Why are my fellow avatars making the case for closed development?

It is unfair to say generally that people are upset because the game does not fulfill their demands for specific kinds of content. There is an art to this business. Some games capture the imagination, even with a small budget and limited technology. People swoon over memories of playing the Ultima series. I contend that if they had never been developed, and only now were being released (after technology revolutions) that they would be just as popular now as then. I believe RG wants to capture our imaginations like that. Perhaps the current technology prevents that (example instancing), or perhaps building the front end will forever confound attempts to stuff the vision in on the back end. My choice of games includes the spectrum of technology, cost and etc. What makes a game great is imagination on the producer and consumer side. There is still time to capture that imagination, though the front end development may forever keep that from happening.

People may not always be able to pinpoint exactly why they are unhappy with a product, so some understanding is needed to persevere misplaced criticisms.

 

This.
Right.
Here.

 

Now we are back to the standard "meeting the letter of the agreement but not the intent". Package the offline mode as an independent game and release it as a standalone title. It wouldn't be able to compete with even 10 year old games in the single player RPG space. Can you honestly say that SP SotA could be held up against Morrowind, Witcher or even indie titles like Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny?

 

HOLY CRAAP! This is an absolutely amazing collection of whats going on right now. Well done sir, well done.

ill note that you should not feed some of the people here who are the ones portraying things you list. Just let their statement lye.

 

No I wouldn't say that at all.

But I also NEVER even once thought they were making competition to Morrowind, Witcher or Pillars of Eternity. Do you honestly think that Ultima 1 - 7 could complete with those games? I've never played them, but I'm very familiar with Morrowind, Witcher, and Pillars of Eternity. (I actually like PoE, I think the other two are boring and a waste of money)

I think that's actually a GREAT question though. Because that would be the real test wouldn't it? Would this single player RPG be able to compete with Ultima 1 - 7? Does it stand up? I'm assuming you'll say it doesn't, and that's fine I'll take your word for it. But if you thought that SOTA was ever going to compete with the 100 million dollar budgets of the games you mentioned, I don't see where that's reasonable. Even some of the Ultima's probably cost a good chuck of change more if you factor in that they didn't have mutliplayer modes that resembled what we have here.

 

I'm not saying that things couldn't get better for SotA specifically. My point is just that in these types of situations, it really adds insult to injury when the people that are funding something and that will be left holding the bag if it fails start to get blamed for the direction of something that they give life to but don't manage.

 

SotA has had the benefit of 15 years technical improvements and streamlined game design since Morrowind was released, and it was the gold standard for a decade. If it is 2017 and if your singleplayer open world RPG isn't more fun than Morrowind, you shouldn't be releasing it, and it you have to, your price tag had better be under $10.

 

yes, if Richard had 100 million I think we would have a Wicher game. If port had 10 years to develop the game without all the people saying "you have been making this game for 4 years now" (which in terms of games is a short period of time). If we give them 5 more years of development time at their current budget and size, I think you would have a AAA type game as long as they had the funds to continue to do so.

On the flip side, I think they have given us one daaamn good game so far for only $12 million bucks.

Im sorry if people dont understand game development, time, budgets, planning and such. But those are facts. Unless you are putting forth a claim that we do not have a game worth 12 million with 4 years into it (and dont forget how many of those millions went into basic "run the business" stuff like a 7 gig internet pipe).

If you think that, then I would love to hear your opinion on Star Citizen sitting with 150 million and compare its state of game play to SOTA.

 

I don't feel like I'm being blamed for the direction of the game (although I'm aware there are some people that would say that's true). I don't think that the people complaining are at fault for the direction of the game either though. I've never said that I felt that individual players were ruining the game.

Instead, what I feel is happening is that the developers are making the best game they can, and there are some people that are ignoring that out of fear or panic or out of spite so that they can further their own agenda's. If this game fails it's not going to be because of people on forums that post complaints. If the game is good it's going to be played, that's how this works.

But giving people that say crazy things and make stuff up a free pass to make everyone miserable and confuse the issues is unacceptable, and the game could potentially have more success if they stopped doing that (or at the very least could control themselves on the margins to do something, anything productive that actually resulted in a better game).

 

I'm referring to the original Witcher title, from 2007, made for around 8 million USD.

 

I always thought Morrowind (and everything like it) was a boring dead world that I couldn't wait to get out of. If ever there were games I wish I never bought it was those. I understand that they're popular, I understand that I'm in the minority, but that's how I truly feel.

The idea that your gold standard could be my turd standard is very telling though. We have different tastes. We're looking for different experiences. I'm very satisfied here, and you're not. That doesn't mean that SOTA is good or bad, but it does mean that some people (like me) will pay for it and be happy. You can't just ignore that, it's a reality. From my point of view if that results in overall game sales that make the game shut down, I'll be saddened by that. But if it results in a popular game that keeps the doors open, I should have a right to that future shouldn't I?

 

So name your gold standard for single player open world RPGs, circa 2000, where you control a single character in a 1st or 3rd over the shoulder perspective. Would you consider SotA better than it is you completely remove SOTA's multiplayer component.

Edit: If you are will to overlook the graphics, I'd be willing to go back to 1991 and say that SP SotA doesn't even hold up compared to Darklands, but I could see some arguments on that.

 

I like Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland (A LOT) but they both had major problems with their stories (bugs) that make it impossible for me to complete them even though I put in 100's of hours into both.

I don't think SOTA is better than those games (from a single player RPG standpoint) which is unfortunate. But I think SOTA is without a doubt the best MMO I've ever played, and that's today right now. I'm an odd fish though. I've never played WOW or EQ because I'm not much of a social achiever. I'm not into "raids" or chat rooms where no one roleplays. I like roleplaying and pvp equally well and to me I enjoy the ability for players to shape the world and contribute to the story in a living world. The players are the stars of SOTA (not the NPC's) and in my world that's very important to me. I value player creativity over some unknown developer's word choice. I want my character or your character to be important, not some static puppet standing around handing out quests. SOTA provides that (regardless of how much you spent) and really provides the tools for robust and meaningful roleplaying (but not for PVP - yet).

 

Well... Since RG pitched this at Kickstarter as a spiritual successor to Ultima and UO, the tastes of people who were long-time fans of Ultima and UO are pretty important. If someone gave money to this game and hated both Ultima and UO --- to be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure their tastes matter as much.

At any rate, I agree with your OP in that I think some backers have been approaching the development process in a way that makes it extremely difficult, and which also puts a lot of duress on the devs -- which I believe interferes with their ability to get the game right and deliver what players want. However, at the same time, your list could be interpreted as also lumping into all that negativity valid complaints addressed in a constructive manner, so I think that's where some of the critics in this thread are coming from.

 

RG did not pitch this game as the second coming of Morrowind though.

Nor did he say it would be Ultima 10 or whatever....he said it would be a mixture of the Ultimas and UO. That's very different than it being only about the Ultimas. Would anyone say that the current version of single player offline is 50% of the Ultimas and 50% of UO? I think they could make that case very easily based on what I've seen.

 

Yea, I used the example of someone coming into the game who hated both Ultima and UO And I'm sure you'd agree that if so, his opinion on SotA should not necessarily be put on the same level as someone who loved both Ultima and UO.

But more background... originally UO was supposed to be like the single-player games, but with more people. LB has talked about this and said that the idea of UO came when they were talking about Ultima VII and said to each other "I wish I could play this game with friends." So that was the genesis of what he called "Multima" or Multi-player Ultima. He talked about this again at Kickstarter, discussed the things that went *wrong* in UO, and how they were hoping to have SotA fulfill his original vision of "Multima." And a lot of Ultima players were long for the journey and know precisely what LB was talking about. So when you frame this as SotA being 50% UO and 50% Ultima, I think its missing the point. The visions behind the two games were the same.

The biggest problem from a development standpoint, is making it *work* so a multi-player game can be like a single-player game, and capture the same spirit, and that was the source of some setbacks in developing UO. A lot of things they planned in making UO just didn't work how they thought it would. Some of this, LB hoped to correct in SotA.

 

That's very interesting. I'm curious what LB thinks he's been able to correct and how close to Multima he thinks he is? This would be a great telthon/post mortem question.

For me, it sounds as though Multima would lean away from the Ultimas in a significant way, so if the Ultima crowd understood this, some of them seem to have forgotten it.

 

Looks like a thinly veiled list of calling people out on the forum. Could be bending the rules a little too much here.

 

I want a water/air combo called "tempest in a teapot".

 

OK, "what's the buff on that?", what do we get? ~TL~