Honestly, how does this compare to the older Ultima games.

you said the changes are coming from player feedback, tho. Does that mean most of the feedback is commign from UO fans?

 

Yep, the ones that have stayed and been listened to. This forum isn't very busy anymore...hell I have been gone a few months now at least...

 

^ this

Aside from the NPCs in early ultima online, i thought ultima 6 or 7 and ultima online looked pretty similar. One of them was jsut adapted to be an MMO.

If you put an Ultima game Online, what is it suppsoed to be??

EDIT: are you dissapoitned because there are player houses?

 

No, I was mentioning that someone cited that as a Ultima feature, which it wasn't. I actually like the housing idea.

Looking similar and playing similar are t wo different things. They were night and day different.

 

Thing is, I was not a fan of the single player games, but a huge fan of UO. Shroud does not strike me anything like UO.

 

Imo, the feedback seems to be coming from people who made money in UO, off other players and are doing that here too, in a much bigger way. So to them, the game probably is like UO in hyperdrive.

 

Right now I doubt that the NPCs will be as detailed as the descriptions in the old Ultimas. If you read those descriptions in the dialogues of Ultima 6 or 7 you will see that it was described in extreme detail how they looked like, what they did and how their facial expressions were. I doubt that we will see facial expressions in SotA. For example someone glaring menacingly at us or smirking etc. In the old Ultimas every NPC also looked unique. There were no clones. I also doubt that this will be the case in SotA.
Without spending MUCH money at graphics, NPC models, facial expressions and animations SotA will not be able to reproduce the detailed descriptions of the old Ultimas by showing those things on the NPCs.

 

In early UO players had more control, for better or worse. That's what helps it stand apart. I haven't seen a company make the next logical step though. Developers have exercised more control over the experience ever since. It's like socialism is what I'm trying to say... Well not really... What I mean to say is game devs are like Mao light, yeah that's it.

Side note: ES was compared a lot to UO and look at what they did to ESO.

 

Let's keep it in context.. I said comparisons as a mechanism to express disappointment.. not comparisons in general. I don't care to guess how many times people have used other games as argument for SotA to be a certain way without regard with whether or not what they want is a good fit. Well.. UO had this so SotA should have this.. They did that in Skyrim and yadda yadda yadda.. Rather than making their case in the context of SotA. Because another game did or did not do something is not a solid argument for SotA to follow suit.

As for lore.. they've been very clear they're keeping the story under wraps until near release. It's not that it isn't being worked on.. it's that they don't want to release it until the game is ready. So what other stuff are they supposed to work on that we can see?

 

- Companions
- Special respawning rules for single player
- Balancing for single player
- How will towns in offline mode look like? What about all of those twon lots and what about the POTs?
- An incentive for single player gamers to enter shardfalls
- How will dialogues really play out? (There will be no descriptions but animations are not detailed enough (yet?) to be a substitution for the descriptions. Do we really read a chat?)
- Economy for single player (will NPCs mine, gather and craft and sell those things?)
- Time advancement by sleeping?

I think that the offline mode should not just be opened shortly before release as I fear that this may not be enough time to test it and give feedback about special offline features.

 

I'm sure they'll open up offline play when they feel they need to but nearly everything that will be in offline will be online also.

If they do it right.. offline play won't need special spawning or balance. They've stated for example that even a non-combatant will be able to finish the storyline.. if that's true online it will be true offline without any changes to game balance being needed.

POTs don't need to be offline. What would be the point?

A single player doesn't need a huge world economy.

Yes there are a few notable differences but not as much as one might think.

 

I don't agree with respawning. In an MMO enemies need to respawn so that they can be killed by others. In an offline game respawning doesn't make sense. Why should the wolf pack be back suddenly after I killed it? What was the point in killing them when they keep coming back? If I clear an area of all the monsters it should stay cleared. Or what about the bandits that set up camp in the woods and threaten the merchants on the road? If they respawn I can never free the roads of them? More important yet what about special enemies like a dragon attacking a village? Even after killing it it keeps coming back, attacking the village forever so that it never can be freed of him? Single player (offline) needs special respawning rules for it to feel like a true single player game and not like an MMO that you play offline. In a single player game the sense of achieving something by killing the evil dragon once and for all or free the roads of the bandit threat once and for all is essential.

As for an economy; A single player game doesn't NEED a world economy but it would definitly benefit from it. It would be the next step in Ultima-like NPC schedules if the NPCs did not just pretend to work but actually work and contribute to the economy.

 

It doesn't take a lot to test turning respawn off though.

 

Which in turn means a totally new balancing as grinding would not be possible anymore.

 

Consider that the Ultimas never had areas that didn't respawn.. and most should. If you clear out some wolves it doesn't mean the area will be clear of them forever. The sorts of encounters you've been using as examples are usually scripted, one time deals.

At any rate.. I don't think you need to worry that much. Some of these guys have been making game for decades. They know what they're doing.

 

I wrote a suggestion some time ago that an area should stay clear as long as other enemies don't move in. You would see those enemies appear on the overland map as roving encounters. You could then engage them on the overland map and defeat them but if you don't engege them they would seek a new area to settle in - an area that has been cleared. And if they settle in then you would encounter them in this scene. There could be a maximum of different enemies being able to settle in according to the size of the scene. This way we would could clear an area and thus get a sense of accomplishment but also new enemies could settle in and become a new threat (this way we would encounter different enemies in the same scenes).
Boss monsters on the other hand should stay dead.

 

Not correct.
Ultima Online introduced player housing. Show me a current MMORPG with non-instanced player housing?
This is the reason I am here.

rune_74, I can suggest a couple of single player RP games you might enjoy based on what I have read from your posts:
Pillars of Eternity
Divinity Original Sin

 

1. Ultima Online, being pretty much the first MMO(give or take a few technicalities), introduced a lot of things. That wasn't the point.
2. He said player-owned housing, not non-instanced. Many mamy many MMOs have player owned housing.
3. Mortal Online and The Repopulation both have non-instanced housing, I believe.
4. The introduction of nested POTs means housing in SotA is pretty much instanced.

 

That's a little bit of a stretch I think. Basements yes.. but when the house itself is part of a larger scene then the house itself is not instanced. Otherwise you'd have to say that houses in Owl's Head or Ardoris are instances because they're in a scene and all scenes are instanced.

 

Own both of those, thanks though.

My point was what made the game like the older games (ie not UO) and he used player owned homes as one of the points...which didn't work in this context.

It's not the respawning that bugs me guys, it's the loose world it seems to be drifting towards, PoT's and all the user content focus tells me they are aiming for a online world much like UO with some token story items in place but hoping that the general players fill in the rest. This is weak for a Ultima inspired game...

IMO, Ultima was never about the combat. It was about a world with a form of religion(not seen in games vey often) and social impacts to the worlds. You felt like you made a difference in the world. It was the feeling more then anything else, but how do you describe that feeling? I'm not sure.

For those of you that haven't played the older Ultima's, my feeling is that UO was the weakest of the Ultima games in terms of lore and story. It didn't have that magic that made a game Ultima.