Complaints for Richard Garriott and his polish pass

that is an interesting proposition @Dwalin i'd be interested in something like this. i know Fable had something similar like fighter rings for fisticuffs all over its landscape, but that was basically the last i'd seen anything similar to a 'fight club' style scenario

walking around and seeing two drunken sailors in an island bar duking it out, and going into diffuse the situation would CERTAINLY make a difference to my virtue levels, it would also pull me moreso into the storyline instead of just having to read a bunch of text..

 

...and depending on who wins or if you do manage to stop the fight - a different storyline or quest appears.

 

The new Town Sieges

The new Town Seiges in R35 is going towards that idea. It is not npc vs npc purely, but they could be killing commoners and such, while Avatars will come in with a helping hand.

 

i like the bigger hammer approach. earthquake, fire ring, and fireball. the survivors are the ones that win. until the next fireball hits, at least.

i brought that up not to troll, but because you know it is gonna happen. what kind of virtue hits and specialized storyline changes will be made then? (this is kind of a 'choose your own adventure' thing now. love it!"

 

If there is any one thing that would bring people back to multiplayer this would be it. And there should be consequences whichever side wins.

 

Yeaps, I think so too. Multiplayer chaotic scene, masses of enemies doing bad stuff to the townsfolk. Services shut down, Crier disabled etc...

 

So are instaneces to housing scenes possible or not? The sieges sound like those are instances or am I wrong?
Also aren't housing scenes not always instances? I mean the number of players possible in one scene is limited, isn't it? So if this limit is reached, a new istance of this scene is created. At least I thought that this would be the case. Or would there be 10.000 players possible simultaneously in Ardoris or Soltown?

 

It's probably too late to do something about this, but there are other games out there that are programmed to respond to this. If Player A completes some portion of a quest, THEIR game shows the appropriate response (no NPC), while all others can see the NPC until they complete the quest. Elder Scrolls Online does this very well. When you complete a quest mobs are gone from a town, for example, after you "banish" them through the quest completion mechanic. Other players, however, still see the mobs. But when you enter the area you do not.

 

Although I'm NOT complaining, there is one area that needs much polish and that's "the Guards" in every town need much polish... I like the new look of all the Ardoris guards, but the AI needs work... I like it when I cast "distract" that all the guards & NPCs come running, but they should also react to ppl snooping around, like checking out their personnel space, they should follow you and complain to you "hey what do you think your up to?" or something... If you steal stuff, they (NPCs) should call the guards, I can't remember any Ultima, where the guards didn't chase you when stealing... UO went overboard with insta-kills, but I think SotA needs guards to react with some animation, like they pull you into a scene where they question you and they haul you away by the arms to the Constable for a fine to be levied or escort you out of town forcing you to leave the scene...

I think that at least 3 guards should come running, and be super human, but killable by groups... If guards are attacked every NPC should join in to help, even other players...

Also, Guards should give directions to POIs when asked, put a mark on the compass or something... At the very least give a response...

 

Here are my suggestions for Ardoris.

-Move the carpenter recipe vendor to the abandoned carpenter shop - not - above the bank?
-Have NPC shopkeepers open their shutters when opening (needed game wide)
-More and varied NPC's I live near the Plaza of the Moon (south of the crafting area a bit) Would love to see a roaming street vendor or a "Chuckles" type NPC. (Really, it row houses... not much deco.. paint the town with NPC's!) It's a nice but dead plaza.
-Possibly, single item NPC vendors. (NPC next to a basket of apples and a crate)
-Did I mention a roaming street vendor(s)?... on a NPC guard type route to liven up the town.
-More fishing hot spots.... The town is full of canals and surrounded by water - yet there are only 5 fishing hot spots?
-Fix the quest the fishing vendor in the market is supposed to give you for tower of the moon. The keyword (name) gets no response from the NPC.
-Street signs? Landmark signs... I know they have been added elsewhere... Ardoris really needs them, as many streets look alike.

All around I like living in Ardoris. As a fisherman I love it.. just want some more fishing hot spots and a unique Ardoris Canal Carp fish or something (Each main town should have a unique fish - each added to a single recipe for varied results/benefits (Outlander Fried Fish, like using different metals yields different benefits for other recipes)

All around I am loving it; but, it really needs another pass of polish.. lots of things around the corners need work.

I did see the guard turning on the lamp the other night... that was good work!

 

That feat would require zone phasing.

 

FYI - I am reading these great bits of feedback. Keep feedback "tight", no need for long descriptions. usually I can see / feel the same issues once you start in on it. Having things in short to do/summaries, helps me get stuff moved over to our Jira system, if I agree with it.

THANKS!
- Richard / LB

 

Fix the weather system. I am currently living in a nested pot in Kingsport and it is constantly raining and storming there. I understand we are at a seaport area but WOW...enough with all the rain.

 

Great to see you here

 

That's very much what we'd like to implement with the conversation UX revamp (currently scheduled for December). Goal is to keep the conversational interface for people who like it (Richard, for example) and yet expose dynamically what keywords have been discovered based on conversation progress and quest flags. There's a lot of writing in the game (a LOT) that doesn't get much visibility because people hate fighting with the interface and playing "guess the keyword".

There are places in the story where this does happen, but it's still buggy/clunky. However we do have the ability to trigger NPCs attacking other NPCs. Very much needs to happen (if for no other reason the main plot requires it).

The current plan is for sieges to be an interstitial scene before entering/leaving a town.

The problem is that if separate versions of a town are created (using the Charlotte example, one version of Soltown where she lives, one version where she dies) then those would count as separate towns and someone could own a house in one lot in one version and a different person could own a house in the other version. This actually happened in Etceter briefly in an earlier release. We're trying to work around this to make more dynamic NPC placement (Min Liang Tan/Sivas Fel in Ardoris is my test case but haven't had time to do anything other than dialog switching yet. Eventually he should get a new NPC model and name).

This, basically.

 

Hey, idk if its in topic, but Ill add it cause this is what I need more polishment till far:

Characters: I really feel that chars need more polishment, in texture and movements. The movements feel clunky and robotic, doesnt feels fluid. When you are running and look around, its seems the char's neck will break, or turn around like the exorcist. Hair and beard seems weird, like the spray tool of paintbrush.

Combat animations: Very like above, when Im fighting or casting spells doesnt feels fluid. Lots of times the mobs go back and forth (seems like a bug), or some animations stop in the middle and the char stops. Idk how to describe it better, I just feel the combat not natural and fluid yet.

Mounts: Yeah, we need them badly. A lot. Not only for movement, but for cargo and rp.

Those are the things I would like to see more polish before launch

 

There's already the Soltown Catacombs, a cave with some Bears or Wolves and some interesting resources would be a good addition though.

I like the idea, but how will the interaction work? (i.e. it's currently very difficult to target, and continue targetting, a single opponent out of a mob with melee and I am still killing random rabbits with ranged skills)

Yes! Questions like "Where is the Oracle?"

 

I would love love love to see a post about this upcoming conversational re-vamp. It would make a great newsletter piece as well.

We've heard bits and pieces about it and I think that hearing more about these plans to revisit the conversation interface would make a lot of people very happy!

 

I'll definitely second this. A Chris style deep dive on the revamp I think would allay a lot of the concerns that some of us have had. Also, if you have a cheat sheet for keywords, I'd love to read all the stuff people are missing. 8^)

 

This. The player should never be placed in the position of attempting to read the mind of the person who wrote the NPC dialogue. This is how they did it in Morrowind:



The list on the right shows all the possible topics: the user never has to play "guess the keyword" - a source of enormous frustration for some.
In addition, the user simply clicks on a valid response, so there is no possibility of experiencing the frustration of entering an invalid response.

Morrowind was released in 2002, and has a more functional dialogue system.

EDIT: Quick guide to the above (from the manual here)