Features you'd like to see in Shroud of the Avatar

Raid groups lol... another great point. No super bosses that are 1,000,000x stronger than a character, and has some stupid trick you need to read about online before fighting him. If I hear they will have a boss that requires a raid group and you all have to jump in the air together as soon as he turns purple or you immediately die.... In fact I better not hear that.

 

How about a skill tree for pets?



-=| Reigner |=-

 

Eh, you may have won me over. I do recall that there was no such gear in the original UO, and yeah, it may have been a royal pain in the butt, and very expensive to get new gold armor when a PK looted yours, but it was part of the game. It's also why you had your miner/blacksmith mule make you plenty of spares that you kept in a chest in your house. If there WERE some ubar-rare-hard-to-find armor, the first time a PK killed you and took it, you'd lose your mind. And making it "soulbound" would destroy the threat of being PK'd. So yeah, I agree, no ubar-rares.

However, I'm still not on board with the "entropy" argument. If I maintain my armor and weapons well, they literally will last forever. I mean, sure, eventually armor may get so weak that portions of it have to be replaced (materials should be required to do repairs) and eventually, I may have replaced every individual piece on my armor set with the materials I used to repair it, but that armor overall would still be as strong as the day I bought it.

Think of scale armor. During battle, rungs and scales will have been damaged. When you get it repaired, a small amount of metal is necessary to replace those rungs and scales that got damaged. Over time you may replace EVERY rung and scale on the armor, but in the end, you still have a set of scale armor every bit as strong as the day you bought it. And perhaps over time you've used more metal to maintain it than it would've taken to build a new set, but that's the nature of repairs. Having armor that just becomes so weak you have to throw it away doesn't make sense in a real-world sense. Anything can be repaired as good as new if you have the materials and talent to do so.

 

I also like the idea of punishment for crimes. Like keeping the player in a "jail" until they do some repetitive menial task. (Breaking rocks or whatnot.) But again, only if CAUGHT committing the crime. There should be the ability to "get away with it" if you plan everything out right, too.

 

@javin you quoted my post out of context. That wasn't the point I was trying to make. I think there could be penalties for crimes but the penalties should be fun for the player. So if they were thrown in a dungeon then it could allow for an elaborate escape and opportunity to get achievements and good loot in the process.

I would never advocate punishing a player for role playing an evil character because they are playing the "GAME" legally as it was designed. Real punishments like what you said about menial tasks should be reserved for people who violate the Terms of Service Agreement we sign before we create our character and begin playing online.

 

See, I would argue that menial tasks as punishments DO make the game more fun. If going to "jail" is happy-happy-fun-times then we're back to playing World of Warcraft where crime has no real consequences. By having a menial task that you're stuck doing until you've "served your time" (and it doesn't have to be much, we're talking 5 minutes here) then the next time you go to "break the law" you'll have an incentive to be more sneaky about it, or stay on the run until the statute of limitations runs out. It's no different than when you die, having people able to loot your corpse. If dying has no consequences, then dying wouldn't be anything worth avoiding. If crime has no consequences, or worse still, those consequences are actually fun, then you're in fact encouraging the crime, and the realism and immersion is lost.

I do like the idea of guildies being able to break you out of prison, though. That'd be kinda awesome.

 

@Javin I have to strongly disagree with you. I would rather see no punishments for crimes at all if they were actual punishments for playing the game. Remember it's a game it should be fun for the player.

I would rather there not be a criminal system at all then see players get punished for roleplaying an evil character. I would say let the Anti-PKs handle it and be done with it. The only reason I mentioned being thown into a dungeon was to add an element of fun for the criminal so they can try to avoid the law enforcement, but if they got caught their game time doesn't come to an end.

 

Yeah, we'll just have to remain in disagreement on this one. I believe that removing any negatives for negative actions actually detracts from the game. You end up with a World of Warcraft where when you die, all of your loot stays with you. I like the immersion of a world with consequences.

 

Full loot on kill isn't the only way to have consequences. However, it does seem to be a way to drive away paying players and making your game a niche product.

You can have repair costs for dying. You can be teleported back somewhere else and forced to venture back to your previous location (making lengthy dungeon crawls more dangerous). You can get bounties for player killing.

 

None of which is why I donated a significant sum to see an Ultima game reborn. Repair costs for dying = WoW. Teleported back somewhere else and forced to venture back = WoW.

I don't want to play WoW. I want to play Ultima.

 

There are tons and tons of Ultima games. And they didn't really penalize you for dying at all. Ultima Online actually seemed to be the exception to the rule. And you'll note that even UO moved away from their earlier systems to prevent griefing.

An Ultima is a story driven game in which you play a representation of yourself, an Avatar, as opposed to a Panda in WOW. An Ultima is about immersion, crafting, NPC schedules, etc.

Losing everything you have because you died has never been a defining characteristic of an Ultima.

 

Did you actually play the Ultima games?

Akalabeth - Dying meant you started over... Completely.
Ultima 1 - Dying meant losing EVERYTHING. You were resurrected with 99 food, 99hp, and NOTHING else.
Ultima 2 - Dying meant game over. Hope you had a recent save point.
Ultima 3 - If party member dies, resurrecting could turn them to ashes causing permanent wisdom loss if you try to ressurect again. Party death means game over. Hope you had a recent save point.
Ultima 4 - If party dies, everyone gets zapped back to Lord British. You lose EVERYTHING except what you've currently got equipped.
Ultima 5 - If party dies, everyone gets zapped back to Lord British. You lose experience, and have to hoof it back to wherever you were in the game. This could take a LONG time.
Ultima 6 - Same as Ultima 5.
Ultima 7 - (Part 1) Similar to Ultima 6 except now you end up in Paws.
Ultima 7 - (Part 2) Similar to Ultima 7, except now you're in Monk Isle.
Ultima 8 - Back to permanent death. If you die, better hope your save was recent (and usually it wasn't. Saving took a LONG time.)
Ultima 9 - While this one didn't win any awards, again, death was permanent. See above.
Ultima Online - Loss of skill points, loss of gear (and often you had to stand there as a ghost to watch the bad guys take it) and then good luck finding a way to get ressurected.

Ultima has historically had the ultimate punishment for death! Death in Ultima games has almost always had extreme consequences.

I personally find that kind of system incredibly immersive. Death should have severe consequences. It should be something you should sincerely fear. It shouldn't be a minor inconvenience. I don't have any desire in playing a game without consequences; a game where I feel like it's holding my hand and coddling me along. Unfortunately, that's the only option that's out there right now for MMOs. (Which is why I've quit playing them all together.)

No game will ever make every player happy. WoW is trying to do that now, attempting to cater to everyone, and as a result, they are now hemmoraghing subscribers.

There's something to be said for being a "niche" game, and I think that that "niche" is more than large enough to make a game like the original UO profitable for many years. Mostly because since the vanilla UO, no game similar has ever come back on the market. A "niche" means there's not much competition, and lack of competition means a steady and stable income. There's nothing wrong with being in a niche if it's sufficiently large - which it clearly is, because Ultima Online is still making money for EA after 16 years. Like... Today. Right now. EA STILL has UO servers up, even in spite of all they've done to jack the game up. And many people have even taken the trouble to rewrite the server engine, and run free vanilla versions of the game... After 16 years.

So yeah... I'm firmly in the "it's okay if games hurt" camp.

 

Ultima 1-9 reload with zero penalties.

You didn't really have much in the way of equipment other than equippedd gear in U4-U6. So you didn't really lose much if you didn't reload.

U7 - lose nothing.
SI - Lose nothing.

The tradition of having no reload and massive penalty isn't in line with that.

 

Would you be so much in agreement if when you are killed by the Dark Powers, you were enthralled in a dungeon by forces in opposition to the Virtues, and forced to do some repetitive menial task?

Any 'punishment' you wish to deal out to players who are playing entirely in accordance to the rules, you should be willing to submit to those exact same 'punishments', in a Yin/Yang type relationship.

 

Just so I'm understanding you correctly, if a player is being toxic, repeatedly PKing others, generally being rude and obnoxious, and running players out of the game, but is still managing to stay within the rules of the TOS, your position is that he should be permitted, and perhaps even encouraged to keep that up?


And then there's this:

Now you're just being disingenuous at best, and there's no point in furthering that discussion.

 

Quite the opposite. My preference is not allow the offending player to grief in the first place. If they can't greatly affect you, then the griefing never happens.

You're saying we should allow griefing to preserve the possiblity of hunting down and punishing (which may not happen) griefers.

Sorry, that doesn't make sense.

And if you can't distinguish between the ability of a player in a single player to avoid death penalties with reloading, and the inability to reload in an online game, then I don't know what to say. But you can't make an apples to apples comparison.

 

Nonsense. If a player is playing the game according to defined rules, engaging in consensual PvP, and being successful, you propose punishing them for that? And rude and obnoxious according to whom? Is the game supposed to develop a natural language processor to monitor and interpret player interactions?

No one will be run out of the game because someone beat them at PvP and said something they didn't like, and if they are, they are entirely too tender for online gaming in the first place. Why quit a game when it is simple just to unflag and remove entirely the source of the irritation? Will @Javiin quit the forums and withdraw his pledge because Owain told him his argument was nonsense? Probably not, that would make about as much sense.

This 'PKs will drive players from SotA' is a straw man argument designed to let people unilaterally declare victory in forum discussions, and that's about it.

 

What part of consensual PvP constitutes griefing?

Not sure if you are talking to me or to Javin, but again, describe how you think it will be possible to grief in SotA consensual PvP.

 

Well, I suppose when one thinks about it, there can be consensual griefers, I mean, after all, there are masocists of all types in real life...

 

A feature I want in SotA is the ability to equip and use a WHIP as a weapon! With appropriate graphics and sound effects.
Whip, Bullwhip, Lasher, Flogger, Cat-o'-Nine-Tails, Knout, etc...etc...