Features you'd like to see in Shroud of the Avatar

Recipe experimentation: Rather than working from set recipes only, crafters could combine items as a way of discovering new recipes. This could also make for a nice community effort event with some people gathering resources and others doing the combining.

 

I love immersion features, and I think the crafting features mentioned will be good overall for the game, but I hope the developers are mindful of features that basically only contribute to the online portion of the game.

Ensuring that core gameplay is solid will benefit online and offline play.

As much as I loved the Ultima games, VII-IX in particular struggled with core gameplay. Combat was fairly simplistic. There wasn't much to progression.

I'm really hoping that SotA can deliver on more enjoyable combat, while keeping the best aspects of RG's previous games.

 

If shroud of the avatar goes for a classless game, I'd like easy to use templates that you can just click on when defining a character.

It will speed up character building until you are familiar with the process and reduce the barrier for entry.

honestly, in my opinion multiplayer should be an extra, not a focus.

I don't want to be robbed, murdered, etc while playing my rpg unless it's an ai opponents .

 

I would like to see an interesting afterlife, assuming it is appropriate for the background of the game. If I'm a ghost running back to my corpse, I'd like to see spirit-appropriate encounters. Some skills might be linked to doing certain things as ghosts. Perhaps my vengeful spirit can give bonuses to people fighting my killer. There might be places I can only visit as a ghost. Spirit Speak style abilities might improve while I try to speak to the living. And so on.

 

Farming, raising livestock, gardening. Buc Denizen said it all so perfectly on page 1 of this thread. Also the GF said she wants a home to take care of while I'm off slaying dragons. Let's giver her animals to play with.

 

-The ability to decorate your house

-House decorations that feature a "vault". I had a "vault" room in UO with gold lying on the floor, jewelry everywhere and big chests. It made me feel very special =)

-The high risk/high reward Gameplay that UO had. Looting a fallen house and then getting it all taken away by a PKer were the two sides of the game, and that's why it became so memorable for me. Horrible disappointment followed by Julibation!

 

Live (musical) performances via support for real-time MIDI-in (w/ sync) and possibly compressed audio. Play with a group at the theater or in the court of Lord British!

 

To continue being an open world. Including dynamic loading of landscape, objects. Inside locations (houses, dungeons) rendered in same area as main game world.

 

Building similar to Minecraft, but including more realistic physics rules. Being able to 'stick' objects together (nails, glue) so they don't just roll off each other when the physics engine takes over, as in many recent games. Build your own house or creation - piece by piece. There would be some need for restrictions as to the area/size, however, as it may get carried away .

 

Something I was thinking about though I don't know how workable it might be is a way you can get a quest.

Suppose in your travels you run across a map or document let's say found on a body or behind a secret wall or whatever. The document might be cryptic such as some odd text or a bit of a map showing something unique. As a result your curiosity has you wanting to find out more about this, or you can ignore it if you wish. Then I'm thinking the game as a result of this find triggers random events like people in the tavern talking about something related to what you found or more clues surface therefore leading you on a quest to find the fabled object, etc. Thus quests are not always scripted but are also caused by actions you take with maybe a random chance of being true.

 

I'd like to see homesteading, I understand presently that the lots are limited. And the argument that houses become abandoned and litter the countryside could be overcome with a degradation mechanic. Haven't played for a month, your house will need a lot of fixing up, eventually it fall into ruins and then lost in the mists of time. Monsters could take up residence in these abandoned lots The houses in town would be exempt from that and therefor still sought after.

 

I would like to see an open loot and pvp world that harkens back to the early days of Ultima Online.

The beauty of the Selective-Multi-Player System that you have developed is that players can essentially opt out of the more dangerous and unfriendly parts of that experience by choosing to play alone or just with friends. If a given player wants to be able to experience a completely unrestricted environment, they would simply need to choose the most liberal option available in the Selective-Multi-Player System. As long as the game defaults to SPO and everyone is warned of the dangers of setting the slider all the way to the right, it solves the major problem of losing new players who end up in over their heads.

 

I'd also like to see multiple 'ancient' scripts to decipher and work out clues/locations of cool loot/recipes/spells and such. Puzzles and Riddles are sadly lacking in most CRPGS (at least good ones)

 

I don't know if it has been mentioned yet, but I would really love the option to have the Bird's Eye View camera with the player locked in the symmetrical center of the screen, just like UO. If you could replicate the feel of the UO interface as much as possible, I think PVP would be a lot more enjoyable. I find the 3D camera to be extremely pointless during PVP in other games because it just encourages people to program hot keys in order to compensate for the camera's inconsistency, and that destroys the entire aspect of player vs. player. That would feel a lot better. I'm not sure about the efficiency since I have no experience with graphics or how Unity would render the tiles differently for each user's resolution, but I really hope this is possible. Please do this for us. I'm sure a lot of thought goes into the art, but I am really here for that class feel of PVP, interactive world and just about everything else we saw up until the 3D clients released on UO.

 

The targeting system is another key factor. If an opponent is far enough away, they should unlock from your target. I prefer the UO and Asheron's Call targeting systems (minus the auto-target hacks in AC). Eliminating the possibility for creating outside advantages via hardware and software is going to be one of the biggest factors in balancing the PVP. I'm so tired of having to spin the damn camera around while some idiot slams on keys and puts absolutely no effort into killing me. Please make this the WoW-killer. All of the more recent games have been just God awful. Ultima's casting system worked perfectly with the targeting on the OSI and free servers with the only difference being that you would instantly target on some of the free shards and have the choice to toggle war/peace with "Tab" which would automatically fizzle the spell without using and mana or reagants. That or the OSI style successful cast with timed target cursor would work. Both have versatility and give the player the option to cancel the spell. This nonsense with lock-on-target-and-slam-the-keyboard is just tasteless and attracts the mouth breathers.

 

Some kind of augmented reality would be interesting.

 

I would like to see character dialogue and interactions that do not suck. That might seem like an obvious goal but it hasn't stopped many RPGs from having some really really bad dialogue and character interaction.

Cringe worthy missteps:

1. Dialogue or internal monologue that no sane person would ever say or think. Conversations and thoughts should sound natural, not like someone wrote them.

2. The over use of cliches and one-liners.

3. Characters that feel the need to announce their emotions rather than expressing them through their actions and/or facial expressions.

4. Characters that seem completely clueless about the world around them and the events transpiring right in front of their eyes.

5. Villagers who are all too ready to tell you their entire life story the second you meet them.

6. Characters that feel the need to explain plot events like the player is an idiot (American movies are the worst offenders of this). It is o.k to let players attempt to interpret an events meaning from time to time. They don't need to be spoon fed every little thing.

7. Conversations that are overly blunt. It is perfectly o.k. to let the player pick out important or useful information from a larger conservation from time to time without beating them over the head with the obvious.

8. Characters that wait around for you to fix every little problem. I kind of doubt that you are the only person in the entire world skilled enough to kill the rats in farmer Mike's vegetable cellar.

9. Characters that are all too ready to fight to the death over every little thing. Yeah I know I stole your loaf of bread but you are seriously going to attack a guy dressed in full plate armor wielding a flaming sword over it?

10. Characters who possess this mystical ability to know exactly what deeds or misdeeds I performed even if they were not there and there is no logical reason for them to know this information.

11. Stay a way from purple prose. It is wonky and has no place in immersive gameplay.

12. Overwhelming melancholy. "Noooooooooooooo!!!!! Don't Die!". .....um, yeah.....

13. Pointless or unnatural details. Farmer Joe: "Ah! Fine day we're having! Monsters roam the lands, though."

14. Characters that are too black or white. I am a huge fan of George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series (Game of Thrones) and one of the reasons I enjoy it so much is that it is very much a "gray" fantasy. Everyone has their own goals and agendas and while those goals can and often do cause characters to clash with each other, no one is marching all around the world committing evil deeds just for the heck of it.

15. Let important and much loved characters die. Yes, some people will curse you for it but it is unnatural that everyone on the "good" side makes it through the game unscathed.

16. Choices are rarely 100% good or 100% bad. What choices you make have real consequences and effects on the world around you. Some will benefit and some will suffer.

 

you know in a wierd way, they may already have the classes they need

1. Wizard - aka the straight spellcasters and overall researchers of stuff.

2. Fighter - the guys whom hit things up close, by land or by sea. They also are the best horsemen.

3. Bard - magical musicians and darm good shots when needed

4. Druid - nature priests and tenders of the shrines, as well as judges (could be turned into some sort of legal mechanic)

5. Paladin - your blending of fighter and mage. Their code brings them strength and they are a sort of proto-avatar.

6. Ranger - your tracker and provider of safe travel. Also your sneaky class.

7. Tinker - your craftsman class. They are also the most likely to use black powder and wierd weapons

8. Shepard - your animal trainer class (expect massive flocks of killer sheep) ).

 

"The ?lose it all in a flash? was Ultima Online?s most standout feature to date. In a matter of moments, you could lose the keys to your house and all the possessions you were carrying just by wandering into dangerous ground. It made for a more exciting world.

I am hoping SOTA implements these values. The ability to lose everything you own at any moment."

Couldn't agree with Nastan more. The idea that you could lose a house key, and have to haul ass to your house to replace the locks may not seem like much, but the immersion you get from this kind of realism is phenomenal. If there was a truly vanilla version of UO still available out there, I'd be playing it still. I couldn't stomach the travesty of what EA did to it.

 

I am wondering if the Avatar names will be the same as my user name or if I will be able to customize it. I am hoping the latter is possible.