New player here - my first thoughts

The irony is that it was kickstarted as a single player game first and foremost with just an optional mode to play it in multiplayer. How things have dramatically changed since then.
I agree that the storyline is not the best - which is disappointing since it's written by someone who made some of the most compelling stories in the Ultima series.

If you can get past some of SotA's shortcomings, though... there's a lot of fun to have. So, welcome!!

 

In terms of the loot as others have said, apart form the fact its pretty rubbish, you are meant to get your kit from other players. Just loot everything and sell the lot. It is also worth using the public vendors, you can sell 5 ore for 25gold to a vendor or 150+ gold on the public vendor, it just isn't instant. Same with wood and most other resources.

 

Is our only hope hiring Adam & Jamie?

 

They won't work together ever again, so that's out the window.

 

Richard has praised Warren Specter as the main writer of the stories of those Ultima games.

 

I agree with these. I know thier idea behind the loot is that youll want to buy crafted stuff with the money you make off loot, and that you have to sell trash to merchants to do that effectivly.

One of the big problems in my eyes is the inability for people to participate in the vendor economy without having to grind a single tecource for an extendedtime. This is one thing they plan on changing at some pointso that a newbie can make 120 gold by selling that single chunk of tin to somones buy order for 100 chunks of tin

 

Damn, when did they add the spiritual successor to ultima online part then? Pulled the old switcharoo.

One of the biggest selling points of this game is the player based economy and loot. There are many games where you are force fed a loot progression as you quest, crafting in those games is usually regulated to non end game gear and maybe a few special items here and there, or a item modification that slightly increases the power of an item, but in this game it is possible to just focus on gathering and crafting full time.

 

Shroud of the Avatar was always touted as a spiritual successor to both SP Ultima and Ultima Online.

"I think we have the basis of a selectable multiplayer that even though there seem to be two camps, the people that want to go “I want a solo player game and never see another person period” or there are the people of “I want an open world MMO and anything less than that is gonna piss me off” I know I have players that are in completely opposite camps and I believe we have created a technology which will let you play in whatever camp you like but I actually believe the people will be coming in the middle; I sincerely believe I created a system which will let multiplayer be additive and not an impediment to a story based roleplaying game."

That's straight from RG's mouth when I interviewed him five year ago.

So anyone claiming otherwise is either deluded or flat out lying.

Sure, they eventually stopped calling it Selective Multiplayer and started calling it a MMO, but that's just semantics, and the reason they did that because basically EVERYONE except Portalarium was calling it a MMO. Indeed pretty much all videogames websites who reported about SotA (whether mainstream presse or less mainstream videogames outlets) basically described it as UO2 of sorts, rarely making any mention of the Single Player component of the game. Indeed THIS was the reason that when I interviewed Richard Garriott, I focused solely on the Singler Player aspects of the game, because nobody else was talking about it and a lot, and I mean A LOT, of people where under the impression that this was game without SP based solely on the KickStarter coverage. So I guess I can get some blame for putting the SP into focus.

The game was released exactly as it was announced, as a game you could play Single Player Offline (which I did), Single Player Online, with Friends Online, or in Full MMO mode. That is fact

That the game was released in an incomplete and unpolished state does not change that fact. Neither does the fact that they are changing the Online rules now (in all likelyhood because it's underperforming), but that's irrelevan as to how the game was presented and that was always basically "Ultima X + Ultima Online 2 All in one".

There are enough legitimate complain to be made about SotA without having to be disingeneous about it.

Sadly backing a Kickstarter game doesn't garantuee thant the end result will be good, which is something people should keep in mind.

-Sergorn

 

Didn't know that. Makes sense..Specter is a fantastic storyteller!

 

I realize that there are a significant number of kickstarter backers who feel it took too long AND that they did not get the game they wanted.

But I feel that SotA, in it's current state, is very solid. Though there are features, various systems, and performance issues that need addressed, I am confident in the developers to continue updates and improvements each patch. I see polish being applied little by little each month in reasonable and achievable amounts.

I am happy to be a part of this community and I see a bright future for it.

 

Time Stamp 13:00, but I found the whole interview worth watching

 

Spector's "Deus Ex" was one of my all time favorite stories in gaming. No wonder Ultima V was so compelling. Thanks for sharing that vid!

 

Thanks for your feedback! A few of us here have been championing for a new dialogue UI so hopefully that's something we'll see as the game progresses.

Interestingly the concept is that this game is supposed to be equally strong in the single-player and multi-player aspect. Strong story is obviously a must for SP. They're actively working on fixing up the current quest system and they'll be introducing a new one for Episode 2 so we should see some good changes here. It very much ties into the dialogue box too because presentation is important!

Performance was a lot better in R57, not sure what's happened but it looks like it got a lot worse recently. That one's a constant battle.

And graphics are getting better all the time.

Welcome onboard! It's a very fun train to be on.

 

Believe it or not these bags were in! But they were causing too many issues so they hid them and eventually removed them. You never know, maybe one day we'll see them again.

 

I love old school GUMPs, but frankly "Bag Mode" just wasn't feasible with the sort of loot SotA is providing. When by just emptying a scene you end up with like dozens of weapons as loot to sell for instance, it's just not manageable.

It's the sort of inventory system that only work with low loot games like Ultima VII, Ultima VIII and (early) Ultima Online were. Sadly low loot games are a thing of a past.

-Sergorn

 

They removed bag mode because very few people were using it and it was work to maintain it (and it needed some bug fixes and work).

 

You suddenly made me realize that SotA needs a "group all the rusty/shoddy weapons into one big trash pile" button.

 

Some RPG has as a "mark a junk" function for items you get, then all items marked a junk are on a separate page and don't appear in your mean inventory page, and you can just "sell all junk" as vendor. I hate the sort of pointless junk loot heavy RPGs we get now because it's just cluttering making inventory pointless and not fun with junk whose only purpose is to be sold anyway.

If you ask me Ultima IX had the right idea where killing **** just directly give you gold - if the sole point if getting junk loot is to sell it, might as well remove it altogether and just give gold.

-Sergorn

 

I think one thing that cold make things more interesting is having loot drops with more random stats. finding a long sword or weapon with higher stats then normal that can be taken to a crafter to enhance further would add a lot more. just like Artifacts which do this, there should be just standard loot with variables to make them stand out more. Or look at some other games where you find artifacts / un standard loot where you can harvest some of what makes it special to apply to another item. thus it become a component. We have a few things in the game like that but not enough. Crafter items are great but again more useful drops need to happen if you want people to want to keep farming.

As to the world they need more NPC's to fill it to make it seem more alive as well rather then static everything have some wander more around the scenes.

more rare world events. why not have world bosses that randomly spawn. Or make it so that towns under siege actually have mobs in them killing off npc's and town folk until cleared. Look at what Rift did, they have Ai and mobs slowly take over everything and hold it until players took it back. We have the Cabalist why could they not do the same. we have the tech with the engine, perhaps as cabilists and their armies take over the lands around them change in look and die off, world goes darker in captured areas.

just throwing some ideas out to better engage players to make them matter in the grand scheme.