Why Open PvP with full Loot worked in UO.

My main hope is that they allow AT LEAST the option to fight whoever you want when you want... I am sure they can add some things in like not all your things will drop but maybe one random item instead. Then it would make it so the cost of dying wouldn't be as high but would still give you that "If I die I MIGHT lose something good" to keep the game interesting. I think that pkers added a lot to guilds. You didn't just do quest and bosses together, instead you did everything together and added protection in numbers. People joined a guild for not just progression but as well to add protection while you progressed or farmed. One of my favorite things in UO was the human orc camps. Yes at times they were cheesy (to me) but my guild and I would regularly attack the camp. Most people would think this was annoying by reading it; however the orcs and I had fun. I would not look their bodies entirely, but instead would only loot their weapons or gold/regs. The day I decided to leave the game I actually took the time to go say bye to them. They didn't cheer.... in fact they were sad to see me go and called me a great challenge that will be missed. It is aspect of the game such as this they created a possible feud that brought excitement to the game. Not only were they watching their backs, but my guild and I had at times been attacked by them at our house in Cove.

Another aspect that open pking brought to the game was the virtuous guilds, and in a game line revolved heavily around virtues, this helped! I remember many guilds they refused to kill anyone who wasn't a PK. In fact they would wander the world looking for PKers to kill us and protect people who needed it from us.

There are many other reasons that I can think for benefits to PKers in UO that would make SOTA even better but I do not want to ramble more than I have. I just think that people who got killed got pissed because they were not good enough at the game yet or experienced in PVP took dying way to seriously and should of looked at it as a way to say "Wow... I need to practice some more if I want to stay alive longer."

Yes there were PKers who would solely kill newbs... However those PKers were newbs at one time too and had to go through the same ordeal. It’s not like they made the game unfair... not like most games now where someone with no skill but has a credit card can make an untouchable character.

 

SotA also isn't an MMO.

Wasn't that like, one of the first things Lord British said outloud in the video BEFORE the kickstarter launched?

 

Actually MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Game.... by that.. If it is a game online with a lot of players then it is a MMO. FPSers are not MMO's because they only have a set number of players per match and it is not a massive world to explore. That is why if you have a FPS with a large amount of players such as Firefall it is called a MMOFPS. So unless they are going to make it so only you and people you invite are in the game with you... or has a small restriction of players per world it will still be a MMORPG just like UO was. I hope they do go with making it an MMO or else it will be another Ultima game like Ultima Ascension with some friends. Don't get me wrong, Ascension was a good game! But if they want the fan base they had in UO then it will have to be an MMO.

 

SotA is more akin to a classic FPS where you'd host an instance on your machine for friends to play with you. The game is ad-hoc and fully instanced. It isn't like you'll have thousands of players on a centrally hosted server seeing each other on the same map. That's why it doesn't meet the traditional critera for an MMO.

 

Whether its an MMO in the form we know them it is still the essense of an MMO

These are many of the reasons why UO was so great and all other games feel so limiting. A lot of people against this type of game must have had a ruff go and gave up without figuring the game out or simply never played the game (pre 99'). In UO it didn't matter how bad you were at PvPing there were always other options. There were plenty of people who wanted to hunt down PKers and loathed them as much as you did and wanted to help. There were guilds you could join that could offer protection and plenty of towns you could gather resources in that were safe. I myself formed a guild thats sole purpose was killing PKers and helping innocent players. Peoples mindsets have changed so much over the years and want to be handed everything on a silver platter. We got homeless people on the streets who will turn down job offers because its easier to beg. When you go bowling are you still asking for the bumpers to be up? Some like it easy, to each his own I guess.

 

Not even against criminals who seek to rob and murder you? If you disarm them, that seems to me more like self defense than mugging them.

Edit. On reflection, I really get mystified by posts like this. You'd be OK with being murdered in PvP, but if you were looted as well, it would feel like a mugging, and THAT is where you draw your line?

To me, that demonstrates that death is no penalty at all if people are more concerned about their stuff than they are about getting killed.

 

Because a system allows for full looting it doesnt mean you have to loot people. If you find it to be of bad character to kill and loot someone, more power to you. You are building your character that other will remember and trust. That is what I liked about UO. You could show people your true colors and it stuck with them. I have a hard time building these memorable moments in other games today because nothing another player really does is that emotionally effective on me. Somone stealing all my prized possessions and someone helping me kill the person who stole all my prized possessions are too very strong emotions.

 

Doesn't make me feel better. I would still be choosing to cause further harm on someone after having already defeated him. BTW, yeah, I would make a crappy policeman.

To put things in context, ever played those D&D computer games where your actions change your alignment? If I'm actually immersing myself in the game, actually roleplaying my character, I always end those games as lawful good no matter my original alignment. And I'm not always as nice to NPCs as I am to other actual players.I can do evil acts or play games where my character is evil, but I do that by intentionally breaking immersion. I can pretend being evil, but never roleplay evil, if that makes sense.

I don't think it's even possible for the character's life to be that important in a PvP game where killing the defeated enemy is the norm. For life to be important, most combats would have to be non-letal. It's more or less what EVE does with the escape pods. (And EVE does an interesting twist regarding killing escape pods, and thus actually killing other characters: the player of the killed character can mark the attacker as a suspect, roughly equivalent to a UO gray, for a whole month. And put a bounty on him on top of that, and bounties in EVE are paid only up to 20% of the financial losses of the hunted character, with the rest remaining available for further bounty hunters. Also, there is no financial gain at all from killing an escape pod, since all gain comes from destroying the ship; and killing the escape pod might actually allow the player to get back into the fray faster as he doesn't have to travel back to a station.)

Besides, games with looting do tend to make the gear more important than the life. The life is usually only important in that still being alive allows the player to avoid being looted, and losing the life without being looted is far less harmful than somehow losing the gear without dying. No wonder players often give much more importance to their gear than to their life, given that the games themselves condition players that way.

But that is secondary for me. While losing the gear is unpleasant, as long as I can replace it cheaply and easily I wouldn't have that much of an issue with the loss itself. My issue is more with the act of being looted, because it's something extra, likely gratuitous, consciously done by another intelligent being after I was already defeated.

In fact, I would better accept a game where everything worn or carried by the player that died was automatically destroyed than a game where the winner could loot the loser. That would make the gear loss impessoal, and thus less frustrating for me.

 

There are some games that still have this. The two most famous examples nowadays, in the west at least, are likely EVE Online and Darkfall Unholy Wars. The still in development Pathfinder Online might be worth looking at, too.

What's different nowadays is that players have options, so only players that already know they will like that play style, or are crazy enough to try it for themselves despite not being sure they will like it (like myself a few years ago), are going to experience it.

Granted, this does means that players that might like that play style if they were exposed to it won't likely get a chance, but I don't think that is a common enough case. I might be biased, of course, given that I can't really see what is fun about exposing oneself to player aggression myself.

AFAIK, most players, even in MMOs, are actually loners; they might play in a group if the game assembles the group for them, but otherwise they stay mostly apart.

In my own case, while I enjoy companionship, reaching out to other players is not enjoyable. In most cases I would rather leave the game than ask for help (though I would typically offer help in a heartbeat, as long as it didn't force me through unpleasant gameplay in order to help). But there is a huge number of reasons for players to stay alone, and all those players added together - players that might leave a game if forced to reach out, ask for help, play in groups - make a very enticing case for any dev to make his game solo-friendly.

IMHO, for the most part those MMOs aren't able to make the act of playing enjoyable by itself, so the devs turned to external rewards in order to entice players and keep them playing. But external rewards force the devs to keep adding extra "rewards" to the game.

Leveling works as this for a while, but adding extra levels all the time is too troublesome. So, the devs turned to gear as the rewards. The constant need to keep offering even better gear all the time has, as a side-effect, that the gear becomes the most powerful thing about the characters, in turn making the gear the true worth of the character.

The answer I can see is making the game itself so fun to play that the players are willing to keep playing even without rewards, and then avoid giving rewards that increase character power. But doing this is not easy in any shape or way.

Keep in mind that many of those games hired devs that worked on UO for their teams. You knew the positive aspects of the freedom UO gave, while those devs that went to work in other games had to deal with the negative aspects of that freedom on a daily basis. I doubt many of them dismissed the benefits of more freedom for the players lightly.

I remember already seeing this as a child over two decades ago. This is not new.

And I believe the same happens with player behavior in games. It's not that the players became lazy, but that the games have increasingly big budgets, and thus need to reach to a wider audience to pay themselves. Thus, people that before wouldn't be seen as a target audience, due to lack of skill, lack of time, no interest in challenging themselves, etc, are increasingly seem as a desirable, sometimes essential, part of the player base.

Games can be made for the smaller part of the player base that likes a good challenge and rises to it. But a game like that usually has to content itself with far smaller sales, and thus a far smaller budget. Which is a reason I've been spending more money on small budget indie games than on blockbusters this last couple years

 

This is a sad truth I have to come to terms with, and I understand it.

 

@Silent, all of your arguments are about "I", "I dont" "I" "Me" "Personally"

personal thoughts don't contribute to the discussion, instead they make it complex. I see no logical explanations about how your gameplay contributes the sustainability of the game. you always name yourself as "victim" that is always ready to ganked by some murderers. since we have written too much about the sustainability, i will not repeat myself. playing alone, farming to the max and full safety where you can make yourself god... these are so selfish and while you are having fun, everyone else gets bored except another selfish people. if you are so obsessed with being alone, please just dont play an online game where your powerfarming will break the balance and economy of the game and make the game boring for the other players.

"The answer I can see is making the game itself so fun to play that the players are willing to keep playing even without rewards, and then avoid giving rewards that increase character power. But doing this is not easy in any shape or way."
this is only possible with free social interactions. unless you have a main quest that ends the game, an online game is boring without social interactions, because there is no point in the game. because even quests, items or another events come to an end in a short time thanks to powerfarmers. but player, a real HUMAN interaction has unlimited possibilities.

 

You can get super technical and hair splitting about it all you want, it doesn't change the fact that they said it's not. an. MMO.

An MMO as we know it. Not something some of you keep stretching it to in order to claim its still an MMO.

SotA does have limits. You can play single player, or with friends only. Entire troves of people will never be shown to you. It's not massive.

It's just multiplayer.

I don't know about you, but playing a single player Ultima game with a bunch of my friends is a pretty awesome thing. That's why they had things like Ultima VI online, Ultima VII lan engine things, and games like EUO that are basically just Ultima esque games that you play with friends...

people want it.

Or, if they want the fanbase they had with the entire Ultima series, they can continue doing what they are doing.

 

This actually says more about the players than the devs (gamemaker).
Unfortunately, this shines the spotlight on an aspect of human nature that the gamemaker uses to their advantage. Give the players an opportunity to believe they are earning a reward, then they are more than willing, almost obsessed, with earning it, even if it is worthless or pointless, which translates into millions of dollars for the gamemaker. Take WoW and their ever increasing item level, making gear obsolete after every patch. It became extremely accentuated when WoW created achievements, suddenly everybody was running around collecting achievements like there was no tomorrow and attributing "worth" to a player based on those achievements and the total sum of earned achievements. An excellent example of how easily people (the players) would allow themselves to be manipulated by others (gamemaker).

 

Arguments that state that SotA is not an MMO seem to be intended at a debate stopper, as in "I don't like MMOs, so since SotA is not an MMO, shut up".

This is not an useful argument. What ever SotA is or is not, in OPO SotA has many of the characteristics of an MMO, and it is those characteristics we should be discussing, rather than avoiding the discussion of those characteristics because 'shut up'.

 

And also please stop with the arguments that is "RG said pvp is consensual, shut up, decision is given, no more argue"

 

But RG did say PvP is consentual, and until that changes, arguments that presume that PvP is in some way not consensual are also nonsense. If you are given to nonsensical arguments, feel free, but you will influence no game designs with nonsensical arguments.

 

since that decision is not US law enforcement, everything can change. if not, then we should close this topic there is no meaning of arguing. because everybody knows that consensuel pvp will make all pvps like duels.

 

Well it is good to see that some things never change. Big Sir Owain attacking the meek. Owain, your comment which you have directed towrds Artariel is personal and not very nice, I do not believe that it is in line with the tone FireLotus would like see in the forum. Artariel is not being combative in this thread what so ever. We would all very much appreciate it if you didn't personally attack him or his "arguments". You can review FireLotus' post here for more information: https://shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?posts/29739/

In any case, open PvP didn't really work in UO now did it. If it worked, then why was Tram created?

 

As you know, not all updates made games more beatiful. We have seen how EA corrupted almost all games in time, NFS, Red alert, c&c, UO.

 

There should be an option for the ones that prefer to play with full loot do do just that. 1 item drop is no compromise it is removing 1 gamestyle from the game.