Is it just me or are the forums hurting for new material

They said around 500 many months ago. I am basing it on being the lowest since persistence because that's what steam charts says. One can make the reasonable leap to assume the pattern transfers over to non steam users as well.

 

^This!
I pop in twice a week for several hours because I am waiting for the quest reset doohickey-thing and have shady businesses to run and rent to pay.
Even with that infrequent visitation as of late, I'm seeing tons of new people on when I log in.
Many, IMHO of the population that hasn't visited are like me w/ it came to persistence and only checking in briefly until the next major milestone, for some like me, that is the quest reset without the bugs.
That said, still finding plenty to do in the meantime... actually starting to hit the overwhelming milestone if you haven't been maxing out things to do as a hard core dedicated player (as most that are in forums are) with every release since launch...

 

500, of which according to polling here on the forums approx 40% are alt accounts, which puts steam at around 40-50% of players at any given time, as a conservative estimate.

This has been confirmed by simple observations every time port gives info on current player numbers, it always works out to around half of the people using steam. Not sure why it is still something people deny or take as a negative. Steam is a great platform and exposes the game to a huge audience.

 

Chris said 500, I'm guessing he was looking at his own metrix which would probably be a combination of Steam and non Steam.

 

Thanks for getting back to me and I'm glad you managed to take the time to check it as it out, even if it wasn't to your liking.

 

Regardless of the number, most amazing games I played with a decent sized world were around 2-4000 concurrent players. At one point the design of the game itself must be made to scale... and well lets face the truth no studio has done a mystical job like UO did with an exponential curve of new players (sure it was the first but, WHAT A TEAM) I'm not speaking of raw success here, but of emotional depth and intricacies.

SOULFUL

Thats what was promised, not a highly functionalized hybrid made to receive the unwashed masses.

Of all the people that played UO, how many really understood how complex it really was ? 1-2 % ?

The guides on the game didn't even include all the math... it was simplified or everyone would have said "what ? are you crazy", and the plans for its complexity was scaling with the playerbase with brio.

We have created here another SUPER SEXY complexity and community... its just not scaling properly with the times, how many "drama and emotional fluff" are created by this inconspicuous fact ?

It's appalling I have been warning everyone since day 1, and I'm not even against RMT or whatever, I'm against META GAMING... so sure I think RMT needs to be only for very specific level of trade and needs limits, but whatever really.

At one point I clearly abandoned the fight and turned around to try to help you guys have less worry and less difficulty ascending the game itself.

You will get there, but don't be the guys who saw the ranger hurt and trip on so many rocks while he was paging you on ICQ telling you about the location of every boulder.

Don't sink into this deep irony, I am even willing to sacrifice my own public image over it... delete all my messages that underline this magnitudinal irony if it can help the community, but...

CHANGE NOW !!! EVOLVE !!!! YOU CAN DO IT !!!

NOW... I NEED MY GAME, I'm hurting

 

Not that much to talk about. If you look at the Q4 2017 post that just came out it's practically a copy and paste for 3 months except for the seasonal content added.

Looking at that post you can see how Port has been trained by us to not say that much or it will be used against them. So now we get incredibly vague and watered down Q schedules.

That being said we will continue to have drastic changes (avoidance this release) that they don't plan for openly and that will be the most interesting things to talk about.

The forums are moving from a dreamland of ideas to retroactively reflecting on changes that are imminent.

Best place I've found for wishful thinking is in the current release feedback which gets washed away every month.

 

Part of this is based on the stage of development and the time crunch. But also I miss the times when Dev+ was asked about something ahead of time and there was a chance for our heads to explode, whatever caused it to be fixed and then it was released to the rest of the folks.

 

I'm returning to the forum roughly on a monthly basis. Chances are, that I would be here every single day, if I was happy with the game, which I am not. Most of you at least get to play it, because unlike me, you don't treat it like a single player game. You'll always have other players around, and if you do not mind some spoilers, you can frolick around, or stop playing for whatever your personal reasons for that might be.

On the other hand, I've been sitting on my hands most of the time, because I don't want to repeat myself over and over. There are gazillion aspects that I could talk about, even still with the focus on just "the single player" (ugh! What a sad description for an Ultima successor). And coming from other RPG forums like the World of Gothic, I know what it feels like to participate in a *very* busy forum about a game that doesn't concern itself with player housing, PvP, or the colour of your wallpapers. The reason I don't open threads to talk about details like that, is because I am obviously the minority. And I feel completely overwhelmed every time I even point out that this game even has a single player, which I'm most fond of, but entirely unhappy with neglect and lack of attention it's being given overall. The next words are kind of harsh, please forgive. Much love. Not trolling here.

It's like you're a huge fan of football, you just love it to death, and then suddenly the door bursts open and there's a parade of people flooding in fast, and we can't play football anymore because there are dance parties, BBQ, people start camping on the field, and everyone wants this to be a permanent solution. Dear football players, move over to that corner over there, which we have crudely separated from all the rest. Hope you don't mind we'll take the ball though, it makes funny noises when we step on it. But you can have this photo of one! I am sick and tired of what could have been Ultima 10, reduced to rubble, because people desperately needed the millionth-and-one medieval MMO type game. It just *haaad* to be this one. Admittedly it was Richards own idea.

Now, unlike some, I'm happy for you. I am glad you're getting what you've always wanted. But I keep coming back to this forum hoping that I backed a decent Ultima style game, too. And I feel left out. Singled out. Isolated. Sometimes mocked. It is frustrating, so frustrating, you have no idea, because I dare blatantly state that I have always cared more for Ultima than most have for their MMO-of-the-week. Or even 10 years. Make that 20 years. I want this to be a success for *you* people, but I'm really this close on giving up on my own dreams. I hope we can all get what we want, but the reality is, this isn't anywhere near what I thought it would become, or could become. I'll still be on the forums, but I haven't touched the game in ages, as if me touching it would curse it. Jinx it. Then I read all these newsletters and they just never seem to tell me good news. It's always the next MMO aspect. And then the next.

Anyway, thanks for reading this, please don't be upset. This is a thread about the forum in general and our habits when posting, so yeah. Mine is rather simple. Arrive, skim through the headlines, desperately looking for clues on single player, sigh, find any related thread where I can vent, and then leave.

 

Very very well written post. Thanks for sharing.

 

Erm... most of us aren't... This isn't a single player Ultima or a MMO Ultima... it has no resemblance exept in details and art direction really.

 

And I would argue against the art direction as well. Once they started properly introducing the.clockpunk designs, almost any resemblance to Ultima high fantasy, with the exception of a few gimmicky throwbacks like ankhs, went out the window. It's now much more of a mash between elder scrolls and DnD.

 

A large part of that is fatigue. Many people on the forums have been here since R1 (I can only claim R4 ) and we're now at the 46th iteration of the game. Having the last wipe at R32 slowed down the decline but having to do what is essentially bug testing grinds you down eventually.

Things should pick up upon release and I'm hoping that the 2nd /3rd character slots soon become available so I can experience this game as a new player again - without having to spend for another package.

 

That is also my favorite era of ultimas... the pure medieval type, but its kind of always been in the themes for the game, if you remember Exodus and other elements which hinted at such an art direction. Then there was the plans for UO2 which were almost half steampunk, then tabula rasa... its quite clear what the devs like and I can deal with such elements in game if they are well introduced in lore.

I loved playing Rift almost as much as AD&D (tabletop) so to me its a nice hybrid to make, but please don't give us swords like in Final Fantasy 7+... or stuff like flashlights or guns...

Anyways, with the neon clothing and other elements, we "purists" do get discouraged that anyone even cares about the western canon... immersion was a goal at first, then it became another buzzword that even has acquired a negative connotation somehow on our forums.

Even if it seems like a mashup of various D&D franchises, the gameplay is far, far from obeying even the most basic premises of the game.

More like a medieval sims with a ultima/tabula skin over it...

 

I agree with pretty much everything you said here. Unfortunately, sota already has guns :/

 

There were actually a chunk of us that stopped playing and got frustrated BECAUSE of persistence, and not just normal game fatigue, though fatigue is definitely legit for some of the long term players. We warned we weren't ready for it, the game wasn't in the right state, it would make big necessary changes too difficult to do, etc. Then it happened, and we are now where we are. Sweeping changes can't be implemented because of those who've invested time grinding, or real life money into buying whatever in the marketplace, and lack luster reviews because people incorrectly continue to equate persistence to be the same thing as release. I'm not saying sweeping changes need to be made (that's not the point of this thread and I've said enough in threads specifically about my opinion of those things), but that has lessened deep feedback that was being giving previously.

We used to post deeper discussions on things because it was more likely they might be implemented or could spawn a different focus for the devs or just help us dream. Now that it is pretty clear there won't be any significant changes, and many of the mechanics and features have been figured out (where to find trainers, how the moons orbit the planet, how this or that skill works, best places to farm for resources, etc.) the only things left to speak about are things we don't like (grind, lack of content, too much RMT or glitterpuffhappiness in the store, random drop of crafting recipes, reviews about how people outside the community view the game, etc.) as we don't really expect major differences to what we have now. This causes negative threads, as its primarily reactionary and most people who like something are less likely to take the time to type something up (customer service experience shows that people are significantly more likely to give a negative report than a positive report about anything), or bring up this again because I have nothing else to talk about threads.

It happens. I've had to walk away a few times (and was very disappointed each time I came back over those who had left or quite posting that I used to enjoy talking with).

 

I've been playing daily as a pledge backer (Royal Founder) for over 3 years now, and watched these forums daily all that time.
It's clear to me that the addition of the death penalty xp loss was the final straw for many, many players who used to post here daily.

 

http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Anachronistic_Weapons - Ultima 1 & 2
Cannons appeared in almost every version (some with unlimited ammo to boot)
http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Musket - Ultima 7 (also had the magic boomerang that could pass through all walls and barriers which is my favorite but completed unrelated to guns)

So it isn't too breaking with original games (meaning natural progression of technology already established in the worlds... well that kobold gun may not be NATURAL progression, but you know what I mean).

 

Indeed and if you look at my posts, I mentioned that it was always part of the original vision.

Theres a difference in technology between a cannon and a gun, between flash powder and a flashlight, between a gas lit shop sign and electrical neon... thats where I think pushing the boundaries is bad, the kobold gun is a good example. Tesla towers protecting a town is another good example, to me it dosen't say woah steampunk cool, acknowledging tesla's underrated contributions cool ; it says well we don't want to work on town guard NPC AI, quick fix !

It gives the feeling that the original vision of the game was never settled, that they rather chose art direction by saying the idea and if enough people say "yea thats cool" then here we go !

 

Oh I agree. That's why in my post I question the whole natural progression of the kobold's gun (I even capitalized part of my statment).

It seems that we have slipped into the U1&2 side of things (meaning it sounds cool so lets do it regardless of logic) as opposed to the U4-7 side of (keep world quasi consistent with a few magitech improvements here and there that improve over each iteration).