Full Steam Ahead: Project:Gorgon

As I may have mentioned about a thousand times before, I don't much like tutorials in my MMOs. I've always been a big in media res fan. I like stories that begin with a conversation between people you don't know talking about things you don't understand and movies that start in the middle of the plot and don't go back to explain what happened before you arrived.

In essence, I like creators who trust me to work things out for myself. In that context, if in no other, I prefer not to take the easiest path. And, of course, for me it's not that hard a path anyway. I've read a lot of stories; I've seen a lot of films; I already have a rough map to the territory, coming in.

I feel a plot coming on.

When I step into a new MMO, then, I really don't need to be told which keys to press for forward or back, how to open my inventory (let alone that I have one and what it's for) nor all the rest of that crucial stuff (although some indication of which arcane combination of keys you expect me to press to hide the UI and take a screenshot? That would be nice...) but I understand that other people do. Every MMO is someone's first and, by many accounts, where most fail is in those opening minutes.

While you and I are tutting and head-shaking and feeling patronized, all around us new players are throwing up their hands in frustration, logging out and uninstalling. Or so the story goes.

Anyone got a torch?

Well, that's not a narrative that fits any more. In the lost days of Big Budget MMORPGs chasing the WoW dollar every launch hoped to open the floodgates to a fresh demographic. Or at least grab a chunk of the one that believed the genre started and ended in Azeroth.

Old school, Kickstarted MMOs like Project Gorgon don't need to worry so much about things like that. No-one's going to be uninstalling after the first session there because the game didn't explain how to get a quest or click a hotbar. We hope...

And yet, first impressions still matter. Just because you can trust your customers to work out which end of the sword is pointy all by themselves doesn't mean they won't still be making snap decisions based on what there is to see and do in the first few minutes. Which is why Project Gorgon's original opening in a dark, claustrophobic cave was always going to be a problem.

Head towards the light...

It seems odd that the experienced Elder Game team needed this pointing out to them but they did. As Eric explains in the latest Kickstarter update, " we've created an all new tutorial area, because lots of people told us that our old tutorial cave was distractingly ugly". Well, duh...

Now it's gone and good riddance. "The new tutorial is outdoors, on an island. The island is in-game now, so if you're interested in seeing it, just hop in and make a new character" says Eric. Which is just what I did.

Eric and the team have plumped for the genre-traditional "You wake up on a beach with no memory of who you are or how you got there" opening. It may not be original - okay, it may be the oldest cliche in the RPG book - but it's a classic for good reason. Starting as an amnesiac on an island simultaneously provides motivation, structure, boundaries and freedom of expression. You'll want to explore but you won't want to stay. You'll know what you need to do but be free to make your own choices.

I'll just hang around here until the sun comes up if that's okay with you.

To a degree, that is. There's a narrative structure rumbling, reassuringly, along in the background. There probably always was although I don't remember it from my previous and only run through character creation almost exactly two years ago. There's even a hint that the much-derided title, "Project:Gorgon" (something else Eric must have heard plenty of criticism about, criticism that he has, so far at least, chosen to ignore) might actually mean something.

I won't go over the entire starting experience. It will be familiar to anyone who's ever played an MMORPG before. Kill skeleton, loot skeleton, wear skeleton's pants, repeat until fully dressed. See NPC, talk to NPC, follow simple instructions, profit, progress. It's an MMORPG starting zone after all.

Okay, now you're just taking the mick.

It's also compulsive, entertaining and paced just right. There's a straightforward questline that needs to be completed before you earn the ability to leave the island for the great, wide world. Again, it's not in the least original but it's smart, fun and satisfying. I'm not quite convinced that Eric's as funny as he thinks he is and there may be tonal issues down the line if this is all heading where it looks as though it could be, but those are small problems, easily overlooked, when the gameplay itself is so satisfying.

The game as a whole seems to be progressing furiously even without the great, unwashed hordes from Steam. The general chat channel was scrolling too fast to follow at times. The starter island was heaving with badly-dressed, confused adventurers picking their way between the hundreds of tombstones of their fallen comrades. The channels echoed to the eternal, plaintive question, repeated so often it rarely received a reply: "How do I get off this island"?

Can't imagine why but I just get the feeling there's something significant about this place...

It wasn't that hard. It took me about an hour and a half, most of which was exploring and getting lost. The map's not much help. The island looks great, at least in terms of art design, which is one P:G's many strengths. We may be back in the early 2000s when it comes to graphical quality but good art design is timeless.

Overall, the new island starting area is a vast improvement on the old cave. Some of the more interesting content has been retained, transplanted whole to a fresh home in the open air. A lot more is brand new.

Hope you like pink

The key indicator that this revamp has worked exceptionally well is that, having made a new character and got him off the island, that's now the character I feel motivated to progress. Somehow I feel more connected to him after just these two, short sessions than I do to my original catgirl, even though she's racked up many more hours in game and has history (not to mention much better gear and skills...hmm, maybe I need to rethink this).

The one barrier I used to worry would put people off - starting in the cave - has been removed and along with it any slight hesitation I ever had in recommending curious parties try it for themselves. Just be aware that P:G does have something Syp will approve of: a relativedly convincing day/night cycle. If you happen to log in for the first time at around midnight game-time, as I did, you might think you're still in a cave after all!

School's out. Forever.

With that in mind, if anyone's still on the fence about Project: Gorgon, now would be a good time to jump down and kick the wheels. Eric had said they were going to close the doors after the successful Kickstarter, when the whole affair moved to Steam, but for a while yet it's still in open alpha and free to all-comers.

That's not going to last forever. The New Player Experience is part of the final polish push to get the game up to Early Access specs that will satisfy even the Jesse Rapczaks of this world, or so it's hoped. As Eric explains, "The Steam early access launch is probably our last major opportunity to earn money to improve our art. (The Kickstarter money is more than enough to get the game to the finish line, but $75k can only buy so much art, no matter how cleverly we spend it. So the Steam launch will help determine how good the game can look.)"

Which begs one question: how come, visually, the game looks so much less spiffy now than it did when I first saw it, two years ago? Look back at those screenshots in the linked post above from 2013. It doesn't even begin to look like the same game. The textures seem far more detailed, the colors deeper and richer. And that's not all.

Keyword: gorgon.

The town of Serbule, as I observed back then, looked so convincing I felt someone might be using photo-reference. "The walled, medieval village is one of the best I've seen in a game as far as spurious authenticity goes. I've been in that village several times, in France, in Spain, in Portugal" I said. It doesn't look like that now. It doesn't look anything like that. What happened?

And so we say farewell to the island. Anagoge.
Wait.. is that its name or is that the day of the week?

Put it down to another of those "better in beta" things, I guess. Or, in this case," better in pre-alpha". I'm not expecting any amount of Steam money to put things back to how they were. I'm just grateful I was able to see Serbule in its glory days and take some photos to remember it by.

No matter how well it turns out, how good it looks and how well it plays, I guess, being realistic, it isn't all that likely that Project: Gorgon will ever end up being my main MMO. That said, I think it has a very good chance of remaining one of the MMOs I play, for a long time to come. It's quirky, fun, satisfying and full of potential.

I still don't want to play as a cow though. Even if they do get their own town.

The Elder Scrolls Online - Installation, Registration and Tutorial

If you're planning on playing TESO when it goes free to play in March I'd advise you to set aside plenty of prep time. I ordered the game from Amazon last weekend; it turned up on Thursday but I didn't open it right away. I planned on starting on Saturday morning so I'd be able to give it a run of several hours without interruption.

Fortunately I thought I'd get ahead of myself for once so I split the shrink-wrap on Friday night in order to get the thing installed in the background while I played GW2. The first surprise on opening the case was finding four DVDs inside. When did I last buy an MMO that came with that many installation discs? The Secret World and GW2 both come with just two.

The installation process itself went very smoothly. In between swapping discs I made a new email address (always best to use a unique email for each MMO) and went through the lengthy registration process. That took around an hour all told.

I was surprised and mildly miffed to find that you can't play TESO without entering full personal and payment details and agreeing to a monthly payment plan. Since the game comes with 30 days of game time this would have seemed heavy-handed even while the subscription was mandatory but now that the buy to play model has been announced and given a start date less than six weeks away it seems positively ludicrous.

It was sign up or don't play, though, so I grudgingly filled in my details, credit card and all, chose the monthly payment, confirmed all the necessary emails and then cancelled my subscription. Not getting me in the right frame of mind here, Zenimax.

Dressed in rags? Check? In an underground prison? Check.

At this point I looked at the installation footprint; it was 31GB. That seemed big to me. Naturally I expected some patching so I thought I'd best get on with things. Just as well. The first patch was 14GB. That took quite a while and when it was done the patch progress indicator read 2% complete. Hell's bells!

Fortunately, it must be tallying the number of files, rather than the size, because the remaining 98% didn't take as long as the first 2%. Also a lot of the patching presumably overwrote the original installation because instead of ending up with a 50GB plus install the final score was just over 36GB.

By then it was well gone midnight. The whole process had taken over five hours even with our pretty good cable broadband and its decent download speeds. Just as well I hadn't been planning on playing that night.

On Saturday morning I dithered around doing displacement activities before finally firing the thing up. It was apparent there was some subconscious resistance going on. I've never liked Elder Scrolls games much. I kept thinking I'd rather be playing GW2 or EQ2 - or even the Valliance pre-alpha.

In the end I got started only to be informed that as the account had never been logged in from this particular computer before I'd have to reply to a security email before they'd let me play. While I support that method of keeping my account secure it did seem just a tad paranoid, given that this particular account had never been logged in from any computer, ever. You would think the first log-in could be trusted to be valid, wouldn't you?

Pre-order bonuses. For a given value of "Pre"

That was the final bar I had to jump. Up came character creation and here the game seemed to be reading my mind: it presented me with a Khajiit, the cat race that I'd already decided on playing. Just as well. It took me three-quarters of an hour to go through all the sliders and options - imagine how long it would have taken if I'd been tempted by a race that actually has recognizable features to adjust.

I'd done a small amount of advance research, which led me to believe that the penalty for playing a cat-person would be having to pal up with *shudder* elves in the Aldmeiri Dominion faction. Well I dodged that bullet. My Khajiit Dragonknight is a proud if almost completely ignorant member of the Daggerfall Covenant.

How did I pull that trick off? Ah, that brings me to the second surprise I found when I opened the box. As well as the sheet with the registration key there was a slip of paper with another scratch panel. That sheet informed me I was entitled to an Explorer's Pack containing Bonus Treasure Maps, a Scuttler vanity pet and the right to "Play any race in any alliance".

I went to the account page and input the code before making a character and was thanked for having pre-ordered the game. Apparently Amazon UK are sitting on some very old stock. Still, lucky break for me - now I don't have to be dealing with Elves other than at the sharp end of my sword.

The one and only moment of entertainment in the entire dismal tutorial.

From there it was straight into a rather poor cinematic and on to a very annoying tutorial. Even with all my graphics auto-set to "High" by the game I was unimpressed with what I was seeing. It reminded me very much of Neverwinter, with lots of relatively undifferentiated, flat textures and everything blown up to 125% natural scale. That said, it's hard to tell how good the graphics might be when you're dumped in a virtually featureless cave.

The controls were also reminiscent of Neverwinter only even worse. I really loathe not being allowed free and full use of my mouse pointer. I'm perfectly capable of playing games that use that fixed center-screen reticule to aim, mouse to attack and keyboard strokes for everything else system but being able to use a control system and wanting to use it are two very different things.

Consequently, what with the numbingly familiar "you died and now you have no soul and you're trapped in a prison and the prison is in a cave and there's a jailbreak and you are THE ONE and come on come on COME ON!!!" opening and the horrible controls, within five minutes I was simultaneously on the verge of a panic attack and bored out of my mind.

So I logged out and went to do some dailies in GW2 instead. Then I made a coffee, came back an hour later, sat down and tried again. This time it went a lot better. The story was still absolutely terrible and the voice actors seemed to be on some kind of depressant drugs but eventually I made it through to the end of the Tutorial.

I'm making that sound better than it was. The whole affair was still quite horrible. John Cleese's celebrated turn as Cadwell was the sole bright spot. After the third time I was told to go find something I couldn't see on the map I cracked and googled for Add-Ons. I rarely use Add-Ons in any MMO and indeed I largely disapprove of their very existence but there are limits to my patience and it turns out that playing an MMO that launched in the second decade of the 21st Century without even a mini-map goes beyond them.

This! This is what I want to see first time I log in! Flowers! Grass! SHOPS!

Sadly there was no Add-On either to give me Keyboard Turning or to replace the reticule/mouse nonsense with real MMO hotbar combat. There was one that gave me control of the mouse pointer but that doesn't help much when there's nothing to point it at. At least I now have a mini-map.

Quite honestly, I'm surprised I got as far as I did. Had this been a completely F2P MMO and if I hadn't spent a few pounds on the box and invested so much time registering and installing it I doubt I'd have carried on.

Which would have been a shame, because once I finally emerged into the sunlit, cobbled streets of Daggerfall, everything began to improve in a hurry. I'll save my first impressions of what could be called actual gameplay for another time but suffice to say once I got out of that bloody hellhole of a tutorial I did finally begin to enjoy myself.

And there's the takeaway: all tutorials should be optional. It's in everyone's interest. Just imagine how positive I could have felt about the game if I'd been allowed to start in Daggerfall straight out of character creation. This entire post would have had a completely different tone.

If developers wonder why so many people buy their games, log in once, log out ten minutes later and are never seen again, well there's your reason - not just bad tutorials but mandatory bad tutorials. Stop it. Just. Stop.

Learning To Fly

Tutorials. Don't you just hate them? Okay, okay! Leading question. I withdraw.

I do purely loathe tutorials though. There's no way round it, I just can't stand 'em. I appreciate that even though everyone in global chat is banging on about how every one of the dozens of MMOs they already played was way better than this current POS they just made the cardinal error of downloading, still every MMO must have at least one person playing who just started today and who never played an MMO before. I appreciate that though most MMOs look and play exactly like most other MMOs they are are all in fact utterly different and hardly like each other at all when you really think about it. Let alone when you don't think about it and let's face it, who really thinks when they play an MMO?

Moreover, I recognize that MMOs are ferociously over-complicated compared to almost any other form of popular entertainment. If you intend to make sense of the tottering stack of stats and skills, functions and commands in even the supposedly dumbedest-down (dumbed-downest?) MMO, the potential learning curve is a sheer cliff face looming over you. And up at the top of the cliff the hardcore seagulls circle, taking aim right at your eye.

Have Flares, Will Travel

Yes, I appreciate and recognize all of that. It's still no excuse for the existence of tutorials.

Wait, let me clarify. It's no excuse for the existence of tutorial zones. Separate instances where all the new players can ride around the play-park on their tricycles with the stabilizers down, caroming off the softened, rounded corners of the scenery, batting at the de-clawed, de-fanged herbivores in the petting zoo with their spongebats, while Captain Nanny of the Toytown Guard trails along behind reading out the rules from The Big Book of How To Play.

We're all endlessly arguing about sandboxes versus theme-parks here in MMO Blogland. It's always been something of a false dichotomy or at least a more granulated scale than the bipolar argument would have it and my position has always been that the sandbox is largely in your head and that just because your park has a theme doesn't mean you have hum along. Well, none of that applies to to tutorial zones.

Tutorial zones are the MMO boot camps where your individuality gets beaten out of you. Oh, its a nice, polite, gentle beating. No name-calling, no shouting, no having your bed turned upside down in the middle of the night, but that individuality has just got to go. You're not leaving the tutorial until you learn to be just like everybody else.

I remember when it was all buildings around here

There's a trick novelists use called in media res. Happens in movies too. Dumping you into the middle of the action and letting you figure things out for yourself. It runs the risk of alienating the audience but when it works it's dynamite because it makes you feel respected, trusted, intelligent. Like when your dad drops you in the deep end of the pool and calls it your first swimming lesson, only with less yelling when you come home and tell your mother and no one has to sleep in the spare room for a week.

And really no-one is going to drown because they couldn't figure out some gameplay mechanic in an MMO. Alright, if they fall off the raft from Halas to Everfrost and don't know about pushing the mouse forward while holding down the left mouse button and W on the keyboard simultaneously then yes someone might drown. Bad example. But it would only be a virtual drowning, and a barbarian to boot so, hey, no harm done, right?

It was a long trip Ma, but we made it! Me and Rocky outside Sanctum!

People that play MMOs are generally not complete idiots (go with me...). They had to be able to download and install the game and register an account. They have to be literate, since most of the instructions and communication in-game will be written down. (And with all due respect to TOR, having every quest voice-acted is not going to be the way of the future, for cost reasons if for no other). It seems to me that people who are able to do all that can be trusted to work out how to play the blasted game by playing it.

Hints, mouseover tips, introductory quests, helpful NPCs or companions, all fine. Adds to the gaiety of nations. Just put them in the same virtual space, virtual time-frame and if you possibly can manage it the same centre of population where everyone who started two hours before you has already arrived. Not in an exploding spaceship, not in a pocket dimension, not 20 years in the future or the past, not in an underground prison or on an island you'll never see again.

Is this Pay-and-Display or On Exit?

Just let us start as we mean to go on. And what brought all this on out of the blue, you may well be asking. I downloaded Star Trek Online and played through the tutorial yesterday, that's what. And it's not even a bad tutorial!