I don't get all the concerns about Open PvP

i think trammel came along for 2 reasons maybe 3
1 - people just don't like to lose their stuff or can handle that.
2 -housing not enough room for the demand
3 -economy factor, houses did cost gold that went back into system, and the more you decked out your house the more gold went back into the system.

 

I will be hunting those that PK for no reason but greed. But that is my play style protector!

 

I really agree here!

 

I don't think anyone really knows for sure how pvp is going to work in Sota until we experience it. But I think there were two things that made PvP and looting work in early UO. First off there were consequences for actions and secondly the population was such that you could somewhat avoid people if you wanted to.

 

You bring up a good point, it was easy enough to avoid people in UO if you wanted to. However, technology has advanced to the point that it's possible to create much larger worlds than the original Sosaria with interesting features (Daggerfall was massive, but not that interesting). The ability of the personal computer has increased exponentially since the late 90's. Modern machines have the ability to support vibrant worlds full of life and character. This is the key asset that fascinated me the most about the world of Sosaria in all of the Ultima games, including Ultima Online (serpent pillars, ice island, fire, island, hidden passages underneath the Empath Abbey in Yew, the light house, etc.). It has been my experience that the world of Azeroth in WoW has much less character than Sosaria did, there were some cool areas like Booty Bay but not many.

World of Warcraft is the epitome of a theme park style MMORPG. New players are primarily interested in completing quest lines and doing so in a particular order. I am well aware SoTA will have quests, but I am also aware that it will not a theme park style game. It seems to me that there will be quests, a rich fantasy world, and a tremendous amount of lore. The key difference, at least to me, seems that these quests are not going to require completion in a particular order. A feature common in many other sand box style games and one I am hoping for with SoTA is open PvP. I think if players can bypass certain areas that may be hot spots for PvP then this is possible. Players can have an entertaining experience doing other quests at their level or doing other activities. Lets say you have a quest to enter a certain instance but the entrance is inhabited by PK's. An interesting feature might be a tunnel to the instance via another route that is less popular or from within another instance.

I am looking forward to SoTA and I am certain that it will be a game that establishes another bench mark in the industry. Ultima Online is still my favorite game (circa 1998), despite how under rated it is. UO defined the MMORPG genre and I am hope SoTA can do the same.

 

Hail, Fellow travelers!!

First things First! MULTI-PLAYER is just that!
If you divide players into groups ie.. PvP, PvE, Crafters and so on the outcome is a loss of the elusive "Essence of the Game"! With that being said there is no reason why we can not have protected areas like UO's guard system. That system and that of Darkfall, made you not lose the feeling of free will/emersion of the game. This could be also extended to areas like roads and main resource areas. ie.. protected King's Road, King's Lands and/or the King's Woods. Now out beyond that would be the Wilderness where all is fair is in love and war!

This balance was best described by Betamox:

Secondly,Richard has the right idea about dropped items!
To create this "Essence of the game" he speaks of and we all miss, there has to be interactions with dropped items in the open world! This is the norm for most games today and that comes with a cost of emersion within the world! Yes, there will be some forms of, "emergant behaviors" but without them we fall victim to the same old game we all have played over and over!
Win..., lose..., and/or drawbacks... INCULDED!

Furthermore, Item Drops / Nodes should NOT be restricted to PvP areas.
This destroys the idea that no settlments would protect their resources. An UO example would Minoc (An enclosed/guard protected mining/Farming town). The idea that Pker kills everyone is simply not true! I had many pker that sold me there "loot" and I inturn would get there protection. Another experence is that of the first days Star Wars Galaxies. In this world I relized that the Dev's did not impose many restrictions and I noticed an ebb and flow that was created naturally. Nowadays this refer to as "The Economic cycle of Mmo's"
PvE -> Crafter/Collector -v> PvP -v
^------------------^------------<---------<-
Now with any protcetion or imbalance to the cylce's parts, the economic impact is harsh! Naturally players will find the Monsters (kill/loot them) and return to the Crafter/Collector who intern sells to the PvE and/or PvP who intern uses them and the cycle repeats.
That cycle was possiable because items were pretty cheap but still have value.
As Ara states:

And Mugly also said:

So this leads us to the Forced PvP/ Open PvP Issue!
I do not see this as an issue at all. The main problem is that we all have been viewing it in old ways. With some new mechanics like I stated previously with guarded and wild areas you are not forced into anything!
The whole population shift is well discribed by Ultima Aficionado:

Last but in NO way Least! Peserve the Essence of the Immersion!
Let us not give into easy and hassle free to forget that which we seek! The experience and thrill of a game not held down by Essence killing game Mechanics. I ,like many others, have learned the hard way! OoOoooOooO...death that it is worth it in the end. What to do, when, where and what to not do. Also to address the issue that game designers beleive that they need to stop "Work arounds". It is not a work around when the players are given a mechanic that works and they just decide not to use it. With workarounds in sight much is lost in other parts of the game like if you remove one aspect of karma system as we know it the whole thing is broken. This is best said by PrimeRib:

Similar to what PrimRib said, Ultima Aficionado explains:

IrishAssasin also had a great input!

In the end I have high hopes... That Sota's future is not what you want it to be but what it was built to be!

Teno

 

And with Selective Multiplayer, you can have all that if that's what you want, and if not, you can select your particular preference.

Choice is to be preferred.

 

The magicpvpsliderbarthingy(TM) - like, why are we still talking about the same stuff lol. I almost feel as if once the game gets going, people are going to be complaining about being PKd because they STILL dont know that it is optional.

 

We are still bringing Selective Multiplayer up because people are still making suggestions that make no sense, given Selective Multiplayer. Education takes time.

 

There is good reason it is still brought up, there are not enough details to know how the slider works. The idea seems to be that you can just scale it to your preferences, others are commenting that you will not be able to do so. Apparently you do know, can you let us in on the big secret Owain?

 

Selective Multiplayer is fundamental to the basic design of the game. Without it, neither SPO, FPO, nor OPO will function properly, nor will different grades of PvP.

If Selective Multiplayer works for SPO, FPO, and OPO, it is reasonable to assume it will work for PvP as well.

 

There are a few different options I have seen:
Single Player Online
Single Player Offline (Most similar to a stand alone game)
Friends Player Online
Multiplayer Online (Most similar to an MMORPG)

Now, if you want to avoid PKs when harvesting you can probably gather them in Single Player Online. However, it is my speculation that some parts of the game may require you to play in different modes (similar to the slider), but I am not sure of that. There will also be the ability to filter out certain people, but from the dev chat it looks like you cannot target a single person. I am interested to know how this is going to work. The "slider" may also be a figure of speech and the game mode varies based on whatever you are doing at the current time. I don't imagine if you play Single Player Offline there will be a requirement to go online, at least I hope not. We do not know for sure until we experience it for ourselves.

 

The first post still says it all.. PAY ATTENTION DEVS!

 

Yes devs please stay true to the vision of Ultima 4-7 of a grand story based RPG with multiplayer and no forced side activities like progression based PVP.

 

I really wonder how many times someone got killed in trammel fair and sqaure by spawn, and said "This game is ridiculous, im cancelling my subscription!" Why on earth do we want spawn to attack someone who does not want to participate?
Since when does having another player attack you unexpectedly mean that your gaming experience is being ruined anymore than when an ogre lord attacks you unexpectedly. What did you say to that ogre lord? Did you pay the toll to cross the bridge or did you tell him that if he wants your gold he has to come and take it? Have we considered that it might be a good idea to allow players control the "spawn" in the game for RP experience and immersion?
Now people like to talk about how juvenille and anti-social people are for wanting to have non-consensual attack and loot.. Well, lets look at it this way, did you ever play monopoly? Ever remember that little brat that gripped his play money tightly and said "no! no!! im not giving it its not fair!" when he landed on your square/business you purchased where the rules of the game were you had to pay this player who owned that square X amount of monopoly money when they land there?
Would you recommend that we create a game where the player has absolutely no way to lose something at all? Ever? Under no circumstances? Why cant one player lose something to another player, or be attacked non-consensually so long as it is done in a way that does not decrease immersion? In a way more like the monopoly scenario I describe above. You land on a sqaure the other player purchased and you lose some monopoly money. The game is NOT over. There is no reason why we cannot have full loot non-consensual PvP so long as it is done in a way that doesn't completely destroy the immersion. Perhaps players are limited to only do as much to other players as spawn do... Im still in the brainstorming stage as to how it would work and all, but I think it is possible. We can be mature about it all. Just as mature as we can be if someone happens to take our queen off the board when playing chess! Did the player on the other side of the board actually consent to losing his queen? Maybe you can argue that he chose to play chess... But I would say that to a certain extent that was a non-consensual act.

 

The difference between a board game and an online game is that players in an online game are anonymous. This leads to players doing things just to provoke others. If you sit around a table and look the other players in the eyes you behave more "civilized".
There will ALWAYS be players in an online game who want to cause trouble, who want to destroy the game for others, who think it is funny to provoke and annoy others. I believe that you simply cannot prevent this in a game with open PvP and full loot.
Therefore the only real solution would be to to include a fifth game mode besides offline, Single Player, friends and Open - the Open PvP (with full loot) mode. And you cannot switch to another mode once you decided to play in Online Open PvP mode. This way all the Open PvP fans could play together and you could please the online gamers who want consensual PvP only with the Online Open mode (that would feature consensual PvP only).

 

Interestingly, there is a sizable number of us who feel the same way about the purely single player Ultima 7....

 

Damn! you guys dragged me in this i was behaving so well!!!

ok yes to (you cannot switch to another mode once you decided to play in Online Open PvP mode.) but if you die and you have to start over completely (if that's implemented) at that point you can say ok Open PVP is not for me and move to a different level(slider) but only then.

Also heres another scenario in accordance with yours Lord_Darkmoon, and Robby! how many of us have played a table top RPG? many im sure, we have all had that one scenario where one or more people in your party go against each other for whatever reason, ill use my game as an example, my party consisted of a human cleric, a dwarf warrior, high elven magic user, half orc barbarian, halfling rogue, a human paladin, and an elven ranger, and my character dark elf assassin/ranger. To satisfy my god lloth, i had to have a chaotic aspect, or id lose my magic abilities. So i we were being pursed by dark elves, (because i was with this party) basically they were trying to kill off me!, so we got attacked every now and then the pally was getting on our nerves commanding what we do and spending a lot of time playing politics! (boring!) trying to get passage to somewhere by going through their messed up land and militant gangs, they had payoffs around every corner and crooked priests and nobles that ran **** in that land! after negotiations were failing, the dwarf warrior was like "why don't we just cut our way through this ******* and continue", the halfling rogue was like "i could just sneak past them, and forget you all!" the elven ranger was like "i can summon my beasts to attack this group!" the cleric was like i could heal your men for passage!" the dark elf assassin/ranger was like "we should just kill them in the night!" the elf magic user was like "these antics are growing tiresome, we should blast them with a fire ball! half orc was like "Smash dem faces!" the pally was like we need to talk this through for another 30 min!
So in that scenario the dark elf assassin/ranger disappeared in the shadows along with the halfling rogue, the elven ranger went outside of town to gather creatures, the mage teleported to the top of the wall of this kingdom, the cleric moved back out of the way to safety, the half orc gripped his 2 handed battle axe tighter, while the pally kept yip yapping! (obviously going nowhere in this negotiation! and heres the point on the discussion in this thread! here's how it played out!

A fireball reigned down upon the makeshift army, igniting and killing some, from the mage, in came the elf ranger with his bears and boars and he let them loose on the guard captain and his men!, a dagger appeared in the back of the huge warrior guard standing off to the side ready to fight, from the halfling! the half orc charged head on into the guard captain axe cutting deep into his shoulder! on a crit! natural d20 (the captain did not survive!) lightening arrows rained down on the captains men igniting them (since my dark elf ranger/assassin had a magical bow!) high strength and dex! my Dark elf left a trail for the other dark elf bounty hunters to follow him to this point, 8 of them arrived on the scene as well, amongst the chaos! The pally turned around to meet the dark elves head on buffing the attack and def, of the party around him! The cleric in between bashing dark elves was casting healing spells on his party! After all the bodies lay strewn about and healing was taking place they realized sometime in the melee the pally had a fatal wound from a couple arrows!, and apparently poisoned, a "nod" across the way from the rogue to the dark elf assassin!(evil grin) the pally perished, and the party continued on through the land without any payments! or negotiations! and they had gotten a little more richer and notable (that is a prime example of why open world pvp is great!) That is a true story! from the RPG ROUND table in my house!

 

Let me just say that the mass exodus from Felucca to Trammel spoke volumes what the MAJORITY of players thought about open world PvP. It isn't that they didn't want to PvP at all, many made trips into Felucca for that very reason. What they didn't want was constantly being open to SOMEONE ELSE wasting their time. Not everyone who is into PvP wants to PvP exclusively or ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Otherwise, when Trammel opened, those who migrated there would have been in the minority.

I love it when hardcore PvPers try to push their agenda by trying to convince developers, who have direct metrics to examine and can see the actual breakdown of who is PvPing and how often, that "everyone wants open world PvP" The fact that every MMO since WoW has come out has locked PvP behind a wall so PvEers don't have to deal with it if they don't want to should send a message that the factual numbers lean AGAINST open world PvP in actual practice.

Those who felt that the introduction of Trammel ruined the game are the ones who suddenly found themselves without victims to harass. The devs gave players a choice. And they chose. The PvPers that think they are the center of the MMO universe need to get over themselves.

Having said that, the selective multiplayer system should solve a great many things. If I don't want to PvP, then if the selectiveness is robust enough, I won't ever have to see any PvPers, let alone be accosted by one. On the other hand, those who want to PvP will be able to find plenty of people who also want it. But I suspect that for a lot of PvPers, that won't be satisfactory. They don't want PvP. They want to be able to ruin someone else's enjoyment and waste their time. Anything less than that won't do it for them.

 

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