Lord British, please return to the simulation

The open, dynamic world simulation was something that was very special about UO and this concept has been explored and expanded upon by other game designers since.

I read the dev team responses to the questions on the Reddit AMA link that Berek posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SotA_Offic...richard_garriott_aka_lord_british_creator_of/

(I'm not sure if I am allowed to paste the Reddit quotes from Lord British so I will paraphrase and highlight those that were the most important to me and then add my points.)

He used the word "effected" and not affected, which implies that these features were purposefully added and were not unintentional consequences of the game design.

Okay, so this is a "new type" of game, but do the advantages of this new type justify its drawbacks?

The multi-player world is being limited by single-player requirements, which is the primary MMO issue with this blending. In a single player game, the programmer can, of course, use technical short-cuts to fool the player into thinking his world is a simulation because he is the only actor to which the world responds. There is nothing wrong with this and they are immersive and enjoyable stories.

But in an MMO you can't get away with this without looking fake and heavy-handed. Remember Dragon's Lair, circa 1983? It was a "new type" of game, but please don't do this with an MMO.

History is littered with failed hybrid inventions that tried to combine two things into a new type of thing that had no advantages over the individual things in their respective domains. Those that succeeded either opened up a large, untapped market for the unique benefits of that hybrid, or the hybrid managed to combine its individual parts in a way that became greater than its sum, having advantages over both of its individual parts in their respective domains.

Unfortunately, I don't see either case here. I can see that this might minimize the development resources needed rather than having to create two separate games, but this is a false benefit if it doesn't improve the end product.

If a medieval MMO is to have an open-world, then it must have a world simulation engine to be immersive. I don't see much of this. I primarily see a single-player story and a monetary economy that distracts from the game world.

Lum the Mad, the lead writer for SOTA, did mention on that same Reddit AMA that Episode 1 is story driven but Episode 2 will be much more dynamic. This might be comforting to know for those that choose to decide to purchase Episode 2, but it implies that there was no real intention to add much open-world simulation or sandbox to Episode 1.

This is taken directly from the R42 Instructions:

Crafting and harvesting are being framed as merely a mechanism to wealth, with "all manner of useful items and equipment" simply being a step in this pipeline of selling things and obtaining a "fortune", whatever that means.

I had to look up the word "arbitraging", and it is an economics and finance term that basically means that you profit on your transaction. Why is there such a focus on this, since Virtual wealth does not equate to Virtue?

And if you allow money to buy items, then you must also allow the creation of those items by the players. Otherwise the economy is not in the "hands of the players", as stated, but is as if you are trading with a separate country that has a global monopoly of those items.

Crafting should be a means of creation and seeing the result of your creation directly affect you or your world. Otherwise crafting is like trying to work your way up in management in a bureaucratic job where you never really understand the final product or service, just experienced a monotonous journey. Money makes one insular by abstracting away this connection between the creation and its effects, which runs counter to world immersion.

If money is being used as a storytelling plot element, then you are using a gimmick at the expense of a more powerful story.

Don't give up on this! Simulations are complex and quickly get out of balance (chaos and complexity theory) so game masters must balance these elements as needed, which is an advantageous trade off, however. Simulations, being automated, remove the need for manual creation and placement, which frees up the game master's time that can instead be applied to maintaining this balance.

In the near future, if it hasn't been done already, someone will invent a world simulation engine with all of the RPG elements that achieves a stable equilibrium on its own, with players naturally prevented from using their in-game technologies to upset or destroy this equilibrium. This is why medieval RPG games are a good fit for this--there was technology, but it was too primitive to destroy the world. Our real Middle Ages lasted for around 1000 years, and humans didn't destroy the world or go extinct during that time (although there was the Black Death). We were limited in time, space, and energy in what we could do to the world.

During the Middle Ages there was a Golden Age in northern Africa and the Mid-East while Europe was in its Dark Ages. I am not a history scholar, but I do remember the story of Charlemagne. He created a tiny bubble during those dark ages, a high time of justice, knowledge, and art in Western Europe, but it was short-lived, lasting only a few decades after he died.

It takes the efforts of people to keep "ideal" worlds in balance, and they are temporary, like a swirling eddy in a great river. It is hard to change the flow of that river, but it can be done. One of the things that the team seems to be banking on is that guilds and groups of players will take it upon themselves to create mini stories within the SOTA world (and this is indeed happening) but it is placing a large, unnecessary burden of role-play and fantasization on people that don't want to do this, to take up the slack that the virtual world fails to fill.

I liked the worlds you created, Lord British, but I deflect any attempts to try to force me into a role, which is why I enjoy your classless systems.

What if a travel agent said to someone, "Visit the Grand Canyon? Why do that? Look over there, the other customers are role-playing in that big valley behind the office, and are having a wonderful time. Would you like to buy a ticket to play with them? Or do you lack the proper imagination?"

Please put a dynamic world simulation engine into Episode 1, add more sandbox elements to interact with it, add procedural generation elements, allow the world, the virtual ecology (not just an economy) to take on its own shape, influenced by all players.

You created the Ultima and UO worlds, @Lord British, and like Charlemagne, you can create a new golden age in this one.

 

I do hear what you are saying, but SOTA will seem more open world UO like the more it develops, because of increases in loading screen times. "Some day those may seem like instantaneous". UO had instances in the same way, where a player would step through a cave into a dungeon and other 'server lines". There's just so much more our game can do by using "instances", over what may be able to do in a more open world without them.
~Time Lord~

 

ha.. good point there. of course the title IS "forsaken"virtues ;p~~

 

I look forward to that day!

I totally can't see him now without seeing this:

Spoiler

 

Great post, really hoping this one makes an impact