Do you have questions for Lord British and the Dev Team? ? (Dev) Replied

I love the Ultima series. I grew up playing Ultima IV-IX and am so very excited for this latest installment.

I have two questions for you.

1. When I purchase the game, i presume it will come with 1 "code" (or whatever you decide to use to verify purchased copies). However, I have my wife and two older children that i would love to play with me as well. Do i have to purchase 3 additional boxes for full price, or will there be some way to buy additional "codes" for a discounted price?

2. Do you plan to have a mobile (aka phone app) aspect to the game? Perhaps a simple app to check on in-game stats/messages, do quick management-type tasks, etc. without having to log into the PC all the time?

 

I am very interested with how the goals and development experiences that Portalarium has, specifically with regards to implementing social features into the game will influence the development of Shroud of the Avatar.

UO was a massive step forward in the online world of gaming. Recently, games that are smaller in scale than traditional MMOs have very limited included features for things like facebook and twitter, but I feel it's all been a very poor effort at best. I feel there's no real need for us to be relying so heavily on in game friend lists when we're all already connected to begin with.

What sort of interaction is planned for LBSotA? I know Richard briefly discussed it on one of the streams, but more depth on the design philosophic would be great.

 

In the single player aspect of the game especially instanced scenarios (towns/villages under siege), will friendly NPCs (including quest givers) be able to fight back against attackers and be non-essential (i.e. able to be killed as in The Elder Scroll games/mods) or will we be stuck with the standard CRPG NPC screaming bloody murder but really making much ado about nothing until the PC gets involved?

If the above is possible, could the PC then have a more unique experience by having quest givers and therefore quest loot barred from them upon death of a quest giver/ or NPC associated with a quest (no respawns of those NPCs as well) because of failure of the PC to save these NPCs (i.e. consequences)?

If both the above are possible, could it also be implemented in the multi-player aspect when questing with friends so that if for any reason, the quest NPC dies, then the rewards available are unavailable to all (consequences for the whole group by having the particular quest line flagged as a failure) thereby leading to much ragging of the individual who dropped the ball?

Thanks

 

Can you guarantee a house, taxfree or not, for every kickstarter even if they only pledged between 25$ and 400$?

And by the way, how many houses can be built all in all in SotA? Will there be a house for every player?

 

Over the years most of us have been spoiled with multiple characters for a single game account. Since the meta-fiction says this character is the player, does this mean one character peron-line game? Also, the player's avatar is projected into New Britannia won?t be an exact representation of the person behind the keyboard. Some of us will gleefully use the cosmetic system to give our character blue eyes instead of green or make character male when in reality the player is female. So, what if the person?s avatar wants to be something other than human? In other words is this game going to be human-centric? Or can I be a lizardman? (Yes, I?m that LT from Stratics)

 

In one of the recent videos, Richard mentioned that part of the dual scale rationale was so there wasn't as much empty space to wander through. Given that, I'm the type who enjoys finding fun stuff scattered throughout the land.

Will hard-core exploration be rewarded as it was in previous Ultimas?

(My favorite discovery was finding an invisibility ring under a rock where the mountains meet the coast due west of Bee Cave in UVIII)

 

Oh! And will there be a humorous but not-exactly-helpful talking horse?

 

Could would would the game support duel monitors. Would be nice to have your stats and bags on one monitor and then the main game monitor.

 

Having tried to "sell" this game to a couple family members and friends, I would love to be able to answer the question that they all had a huge concern about (and aren't currently backing because of the doubt surrounding this).

Question: Will there be any possibility of being PvPed in the open world unless we explicitly say yes to it? If so, how common are you aiming to make the situations that do lead to PvP? 10% of content? 50% of content? Any ballpalk figures and details would be vastly helpful in trying to encourage people to jump in here!

 

Did the giant squid on the original UO cloth map actually exist? Either I was sleep deprived and seeing things or I was attacked by that very monster back in 1998.

R,
BM

 

Basically I posted this already in the wishlist section because I hope some thinking goes into it.

What is the philosophy on letting real advantages, particularly time and money, intrude into the role-playing experience. Should those who have these real advantages be able to have them in this virtual world as well, or should there be a chance for a new, more egalitarian start for everyone? This is not an easy question!

I hope something the team thinks long and hard about. Too many games that take a purely capitalist approach to this question out there.

 

Will there be house customization?
-Custom Floor Tiles
-The ability to place items?
-Chests
-Deco?
-Spikes w/heads to warn the feint of heart
-Locked Down? Secure?
-Max Space?

 

If my very large guild can get an entire city dedicated to them why should I buy a house through the Kickstarter?

Can I really get a CITY? or do you mean village?

What's the disadvantage of a city owned by a guild compared to a city owned by no one?

I'd like to be the mayor a city. Can landowners run for office?

 

I wanted to know how exactly does the searching for friends and other beings work.
Besides being a simple are they on yes/no list. Does the list start with the closest friend within x amount of miles? What about strangers with same 'virtues' as you? Does it start at 10 miles then increase from there?

 

I actually read through the 4 pages of this thread and have watched all videos I know about to make sure these questions haven't been asked or answered yet:

1) Does "owning a shop" mean an actual physical building or just a vendor like in UO? If it's a building, will I still be able to have a separate home?

2) Will gold be a number on your paper doll (hope not) or an actual item with weight that has to be hauled to the bank (hope so)?

3) Will I have the ability to customize my body type in character creation like in Skyrim?

4) Which crafting skills do you think you will have?

 

I am very excited about this game, but I cannot buy it since Kickstarter doesn's support ''Paysafecard'' payment method and I (as many others) don't want to use credit card in the Internet.

So, my question is: When you release Shroud of the Avatar, could you make ''Paysafecard'' an available payment method? (This would probably raise sales in Europe significantly too.)

 

Housing:

-can I rent out vendor spaces to other players and collect rents?

Economy:

-Please tell me there is no AH. Market with vendors is ok.
-How do you plan to control inflation?

PVP/ Combat:

-given I can choose who to play with, does that mean I will never be pked?

-how much does ping affects the pvp experience? does 250ms ping = guaranteed death?

-action based combat or Tab Target?

-full Loot?

Items:

-can player craft the strongest items from harvested/mined materials? or some ingredient comes from high tier monsters?

-is there raiding in this game and raid gears are top tier, stronger and much easier to obtain than crafting?

Chat System

-is there global chat? I hope not...

-chat bubble?

 

I played Ultima Online for 10 years and loved the Skills Base system and Crafting. I really miss that part of the game and have yet to find a MMO with these types of options.
Will SOTA have skill base and crating system like Ultima Online has?

Will there be armor styles for a female class?...
so many games out there forget there are female gamers and don't give us armor that is fitting for the female frame.

 

- Any plans to add boats/ships? And If yes, just as vehicles or with more uses? Like fishing, naval battles, to retrieve sunked vessels's treasures, etc.

- Will gear be simple like UO's first years or will it be more like current MMOS? I miss those days when a sword was just a sword, you could lose it easily, but also you could get a replacemente from any player blacksmith.

P.S: Sorry for my english.

 

I'm still not sold on buying a city house through the kickstarter. Why would I want a city home if I can only have a dozen friends over?

What is the minimum amount of people I should expect in any given map in the full online mode?

It seems a lot of people have backed away from the housing tiers on the kickstarter - Why should people be jumping onto those $500 and up tiers?