Reading a thread just disappointed me...

I had a window open where I was ready to pay for the game, then I stumbled on another thread and closed it for now because of two things I've just read.

First, is this not a MMORPG?

I read twice there that it's a "single player game". I've never had one hold my attention more than a couple of hours, including the Ultima Series. (sorry Richard, just not my cup of tea) However I have played every major MMO since UO, waiting for one to come close. Can someone explain?

Secondly, I keep reading about how terrible the combat is. Is it "that bad"? What makes it so bad?

I agree the graphics are below amateur at the very best, but I could look past that for a game that has the immersion and gameplay of UO.

Help?

Z

 

It is multiplayer online, you just have the option to switch to single player online. Combat is fine, it just is not completely finished yet and is under construction like the rest of the game. People just keep forgetting that this is not even an alpha test yet (easy to do since it is as playable as many completed games).

 

Yep you get the option for single player, single player online ( you still chat with friends and guild and you get all the mobs to yourself, great for grinding and farming resources) and you have multiplayer. The combat is ok right now the deck system is something i have tried to mess with but gave up and use the locked slots.

So really you get to play it as you want to.

 

So is "multiplayer" like any other MMO? There are thousands of people playing on a single server/world, and they can all be seen and see and interact with each other?

 

All the above plus the game will have a ton of depth - they plan to have everything in game generated by the players.

 

You'll see people running about, can chat/party/group up/fight/trade with them, just like in any MMO.

 

The online portion will play like an MMO, but each hex will only have (currently) 64 players per instance of that hex.

 

Most MMO's are not MMO's. The label no longer fits. SotA, unlike UO or any other game with servers/shards, will have 1 mega server. This will allow for a truly massive amount of potential players. At the same time, it's keeping things reasonable in terms of who you interact with in any given area.

 

They call it Selective Multiplayer Online as opposed to MMO. That means you can choose to play online or offline as you see fit. If you want to play online with everyone, then that game mode operates like an MMO.

I think combat isn't balanced yet, but it is fine. I rather like the deck system and the dynamic nature of it. I got bored of set rotations in other MMOs.

Mad Hermit has some good videos on combat.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMadHermitGaming

 

Ouch. That is so restrictive to good gameplay. I would much prefer multiple servers with several thousand ppl playing at once but TRULY together than one "world" but only seeing a few ppl. Does that mean that with housing there's many houses on the same spot in different instances?

Of all the MMO's I've played, the ones I liked the least were when me and a friend were able to stand at the same spot and not see each other because of instances... only having 64 ppl together is pretty lame, but I'll assume that'll eventually go up.

 

The same house would exist on all instances.

Does not really happen that way. All games use some form of instancing to split the load and/or share the load.

I sure hope it will go up. The instancing like this occurs in WoW right now.

 

Actually it's not like wow... you can phase in and out with people within two feet in wow and in this game you can force yourself into that person's phase by two-way-friending. Wow makes it so you can play with the people you want but this game will both intelligently and manually sort you with people you want. SMO is different than MMO but, if I can remind you, there has never been an event that I've seen where over 100 people were there and it didn't completely suck. I mean seriously, there were some "wow this is great there's 150 people on my screen" moments but that's where it ended... "wow this sucks that's a ton of lag" and "wow I can't click anything" and "wow, I can't see who says what because chat goes to fast" and "oh my goodness where is that person I'm trying to trade with... ARGH!" usually are what happen within seconds...

I really like this newer, smarter, and next generation form of game play... what needs to be figured out is how to increase instance/location density without decreasing world size when the player pop is low... that's the golden ticket question.

Anyway, my two cents, cheers!

 

http://sotawiki.net/sota/Selective_Multiplayer_Online

 

Trust me, you'll get confused if you listen to everyone on here, there are die hard anti-MMO people on here that religiously despise anything that has anything to do with MMOs.

But aside from that, SOTA is an MMO, similar to Guild Wars 2, in Guild Wars 2 when you enter an instance (exit the city), you see other players, you didn't see that the game randomly or non-randomly plopped you on a sever with the other players you're playing with, but that's what it did, it put you and X number of players in an instance. So in the same way that Guild Wars 2 is an MMO, SOTA is an MMO. In SWTOR, if you leave town you are plopped into an instance with other players, you aren't plopped in an instance with *every player* on that particular map unless that map happens to be low in numbers, if it's high in numbers you are 'seamlessly' plopped into an instance with other players. And yeah there's a single player option, but the multiplayer option is not much different than many MMORPGs I can name, it clearly isn't "Massively" as it isn't a "Massive" amount of players, but for economic reasons and the direction MMOs are going, seamless instances is the wave of the future for MMOs. Star Citizen will have a very similar setup, not exactly the same but it will have instances and like SOTA won't have a "Massive" amount of players on 1 map for bandwidth/economic/design reasons.

 

We don't hate MMO's ... just WoW

 

Hey Znick nice to see you here. I was in your CoH guild.

SotA is an MMO, but not in the traditional model. If you were an Ultima fan I highly recommend it. The community is awesome and very much reminiscent of UO.

If I were to criticize SotA it would be for heavy instancing. I'm currently playing ArcheAge which is a huge, open persistent world. Sadly SotA seems to be a world of chained zones. I really really dislike the constant phasing between zones.

However, the Glyph system, sort of like building a Magic Deck for combat is very promising. If they can pull it off PvP will be very interesting. The magic system is awesome as is crafting. The core game design elements are very deep. Deeper than many other MMOs.

I'm a Citizen level backer. I've heavily invested in the game despite my hatred of instancing because of the community and the spirit of UO that is already alive and well in Alpha. Combat needs work but Is improving . Garriot and crew are playing the game. They are sharp. I feel they will get combat where it needs to be.

 

This is actually going to be a good thing later when the random encounters are fully functional.

 

If there's one thing I learned from playing UO is that graphics are just fluff and mean nothing. UO was a better game (and still is) than all of it's competition which uses all the latest 3D graphics, including WoW. The mechanics and social interactions are what make it so awesome.

 

Welcome to the Forum Znick. It is difficult to picture this game. True it is not Archeage open world, but how many people are going to stay with Archeage. I have already left that game and true my heart is here anyway. This game will have depth that other games will be lacking, things will have a purpose and a reason as in Ultimas. Remember that not all systems are in or optimized at this time. I've been playing star wars old republic and load times are pretty bad in that game altho to me it is a nice looking game. So you should check out some videos showing off the game. Mad Hermit has videos and youtube has many that can give you an idea, but just remember we are still in development and our feedback is helping to get the game made a particular way. and again **cheers** and welcome to you.

 

Welcome ZNICK!