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

The problem is that neither can you, so we get stuck in a circular argument of belief. I never said anything in my posts was a proof. Feel free to rake through my posts and be pedantic but I was careful with my words and presented my argument honestly.

I stand by what I said. MMO players have been more lucrative for SotA. Most of the high level backers on the forum are MMO guys. Yes I am fully aware of the biases in this sample but you haven't got much to back up your counter-claim. Richard said that a large number of backers wanted single player. That says absolutely nothing about dollar value.

 

Yes I will be using them for both sides but when I first purchased it, I was only intending to use it for off-line mode. It's only because I ended up enjoying the online portion of the game that I now intend to use my lots for both versions of the game but I'm still heavily interested in SP-Offline.

On the forum? Sure. But there are a lot more high level backers who aren't on the forum I believe. And I'm not sure how stating "the stats heavily suggest that" isn't using the stats as proof. But nice try to talk your way out of that one.

 

I never debated that. I even stated my own desire to play both. Part of my reply is based on the fact that the OP is _only_ concerned with single player and creates far too many topics with the same message and often in a hostile manner.

Edit: I see that was in reply to Razimus. My point on the OP still stands as it was the impetus for creating my original reply which you quoted.

I use proof in a mathematical sense where you can prove something to be logically true. In this case I'm not claiming a hard logical truth but rather that the stats suggest / correlate / corroborate with what I'm saying. I thought was was obvious in what I was saying. I picked my words carefully by saying things like "wager", so you have assumed too much in saying that I am proving anything. You should also be honest that you can't disprove my claims either. I have at least been honest to accept my position is not 100% certain.

 

This ^^^^^

Just because I spent a lot of time in Single Player (gathering resources without competition), does not mean that I intend to spend most of my time there... In fact, I do not!

 

I truly think a large majority of players are from UO not Ultima, some both perhaps, but it does not matter really since it is stated we will have both types of a game made. The MMO type is just getting made first, and it also was stated there are things done behind the scenes that we aren't always aware of. So we just trust that they know best about it.

 

I'm an mmo person myself. Nostalgia from Ultima Online is what mostly brought me to pledge as much as I have. I have zero interest in story and zero interest in single player offline mode. I play an mmo to relax, meet people, gather materials, gather rare items, craft, and accumulate a ton of it, so that I can have plenty of coinage and items to give family members and friends, so that they do not want for anything, much like RL

 

For me, its ALL about the story, and about the single player mode. I simply don't have time to invest in an MMO, and will quickly be left behind by all the "power gamers" here. (This is also why I will be avoiding PVP like the bubonic plague, unless the devs implement their promised "castle siege" gameplay from kickstarter).

I came here for Ultima, and that's what I'm sticking around for. Here's hoping.


EDIT: And if Knight Marshall is considered high level backer, then I'm a high level backer here for the single player story

 

I played Ultima, but I also played UO, and I liked both. I definitely look forward to the story, though. I think I'm more interested in playing Lord British's story than interacting with the community.

 

That means that the other half wants to play online.

Personally, I'm not at all interested in the single-player and I wouldn't have invested a dime if it was only that.

Let the devs figure out what the game should and shouldn't be. Can we get over this pointless dispute, now?

 

[scene opens on flashes of a misty computer generated landscape with trees and fog]
(voiceover) "From the creators of the best role playing games of the last two decades..."
[zoom in on a full armoured avatar and helicopter over to camera angle behind the avatar, showing him facing an enemy or two]
(voiceover) "Comes the answer to multiplayer immersion and single playing excitement"
[various battle scenes, five in all, pulsing in from a dark screen - showing the action - and black out]
(voiceover) "over three years in the making"
[cutscenes shows a pirate ship in the water, a zombie ressurecting, a dragon breathing fire from a first person pov]
(voiceover) "promised in 2014 : and finally to be released in 2017"
[cutscene shows regular screen with crafting menu, chat log, skill tree, all cluttered all over the screen, just like the game is now]
(voiceover) "the cutting edge technology of 2011"
[cutscene showing the slow npc turn towards the avatar when speech is engaged] [cutscene showing 8 seconds of repetitive crafting menues] [one more cutscene showing combat missing and combat icons popping up like they do now]
(voiceover) "now. For 2017" "Shroud" [cutscene showing Ultima 4] "Of" [cutscene showing tabula rasa] "The" [cutscene showing Ultima 8 jumping on a ledge] "Avatar" [cutscene shows rapid pulses of the Sota emote menu, dancing, avatar air-chomping after chopping a tree, an avatar wearing a release-only hat, an avatar walking into a doorway and hitting the wall instead, a flash of the add-on store menu scrolling down]

The Hendoman

 

Doesn't really matter much what the original vision was if it's evolved to be something different now, for whatever reasons. I think it would be foolish for Portalarium to favor single player RPG at the expense of online play. The biggest factor contributing to keeping the servers alive and running will be the impression they make at launch and the word of mouth on the street about the game. They have to accommodate the money players to survive, wherever they live, otherwise the game winds up a nice footnote on Wikipedia.

 

The curious part is that it seems they've been very careful to ensure that MMO aspects aren't all that "in your face", so unless you're still dialing in via netzero, I don't see why anyone would consciously not engage the online functionality. I mean, unless you're like my Aunt who won't use an ATM because she knows that Chineese hackers will immediately steal her identity...which is a completely rational concern....

 

I guess it would be safe to say for some: I told ya so.

The MMO crowd is the money players as they say it. If that's the crowd you want, then you got it. Good luck with that.

 

I think some are missing that a lot of high level backers pledged just because they wanted to support the game development.

I'm Dev+, I have a tax free lot and I'm glad I have it. Its not why I pledged. I hope the game plays well in single-player as well as multi-player.

 

I think the MMo crowd doesn't care about the single player side, they only care if any resources get used for it.

 

It will be a better game all around if both sides of the game are good, so they should care !

 

I care for the single players online and offline and I think I am part of the MMO crowd. I hope this is a great game no matter how you play it.

 

I bought the game for a single-player game that would carry the spirit of, particularly, Ultima 4-7 and pledged at a level that gets me a tax-free house/plot. I backed to support the developers and help the game become a reality. It wasn't so much about buying a certainly good.

 

There are two single player modes; online and offline. I'm a fan of single player online, so I think I fall into the story-interested crowd Richard mentioned. And I am another that pledged at a high level because I wanted to do what I could to make the game happen, and have a castle I can use to live my own story regardless of what the MMO community does.

 

As this is a Kickstarter game, it does matter. You can't announce a game as being one thing, lure people into giving money because they like this idea and then along the way you change everything. This does not work.
What would MMO-fans think if Portalarium would announce: "Hey, we decided to ditch the MMO part and just do a single player game. We call this "evolution"!"

Another thing: I don't believe that MMORPGs are as successful and popular as they have been about 10 ten years ago. People move on, new gamers have new preferences (MOBAs, mobile games) but what remains is that single player games have been as strong as ever and continue to do so. Take a look at E3. Name 5 MMORPGs that have been announced during E3. I'd say about 90% of the games announced there are single player games. And there is a reason for this. The trend goes back towards immersive, story-driven SP games.