How good is SotA compared to ultima online?

Thanks for posting this. I've tried to play a couple hours every 6 months and have just left feeling like this just isn't the game for me. I guess my biggest issue is I want to just head one direction and explore the world, see what it throws at me and meet people along the way. Too many barriers seemed to exist to make that happen (especially instancing). Maybe I've been too quick to judge but even playing a few hours last night I can't help but feeling it's missed the mark. Hopefully you are right that the potential is still there and I haven't given it enough time to see it.

 

My favorite things about UO were; crafting and mercantilism, exploring, and rp. Basically in that order. The crafting and mercantile features seem to be there. I hate the way games have these marketplace type interfaces for instance guildwars 2. It's not personal, and this game seems to be what I'm looking for in this regard.
The explorer in me is pretty disappointed with the instances, zones and the lack of ability to just roam around and fight or run from whatever happens to be around the bend. I loved jumping on my lumber jack or miner and run through the countryside killing Ettins and collecting wood. Not trying to be super efficient, just goofing around. I don't think I will get that from this game, but maybe I am wrong.
Third, the rp. I think this seems to be a strong point of this game. So 2 out of 3 ain't bad!

 

Ill wait for the final wipe , and will check it out
Instances are a real big problem, im just wondering about this. It is so expensive to keep servers online which are not instanced these days?
I mean okay big servers like from the old OSI uo are still a bit expensive, but its sad they didnt went this way. These days you can earn enough money with some cosmetic boughtable rewards to keep the servers up!

 

SOTA is WAY better of a game. Let's say the current game state is considered the first release. Compare that when UO first released. SOTA has better graphics, way more comprehensive crafting, the melee combat has actual skill to it (if you disable auto attack), the player community is tighter and more involved, etc.

The best part is, as we approach an actual launch date, things like SFX and VFX, and story line will be rolling in. Think of game development like making a sandwich from scratch. It's like they have been baking the bread for the last 2 years. That loaf is cooling on the window sill waiting to be sliced. We haven't even tasted the meat or the cheese yet.

 

Ill compare them...

UO had an awesome open world experience and a classless character system.

Some of the Good of UO
1. Could choose any skill, and ability scores I wanted for my characters for adventuring and crafting.
2. There were no required quest or paths to reach the end game.
3. It has PvP
4. Persistent housing
5. Guilds and events

The UO "howevers"
1. Skills had a hard cap, and here were significant incentive to GM your chosen skills, thus limiting our freedom due to skill maximizing. It made sense to 7x gm not gather skills here and there.
2. Thankfully there was no single questline to follow, but there was no story at all either.
3. PvP was great (for those who liked it) however the end result split the world creating PvP and nonpvp only zones. Players could still opt into pvp in trammel but the split in the world ruined the economy for those with homes in feluca because players jumped off into the nonpvp areas to do business because of the absence of getting looted or having thieves steal from them.
4. Honestly I see no downside to the housing of UO except the fact that initially space was so limited that players placed houses due to luck, and only rich players could afford to buy a house from those lucky enough to place a house after a landrush.

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SotA comparison/contrast
1. Classless skill system and skill gains based on use like UO but has an XP based skill pool to prevent macroing. Also players are not forced to GM skills and there is more encouragement to pick and choose skills to create virtually unique characters while the ability to hit is modified by a behind the scenes level/xp system so that more experienced characters are evenly matched while freeing them to take the skills of their choice.... CRAFTING does not use the same XP pool as adventuring skills so that we don't need mule characters, so we aren't limited to being a crafter only or adventure only... SotA in my opinion is superior to UO skill system.
2. So specific order to do quests and quests are not required to advance as an adventurer/crafter etc. However there is a rich storyline and NPCs can dialogue with us. So SotA wins this catagory since UO did not offer this.
3. There is no perfect solution to PvP to please both pvpers and pve players. However the ability to flag and the single world single server model does not segregate PvP flagged players amd pve players which in my opinion is beter since the economy is unified while the single server for the whole polulation ans selective multilayer model should allow for a good pvp matchup for those who like to the thrill of pvp. However it is a matter of preference when it comes to which had superior pvp since the equipment in SotA takes so much more time and effort to craft making full loot a bit harsher if it were implemented in SotA. If players like full loot this isn't the game for pvpers like that, but economicly SotA has an equivalent to risk vs reward imho.
4. Housing in UO allowed plaers to place a house wherever they fit on the map. SotA has lots. Both games have persistent housing. UO had a luck only placement after aquiring a lot. SotA has a guaranteed placement for anybody who aquires a property deed. So far players have lots though real world purchase however SotA is going to allow renting rooms and some lots will be available to buy with gold too. This seems more fair to me but this is one of those areas where people will disagree at the mear mention of paying for a lot. Although I remember people selling accounts lots and gold from UO on ebay.
6. Guilds and events are superior in SotA. The crowd funding and forums helped gather together a community of people interested in the game. Also permissions on houses allow for greater sharing or contribution only chests etc.

While the two games cannot be compared as to which one is better and which one is worse since that really comes down to personal preference. However there are clearly some well thought out improvements on gmae mechanisms at work in SotA that did not exist when UO was delivered.

 

SOTA is nothing like UO, dont listen to people that tell you it has so much in common, in actuality it has nothing in common except for the Designer of UO. Thats it, PVP sucks, everything is repeatative, it gets boring fast if you are not into RP (which i am not). You will spend a lot of time in SPO, Because you get sick of all the drama and RP going on. Once you become good enough to PVP you will come out of SPO just to realize everything you thought was good actually sucks in PVP (great in PVE though) and i dont expect anything to be done about it (PVP), its not even close to being as good as UO was. ( End of my opinion, looking for other games ATM!) I keep this game just for when i get bored.

When i played UO i always had something to do and i never got bored i could make and remake my own house, what i made was unique and important and worth something, not like this game it takes forever to harvest, then it takes forever to make anything, then everything is not unique its all the same! Not fun for me on the crafting front! again this is my opinion. PVP in this game it worthless and useless (ther really is no reason to PVP anyone except if they are being jerks, you cant loot them off all thier belonging, SOTA regulates what you can take from them (this is not good PVP) I dont want your jawbone or skull i want everything you have on you that you didnt buy with real money! My opinion again. People will argue me and thats fine those people can enjoy PVE and RP!

 

Damn, some really good opinions in this post and such a really hard thing for me to really weigh in on.

Uo is by far the best game ive ever played, and my gaming life started with a vic 20 and a tape drive years later I got a 300 baud modem. My point is ive played them all. Pretty much only compedative pvp for the last 6 or 7 years.

Sota has a lot of uo in it but its missing the character of uo and I think that has to do with where the game is in development stages. Sotas pvp is terrible atm but im not sure they have really even started on it. Housing isnt bad though I prefer uo system with open world housing more. Crafting with master work will be good but the more difficult crafting process will mean less people crafting. And I find the small instanced zones irritating. Animations are a bit under whelming.

With all that said there is alot I like, I think player owned towns, town wars sieges will all be alot of fun.

The thing I like most is the responsive dev team. I bet this title in a year or 2 will be epic.

 

To be honest it is really easy to build a freeshard. And I'm not much of a programmer, but I set up my own customized shard quite easily using and making hanges to the scripts from the forums etc.

Anybody can build one just for fun for friends or even solo as I did for fun placing castles linking them with moongates and decorating and going out adventuring.

I even modified the summon spells to make it easier to do champion spawns solo.

I could have easily hosted that for just me and my friends and there are options to make it like old school UO items etc. I think it was just as much fun tinkering with it as it was to play it.


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This is not mebt to be condescending it is just illustrating how much our expectations have evolved without use being mindfully aware of it. It takes far more complexity to give us the same feeling of excitement as it did back then.


SotA is a totally different game, but we are still comparing a far more mature game than sota too. Considering the UO emulators today are far better more rich than the initial release of UO. I don't think our memory is too good. As awesome as UO was for us back then, tbhe experience would not be acceptable at this time.

When I played UO I had a major advantage in PvP because I had DSL at 300Kbps, my opponents could not make up for the slight changes in direction because they moved in spurts due to lag and packet loss possibly. What is packet loss? Exactly. I don't think I would play UO today with such a crappy connection and a 600Mhz P3 with 256mb of ram (jesus it may have been only 32 or 64megs) using windows Me or some crap that ai had to restart more than once per day and occasionally I had to wait because my computer needed a few hours to run though a scan disk or a diskdeframenter. Oh and I loved my dad's office because the had a T1 with a massive 1.536Mbps throughput. I think I paid 50bucks a month for that dsl too not counting long distance. (Oh yeah long distance? I didn't even have a wireless handset for my landline).

Oh yeah those were the days. LoL sota is not being judged by how good it is compared to UO, sota is ultimately subject to a standard set by our memory of the excitement of this ground breaking UO experience with the expectation that sota be as new and beyond our dreams as UO was considering just a few years before UO we probablu didn't even know what an Internet was let alone imagine that we would play an MMO a few years later.

 

The college students today grew up in a world that never had any of that.

 

What made UO fun for me was having the freedom to do my own things and also the environment to create in-game content to enjoy with other players.

SotA does provide many tools for people to immerse in the world, create their own stories and invite people to join.

If anything that SotA doesn't have right now compare to UO is the ability to play as evil characters. There isnt much going on right now beside role-playing as a bad guy since the story line is geared toward players saving the world. (I'm not talking about players grief other players via meta -gaming because this already exists)

 

In turn without the "Evil players" the "good" ones like me cannot hunt them, we cannot heal others as we pass by unless they are in a party with you, so that kills the roving Cleric type (mine) even if it means i healed a PVPr, i now become PVP (just the ropes of a roving healer in my eyes) so im good with becoming PVP if i heal a PVP. In turn will open myself up for attacks from other "evil" players, im still good with that.

 

This is not a sequel to Ultima Online, nor Ultima. Shroud of the Avatar is a pay-to-play game, where players receive perks/bonuses based on how much cash is spent in the online shop. A lot of players who invested in the game had pledges restricted and taken away. I have played the various releases and I cannot determine whether it's getting better or worse.

Ultima Online had rich lore and vast lands to explore in an open sandbox game. Danger lurked behind every corner and when attacked by another player you could feel the adrenaline pulsating throughout your body. It was an invigorating, unique experience and SoTA has failed to capture a remnant of Ultima's glory.

 

Woah you necrod this from july?

 

He choosed his word wisely, that takes time!

 

It's almost Halloween!

 

I keep hearing people mention this "Ultima Online" as a comparison... was this some finished game that was completed and has been completed for 20 years?

As a player that plays SOTA and has fun playing SOTA without worrying about comparisons I'd like to get all of the facts so I can revisit whether I should be having fun or not. I'd hate to waste time having fun when I shouldn't be...

 

Thats pretty close....

If you enjoyed UO PvP and regarded housing and crafting as nice add-ons than SotA is most probably not for you. SotA emphasizes the housing and crafting system too much for my taste while the PvP/PvE system seems to be underdeveloped. This centering around housing and selling virtual lordships with manor and ship had been exactly what did prevent me from crowd-funding this game.

Then you keep ALL your loot if dying in PvE and only loose some random loot in case you die in "consensual PvP" (Which makes people put a lot of trash in their inventory hoping those will be picked by the random selection on Death). LooL.

Even in Shadowbane you would loose everything which wasnt on your body/equiped. Which i think is already lame but a bearable compromise. How much Fun is fighting if there is nothing to loose? I really loved that in UO people rarely would use high-end weapons and armor because of the high risk of loosings it. Players would usually only use high-end stuff in Duels and Tournaments. They few exceptions had been the top 1% PvP'ers who had been nearly un-killable. In SotA any N00b/Farmer can run around with high-end equipment and must not fear to loose it.

SotA, IMHO, is for people who want a medieval version of Sims-Online with some secure PvE mixed in. >= 50% of the player base dislikes PvP. Thats not UO'ish at all.

Thank God/Garriot/Starr Long it wasnt. Housing and crafting should complement a good "game core" but in SotA it seems exactly the other way round: Everything evolves around housing and crafing. Those aspects of the game are currently the most complete and polished while PvE, PvP and the game interface related to those seem crude and not a lot of fun.

The housing systems creates huge loads an the servers and the clients while at the same time making game development more difficult. Like adding meaningfull content.

Another major difference is, that while UO had zone borders it had been one virtual world. SotA has an overland map for (naturally secure) travel while you enter minituare caves, woods and cities and then an 3D instance is loaded. I like the open world aproach, even with less amazing GFXs more than this overland approach. Traveling in UO had been dangerous. I cant remember how often i died while exploring the world in the beginning.

So far i had more fun in Shadowbane, which is the last PvP+ MMO i played.

// Armar

 

SotA is nothing like UO. Not in any aspect. SotA and UO play different, feel different, are designed differently, they are as far apart as you could imagine. But to emphasize a point. One of my favourite skills in UO is tailoring - I have a 120 legendary tailor character. I worked hard on that character - I can make any item of clothing or leather and bone armour. It took me a lot of effort to reach that level.

In SotA, most of wearables are add-on store only.

Did I mention one of my other favourite skills is Alchemy? =P

 

Just one of the the victims of the ultimate evil known in this realm under the name of "Electronic Arts", destroyer of worlds.

I hope this helps



Not UO but demonstrates whats missing in SotA



// Armar

 

Good point, I prefer 'chose' as it is more concise and efficient.

Amar, everything revolves around housing because that is where the bulk of the income comes.

Ashlynn, I found it fascinating in UO you could combine various ingredients and create new products. The crafting system was amazing and I haven't seen a game which featured such a cohesive one since. Nearly everything you looted or found in the game could be put to some purpose in crafting (bottles, shafts, logs, reagents, etc)

 

Yes in UO the crafting was amazing. In Sota there are some major problems.
First with the only rewards in game so far being resources the high breakage and all day grinds are a killer. Also the you can do it all system is a fail. Why would anyone buy anything if we can all craft everything at all levels. I made a +16 chest peice after a huge amount of breage but I could never sell it for what it's worth.

UO had a liniar advancement system. The higher you leveled the better you got at making items. In Sota you have a non-liniar system witch gets you to your max % at a very low skill level. This will turn off many players who like to put in more time and see the results of doing so.

To craft at all in Sota the crafting character HAS to be a very strong combat character. Again a major fail for many die hard crafters.

I think Sota should take more from the UO system. The base concepts of this system are way off if this is to be a crafter-centric game.
100% rewards in game being resources = Failed game.
100% crater players = Failed game.
No rewards for spending more time and resources caracfting = Failed game.