Did anyone catch this news story?

I agree, yet I don't think recent events will stop them, as it will take quite a long time to see any new game they are working on to reach a stage where they have enough of the game built to begin advertizing it, which they have failed in timing properly before, and the playable game itself could take years as SOTA did.

Selling hype protential seems to produce games which have limited life spans, hype = profits, potential = greed, games = new interest, life span = been there done that, been there done that = gamers needing a new game once again.

I do keep searching for more news on this subject and also about the new game, but it does seem to have died down to seemingly nothing, which causes me to wonder why they shared that news as early as they did. I was expecting sales to begin within a month of those stories.

In light of that, maybe they will fail at more proper advertizing both in their timing and their ways as they did with SOTA.
~Time Lord~

 

My two cents.... RPG is a misnomer in the way it is argued. I truly believe that RPG represents the true essentials of our personalities. It is not a fantasy role play of imagined or shared (if you will) ways of life. The gardener at heart will rpg their real live selves in the fulfillment of what they need to attain IRL according to their true personality. So role playing is just being able to be who you are in this artificial environment. That said, the closer a game gets to offering all the inherent normal life affinities for all who come is just that more successful.

Fishing, hunting, decorating, marketing, treasure hunting, Pirate stuff, player on player competition, governing, protecting, building, religion, etc. Each has a place and more importantly each has certain requirements to deliver a fulfilling experience. Take fishing for an example. Just catching fish any where you cast primarily due to random chance just doesn't cut it. Fishing needs a hunt for favorable areas and times for specific fish. The fisher person wants to catch the big one. They want to keep their best spots secret, they want to bait up for a tarpon, not catching much other than the target fish. Mounting a prize trophy should get bragging rights.

The miner needs a search for ore rich ground. They don't need big chunks of iron sitting on the surface any where they go. That is not mining. UO had this down pat. Mining was prospecting on normal ground till a hit was made, the ore showed up after a few swings. It could be iron, gold, or other ore. Then walking all around this spot and trying the earth you discover that by gosh this is a hot spot for (let's say) gold. Oh wow, is anyone looking?
That hot spot discovered might last for a few days before it petered out. Then the hunt continues....

My point is that if we supply these activities at a deeper level, each one will draw people whose interest is along those lines and they will play essentially forever. The fisher person to have a good supply of tarpon, to either sell or display as the largest tarpon ever caught as a trophy. You know yours is the largest because the one that was the old largest on display somewhere in the land either disappears, or changes such that only the largest one on display becomes obvious.

We have many of the basics for real RPG. Things just need to be a little deeper to be very satisfying.

Hope this is not off topic. I just contend that ANY game will be successful if our intrinsic personalities are satisfied in this build it yourself environment.

 

That's a strong appeal to the Simulationist, but they are hardly the only players and beyond a certain point you are going to end up annoying the Gamist and the Narrativist. Assuming that trio still matters. For example, the various Paradox game series has always walked this line, to the Simulationist, having one kingdom/country/galactic federation rapidly expand without its neighbors taking steps to hem them in is both unlikely and has several historical antecedents, yet the mechanics Paradoxes puts in their games to simulate this are among the most hated by the player base. It annoys the Gamist that wants use the mechanics to "win" and it annoys the Narrativist who wants to role-play an epic rise to glory. I'm not saying that the Simulationist approach is less important, only that when you focus too hard on it, you limit you market appeal to a much smaller group than you would otherwise attract.

 

I love these catagory names Excellent refinement!
I guess I'm a Simulationist, not because they have a much more scary name than the others (my "Technolians" catagory were beginning to scare me but I do contend they are the ruling party of squaters which is normal as games are built by progammers and programmers like other programmers which leaves users at their Technolian mercy), but I'm guessing I'm a Simulationist because I do like those qualities much more than the other 2. I do wish our "mechanism wins" were much more chaotic to the point of annoyance than as orderly and predictable as they are in dealing dammage or feat.

So I think my best description of me is I'm a Simulationist User, with no other more redeaming qualities about me.
Oh, and I'm also very prejudice against the other two because they seem to be the dominant of the three ~TL~

Some things in this video sound very close to what is coming

I think what is coming will shape all in what we've said here.

 

Isn't there room for three games? My guess is that NFT will be lots of fun and profitable, it will peter out due to the overhead and burnout. Left will be three approaches, plundering along earning 6% or more net with lots of happy players. I sure do realize that my view and approach is simplistic, but I wonder when looking at products such as corn flakes, oatmeal, et al that earn a tidy profit year after year without change, rejected by many but continuing to be a modest investment return.

Every successful product gives birth to many schemes to "improve" fun and excitement through different mechanisms. Take your basic slot machine program, perhaps run by a major casino. A proven game, highly profitable, satisfying a huge player base willing to gamble for the big win. As long as the original game is kept secure from various marketing schemes, player info sharing, fraud, and whatever, it will always be a consistent profitable operation. All the copy cats with hidden agendas selling slot machine games with huge coin payouts, beautiful visuals, great sounds, community, constant advertising to attract new players as old players move on. None of these will be the corn flake, but for sure the original, secure game will survive.

 

Wise words indeed Yurk Key!


Original Corn are good and will continue to be good to the dedicated enjoying consumer!

When you're hot, you're hot and resell for a hot price and maybe even an inflated price, but whatever that "good return price" is, if it's sold, then it is no longer th original owner's fun, it's now the purchaser's fun. Even here in our SOTA we've seen this play out, where someone bought a hot location to buy things, at some incredible price, yet it's re-sell value deminished as players went on to other games, having had their fill of our corn flakes until they get the hunger for the same again.

I couldn't afford a Ferrari level account when our game here first started, but I did however buy a mid-level Royal account. It's aged now and I could still get something for it, yet I would then loose what it has been built up to be, which is fun for me, yet is now well beyond what was a top level Ferrari in invested value. I have a very versatile account, which was my aim to build "for fun". But it is an old car now when looked at as marketable as all accounts are now, yet if you like Corn Flakes or vintage Ferrari, it's still allot of fun!

The new game is said to be marketing fun in a game and I will be trying it, but not as an investor in some apreciating value, a some came ro SOTA looking for, which it was, yet was in long term not (I'm looking at you when I say that "Syndicate" ) I mention them because they are hinted to be somehow an influence within it's concept development.

~TL~

 

A New Web 3.0 Open World Sandbox MMORPG From The Creators Of Ultima: Iron & Magic

 

https://www.facebook.com/IronandMagic/

 

I wish them well (Iron and Magic).

Continuing to play Shroud of the Avatar (hopefully we'll see the next 4 episodes completed), ESO among other games I've recently purchased

 

I think there will be plenty of people who enjoy playing one type of character one day, and playing another type of character another day.

Playing a game is like seeing a movie or watching a book. One time I might want to watch a movie about adventure and swashbuckling, and another time I might want to watch a movie about a boy and his father going fishing. The bottom line is that its a good, well-written movie will draw me in. It can be about any subject or any theme, it can be slow, or it can be fast, action based or introspective. I'll see any movie -- I as long as its a good movie.

One thing I agree with you is that detail helps build stories and helps draw people into them. Stories are a form of escapism, and in order to build a good escape for a reader, you have to create atmosphere and make people feel like they're in the story. Imagine a book about miners, and it was just about someone walking around a cave with iron ores sticking out of the ground and going around in circles hitting these ores with the same pick. By the time he finished gathering the last ore, he goes back to the first ore, which respawned. Nothing happens except going around in circles hitting ores for the entire book. It would be a boring story, right? That also makes it a boring game. The vice on the other end of the spectrum would be to labor the reader with too many tedious details about mining in a way that doesn't fit into any narrative experience, making it feel like they're reading a technical manual rather than a story.

What makes a role-playing game a role-playing game are the rules, limits, and restrictions placed on the player, because that's what allows it to be a storytelling experience --- the same way those things help create a good story in a book or a movie.

If you doubt that the way I put that, think about it like this: If I'm reading a book about mining, I expect the miners to deal with all sorts of needs, challenges, and dangers --- because that's what creates the drama and makes the story engaging and moves it along. I expect the characters to need to take with them all the equipment they need to do spelunking. I'm going to imagine if they do things wrongly, there's going to be cave ins, and they're going to be trapped, or they'll fall down a pit, that if they aren't smart enough, they'll chase false leads, and destroy what they're trying to mine. All of these realities of mining are what will help create the drama and what will help make a book about mining a good book. They'll also help create a good game.

I'd say the same kind of thing I said earlier -- I think there are plenty of people are happy to play a "gamist" game one day, and play a "simulationist" game the next day.

Say play Minesweeper ("gamist") on Wednesday, and play SimCity ("simulationist") on Thursday -- and enjoy them both, because they're both good games.

My view is the problem with Europa Universalis' isn't that its "simulationist", its that its like playing a technical manual, as I described it earlier. For example, I loved playing SimCity and I think it always was more engaging when they managed to add more real features, like SimCity 4 with the Rush Hour expansion. I also hated playing Europa Universalis. Its not that SimCity is less "simulationist" -- its just as simulationist as EU, if not more so -- just simply a better designed game.

Anyway, the common problem I see with MMOs is the opposite tendency. Mining in most MMOs is not a technical manual, its that its incredibly mindless and is boring for the same reason that it would be boring for a book or boring for a movie to just see someone run around in circles all day. If you want to make mining in a game better, a game developer should think about what they would do to make mining in a book or movie better, and translate that into gameplay the best they can.

 

You missed the part about the encounter with the satyrs and ghosts while mining. And many of the dead avatar bodies we see sometimes there…

 

If ESO had an offline mode then it would be awesome. I would buy all the DLC and just play it offline.

Dragon Age 3 was pretty good. I'm looking forward to Dragon Age 4.

 

When MMO games go deep into mining and do it well:

 

Lots of games btw have fun mining in them, not necessarily replicable in an MMO



Different rules, different complexities, different degrees of realism. But the point is still always if you want to make a fun game about mining, you make the player feel like he's a miner.

So that's a pic of Terraria. You need to bring enough torches with you or else you're going to have to find your way back to the surface. This is a fun aspect of the game even though its a restriction on the player and its a disappointment if you ever run out of torches. Darkness is one of the dangers of spelunking in caves and creates a challenge you as a player associate with the fun of mining.

 

Wow that website... just put on air and there's already the SotA trademark "content coming soon" on it.

 

'Iron and Magic'.

Pretty cheesy name TBH perhaps but im no marketing person. Seems you can eventually buy large plots of land AND smaller buildings which seem they might have progression of completion stages. (kinda like Hero's of might and magic? I wonder if characters will be used)
If its not instanced, it almost might as well be seeing it seems to use tiles.

"buy land in the realm of Lord british"

Direct me to the 'realm of the free peoples republic' instead! Would we be buying land on LB's behalf??

 

I sure wish that "Portal" thing would have worked so we could just move virtual asset investment amounts between games within the "Portal".

Portalarium, it was a great idea, a wonderful consept, a dream to dream on as well as a portal onward for a dedicated fan base to cling to.

Dreams can come true, let me show you mine, SOTA-Derelicte!

I like IM's new artwork, IM leans into the fantasy of MMO-RPG
~Time Lord~