[Kickstarter] Shroud of the Avatar (Lord British)

[Blackhawk]

I remember the only one I played for any length of time was Ultima VIII, which was pretty much panned as one of the worst IIRC. The only thing I remember about it was that the graphics were amazing, and brought my system to its knees. Also, lots of frustrating jumping.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of IX? VIII was isometric. IX had the frustrating jumping. (I've only played IX myself, and enjoyed it quite a bit, although the bugs were crazy-making.)

[Sepiche]

I know I'm weird, but personally I loved VIII. What it lacked of the usual Ultima features it made up for with having a fascinating new world to explore and an awesome magic system for back then.

VII is still far and away my favorite, but I never really got all the hate for VIII.

[EzeKieL]

i said it in jest as all he has done since the failed Tabula Rosa is casual smart games.

No doubt this will be playable only on smart phones.

You're not even trying to read up on this, are you?

Why PC?

Some people think that PC is an outdated platform, but to that I say not true! I have always been a PC developer, and there is something magical about sitting close to a large screen, seeing your world come to life. And the flexibility of using a keyboard and mouse is unmatched; though if you prefer to play with a gamepad on a PC, you can do that too!

For game development, the PC allows developers tremendous innovation and gives players the most choices as far as how they play. Although a great RPG can exist in many forms (even paper tape!), I firmly believe that the PC is the best platform for Shroud of the Avatar.

I loved Tabula Rasa

I miss it ;_;

[Carpet_pissr]

I remember the only one I played for any length of time was Ultima VIII, which was pretty much panned as one of the worst IIRC. The only thing I remember about it was that the graphics were amazing, and brought my system to its knees. Also, lots of frustrating jumping.

Are you sure you aren't thinking of IX? VIII was isometric. IX had the frustrating jumping. (I've only played IX myself, and enjoyed it quite a bit, although the bugs were crazy-making.)

Definitely VIII - I just looked it up. It was the first game with an "M" rating I remember. Also:


"In this part of the series, Garriott delegated most of the work to others. Garriott later explained, "... I sacrificed everything to appease stockholders, which was a mistake. We probably shipped it three months unfinished."[1]

A patch was released to correct the game's bugs as well as fix some plot holes, and eliminate most of the problems with jumping (the original release only allowed jumping over a fixed distance in eight directions while the patch enabled jump distance to be targeted;[2] the original release also contained many moving platforms to be jumped across, the patch stopped their motion). Long-time Ultima fans jokingly referred to Ultima VIII by the nickname 'Super Avatar Brothers', in reference to the abundance of platform-jumping puzzles.[3]

The Ultima VIII engine was later reused in the Crusader game series."

[Freezer-TPF-]

Somehow, I managed to miss the entire Ultima brand. Which I find strange considering RPG's have always been my favorite genre, and particularly old school RPG's.

Same here on all of the above. I played the Gold Boxes and Wizardry 1-3, 4 (sort of), 5, and 7. One day I'll try to go back and play 6. I managed to miss Ultima, M&M, Bard's Tale, etc.

[Smoove_B]

Hmmm....this was just sent out to all the backers:

Two Legends of Gaming join forces! International and New York Times Best-selling fantasy author Tracy Hickman is pleased to announce that he is joining Richard Garriott’s team as Lead Story Designer for ‘Shroud of the Avatar.’

...

Tracy is known world-wide for creating the incredible worlds and stories of Dragonlance, the Deathgate Cycle, the Annals of Drakis and ‘Wayne of Gotham’. He, with his wife Laura, pioneered the use and integration of story into role playing games. He currently has over fifty books in print and is also a pioneer in the New Media publishing world of e-books and online serial publishing.

“Join us,” entices Tracy. “We’re taking adventure to a whole new realm.”

[Baroquen]

Goal has been hit, so the game is now officially a go.

Stretch goals include pets, and weather... (and a "mystery" goal to be revealed...)

[Suitably Ironic Moniker]

(and a "mystery" goal to be revealed...)

Jumping puzzles!

[Smoove_B]

They posted a 3-month progress video last night -- now available on youtube. It was emphasized that "This is not a throw-away prototype, hacked together for demo purposes, but is a fully functional, early version of the game!"

Narrated by Richard Garriott, it includes information on:

Overland travel
Exploring Towns
Exploring Dungeons
Harvesting Resources
Crafting & Recipes
Inventory Bags
Character Paperdoll
Decorating Your House (a Knight's Keep)
Full Sentence Conversations
Rudimentary Combat

[Hrnac]

Wow, this looks really interesting. Can't wait to see what they do over the next 15 months.

-Hrnac

[hentzau]

Release 1 of this goes live tomorrow. It's only going to be up/available for a few days though. I hope I can find time to get on and poke around (and hopefully not be as disappointed as I have been in ESO.)

[Zarathud]

After a few days they're ganking the server? That sounds like Ultima Online.

[Sepiche]

Looks like if you're invited you can download it and get it ready to go tonight... took about an hour or so to download.

[hentzau]

Looks like if you're invited you can download it and get it ready to go tonight... took about an hour or so to download.

Yep. Grabbed my copy tonight.

[hentzau]

Goofed around with it for about 10 minutes. It appears it's not much more than a tech demo. You can create a basic avatar, change a few things on it (like 3 different hairstyles.) You can wander around (but I couldn't find any way to invert the Y mouse axis and that's going to kill much playing for me) and interact with some objects. You can claim houses in the towns, and change the style of house. You can talk to characters, and you are presented with a very familiar (to anyone that's played an Ultima game) conversation tree, with highlighted words that you can type in to lead you down into other conversation trees. Combat is currently not implemented. And that's about all the further I got in the game.

[Sepiche]

Yeah, about the same for me. It looks great even now and it feels like the makings of a new Ultima, but not much to do yet.

And for all it's annoyances I always had a soft spot for the Ultima inventory system.

[Jaymann]

Is anyone playing this? Looks like for a $45 pledge you can get a playable alpha version.

[baelthazar]

Is anyone playing this? Looks like for a $45 pledge you can get a playable alpha version.

I have the alpha, but have never put any time into it. I keep meaning to, but as soon as I get motivated, they release a new version.

[Suitably Ironic Moniker]

I played it for a little bit about six months ago. It has potential, but I'm going to wait until it's a little more complete.

[Smoove_B]

RISE! RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!

Officially launching on 3/27/18, ~5 years after being funded. I...am not hopeful. I tried playing my KS copy a few years ago and was underwhelmed. I don't think I've actually run the game in years. But hey, I guess delivery is delivery.

[stimpy]

RISE! RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!

Officially launching on 3/27/18, ~5 years after being funded. I...am not hopeful. I tried playing my KS copy a few years ago and was underwhelmed. I don't think I've actually run the game in years. But hey, I guess delivery is delivery.

Annnnnnnd......that would be today!!
Impressions?

[Kelan]

I have played quite a bit over the years.

I don't have much time right this minute for any detailed feedback, but I would suggest at least figuring out how to purchase and train some of the skills in the many different skill trees and trying out the deck system in combat before giving up on it.

I can try to answer any questions, though, if I know the answers.

[Smoove_B]

My impressions are day one 2.5 GB patch, day 2, another 2.5 GB patch. So...yeah.

[Smoove_B]

Updated impressions: Day 3 is a 3.2 GB patch. So I guess they're competing with PUBG?

EDIT: And now another 1.1 GB patch.

EDIT2: Day 4 means it's time for a 1.8 GB patch

[neofit]

Strangely enough I am not seeing any reviews nor impressions on any of the sites and forums that I trust, be it for the SP or MP part of the game. Mostly complaints about officialized RMT, basic housing costing $200-$500 and more, no way to craft for fun due to high costs and the need for a house, and so on. But with a free trial and game keys at €6.40 at allkeyshop, I guess it won't hurt to try.

[Kelan]

I actually am having a good time with most of the game. I like the skill trees, training options, deck building and options during fighting. Even the crafting system is acceptable and has some nice options even though it takes a lot of work.

What I don't like is the gold drops needs to be boosted drastically for it to make me enjoy it more. I pop on and have fun fighting and harvesting and working on my adventure and trade skills, but what keeps me from going all in and working toward house ownership and having a bit more of a lasting impact on the game is the difficulty in raising gold to do what you need to do. If they balanced it more like Ultima Online, where you still had to work hard to amass wealth, but it was achievable by the average person fighting mid to high level creatures with time; I would be all in on trying to play this game as much as I could. However, what happens more times than not for me now is I go on a long adventure/fighting run deep in a dungeon (Tier 5) to mine ore and come out with barely enough looted gold off creatures to fund my crafting of those resources, maintaining my existing gear, and getting ready for the next dungeon run (potions, etc.), and purchasing reagents for them and to power my spells. If the balance was more like UO where you always had lots of extra gold after each dungeon run to go shop vendors for cool equipment upgrades, or stuff to put in your house, if you could even afford a house and the rent, it would have huge potential, I believe. I am afraid right now that the only people that are experiencing this part of the game are the extremely dedicated, or the ones that purchased high end pledges at the beginning or paid lots of real money to catch up.

Granted I could be totally missing a lot, but I do have over 200 hours in the game and believe the Tier 5 zones need at least a 5x boost to gold drop rate to make it enjoyable.

[neofit]

Granted I could be totally missing a lot, but I do have over 200 hours in the game and believe the Tier 5 zones need at least a 5x boost to gold drop rate to make it enjoyable.

A shame, another confirmation of that thing I keep reading about, about the game being crafted around official RMT. Sounds like Project Entropia, which was carefully tuned so that the loot you got from mobs never exceeded the real world money cost of bullets plus gun repairs needed to kill them.

[Kelan]

I should add a bit to clarify on the loot system.

They have improved some of it quite a bit with more random drops on mobs like potions, repair kits, loot bags, and probably some other items I haven't noticed, so the potential to make more money is there. The dungeons I have been frequenting lately were rich in ore and crystal deposits, so perhaps the loot was balanced to be lower because of this and more gold could be acquired in the basic dungeons and other higher tier outdoor zones. If I actually sold a portion of the ore and crystals I mined, it would probably be a decent haul, but I hoard them for my own crafting. There is a decent market to sell resources, I believe, so at lower tiers of adventuring it can be a decent way to make additional gold if you harvest as you go through them.

I have run into zones in the past that the creatures drop decently valued weapons that can be sold, so gold can be made, but I would still like the actual gold drops to be bumped up to ease the burden overall.

[neofit]

Thanks Kelan, this is helpful, I've been looking for some time for some new MMO that would have no manga nor forced PvP, so I think I will keep on playing this one at least till the end of the tutorial .

One more worry. I am a terrible packrat and am usualluy trying to craft as much as I can, not to get rich but for fun. This created huge problems for me in some games like Fallen Earth, TESO, or Project Gorgon. In these games, that I otherwise loved, I ended up quitting when I realized that I was spending more time juggling with the inventories/banks of various mule characters than playing . I saw some bank upgrades for sale in the SOTA store and it reminded me of this issue. I noticed that just running around the newbie area looting pre-killed corpses, even before I had my first fight, I acquired about 3 dozen different items in my inventory already. Since you called yourself a "hoarder", I guess you are qualified to answer whether you spend a lot of time fighting the lack of storage space or not?

[Kelan]

Good question!

One thing is that the banks are not common, meaning that if you deposit items in a bank in one town, you will not be able to access them at a bank in another town, so that can make things difficult for hoarding items. You will probably eventually want to establish one main base to store items for crafting in one town. I hang out in a guild member player owned town and he has all the NPC vendors and bank and full crafting station setup in the same location. You can use recall scrolls to recall to your bind location, which I do to return here after adventuring runs. I believe I read something that one day (probably not yet) that there will be a parcel service of some sort that can move items for you between banks, but I have no idea when that will happen.

However, for having one location with all of my bank items, I am up to about 150 slots and seem to have plenty of room to store a backup set of gear and all crafting raw materials that I know of and have room so far for storing a few extra special items. You can pay gold to upgrade your bank storage also, and I believe my last upgrade cost was like 800 or so to get to close to 150, with most of them before that being close to 100, so it isn't too hard to get a decent amount of storage to support crafting.

I can double check tonight and take a screenshot to see exactly what I have in there.

[neofit]

OMG I just discovered that mages have to spend reagents, i.e. money, to cast any non-trivial spell, while melee and ranger toons do not. 3 reagents. At 18 gold per cast, do you even get any profit? I'm thinking I'll be wasting money with this mage, I am still in the newbie area, I think rerolling a ranger might be a good idea.

[Kelan]

While you need the reagents to cast the spells, they are rarely consumed. I forget the % chance, and there are skills and gear adjustments you can make to reduce it further I believe, but it is a small percentage chance to consume each reagent when you cast one of the spells that need them. I would guess it is normally as low as 1 in 10 based on my perception (I haven't tried to figure it out exactly), but no worse than 1 in 5 or so.

Maybe look into that a bit before you make a decision to switch.

[neofit]

Maybe look into that a bit before you make a decision to switch.

Yes, I'm a dumbass, I didn't notice the "10%-20% chance of being consumed" further down in the spell description . Glad I figured that out before deleting the toon to reroll.

Now I have discovered Deck Building and am trying to figure out why anyone could think it's a good idea . I am afraid that if I don't participate in the whack-a-moling that the toon will be gimped with only 10 hotkey slots, twice the mana usage plus cooldowns. Trying very hard to like it, no other new PvE MMO around that I know of .

[Kelan]

Now I have discovered Deck Building and am trying to figure out why anyone could think it's a good idea .

Yeah, I am still not sure whether I like it or not. I do like that you can swap a deck in combat, and the decks can also link to your gear and auto-switch gear out.

What I do is have the 5 slots to the right be locked to skills/potions I always want to be able to access in combat. The first five are unlocked and loaded up with 4 copies of 4-5 combat arts and maybe a combat spell I am training and a couple of defensive skills to fire as they come up to reduce damage taken. I try to stack the copies on each other to their max of 4 to fire off a powerful version of it by hitting R + #1stskill + #2ndskill, like if Thrust is on the 1 and 4 slot, hit R + 1 + 4 quick to stack them. It is a bit of a pain and hard to watch that and watch the action, but I am getting used to it. With only using the R key and 1-5 keys, I can normally fire them off quick with just my left hand and without looking at the keys and they are right next to WASD so not far to move.

Then on my alternate deck, I have all my heals, potions, 1-2 minute combat buffs, etc. Once they wear off while fighting, just hit x to deck switch, fire off some buffs and heals if needed, then x to back to combat deck. I also have my longer 2-5 min+ buffs on my out of combat bar and try to keep them up between combat.

I know it is far from optimum, but I like it enough. It definitely keeps you engaged and forces you to pay attention, but I can understand not everyone enjoying it.

[Daehawk]

Ok Im a huge Garriott and UO fan. HUGE as Trump would say. Always have been. I wanted to ask two thing on their forum but it says I have to buy $5 of in game stuff from their store to have that privileged. That right there is a BIG ASS no no to me and a worrisome thing. Something I refuse to do. So Ill ask here. Although that requirement has almost turned me completely off to that game and company Im still willing to look for info....for now.

1. I tried the trial version that allows you to create a character about 3 months ago or so. I get emails with game updates and everything I see the game is beautiful. But that trial was God awful UGLY. The characters were horrible and the area around where you create your character were ugly as sin. Whats up with that? Why have the first area anyone sees or sees in the free trial be so damn awful? Seems a bad decision.

2. And for curiosity....Id really like this a lot if it was Ultima. Does Richard have zero rights to his own creation now? I dont see any towns named anything Id recognize and such. Its kinda disappointing.

[JCC]

Ultima belongs to EA like all of the Origin Systems intellectual property. I am guessing it will languish forever unless they make a UO sequel which would interest me even less than Shroud of the Avatar does - which is saying something.