A plea for the single player experience.

@RichardGarriott

Most of these comments have been stated in other threads by @docdoom77 and others, but I felt it was important enough to have its own thread.

I know I'm not alone by saying that a good portion of what drove me to pledge for Shroud of the Avatar was the promise of a new Ultima. References were made to the classic Ultimas countless times, and the stated "Benchmark" was (and still hopefully is) Ultima 7.

Unfortunately, it appears at face value that several iconic features of that series are being sacrificed, willingly and openly, in favor of traditional MMO trappings.

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Disclaimer #1: I am completely aware that what works in a single player game does not necessarily work in a multiplayer game. However, the grand design that Richard Garriot was so passionate about was the best of both worlds: a TRUE successor to the Ultima series, with its unparalleled depth, story, and mechanics; COMBINED with an online game reminiscent of Ultima Online.
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Systems I am concerned about:
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First and Foremost, Companions. Again, this has been stated previously by me and others, but it bears repeating. One of the things that made Ultima so special, as compared to other RPG's of yore such as Bard's Tale, Wizardry, or Might and Magic, was the sense of connection the player felt not only to his own character but the character of his companions.

They had their own reasons for being in the world. They had their own beliefs, combat styles, and pet peeves. They would talk to each other, as well as NPCs you encountered on your travels. They commented on specific situations with their own point of view. They might leave your party on their own if they found a better option, or even if they disagreed with they way you were handling your quest. In short, they felt like living, breathing, people... and you cared about them, and their fate.

Currently, from what we have been shown, it appears as if Companions are going to be ancillary cannon fodder... mercenaries or other faceless characters who are there to fill slots and provide support to your dungeon crawling if there are no real life players in your group. That's all well and good, for a generic online rpg... but it isn't Ultima.

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The NPC conversation system. The current system is cluttered and complicated, and directly reminiscent of MMOs such as LOTRO rather than a true RPG like Ultima.

This has been touched on in great detail in other threads, so rather than rehashing too much, I will paraphrase and condense.

All the conversations are squished into the traditional MMO chat window. This has the undesired effect of stripping away any and all dramatic impact created by conversations. We should be able to see a portrait of the NPC we are chatting with, and the conversation should be broken up more, with a "more" option to have the character continue speaking.

The response on this suggestion was "well, we may get to that point eventually." And don't get me wrong, I do understand the limitations of team size and deadlines. However, this feels like an integral part of not only modern RPGs in general, but Ultima 7 specifically. The fact that this wasn't taken into account to begin with underscores part of the entire issue - this conversation system was designed from the ground up to be similar to an MMO. That's all well and good, for a generic online rpg... but it isn't Ultima.

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Crime and Punishment. Recently in a Founder's Q&A session, I asked for clarification on the consequences for stealing from an NPC and getting caught. The official response (which i won't paste here because of founder privileges) was entirely based off of merchants charging more or refusing to sell to the player in retaliation. That's it.

That is, in my opinion, woefully inadequate. At the very least, players should be faced with the possibility of guards becoming hostile. Ideally, there would be some brilliantly designed crime and punishment system. There have been dozens of suggestions regarding this possibility in the forums, none of which seem to have been considered.

Disclaimer #2: Yes, I understand this and all other systems are in flux, nothing is set in stone, etc etc. However, to reiterate my previous point, the original base design appears to have been derived from that of an MMO, not an Ultima.

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The Overland Map. I and many others have already made our feelings clear on the map, so I won't go into any more detail on this, other than to say: In its current iteration, this does not feel like Ultima. At all.

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I am completely aware that Richard Garriott is hard at work with Tracy Hickman designing the overall story. Which is great... but Ultima has always been more than the sum of its parts, and the story is only one part (albeit a very large one) of the overall Ultima experience.

I, along with many other pledgers urge you to consider these points and re-address priorities.

For instance, perhaps it would be a good idea to spend a tiny part of the four million dollars to create 2d portraits, rather than creating even more generic houses in the add-on store. Those can always be added later, with little to no effect on the gameplay experience.

But the single player game, hastily cobbled together with the current systems, feels.... well, exactly that. Hastily cobbled together, like an afterthought.

 

Is this when I should queue up the "they are still designing it" portion?

I agree on every single point, but the design took a decidedly MP facet early and even after repeated attempts to stay above the noise of Barbie Dreamhouse builder and PvP Phat Open Lewts for all, it was just too overwhelming.

Its not like we have not been asking for clarity on the single player experience since the culmination of both UO + Ultima 7 were BOTH the "spiritual successors" being blended here.

Seeing as how the answers last week seemed to put the SP experience more on "rails" I dont see this launching with the depth or breadth in what you say is an "Ultima" experience unfortunately.

 

1. Companions: This concerns me as well, but in the Deep Dive and the massive anniverary live stream they said that companions can have all the dialogue in the world. They don't have to be faceless. They just don't know if complex AI for companions will make it into the game. I really hope they make this a stretch goal. Ask the community to make 4.2 million by a certain date and then use that $200,000 to hire two more devs, one to write full time to expand companion dialogue, and another to code full time on expanding NPC/companion AI.
2. NPC Conversation System: I don't think what we're seeing is a final product, nor something that everyone is happy with. The oldest Ultima games required direct text input to chat with NPCs, and this didn't change until Ultima 7. I expect this system to get refined and improved before launch because it is so critical.
3. Crime and Punishment: What was described does seem overly lenient to the extent that stealing isn't discouraged enough. If you can steal successfully a few times with no penalty, and then still really pay no penalty when finally caught, that seems off. Having the merchant not even adjust prices or treat you worse until you're caught multiple times seems troubling. I do hope this is addressed. But I don't think this is an issue on not focusing on single-player because they only care about multi-player. Players wanting to explore stealth skills and steal from merchants will happen in both game modes, and the merchant reactions should be the same regardless of single player or multi-player. Look to my signature. When devs spitball in the video chats, they aren't saying these are definitive and final. "Don't Lawyer Me, Bro."
4. The Overland Map: I agree the current iteration seems like a massive step backwards and un-Ultima like. I hope it changes. That being said, they had to dedicate new dev time to replace the old one. I don't see how this is supposedly an example of focusing on multi-player to the point of compromising single-player. This was just a direction they tried that we don't like. And thanks to the open dev structure of crowd-funding, we can give feedback that might change their decision.

 

This is a design decision that ideally would have been made from the get-go. I don't think forcing the community to give even more money, on top of the 4x the originally requested amount that has already been pledged, is fair or right for something that is so integral to Ultima.

Like I said, I was already told that my suggestions were something that they "may get to eventually". In other words, this is not high priority. And notice I said nothing about a text input.

uh... yeah. I suppose that was entertaining the first couple of times it was said, and its still applicable on occasion. This is not one of those occasions. I'm not calling out Portalarium on going back on something they said... I'm expressing concern for a vital system which has received little to no attention.

 

Maybe I'm just a little more pragmatic. RG was saying on day 1 of the KS in media interviews that he though his total budget for this game before launch would be maybe $5-$7 million from all crowd funding plus his initial investments plus any outside investment.

I thought to myself that there was no way he could deliver on every promise he was making on a short time table with that budget. Unless crowd-funding stepped up and exceeded expectations, they wouldn't have the staff or budget. I still backed the project with no reservations because I'd still prefer 80% of what he was promising over most games on the market. RG, as much as I love him, also has a history of shipping late.

Again, your initial stated concern was that companions would be faceless. And that hasn't been stated by Portalarium. They've said they can write dialogue for them all day long, but they're not sure if they'll have complex systems from a programming perspective.

As for the NPC Conversation System, I have reason to believe this is changing. That's all I'll say about that.

How do you know the devs have given the conversation system no attention or that it won't change?

 

*Scruffy Voice* Second!

 

The issue with companions is not one of depth, but of dynamism (it's a word ). A character can have all kinds of great convo options, but if your companion doesn't ever speak up for himself, it will never be, to my mind, a true Ultima successor. Companions should comment on the scenes, banter with each other, offer opinions etc. I've offered a few suggestions on how to do that within the current system (the bark system is ideal for this), but I don't know if it got to the right people.

 

Scripted dialogue on events shouldn't be that difficult.

Complex companion AIs, such as Iolo working at his shop when he isn't in your party, complex AI to react to your actions and instructions while fighting enemies, having a unique progression of skills, etc. is another story.

I think Portalarium is starting to feel the crunch, which is why I think they're starting to get to a point of promising bare minimums, even if their internal goals are to hopefully exceed those.

I get where people would feel that we shouldn't have to open our wallets more to get something they considered part of the basic game, but at the end of the day more money allows them to hire more staff. SotA has less than 34,000 paid backers, which is a fairly small number in the grand scheme of things. And their budget is very small for a game with goals like these. There is still a lot of opportunity for this game to find a much larger audience and thusly a much larger budget.

Stretch Goals should help with that.

 

Every point you made I completely agree with. Especially with the NPC personalities having at LEAST the same depth as U7. I dont know that U7 was the best for NPC personalities as I didnt get too into the others Ultima's, but its such an easy thing to do. I mean U7 was 20 years or what ever ago.

And on the NPC chat windows... defiantly shouldn't be plopped in with the general P2P chat. Needs to be a pop up... with portraits. I dont care if they are not even 3D portraits, make them in crayon... just make losts of them and no two the same... except the guards... they always look alike.

Just to note... They are millions of dollars past their stretch goals... money shouldn't be a problem... only time.

 

IF they put in stretch goals to cover these specific issues, I'd consider putting a little more money in, despite being in the "these things should have been a priority from day 1" camp. What I'm not going to do is put more money in to watch it spent on more multi-player functions.

So, until they put in specific stretch goals to address these issues, it's really a moot point.

It's not a bad idea, but like many good ideas, it will probably get lost in the bottomless morass that is the forums, before anybody important sees it.

 

Sorry, but fail.

Given the tech we are talking about is 20 years old, it could be implemented fairly easily in this day an age to give the companions more life.

No one is asking them to be auto-bots that go out and farm mobs for you.

The original characters were exactly that -- characters. They had personality. You seriously telling us it is harder to add something that was solved decades ago by the same designer(s) who did it?

smh

 

I only know what was told to me by the dev team, and that was only this morning. The exact quote was:
Bubonic, we may get to that point eventually (at a minimum, each NPC will have their own tab within the main window, and I'll try to push for U7-style presentation on it) but not immediately. We won't even have the ability to manipulate tabs within the chat window for another release or so, and I'm trying to make the underlying system usable while waiting for UI improvements.

What that says to me is "Sure, we can try to get something like that down the road. But it isn't a priority, and we certainly weren't aiming for that to begin with."

Let's not derail this thread. No matter how much benefit of the doubt you or anyone else wants to give the dev team, all of my original points still stand. We are approximately five months from release, and what we have been shown is an online game that can also be played offline. It doesn't feel like Ultima.

 

Star Citizen had a projected budget of $25 million. They only asked for $500,000 in their Kickstarter, 2% of what they felt they really needed to make the game they wanted.

Asking for $25 million up front would be a good way to not get funded.

What they didn't get in crowd funding they would have sought from outside investors, or found a way to make a smaller, cheaper game than what they wanted.

SotA is no different. RG felt he needed $5 - $7 million to make SotA and asked for $1 million because if you ask for too much you receive literally nothing in your Kickstarter. The rest he hoped would either come from more crowd funding, or from outside investors. I haven't seen announcements of outside investors. And they made $2 million since the Kickstarter ended, but they didn't double the number of backers. The per backer average went up, which isn't sustainable. People increased their pledges, but at some point they hit their max budget individuals are willing to spend pre-release. I'm not sure SotA will have $6 million before release unless they can speed up the rate they gain new backers. Which is why I think they're starting to realize there may be a crunch to get in everything they want, which may mean a slimmer game feature wise than they wanted.

 

I made a similar point in another thread. This game was pitched as "the ultimate rpg WITH selective multiplayer," but from what I keep seeing and hearing, I think we're getting an story driven mmo WITH a single player experience. I feel like the focus has changed a great deal since the original pitch.

 

"And on the NPC chat windows... defiantly shouldn't be plopped in with the general P2P chat. Needs to be a pop up... with portraits. I dont care if they are not even 3D portraits, make them in crayon... "

I agree. I want to see a picture of a smiling NPC that I'm talking to. And if they start crying, have it reflect on their portrait (Like Spark in Ultima 7).

 

The proof is that a lot of 20 year old ideas weren't expanded upon. How many games se systems introduced by something like UO? Conversation systems that worked like , now SotA weren't seen again. instead the systems became point and click, choose from three options pseudo conversations. I'm not sure that many mmos release even in the last couple of years have people moving around doing odd jobs or talking to people. Most games in development say 'oh sure' and it never happens. While these systems may have been present in some form 20 years ago, implementation and tech advancement hasn't evolved much past those days.

 

Not sure if you are agreeing or not. My point was simple: The game is supposed to carry the weight of an original Ultima game, not just UO. The argument for not implementing artificial interactions/reactions from companion characters seems to have (in this thread) centered on money, time and technology.

Money is a NON consideration, it was something already promised, alluded to in the original KS.

Time/Resources is a Portalarium delivery problem, and they should be held to what the design was. I am partially disgusted about how everything is now a literal joke "Dont lawyer me bro!" so as not to hold them to the original designs laid out when they went fishing for our money.

I get things change, but a lot of these changes are in motion and not close, or in the spirit to which the project was sold. AND THIS IS NOTHING NEW -- I have personally said there needs to be more clear lines of design communication since June 2013.

As for technology, that is what I mentioned, and I gather you agree? I dont really care if the bar is moved on the HOW. The point is simple: It already exists in some form of software logic to be able to present the "appearance" of a basic AI for your companion.

There is not some new ground that must be tred here. We dont need NeoPets for SotA companions, nor do I expect Eliza style dialog.

The game was sold as the "UTLIMATE RPG" with selective multiplayer. Not the other way around.

 

Do you think it would be reasonable for Portalarium to delay the final release by weeks/months until they feel that they have a finished product? There is no reason why they should feel like they are
under pressure to push this out as scheduled if that means a 'not quite' complete game.

 

Vendors and other NPCs are a different animal than the player's Companions, which is what I was referring to.

 

I know what you are saying, but that is not the same as the companions that travel with you on adventures.

If they are trying to reduce the resource footprint by jamming the AI logic into the same block as the auto-bot sellers, ok, sure, but that still doesn't resolve the original concerns.

Last I checked Ultima 7 didnt have a shop keeper bot to sell my stuff. But I certainly ran around with Iolo in my adventures.

Again, I think this is one of those times to "lawyer" them because if the intent is more about having a sell bot, or auto-bots for your house, that is a far cry off the sold plan of having an ultimate rpg game with multiplayer elements.

It is exactly as @docdoom77 said, "I think we're getting an story driven mmo WITH a single player experience. I feel like the focus has changed a great deal since the original pitch."

That is an absolute fundamental design change and not some small, no big deal design change.