Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues (Lord British returns...again :P)

[schild]

I wish he would retire and just go away :(

[Hawkbit]

Why does that map have a vagina?

Because endgame is getting to fourth base.

[Sky]

I wish he would retire and just go away :(

It pains me to agree with you on that point, but yeah.

George Lucas effect.

[Azaroth]

For the record, George Lucas is a master troll and made billions at it.

[Xuri]

I don't dislike the guy as much as some apparently do, but I definitely dislike how he keeps talking about himself in third person all the time. Actually, not all the time - he's not even consistent about it! ;P

[Sky]

I don't dislike RG as a guy. I dislike him as a Lucas, taking a dump on his legacy. I dislike that he wants to remake UO for the facebook generation but sell it as an Ultima. So, fuck that dude. Also, that game you're buying? You're not, really.

the current plan is for 5 episodes and we have a story drawn up through all 5. This will be a full blown game with significant content and story lines and not a watered down 1/5th of a normal sized game. We haven't set how we'll be selling the upcoming chapters. Richard and I disagree on how that should work (*shakes fist at Lord British!*) currently and you can guess who usually wins those disagreements. :P I think Richard's proposal was that we charge some nominal fee like $20.

Nominal fee, another $80 for the other 4/5ths of the game. But then,

the game can be played single player without an additional dime spent. The main story lines are all single player focused and will live up to Richard's standards for a single player experience. The multiplayer experience is very MMO like and I think we're just confusing people by saying it is not. You will be able to see other players in game and meet new people. The only thing that will be different is that where possible, we won't be driving 100% of the experience through our servers. Instead, we'll be letting players direct connect to each other. Obviously there many situations where that isn't possible due to exploits but where possible we'll be letting the players drive much of their own scenes locally. Again though, if players choose to play solo, we let them. Our current thinking is that we'll be showing them evidence of shared elements like other players houses and banners and dynamic content just to keep the world feeling more alive but even that is up for discussion at this point.

I think that's where my brain broke. Talk about having no design doc or vision driving the project.

Honestly, at this point I am tempted to keep $25 in the hat just for alpha/beta access and the lulz like we had in UO. It just sounds so naive and terribad.

And the comments continue to entertain, especially in light of offline stuff like InXile and Obsidian are working on...

would you prefer subscription? We've talked to a ton of people and most seemed to prefer an opt-in micro-transaction system to a mandatory subscription. Actually, I suspect most want the game for free, to not have a monthly subscription, and no money ever but that just can't happen.

We have a number of elements still coming for PVP! We will absolutely have an opt-in PVP element, PVP scenes where anyone who enters is fair game, and "rabbit and fox" missions at a minimum. The "Rabbit in Fox" missions are ones where you take a mission/quest of "escort person/deliver item/protect area" knowing that doing so will PVP flag you. This will also bump up your relevance ranking(what we use to determine who can be seen by a player in the game) so most everyone will see you immediately. To make it even more exciting, other players are incentivized to stop them! Basically the system gives the more savage players lots of rabbits to chase and will hopefully satisfy, at least to some extent, their need to kill!

And the true spirit of Ultima, remember when Iolo livestreamed Stones and everyone "liked" it?

To several posters below, absolutely the game will be social BUT by what the word truly means and not what people associate it with more recently. Players can interact, chat, craft, fight, and adventure together. I can't imagine anything more social. Some how the phrase "Social Games" became synonymous with games where the only social elements are that it requires you to harass your friends until they block posts from you. Don't hate us for trying to use the term for its true meaning again. :)

And irony:

We're also trying to avoid artificially punishing people just to extract money from them to make the punishment stop.

If you don't want to pay taxes, then be sure to pledge as a Citizen, Lord or Baron!

(because the upper pledge levels get free limited property for life)

This post brought to you by an evening playing Ultima 7 and drinking bock beer then reading this utter fucking nonsense of a project. (all those quotes are dev quotes from the KS comments)

[Xuri]

That reminds me of the "good old days" when new private UO shards popped up every day, and the main feature of 97% of those were "FREE CASTLE 2 THE 20 FRIST PEPOLE WHO JOIN!". Those shards never lasted very long

[Zetor]

"The adventures of the Avatar and his faithful companions Dudebro and Yolo"?

edit: hey, my old UO shard is still going! Even though I remember us having to troll everyone on IRC to keep voting in those "top 100 UO shards" lists that were all the rage in the early 2000s. 

[UnSub]

The Kickstarter is halfway there after two days. Interesting times ahead.

[Fabricated]

Stop giving money to this guy.

[Venkman]

Whose been out of the game longer? Him or Chris Roberts? 

[rk47]

He's past the xpiry date. Fuck him.

[HaemishM]

Stop giving money to this guy.

This. Also, all that shit Sky posted just makes me go

At this point, it's not even about shitting all over the Ultima legacy so much as making fuckstupid decisions that Ultima Online should have taught him a decade ago.

[palmer_eldritch]

It looks very much like a new Ultima game with enough tweeks to the setting to stave off the lawyers.

This may turn out to the be first kickstarer I give money to. I want to believe in UO2, the MMO you can also play offline.

[Lantyssa]

He's just going to take your money and blast off into space again.  Maybe build his next castle there.

[Sky]

It looks very much like a new Ultima game with enough tweeks to the setting to stave off the lawyers.

This may turn out to the be first kickstarer I give money to. I want to believe in UO2, the MMO you can also play offline.

wat

[Cheddar]

I cannot wait.  I am excited but not engaging in kickstarter; still miffed about U9.

[Bzalthek]

ITT: proof humanity is incapable of learning.

[Sky]

Richard Garriott 40 minutes ago

Greetings! Richard "Lord British" Garriott here.
I was having to post via the Portalarium account for a while, due to some Kickstarter hiccup, but now I can post as myself. First, let me thank you all for your interest and support so far! Let me again clarify, we are building a game that is story driven and about social issues and your behavior ala U4-7. Our interactivity goal is to be a deeply interactive as U7. While people can play essentially and likely literally solo / offline, online play will allow you to participate in the persistent world, where you will see the shops and homes of all other players, and you can adventure alone or with fiends and strangers with our "ad hock" multiplayer system. It is NOT a client server MMO, but rather continuous automatic matchmaking favoring your real world friends.

Richard Garriott 28 minutes ago

@Ambrose - It is my hope that all the folks who think they really just want to play offline will play online. I really believe our plan will provide a deeper world to experience without either pestering you to buy crap all the time, nor interfering with your feeling of "I am the chosen hero". Yet, I understand the two camps of A) I want a solo player Ultima style game, and B) I want the UO style MMO experience (before it was "ruined"). We will provide those options, as best we can. Yet, I still hope and believe, the way we are tackling the online play will serve both camps! If not, you can play solo!

Yes, folks. This game will be both classic Ultima period rpg AND pre-Trammel UO. And despite how much we talk about microtransactions, we won't pester you /all/ the time. And they're going to hock ads while you play with fiends. I do like 'you can play essentially and likely literally solo/offline'.

[Sky]

Why do I love KS?

Maric 13 minutes ago

NTRPFCon Yeah, but you paid $500.00 less. Every Kickstarter I have seen has done this (added another tier after one sells out). It's not out of the norm anyway.


NTRPGCon 21 minutes ago

I thought the point of housing was limited... now that the $3000 houses sold out, you add new $3500 ones ? I wouldn't have bought in had I known you'd just add more houses on the fly... they are suppose to be rare...

[rk47]

HAHAHAAHAHA 

[Rendakor]

"There's no way we're going to stop letting people give us $3000+ for in game houses."

[Sky]

That's better than I was doing selling UO real estate. Best I ever did was $300 for a villa north of Vesper.

[Krakrok]

Sounds like multiplayer along the lines of Diablo and Dungeon Siege.

[Outlawedprod]

Stop giving money to this guy.

Thank goodness Kickstarter is there as a safety net or this poor hapless man might end up like Curt Schilling.

[Sky]

I do wish this pledge level came with a copy of the game:

Pledge $10 or more

 33 backers

GUILT PLEDGE ============================= Thank Lord British and prove your virtue with a $10 donation. 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.

For $10 I'd love to grief and exploit in this game.

[HaemishM]

Wait, you can actually have a Kickstarter where you don't have to give jack or shit to the donor?

Fuck me. I've been doing it wrong.

[Sky]

Yeah, usually it's a $1 "So you can make comments" or $5 "Show your support with a cuppa" kind of thing.

But then you really don't have to deliver anything anyway, but it's nice to have the promise of something.

[HaemishM]

Damn my ethics!

[drogg]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/posts/425574?ref=activity

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.

[Venkman]

Except for how close some of us might be hoping this is to the Ultimas we kinda remember 20 years later, is there really anything substantive to talk about yet?

And seriously, this is yet another example of why I don't get Kickstarter. People really are paying $3k for a house they don't know the value of in a game that doesn't exist from a guy that hasn't launched a game in 15 years (he was not involved in the TR that ultimately launched) who is only collecting just enough money to get him in the door of some of the places that may publish it who haven't yet had their say on what it will be?

I swear Kickstarter was created by zombie PT Barnum*

If we see just a Google Play version of this in two years, I'll be shocked even that launched. I'm all for being excited by the potential of something. But come on. Whatever happened to waiting until something was purchasable, ya know, before you purchased it?

* Ok fine, David Hannum

[Sky]

This project is only representative of one facet of KS. While there is a lot of bad stuff (and this one is pretty epic imo), there's a lot of good stuff if you do your homework.

This one just sounds so bad, and apparently they think sitting through hour-long rambles with Lord Ego is the best way to convey information.

[Ingmar]

And seriously, this is yet another example of why I don't get Kickstarter. People really are paying $3k for a house they don't know the value of

No. I mean, this looks like a terrible project, but you just can't boil it down to a give/get transaction. That's not what people are buying, they're buying the chance to recapture their bullshit pre-Trammel glory days, the feeling of being thanked on some credit screen by ~LORD BRITISH~, or whatever. All these Kickstarter computer game projects live in a weird intersection of nostalgia, business, and charity, and if you just look at it like a robot beep boop pay money get thing transaction, you will never understand it.

There are lots of projects where you can and do get lots of actual value back for your money; ironically those are the ones probably outside the 'spirit' of Kickstarter the most, just based on some of the other product categories where KS essentially shut down the ability to use a KS as a way of just doing preorders.

[Sheepherder]

...the feeling of being thanked on some credit screen by ~LORD BRITISH~, or whatever.

By the way, does anyone know if he still answers his phone?  I need to call him up and tell him I beat U6 in one month, sixteen days.

[palmer_eldritch]

And seriously, this is yet another example of why I don't get Kickstarter. People really are paying $3k for a house they don't know the value of

No. I mean, this looks like a terrible project, but you just can't boil it down to a give/get transaction. That's not what people are buying, they're buying the chance to recapture their bullshit pre-Trammel glory days, the feeling of being thanked on some credit screen by ~LORD BRITISH~, or whatever. All these Kickstarter computer game projects live in a weird intersection of nostalgia, business, and charity, and if you just look at it like a robot beep boop pay money get thing transaction, you will never understand it.

There are lots of projects where you can and do get lots of actual value back for your money; ironically those are the ones probably outside the 'spirit' of Kickstarter the most, just based on some of the other product categories where KS essentially shut down the ability to use a KS as a way of just doing preorders.

If you pay enough then your character can be a Lord. I will be Lord Palmer. Other players will know I paid $3,500 for the game years before it came out because it will be written over my head, and they will respect me for it. So I assume.

Seriously though, I see it as being a bit like playing the lottery. It makes no economic sense to buy a lottery ticket (unless you want to contribute to the causes the lottery supports, but then it makes more sense to just give that cause some money). The odds are that however much you spend on tickets, you will never win that amount back, let alone become filthy rich (otherwise the lottery would make a loss, right?) Yet people buy tickets because they want to imagine that it might come true.