Who's with me and prepared to show support?

My turn for a rant. Not so much of a rant maybe, just a plea for calmness and tolerance. I've seen a few threads lately, complaining bitterly about the direction SotA is going, how it is "not what we signed up for", that it is "immersion breaking" and so on. A few areas in particular I would like to address.

The map. OK, huge rants about the map, which I admit did look pretty cheesy and amateurish. Almost certainly a 3D textured overland map would look better. The discussion has now bloomed to the point where any overland map is wrong, and immersion breaking.
I have listened to Chris Spears explaining why the developers came to the conclusion they did; I must say that IMHO the arguments are pretty compelling. I would like maximum "bang for buck" in terms of graphical quality and interactivity, and I do not have fibreoptic internet with gigabit speed. Nor do most of us.
Also, I do NOT want to spend half the day walking - or even riding, if mounts are ever developed - from one end of the map to the other. If I want to get from A to B, I like being able to select a destination and go there. Also, they can easily add new bits and features to "that" particular hex if they want to. And if you have to be in solo mode, the instanced mode works for that.

Combat. Yes, it's different. I am quite enjoying the card system at present (yes, it's manually driven...) - I don't know what the auto iteration will be like. But I am prepared to give it a go. I will not condemn anything before I have tried it. I did not know what the combat system in Baldur's Gate was like before I played it; I got used to it and enjoyed the game.

Runes. They are a legacy from the Ultima series, and to the single game faithful like me, they feel familiar and comfortable. This game is NOT UO2; it was never going to be. It is a hybrid, drawing both from UO and the Ultima series. So there are things that both "schools" of player will be unfamiliar with, and maybe uncomfortable for a while. Try it and see.

Some things can be changed by community input (the style of the overhead map is a classic example); some things cannot (the very fact of a 2-scale map, selective PVP, housing, and the list goes on).

I am old enough to have learned a few things in life - sometimes initial impressions are wrong. I bought a new computer "back in the day" - it came with Windows 95. It looked and felt so bizarre and different from the Windows 3.1 that I was used to that I stormed back to the shop and made them take it off and reinstate the comfortable old 3.1. I eventually realized that this was a bad idea - Win 95 was actually a great advance.

I didn't know what the details of the game were going to be when I signed up; also I hail from the Ultima "series" I am not from the UO school. So I doubt the assertion that the majority support is from UO fans - if anyone did a survey they certainly didn't ask me. And I've sunk a bit into this endeavor!

My point in this ramble is a plea. SotA is different. It is meant to be. It is not UO2. It is not Ultima 10. It is the best game that the team can devise for us. And they ARE listening, and doing their best to accommodate us wherever possible. But it does demand something from us - to be willing to "step out" from our comfort zone, to try something new and different, and who knows - we may even like it!

I am really enjoying the game so far, but I am not a dyed-in-the-wool RG/Ultima apologist, who will see no wrong in anything. I am someone who is prepared to give the development team a chance to make something great, and will try to adapt to what they serve up. As they said, if the combat system proves to be a disaster, they can redo it. But it has to be tried first!!

To those who seem to be grossly dissatisfied, and feel they have made a bad investment, I can only say one thing: PLEASE stay the course. By all means continue providing input and criticism, change the things you can, but recognize that there are things that cannot and will not change, and probably for good reason. Make your final judgement on the game itself, not on pre-alpha releases. And I hope this is enough to allow you to adapt to the style of game that this will be, and you enjoy it as much as most of us will.

If it just can't work for you, and if some aspects are non-negotiable dealbreakers, then I respect that; in return, out of respect to the rest of us would you close the door quietly as you leave.

 

Actually when people complain about "UO2" I think they don't meditate how the real UO2 could be.

 

The overlay map is what will set this game apart (among others things I hope). I understand it's hard to go back to an overlay map when most of the MMO's and single player games out there have gone the way of 1.1. But that does not mean it's a bad thing, if done right it can be a great feature.

I did not see the video about the overlay map but let's take a few things into consideration, I am using WoW as example because it's game everyone knows. I was a WoW gamer for a very long time and I do not intend to turn my post into another WoW bashing, only for fact comparision.

- personel and budget are limited - many many many times I have seen this overlooked. The team is small and resources are small, it's unfair to compare the scope of Portalarium with Blizzard. If the wikipedia article is to be believed WoW took 3 years to develop, tho im pretty certain it was in works long before. Also, Blizzard was quite big back then and it had a secondary unit at Blizzard North. Building stuff for games takes time, debugging can take even longer. So yes, reduced staff has a direct impact on how much you can deliver, because if one guy is taking care of netcode it means he can't check why players are getting stuck on a door porch, someone else has to look into it, if a guy is building a dungeon he will not be building a forest area, multitasking works if you split it by individuals, not if you are giving two diferent jobs to the same person.

- an overlay map eases the burden on world builders and allows for more and better content - the first time I looked at Novia I was amazed how big the place is. That island is not something you can build over a year, unless you are willing to compromise exploration with a much smaller map. On it's release WoW had areas closed off, capitals for example were both amazing and a let down (Stormwind felt like a true big capital but Undercity was just a sewer drain). The overlay map allows the whole island to be technically all open on launch while not forcing the world builders to rush up sections to meet up deadlines. Yes, sure, exploring the map can be fun, for like 3 times at most, I once took a tour of the entire map in WoW, but it's not something I will do again soon. Most people will not care and even explorers will loose interest. With a hugely big map people will start asking for faster ways of travel. Think with me for a moment, in order of importance, what areas will people visit most in game? Settlements will come first because that's where most services and quest givers are, then comes the questing areas and finally the resource areas. The first 2 areas require a huge deal of work already, cities need to look diferent and unique (and bug free by the way), questing areas will require diferent lines of aproach (is it an haunted tomb? a spiders nest? a village under atack by brigands? village under atack from undead on a nearby tomb?). Then there is also this thing called reason, how reasonably big does the world need to be? Arena and Daggerfall proved that a true size world is simply not suited for a game, it's way too big. There is a point at which you need to trim down the size or you get too many spaces to fill up and players will get overhelmed by the size, Middle Earth in Lotro is considered a big map by gaming standarts, but by Tolkien standarts it's quite small as you can make the trip from the ferry to Brandywine Bridge in a just a few minutes. WoW had the advantage that not much had been mapped so they had the freedom to simply add stuff as it suited them (which included ignoring locations in Wc2 or WC3). Long story short, most players find travelling a time sink and only a small part of the experience, they find it boring, they find it tedious and they will not be spending time looking at the gorgeous landscape while hunting or scavenging aaaand, there is also how much the hardware can take. The overlay map (if done right) adresses the world size problem by giving you the ilusion of a much bigger world while still focusing on the more critical areas I mentioned above (cities, questing, resources), and as stated in other threads, it allows for a quicker and dynamic content delivery as you dont need to touch adjacent areas. Blizzard had to rework the whole Azeroth to make flying mounts work and add the new areas. On this subject of the overlay map I wholly agree that the current solution is only good as placeholder, in fact, it reveals too much and it's way too small. By all means have location tags on the 3D map, but only after we have entered them and please not a 1.1 copy of the cloth map, make it like something that stands bettween both the cloth map and the detailed map, players should still feel some sense of size, not an animated version of google maps. One might say the perfect solution would be for the team to fill up hexes as they go and open detailed travelling as those hexes get populated, it's good on paper but... those people will not be creating new questing areas, they will be creating fillers for a very small amount of people to see, while that is content technically, most players will find it a waste of time. One fault I also agree is that this system essentially makes player cities closed areas, unless the overlay map forces you to go through points of interest those cities will not have many players passing, it's certainly an issue to be looked at.

About the UO thing. It's been many years since I played UO and I never got very far, in truth I may also qualify as someone who came more of a single player Ulima than Online. But I find it dangerous that comparisions are often brought in as if UO is some sort of master guide. Yes, UO main remain unique on many aspects and still works because of that, but I think the team should have it's own vision (the overlay map is part of that vision), WoW may have taken a few cues from elsewhere but it created it's own vision and abided to it, even after all the system revamps and expansions the core idea is still there. I Hope Sota does not fall into the trap of trying to be like this or that game.

I am not expecting a son of Ultima VII or a "finished" Ultima IX and certainly not a WoW killer (Blizzard holds that card by the way), im expecting a fun experience and I expect the people at Portalarium will meet those expectations.

 

If I may be blunt for a moment, I'm sick to death of hearing about the overland map. I didn't really get it when I first saw it, but I've traveled along the roads of New Britannia a couple of times and it works fine for me. I have no interest in walking between towns and I have even less interest in mounts. I like the idea of waypoints from Diablo, but now that I've tried the map, it works fine for me. I can dash to a new city and then spend my time wandering around it. I'll spend hours crawling a dungeon or spiraling down a sewer, but don't make me walk between towns. All this talk of hexes and 2D vs 3D maps is lost on me. I'm pretty satisfied with how it works now. Sometimes feel like people throw out these terms just to try and make the devs do a dance.

When I heard of this project I was a little misty-eyed. A new game that would blend the elements of Ultima (which I played - single player) and Ultima Online (which I didn't play) sounded so amazing I wanted to be a part of it. And I'm still amazed to be a part of it. The amount of work done on a project of this scale in around a year's time is outstanding. And let's keep in mind, it's ALPHA. It's not a complete game. Technically, Alpha build games are barely useable are merely show proof of concept. The fact we can walk around this world is remarkable.

If I wanted to play WoW I would go out and buy a copy. If I wanted Ultima Online I work my way into that world. But neither interest me. Heck, if I wanted pure hack and slash I would get Diablo III, but even after waiting 10 years for that game to arrive on the market I skipped over it because it has too elements that don't appeal to me. Shroud of the Avatar has a lot of things that pique my interest and curiosity and I like what I see. Not everything is my cup of tea, but again, it's Alpha, we're just getting started.

This team knows a thing or two about making games. It certainly feels like people are "demanding satisfaction" when we're still in the concept phase. Let's keep this in mind as well, just because Episode 1 gets released doesn't mean it's done. I'm sure they'll tweak and update and tinker with the game endlessly to meet the wants of the game playing public. I have no regrets and only forward to good things. I'm still a little giddy inside that 5 episodes are planned. Really, 10 years of watching and helping this game and this world grow into something amazing? Yes, please, count me in all the way.

 

I made this post in another thread, for current world size we have a map that is 128x128. Each hex (from an early chat-this might be different now) averages 2km. it works out to over 40,000 square miles. LOTRO is around 30k and elderscrolls 2(which has a fast travel system) is around 50k. Skyrim is 14 square miles (No I didn't miss a k there, it is only 14 square miles). I agree, this map system allows for a much larger world that we don't have to try to run through every time we go somewhere.

I had played muds and graphical muds before UO. (When I first tried UO I was told it was the best graphical mud out). I've tried a lot of MMOs but only handful have I played "heavily". UO, warhammer online, WoW, final fantasy 11 and 14, SWTOR. I missed out on a few that I wish I tried, such as age of conan and tabula rasa.

What I really don't understand, is the desire for a 1:1 world with no instancing at all. This isn't just SoTA community requesting it. It is the most requested feature for an MMO to have, no instancing, completely open world. Can you Imagine sharing skyrim with even 500 other players? you'd need 40 shards/worlds to handle UO's population, and 30,000 shards/worlds for WoW's population. Wow and most other MMOs allow 900-1500(edit: more searches found claims of 15,000) concurrent connections. But these are much larger worlds with instanced areas. (you'd likely also have server boundries like UO had)

 

You should give Diablo 3 a shot if you liked 1 or 2. The latest expansion fixed a lot of the issues the original release had. (mostly with loot/difficulty/auction house). It's a very fun game. I don't care much for the binds on account legendaries have, but at least you can trade them with your friends if you got them in that session with them. Character customization through leveling sadly still isn't there (Diablo 2 was awesome for that).. They sort of have it with the paragon levels, but really, it doesn't make a difference.

 

It's one of the unfortunate side effects of modern civilization. People want some ideal, but they have no idea what it is, what it entails or if they really want it in the long run. The devs, thankfully, seem to tbe more professional that a lot of teams out there, and are not caving to pressure for fashionable (and impossible) game features. How many indie games just suck, because they gave in to pressure from well-intentioned gamers?

I don't know better than a team of game developers, I know that, and I am glad to offer bits of opinion or bug finding, but I really want them to continue on their path. If I hate the game in the end, well, that's sad. Someone else will love it. I would love to see the ranting relax a bit as well. I can't imagine the devs are glad they let us into the Alpha at this point.

 

Chris in his dev chat stated that hexes could be either 2, 4, or 8 kms in size. So your numbers are a conservative estimate. It doesn't change the statements tho, only reinforces them.

 

Great thread. This game and this team have my support 100%. I am more than happy with the direction the game is going. As I said in another post, I researched everything I could find on it before putting my money on it, so I feel confident I know exactly what I'm backing.

I love some of the innovative ideas they have, most of which are new to me, and like the OP I'm more than willing to give them a try before saying if I like them or not. If I wasn't, I would have waited to put my money on the table, rather than jump in and then complain about everything in advance that I haven't even tried.

 

Asclepius
You were way overdue for a rant!
"And Ditto" !
~Time Lord~

 

Aslecpius I hear ya, but I'm not so sure your "rant" against ranters needs to be done again.

Why? Someone always bears the standard for the game in every rant thread. Furthermore, the SoTA forum is such a tame place compared to most any other forum I've ever had the misfortune of encountering. SoTA does well in having an active community that is willing to support the team through all the ups and downs.

From the beginning, there have been topics - PvP anyone? - that have the usual mix of people grumbling and threatening doom. Starr even championed criticism a while back as we all remember. While people do get a little over the top sometimes... challenge and speaking up can actually help the game in its own way.

If something "doesn't work" for people, I've grown to appreciate what they have to say and I don't want them to close the door quietly on the way out. If people just fade away something would be lost I fear. I'd rather know someone was angry than have to guess at it.

 

And here I thought I was the only one who noticed the angry aggression threads. I agree with op.

 

Just showing the dev's a little love

 

Lest we forget they have gotten $4M worth of love so far, and have a great amount of support from the community. A few ranty forum posts are not going to undermine things to a great extent. When you look at the entire forum "angry aggression" as rune said is actually extremely rare. It just stands out a little more sometimes. I think the support/community is as fine as it always has been.

 

I believe that the appeal here is for more productive posts and thereby more suggestions that are not all calling for New Britannia to be just like some other game out there. A certain amount of reflective view to pervious successful games is reasonable, but "No No No, I want it just like the other games" seems counterproductive to anything new being designed here and $4Mil is nothing when it comes to "EA or similar mega-company's funding for those cookie cutter very similar to each other games".
I as an individual can appreciate harsh comments or objections, yet when it comes to productivity, a call out for less unreasonable objection to everything seems to be a step in the right direction, just as much as the insistence of others that may not be happy with anything other than a replica of another game.
~Time Lord~

 

LOL I'm with you. ***majoria cheers for SOTA**** I say Chill to anyone who isn't lol. Let this game get made.

All the developers need is an angry forum.

It's one thing to talk about neat features, or talk about concerns, or wonderful ideas, or suggestions, that can help in the development process. Anger helps no one.
For some the game is very difficult to invision at this stage.

Remember RG's dream.....an interactive game, full of surprises, secret passageways, npcs that know your name and say things that surprise you *sighs*, just wonderful.
Making a game from scratch is a very slow process on it's own but imagine making it with a constant divided community,
and also one who throws insult and anger everywhere.

We can help, I just know we can. Some things are not changing due to budget constraints ,so move on to what you like in a game.
I feel very happy and priviledged to be a part of this. This game will make history, and if you can't see that now, just sit tight and find your patience.
Count to 4 and you'll feel better. At release judge again if you like.

 

Every now and again I load this up and watch it. And then when it finishes playing I feel really sad.


I seem to remember when UO2 was scraped that the team printed out the code and had a BBQ where they lit it on fire. Am I the only one that remembers this? I used to have pictures, but the drive died on me long, long ago, and my backup discs got ruined when I moved.

 

They should keep the code for the mounts! I wish to see that!

 

I just get tired of my eyeballs having to endure being a shoulder for others just to cry on...
But I know what this game really needs is more dancing girls

I'm happy with New Britannia Productivity and an original game concept...
~Time Lord~

 

I see no reason why we should not agitate for a better game and for a fully immersive world.