“About half our player base is more interested in playing through the story than playing online!”

That line was never used in the kickstarter.

 

Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”.

Pretty much defines sandbox.

 

Yes, but I think that this information has not reached many interested players outside of this community. Even most articles about the game focus on the MMO part with next to no word about the single player or the story.

But not MMORPG

 

I'm not bothered by this at all. They will see what SotA is all about at launch.

Lol you trying to bait me into the "this is not an MMORPG" conversation. My stance on MMO is it's impossible to be an MMO with instancing.

 

Fair enough

 

"When I describe the game to people I say look its a story driven basically solo player experience akin to Ultima's 4,5,6 or 7. A world intractability which is similar to the Ultima 7 which I think was the best target for and the wonderful open non combat roles and persistent virtual world of Ultima Online."
~Richard Garriott.~
Start at about 35's mark.

 

Don't really care tbh.....that line is used now. The line that is used in kickstarter was spiritual successor (which included Ultima Online as well as Ultima). As soon as you have multiplayer you have the basis of an mmo.

If people want to buy and play the game and view it as single player it is up to them........they bought the game and can play how they wish. I purchased the game as an MMO and will play it as an MMO......really sorry if this offends the single players somehow.

 

We've had this discussion a million times, though. RG said from Kickstarter that it could either be played like a single-player game, or like a co-op, or like a MMO.

I don't think the things single-player fans are talking about, like world immersion, are necessarily single-player only features; I think those things would be great in an MMO, too. Although I think its fair for the single-player fans to point out that there are certain standards people have for a single-player game, that MMO players don't expect as much, and one of the tests for a lot of gamers is whether it meets those standards. That's what this is about, isn't it?

 

That's the key though....it has to be able to played like that. They actually stated it was not a MMO many times during the kickstarter....this changed after the fact. Not a huge deal, but it's revisionist history to say that didn't happen.

This is entirely true. We keep hearing that as part of an online world we should accept things like mile high stacks of ankhs or whatnot....which IMHO ruins immersion(the dreaded word that means more to a single player then a person playing an MMO). Perhaps this is the crux of it, perhaps a lot of people play MMO's to socialize and perhaps a lot play single players to escape for a bit....maybe a mixture of both, but I would hazard a guess that immersion means more to those interested in the storyline/single player game.

 

I have to agree with @Bowen Bloodgood. Please Bowen correct me if I am misspoken . I think he stated that the Devs should control the content of what is put into the game and allowed as to protect the lore and immersion factor. We all know the players will and can do anything to be stand-outish in the game for what ever reasons they figure seams right to them. I am not talking about oppression or taking away peoples freedoms, I am talking about keeping the world some what on target with the story line and lore.

 

Ehhh, I brought this up to Lum one time and the impression I got was that they would do a little but wanted players to sort of morph the lore. I could be wrong in what I read out of what he said(it was awhile back) but it wasn't the answer I was hoping for.

I'm not against player events becoming lore, but they should be without names(ie big battle of opposing forces) as to not give artificial importance. We have already heard that some think they bought into lore with their PoT's(which I'm also against) which I think could have a very negative effect on the game. I'm all for them having their area that they want to run their events but I would prefer to play a game based on lore that was fully thought out by the team and not a rehash of some novel or movie.

 

I wonder if the future episodes will be based on episode 1 then. Will what we do now become the cannon for the next episodes? Are they written yet? How will we as players fit into this if our world in episode 1 is basically earth 2.0?

 

Good questions that I have no idea the answer to....there has been some vague mention of the moon and a temple.....but I'm not sure where that went.

 

Again, this goes back to that question "what is the solution" Offline, player owned lots won't exist. That's not possible for single player online. Not with housing being persistence across all instances.

My stance is the online persistent world comes at a cost. Dealing with other people's actions is part of that cost. They might be able to address the ankh stacks specifically but there will always be things that someone can do that is less than appealing to others. The added value of online persistent is worth dealing with those kind of things. Specially if it's limited to lots.

 

In the end, it will be up to portalarium to deal with this. We are all just giving our side of things. Portalarium should try to find the best solution to keep one side or the other from leaving or not playing. Will it be the people that want the lore and immersion, or the people that don't.

 

It will be interesting to see what they do with offline. At the moment, if all they do is add generic housing to those lots that would normally have player housing then the offline game will feel incredibly empty and won't come across as very believable. Obviously a huge job to fix that...the question is will it be worth the time?

 

Close enough.

The offline story will have to remain pure I imagine. By that I mean based solely on the single player story. However, I can still see some influences carrying over from player activity in the realm of written material. I have heard that written material that 'stands the test of time' may have a chance to become canon. That wasn't a promise of course. So imagine for example a series of player events and someone writes a really good book about it.. said book could possibly appear offline in a future episode. (Speculating).

 

It will be interesting but I'd be a hypocrite if I said I want them to spend a lot of time on the offline mode. Offline is in effect the exact same situation as a PvP server.

Adding the ability to save is an obvious requirement. But altering towns to have NPCs inhabiting all the player lots is a pretty large task. Trimming out some and populating some with NPC housing might be in order. Not sure it's worth too much time because those NPCs can not have quest scripts because they will not be there in the online modes.

Altering companions from NPCs that pop in as needed to support the story to NPCs that can be long term party memebers seems logical. It allows room for them to support scenes that require more people and MOBs, like a dragon, that will be impossible to defeat solo.

 

That's the problem I see as well, I don't see them having the man power time to do it justice and the game will suffer for it. I'm not keen on seeing reactions across the net if it comes off as incomplete or an after thought.

 

That's only a problem IF you only wish to play in offline. The optimal play will come from online. Specially if they push content through out the scenes dynamically on a daily or weekly basis.