Out-of-Pod: Paragon Studios hang up their capes

I'm sure pretty much everyone has heard about this one already, but I decided that, for reasons, I should probably put together my thoughts on this. It was announced earlier today that NCSoft had decided to close down Paragon Studios and their tights-wearing flagship superhero MMO, City of Heroes.

I first heard about the game when it was just in beta, and it pretty much immediately fascinated me. Living at home, and at the time using a family Apple computer, I wasn't paying much attention to the whole "online gaming" thing because, by and large, I couldn't do it, much less convince my parents to spot me the $15 a month to play an online video game over our 56k Internet connection. But this was back in the days when EverQuest was the big kid on the block, and an MMO that promised superheroic hijinks stuck with me for a while.

Fast-forward to the end of 2005. I've joined the Army, gotten my initial entry training done, and gotten to my first permanent duty station. What's a nerd to do with months of virtually untouched pay burning a hole in his pocket? Buy a computer, of course. And while I was at the post exchange looking at the various and sundry laptops that they carried, I saw the video game section, and decided that I should probably pick up a couple programs while I'm at it - the cheap military edition of Microsoft Office for one, antivirus, and - hey, it's that superhero game.

Modern Samurai - by Juggertha

That weekend, I'd gotten everything installed on my computer, gotten the internet hooked up, and am enjoying my return to the various and sundry online groups that I was a part of at the time. When it came to light that I'd picked up City of Heroes, a friend of mine suggested I join the Virtue server. And it was like "These are my people." I wasn't the best gamer on the server - it took me literally four years or so before I finally hit the level cap - but I was having near-constant fun, either from playing the game or just hanging out with the people I'd met there, many of whom I still have contact with through one social media account or another.

Years later, I'd still play CoH as time and disposable income would allow. When the game went free-to-play, I was hopeful that I'd be able to pick it up again, get back into the groups that I had known for years and do the (many) things I either hadn't done since I'd picked the game up or that had been added since then... but a lot of the people in my supergroup had moved on, others were doing things behind the pay wall, and without a job of my own, I couldn't justify spending any of my dwindling savings on a video game. And so City of Heroes started to collect virtual dust, sitting in my hard drive and occasionally updated to play for a day or two, then to be neglected again.

Belle Liberty - by John Becaro

Then, today, I heard the news about the closure of Paragon Studios. And I was floored. Possibly as floored as the staff of Paragon themselves were - the rumor was that, besides for a skeleton maintenance crew, the majority of the staff at Paragon heard the news shortly before we did and were instructed to clear out their desks, and good luck in their search for their next job. (Which is something of a dick move in and of itself, but I digress.)

I quickly found the NCSoft launcher, patched up, and got in game... and there were a dozen people there that I hadn't seen in literally years, that had come back for the same reason I had. The community as a whole was in shock, but a lot of us who had moved on to other games were flocking back to the games, seeing that the tights didn't fit as well as they used to, or the old powers seemed a bit less powerful than we remembered.

It evoked the memory of the visitation after my mom had died. I was pretty shocky, I remember - I was deployed with the Army at the time and was literally on a plane heading back to the U.S. less than 24 hours after I'd gotten word, and that sort of movement will set anyone back on their heels, regardless of the reason. But I was struck by the fact that there were so many people there that I had known from my days in Scouting, or from cities we'd moved out of a decade or more prior. There were so many old friends and acquaintances there and I remember thinking at the time that it was great to see them, but it was for literally the worst reason in the world. This was all was going through my head as I ran into people that I had known almost literally since day one of my playing the game, or the closest thing to it.

Now, there are still a couple of months left to go before the servers close down, the lights go out, and Rhode Island goes back to being just that tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it state in New England. I hope that NCSoft doesn't just let things quietly go. The first superhero MMO deserves better than that.

From Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC Comics, 1985-86

I want to see this game go out with a bang. I want to be fighting up until the last minute. I want to see our characters out and fighting to save the world one last time. Make it a fight we couldn't realistically win. Activate a permanent Rikti invasion in every zone. Send everyone to Recluse's Victory. Whatever.

I just really really hope that the first MMO I ever played goes out with a bang, in true comic-book style, and not with a whimper.

In closing, and to sum up everything I'm feeling, and with full apologies to the Deep Space Nine writing staff, I would simply say this:

To the best community an MMO ever had. This may be the last time we're all together. But no matter what the future holds, no matter how far we travel, a part of us... a very important part, will always remain here, in the City of Heroes.

It's the little things you miss.

So I've been back in EVE for about a week now. So far I've ended up just sticking on my own, doing more missions and working my way up the proverbial ladder. And I realized something a couple of days ago.

I'd honestly forgotten how genuinely pretty EVE is.

Consider I'm not running the world's greatest gaming rig, here. Between my (relatively) ancien Core 2 processor, my whopping three whole gigabytes of RAM, and my speedy GTX 295 graphics card, while I'm still capable of running even games like Skyrim and (presumably) MechWarrior Online at decent settings, my stability isn't great - Skyrim, for example, usually runs for maybe an hour or so before the game closes itself due to my RAM overheating. (I didn't know programs could do that, but whatever.)

I'm not sure what it is. I know I missed the missile launcher update, and I know that there have been various graphical improvements made since I left about a year-ish ago. (I know I played for a bit back in January, but I didn't really count that so much, since I ended up only playing a couple of days.)

For whatever reason, EVE just seems so much prettier now than I remember. I can't wait until I get the cash together to upgrade my computer to hell and back; it's only going to get better.

Who makes the story?

I haven't done a Blog Banter in a while, but Number 38 kind of intrigued me.

(Blogger's note: I did write most of this before I saw Kirith Kodachi's post over at his Sanctum, so any similarities there are purest coincidence.)

In-universe story has always taken a back seat to gameplay in EVE Online. Even when Incursions came out, the majority of players regarded the backstory of what was going on as purely secondary to the fact that there were huge amounts of targets to kill. A majority of players only paid attention to the stuff said by the Sansha characters in local or on the boards just enough to look for clues to the next major Incursion event, and that was it. And I would wager that a good portion of the players who sided with the Sansha forces were just doing so because they were more interested in shooting at other players and not NPCs.

This is normal for EVE. CCP Unifex said as much in an interview with Gamasutra. Players have always been the major driving force in EVE. Every market transaction, every major conflict, every war, every skirmish in nullsec; all of that is because of the players. A new player in EVE will miss any elements of storytelling in the game, unless they specifically go hunting for them... because story in EVE doesn't particularly matter.

And that's a part of why EVE Online has a reputation as "Excel Online" and also one as being full of scammers and griefers. In other games - The Old Republic, Star Trek Online, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and even (presumably) the upcoming MechWarrior Online - the game presents a reason for you to be off shooting/stabbing/punching/whatever-ing the enemies you're given. In EVE Online, and especially outside of NPC missions, you're never handed that; you need to make that decision. Are you just out roaming? Are you probing your enemies for weaknesses you might exploit in a larger conflict? Are you in that larger conflict? What's the mission objective? All those questions are only ever answered by the players. And that's how EVE was envisioned.

The problem is, there's a good chunk of the MMO community that wants to be enmeshed in someone else's story. They want to go out and pretend, if only for an hour or so at a time, that they're a hero and they're Making A Difference In The World, even if that world is Middle Earth or Paragon City or the United Federation of Planets. Escapism is the reason a lot of players play games.

And EVE is never going to appeal to that demographic. Too much of the game, as it stands, is simple, day-in-day-out boring work. It's rare that you get the opportunity to take part in something that truly reshapes the landscape of the game. It happens, certianly, and more effectively than a lot of those other MMOs I mentioned. (MechWarrior Online is a bit of an odd duck, but that's rather a whole other post.) I can't think of another game that's out right now where players can reshape the political landscape of the map quite like they can in EVE. But all of this mutability in the hands of the players comes at the cost of any scripted story.

That's how EVE is designed. Overall, I think it's a good thing, at least for EVE itself, and for CCP.  But reliance on the engine of the players to drive your narrative alienates a lot of prospective players. And that's why this is the edge of a knife CCP has to balance on; without new players, a game dies. But change the game too much, and old players will leave, potentially faster than you gain those new players.

What's a game designer to do? I don't know; if I did, I'd probably be in Iceland or Atlanta right now. But I will say that CCP seems pretty good at recovering their balance on that knife edge, though they do slip once in a while.

What to do?

So, thanks to our friendly community manager and the revamped fansite program, I am now in possession once again of an active EVE Online account! Woo!

So...

... now what the hell do I do?

When I last logged in, I was off doing missions. It's not entirely fun, nor was I at the point where I was making a lot of money. A touch frustrating.

So now I get to decide what I want to do in EVE.

Option 1: Keep on missioning
Easiest option, obviously, would be to keep on doing what I'm doing. Go out, find NPCs, kill them, salvage the good stuff, get ISK. Boring, and wouldn't really lead to a really gripping narrative on the ol' blog.

Option 2: Find a corp
Possible, but the question becomes what sort of corp would I join? Industrial? I know they look for guys to pull security, and I can do that, but that'd also get pretty boring. And it's debatable as to if I could maintain a sufficient flow of ISK to support myself. Missioning has possibilities, but also the problems I mentioned doing it solo.

Option 3: Faction Warfare
This is a possibility, but I've heard that there are serious problems with FW.

Option 4: Red vs. Blue
If I could just pick one, this one would get serious consideration. I enjoy PVP in this game, and RVB is, from what I've heard, a great, low-stress place to do it. Again, cashflow may be an issue, but it's still worth consideratoin.

Option 5: Nullsec
Ideally, on a lot of levels, I'd like to get back out into nullsec. Problem is most of the big alliances have odd and convoluted joining requirements, and I'm not particularly interested in joining a whole separate site and trying to actually seem active there just to play EVE.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Flawless Victory? Well...

So Jester over at Jester's Trek made a totally not-EVE related post that got me thinking. People joke about "winning EVE" all the time, but an MMO like EVE, by it's very nature, cannot and perhaps should not be won - otherwise what would be the point of keeping it open once someone has "won EVE?" So, in the spirit of my previous job as an intelligence analyst (something that has led to some frustration as I try and find a decent - read, preferably non-burger-flipping - job in an already crappy job market; few companies have a use for an intelligence analyst, dammit) I decided to take Jester's idea and run with it, and try and predict the future.

So, how could the Goonswarm "win EVE?" As Jester pointed out, the victory conditions in the Civilization games (and I echo his comment about "go play them now!") translate pretty well into how anyone could "win" our serious game of internet spaceships. But, if perhaps taken to their logical extreme, these "victory conditions" would also make EVE a less fun, and less sustainable, version of itself, meaning that someone would have to take action to breathe new life into the metagame.

Military Victory

In this scenario, the GSF bloats itself out to hold sovereignty over the vast majority, if not all, of null-sec, leaving perhaps only a few pockets of  NPC null-sec where they don't exercise effective sovereignty. There are a few issues with this scenario. One, I don't think it's truly feasible. Even if, say, half of the sov-holding alliances were to ally themselves under the banner of the Swarm, that still leaves enough others to make a stand somewhere. Moreover, I would contend that the Goons are a polarizing enough group that any such bid for an outright "military victory" would, almost instantly, solidify a decent-sized opposition bloc to prevent any such victory from occurring in the first place.

In addition, I suspect that The Mittani, being who he is, either has no real plans in making such an effort to "conquer the universe," or would, if such a thing seemed likely to happen on its own, would immediately take steps from resetting relations with allies to reorganizing the GSF in such a way to provide an enemy able to provide the much-touted "good fight" that most EVE sov-space members desire.

Diplomatic Victory

Similar to the Military Victory scenario, in this one instead of simply taking soveriegnty by force of arms, the GSF extends alliances and vassals through sov space, giving them effective control over a large enough portion to make them masters of nullsec. Again, this isn't really feasible, given the prevalence of espionage to prevent such a thing from happening quietly, as well as, again, the polarization of the GSF and the inevitable resistance to such attempts for Goon control.

Again, I suspect The Mittani would take steps to curtail his own chances for such a victory, given that either a military or diplomatic victory would in fact mean that, like Alexander the Great, he would have no new lands to conquer. Or, in more EVE-ish terms, there would be a lack of good fights.

Cultural Victory

Now we get into the interesting bits. An argument could be made, and one that I would tend to agree with, that the Goons are moving toward - if not already at - the stage of controlling the culture of EVE Online. In a comment on Jester's blog entry, The Mittani himself commented that "EVE, like all MMOs, has been a misogynistic hellhole for years and that has nothing to do with Goonswarm." While he is certianly entitled to his opinion, I think he's trying to dodge the issue. As the most prominent player organization in the game, the Goons, whether they like it or not, are at least somewhat responsible for shaping the perception of EVE as a game, and also how it's players act. While I grant that a good portion of the playerbase as a whole can be considered poster children for online disinhibition effect, regardless of if they're Goons or not, the prevalence of the Goons, especially on the forums, and their attitudes can - and I would surmise they do - adjust the attitudes of other players in the game, partly out of peer pressure, partly out of a desire so as to not appear weak, and partly as a means of social camouflage.

Economic Victory

OTEC. 'Nuff said.

Okay, I'll say a little more. Of all the victory conditions, this is perhaps the only one I would expect CCP to take steps to ameliorate. Technetium, given that it is an essential element (pardon the pun) for all Tech 2 production, is the crude oil of EVE Online. The Mittani knows this, and this is why he got OTEC started, and one of the reasons why he orchestrated Burn Jita and supports Hulkageddon so strongly - all of that market chaos can only cause the demand for technetium to skyrocket, leading directly to more money into the coffers of OTEC's member alliances.

But it also places a dangerous weapon in the hands of the Goons. Should they so desire, they would have the capability now to cut the technetium supply on the open market down however they wish, and for whatever reason they wish, from simply wanting to drive the price upward even more, choking off the supply for an enemy, making it harder for them to build more ships and equipment, or simply to watch the world markets burn. It is a blade pressed against the throat of anyone that wants to strike against an OTEC member, and indeed against the rest of EVE entire.

So what could happen, and what has been rumored to be happening for years, to be fair about it, is that CCP could introduce a new source of technetium into the game. Ring mining is a popular speculative source at this point, but it could be as easy as seeding new wormhole systems - or known-space systems? - into the game with technetium sources in them. I doubt that there would be a conversion of extant moons to become technetium sources, though technically it would be the easiest change to make. I'm not certain of what course CCP would take; Lord knows I'm not as smart as CCP Dr.Eyjog, and he'd probably have a lot to do with the decision-making process here. If CCP were to do anything, my suspicion is that they would add technetium sources in ring mining, and deliberately do so outside of OTEC space. More likely, however, is CCP would maintain their laissez-faire market policies and simply let The Mittani and his OTEC partners do what they will.

Space Victory

Let's face it, if the Goons can lock down Jita for a weekend, they can do it any time they want, wherever they want. Add in how much The Mittani supports Hulkageddon... I think they have this one.

The Little Red Button

I didn't touch on this before, partly because I don't believe it's something that would realistically happen, and partly because it's not something that anyone has ever really wanted to consider in an MMO.

If Goonswarm became somehow unassailable - they were big enough nobody else could realistically hope to take them on, they had established their control of the technetium bottleneck and used it ruthlessly against their enemies and those that simply annoyed them, and so on, CCP does have what amounts to the ultimate weapon in the game. The reset button.

Resetting an MMO - any MMO - is not something that one considers lightly. Insofar as I can determine via some Google searching, the complete and deliberate wipe of all player data, sending everyone back to the start point and putting everyone on an even level again, is not something that's ever been done. But, as CCP has demonstrated before, just because nobody has done it before is not in and of itself a reason to dismiss something. And given their "Fearless" corporate mentality, I don't think CCP would shy from reaching for the proverbial nuclear option if they felt they had no other choice.

Note the emphasis in the last sentence, there.

While wiping out all characters, alliances, assets, and so forth in the game would certainly have the effect of breaking open pretty much every and any barrier in the game, and would possibly win some player support, especially for newer players that consider themselves dwarves in a world of giants, the vast majority of the playerbase would revolt at such a step, possibly to the point of finally walking away from the game were the button actually pushed. And to be fair, I can see the logic on both sides. Yes, especially for a newer player who wouldn't lose as much, the notion of having everyone start over again, on the same level playing field, would be exciting. It would be almost like stepping back in time before the giants of the game became those giants, possibly giving you the opportunity to interact with them as an equal and possibly even get your foot in the door of a rebuilding alliance.

But for an experienced player, with millions of SP, billions of ISK, ships scattered all over the cluster, and a history invested in the game, what would be the upside for you? Sure, you would have the benefit of your experience as a player to guide you through the early steps of the game - Lord knows all of us made mistakes in our n00b days that we'd love to go back and correct. But that'd be about it. You'd still have to spend however many years you'd invested into the game rebuilding your fortune, your fleet, and more importantly your character's skills. Few people would want to go through that again, I'd expect.

And yet, if the Swarm had that much of a stranglehold on the game, what other steps could a developer take that wouldn't seem unfair to one side or another?

Obligatory Sheet Anchor

This is just a very off the cuff prediction set. My reasoning makes sense to me, but it may not be at all accurate to how the parties involved would actually act, especially given that I'm not in any way a part of said parties. I would make some sort of Magic 8-Ball joke here, but honestly I didn't even do that much. This is just my thought process from last night and this morning.

Hulkageddon and Magnificent Bastards

It's been a bad week or so to be an industrialist in EVE.

Between the Goons' "Burn Jita" event - which, apparently, surprised even Mittens with how effective it was - and Helicity Boson's fifth annual Hulkageddon event, there are a lot of Empire-based industrial types that have a lot of red in their profit-and-loss figures.

First off, I have little sympathy - some, but not much - for the miners who lose ships during Hulkageddon. First, it is one of the most advertised player-run events in the damn game. If you don't know about it, you've stuck your head in the sand and are missing the "multiplayer" part of "massively multiplayer online game." Second, there are guys, who, I kid you not, take an attitude along these lines:

PERSON A: Here's my Hulk fit that I fly, that lets me survive most gank attempts long enough for CONCORDokken to occur.

PERSON B: B-b-but mining efficiency!

ME: *facepalm*

Look, Empire miners, which will cost you more: Losing at least one 300,000,000 ISK ship, or having your mining efficiency drop a bit for however long Hulkageddon lasts? I mean, I'm no industrialist - mining asteroids is too passive for me to do and I go insane after a half-hour - but it seems to me that flying anything that expensive, especially when you know there's a higher instance of players out looking for you to kill you, without it being tanked is just... dumb. Anyway, I'll let you figure out the math on that.

If someone has decided to quit EVE because they got ganked in hisec, honestly, they never really got EVE in the first place. I say this without rancor or enmity, but it's still the truth, as I see it. EVE is not a game for everyone. My own brother, for example, I have said to his face that he should never try EVE. He gets frustrated with video games a bit too easily, and prefers to be left alone to explore them and enjoy their storylines. Given that EVE is so much a "sandbox with landmines," and doesn't really have a provided storyline, he would either get horribly lost and quit, or go wandering, stumble into a fight in low-sec or null-sec, get podded, and then quit. He is not, and has acknowledged that he is not, temperamentally suited for EVE.

And the same goes for those players that think Helicity Boson and The Mittani are cyber-terrorists, should be reported to the FBI, and that hisec should be completely safe. (I'm not making those up. I'm pretty sure I've seen all of those said on the EVE-O forums. I could be wrong, as I'm writing this post without benefit of caffeine, but it'd shock the hell out of me if I were.) There is no guaranteed safety in EVE. There is no opting out of PVP. Everything that you do can be opposed and destroyed by another player for no apparent reason. EVE is as much a social experiment - what do people do when given virtually complete freedom to pick their own paths - as it is a game, and yes, there will be those people that just want to watch the world burn. Or, alternately, EVE is the greatest-ever proof of online disinhibition effect, AKA John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory. This is not to say that the guys who blew crap up during Burn Jita and are still blowing crap up today as part of Hulkageddon are bad people - given that EVE has no real-life consequences, a lot of otherwise normal, approachable people will choose a path they, in real life, would never choose; in fact, some might choose it precisely for that reason.

Anyway, on to the second part of what I was going to say. Mittani, if you read this, this is my general opinion of you:

For everything you've done, despite not having logged into the game for the last 30 days, organizing Burn Jita, OTEC, and using Hulkageddon to further manipulate the market so you and your OTEC buddies can continue to line your pockets... you have achieved Magnificent Bastard status. Well done, sir.

Understand, I hope CCP does finally introduce a way to break the Technetium bottleneck that you are ruthlessly exploiting - I doubt they will, unless you start going crazy-stupid with price-fixing, but I can hope. (Educational moment: Technetium is actually a thing. I didn't know this until I started Googling it to ensure I was spelling it right.) I have been only perhaps peripherally involved in any of the GSF's conflicts, and I have no intentions of changing that, and certainly not by joining the Swarm - though this is mostly because I don't feel like joining some other, unrelated site just to join an EVE Online alliance. Granted, I could be wrong about your recruitment policies, but I digress. And it's moot anyway, given that I'm not active in EVE currently.

Still, for playing the economic metagame like it's your own personal violin - or $20 toddler's piano, take your pick - I salute you, sir.

I wish I'd put money on it.

And so Mittani-gate comes to a close, with the GoonSwarm leader being removed entirely from the CSM and banned for a month. As I said in my last post, I rather figured that CCP would have to take visible action and quickly, lest the negative PR about the EVE Online community start overwhelming any pushback from said community. I almost went one better and gave my prediction of what would happen to Mittani - I had been thinking removal from CSM, ban for 30-60 days, and being unable to participate in any panels at FanFest 2013 (to clarify: he could attend FanFest just like any other player, he just wouldn't be on a stage).

What has been surprising me has been that people have been screaming that to remove Mittani from CSM7 as a whole, instead of simply him declining the position of chairman as he'd already done on his own hook, is "disenfranchising" to the people that gave him his over ten thousand votes. They're also calling for an immediate reelection of the CSM as a whole.

Personally, I think a complete reelection is an overreaction. From my understanding of the CSM election procedures, when a CSM member is removed for whatever reason, the open seat goes to the player that received the most votes but did not originally receive a seat. This actually makes more sense than a general reelection, as CSM7 hasn't yet started their term. Moreover, I think it's important, given the single-year term of the CSM and the fact that we are talking about a continually evolving game that the CSM is helping to oversee, that we seat CSM7 without the major delay that would be inherent in a new election.

Further, I would point out that Mittani has specifically not been banned for running for a seat on CSM8. If he does so, I expect that he'll face something of an uphill battle against the rest of the pack who will, I'm sure, be quick to revive this whole incident, and use anything the Goons do over the next nine or ten months as proof that Mitten is a bad guy. (The funny thing is, I think he'd take that as a compliment.) But that's nine or ten months down the pipe. And it also assumes Mittens will be willing to give up the leadership of the Swarm to take back his role as an Important Internet Spaceships Politician; according to the TweetFleet, Mittani made a statement during this evening's State of the Goonion that he would not again attempt to hold both the GoonSwarm leadership role and the CSM Chairman role at the same time, and apparently clapping could be heard in the background, presumably from Mrs. Mittani.

For now, I think that despite any outcry by the players, the best thing for CCP to do right now with CSM7 is to simply follow their own guidelines - offer the chairmanship to the next player in the line of succession, and contact the first alternate CSM candidate to offer them the open seat. Will it flush Mittani's 10k+ votes down the proverbial drain? Sadly, yes. But maybe that just indicates that the CSM election procedures may be in need of a bit of reworking.

Or maybe people just take internet spaceships a bit too seriously.