/play Muppet_Show_theme

I haven’t been following any of the hype or expectations around Hellgate: London. But enough people who seem to know something about gaming were looking forward to it, so I gave it a try. Apparently, I tried day of launch. Well, here we go with my results. No background, just user experience. Don’t care I couldn’t subscribe to multi-player day of launch, or it was locked down etc. This is mostly from solo play and then a few hours from online play last night.

Memory LeaksIt seems to have 3 problems. See screenie below. This is after around 5 mins of solo non-online play with 2 zonings, some combat, log in/out, etc. Imagine after an hour. Well, you can do the math from the possible results below.

This is a silly freeware tool, but I don’t have access any more to a real workbench to inspect how Hellgate runs. At any rate, three modules didn’t free memory after a graceful exit. Which was a “well-duh” moment, since the app runs very very poorly on my rig, which stood up well to LotRO and a few others like the fun of OrangeBox. On all lowest of low settings there’s terrible lag for me in solo non-online play.

UIFor some strange reason, there’s no documentation on how to group, how to look for groups, or even how to chat. Mostly because I still have not found how to unhide the chat log box. However, a brief forum search showed I wasn’t alone. There’s strange graphic lag in inventory, with vendors, poor rendering in the skills window… I can forgive graphics if it’s my fault (which was my first impression), but when there’s no chat bar… Come on.

Borked Linear QuestsSo an other final discovery has ended my HG:L play. Like a lot of new MMO’s, there’s an over-arching background narrative, hallmark-like quest which delivers characters between zones and introduces them to the world. In my case, and a few others, we got stopped at this point. After completing the fight with the boss, there was a new quest giver that was needed to be met to complete that task. Normal herald-quest like stuff. Unfortunately, when the guy is not available you are stuck. Normal fix procedure, and recommended, is to abandon the quest. Logic dictates you can repeat the whole boss encounter again, or just that herald task, to avoid sploiting on boss loot etc. Imagine. Reboot, relog. Nothing happened.

Thus, myself and other folks are left with no way to advance. The hallmark quests unlock the next zones, and the quest needs to be reset and probably complete redone. The issue here is HOW CAN YOU RELEASE A GAME WITH A ONE WAY DOOR? How can a company release a title with an effective doorway which locks behind gamers once they leave? It’s not as if we did something even wrong — it just broke. Regardless, we literally can not continue the title in multiplayer until it’s fixed. Or unless we reroll. I mean, COME ON!

The only player invented recommendation is to group with someone else who has not done the quest and hope it works. Unfortunately, the lack of a chat window, and known mechanic to group makes that also rather difficult. So, I went off to watch a rerun of the Muppets and was more entertained.

Flagship’s crack deployment project management

“I thought you outsourced the QA.” “No you did, you old fool.”

Oh, and “Tiggs” of SWG fame is in charge of the community. So, yeah. Enjoy. Yeesh.

Now, I know this has been copied all over the place, and will probably become the new Dunbar’s Number meme, but I’m coming to it late and this is my own take on it in games.

Dr. Daniel Levitin a cognitive psychologist, neurologist, music producer and no doubt all round good sport, has collated a lot of the current research on music therapy and effects of music on neural development in his book, Your Brain on Music. Amidst other things he proposes democratically that what’s most important is not perhaps an innate talent, but a disciplined and regimented practice routine. … ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery. (courtesy of Tertiary Education)

There you have it. Maybe regardless of domain, if you want to “master” something it takes a dedication lasting no less than 10,000 hours. That’s sort of comforting. Inasmuch as it lets me know if I am truly serious about accomplishing something, I ought to spend more time on it. It gives me a limit, but no guarantee.

But turn to games and the old usability chestnut: How long should a level or zone take to master? How long should someone — particularly with consoles — be given to complete and “win” the game. I know I never got far into God of War, mostly because I gave up looking for cheats (yes, for that ridiculous first crates puzzle). Should I have got in-game assistance? Should there have been a number of turns the game monitors I’ve tried this challenge and then offers me a break, for a lesser reward, or a harder penalty later? Otherwise the game becomes a coaster for me.

And similarly, how about MMORPG’s? How long should designers give users to reach the cap? There’s lots of evidence for how people pace themselves, but sometimes I sense it gets lost. For example, we hear more about racers in the Burning Crusade reaching level 70 within 28 hours and some wag finishing all of DDO in the same time, but dismiss the lone whiner who may still be stuck at the start (on some crates…). Reaching a level cap is not a mastery, but it does respond to the same desire. And maybe the same built-in bio-cognitive need. Dedicating time, often alone, to reach a limit for self-reward and public acclaim may be a real human drive. But likewise when the challenge does not meet the realistic effort required, then most people who can’t succeed turn to other things to help their advancement. In MMO’s, the obvious ones are RMT, cheats, hacks, powerlevelling services. In music or athletics, it might just be a better coach. Or drugs.

David Seah on Levitin has a nice break down, and so a critique, on how mastery could be reasonably seen. The point, as every game designer knows, is to offer a carrot and an encouragement (ding!) through ones’ advancement. It’s not about 10,000 hours or bust — it’s about maybe 100 hours and a pat on the back. at 1 hour … you know some basics at 10 hours … you have a pretty good grasp of the basics at 100 hours … you are fairly expert at 1000 hours … you are an experienced expert at 10000 hours … you are a master

If you know your limit — in this case, the almost mythical 10k of investment — you can offer a realizable training program for people. And that circuit of gradual achievement and self-esteem reinforcement is maybe vital for someone to continue.

While 10,000 hours over 10 years is a daunting proposition, consider this:

1000 hours is pretty doable. That’s a little less than a year of full-time work. 100 hours is even more achievable…you could do that over a few months on the side, or just slam through it in a very intense couple of weeks. Even spending 10 hours practicing something is going to make you significantly better at it. If you spent 10 hours practicing one song, or learning how to juggle, or learning how to bowl strikes…you’re going to learn something. One hour? That’s worthwhile too. You could spend an hour writing your signature over and over again to make it cooler. I’ve done that at least a couple of times in my life.

I bet understanding and planning the least and mean time for a user to finish your game (or a part of it) is actually in the back of every designer’s mind. After all, it’s how we got “levels” and intro tutorials in the first place. And it affects how they introduce new content as well. I remember, for instance, very clearly in the first few months of SWG a poll on the forums asking how much time people spent playing. It came out near the same week as official survey results on the number and types of classes people were picking. Why that was important is that SOE was trying to see how to shoehorn in the Jedi class. Once they could show users where they were spending their time already, they might have a better sense of how long the class might take to unlock and then master. And then [...]