How Ultima do you want the game?

Did *I* seriously just read this?

 

Of course so does Hexan and Serious Sam... Tomb Raider... Any game set in Egypt... Got nothing to do with Ultima.

There's titans of truth love and courage... Of course Zelda has those... Nothing to do with Ultima.

There's umm...

Uh...

The prophecy says Lord British will return?

 

There's content.. and there context.

 

At least he shows up in the game sometimes....

 

ok so the music has that old feel like the original ultimas,
the loading screens while entering towns\places is simular to old ultimas,
the name/job/help is very much old ultima,
the moongate system is old ultima,
some names and faces are old ultima,
the symbolisation of the ankh and the virtues are old ultima,

other than that I'm not really feeling much more that is old ultima - I could be missing things, but overall I think its the fact that Richard Garriott is behind the construction of SOTA and has incorporated some aspects of the old Ultimas and has also mentioned them from time to time in posts is what is bringing on the hysteria of the fact that this is feeling and becoming a game simular to the old Ultimas. If you accually take two steps back and think about everything for a bit you would notice yes it has some aspects like the old Ultimas but it also holds aspects like quite a few old games aswell which intern makes it a whole new game completely.

Personally I loved the old Ultimas especially 5 and 7 part 1 and 2, but I'm not feeling that this is a tribute to those games for the fact that there is many aspects that don't fit into the Ultima way of things. Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that that is a bad thing because I'm quite enjoying SOTA in its current form even though I'm still on the fence over certain aspects of the game. I can forsee myself playing SOTA for quite some time in the future provided they don't completely destroy the game. A lot more needs to be done to the game to make it more immersive and wholesome yes but we still need to realise that the game is not even fully launched yet so everything isn't in the game yet for the final wipe\launch.

So overall I still hold out hope that the game will iron out its crinkles and become one that we can all play for as long as we did in UO.

 

Exactly. At the moment it just feel like the content has been shoved in.

What made Ultima feel ultima was a mix of things, the music, the visuals or course... But more broadly the characters, the places, the history. Which sadly we have access to none of because licencing. But we don't even really have proxies... So the only other thing we could relate to is mechanics... Which we have none of either... No hunger, no fully free interaction with the environment or characters... Which are just faceless statues. There's no searching mechanic, no spell construction, no collection of artifacts to assemble, there's not even really a virtue system yet... Bar the oracle getting upset when you loot corpses... Which is from which ultima exactly? None of the monsters in the game are even recognisable.

Heck Bowen... We can't even get a friggen orrery named an orrery.
At least they stopped calling the giant electrodes Tesla towers.... That doesn't even make sense in this universe.

Edit: I forgot about the lunar rifts since they aren't really implemented in anyway other then go from point a to b when devs think it's convenient for this release. Where's the system to predict and control them?
And to be fair, "some" of these things are coming one day down the line... But it certainly doesn't feel anything like Ultima yet.

 

I don't have quite the same feeling. It's just a lot of it hidden. Take the Obsidian forge for example.. it's totally the base of a black rock pillar. Obsidian's effect on magic is very similar to black rock. But you actually have to take the time to put it all together. And a bit part of that is just there's so much story we haven't seen yet.. how well will they sneakily do this or that? I'm not 100% there yet on the Ultima vibe but there's content AND context I see everywhere.. but only because I'm well acquainted with the lore.

Take the fomorians for example.. Obsidian cabal performed shape shifting experiments on humans producing creatures new to the world? This concept goes all the way back to Mondain who did the very same thing to produce a lot of the variants on creatures in Ultima like the orcs and trolls.. yes.. orcs and trolls from Ultima were in there own right fomorian creatures and who knows what else?

With you there.. I think all Ultima fans will miss Stones.. Visuals.. I don't know I feel like there's a bit of a cross between Ultima and NWN in the dual map system. places not so much as I remember Ultima III pretty well. Old Sosaria map and all..

Much of which can be due to the current state of development. So I'm not prepared to stress on these just yet.

Well I don't know about that.. I don't think you can copyright a common noun.

I'm still hopeful we'll get there in the end. But yes the lack of real character development and polished story does much to hold back some of that nostalgia.

 

10000000000000000000000% Ultima

No fake gypsies with fake questions and fake answers, but legit Ultima-ness, a world where things matter. Doesn't matter if some pledgers didn't pledge because it's supposed to be "The Spiritual Successor to the Ultimas", the fact is, it's supposed to be "The Spiritual Successor to the Ultimas".

 

I wish this game would be more like Ultima 7.
Right now the cities feel bland and empty, just like hubs and not like places that have a "soul".
The NPCs right now are lifeless husks - except for a few who offer quite some interesting dialogue.
The quests are - sorry - boring right now as there are just Fedex quests in the game without any twists, surprises etc.
The dialogue system being an IRC Chat protocol is bad. It is neither atmospheric to look at nor easy or fun to read.
The interaction with the world is not yet on par with Ultima 7. Some things cannot be taken (cushions for example), we cannot drop items everywhere, move items etc.
There are no companions yet and we don't even know how they will work when they are introduced.
It is not possible to sleep in order to advance time.
We don't know yet if we will get multiple savegames in offline mode.

You can see some Ultima vibes shining through from time to time and SotA could become a good game but right now there is still a lot of work to do to accomplish this.

 

I was quite disappointed the other day when I started questing again for the first time in months and the first quest I found was kill 5 of X monster and return.

 

Yes the quests need a lot of love. Right now we have Fedex-quests or Kill-quests... An RPG that is released in 2016 should offer significantly more. But I hope that the devs will manage to create complex, deep quests full of surprises and twists and that what we see right now are just first iterations and placeholders..

 

I was really hoping to see hot air balloons, to bring back the nostalgia from Ultima 6.. then they put them in the 'add-on store'......... ....... ....... :-(

What the??

They are suppose to be craftable and extremely heavy once put together.. and on top of that.. you shouldn't keep them inflated all day-night! It's using up fuel that way!! What?? They aren't yard decorations, they are means of transportation. I'm glad the assets have been made, but I don't think they should be paid for to look pretty in our yards.. I'm not playing 'Garage Sale' to show off the cool Ultima-looking stuff I bought in a store in my lawn.. I'm playing the spiritual successor to the Ultima series!!

Why is gold just a number? Why isn't weight being measured in stones? Why isn't darkness dark without a light, and why don't we die if we stop eating or don't wear swamp boots in the swamp?

Okay, I think many of the things that made Ultima games great came after the world building mechanics (core systems) were completed which would allow them to be completed. This game is in development, and it's an iterative process. The add-on store purchases, when related directly to some of these mechanics puzzles me, but hopefully the added functionality will come in time.

 

There's only one answer to this question, and that is Ultima++, double, no ice!

In the long run, i expect SotA not only to have what we had in previous Ultima games, but a whole revamped experience with the human interaction of Ultima Online and an environment as rich as the one given in U7.

• I expect to feel how my character is developed in a world bigger than him, populated by organic NPCs that reacts to me and my previous actions.
• I expect not only a rich story with meaningful choices but also a system that gives meaning to go around the world exploring and discovering, making sure that the world is not static and it changes over time.
• I want to see players involved in how the world shapes, and guilds of different nature being a driven force in the game, and with the mechanics to make guilds intertwined with the game (factions, fame, control over the world).
• I want to see the current core mechanics fully developed into what they should be. Quoting my two favorites, an overland map i could interact with by camping, finding treasures, planning PVP ambushes and having a ton of random encounters with different outcomes and a full fledged combat system with lots of combos.
• I want the world to feel organic, with NPCs that travel and do things. An organic layout in scenes where enemies seems to be passing by or patrolling or camped, not just "hanging around". Also a final product where levels matter less and players progress more horizontally (diversification) than vertically (power).

I know my expectations are high, and the way i acknowledge it is by worrying about the direction of progress, not the amount of progress itself. I'm in no rush, and i honestly believe that if somebody can pull the "Ultimate RPG" is this team. And i'm sure i'll enjoy the ride as much as i'll enjoy being at the destination. And part of the ride is being overly critical with the things we don't like Buckle up! this 7 months are going to be an amazing roller coaster.

I expect those to be craftable/buyable at the same time we can use them to fly, or at the very least shortly after. The same way houses are both available in the Addon Store and in game, at least "standard" versions of everything should be obtainable in game through crafting or other means. What is an Ultima game if there are things you can't get in game?

 

Out of curiosity, was Martian Dreams more Ultima? Did Martian Dreams have the characteristics to give the feeling of playing another game in the series?

 

I've played all of the Ultimas, and UO for many years (atlantic shard) and they were fun! That's all I want from SotA, an equivalent (or better) fun level--and so far so good .

 

Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams is a role-playing video game set in the Ultima series, published in 1991. It uses the same engine as Ultima VI, as did the first Worlds of Ultima game, The Savage Empire.

The game has an extensive cast of Victorian Erapeople, including Marie Curie, Buffalo Bill, Rasputin, Sigmund Freud, Andrew Carnegie, Nikola Tesla, and C. L. Blood.

After the events in the Savage Empire, the Avatar is visited by a strange red-haired woman that gives a book to him and his friend Dr. Spector. The book will eventually be written by Spector himself, and explains how to use the Orb of the Moons to travel through time. Following instructions, the duo ends up in the Victorian Era, where Percival Lowell has set up a space cannon that will launch some volunteers to Mars.

Through an act of sabotage, the cannon is fired during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, with several dozen famous people and leaders of the time on board. A second cannon is prepared to find and recover the people in the first, who are now stranded on Mars.

It turns out that Mars had an extensive civilization based on plants. Most monsters the player encounters are so-called "plantimals", such as the Jumping Bean and the Planther. Mars has cities and canals, although the civilization is in ruins, so the player's first tasks are restoring the world power station, and melting enough of the polar caps (with a solar lens) to fill the canals.

Some of the people appear to have gone insane after using a device called the Dream Machine. What in fact happened was that, after massive soil poisoning, the original Martians had gone into a sort of alternate dimension called "dreamspace" to preserve themselves. Those people using the Dream Machine found themselves trapped in dreamspace, while the Martians took over their bodies. A large part of the game is spent visiting various people's nightmares and clearing them up.

Eventually, robotic bodies can be created for the Martians, since their plantamal bodies won't grow. After a showdown with the evil Raxachk, who caused the soil pollution in the first place, all Victorians can once more go home.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima:_Worlds_of_Adventure_2:_Martian_Dreams

 

Martian Dreams used the engine but for me it was a stretch of an Ultima that I was used to.

 

*Bubonic gives Miracle a big fat chocolate chip cookie for continuing to speak the very thoughts Bubonic has been thinking*

 

Large parts of it were. Ultima had dealt with the dream world a couple of times (and continued to do so later in serpent isle) and there were several returning characters, some of which were given more depth by their dialogue in MD (Astaroth the Shadowlord comes to mind) and the bulk of the mechanics/visuals/sound/interface etc. were pulled directly from ultima 6 (It added mechanics like the need to breath, rather then changing them or taking them away). The setting was a fantastical mars, this isn't too much of a stretch if you accept ultima 2's gameplay as the actual cannon (verses the retconned official cannon from later games which was much more vague and please don't sue us, but even that non specifically said the Avatar explored the solar system thus had been to mars before when the timeline was a mess). The story dealt with a lot of interesting philosophical issues and had a lot of throw backs to the Avatar/Stranger's history and in that sense was very Ultima even though the world was very alien to the series (same can be said for U8 Pagan with the caveat that Pagan was less complete and polished because it was rushed and published to soon impacting the story).

 

whoa yeh forgot about the swamp boots . now that would be cool . Like you say i was dissapointed the balloons wouldn't move . old nostalga i suppose . Thats why i liked the other forms of travel boats,horses and of cause the moon gates. remember the flying carpet too .