I backed Torment and Project Eternity but I'm also backing this. I spent a good chunk of the 90s immersed in games by Origin and I'm now interested in seeing what Garriott can do without the shackles of a publisher (EA, back in the day).
I understand. I'm not expecting this to have the story depth of a single player RPG. I'm expecting more of a sandbox MMO like Ultima Online or Starwars Galaxies (pre NG).
> Multiplayer Online Game - which can also be played solo player / offline
I remember when UO came out...I never played it but I wondered if it would be the end of good single-player RPGs. Luckily, it wasn't, but it was basically the end of Ultima as a series, though arguably it wasn't a causation. In any case, it's hard to imagine an RPG world that could be designed successfully to be a MMO and a good single player experience.
Good single player experiences are bespoke storytelling affairs...and to abstract it out to accomodate MMO interaction would seem to necessarily dilute it.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I'm not at all against games that just end, rather than try to shoot to be a world in which you can fully "live a life" and in which the world is infinitely evolving. It's not that such a prospect isn't interesting, it's just that it inevitably leads to the kind of feature creep that leads to bugs and outright brokenness (insert reference to SimCity). I'm OK with games ending after 50-100 hours (or even 10, in the case of the Portal series), if those hours were fantastic.
I'd contribute if Lord British were going to make a modernized version of Ultima VII. Even though the limits of its world are obvious in retrospect, it really was way ahead of its time in creating a believable digital world for the single-player, and the constructs it used to maintain that facade (and have a story arc) would not have worked if it were a MMO.
Ultima VII has remained my fondest memory of an RPG. It was a world that, in comparison to its contemporaries, was practically alive, a living, changing place (that I could visit with my specially tweaked CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT). I think TES has done a good job of taking up the mantle that Ultima VII set down, but for me nothing will duplicate the childhood wonder of encountering the level of immersion and detail that Ultima VII offered.
About simulations: after playing MUDs I wished for evolving worlds, player clans with the ability to claim territory and build structures, NPC factions that battled among themselves, ecologies, simulated NPCs that responded to invasions and events, the works. These have been achieved to some extent in recent games, but maybe the magic lies in the storytelling in the end.
Maybe what we need is professional scripters running MMO cities: imagine Lord British essentially playing himself as a full-time job, with the ability to spin quests and stories that permanently change the fabric of the world, fight off invading lords, launch expeditions, rezone areas, fund guilds, run his realm. That way we can have complex world simulations, player-driven clans, and the human storytelling element, all richly combined.
(I wish I'd played UO, it sounds fantastic. Realistically, I won't have the time or energy to play SotA intensively, but I'd certainly like to try it. Too bad it isn't 2.5D isometric...)
I loved U7 The Black Gate. I just hate the fact that all games are 3d now, it just doesn't add anything to the game and it's distracting (in case of RPG games). I'm too old for this s*it :)
I hope you succeed despite your extensive goals (building a deduction engine in AI?). Really, I'd be happy just to play multiplayer in a fairly self-running world that's perhaps more user-friendly than LOVE. I definitely think multiplayer will attract more interest to your game.
If you haven't come across it, another HN user shared his UO-inspired project, First Earth. It has more of a focus on allowing a natural player economy to emerge, and the client is built in Unity. As someone who never experienced the glory of UO, I'm waiting to give it a spin.
Yeah writing my own engine was a hard decision. On one hand, I hate writing boiler-plate code, but on the other I have become so used to it at this point that I can whip up a basic rendering engine in a few weeks (the most recent iteration of my engine was written in two weeks of free time, in about 80 hours). I have wanted to use existing engines like Unity, but I have found that they pigeon-hole you into a specific type of industry-standard workflow that is not really good for me (for example I do not use any external assets, everything is generated in-engine since I am not a very good artist).
That said, I'm just kind of taking everything one step at a time. When Minecraft was first released, it was just a simple block-based world editor; I intend to release the simplest thing I can first and work from there. As for the AI, it is easier than it might seem to implement and I am not doing anything that novel (primarily the deduction is based off of languages like Prolog); I have implemented basic (test-based) prototypes in the past and I am pretty happy with the results so far.
I'll have to check out First Earth; as for multiplayer, I am prioritizing it last - not because I do not love a good multiplayer game, but because it is the one thing I can safely remove and still have a fun (enough) game while greatly reducing complexity.
Yes, my experience compels me to agree. The best compromise I've found are Diablo-style co-operative stories, where multiple people can go through a very engrossing story as a group of adventurers, and progress to the game's final end. I argued that the great failure of SW: The Old Republic was that it removed the one element that made Knights of the Old Republic such a success: the engrossing single player story.
Massive online environments, by definition, prohibit a single character from being important. The natural solution is the instanced single player game, allowing large party sizes which scale difficulty based on the encounter. A corollary of this is that any true, persistent MMO must be sandbox type, allowing individual players extreme freedom to write the stories. The best example of this is EVE, and a lesser known korean RPG Lineage: The Blood Pledge, which allowed players to control castles of each kingdom, creating incredible game histories due to player competition alone.
It is clear that the single player co-op and the MMO are now distinct genres, catering to different play styles. Attempts to bridge this gap have generally failed from a storytelling perspective, even in great games such as Guild Wars 2 and The Old Republic.
I agree with you that trying to merge multiplayer with singleplayer would be a very difficult affair. I think swtor attempted this, but I cannot say because I never played it.
I am excited to see if anyone takes up the idea of making something akin to the elder scrolls franchise and adding small scale multiplayer into it. Not specifically co-op but just where multiple people are dropped into the world together and then left to their own devices.
In a game where up to say 10 people were allowed to wander free it would be fun to have rivalries and alliances arise as people try to further their own goals.
What saddens me is that this sort of idea seems to be forgotten completely in lieu of the industry direction that seems to suggest the only multiplayer fantasy rpg games we'll ever get are shameless wow clones.
I would love to be wrong by the way, if anyone does know of any of these sorts of games feel free to correct me.
It sounds like the multiplayer is implemented in similar way to Fabel 2. A single player game, but if your friends were online you would see a floating orb where ever they were in the world. You could interact through game play as well, though I am a little rusty on how that worked.
An implementation like that would be really cool. It would definitely me a nice argument against the EA / Activision(Blizzard) always online approach.
I grew up on the Ultima series - in fact it is exclusively the reason I became a programmer and game developer. I do not know how good this recent iteration will be, but at least it looks like Richard is keeping a close ear to his community. In all honesty though I would have settled for a 2D/isometric non-MMO (in the spirit of Ultima 7) -- I think that's where his original fans lie.
My Ultima experience started with VI, but I remember distinctively walking into Electronics Boutique and seeing Ultima VII on the shelf for the first time. I could not believe the screenshots were real, it looked like everything a RPG should be.
Ultima VI is was really got me into coding world simulations, but Ultima VII really showed the potential of the genre. I think that's why Ultima VIII and IX were such a disappointment.
The interactions, exploration and focus on virtues that hooked me into these games. I could care less about the graphics if these elements are well done in the new game.
I started on V but VI was really a leap forward for me. There was an Electronics Boutique in the Fairfield Mall (a good half hour from where I grew up) which was an amazing experience as a kid: you would walk into a store and learn about 50 new games, no trailers, just your imagination fueled by box art. The internet has kind of destroyed that sense of wonder/mystery, I feel sorry for future generations. :)
I agree 100%. For me it was Egghead Software in the late 80's early 90's. I also had fun working in Babbages in the early-mid 90's while I was in high school. Unfortunately, those years were mostly dominated by Myst and Mortal Kombat sales. I think that's why I liked Egghead so much, no BS just computer games/software.
I have the exact same experience. Ultima7 made me a developer, and was my first dive into editing bash scripts (that fucker was impossible to get working in windows95). Enabling the debug mode and hacking on gumps was my favorite pass time.
It was Ultima III that first made me realize that all data lived on the disk and that I could alter all of it. And I did. Maybe I'm weird but it's fun to read the assembly for Ultima 3.
I was stuck in the Apple world so I stopped playing after U5. I bought the Ultima-giftpack on GOG.com before Christmas, but still have only had the time to work through the first 3. I'm savoring them, still.
Me too... Ultima III was part of my introduction to hacking, but on an entirely different platform.
I had it as the NES cartridge, mostly oblivious to the franchise's history on the computer platforms. I also had the Game Genie cheating device, whose codebook had a fairly rich set of codes for the game, changing your characters' health and stats and such. There were enough closely related codes (30 strength, 60 strength, 90 strength) that I started seeing the patterns, working out how the Game Genie code letters mapped to bits and represented the data values. So then I started synthesizing more codes that weren't in the book: hey, adding one to this letter changes the next stat instead, that must be a memory location. What happens if I add 16 to it, nice it changes the next character.
Ultimately I never really played the game with hacked characters, since the challenge of the game wasn't the stats but in exploring and mapping the dungeons and hidden areas. (I had nightmares for years about getting lost in Ambrosia.) Other NES games were much more interesting with hacked stats, notably Final Fantasy I.
Ultima III on the NES also contained the first major loophole exploit I discovered in a game. When in a dungeon, your magic power would slowly recharge with every step, but also risk running into a monster encounter. But I happened to realize that _rotating in place_ did the former and not the latter. So just by pressing the right arrow 300 times between encounters to recover 75 MP, you could cast the top-end magic nuke spell on every single monster group, virtually achieving god mode.
I'm not too familiar with the NES port of U3. Could monsters walk over chests? Did monsters in dungeons drop chests?
In dungeons, if you were standing on a location already holding something (chests and strange-winds, basically), a monster couldn't show up, because it would have no place to drop its treasure chest.
But I guess the more power to semi-independent studios we can give through Kickstarter the better.
I like the $10 "guilt pledge": "If you ever pirated an Ultima game or used an exploit to grief other players in Ultima Online, here’s your chance to repent! For your $10 donation you will receive a clear conscience and Lord British's undying gratitude.".
You're probably thinking of Kickstarter in its original "support a cool project to make it happen" mindset. Like most high profile projects, this isn't like that. It's one part marketing, one part a pre-order system, and one part a market research tool. In that light the personal wealth of the project owner is irrelevant.
Don't spend a penny of your money toward it if you don't want to / if you disagree with it.
And $1 million? It's going to cost radically more than that to launch the product. You do realize how much even a mid size title costs to make these days, right? All $1 million does is get the ball rolling (barely).
Try $15 to $30 million dollars just to build it out.
I don't think personal wealth of an owner has anything to do with a business. I'm probably a greedy SOB, but that's his money, not the company's money.
If the company can't exist without him paying his own money into it, then the company probably shouldn't exist.
I find it laudable if an owner would help float a company through a short bad period using their own money, but I wouldn't expect them to beggar themselves (or not get paid back) just to keep a failing company running.
For something different, here is a soon to be launched kickstarter. From someone not as successful as Mr Garriot but if you played Dark Age of Camelot you might be in love already
I am going to rant about graphics here. The graphics on this game look 8 years old. A game doesn't need to look fantastic to be good but surely a new game should have good graphics. I am not talking about realistic graphics. Simply esthetically pleasing graphics. The graphics in the video look like something from runescape...
Looking elsewhere. Is this game not called 'Ultima Online' because Garriot doesn't own the rights? A sequel in all but name?
While the vision sounds promising I worry about broader appeal. Who is this game for? Tabula Rasa failed pretty badly. I don't quite see the appeal of this game. Most MMO's have a clear goal. Even if that is the same. "Level up, do quests, reach new areas, get gear." Perhaps I misunderstand but the goal of this game seems to be 'explore for yourself.' I don't think that is enough to pull people in. I have played the Ultima series. I still give Ultima Online a spin every couple of months and this new game doesn't pull me in..
The video left me feeling like the game is a time sink without getting the reward of getting little achievements like gaining levels and discovering new gear. The very things that make such games addictive.
When I saw the title my first thought was "TAKE ALL MY MONEY NOW." After seeing the video I think perhaps there is a reason why EA didn't take the franchise further.
Imagine how poorly something like Minecraft would sell today. Minecraft was amazing when it was released with a 256 color palette in 1993, but nobody would go for that today.
People want graphics, not great gameplay...
No, they want great gameplay first, and great graphics second. That has always been true and will always be true.
Minecraft took an obvious stand against graphics, kind of like someone who purposefully doesn't comb their hair in the morning and it looks awesome. These graphics just look uninspired, like they never made the jump to modern lighting techniques or shaders. Even one man jobs have more interesting visuals. I agree, the graphics need to be updated.
What is wrong with the Minecraft? The game has a blocky style to it. The artistic direction of the game suits it perfectly.
The issue I have is that this game appears to have no graphical style or artistic direction. It looks like an incredibly generic low poly-count 3d game.
Sure these are only prototypes but surely you wouldn't get this far into development with models completely unrelated to the finished product?
Minecraft has pretty interesting terrain, whereas this kind of looks.... flat, like a table with a few objects added onto it, but you can still see the flatness.
I still backed it, hopefully they shake the terrain up a little and add some more shrubs.
The quality of graphics that we see in modern games has more to do with art assets then with programming of the game engine. Take a close look at the surroundings in your next game session. Every single thing in the game at some point had to be modeled by a person. When you're just starting with a project, you don't have those various and detailed models available. What you saw here was the "programmer art" version, which is actually pretty good for programmer art.
And apparently "explore for yourself" worked for Minecraft. Any style of game can be successful, it just takes a good gameplay element on top of it to make it.
Really? Everything is modeled by a person? I thought it was done with magic.
I haven't heard of programmer art. Why would a programmer work on models? Perhaps the game demo is using stock models or something but it seems strange that you would have prototypes and a demo like this with no artistic direction implemented.
I am not sure what exactly you think this has in common with Minecraft.
I'm not even really sure how to reply to you, because there seems to be a complete lack of common ground here. Let me try again.
Garriot programmer. Garriot not artist. Garriot no choose art direction. Garriot just want to make program. Garriot just use whatever model laying around on hard drive.
No, it's not strange to create prototypes without choosing an art direction. Games are typically products of real substance. They aren't your random Rails+Illustrator startup making something flashy and pretty, banking on everyone being distracted by their "elegance" long enough to make a few bucks before the users realize they offer nothing of real substance. Art in a game is content. You can substitute any content into the game and the gameplay will be unaffected. If the game can stand on its own with unattractive content, then it will be even better with pretty content. If a game needs pretty content to catch your attention, then it's probably not a good game.
And that is where game projects fail, when they don't offer anything of substance. My point about Minecraft was that your point about "exploring on your own" not being a good concept for a game didn't hold water. A game concept can be anything, if you make it substantial.
Yes but surely Garriot isn't completely naive as to think we won't judge the graphics and the game poorly as a result, as he doesn't choose to mention or confirm that said graphics are placeholder.
I think the graphical engine they're using, the shading, the models, are trite, including the UX design - and it sucks, because if it doesn't improve the game won't be worth most peoples time. Runescape, graphically, in 2013 doesn't seem too appealing!
Right, the big words "PROTOTYPE" didn't confirm that they are placeholder graphics.
Jesus Christ, remind me to never post a work in progress on HN. If someone as big as Richard Garriott can't get some basic respect, what chance do the rest of us have?
> "The video left me feeling like the game is a time sink without getting the reward of getting little achievements like gaining levels and discovering new gear. The very things that make such games addictive."
Those are the things that made DIKU MUDs addictive. And graphical MMOs have definitely been successful largely to the degree that they effectively incorporated such designs. [1] The largest MMO audience clearly prefers that experience. (And the popularity of F2P suggests the preference for that kind of design holds for more than just MMO games.)
But that was never the attraction of UO [1]. Nor was it even a minor part of what attracted people to the Ultima series overall. And despite almost certainly being a minority, there remains a non-trivial segment of the potential MMO audience that at least claims to want an exploration-based world, rather than a DIKU-style amusement park.
I can see where someone who prefers an 'amusement park' design wouldn't be interested in this. But I can't really see why anyone would expect that sort of thing from Garriott. The game described is pretty much exactly what I imagined when I read the headline. [2]
[1] At least UO wasn't anywhere close to that when Garriott was even remotely involved. Though I'll admit I have no idea where the game went after the first couple years.
[2] That said, I'm quite skeptical and bearish on its chances overall. The stated design reads like the same wish-list that a dozen games have started with. Each whittling down said list to a far more narrow scope, giving up on many hopes of 'another way' for tried-and-true DIKU-style elements, and ultimately still collapsing under the primary challenge of trying to balance the PvP experience to actually be meaningful without it being overwhelmingly defined by the griefing.
PvP alone is the key feature such devs refuse to push off the launch feature list but almost universally kills these games before they deliver an acceptable design.
This is so great. I'm such a damn UO fan I can't even put it into words. I'm not a "gamer", but UO was the __best__ game I've ever played. No game, as far as I can tell, has even come close to replicating the brilliance of UO around 1998-1999. It probably gave me some of my best childhood memories, and it was also the first time I was ever called a "fuking n00b" on the internet.
They remain two of the best games I have ever played. Looking at the games the team have made brings back a lot of good memories. Wing Commander Privateer was also phenomenal at the time.
I'm glad that "Meaningful PvP" was singled out. PvP is important to me and its one of the things that Ultima Online got right that vast swaths of MMOs since have floundered with (in my opinion).
In parts of the world (Felucca[1]), UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stealing from good people corpses also did this. Anyone can attack and kill bad persons, and if you killed even more people you were a murderer and it took a very long time to return to normal.
You want to use super awesome powerful gear? None of this sissy MMO stuff. Die and you lose it, and your enemy (or his enemy!) gets the spoils.[1]
Those are the two criteria by which I think "meaningful PvP" should be judged:
1. Can I kill anyone? (ie, in WoW you can't kill 90% of the people you see, they have to be in an arena/faction/alliance).
2. When you kill someone do you actually win something? (preferably something of theirs), and when you die do you actually lose something (preferably the equipment you risked to try and have a more favorable fight).
Ultima and UO were very big into morality and moral dilemmas, which is a thing I love in both single and multi-player games. Some of the Ultima games featured very interesting choices, like whether or not you should kill "evil" (possessed) children or leave them alone.
In UO, if you did have a "bad person" title and wanted to know how much time you had left before you would be considered blue again, you had to type:
"I must consider my sins"
~~~
The other problem I have with a lot of MMOs is that the power of your character is simply how much time you sink into the game. Essentially, MMOs are games that reward wasting time.
UO had so much more than that. The class-less system definitely helped, and UO was a game where treachery and sneakiness really paid off, if you wanted them to. Lots of ways to nearly instantly kill or entrap people lead to a lot of very exciting plots where guilds might be laden with spies. Absolutely nothing like the limited PvP found in many modern MMOs.
In a lot of ways UO was the Diplomacy (diplomatic back-stabbing board game) of MMOs. And it was great.
See also outworlder's wonderful comment explaining UO 90 days ago[2]. Also considerably interesting was the economy of UO[3], which was wrought with a good deal of experimentation.
~~~
Also, if you played UO, you'd know that property taxes are a wonderful idea. So many people land-rushing to get the largest properties possible, who then sat on them and never built anything! (Or never played, while newcoming regulars had zero chance of ever finding a home at a reasonable price)
~~~
[1] In the beginning there was only Felucca. And an insurance system was added later (2005ish?) where you could pay a certain amount per item to not lose it on death. Both were attempts to make the game less harsh. Like a lot of later patches, this was unpopular with older players and popular with newer players. Over its lifetime, UO did a lot of things to make the game world less cut-throat, which will always be controversial. Some realms rules stayed more "hardcore" than others as a compromise.
Richard Bartle: "[without permanent death] Newbies (and not-so-newbies) feel they can never catch up. The people in front will always be in front, and there's no way to overtake them. The horizon advances at the speed you approach it." [2]
Really, permanent death? PvP corpse looting? These are profoundly user-hating mechanics and their removal is likely among the factors that made WoW successful.
There are other ways to allow newbies to catch up and to incentivize or disincentivize players that don't rely on 'ruining your month of gameplay'.
Yes, really - but it is a matter of taste as tsumnia says in the sibling comment
In Monopoly, I can go bankrupt. In Nethack, I can (and often do) die. In Super Mario Bros 1, I can lose all of my lives. In football, I can get knocked out of the Champions League (by a red card).
In all of these cases, the fact that I can "lose" creates meaning - I care more about the outcome and I appreciate my achievements more. And one never loses everything - the skills stay with you. "Next time I can do better."
Counterbalancing, for a different mood: works like Ocarina of Time are still great, but they sit separately - they're about the journey, not about the achievements.
I think the difference is that Monopoly, Nethack and Mario are intended to be played short term. Of course you can lose terribly in Monopoly and Nethack elevates dying to part of the gameplay.
The stakes are a little different in a long-term, persistent world MMO. The Mario you died with is, for the most part, the same Mario you started with. This is not the case in an MMO. Punishing you, irrevocably, for dying in that situation is a dreadful, fun-destroying design choice.
Even in platformers, it's probably telling that one of the most successful recent ones is Jon Blow's Braid where you not only don't die but you get to reverse time.
I think its not so much user-hated as difference of taste. I love the perma-death aspect of a lot of the games I've played because I get to appreciate all I've earned. That being said, to balance it our, you remove the idea of 'epic loot' (things that take months to earn). Now, the hit of death isn't game-ending.
Games like Realm of the Mad God, DayZ, and Minecraft (its survival based multiplayer) make this perma-death a part of the game (though Minecraft, you keep the character). You feel defeated, but not dissuaded towards playing.
The way to keep newbies is to make the gear they can earn secondary to the gameplay.
They wouldn't work in a carnival-lite atmosphere like WoW, because so much of your self-worth in said game is how much ph4t lewtz you have and whether or not you're at the level cap.
PvP corpse looting works exceptionally well in Eve Online. You don't really have permanent death, there, though.
And if a month of your gameplay gets ruined by getting instacane blapped in Eve, you're doing it wrong. Never undock with what you can't afford to replace.
Agreed. I'd much rather play a MMO that included permanent death but the balance needs to be there. It can be a much more rewarding experience, especially the types of conflict that you can create (actually pkilling someone from a league and having that league come after you)
If the entry point is too high (say several weeks of grinding to get even a mid-level player) people will be less likely to venture out and play the game. The reward is very low for the risk. If the entry point is too low then it'll just be a FPS. Striking that balance is really tough.
In my opinion, a permanent death MMO it should take about 20 hours of grinding to reach the top 2%, 60 hours of grind to reach the top 1%, and 400 hours to reach the top %0.01 (and so on).
Permadeath sounds cool, is great for many to boast about around the virtual water cooler, but in the end suffers from the simple fact, things go wrong and people cheat.
You can self replicate perma death for yourself in any game you play but I know most people would not, they would rather be water cooler hard cores.
Having recently played XCOM which has a perma death for your troopers I lost my taste real quick because of bugs. Players certainly won't pay for a perma death MMO where they died because of bugs or cheating; there will be cheating. A free to play perma death MMO might survive but even then its a fine line before the bugs push them over the edge.
I really don't want to be in another MMO like Eve, where areas of the game are off limits or worse, certain groups go on nerd rages and just grief people who are no threat/not even interesting but convenient.
> I really don't want to be in another MMO like Eve, where areas of the game are off limits or worse, certain groups go on nerd rages and just grief people who are no threat/not even interesting but convenient.
Dude, if no one likes you, that isn't their fault.
Besides, there are no "off-limits areas". You can venture that if you want to risk it. I know, because I enjoyed doing just that.
There's nothing like invading a big alliance space, get chased by multiple pilots, and by some skilled (and lucky!) piloting managing to escape alive. All the while knowing that one screwup would cost the whole ship.
This is only true if you are talking about level-based systems.
UO had a skill cap, which you could reach rather quickly (less than a month if you had no life, a few months playing casually). After that, there was no difference.
And you could even close the gap faster, by focusing on skills which made the most difference. You alchemy could wait.
Also, there was a stat cap. There wasn't that much difference between a new player and a veteran. The veteran would have like 2x the amount of health compared to the newbie. This is in constrast to WOW, where it is not uncommon to have a 140x difference, or more. You actually had a decent shot against veterans, if you knew what you were doing.
I am a big fan of permadeath - in video games, not real life! Ramp up fast, die fast, no grind - that's the way I like it; Spelunky really taught me the value of this design.
Never catch up isn't really true, it depends on the game. I prefer perma-death games, and often you see a situation where you will reach max levels in the game in one month or less if you work really hard or have expert assistance. Of course item collecting might take a year if your guild doesn't equip you, and skill building might take a life time. Wow had to do what they do to build a never ending money sapping treadmill, but it isn't the only way.
I used to play a Star Wars MUD that had permanent death and a similarly aggressive PvP policy. As a result, there wasn't a single character that survived more than a few months. Considering the huge up front cost you had to pay in leveling, skill training and resource collection, eventually people got sick of having to start with nothing. Every time you died, you had to make the decision if it was worth starting over. The longer you played, the greater the chances that answer was "no." Player turnover was bad, especially for MUDs at that time.
That's all my way of saying Permanent death may sound great in theory, but it takes a hell of a lot of balancing against to make it work well in the long term. Maybe making it easier to get up to speed with any single character? Or maybe making it worth your while to be altruistic to other players (I'm not sure what that mechanic would be, but it would be interesting to see something that make people more social as opposed to the antisocial element that PvP tends to foster).
There's so much more nuance to MMO design that seeing a blanket "yes to permadeath" request just feels wrong. Bartle got permadeath to work in a MUD where levels were social commentary on the British class system and individually meaningful rather than being one out of 70 or 80 or 120.
Never add in features willy nilly because it sounds good. Figure out why they work well with your design.
I'm all for permanent death, but it absolute must be accompanied by rock-solid stability from the outset.
Playing through Diablo III on all but the hardest difficulties, I must have died about 100 times due to extended lag spikes and only a few times due to my own mistakes.
While UO was my favorite game of all time, this is not UO. I won't be helping fund this. Garriot does not have a track record anymore. He's had failure after failure post-UO.
He needs to take a step back and look at the successful games that have taken off recently that have roots in UO. My best example is DayZ. You run around with items that if you die fall on your body. Weapons have low relative value like UO. You can trust no one. People love the hell out of this game and it embodies what UO was to a lot of people. Unforgiving and harsh, but so much fun.
I'm disappointed where he's going with this but with what he's made post-UO I'm not surprised. I never expected him to create the next UO.
In his defense, Lineage was a horrible game before he got there.
I'm hoping that with complete creative control, he can go back to his roots and create something truly amazing. He probably won't, but I'm willing to wait and see.
Curious. I've seen some more people saying this... and the game being not a MMO is precisely the reason I've just pledged.
Don't get me wrong, I love MMOs, but they're not only games, they're designer drugs. I keep away from them because I fear losing my social life. So I'm glad this game is not an MMO.
I played back before the trammel/felucca split. (I was a beta player -- people who play MMO betas these days are spoiled compared to how UO beta was; I still have the install CD that we had to pay s/h for! Ah, 1996.)
I still think the split was a bad idea. I think of Eve now the way I thought of UO back then: if you can't afford to lose it, don't leave town with it.
Being an EVE player and lover, I still think this would be even more awesome with the good old knights and mages... If this gets to that, it'll be a very worthy game to play :)
I was thinking the same thing, except that I rarely find it tedious. One important thing about Eve Online is that there are hundreds if not thousands of viable ways to play the game - many of which bear little or no resemblance to the other ways of playing it.
The progression of UO over time is not unlike that of most computer games over a longer period:
We used to have 3 lives, and pixel perfect jumps. Not a "100 life" buffer with health packs or -worse- life regeneration if you hide behind a tree. Or a completely safe MMO world like UO ended up as. Few went to the Dark Side of the UO world.
Most games have become movies, with little chance of anything bad happening to the viewer except getting popcorn hitting the back of your head.
UO was exciting when you thought you might get jumped and killed. It made you think hard about what you took out hunting.
If you are interested in a game that holds similar mechanics, take a look at Darkfall(http://www.darkfallonline.com/), while it is shutting down, the 'sequel' is being released. It offers the same full looting, full PvP experience. The only area where time-sinking customers benefit is from the fact you can build your own strongholds to store things if your toon gets killed.
UO PvP was the golden era of my gaming experience. I was Dread Lord Phlux on Napa Valley shard and was playing from beta through go-live for ~2 years.
I worked in the Intel Game Developers Lab at the time and we had ~6 accounts machines all right next to one another. We had 100 hide and also had Great Lord Phlux characters as well.
It was so much fun logging in as Great Lord Phlux and people just saw "...Lord Phlux" and would attack my good rep character and lose their rep!
So many great memories on UO.
I long for such an experience again, and since I have been playing the ultima series since Ultima II on the Apple IIe - I will always support this series...
Per the title of this post, it's not exactly "Ultima" or a sequel. As found on the official site's FAQ:
"But is this the Ultima sequel I’ve been waiting for?
This is NOT an “Ultima”, as that is a trademark owned by Electronic Arts. Ultima fans know though, that great RPG’s can be been played anywhere; on earth, in space, in Britannia and in many other lands. I am creating a new land for Shroud of the Avatar, which will adhere to the design principles that all of my FRPG games adhered to."
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=19
> Since then, most every other RPG has focused more on level grinding then “role playing”, which has been reduced to a few initial character choices... Less open. Less immersive.
I don't think this team has played any RPGs over the past decade. Non of them are like this other than JRPGs. It lessens his project's credibility.
It is somewhat interesting that an online multiplayer game is having more difficulties raising funding than Torment, a single player RPG.
Both seemingly have similar old school appeal, though the Planescape Torment audience is maybe slightly younger (5-8 years?) compared to fans of Ultima.
I'll admit, while I threw a good chunk of money at Torment, this Kickstarter is less appealing to me just because it is Online.
I also feel that there is some ambiguity over the vision of this game. The FAQ says this isn't an MMO , but you have online property you can buy and it has PvP? I am seriously confused as to the genre of this game. Confused people don't pledge.
> From Lord British's Treatise on "What is an Ultimate RPG?":
> * Fully interactive virtual world - If it looks usable, it should do something
> * Deep original fiction - Ethical parables, cultural histories, fully developed alternate language text
This reminds me of the first Deus Ex. Wonder if they'll be able to pull it off.
I played Quantum on Atlantic and Heroku and later helped run parts of the Dr.Twister network :). Short of WoTMUD early UO is the best pk system I've ever experienced. I still talk of game memories with my brother and my friend Jason that played Sir Alf.
I don't think the felucca 'carebear' world helped the game. Yes, there were some issues with griefing -- but the playerbase was in control (I admit I'd polymorph into a slime around coveous, flag myself gray, and have people attack me to freely pk them).
When Sir Alf and I used to raid this RP heavy village, and we became a nuisance -- they hired guards...real players -- to keep us at bay. Eventually they befriended us and paid us in regents and offered protection.
We once betrayed a friend in-game and the father called us -- I learned peer mediation from UO :)
The timing on this and the Torment kickstarter is truly impeccable, with all the hate at DRM, EA. What better way to vent frustrations than help support the revival of the old-school?
Personally, I really hope this succeeds. If KS represents the next generation of game studios/production, then I'm all for it.
Inevitably, there will always be tension between the creative aspects of one's vision and the need for viable product to keep the lights on.
SotA is NOT UO or Ultima I-IX. It's a clean slate. Yes, it's good to have discussions about PvP and whatnot, because we are passionate about these things that have been with us through the years. On the other hand, consider why RG chose to go through Kickstarter. It's to free himself, his idea, from meddling managers who only care about the bottom line, the lowest common denominator, and not the creative aspects. And that's what kills art.
I would prefer that we discuss what new and interesting behavior could arise if a certain gameplay mechanic were implemented, instead of "SotA needs PvP/perma-death/what-have-you because every other MMO has it".
Man, Ultima Online was so good. I would love to see this.
And corpse-looting gave PvP adrenaline rushes and was something that UO did really well. Without that huge sense of having something to lose, the fights become meaningless and stale. Like in gambling.
Kickstarter should spin out their video games category into its own brand. After all of the long-dead series/genres they've been reviving, they're the most beloved "publisher" in ages, the direct opposite of EA/Activision.
I was going to back then until I realised it's an MMO. Not since 1995 did I ever want anything to do with MMO's and I have no intention of playing them.
Please give me a meaningful single player experience.
The links on lordbritishpresents.com didn't have the -0 at the end. I only got on once someone tweeted a different link. It might be because I was watching as the timer stopped.
Really preferred the original title on this Hacker News story. More people know what Ultima is, and the creator launching a new project means something to far more people than his specific nick or the new projects name. The submitter's title was much better.
I wasn't all bad, I liked the new world and the darker "edge" of the plot (I still remember the beheading scene), the complex magic systems, the duels with the sorcerers...
It is pretty sad that kickstarter gets abused like this so much. Garriott is filthy rich, and has been in the game industry for decades. There is absolutely no need for him to be seeking financing from us, he could pay for it a dozen times over out of his own pocket. His reputation means he could easily get actual funding if he doesn't want to risk his own money. But instead, he abuses the willingness of ordinary people to take all the risk for him, and get nothing back in return.
Or ... this is a good way for him to see if there's actual interest in the product. And given his track record of actually finishing stuff, it seems like this is relatively low risk as far as Kickstarter projects go.
Neither of your points address the concern I raised. This is a guy who paid $30M to go in to space for fun. A guy who lives in a castle. If he wants to make a game, he can. He doesn't need kickstarter at all. He is simply using it to make a game for free, rather than investing in it personally. The idea behind kickstarter was to allow people who couldn't get funding through traditional channels an opportunity to appeal directly to their potential customer base for funding. Not a way to make rich people richer with no risk to themselves.
1) He has been trying to sell a lot of his land and fancy house in Austin for a couple years now [1] [2]. It's hard to say how much he's worth anymore with the money he's spent on other projects.
2) He married an investment banker[3] who I'm sure has a lot more financial sense than he does and doesn't want him throwing his personal money at the game.
3) The company make this game (Portalarium) had some layoffs a few months back[4]. I'm guessing they are trying to get funding to keep the company going as they don't seem to be working under any publisher.
4) Richard Garriott has a following in the gaming industry that he may as well use to keep his project going. Just like he did with Ultima Online back in the day (had to pay to be in the beta as EA didn't want to back his project), he is going to people to help keep the game funded.
You have a more narrow view of what Kickstarter is than most, and more narrow than Kickstarter itself. All they say about themselves is, "Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects." If you don't like it don't fund it, but if it is any consolation, big projects like this bring a lot more eyeballs and money to Kickstater, and will end up helping smaller projects get funded. I had never funded anything until Doublefine Adventure, but now I found at least one thing a month.
EA acquired Origin for $35,000,000. If I remember correctly, Garriott only walked with $20,000,000 -- before taxes. I think his lawsuit with NC Soft netted him $32 million -- before taxes as well. 52 million taxed is maybe 30 million out the door (very rough estimate here). His space trip cost 30 million alone, nevermind everything else in his life. I would estimate that Garriott probably has a few million dollars in the bank, none of which he should have to risk on a venture that fans are willing to pay for.
That money from the NCSoft lawsuit was to make back money is lost from stock investments [1]. It's hard to say how much he came out ahead or behind on that lawsuit (after lawyer fees and whatnot).
And the millions of dollars he made owning origin while they produced hit games.
>none of which he should have to risk on a venture that fans are willing to pay for.
I am amazed at the amount of anti-entrepreneur sentiment here on HN of all places. How do people seriously suggest that an entrepreneur should not have to invest anything in their own venture?
You've got it exactly backwards. Your sentiment is anti-entrepreneur, as you're trying to dictate who is or who isn't an entrepreneur by an artificial and entirely subjective $$$ funding basis.
There's no set definition of funding requirements to be considered an entrepreneur.
Not have to invest anything? Try putting a price on his reputation and time.
>as you're trying to dictate who is or who isn't an entrepreneur by an artificial and entirely subjective $$$ funding basis.
No I am not. I am saying it is unfortunate that what was a way for small independent projects who could not get funding through normal channels is being taken over by rich people using it as a platform to avoid having to take any risk.
>Try putting a price on his reputation and time.
The last time he made a game that didn't suck was what, 1992? If the garbage he slapped his name on since then hasn't ruined his reputation what risk does this carry? And he isn't investing his time, he is the name put on the project, he isn't actually sitting down and writing the code.
I agree that a lot of people are "abusing" Kickstarter and just cashing in on nostalgia. But ultimately it is up to the consumer (or backer) to determine what they think is a farce and what is not. Garriott might be caching in on his legacy to some degree, but he has also clearly put hard work into this game, which many other veterans have not (they simply show concept art, or worse yet, nothing at all). If Garriott were just programming this himself in his basement, it might be a different matter, but he has team members that depend on him for salary/benefits, and he has already had to go through layoffs. It would seem kind of foolish to turn down "free" money in the name of being virtuous, and risking more layoffs.
> He is simply using it to make a game for free, rather than investing in it personally.
It's worth pointing out that he's only asking for 1 million, which is nowhere near enough for the kind of game he's promising. He also says that money has been sunk into production already.
Note: He did not go to space for fun.
He is major shareholder in a couple of space-related business, and he do active science work in space and ice caps.
Also he wanted to follow his father footsteps (his father is a astronaut that actually went to space).
? Kickstarter functions in this case as a pre-ordering process. They do not "get nothing back in return" - they get a copy of the game when it's done.
That's like saying that rich entrepeneurs should fully fund their next company, rather than seeking VC. Sure, it's one way to do it, but it's not the only way...
Except VCs get equity, they get a return on their investment. Not a copy of the product. Do you think ycombinator should have funded dropbox in exchange for a free dropbox account? Like I said in the post you replied to, he has access to VC funding. He chose not to take it because he can abuse kickstarter to get the same funds without giving up anything in return. It is nothing like saying they should fund it personally instead of taking VC money, I specifically said taking VC money was one of the two options he should have taken.
He's doing a tremendous service to Kickstarter in fact. It's beautiful that the platform can be used to get the ball rolling on a potentially fantastic new gaming world. One of the most renowned video game developers in history chooses to use crowd funding to kickstart his new game, and directly involve those who are willing to take a risk with their money because they want to see the game exist - what a tremendous accomplishment for Kickstarter.
Because it is contrary to the stated purpose of kickstarter. I am treating the backers like adults. Why do you think that "hey, that's really not what kickstarter is for" is patronizing?
Where exactly is that stated? As far as I know, and according to the FAQ and project guidelines of Kickstarter, there's no rule or implicit understanding that only creators who can't fund their own projects should apply. In fact, they specifically mention that KS is about more than money.
And I find it patronizing because your complaint is about the poor backers who get nothing for their money. Why exactly do you feel qualified to judge that on their behalf? It's up to them to know what they get in return, and if that should or not be important in their decision to back the project.
That wasn't papsosouid's complaint, which pertained to the fact that the project creator can afford to pay for the project, and so shouldn't be using KS.
You say it is contrary to the stated purpose of Kickstarter. Can you link or quote something to back that up? All I've ever seen them say is that it is a platform to fund creative projects. This is a creative project.
For game developers, even millionaire game developers, Kickstarter offers some level of freedom from real big bilion dollar game publishing corporations. So even if Richard Gariott has a lot of money, maybe you can at least appreciate he is a little guy in the context of the game publishing business.
The same reason blatant scams get allowed, kickstarted has a significant financial incentive to allow as much as possible. Why would they shut down a kickstarter that will put $50,000 in their pockets?
How does that possibly fit with your claim that it is against the stated purpose of Kickstarter? Kickstarter gets to define what their purpose is, and their actions are as clear as their words. You'd have stronger ground complaining about Kickstater than this project.
VCs also put a lot more money than $45 into it. Besides that fact, Kickstarter has to approve any project that appears on the site, so THEY obviously feel this is perfectly okay. I trust their opinion above some random person on the internet who wants to keep KS 'pure.'
Also this project is good for KS because it will likely bring at least a few new people onboard to join the site and fund this project (seem to recall them saying once people join they tend to start funding more projects), not to mention the obvious that they get their cut to help fund further improvements on the site.
I think that for projects like this, Kickstarter is becoming less a place to raise funding, but more of a place to gather publicity. The site is fast becoming a household name and as far as games go, has high prestige for a place where alternative, retro, hardcore games go to be revived.
He's exchanging money for copies of the game, not to mention other trinkets, as a form of funding. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, and he isn't abusing crowd funding. Quite the opposite in fact.
You act like people are being forced to pay up for the kick starter.
Lord British is back, that alone is enough for me. I love that man, he is always willing to push the boundaries - a very rare in prohibitively nowadays expensive game dev world. Why should he risk his kingdom when he can assess interest very effectively with Kickstarter while maintaining more creative freedom (either by having more leverage in negotiations with publishers and/or banks). One million dollar is nothing in comparison to most AAA games, it will still be risky. I love the thought of being able to help kick starting another Ultima project!
Love & peace my friend.
He was rich. He spent most of his money fulfilling his lifelong dream to go into space. (His dad was an astronaut...) He has a half-built "castle" in Austin which he had to stop building because of his space endeavor. He hasn't had a successful game in a long time. Since UO, really. He may have gotten some money from NCSoft lawsuit / settlement recently but I don't remember which way it went.
Even rich people here in SV often take investment for their new startups after the first. It's silly to go it alone, risk everything, and not recruit people with skin in the game. Even if he didn't need the money, it's worth it for the PR alone, which will benefit everyone into the game since it will take longer to die a lonely death.
>Even rich people here in SV often take investment for their new startups after the first.
Yes, in exchange for something. They don't ask for funding from people and offer them nothing in return, forcing them to take all the risk while he stands to make all the profit.
Kickstarter has been really great so far for people, like myself, who were and are very fond of the "old school" type of RPGs.