Uo spiritiual successor

Ive though alot about this over the years, the thing that made uo great was the massive sand box it was. This sand box was geared to have room for all play styles, lots of people could find and excell at thier chosen area of interest. Social players had a corner, hard core pvpers, spot campers, loot whores, packrats, crafters, then they had specitiy areas you could dive into and explore with deep skills like fishing and treasure hunting, finding and taming rare creatures etc lots more..

The problem with sota now is there isnt much of a sandbox and none of this is deep and rich YET.

Yes its possible the devs played a diffrent game than the rest of us, I know thier really big into the social game and yes its important to have that piece. That small segment should be happy with thier invesment, the quest and story people should also be encouraged. The rest of us will just need to wait untill they get to our corners.

 

He/She said Ultima, not UO.
Just pointing out to avoid missunderstandings.

About the rest, i am indifferent. I see a lot of progression at the moment. I would like different parts oif the game to progress faster or different but *shrugs* i actually can't complain much at the moment.

 

Only real deep sandbox in SOTA is your lot deed and house but thats about it, run of the mill online RPG game. I dont blame them for this, this is a 20 year long evolution of online RPG's, using what has evolved adn works (they arnt big enough to invent something new, in fact no company is big enough and has the money for that).

Other then using the name Avatar, I've seen less and less of UO in the game to the point where if it was not advertised as such, I dont think I would put the two together.

 

To prevent derailing of verbage, you can read and decide the inetent.

That focus on meaningful multiplayer is at the heart of Garriott's new game, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a spiritual successor to the EA-owned Ultima franchise. The new game promises to deliver a more personal online and offline experience driven by the sort of gameplay that fans of the Ultima franchise will find very familiar.

"Just like, I think, the numbered Ultima series really helped stake out territory in the solo-player, role-playing game and I think Ultima Online was the foundational product of massively multiplayer," Garriott said. "I believe I now can bring a role-playing game to bear which is yet a new model, that is neither a solo-player game strictly speaking nor massively multiplayer."

 

Well, i think the difference is important because the expectations from a former Ultima player may and will differ massively from the expectations of a former Ultima Online player.
That beeing said: not my circus, not my monkeys. I will leave you to your intended discussion.

 

I would also stress that it's Ultima as a whole.. not UO.. and the fact that despite knowing and acknowledging the game is in development and has a ways to go.. people have been judging SotA as if it's finished since very early on and deciding that no matter what it will always fall short because of how they see the current state. Which isn't really fair to anyone, including themselves.

Take the product for what it is.. unfinished. It's not perfect, and never will be.. but at least wait until you see it in its commercial release state before passing final judgement.

 

/sign this thread isnt about is this a uo or a ultima game.

When I play this game I only see uo in it, when I see his post I see the ultima statement.

The thread is really about depth and development. Please stop derailing..

People need to have stuff they like to do and people like to do lots of diffrent things.

 

Then you should change the title of the thread perhaps? Cause currently it's "UO spiritual successor" Perhaps it should be called "Depth and Development"?

Ok so what's missing that isn't planned or being worked on?

 

You assume Im a bitter participant, really I saw this post for that RF selling thier lord account(Its quoted in the op). And to me a person who spends thoundsands of dollars and waited 4 years is now selling out, this is sad and I feel like we have failed them.

I felt like people needed to know thier game is coming but that it may not be here atm.

My intent is to target other people who might feel as this RF feels, ive seen them make this claim before. If you want to make your own threads you can use the titles you choose.

 

Yet I am sure that the die-hard fans will tell us after commercial release that the game still isn't "finished" and the we should not really judge it as it is an ongoing development...

 

And i am sure you will keep on complaing no matter what the EP 1 product will look like ;-)

 

Perhaps.. but it is not unreasonable to expect a commercial release to be in a "polished" state and also that before that to be in a state not yet worthy of commercial release. Once that release happens the flood gates are opened and the pressure's on to maintain that "finished" state for everything that's in at the time of release. At that point, that much is judge worthy as a "finished" product.

What comes afterwards is the march to the next episode, which is unfinished and will go through that same development process.. and when that is "finished" then those additions will also be locked in as judge worthy.. and so on. but at that point it really won't be any different that judging the quality of any other online title. You don't expect the game to not change.. and you don't expect to like all those changes or for those changes to be perfect in their first release.. but you do expect the "release" to maintain a level of quality.

We just aren't to that point yet and never have been. Where we are is the point were "80%" of that quality has just started going in and for those of us who are still here.. we hope our patience and (in many cases it seems) endurance will pay off.

 

Right, i will try to get this one back on track.

In my opinion we have a couple of things to adress.

- Crafting
The solution we have at the moment with the random recipe drops is a pain in the backside.
I really liked the invention system. Sure, in the end i could read it all up...but who cares? Who ever likes to experiment won't read it up anyway.

- PvP
There is nothing that deserves the lable PvP system in this game. There are no goals to pvp. There is no reason to PvP.

- Quests
Yes they are getting more and they are getting better. But there are NEVER enough quests. Gives us more. And when you are done, give us still more. And after that more. And when we beg Port to stop, add even MORE.

- Phasing
In my opinion we badly need a working phasing system to be able to impliment real consequences.
It doesn't have to be big in the beginning. Just enough that we are able to see we make a difference to the (our personal) game world.

- Exploration
In my opinion we should deffo do something for exploration. It's a vastly overlooked part. Add gimmicks, add achivments, add loot or xp. Gives us places we can only reach if we are really inventive.

 

Hey, I wrote that I actually think the tutorial and the Blood River outskirts are good Just what comes afterwards still needs a lot of work

 

You are right. I am demanding too much today ^^

 

There's quite a bit about the implementation of the system that I consider to be 'off'.. the system itself is great imo, particularly under the hood (as it were).. but recipes no longer need to be unique so long as they are selectable from a list.. as loot offline is unnecessarily burdensome though I understand why you'd want it for online to get people to interact.. the unfinished state and other issues is particularly burdensome at the moment.

I think PvP has the wrong approach in just about every way. Ransom, "Oracle" involvement, PvP only zones.. I would set it up very differently.. unfortunately my solutions would probably be too expensive in terms of tech limitations and manpower. So I can't complain too much.

+10

 

The problem is that they rely on players to fund the project but we hardly have anything to go by other than being in a world to kill stuff in. As bare bones as that sounds, even that component is lack-luster.

The only thing they CAN do is offer us some shiny decoration in the hopes that we'll stick around long enough to see some game-play.

I've played prototypes that played better than this. So whenever I'd say that it's not meeting up my expectations, it's because I'm waiting for the "game" to happen. The sad part is that I'm pretty easy guy to satisfy... I still play the original Diablo to this day and that's a game about mindlessly killing monsters.

I want something to do other than grinding... and when you have a Diablo fanboi telling you that your game is a grind-fest, something is fundamentally wrong. I'm here because I want to shake the devs up so that we can get a better game.

If this is about people who are quitting the game, well... I can't blame them either. If you fund a project and you realize that (in your mind) that it's not going anywhere, you'd bail too.

 

I think there needs to be a certain level of understanding that a lot of players just don't have (yet). I can't speak too much of the prototypes you've played but I wager they weren't open for testing starting with a single room with a chair.

That's not to say they didn't have better gameplay at the moment. Only to emphasize differences in the development process and possibly differences in vision, team style and other factors that are too many to list.

Open development like this is a 2 edged sword really. If you don't already have a level of understanding in development or simply the right temperament, going through this process can be a bit rough and even if you do that only speaks to you and how you navigate the process. There's never any real guarantee the game itself will be all anyone hopes for. I just wish more people didn't rush to judge before the game is ready TO be judged.

 

I just want to say Earl, Bowen and Gix are right, i join there opinions!

 

The vast majority tend to be more along the lines of a "first level" type thing to try to get the project green-lit (not on steam, but at an actual publisher).

The most bare-bones prototypes I played was basically a square room with a player character, a "pet", a sphere and a jumping puzzle. It was a third-person puzzle game with platforming and the sphere (influenced by Havok physics) was to represent "food" for the pet companion. You couldn't do anything to the pet but you could grab the sphere and throw it... and the pet would try to follow the sphere. The puzzle had no real "win state" but you could push and pull blocks to get on top if you wanted... or try to get the pet to climb up. The jumping and running felt nice.

Just you, a pet, a ball and some blocks. It was enjoyable and it was enough to give you an idea of what's in store when the game is completed and that's when the designers can start building levels; when they know how everything works in relation to one another.

It's always frustrating to work on something and have someone else bud in an criticize it... that's why I don't let anyone except my peers see my work. It's one thing to complain that the game is missing features and another thing entirely to say that it doesn't keep your interest.

If it's the latter, then I don't think it's "too early" to judge the game... it might be too late, actually.