Why this game is important

I played Ultima Online from release until Trammel ruined everything. During that period, UO felt like a gift; it filled a need I never knew I had until the first time I saw a friend playing the game. I was just a kid, but beginning on the day I was exposed to UO while looking over my friend's shoulder, I knew that I had to dive in, and that I would be helplessly addicted. I was too young to work a real job, so I started mowing huge lawns with a crappy push mower just to afford my own internet connection and the game's monthly fee. I regret nothing -- UO is still the greatest game I have ever played. Fortunately for all of you, I remember why.

I donated for two reasons: (1) even despite paying hard-earned money for UO's monthly fees, Richard Garriott and his team gave me a gift that I am still thankful for; and (2) I didn't want to be in a position where, if SotA failed to reach release due to lack of funding, I was forced to hypocritically lament about the lack of money available to nontraditional games.

This game has a chance to be something special. Nothing has ever come close to replicating the experience that UO provided -- none of the new MMOs have managed to hold my interest for more than a year, and I've played a lot of them. It's hard to distill my feelings into a feature wishlist, but here are some of the things that made UO great, and that I hope carry over into SotA:

1) Some kind of meaningful loot/loss system as a death penalty. This is probably the most important feature for so many reasons. For example, since players must risk losing what they carry, it prevents the (all too familiar) gear grind from becoming the sole focus of the game. By extension, the risk of loss creates value and demand for both player-crafted items and, specifically, for items (player crafted or not) that are NOT THE ABSOLUTE BEST ITEMS AVAILABLE TO PLAYERS. In gear-grind games, there is almost no reason for non-elite items to exist. In contrast, when you have a chance to lose those shiny treasures, you might elect to venture out with an easily replaceable set of gear instead (which your local blacksmith will thank you for!). The fact that a lich lord could kill you and loot your silver katana of vanquishing made even PvE encounters meaningful and exhilarating. When death has no consequences, life and its victories feel unfulfilling and hollow (see, e.g., any MMO apart from Eve in the last ten years).

2) Open world PvP. Why? Because instanced PvP just feels like entering a tournament that is isolated from the "real world" where players PvE, live in persistent housing, treasure hunt, gather resources, and just generally exist. It adds suspense even to encounters with friendly "blue" players (is this player a thief? is it a murderer with a low number of kills? might this player summon a reckless blade spirit that will turn on me after it kills the troll it was intended for?). When PvP is restricted, you always know exactly what you are in for: either no-questions-asked combat in a zone devoid of any other content, or a peaceful frolic to kill mobs while suited up in your best gear (see point number 1 above). The original UO world felt excitingly stressful and rewarding, while Feluccia and Trammel both felt limp and contrived once they were separated. Again, it is the element of risk that makes even mundane activities worthwhile. Remember how scary it was to keep killing monsters with 7k gold in your backpack? That feeling sprang from the risk of being PK'd, not from the thrill of provoking drakes onto each other for 2 hours. When you finally deposited that money in the bank, you felt damn good.

3) A skill cap and possibly a one or two character limit. This one is simple: it gives each skill more individual value and forces players to rely on others in the community who have chosen a path different from their own. In just one example, Darkfall blew it big time by not foreseeing the problems associated with everyone maxing every skill. Granted, even UO did not have a one character limit, but many skills took so much time and so many resources to raise that many people preferred to buy their next heater shield from their neighbor (because they actually could lose their previous heater shield -- see point 1!). Furthermore, because changing builds/skills was a zero sum game that required a significant time investment, people really obsessed about their templates. With many modern games, it costs a few silver to respec into an entirely different build. This sucks, and encourages players to flood into whichever flavor-of-the-month build the latest patch or forum post has legitimized.

Sorry for the eminently accurate wall of text of power. I hope at least some people share these sentiments. I should note that I never even played a PK character, but I had tons of fun hunting them when I felt strong, or running from them when I felt vulnerable or had too much to lose. No game can be fulfilling without providing stress, anger, and trepidation, as those negative emotions are required to truly feel the complementary emotions of relief, happiness, and excitement, respectively. Good luck to RG and his team -- I hope you remember what made UO special, because I sure do.

 

WallOfText is attacking you!

I agree with everything 100%

 

This is 100% how I feel and I appreciate your effort explaining this as so many people continue to not understand why it was so amazing.

This post needs to be stickied.

A lot of people are confused and assume anyone that wants it this way is a Pk that likes to grief. I too was never a PK.

 

@Baltae Thanks for the read. I still consider myself new to the MMO scene compared to people like you & my husband who has played UO, EQ, DAoC and other games with me. My first experience with an MMO was Lineage II, at the time the game had just come out and WOW was still in the process of being developed. I remember one particular day I was so happy because I had finally saved up enough money to be able to purchase a particularly expensive weapon that I had been eying for a while. Later that day I went adventuring on my own when two PKs came out to play. I was killed and to my horror my weapon fell to the ground and they took it. (In that game your stuff didn't have a 100% chance to drop like UO, sometimes nothing dropped when you died) As I walked back into town the two were sitting there setting up shop to sell my weapon. Now, my problem with this wasn't the fact that they stole my weapon, my problem wasn't even the fact that they were selling my weapon, my problem with this was the fact that it took me a week to be able to afford that weapon. Ever since then I made sure that if a game had PvE only servers, that is where I would play. I think though, the way UO worked was a bit different am I right? My husband says getting armor & weapons was no big deal. I think as long as I could go out and spend an hour or less to re-equip lost pieces the situation wouldn't be as bad & I would be more willing to join in that sort of PvP content. My point is, as long as PvP is realistic & fair, even more PvE prone people would be willing to test the waters and give open PvP a try.

 

I think you're actually missing what made UO special if you think "Trammel ruined everything". PK's, Anti PK's, full loot PVP, open PVP everywhere... it was a single aspect of the game and its not what made UO special to the majority of people.

The interactivity with the world, the amount of things we could all do THATS what made it special and that's why UO's numbers went up when Trammel was introduced, because it allowed people to explore and interact with the amazing world without the jerks (PK's). MMO's now are all pretty to look at but all you can do is quest, level and kill. UO let us all do so much more.

If you were to add full loot open pvp to WOW or any of its clones that would give you everything you're asking for, and it would still fall so very short of offering the UO experience. In my opinion you and the rest of the people who claim Trammel ruined UO are short changing that which was UO, either that or you never took the time to experience what truly made the game so exciting to everyone else. If that's the case, you missed an awesome game!

As for the loss of items to other players in PVP, it didn't remove them from the economy it just shifted things around. When I killed a PK, I didn't throw his stuff away I put it in my bank so when I died I could equip that to replace my lost items, and I was not alone in doing so. Item decay from use removes items from the economy and is a far better method to insure crafters are constantly needed.

I took part in the UO beta, still have my cd on the shelf beside me , and I kept playing for 6 or 7 more years. I spent time in both facets after Tram and Fel were introduced. Did my fair share of Anti PK both pre and post Tram, eventually took part in Factions with the Council of Mages and had a nice pile o Silver Coins and a blue War Horse to show for it. So I guess im in between groups, I loved UO even more when Trammel came out because it increased the number of people to socialize with, it was less frustrating to play when I just wanted to relax on my crafter, and the option to do full loot PVP was still there when I felt like taking part. All it did was remove people from the world who had no interest in PVP and would have ended up quitting anyhow. The only change was, for the most part, everyone in Felucca was interested in PVP and on equal footing which made the fights that much more exciting, unless you were a PK who lost their easy targets. If you gave up on UO after Trammel came out all I feel for you is sorry for missing out on several more years of greatness.

 

I played several years after the Trammel/Felucia split, but I started over on Siege Perilous. I still had a character on Pacific, and I remember conditions there weren't that great. Felucia was pretty deserted because the PvPers had quit or emigrated.

Everyone has different things they liked about UO. Pre Trammel UO was like nothing else before it, and like nothing else since.

I miss it. I hope we can get it back. I have a suggestion in the Shroud of the Avatar Wish List forum to do just that, create an entirely separate play mode beyone SPO/FPO/OPO that I call SPO, Siege Perilous Online. If the devs would provide that, everyone would be happy, single role players, small group role players, open world role players, and full PvP/full loot PvP players.

It is a modest proposal that should not interfere with the rest of the game at all.

 

I support your Siege Perilous Online idea Owain And I would definitely make a crafter there, as well as another character in the regular mode to play for the days when I was not into PVP. Now to be completely fair both Pre and Post Tram UO were unique in the industry, everything else seemed to have gone the EQ route.

What I will not throw my support behind is a blanket "If you want to play online with others you HAVE to play PVP" or a "If you want he best crafting stuff you HAVE to be vulnerable to PK's" Some people don't want to see PVP, ever, which should be a completely viable way to play. One groups request isn't any more important than the other.

There are more people who want to socialize online with strangers than there are people who want to kill each other, that's just how it is. And I would rather this game be as successful as possible instead of being a niche game for old die hard PVP'ers.

 

No, Elsad, I agree entirely, which is why I want Siege perilous to be completely separate, including being unable to take an SP char back to SPO/FPO/OPO, or vice versa. That way no one can say that SP players can drop down to escape PvP, or that player can level up characters in safety, and then cheese their way into SP. It's entirely separate.

If you support the idea, give a supporting comment in the Shroud of the Avatar Wish List. The more positive bumps it gets, the more likely it will be noticed by the devs.

 

The correct title for this thread should have been:

Why this game is important to me.

Otherwise, your reasons are not why it is important, at least to me. It is important to me because I want the old Ultima game style worlds I want the worlds RG created.

It had nothing to do with PVP or who's stuff you could steal. That had absolutely nothing to do with what made Ultima great.

Literally he created living breathing worlds with NPC's with schedules and dynamic areas. He had lessons to be learned as you played, and tough choices to make. I want one of those worlds back.

So yeah, your reason for what makes this game important is way different then mine.

 

After all the drama I watched revolving around Wing Commander, Ultima, Westwood and all the others back in the late 90's, I am so happy to see this sort of "indy" success. It's a way to successful defeat the publishers who destroyed so many great franchises AND prevented their creators from returning to revive them.

We now have creative games coming out in a manner unique to our platform. This is PC Gaming.

 

I think the glory days of open world full loot PvP are over. In the beginning of online games, Meridian59 and Ultima Online had the full loot open world PvP. But it attracted far more players than just those interested in that. You had your monster slaying groups, crafting group, business owners, and such. You had all of these people put together. The PKers had prey. And the prey had no other virtual worlds to go to. This created something really unique. You could actually be an evil bastard that killed innocents. Or you could defend the innocents and become really noble and heroic. Those were the qualities that made PvP in UO so unique.

That all has changed. With so many games out there, these different player groups go to the game that caters to them the most. The crafter put up with PKers in UO because it was the only option for a good crafting MMO. Same with the PvE guys and business guys. Games that have tried full world open PvP consist of a very small amount of players, and they're almost all hardcore PvPers. I look at Darkfall of a recent example of a UO-like game that never got the crafters, pvers, and business folks interested in mass.

Seige Perilous Online is an interesting idea, but it would not be the glory days I miss. It would just be a very large PvP arena. Only the PvPers would be in that mode. The crafters, businessmen, questers, won't be there. There would be no innocents to kill, so you can't really become evil. There would be no innocents to defend, so you can't really become good. It's just an arena, where two willing combatants enter and see who is better. There is no good, there is no evil. It feels more like professional wrestling than the feeling UO had in the beginning.

I don't know how to recapture that feeling.

 

@marthos has a pretty valid point. The open world full loot and impact back then as compared to now is completely different and sometimes unthinkable to certain people. We all know this, and the latter as well, there have been many discussions and posts about it.

I'm not against open PvP and full looting, though to be honest, I'm not for it either. What I am for though is having the option to choose which you'd like to be involved in.

If the technology and options are possible, having a Siege Perilous type mode aside from the current ones would please EVERYONE (which is nearly impossible to do). It would have to be the same rules as SPO to OPO... you can't transfer that character, same with the new Siege Online Option.

That would probably be something you would OPT INTO... meaning actually pay towards since they're already providing the other modes and this would be an additional cost for them to keep everything separate.

I'm sure people would be interested... but how many and is it feasible for their budget? Would you all help them out?

@Dean478 - I'm quite happy for how this is heading as well! It's nice to see something we adore not be in the stranglehold of a company known for... choking a...!

Btw OP... Trammel did NOT "ruin everything". Many more factors than that.

 

@BorgKitten

In UO players crafted everything. You would have a chest in your house full of armor sets. When you decided to go out that day you would pick one and throw it on. If you died and lost everything, you went back to your house and re-outfitted yourself. If you were going to go do something extremely risky you would wear very cheap armor and go with limited spell reagents.

There were still very powerful items but using them was risk/reward. It was fun to go 3 shot Litch Lords with a Silver Heavy Xbow of Vanquishing but it was much safer to use a player crafted Xbow that is easily replaced.

Because of this, the PvP scene was full of player crafted level gear for the most part. It didn't take an incredible amount of time to get into it. You just needed to suit up and go. The main difference is, your weapons/armor are more of a daily resource than a permanent thing you grind for days/weeks/months for. You focus more on the gameplay/adventure than getting a set of flaming shoulder-pads. I think the OP's point is the MMO world needs this again from a AAA MMO. If anyone can, Lord British can pull it off. If people want to play a gear focused MMO, there are a hundred of them out there.

 

@BorgKitten You're right -- weapons in UO were not like that, which is entirely my point. When the game isn't a gear grind, your play is more about your character's skills, and your skills as a player. Also, because there was actually a risk associated with dying (apart from clicking a waypoint to respawn for a nominal amount of cash), most people did not venture out into dangerous areas with their most prized possession...unless you went with a some kind of protection. For example, you could treasure hunt with a like-minded group or guild, or even hire other players to protect you while you were dungeon crawling. Players often chose to wield cheap player-made weapons because (1) they were quite effective, and (2) you wouldn't be sad when you lost it (even NPCs could loot your corpse, though you could kill them and loot it right back). Again, it was from the element of risk that much of the unique UO content sprang.

It kinda bums me out to see that a lot of people missed the point of my post. For all of you who are saying that "I missed out on a lot of UO content if all I care about is open PvP and full loot," you're wrong. I didn't miss anything; I played all the content that the game had to offer. The unfortunate fact for many gamers was that the introduction of Trammel made UO an entirely different kind of game. It cheapened every experience by removing the risks and consequences that caused you to care about your character in the first place. And Feluccia just became the wild west -- a land populated only by idle griefers and other nostalgic players wondering "what the hell happened?"

@RelExpo you're right, other things contributed to the bastardization of the UO I loved (item insurance, absurd new classes, etc), but you are being a bit pedantic. Obviously I am painting in broad strokes here for the sake of brevity. On the flip side, I know factors other than those I originally listed made UO special (persistent housing alone was an amazing concept). Hell, the game was groundbreaking in many regards, and most of us had never seen anything like it. What I am failing to understand is why some of you are even looking forward to SotA if you want it to have the same ******** mechanics as the dozens of other games out there right now. If you want consensual PvP, perma items with fancy pixels, and worry-free life and death, why not play Guild Wars 2? WoW? LotR? In fact, why not play EA's version of UO? It's still there, with its awesome item insurance and other easy mode nonsense.

This game isn't just important to me as Rune_74 suggests; it's important to anyone who wants to play something unique that might actually have staying power. If this game fails to distinguish itself from the slew of boring gear-grind raid fests out there, then many gamers will play it for six months and then move on to the next big name release. The game doesn't need full loot or completely unrestricted PvP, but it needs something akin to those features to provide the feelings of risk and reward that make games worth playing at all. Simply put, if a game fails to heavily penalize you for dying, then what is the thrill of surviving?

 

@marthos: Great insight into overarching trends and the nature of "that feeling" so many people are talking about and trying to recapture. I agree it was something magical, truly unforgettable.

I've coped with the loss of that magical experience with an extension of your own reasoning; like you said, innocent victims won't continue to be innocent victims if they are given the choice. Not only is it impractical to resist the demand of those victims for a game that doesn't subject them to the whims of merciless PKs but I suppose it would also be immoral on a certain level.

So since the supply of games will necessarily respond to gamers' demands and resisting the wave of change just isn't realistic, it's best to accept that you were part of that magic experience then and now you have the chance to be a part of another one e.g. the combat system RG described to MarkeeDragon [<a href="https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=3359">] (starting at 32:20) is going to be revolutionary.

 

Also, as to the "siege perilous" idea, I think it's definitely a compromise worth talking about; however, it is definitely not the ideal solution that some of you are making it out to be. I think forcing all different types of players together is an important goal -- the resultant diversity of play styles and disparity of opinions is what would make the game interesting and challenging. The game content must be interesting enough to attract and retain all types of players, not just sheep or just wolves, exclusively.

For all of you who purport to be interested in RG's content above all else, are you also saying you will forgo experiencing that content if there is a little bit of risk associated with exploring the game? In UO, once you got back to your house and locked the door (don't forget to use detect hidden!), you finally felt safe and relieved...in real life! In modern games, where you lose nothing by stupidly getting your toon killed, I cannot even fathom how players manage to care about their toon's well-being.

 

" I think forcing all different types of players together is an important goal..."

When you have to 'force' something upon your customer, that is an indication your game design is lacking.

If the Devs actually take me up on my Siege Perilous mode, I would want players to come there because they WANT to come there, not because they were FORCED to come there.

 

@ZtruK &amp; @Baltae, sadly I feel like I have been gimped of any good MMOs in my life so far. All of the stories of the good old days make me realize how cookie cutter , boring &amp; unoriginal MMOs and games in general are these days. No one thinks outside of the box, no one cares, well they do but only about money. Anyway, I am glad that my husband's childhood hero is back on the scene, I can't wait to play something literally NEW, I'm ready to see what his amazing game is like. The idea of a sandbox game has always fascinated me and I long for something else other than jumping into dungeons for hours just so I can have better gear. I am willing to jump into a PVP environment not knowing what to expect, I'm just ready to have fun in a MMO environment LOL! My husband used to talk my head off about UO and now I'm talking his head off about SoTA!

 

Owain, I think your Seige Perilous idea should be more of a backup plan. I'm hoping that RG and crew can revolutionize PvP in a way to include more types of players. The open world gankfest of newbies doesn't work, and neither does the "no loss" ******** systems of most MMOs. Something in the middle may be perfect.

I ponder the question of what would motivate the PvE'ers, crafters, and business owners to enter PvP. The risk and reward system obviously plays a part, but if the game heavily rewards hardcore PvPers, that will turn off the non-PvP crowd.

A traditional experience in UO was that your miner would work a mine for say 30 minutes, producing a bunch of ingots. A PKer would then sweep in, kill that miner, and take 30 minutes of his labor. The PKer had very little valuables on him, and had little threat from the miner. The PKer had high reward with low risk. I think that balance needs to be adjusted. I'm not quite sure how though.

Perhaps the PvP opt in missions need to include non-combat roles for success. Instead of mining that cave for ore that you lose when killed, the mission could instead be one of sabotage. Your miner goes to an enemy castle to weaken its foundations. The longer he survives, the more damage he does to the castle walls. If he succeeds, maybe a tunnel appears that leads directly inside. If he's stopped, he is rewarded based on how long he survived in there hacking away.

 

@Owain I knew someone would seize on the word "force" and only respond to that. I should have known better than to use a non-neutral term in a forum. What I mean is that I hope the game content is so inspiring that it will attract all types of players, and that everyone will agree that playing with WHATEVER single rule set is worth it for access to that killer content.

Furthermore, you are misstating my post. I don't want to force players into a siege perilous mode. I hope the dev team can generate content so intriguing that it obviates the need for a separate siege perilous mode. There are already so many existing games for players who want to feel unthreatened at all times -- can't we have just one game every ten years that is at least somewhat attractive to the rest of us? Since you are advocating for a siege perilous mode, I know you feel like I do for the most part.