So the new quest designer is from another MMORPG

I cannot believe that. Here is a snippet from the Kickstarter campaign

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”.

Richard Garriott has designed (and partly developed (U1 - U5)) all 9 single player Ultima games, he designed Ultima Online and the cancelled Ultima Online 2. Richard had the idea about the eight virtues and the Avatar as embodiment of these virtues, Ultima IV - Quest of the Avatar was a groundbreaking cprg and a departure from the hack'n'slay games without story and ethics at that time. Richard is an extreme experienced game designer, I cannot imagine that he didn't realize how hard this would be to implement. Even if I'm not very happy about the state of SotA, especially with the development of the story, I trust him and I count on his experience. My concerns and complaints in other threads of this forum are caused by the slow development and the imho poor communication about the single player and story aspects of the game. However - I cannot imagine that there was no elaborated concept right from the start.

Edit: now it is time to implement the story aspects, therefore I give Damien a hearty SoTA welcome

 

Indeed.
But in my opinion Darkmoon should have started it. You know, single player narrative beeing all that important to him.
Instead he started this one.
Makes you think.

 

Reading that a quest designer coming from MMOs is now writing the quests for SotA made me uneasy. I hope that Damien will write great quests though.
In the research Spoon provided, there was no mention of what exactly he did working on those games, there is no mention of quest design. What quests did he design? What can we expect?
Again I hope that we will now get great, exciting quests full of drama and surprises but still, it made me uneasy when I read that he worked on Tabula Rasa and DCUO...

 

Even those games have good quests....a couple....ok a few...maybe a handful....one or two at least ;-)

 

Great News, i am satisfied with TR or Icewind Dale like quests.

Welcome Damien and have fun!!!

 

I vote for tons of "delivery" & "kill this and that" classic MMO quests right arround the area/areas where Lord Darkmoon lives

Just joking, couldn't resist

 

Welcome and ideas would be sufficient and constructive. We don't need the bickering and banter about this. It is not helping to talk about someone that just got here like this and a bit rude.

One problem is for you that we are working on the MMO right now and it is not what you want, but ok it is what it is, so help. It does not mean that when the team gets to the single player full time that they won't do a great justice to it. Perhaps the quests in it will be different quests. It's too much to expect it all right now.

What makes you think MMO = Single player quests or anything like that? I know patience is needed from all of us and yes we want it all. MMO needs MMO quests of all types for reasons to play, saying to not have them because it affects Single player means you think they are the same and to be carried over, ummm I don't think so, why give those reasons to play to Single Player if it is not appropriate for single player. Sure what you see now in Single Player imo is not a reflection of what it will be. They are not working on it and only do to appease which is not helping it. Admitting that will come a long way to everyone knowing that will come later in a very good way with lots of focus on it. Some will not like that but it is still better than half hearted torn efforts and would make the single player crowd more optimistic to wait imo. You can't make them stop the MMO so help.

Just keep your ideas coming on Single Player but remember they are not making it right now. You are a very creative person with great ideas I like a lot. I really hate when you stoop to this instead of giving those ideas. The team will need your ideas and it will help when doing single player and for the parts of the MMO that those ideas can be implemented. Give them some trust when the time comes they will dig in to make Single Player great.

So if we come back to constructive again to be heard, bickering will not be heard but ignored. Now is the time to go back to ideas of questing verses this. Come on guys get a grip please. It has been a long road for everyone. The time is now to give a very big welcome to our New Quest Designer and ask if he has a couple of friends *cheers*

 

You are a bad Person

 

I'm usually with your criticisms considering your desires for the game. I co.pletely support your right to lost and draw attention to those issues because Portalarium has asked for input from backers and the forums are where we are asked to give that feedback. I think you're often responded to in an unfair manner.

However, his resume lists 9 games other than the 2 MMOs that he has worked on including getting his start in the industry writing for single player rpgs for Black Isle studios no less.

He's worked on Baldur's Gate 3, Fallout 3, Icewind Dale, Lord of the Rings...

Come on man. You often post very valid critiques. This is not one of those times.

 

This shouldn't be hard to believe - the premise being that Portalarium maybe did not know how hard melding single and multi-player would be in a game like SotA. Obviously they have the chops to make single-player (U1-U5, as you noted); and obviously they have the chops to do multiplayer (see UO). My point is MAYBE they didn't know how hard it would be to take both and meld them together in one malleable game.

Please note, this is different than TALKING about melding single-player and multi-player. Which is exactly what they did. They talked about it. They pontificated. They brain-stormed. They put together a kickstarter campaign. All of that is past. And it means exactly NOTHING. The actual putting together of a cohesive game, with both single-player and multi-player aspects, the way everyone harps about, this is the hard part. And my point was simply that maybe they did not realize how hard that was going to be.

 

More than that. I can recall it being the only other time I felt engaged in some of the quests where you show up in a base and all sorts of madness occurred - all from a "quest" or "task". The only other time I felt that way was with Matrix Online. And the point is that some times interesting things can be done with quests/tasks. And all it takes is some imagination.

 

I bet quite the opposite effect will occur - someone with experience in MMO's must know the pit of endless despair that is the internet, and so this probably will embolden him to do good things.

 

So you really think that they had no concept, no master plan during the Kickstarter campaign? Such experienced designers and developers? This is hard to believe.

 

I never played Tabula Rasa, so I don't know how deep the quests were, but I bet if you looked at Ultima VII quests as a whole, and broke them down in a very discrete, itemized fashion, you could put them in a similar format, like --

- Deliver x to x (ie get a signature on the bill to clean Lock Lake)
- Speak to x (ie talk to Batlin)
- Destroy x (ie shut down the generators)
- Collect x (ie collect the Fellowship box in Destard)

And so on...

 

I second that..big time.

 

Quite the contrary - I think you compare collecting and FedEx quests with story driven quests here

 

You have to actually play the game to tell... and I never played Tabula Rasa... just pointing out that itemizing quests in that fashion can be misleading.

 

I am sure they planned. But without implementation/experimentation what do you have? Just words. Words in press. Words on a business plan. Words on Kickstarter. Words on a website.

They didn't have a big budget to throw ideas around and test stuff out. Look at what Richard did with Tabula Rasa. Who remembers seeing a full fledged demo that was subsequently scrapped for another implementation? That was probably a million plus lost before the game even went into beta.

We are currently the implementation of their ideas, the experiment. And this is absolutely the time to get it working right. What I am saying is they probably had no idea it would be this difficult, otherwise I imagine we'd be discussing some other "failed Kickstarter promise".

 

Do what ya do baby!

 

Hm, sounds somehow reasonable I still hope, you are wrong - but who knows. I wish Port would comment this. @Lord British, @DarkStarr, @Chris, @Lum the Mad could you please give a statement about this?

 

Maybe - but I have played Ultima 7 and SotA And I see a huge difference.