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

Hi!
I do wonder about the possibility of interconnecting the standalone-parts of shroud of the avatar 1 to 5 ... do they together form a complete land? I just wonder, will it be possible to walk from the land of sota part 1 to the land of part 5? I would like to be it like, for example, in the Might and Magic Series Part 4 and 5, which together form the World of Xeen. Is it planned that way?

 

My greatest wish for this game is World Building!

The ability to have my guild move into a village and gradually grow it into a city. Factors would include things like player population and building structures that aren't player owned. Such as roads that start as paths, upgrade to dirt roads, upgrade to cobblestones etc. The creation of community buildings. Building NPC homes to grow their population in the town. Building things like fences and fountains and decor items to spruce up the town. As the village expands to a town, unlocking new community projects. Even more as it expands into a city, with walls and defenses and all the grandeur that the pre-launch cities have.

I'm the kind of person that loves this aspect of an MMO, the ability to make real changes to the game I am investing my time in.

 

Terrain that isn't *SO* flat...

Many of the screen-shots of towns/cities on the SotA website and Kickstarter page show a totally flat ground-plane. Feels wrong... how about emphasizing some hillside/ridge-line towns with slopey and twisty roads and paths?

 

- Not repeating the same mistake of Darkfall where the world real-estate ended up being owned by like two or three clans.

- Pre-Trammel-esqe freedom to PK, and bounty boards --- that was such a fun element of the game! Gives all the more incentive to be skilled at PKing and skilled at hiding, while pursuers must be very savvy, acquiring as much information as to the whereabouts of said PKs, and creating strategies to capture and behead them!

- Non-macroable song playing. I want a bard to have to be skilled. Not like in LoTR where people just downloaded some auto-keyers and just played songs others have created. Let bards be renowned for their skills!

- Non-instanced, player-built housing. Like how we could choose our foundation in UO and build whatever we wanted on it in the style we wanted it.

 

Need bagpipes as a playable instrument. If you have flutes, pipes are not that much more dificult. Only 9 notes a bass
drone and 2 tenor drones (one would be fine for audio).

 

My ones would be:

- Large/infinite space for crafting mats and intermediary products in the houses / bank.

- If crafting in a city, town, or village where there is a bank, allow materials stored in the bank to be used directly from the crafting window without having to manually get them from the bank first. The same with house storage.

- Instanced, "pocket dimension" option for housing, without all the perks of the non-instanced houses but allowing every player to have a house.

- Local multiplayer for the offline mode.

- A way to repeat the history / sidequests on a single character (specially if we have just one character per account). Even if the second time onwards doesn't grant rewards.

- Some easy way to find players selling a specific ware. It can be an AH, a listing of the stores, or anything similar that allows me to find whoever is selling what I want without having to search across hundreds or thousands of houses.

- Never force a PvE player into PvP, with the caveat that too strong an incentive to participate is akin to forcing the player if the incentive is enough to elicit participation even when the player dislikes the activity.

- Crafting able to change a gear's appearance; also, appearance tied to gear type (with multiple appearances available for each type), not to quality / level.

- Ways to upgrade a favorite piece of gear through crafting. Even if it costs as much in resources and time as outright creating the better quality gear. Also, naming gear (or at least weapons and tools)

- No way to inspect a PvP-enabled character; also, cloaks that can hide weapons and armor.

- Make travel either instant or interactive; travel that is neither instant nor interactive can be AFKed through and is just too boring.

- Reasonably light death penalty; being forced to play too carefully is beyond boring.

- RP "flag", with the server attempting to put RPers together. Abusing the flag might be punishable by removing the ability to flag oneself for RP.

- If players can have more than one character per account, the ability to make a party with our other characters; I loved that in Guild Wars.

- Don't let gear stat inflation happen; an epic teaspoon shouldn't be more powerful than a common broadsword.

 

Topic: How to tie on to the old Ultima lore without running into trouble with EA.

This idea has been floating around my head for quite a while and I don't know if it has ever been suggested here - at least I'd be interested in your opinions.

It appears to me that many would love to see a lore in Shroud of the Avatar that does tie on to the lore and figures of the original Ultima series. As we all know, since EA own the rights to Ultima, it will apparently be impossible to use the more prominent elements of its lore in Shroud of the Avatar. You could go as far as saying that this lore is 'forbidden' lore for Shroud of the Avatar.

My idea is, now, whether it would be possible to implement the lore of Ultima indirectly: In the cultural system of Shroud of the Avatar something like a 'forbidden cult' could be integrated that must not be talked about (by the NPCs at least) and not be written about (e.g. in books available in the game), but that can be hinted at in the game.

As an example, the "lost Vale" stretch goal (at 1.7M) is clearly a hint a Ultima VIII but it does not mention it explicitly. My idea goes a step further by not only referring to names and lore of the Ultima series as kind of easter eggs but by integrating a whole system of such easter eggs as part of the lore of SotA.

To put it short: A big part of the Ultima lore cannot be used because it is owned by EA. It must not be used, else it would probably run Portalarium into trouble with EA. What is the natural thing to do when you're not allowed to openly talk about something? You circumscribe it. Why not implementing the lore of the Ultimas as a 'forbidden cult of old' in Shroud of the Avatar? Something that will not be mentioned explicitly anywhere in the game but that will be hinted at from time to time. The rest would be up to the players.

I don't know if I could make myself clear since English is not my native tongue and I felt I had to struggle a bit while writing this. Tell me what you think.

 

I've ordered these by what I think I'd most like to see first, so if whoever has to read these gets bored, they can stop before the end.

Old School "talking":
I love the idea of the option to "ask something different" with npcs, where you can then enter a text phrase, which the npc might respond to. This would give a mix between the clean, easy to follow conversations we're used to on MMOs, and the old school "need to know what to mention" feel of the mid-Ultimas.
If you've chosen a topic which the NPC cares about, the menu option appears, and subsequent conversation can follow without having to "text enter" everything.

Boss monsters:
Truly random spawn timers (with a minimum gap between spawns). Spawn locations should not be identical each time. Otherwise people will calculate spawn timers, and you'll get spawn camping, which is not good.
Make them interactive. If they've come to take over the world, don't have them just sit in a swamp and wait for the adventurous types to come and find them! Maybe have boss monster alliances... after some plotting they go to find allies to help them with their plan.

Trophies:
I mean in the "mounted animal head on the wall" sense. Bring the skull of an animal to an appropriate crafter and get it mounted as a trophy! Maybe people won't know where you got the magic sword you're proudly displaying in your house, but the dozen dragon heads on the wall might give them a clue!

Stealing and Item Sharing:
I'm not especially keen on this, I'd much rather be without it. If it must happen, give us a way to protect our most valuable, hard-earned items. Maybe a spell can be used to bind an item to a particular storage slot in your bank / storage / house. That slot is then "full" even if the item is not in it. You can pay an incremental fee to teleport the item back into the storage slot. Effectively "unstealing" or "unlosing" the item. This would also set us lend/hire items to other players, even if we don't know them too well. An identical mechanic could be used for guild banks, letting any guild member use the shared items, but the guild leader can re-call the item if needed (the fee should be a flat fee if the item is in the possession of a guild member).

Taxes:
Let guilds claim a variable tax (0-50%) while you are hunting, allowing the guild to save up money for houses, deeds or other valuables.


Unique items:
Have some genuinely unique items, that drop during special events. They don't need to be statistically any better than what is otherwise available, but a unique appearance, or perhaps they don't need repairing, might be a nice perk to them. Unique decorations would definitely be highly desirable for houses.


Names:
Someone said about player names not showing in the early pages of this. I quite like that idea, but it definitely needs some refinement.
Players on your friends list, or from your guild/clan/alliance/group should show up (assuming you don't disable naming entirely in your personal options).
Players you've spoken to recently you should remember, perhaps through some sort of "met list" behind the scenes. That list might "fade" over time unless you tag people to remember, or you re-acquaint yourself with them.
Famous or Notorious people should be instantly recognisable by anyone unless wearing obscuring headgear. You don't recognise some in a full plated helm, however you can still recognise someone in a fancy hat which doesn't cover their face.

I'm in the "non-unique" names side of the camp, but logistically there needs to be some form of unique identifier. So you could have Tom123 Tom2468, but the game knows to strip off the numbers on anything directly viewed in the game world, so they both appear as "Tom" (but can be messaged, added to friend lists, etc with the full name+number on any game menus).

 

all of the major dungeons to explore as well as some of the minor dungeons from Ultima VI like the Moonglow catacombs and sewers under LB's castle. and maybe have it dymanic as in specific dungeon activities have to do with attacks in towne.

 

Would be a nice treat for the older gamers if we could switch between orchestral and MIDI style music. As much as the orchestral stuff is nice, I get nostalgic about the old synthesised style music. I learnt to play a lot of the U7 soundtrack on the piano!

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=system-of-choice-of-character-class

 

Armor that makes sense example: no where have i seen a bowman in armor that you would not be able to Draw a bow also a character creation that has lots of options to make it you :beards, body art size don't know if it is possible but Example:as tall and thin as an elf or as short and stocky as a dwarf everything in between would be nice to have ears you can change too. body hair could be an option to from: none to a lot just like real people.

 

An in-game messaging system (and by that I mean couriered messages such as via carrier pigeons) could be really cool. Imagine a castle under siege, they are trying to call for aid from their banner men but those outside keep downing their messages.

Maybe tamers could train the birds?

 

Glow-blue weapons!

 

glowy-blue weapons

 

Care of the realistic feeling as far as possible. While having a lot of interact-able objects surely help. Avoid abusing of levels, classes and caps for they ruin the player's immersion on the virtual world.

Example, you found a dagger, you can take it, almost real. But when trying to equip it, a message say "Only usable by L3 Fighters or L4.2 Rangers" or similar nonsense.

As for caps, the best time I had as UO player was before they set a cap to the skills (about at the end of the Beta). Later on I was forced to have many characters, on four accounts, and training them took most of my time (had to train some skills many times, once for each character).

So, keep rules simple, natural, and avoid out of the environment messages like "Sorry, you cannot equip the toothpick! Your class not allow piercing objects" that might be found on another games.

 

there aren't going to be classes but see your point, if your fighting skill not high enough maybe you could just drop the sword when you try to attack

 

Inreguards to my comment about ears you might want to include mouths and teeth too. And I was a tamer mage on UO i even had a meat eating unicorn would like to have tamers simular to those in UO . Good luck again Will comment more when i find out more sounds real good so far

 

Limited visibility on the overland map while in places like dense forests, so you can get lost, like in U5.

 

Ecosystems please. What do dragons eat? Cow's? Can I kill all the cows and drive the dragons into attacking a settlement due to hunger? Just an idea, but it would be cool to see...