How Ultima do you want the game?

Thinking about what I said I see myself playing Tabula Rasa again and thinking "why the hell would people not listen to someone who created a game that still has tens of thousands of fans 10+ years after"... it really is beyond my comprehension.

At times during the developpement process I was faced with it... and I almost felt like some people were thinking UO and Tabula Rasa were failures.

I know this is kinda harsh but its my feedback nonetheless, its as if we were saying "well look at WoW, not THATS A success, and the SIMS now THATS a good model, oh and farmville THATS a good way to make money to finance your dreams, wasting people's time and creativity"

Well I couldn't disagree more with the subconscious "vibe" out here...

UO changed my life, Tabula Rasa was one of the most entertaining game ever made, period.

 

Ultima changed mine, it was my introduction to RPG's. I started with 3 went all the way to 9...tried UO for a bit and thought, what happened to Ultima....it felt like they took the setting and tacked it on top of a medieval simulator....I'm hoping they find the balance here to bring the magic that the single player ultima's had.

 

You have to remember that UO was all made and coded by hand... there was lots of merit in it, and obviously you missed the meat of it 1998-2000... there was a time where UO was becoming something that words fail to describe.

 

When I play a game I want to experience a great story and I want to be the hero of this story. I want to save the world. I want to kill the dragon overlord, the bandits who attack people on the road. I want to free the mines from the undead invasion. I want to have the feeling that what I do really matters and does affect the world and it's inhabitants around me.
Also I want to experience a world with a rich backstory. Meeting it's inhabitants that do have a purpose and a place in this world. I want to explore cities that have a personality and a history. The world should feel believable and "real". I want to interact with every item in this world to get this feeling.

Most of this was missing from UO. I was not the hero who saved the world. There was no story. The cities didn't feel believable as the inhabitants were other players who did what they liked and they did not have interesting backgrounds and histories that added to the cities. There were no interesting people living there who had their secrets, cheated on their husbands or met in secret. Cities were hubs where you met other people and bought and sold items. Even exploring the wildnerss was not interesting as other players built their houses in front of dungeons. Not very atmospheric for someone who wants to explore a wild area.
There were no consequences to what I did in the game. When I killed the dragons they were back again. When I attacked the orcs in the fortress I could never rid this fortress of the orcs. I never felt like being the hero - others even attacked me on the road and took all of my gear. Not very hero-like.
Yes, UO was a great sandbox but for me a game should offer MUCH more.

 

You can play stones in the game.

Go here to read the directions and download the song from the Ultima game you want - http://www.sotamuseum.com/Shroud_of_the_Avatar/Music/

Grab or craft a lute / piano and play Stones in the game!

 

Was the bug with being unable to play any file over 40-60 kb fixed ? (the player could hear them but not anyone else)

Same bug happened when you played in groups sometimes, seems like a buffer issue...

 

I assure you that was part of the original vision for UO, in simple terms before some people (even some working for origin if you recall) realised it was more profitable not to care and just sell dupes and hacked gold and potions, and that those same people used their hard earned monies to purchase-em-all-othon. Using "bought" friends to leverage opinions and design decisions ; ahem.

Lets not generalize here and take it in a positive way :

Before that moment, everyone was having fun for the sake of fun (with exeptions of course), so gold and riches mattered less, yes ? So seers and GMs in the game actually made sure the story was "moving forward" by actively spying and modifying the environement according to yes, a chosen few who were then supposed to turn this into volunteer reporting with free artistic liscence. That was how their roles as archons were important because they did not discriminate by choosing only people with high contributions to the game but rather who was spending the most time into _definite_ aspects of the story.

Seems like alot of work but then and only then it can make sense to have "an open developpement" in my humble opinion. Thats the open source concept and thats the future of gaming.

Not micro-transaction not psycho aquisition not meta-hurdled tier based equipment babble.

[QUOTE="Most of this was missing from UO. I was not the hero who saved the world. There was no story. The cities didn't feel believable as the inhabitants were other players who did what they liked and they did not have interesting backgrounds and histories that added to the cities. There were no interesting people living there who had their secrets, cheated on their husbands or met in secret. Cities were hubs where you met other people and bought and sold items. Even exploring the wildnerss was not interesting as other players built their houses in front of dungeons. Not very atmospheric for someone who wants to explore a wild area.
There were no consequences to what I did in the game. When I killed the dragons they were back again. When I attacked the orcs in the fortress I could never rid this fortress of the orcs. I never felt like being the hero - others even attacked me on the road and took all of my gear. Not very hero-like.
Yes, UO was a great sandbox but for me a game should offer MUCH more.[/QUOTE]

Ok as I've explained the issue with people is lack of guidance, you could in theory be the hero and there was a great storyline deployed on many shards (the key element to remember here is that the division of the people made them more united in the end because by allowing such freedom to "have a fresh start into another world" by creating an avatar on another shard made your experience infinitely complex and you could expand it as you wished.) in fact on atlantic and pacific shards there was someone who was crowned paladin and given lots of rewards for, well thats the part.

The story was never finished because real money trade (RMT) ruined the game, EA legally HAD to fire the whole staff because of a few rotten apples amongst them, who obviously helped set up a ring. Anyways thats not the interesting part.

The interesting part is that basically those people were rewarded for having killed me. That was my silly role on Atlantic, Bal Lem.

I was carrying the codex, the scroll of armageddon and the black rock gem.

I was hidden under the maze (in the ritual hidden chamber that everyone knows of) and was SUPPOSED to be killed. This was done to hook people into thinking that they could prevent the followers of armageddon from finally accomplishing their goal (which was a hidden meaning goal, one of the greatest achievement in multi-dimentional gaming ever : the goal of armageddon was to wipe all houses off the map to cripple all hacking and duping that had occured. Patches were soon to follow that fixed those exploits and time was really key here, they had to intervene fast to keep face. Well noone came into the hidden chamber, then the seers and GMs disapeared and I was left on my own.

Weeks later I met the xorinite that taught me how to cast armageddon, I admit at that point I had sensed something was very wrong and was angry enough to destroy the shard, fulfilling my role.

As for the people Rune you see, yes many were uninteresting and without background, some killed mercilessly like madmen, and whatnot ! So that seems like the real world, and Ultima was always meant to reflect real life.

Thats how I'm a real fan of ultima, I see the genius in it all, to a degree I can now share with you with perfect clarity.

Of course weeks yet later, EA modified the TOS and added a clause about players having the right to privacy in their own home and the whole "I ban thee" masquerade, which effectively meant that GMs stopped peering into players house (which should be BY DEFAULT) to determine which were obvious cheaters.

RMT "interests" bought the game, literally in front of my hourglasses, and everything became as you describe, the structure slowly erroded. Of course it would, people diverged from the path Lord British had laid before them.

In essence I'm also saying that in no way I think members of portalarium are part of this mess. They dealt with it the best way they could without causing too much commotion that could have harmed even further the community.

I'm saying also that I did what I did, I destroyed atlantic and all the other shards thus have had a scar that never healed. I did literally, I did figuratively, done deed.

So was I a force of evil, really ? That is the genius of Ultima.

And since noone wanted to hear me behind the throne, I now say it loud and clear.

OPEN SOURCE NOW

The mature content that really moves people to actively pursue a balance of pvp and roleplay is still not at the menu sadly... I think families will play this game (pg-13) and true evil and thus fantasy has a rather small place there. I would love a siege perilous mature server myself Can we purchase that in the add-on store ?

Some of the complaints you had were immediately fixed, I am sorry Darkmoon but UO was a masterpiece that was ahead of its time, I won't let you take away from the genius of those people The patches were impressive (so are portalarium's) and painstakingly detailed, name what other game does this.

Don't get me wrong people this is really a WoT of admiration, and also honesty for my part in it all.

Some of the people at portalarium I really admire, and know that they did work on the amazing story that UO had. So release some worry there, just a notch about the single player experience, because you're in for a surprise.

I'm merely here to remind you to not close your mind, because things change, times change, let yourself see through and through

 

So basically, the "degree of Ultimaness" people want the game to be is completely different to every person, since "being Ultima-like" is different to every person. To me, the moment you make PVP optional, its not Ultima (and thats ok [I guess...] cuz I love SoTA so far!).

Though there are a lot of things very Ultima about this game. I dont need to repeat the loads of things people have listed, all of which are great, and I cant wait to see more of in SoTA.

One thing I loved about UO was the very simple nature of the game system, with its high degree of ability to interact with. I loved how trends and styles with fashion and gear evolved in the game - you could spot a hardcore PVP'er just simply by their outfit, and the same for a PVE'er. This had little to do with gear, and more to do with fashion accessories. You could tell who hung out in the Brit graveyard, and who diddnt, just by their clothes and color schemes. It was a lot like real life, with some trendsetters, and many following suit, and then fashion trends would die out and evolve into something different. That was very Ultima to me, a culture evolving from player choice, rather than decree from game world stats and buffs etc.

Conversely, I loved DAoC, and it was probably my favorite PVP game ever made (note: I was a hardcore PVPer in UO). I played DAoC so successfully that I sold my 2 accounts for almost 5 grand total. However, there was no style in that game, no player made culture - everyone just went for the same "FTW" stats for their class, wore the same exact armor (the Trials of Atlantis gear pretty much), and it had a rather boring player culture. Player towns were really dumb. Guilds were good for racking up PVP exp and organizing raids (so you can get the same gear as everyone else) but not much else. I played the game for like 5 years and neverstuck with a guild, it felt meaningless. Deviating from the norm in terms of skill selection usually meant your character sucked at "endgame." Single player quests were just epic FedEx tasks that amounted to riding a horse on an automated trail for hours and then clicking the FTW button for your class a bunch. Crafting was beyond cantankerous, bland, and boring. And naturally EA came along and ruined the game like all good things... but the bottom line for me was, I played DAoC cuz no game was available that was as cool as Ultima Online (which was utterly destroyed by EA at that point).

Anyway, what makes the game very "Ultima" for me is creating some baseline "interactability" and letting the players do the rest. Creating an environment where trends can rise and fall based on natural player choices, customization for the sheer sake of customization, and game immersion that amounts to more than "get the best sword in the game to be able to keep up with everyone else who has that sword." Naturally, this involves something to the effect of a GM to come in and mix the game world up for us. Some players to have the ability to advance the storyline and change the gameworld. A focus on social abilities in the game to make gathering together meaningful beyond a mathematical requirement to take down a boss mob. And like everyone is saying: NPCs that have real lives, schedules, dramas, wants, and needs.

People trying to mock SoTA as a glorified "The Sims" are really just showing their ignorance to the history of online gaming. The general direction of SoTA is awesome, and I love how "Ultima" this game feels so far. Everything said in the "Hangouts of the Avatar" and post mortems gives me faith that a year from now, I will never want to play any other video game ever, besides SoTA,

*cough* make pvp non-optional but make it so hard few people ever want to murder *cough* Pardon had to clear my throat ;-)

 

All the things you consider ultima came from UO...PVP for instance non existant for 9 games(obviously). I'm curious did you play any of the single player games?

 

All of them from Ultima IV and beyond. Ill admit I did not like The Serpent Isle due to being trapped in towns I couldnt figure out how to get out of, which killed the open game world nature of it, so I never played that one much. I diddnt play the one where you go to Mars either.

I played Ultima VII The Black Gate religiously, even learned how to manage types of memory on MS DOS as a 10 year old kid so I could run it when I got a newer computer. Always had an emulator for it on every Windows machine Ive ever owned. Ive probably clocked many hundreds of hours playing that game. Could talk about it for days. Oink! Oink!

I played Akalabeth as an adult (decades after its time), and diddnt engage with it well. I also have the first few Ultimas, but again, havent committed myself to playing them since I diddnt play them as a kid.

I thought U8 pagan was a joke, and while I did play it to completion, I diddnt really like it (like most Ultima fans). U9 was cool, but I honestly liked U7 way better than U9 (though I think I found every single possible secret, easter egg, and hidden mob/dungeon/room in that game too).

Ultima VII has been my standard to which all RPGs have ever been compared, and few, if any, shine as it did. I did think Morrowind came close when that came out tho. Skyrim, while awesome, doesnt count, cuz well, Morrowind did it first.

My comments above are just a spew about how kickass UO was. I dont have anything to add relative to the older, single player Ultimas, that hasnt already been said. So like, +1 on all that . There are many, many, many other things which I consider "Ultima-like". I shall compose a book with my printing press!!! "Everything an Avatar Needs to Know About the Ultimaness of Games"

P.S. - To want to play a Gargoyle avatar. To want others to know what it is to be Gargoyle like me.

 

0.o

 

I like a lot of the comments on this thread. For me, the fact that Garriott is at the helm of SOTA makes it already Ultima-like. How much like Ultima should it be? Well Ultima and UO were both very different and very good games (one was single player PVE, one was multi-player with full time PVP). I think that SOTA is doing a good job of combining them and allowing different modes of play. I admit that I am also prone to the nostalgia, first watching my friend defeat Mondain in Ultima I on his Apple II+ around 1982, but I don't expect an exact reproduction. I don't want to detract from comments of the hard-core Ultima fans either, as I'm sure they saw many good design features in the games of that series that I did not (I only played Ultima I, a little bit of Ultima IV on the C64, and Ultima Online).

I played UO when it first came out and also loved the PVP mechanics. I later played DAOC hoping for a 3D UO experience, and it had a nice mythology but somehow lacked UO's pseudo-realism, although it was still more realistic than WOW, which I played until SOTA developed. Ultima was a fusion of 1st-person dungeon crawl with overworld movement, and it had a great transaction system, technological anachronisms, and storyline. The idea of town NPCs being "mortal" and having hit points, albeit very high, rather than hard-coded invincibility, made it seem more fair and realistic. The fact that the game programmer was represented as an avatar in his own game added an omniscient, mysterious presence. I loved the protection of the towns and guards and loved sailing ships out into seemingly vast waters (computationally simple, but fun). And the dungeons could have been a standalone game of their own.

I played Akalabeth for the first time on an emulator last year to see his "proto-Ultima", and I think games like this influenced the roguelike genre over the years. At the time UO came out, the landmass was massive, the resource/crafting/economic model was massive. It was such an ambitious undertaking that the world dynamics might have even been over-engineered, which is not necessarily a bad thing for the player. I see some of the same things happening in SOTA.

In UO, I got ganked repeatedly traveling between towns, trying to visit the bank, since it was pure PVP, and I barely scraping by a living killing and harvesting things, exploring the land, while others had fancy gear, vendors, etc. I remember shouting "Guards!" but one day no guard came to my rescue and the player that killed me snickered over my dead body. I'd see dead bodies stripped of clothing littering the countryside. That was *crazy* realistic, but I enjoyed the game world. If I remember correctly, Ultima was also quite harsh and had a kind of dungeon permadeath that wiped out your hard work if you died deep on a lower level since he didn't allow you to save the game in a dungeon. I actually like this type of harshness, and like in SOTA how death will have penalties, unused skills will decay, housing upkeep taxes have to be paid, etc. I hope they don't dumb-down SOTA. I've seen some of the negative comments on Steam, and I think that a lot of the haters misunderstand this specific genre and that it is an open development process. My only caveat is that it works cross-platform with good frame rates and no crashing.

In UO, I wasn't a quester or a group player, so it was next to impossible to build myself up, but DAOC showed me the value of solo questing when I wasn't in threat of my life and belongings. I never played to reach level caps or do the RvR stuff. At that time, Eastern RPG's were getting very popular in my country, which were heavily quest-driven, but I missed the feeling of solitary peril in earlier dungeon crawls and RPG's.

Ultima succeeded in transitioning the 70's feeling of medieval fantasy into the digital era, and UO moved it to the Internet era. In UO, it was fun to open/close doors (they had a loud latching sound), and SOTA has a similar sound. SOTA has interesting anachronisms, too. In SOTA, I am happy just running around and exploring (I'm a terrible beta tester), since the world is so complex and beautiful. Therefore, I love the involvement of people that are active in the community, keeping the game world balanced, since it adds more depth if I get bored and decide to focus on more specific elements (the game is really a collection of multiple, interwoven games with many modes of play).

The state of SOTA *right now* is better than any MMORPG I have seen. Even though it doesn't have enough unique character models yet, it is staggering in detail considering how big their team is and what they are trying to accomplish. The AI and questing is already exciting to me at this stage, and I can only guess how fun it will be after further refinement.

There is a weird class stratification in SOTA that reminds me in some ways of UO. Some people hate the fact that higher-paying backers get additional benefits. I can't afford this, and can barely afford to get into the game. However, if that eliminates a monthly subscription yet keeps the community from devolving like in some free-to-play MMORPGs, then it makes it available to me. The quality of the objects is good, and in the real world, we are born into a socioeconomic class, so starting out in an MMORPG at a lower or higher class than someone else is, for better or for worse, *realistic*. And it's only just a game--the treasures are not as important as the journey. Some people like to decorate their homes and do the socialite stuff, private greenhouses, crafting stations, secret societies in their basements, and poor paupers like me run across the countryside killing skeletons and selling loot at public vendors for a poor price. I think the diversity just makes the game better, and I can always dream one day of getting enough in-game gold to buy a plot of land and house, *if* someone is willing to sell it, being a finite resource. I love that darkness makes it harder to navigate, travel has its cost in terms of time, food has benefits, natural barriers obstruct travel, maps are not commonplace, quests are not obvious, humans are the norm, freeform text is typed to NPC's, and cities are still zones of safety and economic hubs. To me, this seem very Garriott, very Ultima-like.

 

@Spartus well said! +1 on everything.

 

-1 on pretty much everything, from my perspective...

I waited a day and read the post again because at first I thought it was making sense, but re-reading it I realise its really... well I have no word.

 

I was intrigued by the idea of bringing back the overland maps from the earlier Ultima's. I know it's not finished yet, but I think it still needs some work, both in terms of scale and feeling like you're traversing long distances and in terms of the feeling of danger. You don't see an ettin or gazer up ahead, which spots you and starts heading your way. You just get randomly sucked in to encounters, but it can be more of an annoyance as you just run for the boundary and continue on your way. I'm hoping to see wandering mobs, and more variety. To have regions that have their own populations (maybe even as far as resources) or different creature variations exclusive to parts of the world (may be part of the plan already, I'm just thinking out loud).

Finding Dawn for the first time was awesome, I wonder what would have happened to those inhabitants if their moons collided. I hope in future episodes we get to travel by boat, and I want to find maelstroms and see what's at the bottom. To have a sense of wonder, danger, and the unexpected when exploring. We don't really have a fog of war, and the world feels somehow smaller and known. There are some areas that are gated, but it seems that even those could be bypassed if you choose to run the long way around.

I'm ok with SotA being it's own thing, with Ultima undertones. The subtle touches of steampunk are nice, though I still feel it could be used to deeper effect. I like how the skills are turning out, and have no real issues there. I see hints of the lore, but am holding back until story and everything thing else is closer to finished. It's possible to already see some of the polish coming online, and I'm excited about the future.

However, I still want a pet balron and the ability to progress far enough in death magic that I can become a lich (they have to come from somewhere).

 

I've had one in UO way before they were introduced in the game back in 1999 It was kind of unintended on my part to summon him (I was following Xorinia's instructions) and well as soon as other people started to notice him he immediately imitated their "energies" and soon enough he was completely bonkers and proceeded to attack me and then summoned his friends to proceed to destroy the atlantic shard, at which they did succeed.

I also was a liche, and became much much more powerful until they trashed the story and fired all seers.

Since then the same "force" that empowers games which are "family friendly" have control over pretty much all MMORPGS though a clever ring of influence which prevents such content from being part of the game. Just like some content is censored from movies... why ? well maybe its because it inevitably brings people to their true spiritual mirror, and thats uncomfortable, makes us lose customers.

You see we have death magic, but we have no anti-virtue path and quoting the devs "no intention to ever include any kind of anti-virtue path" into the game.

They technically could allow it, but then it would have to be pvp only, so your interaction would only mean so much into the game.

Or... siege perilous...

*chuckles*

 

Only Ultima game I can remember playing was Ultima Underworld really enjoyed that (even if I thought it difficult, I wasn't that old while playing it)

If I can find amazing zones to explore, dungeons to delve into (and actually enjoy the surroundings without being in a hurry) with a casual friendly group (with a bit of rp tossed in) I'll enjoy this game for sure.

I -love- the genre, Massive Online RPGs in general, there are few I've played I didnt enjoy (some more than others).

I really enjoyed Everquest 2 (played the first one too, but ..was kindof dated when I first discovered it), Galaxies, Old Republic, Lineage 2 (a little bit) , World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and many many many more.
They all had/have something to offer.

Ultima Online's rather cutthroat open pvp isn't for me, that much is for certain. I've never been a PVPer nor will I start now, I'll have to settle for the other parts of the game, see if I enjoy those enough to keep me interested

 

Check out this game if you liked Ultima Underworld! https://underworldascendant.com/

 

Well, if SotA was not supposed to be an Spiritual Successor of the Ultima series, then something would go really really wrong.
The term "Spiritual Successor of the Ultima series" is the ONLY reason why i back this project and spend a lot of money. Yes, i back an "old style" game and i do not expect getting a casual game / modern game. Whatever this means..

This does not mean that i am satisfied right now. I hope there will be much more polished before release.
What i am also expecting is, that the world is much more interactive . Yes, i am able to lit a fire, open a door, move some house decorations around, but interactive means also the SotA world is filled with live, which unfortunately, isn't yet the case.

Ok here the original tone which i feel changed a bit:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/description

Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”.

 

Just a tiny bit below the "getting sued by EA line".