Saga: Putting the MMO Back in RTS

So what’s offlining? It’s a big problem in the MMORTS genre that tends to drive away the more casual player who can’t sit as his computer for hours on end guarding his meager collection of earnings while his neighbor in the basement, pink eyed and orange thumbed, amasses an army of followers to crush those who oppose him-while they’re offline, of course.

The simple way to put it is that while you’re away at work, sleeping, walking the dog, yelling at your other neighbor to stop blasting his music, your nation is still functioning. Your peasants are still gathering, your buildings are still being constructed… and you’re pretty much defenseless.

Some of the more notable games in the past have made attempts at preventing this, such as the system in Artifact. Players are only allotted so much time they may spend in the game, with more being granted at different intervals. If you foolishly squandered your time, you could only sit and watch helplessly as your nation was attacked. Artifact also offered alliances with alliance controls for your units and your buildings.

The idea was that your alliance members might be on when you’re not, so they could help defend you. However, some of the more malicious users would form alliances, take their allies resources when they were away, then boot them. Artifact added a reputation quality to a player’s profile to combat this.

“Offlining” in Saga

Since Saga is an MMORTS, it would feel pretty cheap and tawdry if you couldn’t mess with your opponents even if just for a little bit while they’re away. Saga has found a nice medium between annihilating your opponent, and causing unrest within his village.

While you can’t directly march your army into a neighbor’s county and utterly destroy him, you can make attacks at his army, murder his peasants, attempt to steal grain, and attempt to damage buildings. As you can imagine, enough of these attacks would result in a pretty flimsy nation.

The PvP in Saga is a mutual agreement. You challenge your opponent on the battlefield with a good ol’ iron glove to the face, and if he accepts, your units will do battle. The winner of the battle will have his rating raised a bit, and the loser will have his lowered. During PvP battles, it is possible to destroy an opponent’s buildings, since the battles take place on either your turf or theirs.

There are currently three modes of PvP. Players can choose between a scrimmage, normal, and hardcore PvP modes. Each mode has an increased level of danger as well as increased levels of rewards.

Questing Throughout the Land

Saga has one of the most in-depth quest systems I’ve experienced for an MMORTS. There are literally hundreds of quests that dot the world map, with any number of tasks, from destroying all enemy units… to killing one specific unit… to capturing a tower or a keep. The flavor text keeps the goals interesting, and to get a bit of replay value out of the quests, they have three levels. All quests appear on your map as bronze level quests.

Once you’ve completed a quest at its bronze level, it’ll become a silver quest, which will offer a bigger challenge, and a better reward. This process is repeated again as the quest becomes a gold challenge, to which it can then be actively “farmed” for resources or rewards. If you find one quest is particularly hard, you can invite a friend or guild member to help you with it.

An Army of Followers

Since there are four different factions within Saga… you can imagine the diversity of units. Each unit for each faction has its counterpart in another faction, which makes the game play between the factions pretty balanced. The battle sequences are balanced by what’s known as CP, or command points. You cannot field more units than you have command points… and once you retreat a unit or it is killed off, the command points are refunded to you.

This is where the strategy part comes in. You can choose to field a large army of low CP units, which don’t pack as much punch as a higher CP unit. Or, you can divvy up your command points between some of your most powerful units in an attempt to overwhelm your opponent.

As you do quests during the course of the game, you’ll periodically level up, which in turn will grant the units you use most often experience so they’ll level up as well. As you level up, you’ll be awarded more CPs, which means you’ll be able to field more units at the start of a battle.

“I’ll Give You A Dragon For Your Juggernaught…”

Units in the world of Saga can be effectively traded to others using the marketplace, which is similar to World of Warcraft’s auction house feature. If you find yourself a Light faction with only Nature units… try putting up the units on the auction house and asking for Light units as a return.

Standard trades last around 24 hours, which gives users plenty of time to review what’s been offered on the auction house. You can also choose to allow offers on your trade, if you’re open to the types of units you wish to receive. Some units are more rare than others, so they are worth more.

Currently there is no definitive guide on this though, which makes it hard to judge if you’re getting all you could for the value of your unit.

Booster Packs

While the game can be played from an entirely free point of view, if you’re tired of waiting for someone to accept your trades on the auction house, you can buy a booster pack and increase your chances of getting units you can use in battle, or trade for other units.

Booster packs run 2.99 for 12 cards, with one card guaranteed to be a rare, be it a unit, or a spell which is castable during battle. The only advantage buying a booster pack creates is getting more units instantly, so you have a better chance of assembling the army you need.

Work, Work

Managing your empire is pretty straight forward in Saga. You’ve got your peasants, who you must assign to building new buildings, chopping wood, quarrying stone, mining gold, and perhaps even worshiping at a shrine to earn you god favor. Buildings are pretty slow to build, so the emphasis is put more on combat than empire building.

All in all, while the graphics for the game aren’t anything that’ll blow you away, you’ll appreciate the feel of playing an MMORTS that might actually work for a large player-base, instead of those with a cult following. Of course, since the game is currently in beta, there are sure to be many changes at the hands of the Saga development team.