It's All In The Report

I skipped posting the last couple of days partly because I had other things going on but mostly because I didn't have anything much that I wanted to post about. It goes like that, sometimes. One week I have half a dozen ideas; the next, none.

Actually, it's not strictly true to say I don't have anything I'd like to showcase here. There's plenty more I'd like to say about Noah's Heart, for example, but unless I can come up with some penetrating insight that feeds into an observation on the genre as a whole, I think it's probably best I ration myself to one or two posts a week on that one.

I can always do music posts, of course. Putting one of those together isn't much more than an excuse to play a bunch of songs I like and watch the videos on YouTube, a very acceptable way to spend an afternoon. On the other hand, I could just watch the videos and not write the post and the experience would probably be much the same - maybe even better.

There's always something about the other media - TV, movies, books and the rest - bubbling around in the back of my mind but the problem there is writing about stuff like that is quite a lot of work. It pretty much comes down to writing the kinds of essays media studies students have to do as course work, only without any prospect of getting a grade. I have to confess the bit when you got the essay back and saw what grade you'd got was always my favorite part. Without that validation the whole thing can seem a little hollow.

Then there are the posts that begin like this one; posts about the process of posting. Again, I find writing those easy and reflexively entertaining but even though I also enjoy reading other bloggers extemporizing on the topic of their process, I can't but feel it's a tad self-indulgent, a subject of limited interest to most.

Then again, I'm not here to entertain. Or educate. Or inform. Those are incidental benefits that may or may not, on occasion, attache themselves to my real purpose, which is self-expression and self-reflection. Just be glad I'm not asking you to read my poetry or hear about that one really weird dream I had the other night... 

What does any of that have to do with the picture at the top of the post? Frankly, not a lot. It's more in the way of a five finger excercise as I warm up for the post itself, another example of the process in action. What I came here to talk about today is a report published by IFPI "The voice of the recording industry worldwide"

IFPI stands for The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry although I had to go to Wikipedia to find that out; they don't explain it on their website. The organization has just released its annual report on music engagement, something I learned from a news item at NME, under the enticing tagline "Music fans are listening to more music than ever before".

That surprised me a little. I'd been under the impression engagement with music had been on the decline for many years. It had certainly been my belief, based partly on things I'd read but also on experiential evidence, that music - specifically popular music - no longer held the dominant cultural role it had enjoyed prior to - let's say - the turn of the millennium.

Of course, it would be very much in the interest of any organization representing the interests of the music industry to gainsay such a defeatist viewpoint. As you can see from the screenshot, however, this particular report does seem to be based on a good deal of well-sourced and properly weighted research. 

It's also very interesting and extremely accessibly presented. I have no intention of analysing, critiquing or paraphrasing the contents. Rather, I suggest anyone even the least bit curious clicks through and reads it for themselves. 

It'll only take a few minutes. Although the website offers the option of downloading either the Full Report or a Highlights Infographic, in fact both long and short form options are presented in the infographic format. 

They're really good infographics but I confess I was a tad disappointed not to get a traditional text report as well. There are pull-out quotes that make me wish I could find out more, like the one that reveals respondents cited more than five hundred musical genres, when describing the kinds of music they listen to. 

I was looking forward to plugging some of those unfamiliar genres into a search engine and thereby opening my musical horizons a little wider. I like hearing things I've never heard before. So, it seems, do most people. I find it heartening to learn that the number of genres people report listening to averages out to eight. That suggests a significantly more open-minded attitude than I would have expected. 

On the other hand, it's less than encouraging (and somewhat weird) to learn that "in those people most engaged with music such as people who subscribe to audio streaming and those who buy vinyl" the number of genres listed goes up just one, to "9 genres on average." It doesn't immediately stand out as a great improvement, does it?

Moving on to a subsection perhaps of more immediate interest to the readership of what at least used to be a gaming blog, we come to the section on music in video games. Or, more accurately, I probably should say the brief mention of same.

The report doesn't seem to concern itself with music made specifically for video games, although that may very well be one or more of those 500+ genres we didn't get to see listed in full. What it does want to highlight, to my own very great interest, is the use of video games as a platform for the distribution of non-video game music and/or as a venue for its performance. 

According to the report a truly astonishing 44% of "gamers" claimed to have "watched a virtual concert on a gaming platform in the last 3 months". Less astonishing is the statistic concerning the age demographic, almost half falling in the youngest bracket, 16-24.

The development of virtual performance and particularly the role of games as a platform for it, as regular readers will no doubt remember, has been an interest of mine at least since the begining of the pandemic. The only reason I have either Roblox or Fortnite installed on my hard drives is so I can visit them to watch singers, bands or movies on their in-game stages and screens.

Back when we were all banged up under viral house arrest, I predicted a bright future for these kinds of virtual shows. Given the kinds of unrelenting pressures currently threatening to crush the last remaining breath from the gasping live music industry, coupled with the relentless push of technology and the growing willingness of rights owners to join in with the fun, the road to a digital future for "live" music is looking wider and clearer than ever.

Anyway, as I said, I don't plan on picking the report to pieces or riffing on the dozens of themes it suggests. I just thought I'd mention it as something worth a few minutes of your day.

You're welcome!

Bless Online : First Impressions, Part One

Steam tells me I've played five hours of Bless. That's not long. Perhaps I'd be jaded too, if I'd played for nine hundred hours like the reviewer who called Bless a "generic KMMO with nothing special to offer", or seven hundred and fifty hours, like the "ex-emissary" who warns " DO NOT buy this game or even if its free to play DO NOT download".

Those aren't outliers, though. The huge majority of recent Steam reviews for Bless Online are overwhelmingly negative. The exceptions are from those who, like me, bought it at 67% off in the recent sale. Maybe cheapskates just have lower standards. Or maybe our expectations are more realistic.

There's a key phrase in one of the reviews that probably sums up the feeling that stands behind much of the terrible press Bless is getting: "I was as a lot of other people hungry for another MMO, and I got info that Bless was gonna release in EU and NA.So when it released I bought the game for €150". Surprisingly, this reviewer gives the game a Thumbs Up. Where most people feel their money has been wasted, he felt his was well spent.

If you come to any new MMO in a state of hyped-up, amped-out excitement, fueled by a long wait behind the velvet rope, chances are you're going to be disappointed. Add in a significant financial outlay and a game that, by all accounts, was released long before it was ready and you can expect a backlash.

Let's be clear, because I'm about to say some nice things about my five hours so far: I would not pay 150 Euros for Bless. That would be batshit insane. I very much doubt the current Early Access version even justifies a full price ticket of $39.99. At the price I paid, however, around $13 (actually £9.98) I think I'll definitely get my money's worth.

Preamble over. On to the actual impressions.

Performance

There are plenty of complaints about this in the reviews but I haven't had any issues to speak of. The only real problem has been the loading times, which are terrible. The game seems to want to load in a stream of files - the same files - every time it boots up and that takes about two minutes. Then it goes through another set of routines after you press "Play". I have to allow the best part of four or five minutes before I see the gameworld. That's about twice as long as EQ2, the slowest-loading MMO I play, and EQ2 has the excuse of a decade and a half more content to parse than Bless.

Once I'm in, however, things run pretty smoothly. I don't usually pay attention to my framerate but this time I had FRAPS running so the numbers were there in front of me. I'm getting around 60FPS consistently, which seems fine to me. That's running at the default settings on a 3.3GHz i5 with a GeForce 960 and 8GB Ram under Windows 10.

UI

I like it. It's simple, intuitive, not weird. The default key presses are what you'd expect - "I" opens your inventory, "M" opens your map. There's not much on screen until you put it there, which suits me. I like a minimal look.

I did run into a few issues where I couldn't immediately figure out what the game wanted me to do, as in when it asked me to drag the icon for my mount to a specific place that I couldn't find, but those were primarily shortcomings in the translation rather than anything intrisically wrong with the UI itself.

Talking to NPCs and quest-givers and interacting with objects all work smoothly. You have the choice of hitting "F" for most interactions or clicking an on-screen prompt. I found it all pleasant and straightforward to use. The auction house NPC herself is something of a star turn. I'd love to know her back-story. And I seriously want those gloves...

The only thing thing that's genuinely irritating is the endless stream of huge, intrusive notifications that appear in banners across the top and middle of the screen. There's the typical Eastern MMO insistence on announcing what other people are doing on the market or what amazing gear they've crafted, but worse by far are the Guild territory notifications.

I haven't read this up but as far as I can tell, Bless has a PvP system that relies on guild ownership of territory. Every time you enter a new area that's owned by a guild, which seems to be almost everywhere, a huge banner appears right across the center of the screen telling you whose turf you just invaded. If you're in a city, it can happen over and over again since different guilds can own different districts or possibly even buildings.

There might be a way to turn the notifications off but I haven't found it yet. What with those and the audio warning every time you enter a factional safe-zone the game can be somewhat over-protective at times. It could use an "I'm a grown-up and I'll look after myself, thanks" button.

Graphics and Sound

See yesterday's post. I'm well under the maximum graphical settings but the game looks absolutely beautiful. Most Eastern MMOs do but I think Bless has better art design than Revelation Online and better textures than Blade and Soul. It's very similar, visually, to Black Desert Online, which is a significant compliment, since BDO is one of the best-looking games I've played.

I don't have a lot to say about the sound. It was way too loud on the default setting but then what MMO isn't? There definitely was music but I don't remember what it was like, other than it didn't annoy me. If there was much in the way of ambient chatter or environmental atmospherics I don't recall that either. I could log in to check but it seems more significant to record that nothing I heard comes to mind.

Character and Animations

See last Friday's post. I really like the character design in Bless. It's top-class. The characters and NPCs look great when they're standing still. I like the confident resting pose and the way my little Mascu stares straight at the camera. The detailing on the clothing and armor is attractive and intricate. I noticed, when I equipped a new item, I could see it appear as a pouch on my character's belt.

The running animation on the Mascu is a little awkward. I think it's supposed to be cute and mostly it is but the way her arms stick out makes it look like she has sticks down her sleeves. Perhaps she does.

I can't really comment on the combat animations. Most of the time I'm so focused on trying to hit the right key and not dying I can barely spare time to look at the screen. Which brings us to...

Combat

Hmm. This is a tough one. Bless has one of the daftest combat systems I've seen for a while but I don't entirely hate it.

NeoWiz don't seem to have been able to decide between the traditional tab-target-and-hotbars set-up (WoW style as it's often known) and full action MMO controls like Neverwinter or DCUO. Instead they've gone for some kind of half-baked hybrid that pleases no-one.

Unless you play a Berserker, who for some reason gets the original action gaming version that was removed from all other classes a while back, you have full control of your mouse pointer at all times. You also have several sets of hotbars into which you can drag and drop skills, items and so on. You can then use the hotbars by clicking on them or hitting a key as you prefer.

So far, so sensible. Except you can only add a few basic attacks to your hotbar and those don't do nearly enough damage to ensure a comfortable win against most enemies. For real DPS you have to rely on chaining skills.

Icons for the chains appear on screen as you trigger them but you can't activate those with a mouse-click. You have to hit "R" or "T" or some other key I forget. There's probably some kind of rhythm or rotation to it but I have yet to work it out. Mostly I click the two main attacks with my mouse and hammer on the "R" key.

It's not intuitive or comfortable and I'm sure it's making the fights harder than they need to be. Also the game doesn't seem to auto-target the next enemy when a mob dies so I also have to remember to do it manually by hitting Tab, which is something I don't think I've had to do in a themepark MMO for a decade or more.

My impressions of combat so far are limited to one class - the Ranger. Other classes may play very differently. The ranger might as well be a melee class. The range on the bow is very short and there's no means of stopping the mob closing on you (no pet, snare or root) so every fight consists of you getting a couple of quick shots in as the mob rushes towards you then firing your bow at point-blank range while glugging health potions as the mob tries to rip your head off.

It's very likely there are better ways to play a ranger. It might be possible to kite or circle-strafe although not with my dexterity. There may be skills I'm missing or chains I should be concentrating on that would make the experience less frenzied and frenetic.


The thing is, I haven't looked for solutions to any of these problems because I'm having fun. The fights are crazy and chaotic and I like that. Lots of them are really close but I win most of them. For low-level solo play it's unusually intense. I've died quite a lot but not so much it's been off-putting. More like "Right, I'll have you this time, Sonny Jim!"

Aggro is interesting. Namplates are green, yellow or red. Green denotes an interactable NPC, yellow is a non-aggro animal or mob. Red means it's going to attack you as soon as you get in range. So far, so familiar.

What's unusual is that in a bandit or orc camp many of the mobs will be flagged yellow or even green. In the outer areas only the scouts will be aggressive and even if they attack nearby yellow-flagged mobs won't assist them.

This means that, with care, you can work your way past the outer defences without a fight to get to the inner areas where your quest target may be hiding. Or just because you're nosy. I got myself into considerable trouble this way.

End of Part One

I have a lot more to say but this is running long already. Next time, I'll get into the tutorial experience, questing, story, leveling, taming, loot and the rest of the good stuff. I'll probably have played a couple more hours too, so who knows what new wonders or horrors may be revealed?

Got Live If You Want It (I'm Not Sure I Do) : Shroud of the Avatar

It's been almost a year since I last paid a visit to Shroud of the Avatar. Since then I certainly haven't been chammering at the bit, waiting for Richard Garriott to throw wide the gates, cut the red ribbon and declare SotA officially "launched". If I'm honest, I can't remember all that much about it. I was just left with the vague impression that I rather enjoyed myself.

Of course, "Lord British", supremely unaware of my existence as he gazes down from his orbital weapons platform, doesn't set his calendar by my interest (or lack thereof) in his earthly works. On the 27th of March he gave his formal nod of assent for SotA - finally - to drop the fig-leaf of Early Access and step proudly onto the stage as a Finished Game. Well, kind of.

As we all know, MMORPGs are never finished, nor meant to be. Not to mention that as soon as you start selling "Packs" and charging money your game is de facto "launched", regardless of what euphemisms you care to employ so you can sleep at night.

I always seem to be in my own shade. Maybe if I lit this torch...

Anyway, it's out there for real now. You can buy it and play it and if it doesn't work Portalarium can't hand-wave your complaints away by playing the "still in development" card. What practical difference that makes is less clear. No MMO ever worked flawlessly and having a purchase receipt and a subscription agreement never guaranteed anyone a refund beyond what might have been required by law.

No-one in this corner of the blogosphere seems to have been paying much attention, anyway. The only post-launch posts I noticed were Wilhelm formally recording the fact and Syp giving it a quick once-over.

Wilhelm opined that he couldn't see when he'd find the time, which sums up how I feel about any number of current and forthcoming MMOs. Syp, who did at least make the effort to log in, sounded like he wished he hadn't bothered. He summed up a frustrating and lacklustre session with one of those 'I'm not angry - I'm just disappointed' anti-rants so beloved by dads the world over:

"Shroud of the Avatar isn’t as engrossing or connected as it should be. And it really should be, which is the shame here."

I did manage to patch the thing up on launch day but that's as far as I got until this morning, when I decided to give SotA another run. For science. Or at least for a blog post.

That's a feature you don't often see.

A week and more having passed there was, naturally, more patching to do. The SotA patcher is swift so that passed painlessly enough. I logged in using my free trial details and my character was there, waiting, just as I'd left him. That was the easy part. From there onwards things went downhill - slowly, like a glacier.

It wasn't anything to do with the game itself. I didn't get as far as playing the game. Last time, when the thing was supposedly in "pre-alpha", I don't recall having any particular issues with performance. There's plenty in the couple of posts I wrote that echoes Syp's confusion over SotA's idiosyncratic systems and design choices but nothing about stuttering, frame-rate lag, buildings popping in out of nowhere or every new zone taking literally minutes to load.

Today I found SotA all but unplayable. My PC was constantly grinding away on 100% disk access. I checked to see if something else was going on but it seemed to be entirely down to the game itself. I would have googled to see if it was a known issue but tabbing out to look anything up was impossible. I could move about in the world, provided I didn't want to open any doors, interact with any NPCs, check my inventory or basically do anything more than peer cautiously around me. Making no sudden turns.

I'm going to jump...I think...

I put up with it for about an hour, in which time I achieved absolutely nothing other than to take some screenshots. The game has taken a considerable amount of criticism for its supposedly old-fashioned graphics but it looks quite good to me. It may not be cutting-edge but it's certainly not 'EverQuest with a new coat of paint' like Project: Gorgon. Then again, I can play P:G.

If the scenery seemed fine, the animations were less satisfactory. My character knocks his ankles together as he runs and one time, when he was sliding down a rocky riverbank, it looked as if his leading foot was going to come off altogether. On the other hand (or foot), when he ended up in the river itself, the swimming animations were pretty spiffy, so it's a mixed bag.

Yep. I jumped.

Syp complained about the absence of a zone or mini-map. That puzzled me because I had both. Hitting "M" brought up a map of the city I was in. It wasn't a great map but it worked. There was also an overview map of the connections between zones but that only appeared in the peculiar "Overland Travel" area that serves as SotA's nod to fast travel.

I also had one of the collectible maps Syp mentions, which I imagine I must have bought from an NPC or found somehow last time I played. That seemed to function like a mini map, although it kept disappearing while I was trying to read it. It was also annotated in some made-up language, which is probably very immersive if you commit to the game but quite annoying if you're just trying to get your bearings at the start.

Who wrote this? Elves?

I had a quest tracker up on screen. I would have used it to complete something I'd started a year ago, if I could have found my way back to where I'd been, but I couldn't work out where to go, even with all the maps.

It'd sure be nice to accomplish something.

The quest journal itself is attractively designed and the quests are well-written but with the frame-rate issues and the extraordinarily lengthy zoning times there was no chance I'd be able to navigate my way to where I needed to be before my increasingly frayed patience wore out.

Red light means danger.

My willingness to struggle on was further undermined by the D&D style random encounters that dragged me into a private instance every time I tried to travel from one Adventure area to another. Not to mention the fact that my weapon was broken and I couldn't remember how the combat system worked anyway.

Grey light means dead.

My unfortunate encounters with packs of wolves and gangs of skeletons did at least mean I got to see what happens when you die. I don't remember it from my last excursion. You have to go find an Ankh, which revives you, or wait five minutes if you can't be arsed.

There's probably more to it than that. I'm sure there's more to it than that. Shroud of the Avatar is one of those MMORPGs where there's always more to it than that. That's a good thing, or at least I think it is, in theory, but as I said last time, I may just be getting too old for this level of "realism".

This map suggests a lot of content - content I will never see.

I'm definitely too old to deal with three to five minute zone transitions and appalling performance issues. A little lag I can handle but this is way too much. Now it's finally "gone live", SotA might be an  MMO worth exploring but until I can actually play it I'm never going to know for sure.

Perhaps I'll give it another run if I hear the performance issues have improved but until then there are less frustrating places to be.