KickStarter Shroud of the Avatar - Lord British's Not-Ultima Online 2

[Charles-cgr]

sold a slice of... $30 million dollars.

Same ballpark wealth figure as Garriot it seems. He doesn't look like the squandering type, but I could be wrong.

 

[evdk]

The plot thickens. MCA is behind EVERYTHING.

 

[JudasIscariot]

I just can't shake the feeling that this Kickstarter is going to have some major fallout...

 

[Stabwound]

No it won't. If anyone expects anything other than what we've been shown (which is certainly not an Ultima-style game) then that's their own fault. This thing will plod along and come out as intended, which is most likely a pile of mediocrity.

 

[taxalot]

I will laugh at everyone in this forum when this comes out and it turns to be a very good game.

 

[Excidium]

I will laugh when I release my CRPG that will be better than everything made so far.

 

[Trojan_generic]

No it won't. If anyone expects anything other than what we've been shown (which is certainly not an Ultima-style game) then that's their own fault.

Someone has probably said this already somewhere on this thread, but the only motivation Garriot has with this is to right the things that were wrong with Tabula Rasa, which was supposed to be the ultimate game. I have a feeling that he will not stop until he makes something hugely successful (or dies of old age trying). It has next to nothing to do with the gamers, it is a personal goal.

 

[Blaine]

I hate the fact that EVE is considered as the bastion of openness - when it isn't. It suffers from a lack of policing and it suffers from NPC policing. It suffers from not having the tools to effectively run a corporation or faction, even though it's the only one of its type. There is so much shit in EVE it's unbelievable - yet people still flock to shit like flies.

Spoken like a true non-EVE player commenting on EVE's game mechanics.

The vast majority of player-controlled territory in EVE Online (which represents most of the game world, proportionally speaking) is policed by the player organizations who own it. They send out patrols to keep an eye on things, set up choke points, scout surrounding territory, and so on. Trespassers, vandals and invaders are (ideally) located and dealt with. I suppose the kind of policing you're thinking of is "if anyone shoots anyone else's ship unprovoked, that's mean and they should be punished"? No. Just... stop. Stop it. You don't understand the way the game works. Skilled players who know what they're doing rarely end up as victims, unless it's on their own terms, having taken risks that they knew could end badly for them. Those who haplessly end up as prey are either very new, or very stupid. The game's learning curve weeds out the stupid.

The game is a bastion of openness, if you know what you're doing. I could reinstall the client right now, reactivate my accounts and go almost anywhere, do almost anything, within reason of course. Knowledge of the game, skill at playing it, and making nice with other players and organizations opens doors. It's true that oblivious newbies who don't know anyone can't do whatever they want wherever they want without eventually getting attacked, but that's as it should be.

Likewise, I don't see a problem with EVE's NPC policing. CONCORD is fine as it is. Piracy of a sort can still take place in high-security space, and war targets can attack one another. Some sort of safe zone is necessary for the newbies and carebears, unfortunately. For someone like me who's played the game since forever, low-security space actually feels much safer than high-security space, because I know how to travel (almost entirely) safely through it, and there's far less traffic.

The game does have its problems, including (perhaps especially) corporation and alliance mechanics. There's a lot of shit to complain about. Complaining about "policing," though, is fucking dumb. You don't know what you're talking about. Players can keep themselves relatively safe by learning how to play the game.

 

[IDtenT]

There is a fuck load wrong with NPC interaction at all in an MMO. The mechanics should solve all gameplay matters and that includes policing. It's not about being victims at all and it's not about factions controlling their space - it's about mechanics not being there to incentivise people to act against griefing. Nothing like an argument about policing to get a null-sec fanboy to rage. Hurp derp N00BS!. The entire shit argument between care-bears and the rest shouldn't even fucking exist. It should be dealt with in a reasonable manner, by the provided mechanics.

At least we agree the corporation and alliance mechanics are severely lacking.

 

[Dorateen]

And another thing... all these people should be pledging to the Grimoire campaign!

 

[Jaesun]

But Grimoire doesn't have housing and PvP. Like all good cRPG should have.

 

[Stabwound]

And another thing... all these people should be pledging to the Grimoire campaign!

Oh what a connundrum. I can't decide whether to donate to the crazy man with a good game that probably will never come out OR the crazy man with the bad game that will come out and doesn't need your pocket change or to be on kickstarter at all.

 

[Lady_Error]

Then he went on Kickstarter and people give him money to do it and I grind my teeth

 

[Helly]

I thought about it, almost pledged, but there is now way I'll ever pay for a mmo. All I can do is up my torment's pledge now

 

[Lady_Error]

I thought about it, almost pledged, but there is now way I'll ever pay for a mmo. All I can do is up my torment's pledge now

Grimoire?

 

[Helly]

I thought about it, almost pledged, but there is now way I'll ever pay for a mmo. All I can do is up my torment's pledge now

Grimoire?

By the time it's out I'll probably be four feet under
I do have to admit the demo ain't uninteresting.

 

[Larendav]

Someone should tell WTFDragon, that there are no "excellent mobile games" when it comes to RPGs. Not even one! Closest candidate would be Undercroft which has been released as free (promotional) dungeon crawler by Runescape maker JAGEX.

There's also The Quest & ports of DOS FPSs. Other than those & Undercroft, all mobile games are shit.

 

[Jaesun]

Brian Fargo ‏@BrianFargo
Interesting article about microtransactionshttp://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FranciscoSouki/20130308/188118/ …

 

[Stabwound]

Man, they are just fucking failing on this KS. What was with the huge jizz of videos/interviews/updates the first day or so and now nothing? They really suck at getting the momentum going. What works is putting out constant new updates by the day, talking about the game and the setting and that sort of things. Talk about your god damn game. You need to start talking stretch goals and shit by now: certainly not just radio silence. The ineptitude of the KS campaign speaks for the game too.

 

[Jaesun]

Stretch goals? They can barely make the damn first goal to fund it.

Also where the hell are those videos today that are supposed to "explain" everything about this MMO?

 

[Infinitron]

Man, they are just fucking failing on this KS. What was with the huge jizz of videos/interviews/updates the first day or so and now nothing? They really suck at getting the momentum going. What works is putting out constant new updates by the day, talking about the game and the setting and that sort of things. Talk about your god damn game. You need to start talking stretch goals and shit by now: certainly not just radio silence. The ineptitude of the KS campaign speaks for the game too.

They're talking, all right. Blabbering in hour and a half livestreams that nobody watches.

 

[Stabwound]

Man, they are just fucking failing on this KS. What was with the huge jizz of videos/interviews/updates the first day or so and now nothing? They really suck at getting the momentum going. What works is putting out constant new updates by the day, talking about the game and the setting and that sort of things. Talk about your god damn game. You need to start talking stretch goals and shit by now: certainly not just radio silence. The ineptitude of the KS campaign speaks for the game too.

They're talking, all right. Blabbering in hour and a half livestreams that nobody watches.

I dunno, are they even saying anything?

This one is Garriott talking about how awesome and innovative he is for 40 minutes: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/29833963

 

[Stabwound]

Wow they really answered "95% of questions": http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/posts/425574

3 days into the Kickstarter and we’ve been receiving tons of great feedback, probably more than we received in the last year through our social campaign to find out what people want! Based on one of the most common concerns, we’re making a few small changes.

First, the game can be played offline, no connection required. The character used for the offline version of the game will not be useable in the online version of the game for obvious exploit/hacking reasons. We are going to investigate ways to export your online character to the single player version of the game but the offline character will not be importable into the online version.

Second, the offline single player version of the game for those who purchase it through KickStarter will not use any form of DRM. We had been holding off on committing to that because we don’t know what our final distribution system (Steam, GOG, etc) is going to be and some of them use DRM. We may have DRM of some sort on post-KS sales but we’ll commit to keeping KS versions DRM and “phone home” free for the single player version once launched.

Third, the offline single player of the game will not have any microtransactions. We know this is kind of a no-brainer since it is offline but we wanted to be perfectly clear on that since there was some vagueness in a few statements in one of our video chats.

Also, we’ll get some more exciting news about swag to you in writing tomorrow. We thought hour long video chats were the best way to answer questions but we’re finding we really need more written updates. Also, for those that prefer in depth videos we’ll get another hour long video chat setup this week!

Microtransactions = no matter what form they exist in.

DRM offline/online makes sense. Same with separate server-side characters if you want to play multiplayer. But what if you want to sometimes play multiplayer and sometimes not? It would get annoying as shit if you just wanted to quest solo and some random person from your Facebook friends list starts chasing you around.

And wow, no real info about the game itself. I can't wait for tomorrow's "swag" update.

 

[Jaesun]

It's an MMO. You can do either Registrations or Microtransactions. Are you surprised?

 

[Metro]

...and some random person from your Facebook friends list starts chasing you around.

Not that I condone Garriott's shitty game but the simple solution to this: don't use fucking Facebook~