SPO and SP Offline

The development of the game seems to be fueled less by the initial vision of a SPO/MMO merger, and more by the elements that draw in the most funds. Is it safe to say the MMO aspect is the real money maker here? In my thinking, the value of becoming a hero, mastering your skills, owning that piece of property, is incredibly greater once we share these with actual people. Would people really care to spend such money on magnificent houses and power only to be lords over NPCs? Even if there is a greater amount of backers that would rather see a stronger single player story, I'm assuming the largest amount of income has come from the MMO allure of housing, PvP, and player economy/player interaction.

So why did they try to split their focus between the two in the first place? Obviously Richard has a strong background and fan base with the successful Ultima single player storylines. Watching the man talk about his vision and seeing his past successes, I believe that, given enough time and money, the team can make this happen.

To me it is only logical that the MMO aspect gets the most focus, regardless of my own desire for a strong single player story.

 

I couldn't have said this better. I'm not sure why it is even an issue to some that we are asking for some clarification. It's like they are offended we dare ask any questions.

 

I think this question has been asked and answered numerous time in this thread. We're not concerned about the story would be the first part of the answer. We know it will be good. The second part is: We're concerned about conversation mechanics that create intimacy, we're concerned about dynamic companions who actually take part in the narrative, we're concerned about time passing mechanics (sleeping or waiting) and a myriad other smaller concerns.

Edit: quoted more than I intended to on original post.

 

You completely dodged answering my question. But that's ok, I will address your comments in the process of explaining why your comments do not impact my questions.

I am looking at the differences between an on going persistent world and an offline single player world. In an on going world there are content changes through out the course of the life stand of the game. Offline single player worlds this is not the case. (DLC is effectively an expansion, on a smaller scale)

You claim that everything that affects the multiplayer experience affects the single player. Well the opposite is true too. Is that the experience you want for the online persistent world? Are there things that can be done to address the impacts that both modes have on each other?

Combat, the list could go on with the ways to make combat appropriate for all 4 modes. They have one thing on the list for R10, AI scaling, that will partly address combat.

Economy, I don't know your Ultima history but gold was never an issue. The online economy is the only part that needs to worry about economy. Since this is a material based economy gathering is an easy solution. That is not entertaining for single player I am sure. What about the items being dropped from MOBs, they are all from a player crafted loot table. - wait, there are no other players. They have an answer for that, the loot tables is seeded with items not player crafted if there are no player crafted items available. The spontaneous creation of items via gathering and looting of MOBs is a single player economy.

So back to my questions:

 

That's not my question, but that is what everyone seems to want to turn this into.

This is about your piece of the pie.

What if they have answers for all your questions. They lay it all out and show how the single player will be. Then they move on to the SPO/FPO/OPO and not once include single player in the process. You OK with that?

Do you think SPO is the exact same thing as Single player mode? Should it be? The man hours of game play, I picked a high one of 120 hours, is what most single player RPGs use to describe the level of detail put into the experience. The SPO/FPO/OPO doesn't end there it keeps going. Should the single player elements keep pace?

What happens after Episode 5. No more Episodes but the game is still running. How much single player content should the be adding?

 

Most of that is way too hypothetical to answer. It depends heavily on what information they actually gave us regarding single player. Without that information I can't tell you if I'd be satisfied or not. As for additional content: No I don't expect additional single player content (unless they decide to go the DLC route, which is an accepted industry process). Just because the multi-player side grows, doesn't mean the single player side needs new content. I could see updates to systems filtering down as the game evolves, but since what keeps people playing the multi-player side is player interaction and "player generated content" in the form of guilds and rp, I don't see what new content single player would be expecting.

So, either I answered the question, or I don't understand what you mean (or somewhere between the two).

 

You did answer my question. TY

It brings out the new question. (full disclosure: I was leading to this question)

What is acceptable content for SPO/FPO/OPO that single player would not expect to be included in after launch. (putting aside DLC that has it's own level of requirements and can be handled singularly)

A dragon flying around the overland map. - easy enough to keep this a single player content and scale it to SPO/FPO/OPO

Evil force moving around the world. As the force moves hex to hex the front lines move with it. Eventually the force lands on a town hex and lays siege. The town is no longer accessible for trade and housing. If you have a home there you are locked out. The battle for control takes days. - How does single player scale down and have their pie of this pie?

2 examples and combat does not need to be the answer in dealing with a dragon or a siege.

 

I feel that "MMO" is just being used as a boogieman in a lot of these threads. A lot of style choices are being blamed on its MMOness, when really it doesn't seem to be applicable.

 

I would think it would be handled like many other SP games. Where there would be two sides and the player could influence the outcome through role-playing options and/or combat. The sides would be comprised entirely of NPCs rather than real players and by finished quests for one side or the other the outcome would change.

But it would require an entirely different system than the online version. Frankly, the whole thing makes my head ache. I just don't see how they're going to make it work and keep it engaging in single player without re-writing most of it.

 

If you mean MMO as in traditional MMO, you might have a point. But to say that there are no sacrifices being made because this game has many online modes would be outright silly. The fact is, if RG had decided to make a purely single player offline game, all of the systems we're concerned about would be included. I have no doubt.

On the other hand, he didn't make that choice. He decided on selective-multiplayer. Some sacrifices are inevitable.

 

Right, that's a good solution. Lots of options and nothing hard scripted (the Ultima way) This is great and works out well for launch. After launch is this maintainable for 100% of the content?

And here is why I have my line of questioning. Is the expectation an over reach?

At what point in the development of the game do that say "OK, we have our single player game" or are they allowed to say that. Are they expected to have a single player game that spans from launch to launch of the Episodes?

What if they do have a launch to launch single player game. Is anything else they come up with and add in on the fly required to be single player?

 

@Ristra: It's a little hard to follow your line of questioning. Can you state clearly what you're aiming for?

 

Content-wise? I don't think so. If it's easy to drop into the offline, then it should be available for download through an update, but assuming the single player game is complete at launch, I don't think we need every additional change and event filtered down.

So if they make some event, 6 months after launch that allows people in mulit-player to partake in some big battle, which affects a region, I don't think that battle needs to be included in the single player offline game. But if the player wants the outcome of that event to show (and NPCs will probably be updated to comment on the event) there should be an optional download to see the effects.

 

This is my thinking also.

Edit: Single player not complete before launch would be very disappointing. Depending on how they intend to deliver the single player of course.

The could trickle that out over the Episode. But that would mean if you never connected for an update the game would not be complete.

 

Captain Jack would like to echo that point. Rista seems to enjoy jumping in, but Captain Jack is never quite sure which side you are on. You have to pick a side.

Captain Jack proposes a new feature on the forum. Tabs on each person's profile where they can easily customise. Have a tab for PvE, for PvP, for SPO, for Companions, for Full Loot, whever you want. Then fill them out with clear and concise thoughts from your brain into them, that way everyone can go see what everyone wants for themselves and it might save us all of these round robin conversations where you talky types just kind of spam out words.

 

I thought my response would make it clear, but to spell it out: I expect a solid single player experience with decent mechanics which aren't a compromise for multiplayer. A story alone does not make an RPG, no matter how many hours of content there are. There are any number of examples of RPGs with plenty of content, but which are dreadful game experiences. A good story is only a part of what is required, and in the case of SotA, I am little concerned about the story because I trust that Hickman and Garriott will come up with a decent one.

The reason I'm so worried now is that the mechanics for a decent single player experience are not going to simply fall into place when they're finished with multiplayer. If they aren't considering the impact of their decisions for multiplayer on the single player experience, it may well be too late to fix things once they do.

I can't see why you're trying to separate them like that. They need to consider all aspects of the game anytime they make decisions on gameplay mechanics. The game modes aren't all separate, they all share the same basic gameplay.

 

The 2 things you have pointed out, economy and combat, don't concern me either. Just as Hickman and Garriott are on the story we have a team of Devs on these too.

What matters here is talking in generalities or having clear definitions. We could a get our torches and pitch forks for some mob mentality but that's not very productive. A discussion about specifics is the way to go IMO.

So if economics is an issue for you, let it rip, what's your concern. My stance is there is little to no economy in a single players game. We will have ample currency to accomplish our goals, if the Ultima series is the reference on how easy it was to get gold.

If combat is an issue, again, what's your concern. 1 person against a full scene designed for OPO? That would be an issue for sure. They mention testing AI scaling in R10. Combat is a rather broad subject and in the Ultima series it was common to be able to avoid combat for much of the game. So no matter how "MMO" focused they make combat they could make the single player experience require little combat or at least a route you can take that can avoid combat.

How is multiplayer actually compromising the single player. I don't see it, but I can see how it's easy to think that if you simply look at each Release as a stand alone example.

That's no different than the PvP crowd upset that PvP isn't balanced, of course it's not balanced.

I pick side...... neutral.

I look at things from the Dev's perspective. My side is not important, if it was I would break out my notes and put a much more detail design doc worth of systems.

If anything, I am more interested in seeing why people take a hard stance on positions they have vs positions the Dev's have.

 

Is it me that is separating them or the lack of clarity in the definitions of what it is people are expecting to be available to each mode?

Are you saying that 100% of all things available in OPO should be from the single player perspective?

 

Right, I'm gonna lock this for a while. Why don't you all take a long break to calm back down, while I decide if I need to moderate anything here.

Update: Unlocked!

 

No, I'm not saying that. Of course there are differences between the modes, otherwise there wouldn't be different modes. However, it stands to reason that the bulk of the game will be shared between the modes, including (especially) the underlying mechanics. It would be ridiculous to expect the devs to flesh out what in effect would be separate games if they made the mechanics different for each mode. It would not only blow out development time past reasonable expectation (and budget,) but it would exponentially increase the difficulty of getting everything to play nicely together, considering that they are at the very least running a common interface and code 'skeleton'.

Hence the reason for this thread. The devs are creating the mechanics for this game now. It should be common sense to discuss how these mechanics affect the game in every mode that the devs are planning for. We are not hearing that discussion, with the exception of for multiplayer. I for one would like assurances that the discussion is at least taking place between the devs, and ideally, I'd like them to engage the community for their opinions on it, as they have done for the multiplayer aspects. I don't think that's unreasonable, and I hope you don't either.

Edit: Misread what you asked, apologies. You still seem to be concentrating on content/story? People have been telling you that isn't the point of this thread. I'll leave my response, because it does address what this thread is about.