Suggestion - separate mmo sandbox and story

What if Port separates the story part from the mmo part?

The mmo part with the three online modes are like UO - a sandbox without story. The playing community can create their own quests.

The story is only in the offline part. No need to make compromises. No need to implement phasing. Each part - mmo and story - can be developed to the maximum because the do not influence each other. They share only the land and the history

 

Yeech! Btw starting with Age of Shadows Ultima Online has quests built in. So no quests in SOTA is not like the current UO. The real UO from EA.

 

What I mean are story driven quests. Not the FedEx and kill x blahblah from the later UO.

 

No, i want to play a sandbox mmo with story content, that was the promisse for all backers.

 

I was here for the single-player narrative in a multi-player setting. I also know that removing the story from the MMO would never happen so I'm just taking part in your hypothetical discussion.

I would also enjoy playing a SP game based on the history of the lore of this world.

I'd back it too, though not until I'd seen evidence of Episode 2+ here, they've got a ways to go on this project

 

The story is supposed to involve the multiplayer aspects like PvP, btw.

But a game with that brings together the best elements of single player and multiplayer is what a lot of us pledged for, and what we should encouraging the devs towards.

 

It would have been the best solution, imho. With two separate "games" both could have been created without too many compromises for each other.

It is frustrating having to deal with so many MMO aspects in a single player story, which suffers because of them - ugly housing, no choices with consequences, no one reacts to things happening in the world, everyone is doing the exact same things, no sense of achieving anything in the world...

 

GTA V manage to pull off separate online and offline mode. They're still doing pretty well.

 

So the developers said they are shooting to release the game this year and then you suggest they spit the game up and go backwards,doing redesign and pushing the release even further? Oh heck no,no way this should happen.

 

AFAIR Richard said recently that SotA will reach Beta-State at the end of the year. I believe that SotA will remain in Beta at least for one year. Port need to complete the story either for all modes or only for the offline mode. For all modes is complicated because of many things already discussed in this forum. They have to implement phasing to get rid off some of this problems for example. What makes you think that implementing the story in offline mode only will delay the release of the game? I think precisely the opposite is the case

 

This time of the year again?

 

Sandbox MMOs are bad. Peeling away the story from the MMO removes all hope for SotA.

The hex based design where they can patch each zone and change them to fix the current dynamic content is key to everything IMO.

"The evil forces of the world are not just waiting in an instance to be killed. They have a plan and move around the world."

Not a direct quote but a paraphrasing of a core concept that MUST make it into the MMO side.

 

Not going to happen when people paid real money to get that questing traffic going by their vendors. There was no other reason for devs to place housing in NPC towns than money, even at the cost of telling consequential stories. The devs have also stated that offline plot will be the same as the online plot, so no hope there either.

 

I know we all have different ideas about what we want to see in the game, but I cannot imagine them pulling the story quests from multiplayer mode -- the game would feel very disjointed to me.

I want my cake and frosting all on one plate please!!

 

Gosh I hope this doesn't happen my friend. I decided not to completely give up on SotA because of their recent move to implement more lore and compelling story based quests. If it does transition to the typical "FedEx Fetch" style quests, I will most likely be done with Shroud.

Yet, in times like this I turn to the words of my dear friend Andy Defresne:

 

During the early days of SotA Richard Garriott said that he found an exciting new way to tell a meaningful story in a multiplayer game. He wasn't satisfied with how MMOs told stories with no consequences and every player doing the same things. Yet what I see now is just the typical MMO quests/storytelling. So I still wonder what this new way of storytelling is...

 

GTA cost them 272 million is inflation adjusted dollars to make as well as all the other money made on it since release (if I recall right, online mode came out later).

Lets get another 250 mil to the dev's and I bet we will have a game better then GTA 5.

FYI: I agree with you though.