The discovery of new Lunar Rifts!?

I was 1 of 5

 

Lol, you would be one of the minority that felt this way. Most people who talk of UO and recall things they liked and would like to see in other games was their Mark/Recall/Runestone/Runebook system. If you do not like them, then do not use them. You and the other few people who want life harder please... just make it an option for you to make things worse and not for the rest of the player base. Too many of these voices calling for a nixing of anything to make the game easier, more enjoyable, or fun to play that actually only represent a SMALL fraction of the player base. Keep that in mind. Just go for an option added in for your play style instead of overriding everyone else's please.

 

While the UO system is/was great, there are certain boundaries between our two games. I'm unsure if this is the case with this issue, but Portalarium doesn't own any of the rights to UO's intellectual property. This subject has been spoken of with most all of our support, dating back to as early as Jan 2014 (that I can recall). Some things like "lunar rifts" have been used in an abundance of games, yet the rune system of travel in UO has not. On another level, SOTA is not UO and must be different, or it would be called "Ultima", which it's not being called.

I've been blogging here a long time and I can say with confidence that, our development is not a democracy on most issues, yet is extremely open to suggestions from all it's players, with no favoritism to how much our players have spent backing our game. The other thing that holds up some good ideas is within our limitations of funding even though SOTA is the second largest crowd funded game "ever". <---<<< Remaining in the constrictions of crowd funding isn't easy when it comes to adding things into our game. Things like horses had to have their own crowd funding campaign and will some day be in our game, but just not right now. "When?" That too will depend on our developer's time schedule, as well as impact to their advent's entry into the game.

We may very well have a swifter mode of travel then we do now, yet for now, "it's really a small, small world".
In many ways we are still just beginning and very much similar to the small world of "Rytabul", of the UO Book;


The Bold Stranger

by Old Fabio the Poor

In a time before time, the Gods that Be assembled a group of artisans, craftsmen and lore masters (for, yes, even in those days, art existed) to create the world of Sosaria. To this group, the gods gave a tiny world, Rytabul, in which to test their works, to see if they were of the quality desired for the true world in which they would be placed. And though the gods were tight fisted with their gold, this small crew worked hard and long, and were happy in their tasks.

A small corner of Rytabul had been claimed by the artisan Selrahc the Slow. Though he was not the fastest of the assembled workers, the gods smiled upon his work, even presenting him with a mystic talisman proclaiming his work the best among the newer artisans. And so Selrahc went about his business, creatin (sic) hundreds of designs which would one day add color and variety to Sosaria.

One day a stranger appeared to Selrahc. His chest was bare and he wore the trousers of the brightest green, and wherever he went, plants grew in his footsteps. This caused Selrahc no en (sic) of trouble, the stranger always looking over his shoulder, and the plants sprouting in places Selrahc required to ply his art. And so Selrahc approached the stranger and bade him speak. But this man in green remained silent. Selrahc pleaded with the stranger to give his name, and would he please leave Selrahc to his work. But this mysterious stranger remained mute.

This angered Selrahc mightily. Who was this silent man, interfering with tasks the gods themselves had entrusted to Selrahc? In an attempt to embarass this interloper, Selrahc stole his green trousers, leaving him naked and open to comments about his very manhood, and still the stranger would not speak, would not leave this tiny corner of Rytabul.

Vexed to his very limits, Selrahc took his war axe and smote the silent one mightily, again and again, until the silent stranger ran away, having never said a word, and never showed himself in Rytabul again.

Thus endeth the tale of the bold stranger.

I hope that explains enough and places this subject within a more clear perspective
~Time Lord~

 

Do we know where there will be?

 

Bastion's Point Announces: The Lunar Rift Chronometer!

 

The only reason this was "great" in UO is because many people are lazy. They don't want to travel. They don't want to discover. They want instant gratification and don't care about the journey. So yeah, I (and many others) don't want that in this game. You may see the need to actually explore as worsening the game, but we see the lack of any need to do so as doing the same. Fast travel is already far too easy.

FWIW: Mark/Recall was originally in Ultima VII, but was limited to the use of a Virtue Stone of which there were only 8 in the game. Having it be that limited, I could live with. Having dozens of runestones (to the point where they needed *books* full of them) made UO a completely different game; negatively so, in my opinion.

Every single new one is in a town, which will destroy any balance between them. Watch the flood of people changing homes now. @Lord British, I still strongly object to this.

 

Balance? The previous inception was *anything but* balanced. Everyone wanted to Shop in Brittany or Owls Head. If you did not go there, it was not easy to make a living in sales. Now they have opened up rifts to many different corners of the world. Brought in more towns to the economy because you don't *have* to traverse Control Points to get there.

It was not impossible to do, but many many players would not venture out because it was a more of a pain to do so. Now its a "little" easier. Not a LOT. you still have to wait an hour in between rifts to the same destination.

Also, there was not much land left in any of the those towns except maybe Brookside. I for one look forward to any additional traffic through the Rift. I don't really think many used them before. I don't expect to change dramatically, but I think its going to help, not hinder regions outside of the current economic Homefront.

 

No, it will just reinforce Owl's Head as the place to go to buy. It was great when that rift went away before, to get people out of the Vale, but its back and noone will ever leave now. I have a shop in Central Brit, and selling anything but deco is a pain; now, I bet I'll have a hard time even selling that.

The best part of the Rifts before this was that they were in adventure scenes, and linked the three beginning areas together. Yes, it took too long for them to cycle (and I suggested a way to get around that), but keeping players in those areas was important. If they could get through the control points, they had a reason to do so (and vice versa; they were not *that* hard). Now, new players are going to be going everywhere and have an even harder time figuring out where they should be.

I'm still wanting to hear what they plan to do for the future Episodes. Is each landmass going to have its own lunar rifts? Do we have to use boats to get between them each time? It seems like for an unnecessary convenience, they chose to not only make travel in the future harder, but royally jack up the real estate market. If you were not lucky enough to get into Etceter, Owl's Head, or Westend, you better make your way to Brookside and set up shop, otherwise your chance of foot traffic just dropped considerably.

 

Just because you and 5 other people in the world would rather travel an extra 15 to 30 minutes in game time to do whatever, including in old UO, doesn't mean the rest of the world is lazy. It is simply a lot more fun to just get on and go do what you want to do. I spent a hell of a lot of time exploring that game and once I did, I saw no reason why not to bind to certain areas in order to get around the world in a reasonable fashion. Maybe your "time" is not valuable to you, but I assure you... to the rest of us it very well is. Some people come home and just want to enjoy themselves for an hour or two and not spend a good deal of that time travelling around instead of doing fun things or getting something accomplished. Not saying you will never need to spend time travelling but if there are ways to accommodate this and keep the game enjoyable, then why not? It is not hurting you. If you don't like it... don't use it. You are obviously one of those that feels if people aren't playing hardcore mode then they must be doing it wrong... because as you said, people using the rune/recall system are just "lazy" and as you said, made for a "horrible" game. That is completely your opinion and again a very, very, very small portion of people feel that way... and I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here because in the past 20 years... YOU are the only one I have ever heard complain about it. I'm an avid gamer, have been all my life. Had my own guilds from small groups to over 2,100 members and met a lot of good players along the way. Everyone seems to hold UO in great regard especially their travel system... even forgetting the bad times when it took 2-5 minutes to cross a screen at times.

So PLEASE, if you want to stick to your draconian ways, by all means, do so in your own game play. Do not kill the fun for other players. If you don't like things, then don't do them or take part in them. Ask for an option in game so you and whoever else may feel that way can turn off those functions. Let the rest of the gaming community enjoy these features. It was a much beloved feature of Ultima Online.

As far as the above being about UO, it only matters in that people loved it and used it. I know this is not UO. I know that there are copyright and IP rights to work around, but that does not mean we cannot use the same concepts or implement similar mechanics/features into the game somehow. The point being that more lunar gates were being added and there would be more travel options to speedily get around the world. We've had 20 years in the MMO world to see that people WANT generally speedy travel... not necessarily real-time travel across landscapes like old school Elder Scrolls games (which were great for their time).

Right now, as stated by other posters, there are plenty of places in the world that hardly get visitors because it's either difficult to get to that area or takes too long. I feel this is moving in the right direction to get more traffic going in the world. If you keep travel always restricted, then you will have kind of like it is now... where people just setup and/or stay/visit the major population centers and that isn't helpful at all to those players setup in far corners of the world. To prove my point, go look for housing near population centers and then in the far flung towns... look for players in the major pop areas... then look for players in the far flung regions... Travel is just one step to help these regions. It'll get better when there are more interesting places to grind/adventure out of, unique resource areas, as well as a robust loot system for said areas which may include some unique loot tables. With the latter, I can see having to travel on foot (even boat eventually), to get to these special places. People will still want to get their as quickly as possible. That doesn't make them "lazy". That just makes them smart & sensible.

 

This is pretty close to what I envisioned and should fix one thing I viewed as a "major problem". So thumbs up for this one!

 

@Browncoat Jayson our time as oldsql gamers are count
poeple dont like death decay, travel and exploring, they want XP and Gold, and nothing else.
Immersion, write books feature or emotes to "earn" - the most dont care about "fluff" they care about numbers as in the real world.
Sense, effectiveness is the order of the day!
Nonsense and ineffectivity, playing for playing alone, immersing, roleplaying contrary to have roleplay elements (raise levels/ skills and nothing more) and RP Features, what we have in this game are dismissed by most people.

I like to have the option, but i often travel and that means if there is the East Perennial Trail on my way, i wander through it, because i am a wanderer, a traveler, a researcher, an explorer - You say there is nothing more to explore, because its just the East Perennial Trail?
Wrong - it could be that i meet someone there, willing to talk to me, willing to roleplay, mybe he need my help or maybe i need his/ her help, we dont know, and we never will know, because we avoid the ineffective and nonsense!

Wrong Path!
The Grey Path is the Path of Knowledge and Wisdom, of Sense and Nonsense of effectivity and ineffectivity, it's a neutral path, a mediocre path, a neverending crossroad where you try to stay in the middle having all options available.

 

@Stundorn
Just because we don't want excessive travel times and would like to use some speedier means of travel does not mean we only want xp and gold and nothing else. I am an old school gamer. Been playing D&D since '83. It has absolutely nothing to do with "immersion". You seem to have a skewed perception of travel based upon your seemingly heavy "role-player" style of play in which you meet and greet others. It's awesome if you want to play that way. Kudos to you. But let's not go to extremes on the matter. Just because the majority of players would like some fun mechanics doesn't mean we don't like the RPG genre, does not mean we don't like exploring, does not mean we are lazy, and certainly does not mean we want instant gratification. I know a lot of players like to skip throught quests and dialogue but I'm not going to hold it against them. I love flavor text as well... wish more would do what D&D Online tried to do with theirs. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good RPG because I like to get places in a decent fashion or get their quicker if I want to.

It's plain ludicrous to see the same types of posts on forums for games similar to these over the years. It's usually the same small group of similar minded people who look down on everyone and think either every game is either too dumbed down to play, their play styles are superior, that you are only playing right if you suffer the most, that everything must be made as hard as possible for people to truly *enjoy* the game. Take it from the rest of us who don't post on the forums regularly... that is not how we want to play our games. I don't think some of you will be truly happy until you have a game where when you login, you are just sitting there looking at BLANK PAGES and you have to fill in the story and adventure yourself. Then you'll be like, "There... now that's a game. Anyone who doesn't do it this way is just lazy and pampered!"

I think there are some game forum people who are really out of touch with reality.

 

Let me just say that I can play our game 24 hours a day and most players cannot. I've used maybe 2 fast travel scrolls in the past 2 months and have much more wonderful deep immersion than most players ever will ...

Conclusion ...

Most people need to get there fast ... and wait for me ~Time Lord~

 

Sounds good to me. This feels very "ultima-ish" which is why I backed this game.

 

Mark/Recall as it became in UO was the result of a bug with an earlyish patch to the game that wasn't corrected before it became so ... ingrained that they couldn't remove it.

 

If these gates weren't tied to the moon phase and I could simply walk up to whichever one and port out of another one whenever I liked I could stomach this system. THAT would actually connect the world. I've seen this shitty system likened to another shitty system... Public Transit. There's a reason nobody uses public transit if they can afford not to (outside of big cities because lolparking): nobody likes waiting an average of 30 goddamn minutes to BEGIN to go where they want to go. What benefit is there to this waste of time system? Zip Zero None unless we're just going to salute over the falls for RP reasons.

 

Why don't you tell us how you really feel?

 

actually, i'm finding it pretty useful. if i want to go to graff from the vale and the moon phase is right, i just go. if brookside is coming up in a couple of phases, i'll sit at home and butcher my backblog of bear for a few minutes before going to the rift. that takes about the same time as running through vauban, only it's more productive. if i just missed it, there are other things in the world i like to do. it's not like once i've decided on graff, there is no fun anywhere else in the game for me.

 

Hahaha... omg has anyone visited the Lunar Rifts recently? All the complaints for people zipping around the world are for naught. I went to the one in Etceter and yeah... just waiting... and waiting... and waiting... takes forever for it to move to the next phase so if you're planning on just getting to where you wanted to quickly or were *worried* others may jump in there and zip around... don't worry. They won't. It's like something to do if you have all day to sit around and... wait... and wait.. I'm hoping for an eventual move to where you can hop between certain gates/rifts instead of just one... because as is, it's just another pretty piece of background scenery that I don't feel will get used that much. But I'm sure some will get lucky and have their destination already lit up and congrats to you, but it'll be a dreary wait for the rest.

We're getting there. Baby steps.

 

For me the Lunar Rifts are more about immersion than their capacity for fast traveling Anytime we can cause our world to react to us, or in this case have us reacting to it, is a very good thing for our game ~TL~