SOTA, Old School UO and games today

Rants, comments and questions:

I loved old school UO. Why...one underlying tenant..risk vs reward.

For me the potential for loss and the difficulty achieving things were what made the game great. I stopped playing after the game was nerfed (trammel etc).
No other game has given me heart pounding excitement like the PVM and PVP of pre-trammel UO. I wasn't a PK but PKs made PVM exciting. I also have never felt like I earned something as much as finally getting to GM crafting skills.

I see the MMO games today missing some key themes/tenants:

- no significant risk vs reward
- PVM gold/resource/rare farming way too easy...results in a few getting super rich super fast (UO tamers immediately come to mind..no pet should be so OP as dragons or wyrms)
- reducing PVP to a few templates..not enough skills that counter each other so you end up with 2-3 templates only that are really viable for PVP success
- macroing...damn macroing...macros for training, crafting, farming etc. No actual playing. I think allowing this destroys the community, the economy and eventually the game.

So TEAM SOTA :

I am looking for a game with gameplay feel/style of early UO vision with no, or greatly reduced farming/macroing capabilities that believes in a challenging risk vs reward environment. Plus all the other cool * like a mostly player driven crafting economy and player housing etc.

Is this the place to hang my hat?

Struan

*edited for language - Koldar

 

Agree with all of the above. Especially the PvP. Some macro should be allowed.

 

Well, we have no heard that before.

 

This very topic have been discussed to ad nauseam, I would suggest using the search to look for other threads on the topic.

 

Yes, the real risk is that this thread will be merged with the countless others that already exist. And has been done before.

 

I like the thought of dying and having to risk dying yet again in order to get your stuff back. You could die to just plain monsters and lose everything, the risk wasn't just in PvP. If you were well equipped or with a competent group you could easily make tens thousands of gold in one night in a dungeon, but a few wrong moves could get you all killed and lose everything that was on you with no chance getting it back (or at least, very low chance).

Full loot is one of the most important devices and I sincerely hope it finds it's way into SotA in all its glory. Not just in PvP but everywhere.

 

Furious,

Ok. I had looked, quickly at least. I just joined the forum so I must have missed all the previous discussion. I am happy to hear that a lot of conversation has already occurred on the topic. I will search again. However if you can provide direction to any developer responses it would be appreciated.

Their responses should make pretty clear what direction SOTA is heading.

Struan

 

Well, you will have consensual pvp so you will have that at least. There will be a storyline in the game with a single player(if you want) questline. It is selective MP, so you should only see those who share your views....not sure if that is what you are looking for.

 

It looks as if right now we have.
1.Single Player Offline. (no ability to go online with said player)
2.Friend Mode.
3. Online mode with you choosing how much pvp you want.
4. Chaotic Mode this mode is for pks anti. Pks, Npks and roll playing Murders.. Because that must be how we want it.. just ask those apose to dangers.. Oops, Non artificial Intelligent Danger.

Ok I made that last one up... But it will happen if people don't continue to discuss, debate.
Happy Holidays everyone!

 

You missed SPO - single player online,

 

Indeed may bad.. Thanks @Rune_74

 

I'm 100% fine with consensual pvp ... let us be able to choose when we want to be involved with it. I started playing UO right after Trammel...I wouldn't have played when it was fellucia only... I liked the choice like buying reg's in bulk in fel towns vs 100 each at mage shopp's. But again it was my choice when I wanted to worry about being looted...not every time I step out of my house.

 

True but for every thread like this there is also a response just like yours. You seem to be following in the footsteps of the OP.

 

That is an excellent suggestion, friend, do you have any more?

 

One thing that astonishes me is the complaint that, if PVP becomes optional, no-one shall PVP at all. And yet here we have countless threads saying the same thing ad nauseam et ad infinitum.

It seems to me that there is quite a healthy population of consensual PVPers- more than enough to fuel internescine feuds, so the concerns expressed by the OP and his compatriots seem to be moot---

Unless, of course, the draw of Pvp for some of these players is to engage with people who do not wish to engage in pvp. At which point it essentially becomes an issue of a group of people wanting to tell everybody how to play the game.

In this instance, Portalarium's solution is the best approach: It does not keep PvPers from engaging in Pkilling and it does not force PvErs to deal with tea-bagging and other likewise sophisticated victory rituals.

The goal of good game design is that it allows users to tailor their experiences- the ability to give choices to the player. If you think that some of those choices make some of those players 'soft'... well, that really isn't any of your beeswax. Playing is what you do for yourself, not for others. If you find a group that plays the way you do- swell! But to fling names at those who don't play the game the same way (without cheating) is infantile.

 

I think you hit the nail on the head.

 

I'd hate to see what the unsophisticated victory rituals look like.

 

I agree that UO was more edge of the seat before the switch. That did come from a feeling of risk versus reward.

The trouble UO had was that it was overly balanced towards gamers who acquired skills and equipment early and could dominate newbie areas, who used that to their advantage. Fun for those able to do this. But not for others who were perhaps newcomers to the game or simply had to work for a living and could not spend all of their time online competing at the same level just to survive the newbie areas. If you set the notion of PKs aside and simply saw that as part of the game, essentially the game had become tuned too hard for some new, casual players to be successful. A lot of people left the game because of that. Whatever we might think of that, it wasn't good for the game. Fewer subscriptions means less revenue means less development budget means more likelihood of failure. The point is that there is risk and reward, but uncontrolled risk where the game simply hammers newcomers is not risk-reward. It is an un-tuned game. I think early UO had the right idea for risk-reward, but was balanced towards risk without reward.

To me, the holy grail would be to find some balance where a player understood the risk they were taking in return for the reward, that they knowingly selected that risk to get the reward.

But I agree, risk/reward makes the game so much better. That is where memories come from. Else it can simply be about harvesting and power leveling, which is not really so memorable.

 

And to the PKers, the ones who spent their time preying on new players, balanced towards reward without risk.

And then, it wasn't just a matter of game balance; the game world wasn't even very realistic anymore. It was often just a free-for-all arena style game where there was very little expectation of safety anywhere except in the city. Some people don't want to play in a world which is like a battle arena.

 

Quite true, UO was tough on new players. When it first launched, my three buddies (who had originally tried to convince me to join them in trying out this new game), were constantly being killed and gave up on the game in frustration after about six months. I wonder if we would be playing the game today if we had joined it after Trammel was introduced...

Consensual PvP definitely seems to be the best way to please all player types