Why did I love UO, and am 'meh' about SotA?

This thread a gold mine of direction for the developers. There is also a reason why it is 10 pages long - because a lot of people feel the same way.

So the question is...

*knocks on screen*
Anybody listening?

 

There are really funny videos about, how Skyrim is no TES game anymore It is as vast as an ocean... but as deep as a puddle.

 

Exactly! I think that is going to be my new favorite catchphrase, hehe

 

Sandbox mechanics are missing a ton of freedom to create, destroy, claim, build, protect. Blood Bay has some potential if the housing mechanic ever comes online - but the farming in their needs to be better. There's no reason to go in there to grind - and grinding is the whole point of this sandbox. Grind, level, loot, craft, sell, repeat.

I have mixed feeling about the multiple modes... On the one hand, multiplayer is lacking because everyone grinds in Single and Friends mode... On the other hand, switching between the modes enables faster boss respawns for the grind - all the best loot is on the bosses - why wait for a spot to clear when I can just go to friends mode and get all the same stuff - or bounce between the two modes for even better chances at rare loot.

Yesterday was interesting... I entered a Shardfall and was ganked and told to leave - of course I didn't leave, instead I was ganked a half dozen more times - but I kept coming back! The interesting thing was I wanted to be there and so did the other group - CONFLICT. It was a foreign experience to this game but one that ended up being a lot of fun - we were razzing each other and sneaking about in stealth. And then they followed me to Ruin (thank you Friends list for selling me out) and ganked me their too. lol

PVP desperately needs choice/consequence mechanics if it's going to headline as a premier game feature. I spend a lot of time in the forced multiplayer scenes and the are generally so empty that events like what happened yesterday - no one really knew how to deal with it. It was weird.

 

Oh they always are

Over the past 15 months I have seen them make a lot of changes based on threads, the longer the thread the higher chance of change.

 

Yet there are those that claim the exact opposite. It's been a constant over the course of the last 4 years.

 

I think people need to get out more in game and look around. I would tell people to visit our town Serenite. Our master masons have now created many high quality block structures mixed with and without houses. Ingenious designs with hundreds of hours into them. With the new magic mover tech, we are planning on taking a city lot and building a grand Colosseum... BUT... we plan on building a grand gustball field and many more which we can swap out when we need them.

I already feel that this game is sandbox enough, I can log in and do anything I want. Sure some things still need to be worked on (heavily) like PvP. PvP has been out of the picture for me so far, I just dont want to deal with the current mechanics (except tourneys). But that had not effected my play, still plenty of stuff I like to do.

The problem is the people who have a much narrow focus in a "sandbox" who only want PvP. Those people are pretty angry (an have probably quit), but then again, we must remind them that this is a sandbox, they have a lot of stuff to put in with a limited budget and limited man power.

Again, I think this game will release adequate and be great in 5 years if we give them the time and $$$.

 

Those people are not paying close attention enough to the forums then or simply dont know what a development iteration is. Things are buffed and nurfed all over the place release to release for testing. I've said it before, death and earth are the uber skills now and Im sure that they are because the dev's want people to switch to the tree and test it hard for a few months. What follows is a lot of people complaining and demanding change. Well, the dev's may not do it immediately (because they are still testing), but eventually the do. Mark my word, the next iterations will be done to melee, blunt and pole arm and those skills will be uber for a while for testing. Look at air magic, it was the thing for some time (again, probably for testing) and it went through several iterations and now its balanced. Yes, people now complain that its not as uber as it was or that Death and Earth are better, but of course, the end goal is balance.

There is nothing wrong with people like me continually reminding them that melee sucks, but to call the game a failure because they have not iterated (final or normal pass) through that skill tree or any other is once again a failure of people to not understand that this game is still in heavy and active development.

 

Word.

 

so THAT's what single player mode is used for. I was just wondering last night why people would log into that. I've just been approaching it as an MMO. I did log into single once, and was surprised to find that I had all of my goods/experience, as opposed to finding that I was starting the game over in solo a 'quest mode.'

 

It's 100% for grinding. Some people will argue it's for their immersion ... while grinding.

Before R38 I was a dedicated multiplayer mode only kinda guy - but now with artifacts everyone bounces between Friends and Multiplayer to speed up respawn and availability for farming.

100% of all resources are available to everyone 100% of the time... all the time. I love it and I hate it. lol

 

I cant even play in Muti any more for my grinding. My grind spot used to be all mine, no one ever showed up. Now the zone is farmed 24x7 and its hard to find mobs so I have to switch to friends only and sacrifice the 10% bonus (which is far made up for in the fact that I can efficiently farm).

We could actually chalk this up to a design flaw, zones are to small. Seq Colossus can only sustain 2 people like me farming it. So either zones need to be bigger or more instancing of non-grouped people.

 

Haha, yeah - as soon as I found a ring artifact on an archer in there I was all about grinding in Seq Colossus regularly.

 

Ive made 100 runs (1 hour, 600 weight of stuff) through it with almost 0 drops. But I had one run 2 days ago where I got 2 rings, the healing anke, 2 recipes and 2 potions. Nothing since. That was a very odd day.

 

You missed his point, the other guys will care what you do in your corner and come destroy it because they can. You don't get to play in your own corner of the sandbox freely as you want. Creating isolated instances that nobody else can touch or are forbidden from entering is not really a sandbox world, it has fictional walls that would not exist if this was a real world so it destroys immersion.

If I don't like your snowman in your yard sale, I should be able to stomp it down, and you should be able to hunt me down and get a bounty or suitable justice. The problem with most open world systems is if they let you destroy something it can usually be done with little risk of recourse. Especially since the fictional world has neighbors that play in different time zones, people cannot realistically be on all the time like they are in the real world, so your stuff gets stomped when you are offline and you have no idea and no way to find out who did it.

 

But MY sandbox is build arround people coming in to Attempt to try and destroy it!!!

Im not here to play a dress up sim game I want blood n guts on the floor.


However all this is off topic, lets move back to topic.

 

I hope you get what you want, so long as I'm not required to participate.

 

Agreed, I hope we all get stuff we all get stuff we like. I know its diffrent for everyone I personally will avoid all quests all story lines and I want nothing to do with the single player rgp part.

 

Before it gets deleted I could not agree more. UO was revolutionary when I beta tested it in what 1997 and I played it for 3 years. Absolutely great game with serious issues which we all dealt with because it was so great at the time. It was the first for many of us and we have rose colored glass's. But it had its serious issues still. Far to many people trying to re-live UO.

This is one reason why I am not a "retro" gammer, I cant stand going back to old games and reliving major issues that in modern times have been fixed through 20 years of evolution.

 

Haha, I could have played uo till the end of time if the graphic and ui was updated...