TheAgent posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=susZrg0UDX4&t=7227s
lol this fuckin video

quote:

And how can I not mention companions? In Ultima tradition, Shroud of the Avatar offers three companions (that will only joins you if you play offline though), each being tied to a separate principle and representing a different “class”. They can make some comment during the adventure at specific places or events, sometimes (but rarely) intervene in dialogues and each offers their own quest. It’s pretty decent picture on the whole (though with still a lot of room for improvement) except it’s actually something that was added recently to the game: at launch two of the three companions only had for dialogue “This NPC is still in active development”. Which really feels like a bad joke. And considering the game isn’t really balanced for adventuring the world solo, depriving oneself of the companions isn’t a solution as they are pretty much required if you want to complete the game offline, while it’ll be recommended to team up with other players when playing online.

So sure, companions were improved since launch, but this really showcases the core issue of the game’s development.

Finally, we can’t mention the game’s issues without mentioning the “save” system, and yes it deserves these quotation marks. As you’d expect you can save anywhere and “Continue” the game where you left off… except the game basically doesn’t save ANYTHING about the state of the SCENE you are in! So if for example you save in the middle of a SCENE that you have pretty much emptied of monsters, explored and looted all its chest after you have opened two of three of the locks on the secret door leading to the biggest treasure… and you quit the game and come back… the SCENE will have been COMPLETELY reset! What about all the monsters you killed, the treasures you looted? They’re all back. And the locks? They’ll have been reset as well so you’ll have to find the keys again and start all over! It feels like an antiquated save system from an old console game: unbelievable! Same with the time of day which is based on real world time, so if you save at day… you can reappear at night. There is also no way to “pass time”, so good luck if you plan to use the Lunar Rifts to move around the world : you’ll have to wait till the cycle reach the place you want to go, which sometime amount to doing nothing for half an hour! Oh and it’s the same if you quit a SCENE and come back to it: it’ll have been reset! So we can only give advice not to quit or save the game until you have completed a SCENE at the risk of having to redo everything. And if you save and “load” a game instead of just using “Continue”? You’ll restart at the beginning of the scene, which might force you to have to redo a whole dungeon for example, even in the main plot!

Basically this feels like an online system where someone quickly jerry-rigged a save system without really taking time to put a proper save system as you’d expect in any single player offline game. That’s not exactly painting a good picture of the development, and it’s also not consistent with what had been announced as we’d been promised that the offline version of the game would have SCENES not resetting and a limited respawn. Another aspect obviously not complete.

quote:

Same with the time of day which is based on real world time

Schubalts posted:

I'm sorry, what? In an MMO?

Moo Moo Canoe posted:

it was a bad idea, so how this gets repeated a decade an a half later

Percelus posted:

how is wildstar still running

Percelus posted:

apparently someone was selling polynesian outfits for cheap on the unity asset store

Percelus posted:

Chrysophylax posted:

How are things like the overall graphical quality of this game not raising huge red flags? This poo poo looks halfway-acceptable in like maybe 2004

Are people really hungering this badly for a new Ultima clone?

Chrysophylax posted:

Are people really hungering this badly for a new Ultima clone?

Chrysophylax posted:

Are people really hungering this badly for a new Ultima clone?

Cool Buff Man posted:

Did you skip the entirety of the thread or what

I said come in! posted:

In all seriousness? No, not really. At least not enough people to crowd fund a new RPG to the point where it could be completed.

Arms_Akimbo posted:

"forsaken virtues" is the most generic poo poo. They might as well have just called it "video game"

Chrysophylax posted:

How are things like the overall graphical quality of this game not raising huge red flags? This poo poo looks halfway-acceptable in like maybe 2004

Are people really hungering this badly for a new Ultima clone?

Capntastic posted:

I know people that were on Shroud’s art team and oh wow were they excited and proud to uproot their families and move to to work with game dev legend Richard Garriot on his return to glory

Gynovore posted:

The most charitable outlook is that Garriott set out to make a legit good MMO, but things went south during the production, so he said 'gently caress it, let's cut costs and push it out the door.' The least charitable is that Garriott is retiring, and decided to milk all the goodwill that he build up over the past 40 years into cash.

Adept Nightingale posted:

Garriott's a narcissist; I firmly believe the sum total point of this project from end to end has been to get him back in the news and getting interview requests. And if he makes a few million more dollars from his exclusive rights to the Shroud of the Avatar license, kindly licensed to his own loving studio? Welllll, that's just fine too.

Game design isn't an inherently public-facing position; the "celebrity" game devs from the 80s and 90s are huge presshounds.

Capntastic posted:

I know people that were on Shroud’s art team and oh wow were they excited and proud to uproot their families and move to to work with game dev legend Richard Garriot on his return to glory

Soup du Journey posted:

nobody listens to the whales.

the business model for anything whale-friendly involves selling them a bill of goods (and doing so at a premium, to boot). only an idiot bitch would fall for it, and they can be trusted to fall in line with whatever you've got going on. they might grumble a bit like warhammer dwarfs, but they'll go along with it for sure. why would anyone ever listen to someone like that? whales are useless blubber barges with no place in the ecosystem. nuke the whales, in fact.

garriott quite literally phoned it in, by way of that nanny cam on wheels. i think this could probably have been a neat little reboot of some of the earlier ultimas, and a fine way to build up a boutique dev studio (sort of like what harebrained did with shadowrun and btech), but it doesn't seem like he was ever really interested in that. some of the early concept art suggested that it might be going in an ultima 1-6 direction, but all the design work pointed to a copy/paste of ultima online. somehow this was going to be both? what? as a freshman offering? how?

i think homeboy just saw the crazy success that croberts had, and knowing that guy to be a moron, figured that he himself could hardly do worse. but then he did. yikes...very embarrassing...

Unctuous Cretin posted:

DID ANYONE GET THEIR BOXES YET?!

I just got mine... and it's all surprisingly well-produced...

Full color manual and book with LB's notes for his Akalabeth D&D campaign.

A coin, a very heterosexual-looking ankh, and a really nice quality cloth map. I'm seriously surprised how nice this stuff is based on... everything else.

WebDO posted:

All for the low, low cost of your dignity and pumping money into a scam