimming a decal from the sheet with a knife, I dropped cut piece in water and waited until I could slide the decal around on the sheet. Too long and it detaches and floats, which isn’t too bad but some decals are pretty delicate. Apply a decal is super easy, just put it next to where you want it to be and slide it off of the backing paper onto the spot. The best part is a decal won’t stick until it dries, so I was able to shift them around as much as needed to make sure everything was placed and aligned correctly.

The one thing I hadn’t counted on was the extremely small size of some of the decals. For instance there were small red and green dots for the top and bottom running lights of the saucer section. These were about the size of a pin head. Not having a set of tweezers or probes, I found that toothpicks I’d bought for applying glue worked great to manipulate even the tiniest decals. Plus the decals didn’t stick to the wood like they did to my fingers.

One adjustment I made was for the windows on the bridge dome. The decals wouldn’t lay quite right and they were just a series of tiny white dots anyway, so I decided to paint them on instead.

You can see in the front view that the nacelles are not aligned within Starfleet tolerances.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how she turned out. The size of the model made it a good cheap starter project, but it also required a lot of skill to handle all of the tiny parts which made if more of a challenge than I expected and thereby much more educational.  I’ve really learned a lot from this first model (or first in almost thirty years), and I’ve already seen my Enterprise A and B attempts turn out better in the painting and assembly stages. So as a test, I bought a second kit of the 1:2500 TOS, A, and B models and started on version two of the 1701.

Painting the Enterprise-A

After my experiences with gluing a model together first (see here and here), before I even opened the plastic on the Enterprise A, I got smart and searched for model painting videos on Youtube where I found an excellent suggestion. Why not remove the parts from the sprues so I could clean up any edges, but then tape them to a board for painting, and glue them together after the priming and base paint was done. Genius!

Enterprise A in Spacedock

I’m glad that I did this model the last of the three since it’s smaller than the Excelsior, although a bit larger than the original Enterprise. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll do any of the detail painting before assembly or not, but there’s not much as much painting required as there was on either the original or Enterprise B.