Will or should question marks above heads of NPCs make it into the game?

Spoiler

Just wanted to add that the single-player experience is near non-existent as it is right now. Much of the lore and story are being concealed at the moment, and the story will provide the majority of the satisfaction of single-player.

Remember that the Hidden Vale will be a pseudo-equivelant to a starting tutorial. It will provide the training to new players in how to navigate the story/quest system. Meaning it will teach players how to find the "invisible question marks".

From what we've heard, the "single player" storyline will be complex, involved & motivating. (and fun too i hope )

However, excepting the "single player offline" version of the game, the single-player experience will still be informed and enriched by the activities of the entire player population. So, single player online is not a "true" single player experience. And multi-player is not a "true" MMO experience (the definition of which is obviously limited by the relatively short history of the genre).

The distinction from MMO is

• Players have an option to control their interaction with other players on a base level, to the point of allowing 'visual mute' as part of the ignore command
• PVP is an additional layer of control on interaction with players that you have allowed to enter your 'overall instance' or 'reality tunnel' or 'play stream' or whatever. This varies from other MMOs such as UO that have segregated populations into PVP and PVE by server
• SotA's dynamic population throttle (as well as method of hosting) allow the player base to interact (mostly) as if it all exists on the same server. So we have a kind of "Single World System" that avoids segregating players by region (as in UO and WoW), play style, or overall population limits. Their interactions may be limited but they still exist to each other and can find each other if the need or desire arises.

Therefore, one could argue that SotA is "redefining" or "improving" the MMO model. One could also argue that the "Selective" model is actually more "Massively Multiplayer" than "traditional MMOs" and therefore more deserving of the title in the first place. In fact, I would say it is allowing Richard to create a world more in line with his original vision for Ultima Online, as I've heard him describe it.

As Trady said, it's a semantic argument, albeit (imho) a necessary one.

"Shards" were created to solve a problem. Trammel and Feluccia have collided to form Daedelus, and the Shards have all fallen to the surface of New Britannia. The old ways are no longer needed.

My point is, we're dealing with problems in new ways now, and I don't think there's a need to reinforce the old training that players have received via other games. It would only serve as a crutch (or possible a hobble) and encourage them to be intransigent and unwilling to accept the new UI and other differences present in this game. While providing for various play styles, we still want to funnel the mechanics of UI into a consistent functional architecture.

 

At this point, I think you're both right.

Unfortunately.


I pledged for this game because of the promise of a new single player experience rivaling ultimas of the past, as did MANY other people. Currently, however, we are not getting that. Just because they are keeping story and canon quiet, doesn't help the issues of A) companions B) NPC conversations and C) no stealing at all for the entire first episode (!)

 

There are those who prefer to play offline, or solo. Some people enjoy a "pure" experience untainted by others' actions.

That being said, I would expect that a majority of Offline players who have the connectivity to transition to SPO or beyond once they play the game a while. Players who beat the offline experience will be thirsty for more content or new challenges. This is one of the clever bits of not charging a subscription - it provides less impediment of getting the customer to the product.

EDIT --> I think you're right that there's really no way offline can compete with SPO in terms of content and development attention. However, designing the features to make it as awesome as possible will be a great boon to the online single-player experience.

I fully agree with you on Companions and Stealing. Though I think you'll be able to pick up objects that don't belong to you - not sure if that will affect NPC behavior. A 'steal' skill seems primarily aimed at multiplayer and likely they are not ready to deal with an entire new set of PVP complexities. [Side note - I would like to be able to examine another player's gear with a 'look' command, if not their inventory]

I think we are getting substantially better NPC conversations than are seen in many games, and I encourage you to keep prodding for even better ones! I like the system, I hope the content will do it justice in the end.

There's been a lot of support for robust Companions - I can't imagine it will be fully ignored by the man who created these dear friends.

 

If it is popular to post this "kind of thing" is that not a clear indication of a problem?

The phrase that catches everyone and makes it a muddled mess is the spiritual successor one.

It is completely ambiguous and what causes these types of circular conversations.

Now, lets get to the non-ambiguous meat:

"More Interactive than Ultima VII" -- You mean the one with companions and theft? How is it "more" interactive to cut out features of the very thing quoted to be "more" interactive?

Also, notice the "beyond combat" that also hangs up a lot of longtime UO players. Queue the standard PVP forum thread about full loot or burn it all to the ground.

Now, sadly, to the actual reality, yes, in the intervening 17 months (17!) they have "clarified" some things as to what "they meant".

I feel this is what is ultima(ly) leaving a bad taste in the mouths of various groups (note, various, not just one group looking for full loot, or another looking for companions, etc....) because the obfuscated sales pitch was:

A) Not clear to begin with
B) Slowly being clarified (seemingly so as not to piss swathes of people off "too" fast)

This is where I typically inject my standard clear, up-front communication, clarity of thought and consistency of design speech, echoing on the forums over the last 14+ months.

So, while it may be shaping up to your perfect version of the game, kudos, not everyone feels that way, and I feel there are quite a number that are disappointed in the dropped ball in various areas, but are so invested as to not just leave or waste time bashing their heads on the forums anymore.

 

People did not imagine that at all. RG himself and others (like chris) stated it many times during the campaign and after that single player would be a robust game. It was never sold as a UO type game, it was sold as a story driven game.

Trust me, I asked many pointed questions on many of the issues for single player game that would come up, such as companions. Their answer at that time is of course there would be companions...which has since sort of slid away. The original marketing was that players would play through, hopefully playing SPO instead of SPoffline, and switch in and out of the other modes as their mode shifted.

If you look at the main statement only one of the games mentioned there was a MP game and even then it didn't state it was going to emulate it, it even said beyond combat....

As for no cut scenes....I'm pretty sure Richard said there would be instances where characters would be switched to single player no matter what mode your into...and I'm also pretty sure he said there would be cutscenes in them originally, I guess this is another cut back.

As for your belief that MP is more fun...well that definately is a subjective thing. Some prefer not to deal with others.

What we do have in the forums lately is people pushing it more and more to be UO2, trying to force round objects into square holes. The question is, is that now the dev's thinking?

 

They mentioned it many times during the kickstarter and continued on when questioned about it.

Um...this is something people have been saying since the start, we all know that. But single player in the title of the modes most definately means it is a single player game as well.

Well...it tells me it is a selective multiplayer game? If I want it to be? So....in your mind they should ignore any functionality that makes it not a MP game?

This is a pretty weak arguement....they mentioned 3 single player games and one mp.....U5-U7 are not one game. This isn't even thinking that Ultima 7 part 2 could be added

You did a lot of assuming here. I never said I didn't like the mp parts. I also am home from deployment very soon so that has no bearing. I will be playing is SPO and moving up and back down to that mode depending on my mood.

As do I. I just haven't seen a lot of stuff that isn't just "features" that cater to people wanting UO2.

Once again....assuming. I never said any of that is not fun to me. Right now, I expect MP to be way more fun....but if by the end they haven't added enough into make SPO "fun" then I would say they failed at what they were doing. I want the best of both worlds not one at the expense of the other. I also think forums are important so they can get feedback, even if I don't always agree with people.


quote="Lord Trady of Blix, post: 227066, member: 16337"]
What we have more of in the forums lately are people I recognize from the game.

People that are actual players and that are constructive. And I am very glad for that, because 6 months ago it was a much darker place.[/quote]
At the end of the day, they have to meet the goals they themselves set. That line you posted was one statement on the kickstarter page. There are a lot of bulletpoints there as well. I don't think it is fair to say that those expecting a single player experience deluded themselves when that was what they were sold. Don't assume those of us who want a strong single player game don't want anything to do with the MP side...because to me they go hand in hand. Companions were mentioned so why wouldn't we expect them? I'm not negative about the game, I just don't want UO2.

 

That's actually pretty rude. I took the time to answer all your points and your counter point is that I just want to argue?

"Sorry you don't feel that way" and "I can see a bright future... I'm truly sorry this doesn't appeal to you." is assuming. You don't know what I feel about it. I took the time to bring up why I didn't agree with your posts. What you just did was the equivelant of taking your ball and going home. My viewpoints stemmed from what we were told.

 

I'm going to be online mostly...not sure where you got I was going to be playing Offline I even own a house and plot already....I even mentioned I would be mostly SPO in my reply to you, so it make me feel like you didn't even read it...I was making a point they had to support something they announced.

I like a lot of the things they have done and I dislike some others...and I voice my opinion on them, like anyone else.

Sorry to hear you don't have any common ground with me...which is strange since I have a lot of different ideas, some we must share.

PS: You may want to look up what assumption means...you did it again

 

Of course I may be wrong, but I came here because the verbage in the press releases made it sound like a multiplayer game, potentially massively multi-player, with a story so rich and amazing that they did not want you to miss it, such as at the hands of a griefer. As a result, if you "need" or want to drop people from your game experience to focus on the story you can. Add that to RG saying you can jump between modes and I fully expected people can customize their play experiences. Want an MMO? We got that. Want a single player RPG? We got that. Want a single player game where the world constantly changes? We got that. Want a primarily single player RPG but with the ability to jump in and sell your wares in a "real" economy rather than just sell to an NPC vendor? We got that. Want to strictly see just your friends in the case of freestyle RP a la D&D? We got that. The way I read it, SotA will be able to cater to everyone.

I'm pretty sure I saw a video where RG says the term "MMO" but didn't seem like he wanted to classify it in that game-defining mold because the system is so diverse. Remember when he first used MMORPG with UO? Our multiplayer PC gaming consisted of MUDs, LAN parties, direct connect (either by phone number or later by IP address) real-time strategy games, ground-breaking death match and capture the flag first person shooters with an incredible 8 players, and stand-alone chat rooms. Therefore MMORPG was VERY specific. Now-a-days, not so much. MMO is used for a whole plethora of genres that just mean lots of people playing at the same time, some of which focus on a story and some of which are simply persistent games on very large maps that don't reset every 10-15 minutes. Therefore I thought, and could be wrong, he was simply not wanting to classify SotA as any one style of player count as there is no word for what he wants it to be.

Therefore, wanting (or not wanting) ! and ? in the air is null, right? This is a new game that will create its own method of telling you a story. Like I said before, maybe you won't even miss ! and ? because they won't be needed. Maybe people like myself will change our tune to "where's my damn ! and ?" Until the game gets fleshed out more we have no way of telling. We can only speculate and argue on a forum.

 

No one is saying anything about this being an MMO only.

Is it primarily an MMO ? Yes. It won 2014 Best Indie MMO at E3.

This thread is completely off topic. Please stay on topic.

 

My apologies. Looking back at the OP now, I see that it has spiraled in a different direction. The OP asked whether question marks should be above NPCs heads? So........

 

Now we should get on topic because you helped take it off topic?

/me watches logic escape this thread....

The original question, ? and !.

How many here played Logitech games? Full text? EAMON Adventures?

I played all of them. No joke. No ? and no ! I still play things like Zork every once and a while (in a browser no less).

Just because people do not want certain options for their "offline" experience (SPO!) or online (MPO!) why is that it someone else's desire is discarded? Make a LOGICAL argument for no ? and !.

There seems to be some weird black and white thinking here on a wide range of topics. Or people who have self-control issues.

Why should segments of the populace be punished for a playstyle choice, easily doable, that others have some weird affliction to either never turn on, or just turn off?

No one has yet to answer that question, that i posted before the train rolled off the track, down the hill, into the ocean, fell down a chasm, landed in a underwater volcano and melted back into the core of the Earth.

 

I think it would be a disservice to the players to allow them an 'easy' mode that leads them to quest givers. Learning to better think critically and in a less linear fashion will be valuable and fun. I feel the same way about 'optional hints' in the conversation system. Not everyone does.

As a simple example: If you offer the escalator, fewer people will take the stairs. If the goal is to create more stairs-taking behavior, you'd need to incentivize that behavior. The more difficult the climb, the higher that incentive need be. OR you could just take out the escalator.

If there are no other options, most players will rise to the occasion. We want to teach people that discovery is fun! Of course we should include some type of tutorial and learning curve. And you know there will be a great video by MadHermit on the subject.

Caving to pressure caused by poor game development is not a good way to revolutionize the face of modern RPGs.

PS love the infocom and logitech games

 

Absolutely agree.

Win win? If you use ? and ! you get say... 25-50% less quest experience? And less gold? And adjusted "loot" table rolls?

Poof! Instant choices. Do I want to have it easy road and make next to ZERO from this? Or turn it on cause I just want to get to point A for this segment.

A good example of this is out leveling areas in LOTRO.

If you are +7 IIRC, killing Mobs -7 to you == ZERO XP.

It scales as well, if Mobs are -3 you get "less" or if Mobs are +3 you get a little more == instant treadmill incentive.

But just flat out saying, nah, I don't like it. That is a pretty crap way out of innovating something that took all of what? 10 minutes to think about?

Would it be a difficult mechanism? No clue, not looking at their code base. I'd imagine not really. Just put an "effect" on someone for a duration and reset it when they flick that option on/off.

That way even if someone tried to "game" the system, by looking for the ? and logging off, the effect would still be on countdown.

So you get the punishment of sitting on your arse not playing, playing at a greatly reduced cost (in line with the whole LOCK MY SLOT IDEA), or just play with none of that junk on and go full bore for them juicy rewards.

 

Fun is a very subjective matter....

Well, I take the stairs 95% of the time, but I can very well live with escalators. And on top of that I value freedom of choice.

Well as I said fun is very subjective. And who is we? And since when are we/they in the teaching business? And if it takes serveral hours for the game to teach us fun, something went terribly wrong.

 

Well another thing about this, it would be difficult to put marks over the NPC's heads because you may or may not have fleshed out the quest yet, so there is no quest. Plus a quest would be telling you what to do or point you in the direction, and the quests in this game will not do that or have been said to not do that much.

Talking to an NPC may give you a comment that you may or may not get at the moment, but it will go in your journal, and over time you will be able to piece it together. So in the meantime you just travel on doing whatever you want to do in the game, talking to more NPC's, harvesting some ingredients, crafting, PVPing, exploring, and then BAM you find that body with the note on it to give you another piece of the puzzle.

I don't think this will be a game that says there are 60 hours of game play to get to end game for example.

I do expect it to be a longevity type of game and some may not want to play in that type of situation.

So I guess we will see, of course I could be so wrong on some points, but it is my thinking, hmmm or is it dreaming? lol ***cheers***

 

Well, as it was said before, there has to be some kind of quest tracking active otherwise the game would know to whom you talked etc. and just because you didn't discover the quest trigger it doesn't mean the quest ist not there, it has to be there otherwise you couldn't find it

Ok, the quest doesn't tell me what to do, or where to go. How do I even know, well where to go or what to do? So I'm pretty sure the game will tell me in some way what I'm supposed to do, otherwise we're playing a sandbow game without quests and then this discussion becomes irrelevant.

Yeah, that's how questlogs work only difference between your approche and mine, my NPCs would have a marker floating over their heads.

Hmmmm, sounds to me like a regular quest trigger or quest objective.

 

As long as we're talking about this, lets talk about an option for skipping through PvE combat. After all, a lot of people will just grind through combat, and because they'll be resurrected in the same scene with only minor penalties, they'll just continue grinding over and over until they win the battle. What's the point of doing that? Its just tedium. And the possible item loss is a non-issue, because people will eventually get the money to buy items one way or another through grinding, or will choose not to do PvP. Therefore, there should be an option 'skip combat' and people who like the tedium can choose not to use the option. Let the people who don't like the tedium not do that. The more options, the better -- clearly.

 

Imo, to achieve long term survival and development this game needs to appeal to as many as possible.

So by all means - innovate with the game functions.
But make the game play-friendly.

Think about that forumites.

 

Okay, so my argument against no ! and now ? is that quests can be more fun when they are hidden. You shouldn't need to worry that you have only done 95% of the quests in the game, because many are hidden, hard to find, and require a lot of time/exploration to find/do, let alone figure out that person even has a quest to give.

With that mentality, I want quests to be long, challenging and rewarding. I don't want to spend 5-20 minutes on a quest, I want a quest to take me a week to finish. After that week I want a large reward. Tasks should be little more than a change in your standing in a community or with an NPC or a change in your virtue. Tasks are what most people think of as "quests" in games. Go do this and you get this. Quests should be monumental under takings. - Destroy the One Ring. Simple enough idea, you might even think it's a task, what makes it a quest is the amount of time and effort involved.


NPC barks could be used as a sort of indicator that they have a task. (obvious ones would be people asking for help... "I need to find an adventurer(or crafter)....")
But i think the more rewarding quests should be more hidden.

On the other hand.. my basis on this philosphy was it would be easy to figure out who had quests and who didn't based on their responses, but since they put in this conversation system it is impossible to tell who might and who doesn't, and I really don't want to talk to 50 different NPCs about 50 different topics in 50 different cities. That isn't fun to me. I was expecting canned responses, I'm too busy right now, etc.. when you sparked a conversation with nobody NPCs. With the way it is now, maybe we do need ! and ?... I'd like something in between.