What is keeping me from backing SotA

Now that it is clear that SotA is essentially the next real Ultima game (let's not speak about that other, false avatar) there are two main issues that are keeping me from backing this project. It really bothers me, as I'd like to support this game, but cannot in good conscience back SotA knowing that the main these features will not match up with how I like to play.

Now I understand if you disagree, that's fine. This is a post of a long-time Ultima fan giving feedback. The issues are limited player housing, and PKing.

<b>Limited Player Housing</b>
There are a number of threads about this already, and I agree whole heartily with those that are very concerned about not being able to find/buy/build a house in SotA. In UO I remember the housing release days with horror. One in particular where a large mass of land was to be opened up and the ensuing rush cause so much sever lag and disconnect hell that I ended up rage quitting UO for over a year. I do not want to do that again.

Please clarify how houses will work. How limited is "limited"? Will there be multiple servers? Shards? I can tell you this, I will not play SotA if I cannot own a house, and I have no intention of paying $500 for the privilege. This issue alone is 70% of why I have not backed this project yet. I need to know what I'm supporting.

<b>Player Killing</b>
This in my opinion is simply not fun. It was not fun in UO and is not fun in any game I play. I simply do not like PvP gamplay mainly because it is inevitably unfair to the casual gamer and encourages the worst kind of gameplay. If I am forced to play in a PK environment I simply will not play SotA. The lack of knowledge on this topic is the other 30% of why I have not backed this project.

PvP is fine, as long as there are gates, and protections for those that do not want to take part. Humanity is just too warped for it to work in any other way.

Until these issues are clarified, I'm afraid I can't back this project.

 

With respect to PvP, the Single Play Online, and the Friends Play Online should handle that well. Even in Open Play Online, it may only be certain geographic regions that are open PvP, if there is to be open PvP at all. To my knowledge, that has not been decided for sure.

As an Anti-PK, I feel that you cannot say that PvP was not fun in UO. That is not a true statement. If you say it was not fun for YOU, fine. But it was VERY fun for many people, and for many people, it was the best part of UO, both on the PK side, the Anti-PK side, and for many non-PvPers who nevertheless enjoyed the risk, and derived a feeling of accomplishment for being able to survive in a hostile environment.

However, I can understand how uncertainty in this area would make you reluctant to contribute, which is why everyone strongly urges the dev team to provide clear guidance on this subject so that everyone knows what direction SotA is going to take with respect to PvP.

 

PVP is what makes UO fun.
How can you want to play a game where you fear nothing and always get all your loot back? I really don't see any fun in that and you can go play WOW because they offer that already.

 

<b>Housing</b> The housing is being limited because they DON'T want to have every open square inch covered in a house (thankfully in UO they got rid of tents which made it even WORSE). However, even though it is limited to actual town locations, they have stated that if the demand for housing is great enough they can add in new villages for that purpose.

That being said... I'm wondering if there will be a way to allow villages to grow into towns and towns into cities over time and player management. That might be an interesting things to see, really.

<b>PvP</b>PvP from what I'm hearing and reading is going to be "quest based" and you'll have ample warning that when you take a PvP enabled quest that you will be at risk of being involved in PvP (or being PKed). Loot in that regard I believe is still in question. However, you won't find a PvP-based quest early in your playthrough and if you're ignoring the plotline completely to be a crafter, then you'll probably never run into one at all.

Basically, if everything works correctly (and I've read/heard correctly), you won't be thrown into a PvP situation without forewarning and you won't have a PvP-enabled quest show up until your character is at least somewhat developed and ready to handle the risk. It sounds like they are really trying to limit if not eliminate the PKs vs Newbs problems of early UO.

 

The PvP trollery will never end here.

I'm a UO player and a PvPer and would desperately love to see another UO. We may yet see one soon.

However.

The Ultima games were amazing singleplayer games. Another one is exactly what a the RPG scene needs and I literally cannot wait to play another one. Don't forget that Ultima Online, despite its name, was a distant cousin of the Ultima games before it.

Remember that at this stage this is an Ultima RPG with very large multiplayer propsed, not Ultima Online with singleplayer.

 

Re the player housing, I tend to think how it'll play out is that most people will band together with friends and more likely guild to group tother to access the benefits of housing

You're obviously already aware of what happened in UO when the expectation was for every single person in the game to have the "right" to own a house so i don't see why you're so adamantly demanding it before backing, I think solutions such as instancing housing areas or putting them in out of the way locations to prevent lag etc such as a special island are immersion breaking and silly but as said once communities build within the game having access to a "guild hall" style of housing will probably cover the needs of 99% people and be much more practical for all involved imho

This is of course is also dependant on the amount of fine grain control they give to the owners of the housing, those permitted to enter, use and arrange goods, the use of vendors etc, but it could all be worked out to be a far superior system than having literally thousands of individual houses i think.

The PK'ing element has been covered a little here and there in interviews with nothing really concrete but i tend to think this is also good as it will give the community the ability to voice their opinions on the matter as the game develops.

I tend to think atm everything RG has indicated in interviews is that it will be "opt in" depending on whether that mean u enter a designated area or undertake activities or quests that actually involve such a thing, with the griefing element removed as much as is possible.

I know its a bit of a hassle and the information is not really being kept in one central location but if you have time to sift through all that has been said i think you'll come to understand the benefits of the leanings RG has for this game and most i've seen and heard thus far would negate the majority of the negatives, not to seem to fanboyish but I'm as skeptical as the next person when it comes to buying into an unknown quantity but I have a modicum of faith in the man and this community to get things just about right.

 

The game will not be free for all open world PvP. PvP will be both optional and meaningful. There will be certain times/stories where you can voluntarily flag yourself as being available for PvP, but other than those cases, you are not going to be ganked by PKers. Meaningful means that you wont just be flagged pvp and go around killing other people flagged for pvp, but rather PvP will be tied into stories and quests. The example given was running contraband from one side of the world to the other. If you accept this quest, you're flagged for pvp and can be stopped by other players. Once the quest is done, you're no longer flagged for pvp.

Regarding houses, there will be a fixed amount of houses in the world. As new villages/towns/cities are added, more housing would be added as well. There is no guarantee that you will be able to own a house because its limited. Limiting houses is the only way to avoid the problem of everyone owning a house in UO, cluttering up the landscape.

 

So far out of all the responses, there aren't any clear answers. One person says one thing, another says another, which is precisely my point in making my initial post. These two issues are not clarified enough and are holding back my pledge of support.

Some people think that it will be UO2, and others seem to think it will be a SP RPG with multiplayer elements. The dev video interview makes me think it will be more of the later and less of the former.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=PQowuSParmA

 

There are no clear answers because they have given no clear answers.

They have stated, however, that they do not want the old UO pvp system that allowed a new player to enter into a situation that allowed a PK to grief the new player.

PvP will be in the game, new players will be in the game, PvP will not chase off new players.

Anything more than that is brain storming on paper.

 

From what I have heard and read so far, it seems fairly certain it won't be open PvP, it'll be in some way consensual (whether because of an area you enter or a quest you accept). If it wasn't, many people would just walk and you'd be left with a PvP game and not really an "enhanced multiplayer RPG" which is what I think they are trying to build.

It seems to be suggested that it may come up in the main storyline too - points in the plot where you will be open for PvP, although I suspect that will see some heavy restrictions or regulations too, otherwise you basically risk having a "PK Bottleneck" in the story that will be camped by PKs and that a lot of the playerbase will just never play beyond.

Regarding housing - this is one that concerns me a bit as well. They have stated they want housing to be limited. Which basically means it will all become very expensive and a lot of people simply will not have one. Couple this with only a single persistent world as they have currently said, and "a lot" could well be "the vast majority".

It does mean a number of people will be locked/priced out of that section of the game, and later new players will have it even harder against the established home owners.

But as was also said, they haven't given wholly clear answers so I guess we'll see how it works out. I think it is worth at least making the $33 pledge though. That'll get you a copy of the game and early access so you can see for yourself.

 

I'm not sure people are not coming away with a clear answer to the OP's question.

The kickstarter page CLEARLY states that there will be limited houses.
"Only a few thousand Village homes will be available to players in-game"
"Only a few hundred Town homes will be available to players in-game"
"Only a few dozen City homes will be available to players in-game"

Regarding PvP, its been clearly stated in interviews that it will not be UO style open world PvP. You will be opting into PvP via quests/storyline points. The example given is that you could accept contraband to deliver, which would mark you as a target for PvP.

Things like arenas, geographic open world pvp, etc have not been finalized. But you will be able to play the game never participating in PvP at all if that's your choice.

 

I may be in the minority, but what is fun with some guy waiting to kill new players and making that players life miserable? Why would I want to use my limited play time to do that? That isn't realistic at all.

 

Housing - Limited most players wont own them - Perhaps in the next expansion when more land is added would be a good time for someone who is truly concerned about housing to be ready to come and play the game. Could back now and pick up the game, set yourself up to be ready to get a house, and then come back later.

PVP - They've already stated that you can go into single player online and "friends" play mode. That seems like a VERY good way to avoid PVP. They have also stated that some events will require you to flag up for pvp however these would let you know well ahead of time.


@rune_74 As a huge player killer and role player for me PVP was never about killing other people in a greifing fashion. It was ALWAYS about hunting dangerous prey.

I have no other game in my experience that I can say I single handedly took down thirty four players at once... and then got permantly banned from the Atlantic Roleplaying Community. for "liking PVP too much" On that note... So sorry about that H*G.

Most fun I've ever had in any game ever.

I never got off on killing people in a grefing manner it was always to test my build against theirs. To see who could beat who. It was never just to run around rez killing people. I doubt many PVPers would really say they wanted to hunt newbies all day and kill them and take their stuff.

Personally I always thought insurance, bags of sending, and other later niceties in UO created a good method where it was profitable to kill people but less was lost when dieing.

Before Trammel though some of my favorite memories involve grabbing the guild and going mining, dungeon crawling, or patrolling the Yew roads fighting player killers. As an early Yew Militia player one of the things we did was station in the guard houses and provided protection to players on or near the roads. In a game with no forced open PVP you would never even have experiences like that.

Open PVP is far closer to real life than some arbitrary system that says you CAN fight here but not here.

 

I have always been a firm supporter of open full loot pvp because it creates large demands for crafters and keeps pricing stable in the long run by limiting access to resources organically rather than mechanically via system.

I would love to see guilds competing for resources in certain high value area/zones. This leads to my wishlist of allowing guilds to lay siege to towns and villages.

Griefing is another matter all together. There needs to be some penalties for griefing.

 

Full loot is quite nice. I like the idea of PKing to get the good gear, then finding all the nub crafters and pushing them out of area so they can't re-populate the gear into the community.

 

@Andrew

Experiences like that are why I've been yearning for a full loot, open pvp game. When I first played UO in 1998, I was ten years old. I remember spending a long time trying to get a full set of bone armor. When I finally got a full set, someone lured me into the woods and killed me. I cried like a little *****. DrEvil was his name, and I never forgot it. This started a very long rivalry between us. We spent years fighting each other. This even started guild wars. So many epic fights. So many server wide political games were being played. Open PvP like that has so many different effects on the server that cannot be emulated by anything else.

 

Why can't every player who can afford it, buy or build a house? Cause most of SotA is instanced anyway.

 

"Why can?t every player who can afford it, buy or build a house?"

Everyone who can afford a house will be able to buy a house. Initially you'll probably buy houses from NPCs. Once all the plots are taken, you'll be buying houses from other players. As long as you can afford it, you can have a house.

Limiting the supply of houses creates a robust economy around housing. As players decide to move up from villages to towns to cities, there will be a supply of player houses up for sale.

New villages/towns/cities can be added if for some the reason economy doesn't work, and there are no sellers.

 

marthos " Once all the plots are taken, you?ll be buying houses from other players. As long as you can afford it, you can have a house."

Okay, then there's a limited amount of houses and players cannot build houses.... which means shortage until the developers add more house plots? I don't believe artificially limiting the supply is beneficial.

 

They are really trying to avoid the urban sprawl experienced in UO, and I am in complete agreement with that goal. The best locations will be in the towns and villages, particularly for crafters, but if you just want a place to hang your hat, there are ways for other players to get a house but not create suburbia. Lord of the Rings Online, for example, has virtual neighborhoods.

At 3 or 4 selected spots in their world, there is an entrance to the housing development. There, they have developed multiple virtual neighborhoods, all identical, I think. This gives everyone who wants a house an opportunity to own on. Not as sexy as one in town, but for my purposes, one that would be just fine.