Tram Killed UO is Tram back?

Nothing says "freedom" like being unable to leave town because every exit is guarded by a dozen PKs.

DnD? Then again, if you murder all the other players and take their gear you might not be invited back for another session. And if you try it the DM might just contrive some way to kill you off instead.

Even Darkfall has safe zones now. Mortal Online doesn't, but that game has like 700 players with maybe a couple hundred logging in per day. No, I didn't forget a zero there. Granted it's not a very good game besides, but if you play you're free to gank newbies as they spawn. I wonder if that has anything to do with it having so few subscribers? Xsyon has complete freedom outside of tribal areas, but PKs don't fare well in that game. It's a lot closer to A Tale in the Desert than Darkfall or original UO. It has 200-300 players from what I can tell.

I couldn't find any real numbers for current Darkfall players, but it seems like it's a few thousand at best. About 200 per day log on through the Steam client, so if we figure that only 10% of players get on that way 2000 people log on per day. Could be more or less, but that's probably a reasonable estimate. I also couldn't find out how many regular players Siege Perilous has on UO, but it seems to have the most active Stratics forum for whatever that's worth. It's not likely to be more than a few thousand either, but if anyone has better info I'd like to see it.

I couldn't find a single full loot PVP game that could definitively boast 10k players. Not one. If SOTA sells in those numbers, that would mean... they sell no copies and half of the people who pledged never sign on. About 20k people pledged to SOTA and effectively have already bought the game. Now, let's say that SOTA needs to earn $4 million for a reasonable chance of ever seeing a second chapter released. The real number is probably higher, but let's assume this for now. Let's also be extremely generous and assume that every player will on average account for $100 of income for Portalarium once buying the game, expansions, and microtransactions are accounted for. (This also makes the math easy.) That means that SOTA would need to sell 40k copies. That's on top of the 20k who have already bought it. In other words, it would have to blow every other full loot PVP game out of the water by a factor of 4 or 5, at minimum (but more realistically by a factor of 20 or more), for there to be a decent chance of seeing another game in the series. The people who buy solely for a single player experience might subsidize the PVPers to some extent, but also keep in mind that those players will be much less likely to spend money on expansions or a real cash shop, meaning that they will bring in much less than $100.

So Artariel, unless I've completely blown it with these quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, which is a strong possibility I admit, it seems that if SOTA were designed the way you want it, with unrestricted full loot PVP everywhere and for all online players, it would be almost impossible for Portalarium to break even, much less earn back the capital they need for the next game. They will not get $2 million off of Kickstarter a second time. Such a failure would probably permanently destroy any industry caché Richard Garriott has left. Portalarium would likely cease to exist and all the awesome devs working there would be unemployed. In short, producing the game you want would be a disaster of Daikatana proportions.

Was that a creative enough argument? Or should I have called you names as well?

 

The reason I haven't replied to this thread ever is the fact that the game finds people who are relevant to you. Since there is only one shard I think finding other people who want to play totally open to full PvP not be difficult at all since there is incentive to do so. There just won't be newbies, but it doesn't mean the people flagged for PvP are great at PvP either. Also you may never run into a non-pvp person based on how relevant the people are to you unless you have friends that are non-pvp.

That being said this argument is a good venting session, but may be nothing more.

 

To be fair, there is one, if you stretch the definition of full loot a bit and allows for fairly large safe(ish) zones: EVE Online. At the same time, I believe it is "hogging" most of the players that are willing to put up with full loot combined with non-consensual PvP, to the extent it might be making some of those other games fail.

I still agree with the rest of your post, though

 

If there is going to be full loot non consensual PvP then there needs to be consequences for committing murder and theft, such as an in game jail. The more murders/thefts committed the longer in jail you stay. However, once your time is served you keep whatever was on your person before going to jail and your murderer status is removed, however you will still be marked as an criminal. There should be criminal records for characters. You would have to be actually caught by a guard in order to go to jail, a guard won't just pop out of thin air as soon as a murder or theft was committed.

Since the people whom rally for PvP harp about having a need for "risk" in the game, there needs to be "risk" from choosing a life of crime. Being flagged as a criminal/murderer or simply being killed by a "would be" victim is not enough. The whole "risk" factor can also be increased by tougher and more numerous monster/mobs, thus making the need for non consensual PvP nullified. Although, I suppose with PvP you could have bounty hunters as a profession.

 

There isn't going to be non consensual PvP unless the decision has been changed and I missed it. Its been stated for a long time that the PvP will be based on a flag system with timers so you can't cheat.

 

No you have not missed anything, the magic sliderbarflagthing(TM) is still in place according to what is known currently by us SotA fans, which I might add I believe is totally made up yet taken is if LB had it tattooed on his back... There will be a way to "opt out of PvP though", and that specific phrase comes down from the top many times.

Fear me not carebears!

 

One thing to consider is the 'switching' of play-styles. If you choose to be involved in PvP you may find a series or even flood of new interactions that are unexpected. For example, if you choose to PvP openly in SotA, it seems players will be matched with people of similar interests. If this is your first time or you're just making this switch, it could be a steep learning curve.

Nice comment, btw.

 

This is the exact reason I left UO...It just got out of hand and old. It got to the point where one could hardly walk out in the open without being ganked at every turn. Now I've had my share of PvP fun over the years and I feel their is a place for it, but it needs to be an option (flag) to the player to chose to do so...Or areas (regions of land) that are known PvP environments..."Proceed at your own Risk" sort of Bad Lands to venture through.

 

Good point. EVE certainly isn't full loot, but it does offer as much "absolute freedom" as as game can realistically handle. You can attack anyone anywhere, just as long as you're willing to face the consequences. SOTA could have a similar freedom by obliterating anyone who attacks another player with a bolt from the blue, though I'm guessing that's not really what the full looters want.

It's not what I want either, by the way. I like PvP, including occasional surprise attacks and even some looting. What I don't like are terrible PvP systems that heavily reward low-risk ganking to such an extent that it becomes an optimal strategy. You know, like that early UO that people worship. This is why the frequent argument of "let us have our style of play because it won't affect you" in regards to making PvP full loot are incorrect. Making all PvP full loot does affect me, because it will prevent me from enjoying an aspect of the game I would otherwise be looking forward to. Sorry, but I'm not gonna spend hours mining or gathering just so I can play piñata for squads of naked gankers that pop up more commonly than mobs. If that's how it will be I'll just skip PvP entirely, or even stay off of OPO if I have to.

It doesn't hurt that EVE is the only one of those games you can reasonably call good. I doubt it would be so popular if newbies were getting blown to scrap by other players seconds after spawning into the game for the first time, though, or if venturing into Lowsec at any point had a very high likelihood of being immediately swarmed by PKs, rather than it being just a possibility.

My roommate plays Darkfall. He tried to convince me to play it with him by talking about how much fun he had killing newbies and taking their stuff. It wasn't convincing, to say the least.

 

I think it's a mistake to allow players to choose whether or not they want to pvp. They should have to risk their life when leaving town. Maybe some of the early leveling areas and gathering areas should be more guarded but taking out the possibility of innocent victims is going make the game feel dull and boring like every other MMO out there. why not take the chance like original UO did and allow PKs. Even in old UO most players weren't PKs. IT WAS HARD!! people would form parties and hunt you down. Its what made being one so exhilarating; and killing them and being around them just as exciting. Some times you felt as though you just escaped death when you were new and one would talk to you, not attack then leave you to play the game.

I'm a preT2A UO player and I haven't enjoyed an MMO since. I think the reason UO was so fun in the glory days was because you were forced if you were a casual player to be some what of an epic casual player. people who wanted to avoid pks tended to do so by venturing to dungeons with a guild. switching up towns frequently, sticking to the guarded areas.. even if you got infamous enough with the pks or rival guilds that you had to be careful showing your face around town there were still clever ways to get around it like alts and incognito. No other game has really created an atmosphere where you can actually be a spy and if you get found out you may find your self in a James Bond like situation that you can't always get out of. I think that if players aren't forced into pvp only the cut throat players will be involved, A lot of players want to feel like a sort of guardian or protector. You take that away by removing innocent victims from the game players wont get the sense of "that guy's evil and i want him to pay for what he's done". You'll never have players who really cares about fighting off the "bad" players either because when soldiers die its viewed as ok because they knew what they were signing up for.

Besides this is just a game.. and very few out there give this.. "experience" most of us seem to be looking for. In real life you don't get a chance to really enact revenge or protect your friends the same way as you do in these games. Most of us will never get ruined by someone have to work our way up from scratch find them, kill them, and take their stuff lol.

Because old UO forced everyone to be a little on guard at all times it added a greater feeling of value to the things you possessed, gave greater feelings of triumph and more humbling defeats. Everyone is going to have a rage moment when they loose their stuff but the stuff doesn't feel like it matters when you have no chance to lose it. You don't really feel any attachment to your character except as a time investment unless you've been through hardship that you managed to over come.

All in all, when I think back on gaming and MMOs only the moments in UO really stand out. I think the reason one can tell long passionate stories about one's adventures in UO that manage to grip others attention (whether they played UO or not) is because of the risk and mystery of leaving town. All other stories you hear about someone kicking ass or just adventuring in an mmo (especially pvp) are neither interesting or unique. The moments in UO we have attached in our minds aren't because the weapons were SO COOL or the monsters were SO COOL or the world environment was SO COOL; its because of the risk one took just stepping out side of town and the items one could gain or loose at the result of luck, planning, game knowledge/skill, and/or allies or lack there of.

 

@Dagless, Totally agreed !

I am not interested in whether the player wants to PvP or not, I am not trying to create a PvP league. At least this is not what I mean by requesting PvP freedom. Do you think that people back then were constantly being griefed ? Have you heard about statloss for PKs in T2A era ?

Creating a Trammel was not the solution for safety problem. They could have implemented much better notoriety system with jails, more limits for PKs but instead they chose the easy way : full-world safety.

 

Perma death would do the same. Put that in the game too?

 

Because this is not 1997. Players that wanted a MMO but didn't want PvP, back then, didn't have a choice; they had to accept PvP in order to play a MMO at all.

Now, on the other hand, there is way more choice. A game that forces PvP on everyone will simply not attract PvE players; those players will just go elsewhere. Games like Darkfall and Mortal Online already attempted to recreate the kind of open PvP UO had, and while those games do have open PvP, they were only able to attract PvPers and PKers, and thus have an atmosphere more akin to post-Trammel Felucca (and, on top of that, saw their player bases implode; PKers chased away everyone else and then started leaving due to lack of prey).

The one modern game that doesn't allow players to opt out of PvP and managed to attract a sizable PvE player base is EVE Online, but that comes with a caveat: about one third of the game universe is "safe" High Sec systems, where any such attack is met by psychic overpowered police that will utterly destroy all attackers within a few seconds of the attack starting, and over 70% of the player base never set foot outside those "safe" zones. The safe zones, after all, provide players with everything they need to thrive in the game. The only way to engage those players in PvP is to suicide gank them - i.e., put up a beefed enough ship to kill the target in the few seconds before the police will destroy the ship, and accept the fact that the ship will be lost the first time it's used that way; but suicide ganking is expensive enough, hard enough to pull a profit with, to be fairly rare, rare enough that most HighSec EVE players will never experience it.

In short: taking a chance and allowing PKs won't work. It's impossible to recreate old UO simply because nowadays it's impossible to force PvE players to accept PvP, due to all the competition from other MMOs that shelter those players.

 

Very well put Silent_Strider.

Like with most anything, fun for one person doesn't exactly mean fun for the other...This game, and I think any game really, needs to be designed in such a way that it it favors one style of play in some ways while favoring other styles in another. This way there is somewhat of a balance, and because of such, it will appeal to a larger mass of individuals one a more level playing field.

 

Such cynicism for so few examples. Your argument comes from 2 poor examples (mortal and darkfall) and one decent one. As far as mortal and darkfall goes neither got enough advertisement, they were poorly programmed, combat was clunky, the prices didn't make sense, some of the most hardcore and famous players made it their business to publicly announce that their leaving the game along with videos and screens of them deleting their character. There's a million reasons those MMOs didn't make it and PKing wasn't even close to the most common "i'm leaving this damn game" post on the forums. Most people left because of poor support, patches taking too long, a small player base and not enough game play. The good example you give is Eve, (and clearly you're an eve player.) Eve is just mimicking UO style "law enforcement" in my opinion the safety is a little overboard. There's probably a happy medium to find there. One example is maybe less valuable gathering materials are in guards protection like iron ore but if you want something like cobalt you'd have to leave it.

I don't like to attack people's character in discussions like these but I think that the cynicism that comes along with the PvEr's mentality is what destroyed UO the second the developers started to feed into it. I happened to meet a guy named Ben Noel about a decade ago when UO was first being ruined by EA. Ben was in charge of EA games out of Florida and he was the guy controlling all the decisions for UO at the time. He made his mind up from reading customer feedback he would get via e-mail. He told me that 90% of those e-mails were people complaining they got killed unfairly and begging for their stuff back. So he had the idea that maybe he should separate the hardcore players from the softcore. He said as soon as they implemented that decision the bad e-mails stopped and they got a flood of good e-mails for a short period of time. Soon the influx of positive e-mails stopped and the player base quickly started to vanish. They didn't complain though like they did about their stuff. Players just quit. Only a few went out of their way to cry and moan to developers about it.

Just because the game may have old style UO PvP rules doesn't mean no one these days will play it. There are plenty who are sick of the same old thing and/or don't know how much fun they'll actually have till they try it and understand it. Its an important condition to have if you want to create a similar feel and get players to care about their characters and items. Even though people may claim they wont like it or play it, I think those players will still give it a try and may find it makes the game more fun if done right. Especially if: you like the rest of the game play enough, have found a way to make money off it, have a lot of friends already playing, looking for a new experience, you may risk the encounter. What people are confusing about old school UO is it never really forced anyone to PvP. It just made it so if you wanted the chance to get places in the world you had to take some chances.

By creating a ******** environment some players may feel better at first but I think without the risk of losing or gaining items from players, there's nothing bringing players to a game that looks or feels like this. Its not like the gfx in the game are all that breath taking. Its another medieval sword and armor type fantasy mmo and i'm not saying their bad, but a player isn't going to join this game for glowing flaming smoking super awesome epic gear when many other MMOs out these days already give the players that and with much better gfx.

Perma death is too much I think. You don't want to start entirely over. When you die in UO you still had your characters stats and what ever was in your bank or house. ( you even got your items back if you weren't looted.. when you died in UO you weren't guaranteed to lose your stuff ) Items in the game were also designed to be lost in a way. You could get really good weapons but the most practical good weapons were made from smiths in the game (players) and you bought them in bulk after you got established because you knew even the best crafted ones would break or be lost.

The stat loss thing happened when you wished to come back to life immediately after dying. You were given the option to be a ghost res by usual means or come back to life instantly with a loss of stats. When you died as a red you had to wait days to res unless you had a friend who was a high level mage and willing to turn outlaw for a few hours or a day in order to res you. I thought it was a good system. It made it that much more of a burden to be a PK; And yes, griefing happened. In that game some times you were really unlucky. but it really didn't happen a lot. (to most people..) In old UO the population was like 10-20% red and the rest blue. When a PK would show up near a town a band of blues would start to form and hunt the pk or pks down hoping for a bounty on the head. As a PK in UO you some times felt like a horde player in WoW when you find an ally in the field and slay him. You get to keep farming your area for a small period of time then the ally is back and with his whole guild ready to corpse camp you till sunrise. In UO getting griefed required you stick around for it. you could always cut your losses on the first death res some where and go some where else. The only reason players got griefed hardcore was because they were jerks and provoked it. which means the player/s doing the griefing are going above and beyond to find you and hunt you and keep killing you ( not easy, especially because the world is so big, and you can just log on an alt ) or because they were stubborn/stupid and kept showing up to die. The guards protection reached pretty far out of town and towns were big so if you couldn't recall out ( teleport to another location in the world) you could still find a way to escape. I remember having entire guilds after me at times. Being hidden in the streets watching them frantically combing buildings and alley ways looking for me. I never got such a thrill out of a game and haven't since.

I think if devs give into the complaining carebears this game can only hope to be as boring and lack luster as every other fatansy MMO before it. I know I wouldn't play it. I've already had that experience far too many times over.

 

I definitely agree with you.


If I am still playing UO on servers with T2A ruleset and people prefer playing it, it's just because of old school UO's uniqueness. I have never been able to adapt WoW, I don't think I will ever be.

 

Dagless I can understand much of what you are saying and respect the points you have made here. However the above statement and some of your expressed views are really "relative" to your style of play, are they not? To you "yes," this is the way the game should be and any deviation from that is just not worth playing (and that may be true, for you). What it seems is really being asked here, of the Devs, is for them to design a game for your style of play, and those who enjoy playing as you do without much flexibility for others who do not wish to play in such a manner, which is many. PvErs are as much a part of a RPG game world as any PvPer, and equally important. I myself do enjoy PvPing, countless toons set up for just PvP throughout my numerous gaming years (yes I'm a bit old) But I know of many who like to play totally PvE, who don't necessarily like to join guilds or even parties for that matter, they enjoy soloing...It's just their gaming style. In many cases, just like you have stated, they would not play if the game was to be designed in such a way. So who do the Devs cater to then? Who's view points should be more valued? Honest truth, imo, is that they all are equally valid and the Devs should be designing a game around that fact. Many of the games before, as you point out in your response did not fail because of PvPers, but instead because of many other factors, a culmination of things...So the Carebarers of the world (as you put it) aren't to blame any more than the PvPers.

I can understand you and many others wanting such an environment of play, that's what you enjoy after all...But why not a more creative balance or a carefully thought out and more fluid method of play...I personally think the Devs here can create such an environment that gives your style of play a home while allowing the other styles to exist as well. So I ask…Why can we not have some areas that are PvP free (not just inside town walls and small zones around a city) but without sacrificing some truly great features of PvP, while stepping it up a notch if you will? The Devs now have the tools to make a much richer PvP and PvE world than has ever been achievable, far better even from that found in the original UO I believe. For example how about some areas on a map that are “hidden or surprise” PvP, areas where if you wonder into (and perhaps didn't know about - new swamp, mysterious cave) that you are suddenly in a PvP environment ("Surprise watch ya butt now!")...Or in some cases, to get from point A to point B, a player will have to take a risk because there is ONLY one way to get to point B, and that is by passing through a known and potentially dangerous/risky area of PvP. My personal favorite, an idea I believe brings more depth to player interaction than we’ve seen before in these regards, would be the following. What if you were able to enable a PvP "flag" on a player if you (being set for PvP already) were able to close some set distance, long enough (maybe a matter of seconds) to a known non-PvPer, which in turn would automatically flag them. What this would do for both players is require those non-PvPers, when adventuring out, to keep an eye out for other players “on the horizon”...and be leery of their proximity to them, never quite knowing friend or foe (this could also rid us of the need for any those PvP overhead flags or colors – it’s an unknown after all). This could open up all sorts of little secret "signals" that groups could use to let the other player know that they are friendly or from a similar group (flares, sounds, AoE spell cast before they get too near (bunch of ideas in my head, if actually workable by the Devs). All of these factors would add a bit of thrill to the "do I trust this stranger coming over the hill" as he walks towards me...or do I run (Fight or flight sort of decision). Of course you wouldn't really know (unless a guild signal or something was show/flashed from afar). Heck, it might just be a fellow traveler who might want to trade with you...Or shiv you. This adds a much higher level of interactive complexity to the game, one that I would argue hasn't been experienced in any RPG or MMO in the past. I believe this method of approach would giving all sides what they want and more.

Much Respect.

-K

 

It has been stated many, many times that SOTA will not force anyone into PvP with their permission. I suggest you come to terms with that fact. 1997 UO will never exist again, because people are no longer willing to spend their limited time and money on playing the helpless victim. This has been shown time and time again. You don't get to dismiss the examples of failed and unpopular full loot games that have come before, because most of those problems come from a lack of funds to fix them. Why do those games have a lack of funds? You know why. Asking for Portalarium to force full loot PvP on all players in all areas is asking for Portalarium to go out of business. It won't happen.

This exists, either on Siege Perilous or on private shards. There are maybe a couple thousand regular players across all of these. Maybe. That very few will play these is a demonstrable fact, and I'm sort of curious why you don't just play them yourself. It would certainly be more fruitful than trying to convince Portalarium to commit corporate suicide.

ETA:

Nobody has seen the actual game graphics yet. I hope you're not basing this opinion on the pre-alpha prototype (about which it's been stated many, many times to not have anything to do with what the game will really look like) because that would indicate that you're not paying attention.

This is a straight up lie. I have no kinder way of putting it.

 

Why do you always consider yourselves as victims ?

Dead community is dead. PvP != Duel, keep in mind.

 

You can't make a game that fits every players wants. Seems to me from the home page Lord British is trying to tap into his roots to make a MMO. I think the CORE of his roots as far as MMOs go is the open pvp and loot from preT2A. so i think i'm arguing for devs to stick to the plan and not forget what made that originally successful. All the evidence suggests moving away from the PVP environment is what killed the game. On top of which no other game is tapping into this portion of the market correctly. Me and many others are donating to get a UO like experience again.

I'm not saying lets encourage farming newbs. I'm saying don't give people a chance to opt out of pvp unless they are ok with just obtaining mid level and average quality items and resources. I think if you want high level or valuable resources and items you should have to venture into a lawless land.

I also think that if you make the majority of the world under guards protection people will not feel as cramped and want to venture out of safety. also the areas PKs can be in are smaller and thus more densely populated. This makes the areas more dangerous rather than there just being the possibility of danger. In a larger area of lawlessness you never know where a bad guy is. when they're limited to smaller areas you're more likely going to be thrown into instant action instead of having a chase or chance to escape.