Why full loot? -- (Dev) Replied

@Lanatir - ******** is not an insult it is a gamestyle. Some prefer a safer gameplay with less risks and the common name for them is carebears. Some called them trammies. You cant change these names that easily since they is a part of the MMO vocalubirity wether you like it or not.
Try to discuss the full loot instead.
Full loot is needed cause it add risk to a game, you might loose everything you have on your body and everything in your backpack, that is taking a risk. Players entering such a risky area should be rewarded with better rewards.
I have a friend that still only play from trammel, he take all the PvE hard encounters the game can bring him but he avoid any encounter with a human (felucca) being cause it is out of his league, he will die then and loose maybe his pet and all stuff.
Some prefer safer enviroment and ok do that then but dont expect the same rewards as when you play the game on hardmode, fighting humans.

 

Cool, I like Psychos, it makes us sound dangerous and unpredictable. Chicks dig dangerous and unpredictable guys!

 

@Ultima Aficionado, you are making as many generalizations about the casuals being the PvE crowd as I am about the gaming industry. Did you know that if a player logged in for just 1 minute a day, it would take him 2400 days to beat the game? Just some more math facts to add to the discussion. Making this game full loot depends on how big LB wants this game to be. If he wants GW2 sized success, he will not include full loot in the same format as UO. If he wants to make less money but develop a cult classic amongst his loyal fans, he might consider it. Since you mentioned other games using the full loot system, how well do you think they are going to do? If GW2 was full loot, do you think it would be doing as well as it has? Even better?

Full loot would be a great option for a hardcore server, it might be the only difference vs normal servers that still have PvP. As it stands, the standard servers for the game won't go full loot in the same format we remember. They will tweak and restrict something, in some way. Partial loot, blessed items, who knows. There will be too much crying. I am a PvPer and might play on a hardcore server once I see what the rules are, but I can guarantee the standard game will not cater to the hardcore PvP crowd without some padding for the casuals who still play online.

 

I don't see how having your bags as fair game and your equiped items as protected with damage from dying and perhaps a percentage chance that a item could break is really a bad idea. It takes care of the problem of people never needing to replace items, and it allows you to take your good stuff out of the bank to actually use.

It is still useful for those that are attacking the people logging or mining you get all their stuff the gathered.


Instead of insulting and belittling how about you discuss it like an adult?

 

@ lanatir siri and anyone else who's got the wrong end of the stick, when ara said 'Your not just insulting me your making me your enemy' he was referring to the rage in sirinan's posts (i.e. 'shut the * up' etc), and what he meant by 'you're making me your enemy' was that sirinan is choosing to characterise him (ara) in a way which has departed from being two people expressing conflct between game preferences, and entered into one person saying to another 'you're a bad person irl' and hence, enemy. so, have another think about 'childishness', in that context.

* edited for language - Koldar

 

@Helicon - Thank you. =) Appreciated. Wanna join my guild? LOL

 

@LordSlack I do not presume to know Richard Garriott's mind but he is obviously already quite wealthy. He never traded quality game play for more money in the past so I would be quite surprised if he did so now. I am positive that RG is far more interested in making the best game possible for his fans rather than the one with the greatest appeal for casual players.

Make no mistake, he is going to try to capture the casual players too but I don't think he is going to scare a way this fans to do it.

By the way, are you even following this game? There are no separate servers.

 

@Helican you didn't seem to have that issue when a certain poster called me a waste of space earlier....

 

I dont know, maybe i am simply not understanding this correctly, maybe we come from different cultural backgrounds, but you dont make someone 'your enemy' in a civil discussion in a forum.
also, an insult is an insult as soon as people feel offended by it. and over these forums your friendly 'carebears' have told you repeatedly they dont wanna be called that way. So i dont understand why it is so hard to say 'pvers' or questers or explorers or whatever. we dont use any derogatory terms for pvpers either. why would we.
As for the topic. The reasoning behind having a full loot option eludes me. It eluded me more that 15 years ago when i started mudding, and all my encounters with people who are advocating this kind of gameplay were griefers. always.

 

@ND3G - Aye, that is how i see on RG too. A developer that just dont seek the easy way out like Blizzard did with WoW. I think he is on to something that actually will bring the MMO games to a new level. Games that will care for many playstyles at same time.
And just to clarify, i want you carebears and trammies to have your game. I am not selfish that i demand you to enter my playstyle against your own will.

 

@rune_74: its called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_perception

 

@rune_74 You keep going on about your good stuff. What exactly do you think you will have that you cannot bear to lose? Unless Portalarium is developing a vastly different type of game than I expect than there will not be much in the way of rare or unique items aside from the purely cosmetic. Do you really care that much about a generic set of bone armor or chain mail?

 

@Lanatir - Ok i will try to explain myself. English isnt my main language so bare with me.
What me and Ultima, ND3G express in many of these replies is a feeling of being robbed, our gamestyle isnt no more. Just about all MMO games is themepark games today with never ending PvE exposures. The full loot and risk vs reward game is buried, is no more. We have a feeling that the game industry dont care about us and when we then see our hero RG claim he will make another MMO game we gets our hope up that this will be our next game we waited 10 years for, imagine yourself to wait 10 years for 1 game that might deliver what you seek? That is how it is.
I might be provoking but take it into context of 10 years of waiting for the next game to play and i hope you understand my frustration. And lets be grownups and not let the namecalling end the discusssion, lets have a high roof and let the discussion flow. Saying a name calling ends the discussion is to me childish.
RG is my hero when it comes to MMO gaming, noone have created such a interactive world that promoted skillful PvP and a risk vs reward enviroment.
You have to understand that i dont look down on carebears and trammies, they have their playstyle. I just want a game for me and my brothers.

 

I apologize if my pointing out that rune_74 is a waste of space offended anyone.

 

@Ara Well. I understand your wishes. There is just one problem with that. Other people have other wishes. What about the players who used to play ultima 1-9 and never got into ultima online?
There is the dilemma. Also, where you are wrong, is that you think RG, who is as much my childhood hero as he is yours, just for other reasons, created this as an mmo. It was announced as a classic ultima-like game with online elements. Your expectations were what made it an mmo.
But it was never supposed to be one.
See, im all for talking in a civilized manner, and i have NO problem with anyone getting what they want as long as other players dont have to suffer for it. And you know as much as i do that as soon as there is something like a full loot option there WILL be people who will find ways to use it to grief other players with it, dont you think.
How about another option? How about a way for people to magically 'bind' items to their soul, making them unlootable. Make it an expensive process, or make it so that only a certain amount of items can be bound. But a full loot system will lead to griefing.

And i appreciate you took the time to explain.

 

@ND3G well it offended me

Well I'm hoping there is some things that you would like to keep, and note I didn't say they were indestructable so they could be lost...just that a person couldn't lose everything so that it makes peoples unwilling to even give the play style you like a chance. I'm trying to find a compromise that will work for at least what I fear would happen and still give you a bounty so to say...gold for instance and other things would be lost on the person.

 

@ND3G Fair enough, my opinion of RG is the same. What we do not know is whether he associates "full loot" with "quality game play" and if he thinks this will make his fans happy or not. He obviously has fans on both sides of the argument which is why all of us are even in here talking about his games.

And no I did not know there were no separate servers and this makes me happy, thanks for the info.

 

I think it is safe to say if someone finds something offensive, regardless if you think it is appropriate and they ask you to stop over and over....they are most likely not taking it as not an insult.

 

@Lanatir - I am a skilled PvP player that want a skilled game that put the features on skills and a no griefing game. Griefing is for the ganking PvP players that lack skills. Me and my guild met such a guild on a UO freeshard, what happened is that we defended the newbies at Brit Graveyard and killed that guild of the shard cause we just could'nt take their behaviour. We defended the carebears and trammies to make their gameplay more rewarding. We want players to feel some sort of proudness from their behaviour. I want the players that seek no PvP in their games to have an option to avoid just that. I want you guys to have your game and im pleased you get it. I want you the best.
And now comes my wantings, i want a SKILLFULL game that take alot of skill from the player to perform as good as the game demands cause that put playerskills in focus and also raise the bar for players. So Richard Garriott need to deliver a game that is as demanding as old school (per AoS) UO cause it will create a game that make PvP and PvE fun.
Lets bury the hatchett mate. What you have to understand i'm actually a very caring human being that care for my fellow gameplaying character. I am also a trammie or a ******** sometimes. =)

 

Why not simply use the term Coop instead of ********. ******** suggests, that anyone doesn't want to take a risk and must be taken care of. And most people, I've seen in the forum want to take risks, do challenging and difficult content, too, since they want to become the Avatar, that is perfectly manageable of taking care of himself. Look at pen&paper RPGs: almost all of them are coop (except something is going completely wrong or the group can't play). And if you think, PvP content is much more difficult and risky than PvE content, then try to find solutions to make the PvE content exactly as hard, so nobody can complain. ******** may not be an insult for many people (even if it's used often in an insulting way), but it surely is an incorrect term for the PvE guys in the chat and forum that I've encountered.

That doesn't mean, I don't appreciate good PvP and I can even accept Full Loot as an option. I suggested that several times (page 4 of this thread, I think): Why not let people pray/swear at shrines, that turn on specific options, like full loot at the shrine of sacrifice (through other players with the full loot oath) or for example permadeath at the shrine of valor (with the exception that you can only be killed permanently by other permadeath players). Those things could be activated automatically in pre-configurable guilds. And reward such gameplay through titles, prestige, achievements and special trophies.

The selective model of Shroud of the Avatar would be perfect for this, since it would put you in the same instances, areas and encounters as other players with similar options activated and similar playstyle.

And I think, this could be the way the developers are heading. The game would become a PvP game for PvP players, a Full Loot game for Full Looters, even a Permadeath game for fans of that mode, and a PvE game for Coop-Players. And it will be the job of the Alpha/Beta-testers to balance things out.

So, everybody could be happy in the end and I really don't see the many problems, some of you guys have. So instead of your trivial running battles, try to be constructive and make suggestions, how you could combine the different expectations to the game.

And there are definitely different expectations to this game. Most players have their own picture in their head, how this game should become. Don't forget that many Ultima fans of the classic series (4-7) never played Ultima Online and aren't really interested in a successor.

And on the other hand many Ultima Online Fans are looking for a game, that takes over the best parts of (pre Trammel) Ultima Online. Portalarium really has no easy job to appease both groups, but the have to do it, since it was part of the Kickstarter Campaign. And we should do our best to support them through constructive suggestions.

Cheers,
Andreas