SPO and SP Offline

I never really understood the companion thing, why choose to have an AI companion instead of a real person??........ It's like choosing a blow up doll over a woman.......I just don't get it.

Anyway, have to say reading through these pages all I can say is that I'm fine with the way the game is going, one thing that I'm not sure in (haven't looked because it's not an aspect that interests me) is whether or not offline truely means offline..... In other words no online play (housing etc) has any impact.....my guess is that it won't.

I'm sure that there will be a focus on offline play soon.

 

Companions are a part of single player games and important for the story. It is like reading a good fantasy book If you are more a PvP and sandbox gamer this is hard to understand I guess

 

me neither I really don't get why people use their imaginations, its such a 1950 concept !!!

Nobody needs their imaginations anymore

And if a guy can't get a real woman and ends up with a doll instead, lets laugh at him cause we have no imagination so our mind is so empty we have to comment on a whim on every subject our superiority comes to mind

*massive eye roll*

 

Not at all Cabrius... I'm one of the worse pvpers/sandboxers ever... I assure you I still played offline games, and if a true ultima game would give me the option of switching between the two I would really enjoy that

Sometimes you have taken one too many drinks and you're just taking off, you don't want people not in the same mood around you and want to use your god given right

 

Offline may include patches - to ensure the economy is flowing - and items are available (and content is updated)

- On the companion aspect - while people are more interesting - we may never get to meet their "family" or come to share a tale of their misfortunes or adventures ... not every live person in game role plays - and not every role player has an interesting story that can be intertwined with the plot of the game ... or for that matter evolve from episode one to episode two

For me its just wanting something closer to ultima 6, 7 than say for example a npc that follows you around like skyrim (Neverwinter Nights - had a good companion system - entertaining)

 

I don't think PvPers are worse and I don't look down at them I'm just not interested in PvP and too much social game I'm interested in a good told story instead - as in Ultima V, VI and VII.

 

I was worse beleive me... I would go around and test players for roleplay, if they didn't roleplay I would make their lives hell... literally preventing them from "farming gold" along with my friends... I would always go as a scout to see how many of them there were, then came back with the appropriate number of friends (I always fought underpowered, most of the time 2vs1 against me if not 3vs1) to give a fair fight.

So at first I was interested in pvp because I tought this would be an ultima game, not a social game as you say. I feel completely cheated by this fact, deep down in my soul because of the way the game was introduced to us... spiritual sucessor to the ultimas... :/

Now I'm probably going to end up playing alone... its so sad for an entertainer and trained actor like me... life goes on huh...

 

One thing should be clear by now there is a massive amount of mature players looking for an online King Gariott version of Siege Perilous.

You were not forced to be social there, I knew tons of roleplayers who had basically no contact with regular players on the shards, and were not part of any guild... they called them the outcasts.

It wasn't a game where the economy forced you to interact socially... you know in UO sometimes I had fun during weeks just chasing and killing NPCs (sorry) just to get that perfect shading of cloth I needed to complete one of my outfits. There was tons of little details like that, that were ironed out WAY before pvp really had an attempt at balancing, which made the game so very interesting in the meantime. The amount of server birth rares that took me days to get because I could not get an angle free of NPCs seeing my brillant theft ? HA... had fun for months...

The contrast is not between EA's UO and SotA, it's between Siege perilous and SotA... and because of Lord Darkstarr ESPECIALLY.

Many like me were roleplaying on the philosophy he put out, because of the new angle that was given to us by his presence and constant tinkering. Of course that was part of my character maturation and I still remember it so well, I would still love to play a chess game with him, thinking I deserve this because I totally mastered his philosophy and manifested it constructively in game ; knowing its all just a game.

But goals like this make it NOT a social game. It's in its heart an elite game, for people who like to think... and forgetting that would be the worse way to shoot an arrow in your own foot here. You can't be backwards... the social needs to be confined to your in game needs, or really there is no "game".

You're going to automatically choose to use peacock arrows cause they're the most powerful in the game because they follow their "tier progression" and noone in the game is going to realise the subtleties you put out, because they have no goal in finding them.

This follows the exact same pattern of our rock and electronic music parties out here, somehow a hall of mirror is crushed, powdered and dressed up as fancy mayonaise and fed to us instead of structured around us as it should. Thats because people were greedy and started to profit from the game without giving back, we understand this is the same everywhere. People within the community that have more money should give back more, but they don't, often they're even the cheapest (go figure, I never been rich) ... so you rise the price...

The only politically correct solution is opening the doors to the pubilc, doing promo, trying to get people to like your product... thats why our parties became commercial, and in the cases they should not (even if momentarly) they still are ! Even if noone shows up and we end up a handful of people, people still don't adapt the functions and environement... they just continue as if they had success, even to the point of letting an artist/dj play to no crowd... just like we're being taught in school put the blinders on. Then you begin accepting less and less conscious artists who end up disrespecting your loyal crowd... and fill in your favorite facebook story here.

Of course we're rare... this affects only a few people, but I'd be willing to bet almost everyone on these forums has a bit of "that" inside them... that they're looking for something like we almost had, the true siege perilous that was lets say it ruined by hackers and profiteers. Thats also a rare irony in the fact there was no hacking/ and limited profiteering on siege but its playstyle was still ruined because of the gameplay changes that were gradually forced upon them for .0033 % more profit.

Thats the end of the parabolic innuendo here ; SotA still has that choice... we're at britain crossroads waiting for true brigands to show up to spark up a little roleplay, maybe a quest, maybe even a friend ! But everyone is gone in the pvp arenas or is fighting the next boss to get the next most powerful thing...

We're not like a failing party franchise... we're not a bunch of stubborn people either ; so lets give us continuity, homeostasis and also ourselves, the avatar is free and cannot be limited without ruining its purpose

 

Another way of putting this is that those interested in the single player aspect of this game are just simply asking for a 'road map' for how this will develop over the next several months. This is what I really am interested in seeing so that I have a pretty good idea of which direction the single player experience is moving towards.We have already seen the 'road map' for the MMO part of this and it looks pretty good. If the single player portion of the game is to be sacrificed in order to more fully develop the MMO portion of the game, then now would be a good time to know. As with you, I supported the game primarily for the single player / single game experience.

 

Did they say there will be companions? Have they given any reason to go back on something they have said?

 

They did say that there would be companions - the problem is when a companion was described as a "pet" - which in game terms is fine; but we would like to know how simplistic or complex the companion will turn out to be

and since we have pets and elementals - it kinda adds a little bit more complexity to the issue of having them

 

Well, as I posted before.

• Scenes: The Ardoris Castle areas will open up to make that city complete. We are also going to experiment with a Challenge Level to test scaling difficulty for combat against AI.

Release 10 has the first mention of anything that could have a divergence with single play and multi player. When making a scene for multi player then breaking it down into 1 person, small groups of friends, and large full hexes of players several questions will come up.

AI needs to be developed beyond basic combat.
Zone layout can be very different for the different group sizes.
Will companions be a part of the plan for scene development and will they be required or an option, considering they mention AI scaling.
Does AI scaling include considerations that players that keep to solo play may not have some gear that may be available in multi player (questing for gear instead of crafting?)
Same for level, does scaling include considerations for single players not necessarily having an expected set of skills leveled.

Tons of questions. Scenes are the first thing I have seen on the schedule that have a place to ask them. Up till now it's all be universal single/multi player elements being built.

Would lead me to believe some kind of info will be coming. If that's what's on the plate next.

 

are you sure, the Castle in Ardoris isn't just the expansion of the Ardoris map, which was blocked before? I'm not sure that this is indeed a Solo Instanced Area... And Challenge Level also sounds something typical from other MMOs and has nothing to do with single player (hard modes).

But I'd also like to no much much more about the presentation of the story...

 

That sounds like most MMO's setup now, in LotRo you open up the skirmish/raid interface and do some of area's solo, 3 player , 6 player up to 24 player. But as they are all instances they just need to decide and set monsters in there to keep it balanced for each size.

 

Nope, not sure about anything. It's all open to interpretation. The part about challenge level and scaling is where I am running with the interpretation that is on topic for this thread.

If they are not including single player in that scaling then this thread should explode with requests for info on the plan for single player.

 

I can tell you with absolute certainty the reason why we can't presently access those areas is because they just simply are incomplete structure wise. I found a back way into one of them and took some screen shots last weekend.
And you are correct, they are just part of the Ardoris map.

 

earlier I spawned UNDER owl's head... the structures are indeed far from complete I had to swim out to reach and pop through the turf

 

This is exactly what I mean. I'm not even looking for specifics, just overall.

This isn't even the first thread asking about it....it's been like this since the start of the project.

We have had reams of PVP info....even before there was a system to even talk about.

Companions haven't been talked about in almost a year....with quite a few threads asking about them.

I'm not asking(and I assume others aren't) why it isn't in the game yet...but IF it will ever be in the game.

 

On the other hand, is there a multi player road map?

 

Instanced hexes has everything to do with single-player stuff. Instancing and phasing is essentially how a single-player game works at a fundamental level.

Any logic, any scripting, the AI, ANYTHING that you can come up with for a single-player experience (story, companions, saving/loading, skipping day/night cycles, etc) can be accomplished in an online environment using instancing and phasing. The more you use them, the more of a single-player experience you'll get. No exceptions. The ENTIRE WORLD is covered with instanced hexes... The single-player experience is actually WAY easier for Portalarium to implement (comparing to other MMOs, for example) because the game exists locally on your computer, so they don't need the server(s) to say anything to your client.

Even if you play single-player online or multi-player online, everything can be dictated by the local client (offline) and then have the results sent to the servers. That's a HUGE advantage.

Now, if you're trying to figure out what Portalarium is going do, Richard Garriott made 9 or 10 single-player games and 2 MMOs. I think he knows how to build a single-player experiences, I wouldn't worry about it especially if you're already a fan of his previous work.

My point, from the very beginning, is that MMOs (or the idea that this game can be played online) has absolutely no impact how much or how little the single-player experience can be. That's entirely up to the developer which, in this case, is known for single-player games. Even if they decide to make SotA into an World of Warcraft clone, saying "MMOs ruined the single-player experience" would be an ignorant statement... it just means that that's how they wanted to build SotA.

If there's one thing that I say that you should consider, it's this:

{​

How they weave their single-player experience into the MMO portion​

is extremely dependent on how they build the MMO portion​

(instancing, phasing, player progression, combat, etc).​

Let them focus on the MMO so that they have the foundations​

necessary to make an awesome single-player experience.​

}​

If that's influencing the way you're pledging, my suggestion to you is to wait until you hear stuff you like and not worry about things that may or may not be.

What I'm saying is that, because anything related to companions would be content related (such as being part of the story ~ like you say), they're not being implemented yet. Ergo, there's no point in talking about it. They'll talk about companions once they start talking about the story.


Have they talked about the story yet? Last time I checked, they haven't. So why are you expecting them to talk about companions? What good does a "yes, there will be companions" and "no, there won't be" this early on in the development? Considering that there's a lot of iteration done with the current systems, anything they might say about single-player "features" wouldn't mean a thing.

"Well at least it would mean that they're working on it" No, that's the thing! They're not working on it! Even with a story all fleshed out, people are busy with the current systems that they're implementing... again, "because it's alpha". Even Richard Garriott is focusing on reagents and cool-downs at the moment.

Simply taking SotA's design documents and copy/pasting them here on the forums would be suicide. The design document could literally be something like this at the moment: "Companions: Yes. Sam is an archer and hates bears... would be cool if he shouted <I got your necessities right here!> each time he shoots an arrow."

That wouldn't really be helpful. In fact, it'd be more spoilers than anything.

"What colours are the rooms going to be?" "Dude, chill, let me build the house first; the plumbing's not even installed yet!"

If your response to all this is "you don't understand" then you, too, don't understand what I'm trying to say.