Should single player- and MMORPG-modes be created by different teams?

I think many fear that SotA will not become the game many want it to be.
The UO fans expect this to be UO 2, single player fans expect a true single player game like Ultima 7. But I fear that in the end neither will get what he wants. SotA will not be UO 2 and it will not be a true single player game like Ultima 7.

Chris Roberts has two separate teams working on Star Citizen. One is creating a true single player experience, the other is creating the MMO game. This way both fans will get what they want and (hopefully) what they expect.

Right now the devs of SotA concentrate on the MMO-part of the game and the single player fans feel neglected and get more and more angry and disappointed. Wait until the devs eventually switch priorities and announce that they are concentrating on single player features - MMO-fans will freak out for sure.

So why not have two separate teams working on the game? One is creating a true deep single player experience and the other team creates the MMO of the game.

Get Mike McShaffrey on the team to lead the development of the SP-part and have Starr Long concentrate on the MMO.

 

And how should they pay the second team?

 

Second Kickstarter campaign

 

This would be great if they had the budget for it...they unfortunately do not.

 

With Star Citizen, the single player game is really a truly different game. The campaign can only be played single player. It exists completely separate of any multiplayer game.

The multiplayer game is mostly a sandbox.

SotA has a completely different design where the same quests and content can be played offline or online. The architecture and design of the game has been based around that from day 1. You can't just start over from scratch today.

I think people are concerned because they don't see a lot of immersion yet. They don't see tons of quests, content or the main storyline in game yet. That is pretty much the last thing that will be added. But it is coming.

To be frank, it was a little annoying hearing for six months that PvP wasn't in the pre-alphas and clearly that meant no one was designing it, it was never coming, and it had been completely overlooked. It was designed, but it was waiting on other underlying systems (like basic combat and skills) to be implemented first.

Now we constantly hear how this game is missing single player just because it isn't visible yet. It is coming.

Patience, young Skywalker.

 

> Right now the devs of SotA concentrate on the MMO-part of the game and the single player fans feel neglected and get more and more angry and disappointed.

No, the dev are concentrating on building systems, building the world, and getting the pieces to work together, all of which are necessary for any game mode. There's no reason to preview any substantial chunk of the storyline to spoil the single-player experience for anybody. I don't know why anyone would complain or suspect that the single-player experience is getting neglected at this stage of development. Unless you're privy to some fascinating information that the rest of us are not, you shouldn't presume to make staffing observations about the game, either.

 

I wonder why you constantly hear about single player now?

Could it be the merged threads, the lack of info or a combination of both....

It has been two years of companion threads and single player threads...you aren't just hearing about it now....

If you didn't hear about it since the kickstarter you must have missed some threads.

PS: Once again, single player isn't just about the storyline and he is perfectly entitled to comment on the game and staffing.

 

Single Player is not just the story. It's also about a believable world. NPC schedules is one example and it has been said that we will get those - albeit with some handwaving, whatever that means.
But what about the offline economy of the game? What about respawns that don't make much sense in single player? What about repeatable quests? What about companions? Will it be neccessary to grind in order to continue the storyline (like in Final Fantasy XIV)? WhAt about choices with lasting effects on the game world? There are so many questions left unanswered regarding the single player modes.

 

> NPC schedules is one example and it has been said that we will get those - albeit with some handwaving, whatever that means.

It means development is an iterative process whereby you start with something small (a pseudo-schedule for NPCs, say) and improve on it over time, until you have a robust feature set (full NPC schedules, say).

> But what about the offline economy of the game?

If you choose to play Single-Player-Offline, you're probably opting out of the "economy of the game" altogether.

> What about respawns that don't make much sense in single player?

Single-player games have always had and will always have respawns.

> Everything else...

It's an alpha game, you're looking for features of a finished product. You raise interesting questions about the game, but you should leave it at that. Don't try to answer them with half-baked suggestions about "separate teams." You want to fund the game with a second kickstarter? Not going to happen -- go to the stretch goal forum and make a case for a new stretch goal, and there's your kickstarter.

 

What is really very fascinating here with Shroud of the Avatar is the very fact that they held a successful(to their KS goal) Kickastart campaign and are beholden not to a bunch of suit wearing shadowlord execs or producers at some game studio. Yet we as a community seem to insist on filling that void on an individual level!

Some of the best games from the past, naturally this is arguable, have been developed by such a small number of people it might surprise you. Things are different today, yes, but I do believe if allowed to continue down the road at their own pace to complete the proper milestones in the correct order without anyone(us) continuously second guessing and pushing on all fronts for different things... Then this team is going to create something very worth wile.

My point, if they thought that separate teams was the right solution for Shroud then they would already be doing it. Lord British has been here before, if nobody gets in his way then the super majority of us will be happy with whatever we end up with I am positive!

 

When I killed Mors Gotha in Ultima Underworld 2 she stayed dead and did not respawn. When I killed the Slasher of Veils in Ultima 9 they stayed dead. When I killed the orcs at the beach in Divinity: Original Sin they stayed dead. When I killed the rail thieves in the camp in Wasteland 2 they did not respawn...

I could accept new enemies moving into a scene after some time and after I left it, but when I have to kill the evil Lich that terrorizes the swamps then it should stay dead. When I kill all of the bandits that raid the road then they should be gone for good...

And I am fully aware that the game is Alpha and that there are many features not yet implemented. But it would be nice to hear what the devs have planned for the things I have mentioned so that we could get an idea about what we can expect.

 

lol -


this is a lovely idea, and having a programmer for U7 on board would be amazing.

That being said, if they had to lay off Stephen, they probably can't afford to have a separate team running. Star Citizen can afford it.

 

Yeah, no, don't agree with that statement at all. Many truly great games do NOT have respawning enemies, especially in dungeons.

 

Sure, but I didn't say that every single-player game has respawning enemies, I said that there have always been single-player games with respawning, which is to say that "respawning enemies" is not a feature that would define a single-player experience.

I can think of some clever ways SotA could avoid respawning enemies with the use of instances, but as with a lot of things all bets are probably off once you get into one of the multiplayer modes. If you party with a friend in a different phase of the story, should enemies be spawning or not? Do you really want to be able to have killed the last wolf in a scene such that you can no longer gather hides, or is wildlife management one of the crafting skills we need to level up?

I'm ambivalent about whether enemies need to respawn or not, and the rate at which that happens, but I'm certain I'd rather see resources spent on other areas than some marginal utility in a single-player mode. I'm more interested in SP than MP since my pedigree is more Ultima than UO, but I don't see value in implementing a lot of special cases for single-player modes if shared systems designed to a common denominator results in a better game overall.

 

I have a different opinion. There already are too many compromises in favor of the MMO features as of yet which makes the SP mode seem to be just an afterthought, something they have to make as it was announced during the Kickstarter campaign and now they want to spend as few ressources on it as possible. But this will not work. The single player fans expect a true single player experience and this cannot be an afterthought.
So the devs should definitely spend a lot of thought on respawns and how to handle them in SP mode. There are ways to do it. For example the quests and are flagged for you so that - when you play alone - the bossmonsters and quest related monsters will not respawn and at least story-related quests won't be repeatable. But when you are in a party the flag of the player who hasn't done the quest yet counts. So if you want to be in a group with this player you have to accept that you have to do this quest again and kill the boss again. This would be totally acceptable. As for respawning creatures in scenes this could be tied to the mode you are playing in. In single player you have to leave a scene and wait a while for other creatures to move into this scene, in friends only mode this respawning time could be shorter and in open online mode it could be even shorter...

But the devs should definitely not add the single player mode as an afterthought only and hope that we accept it that we can just play an MMO alone and offline. This would lead to a big dispute I fear.

 

This would give me a reason to donate again!
Yea keep Star away, I want some freedom.
Give me PK's, Thieves, Gankers, Looters, Head Hunters, Cannibalism, Good, Evil and all the stuff we liked about UO.
Let Lord British get the pk world back on track.

 

Heh, is this posted in the wrong thread?

 

Its impossible for a player to kill off all of the wolves in the forest.

"Respawning" would suggest that the same enemies are brought back to life, in the same locations, for the same battles. But there are different approaches to populating the game with foes. For instance, if you were to take U5 as an example, I wouldn't say any of the enemies "respawned" -- they were generated and wandered the map. We're going to have a map again like U5, and also the scenes should have some of the same logic, so there are creatures generated, but not necessarily mechanistically "respawned."

And all of this should feel logical, like its a real, living breathing world, instead of a game of whack-a-mole where you kill some monsters, come back a minute later, kill them again, in a cycle, until you're bored.

 

I think I read the headline wrong

I read the headline wrong.
I was thinking along the lines of PVP vs PVE teams.

 

How about after the initial release they let us donate for the type of content we want.
Which means bigger teams working where the money is.