Goblin Squad Member
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Some of you may have already seen this, but Lord British himself is back, with a kickstarter for a project that sounds like a PFOish Ultima Online project.
The Kickstarter is super vague, but what details there are sound a lot like what Ryan has articulated in the "meaningful interaction" vs. "theme park grinding" approaches to games. But it sounds different too, in that they promise "meaningful pvp that minimizes griefing," but also some sort of instancing system for adventuring--those seem to be at cross purposes.
So is this the first competition for PFO's niche Ryan mentioned would come? Can they make their ambition December 2013 Alpha release date? Be interesting to see happens.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From Lord British's Treatise on "What is an Ultimate RPG?":
Multiplayer Online Game - which can also be played solo player / offline
This entry makes me cringe, because if you can advance offline, then you can easily mod your local client and have god-mode characters advanced offline running around on the server online.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, already looks like it's got a following already. I think the key as I see it, is that players of games generally don't like rail-roading, they want freedom to explore the game in their own way (ie see their own actions influence the adventure (think this is where ME3's ending fell from a great height)). If honest it sounds like a tough job combining different things to create the RPG (eg narrative, action, sandbox, player-player interaction, etc).
Taking a few leafs from UO, EVE, H&H: Albion Online by Berlin aptly named Sandbox Studios. They've gone for a more condensed version of the principles I think with a free access & attempting to keep "value" in the hands of the players.
Additionally: Archeage (somewhat), EQ:N (nothing announced but I can't help thinking if they scrapped 2 themepark designs they'll raid gw or other sandbox designs?), Camelot Unchained (kickstarter soon also, by Mark Jacobs) not so much but again going for more of a niche approach.
"Zzar" did a nice puff for PFO's kickstarter as well as this 2013 watch list: Sandbox MMO list 2013 video with commentary
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Goblin Squad Member
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What does this mean I wonder?
"Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game. We will be describing this in more detail in our upcoming community blogs."
I have a few ideas, but found it strange to NOT be going towards the MMORPG target. I find that odd.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think the stated goals are mutually exclusive. There will only be a few hundred town houses and only a few dozen city houses, but up to 1440 players are offered tax exemption if they purchase a city house.
That means small servers, and lots of them, splintering the player base.
I think that a new genre is going to be created by this project, and I'm very cautiously optimistic about it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That means small servers, and lots of them, splintering the player base.
Not necessarily. The KingsIsle games run multiple servers but you can switch between them as you like.
I really hope the graphics in the video are placeholders. All the characters looking like hunched-over goons in black hoods was the worst part, but the floors and walls were also so flat they looked like a cardboard film set. Games like Minecraft use a sort of 'retro chic' style, but I don't EQ1 is a look that's coming back any time soon.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, because Richard Garriot's last "big project" did so well!! LOL!!
Tabula Rasa was the first, supposed AAA (based solely on his name) to open and shut its doors in less than 2-3 months after launch.
Tabula Rasa certainly wasn't a success, but it lasted over a year I think, not 2-3 months.
This is much more of a return to what he knows though regardless. So I'll be rather interested to see where it goes. :)
I stand corrected, if I accept wiki as factual, it may have been "open" for 16 months.
Nice, it'll be good to have him back in the fantasy realm. I alpha-betad TR, and while it didn't connect with the gaming public, it had some innovative aspects to it. The AI was very well done.
Actually talking to him at Gencon convinced me to abandon Apple as a gaming platform and move over to the PC.
When I found out he wasn't bringing out Ultima IV or V (or somewhere around there) for the Apple it pushed me into the PC world.
I sold my Apple IIGS and bought a PC.
4 and 5 were both out for Apple (I had a IIc)
You must be thinking of 6 or 7.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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There's no downside and lots of upside to having more Big Names pushing sandbox game play as the answer to the broken Theme Park business model. It helps us show that we're not alone in our thesis and that is good when talking to the market about our ideas.
Richard is a great guy and we wish he and his team lots of success!
Ryan, what have you heard about EQ next? I heard the same thing everyone else did, that they scrapped a lot of work to totally redo the game. Supposedly taking it from theme park to sandbox.....? Just curious as you guys get a lot more info then we outside the fence <g>
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually talking to him at Gencon convinced me to abandon Apple as a gaming platform and move over to the PC.
When I found out he wasn't bringing out Ultima IV or V (or somewhere around there) for the Apple it pushed me into the PC world.
I sold my Apple IIGS and bought a PC.
4 and 5 were both out for Apple (I had a IIc)
You must be thinking of 6 or 7.
That sounds more reasonable. It has been so long it tends to muddle together :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's no downside and lots of upside to having more Big Names pushing sandbox game play as the answer to the broken Theme Park business model.By what standard is the Theme Park model "broken"? It seems to work well for those 8 million plus Warcraft players, those folks in Star Trek Online don't seem to be complaining that much either.
It's the model that's broken, not WoW. Try fielding a multi-million dollar AAA game using this model, and tell us how well it works out ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's the model that's broken, not WoW. Try fielding a multi-million dollar AAA game using this model, and tell us how well it works out ;)There's no downside and lots of upside to having more Big Names pushing sandbox game play as the answer to the broken Theme Park business model.By what standard is the Theme Park model "broken"? It seems to work well for those 8 million plus Warcraft players, those folks in Star Trek Online don't seem to be complaining that much either.
Can you explain your acronym? the only thing I can think of when it comes to Triple A is roadside assistance.
And how is the model broken when it works for what it's intended to work? a Lamborghini may be a terrible tool for roadside construction, but despite that it's got the same number of wheels as a given bulldozer, no one complains that it can't do the job a bulldozer does.
The Theme Park model was created for Theme Park games. It was created for players that wanted content.... like those who play Pathfinder Society, not be dependent on their own graffiti skills. Eve Online's major stories are about how certain players are unparalleled in their ability to screw over vast numbers of other players. Besides that, there IS practically no content on Eve Online.
In a nutshell: Isn't it that investing big (over a long period of time) creates the required goal of ROI to exceptionally big? Hence in terms of investment options, mmorpgs that go the themepark route are just less and less attractive than they used to be with subs first coming on the scene with online periodic charging of customers? IE big business start up with a one-hit short-lived wonder just does not cut it? And it's risky and not a product that might lead to future business? Eg WOW: The Movie?
There's no downside and lots of upside to having more Big Names pushing sandbox game play as the answer to the broken Theme Park business model.By what standard is the Theme Park model "broken"? It seems to work well for those 8 million plus Warcraft players, those folks in Star Trek Online don't seem to be complaining that much either.
It's more the Sandbox games that seem to quickly degenerate into holes of scum, villany, or just plain grafiti or just plain fall apart. If Second Life, Sim City, and Tabula Rosa are any sign. And not everyone cottons well to the ruthless style of Eve Online, if that's your standard of success.
Knocking one gamestyle doesn't prove the superiority of your own, especially when it's not published yet.
I think the string of dead soldiers, Warhammer, SWTOR, Conan just to name a few are proof enough that theme parks just aren't working as a business model. Just looking at the games going into development under the "sandbox" umbrella, PFO, CU, SotA, EQ Next should tell us something. Sony, who has a huge history of theme park games, scrapping tons of development work to switch to a sandbox format with EQ Next is pretty surprising.
PFO is going for a niche market, a smaller group of players dissatisfied with theme park games and the guided content, boring end game grind and overall handholding gameplay. To those people especially games like Wow hold 0 interest despite their continually churning out content upgrades for a premium price.
As a measure of success, games like PFO won't be judging box sales or opening day subscriptions. They won't depend on the boom/bust cycle that drives most theme park games. So they can start out with a small base of players and grow organically without overreaching. They won't face the empty servers forcing merges, nor the layoffs of developers that usually comes with servers closing and subscription numbers falling. I'm glad that they aren't following this mold to be honest, I've gone through the boom/bust cycle and its pretty depressing to watch.
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Goblin Squad Member
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UO was a real trailblazer in the MMO genre. My brother and I had a blast playing together. In the earliest days of it I was very bold and foolhardy and my brother was very tentative about PvP. I got us into lots of trouble and we were killed many times. It took a long time to finally get the skills to fight back and survive. I rarely won, but could heal myself and get away very well (eventually). Amazing how pixelated avatars can get your heart pumping so much in the real world!
The next bext Ultima was "Ultima Underworld-The Stygian Abyss". I loved that. That would be a great dungeon type adventure to run with a party, or maybe even more than one party. Very exciting gaming in that day.
I do still wonder what he means by my above quote on the KS FAQs..."Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game." Still somewhat disturbing. Might check it out for a bit anyway.
I do still wonder what he means by my above quote on the KS FAQs..."Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game." Still somewhat disturbing. Might check it out for a bit anyway.
Near as I can figure, he's doing what GW is doing, shooting for a niche market. He's planning on having 1 server, and a lot of similar features as PFO. I'm thinking he said that because he knew that once the theme park people see what he's planning, they won't want to play.
I might be wrong though. They have a IRC channel and a couple of Devs were there talking, but my IPad hates IRC so I need to get on my PC and maybe I can get them to explain what he meant. I'm curious as well actually. Funny thing though, they did a tech demo similar to what GW put together and people are all over the forums saying "That's what the game will look like??" Even when it's explained to them they still keep coming back to the demo as actual game footage.
Apparently they had a chat earlier and someone asked why they said that about SOTA being a multi-player game instead of. MMO. The answer they gave was that the game can be played both online, and offline. So that's why it will be a multi-player as opposed to a MMO.
Not quite sure I understand how that makes SOTA less of a MMO, I mean if 100K people sub the game at release, that seems to me to be MMO territory, but oh well. That's the answer they gave.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A point that hasn't yet been raised here regarding what is broken in large budget 'themepark' MMO games, is the apparent tendency for investor risk aversion. It is said that a fear of trying new designs tends to leach innovation out of game designs.
Who could blame an investor for only wanting to risk capital on something proven? Yet if what is proven is 'old hat', and the players consume it quickly only to move on, it will reduce the return from its intended potential to considerably less. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, one could argue.
Building a real themepark works out in the world because almost everyone wants to go there at least once, not just twenty million people who happen to own a computer, have decent connectivity, and have an interest in the few genres MMO gaming has fielded.
Building an MMO Themepark does not have all that large a population to count on. 20-30 million people aren't four billion.
It has been may years since I went to Disneyland or Six Flags. Probably most of us haven't been to a real themepark in quite awhile. But there are so many people that Disneyland and Six Flags do just fine, even though they are using pretty much the same content they have had for many years.
MMOs cannot get away with that. The only content that can keep up with the players are the players themselves, and that argues 'sandbox'. If only we can get the right players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I find it funny they have Ultima Online 2 listed on their wall of "published" works... Ultima Online 2 was vaporware, it never existed, it was always in the planning and early development stage and never got anywhere.
I was watching this in development in 2001 and it looked really awesome....UO was getting outdated, mostly because is started out with such a primitive graphics engine. The way they were trying to update it to a full 3D engine was very problematic and later releases really broke the lore (added lots of Samurai warriors and oriental stuff.....that was very strange).
I was sad UO2 was killed off by EA (imagine that...EA has probably killed off more games than most developers have made). A lot of the staff working on UO2 went with Richard Garriott to work on Tabula Rasa (which was killed of by NC Soft).
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Goblin Squad Member
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This entry makes me cringe, because if you can advance offline, then you can easily mod your local client and have god-mode characters advanced offline running around on the server online.
It also means you can play it when the servers are mucked up, your connects are down or so your limited bandwidth doesn't get nailed.
Look at some of the flack that Diablo 3 to lesser and the new Sim City more for the crap that happens to their always online cloud models.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... A 50 million dollar sandbox shooting for a million subscribers in the first three months isn't going to be any less broken than a 50 million dollar theme park.
I say that depends on the quality of the players, Waffle. Where the players are essentially the content, then if the player-content is engaging and inclusive the game will take off, like a well-built aircraft with powerful engines (the playerbase). If the player-content is weak and exclusive it will not.
You might be right and I might be wrong, but if that is the case then it is the players, and not the game designs, that are 'broken'.
The difference is that themepark designs provide engaging but finite content, and generally succeed well at that. Yet players have grown to be driven to beat the game, to get all that content out of the way, to finish their race to the top, often skipping anything that takes time like skimming storytelling to glean only as much as they need to complete the gateway quests. Once they reach the end of the prebuilt content if there is nothing left, no time has been spent on community, there is no new raid content, and the PvP isn't stellar (or populated by non-fun murderers) then they move on.
The advantage sandbox can have is heavily dependent on the players.
We would like to think we here are the creme-de-la-creme but in fact it is probable that we are not terribly different from normal players (except we who post are vocal and appear fairly invested in our personas). The challenge for the sandbox designer is to create an interesting context and building tools for our generating our own content that will be useful and accessible. If they can do that, and if we players do our part to build a community that works together to be inclusive of newcomers; if we can indoctrinate them adequately into the sandbox sociology and philosophy, then sandboxing will prove to be a more successful model than themepark. We will be the themepark.
That is the high-risk, high-reward challenge. Fortunately we players are invested in its success, and have adequate reason to put forth our best effort.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would predict that if GW fulfills their mission, then if we can build a strong community during early enrollment the game will see an inflated number of people arrive at release. The stronger and more inclusive our community the more of those we will retain. Once the players have sorted themselves out (most will probably migrate after pounding the forums with complaint) we will be left with a healthy playerbase suitable for a long run that very gradually grows.
Player organizations (settlements and chartered companies) that are strong in their vision to retain their members, are creative in their use of content-generating tools, and whose inter- and intra-political dramas are meaningful rather than petty will make or break this game.
I just have one question: Will foliage in PFO be called Mr. President (GW Bush)?
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Goblin Squad Member
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D&D, and by extension Pathfinder PnP, has always been about the 'small adventuring group' so its only natural to expect a certain amount of that in the game. We all have our fond stories and campaigns that we want to recreate here. While I dont get the impression that its going to be JUST small party, its certainly going to factor in heavily considering the 'solo unfriendly' nature of the world.