Below is a letter that I wrote in response to a request on the vault to compose a letter to the UO game designers. Looking back on it, I'm not thrilled about the order and emphasis used. And I think they're not really the most critical points either. But there are some decent things here, even if not presented in any kind of earth-shaking format or explanation.
Well, I know that you get alot of extreme garbage. One side tells you you're the devil, the other tells you that you're the savior.
Like all things, the truth lies somewhere in between the extremes. Some things about the Ultima experience are exciting and new (I was thrilled the first time I met another play standing on the side of a road hawking his goods), and some are patently ridiculous, and show a lack of vision.
That's just how it goes when you tackle something as large and innovative as this project.
BUT, that having been said, Rich, let me lay out my vision of what makes a game good. I've played alot of them. Probably too many. But anyway, the point is to boil it back down to a basic constitution of gaming laws that shouldn't be messed with. If you can get 90% adherence to these laws, you've got a winner. And if you make all your improvements and patch decisions in reference to these, you'll develop some hot stuff.
There are a SLEW of details underneathe each rule that really flesh out how you should pursue them, but we don't have time for all that crap. So hopefully I'll just get to the heart of each one, and leave it at that.
1) Hacking and cheating ruins everything
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I know you know this one. Most of the reason that UO suffers so much
lag is because of the lengths your designers have gone to in making it
unhackable by putting so much processing on the servers instead of the
clients. Bravo. Now just fix the lag ;> I know, I know, easier said
than done. But we're paying you to do it 2) Players must feel that they ARE their characters. Without directly identifying yourself with that little icon on the
screen, the game means nothing. My personal opinion is that a
first-person point of view would have helped this immensely, but overall
that's a small consideration. You guys have done lots of things to try
and get to this, but you've been missing the main one. The biggest
single factor in achieving this is CHAT.
If you don't have an easy-to-use, elegant way for people to interact AS
THEIR CHARACTERS, people don't role play, people don't care about what
they've earned, and sooner or later, they quit.
If you just give people a basic fantasy land-scape, and a good way to
interact verbally, they will INVENT their own fun. It's classic. It
MASSIVELY cuts down on what you need to do to keep the world
interesting. Let your players do the work - they will.
3) There MUST be a skill-based, strategic way for people to kill each
other. I'm not kidding on this one. You CANNOT invent the creature, quest, or
NPC that will hold a player's attention for any length of time. It
can't be done. The life-expectancy of your average player in the game
is gonna be less than one year if you don't have this. I guarantee it.
Everything I've seen SO FAR about combat in Ultima tells me that melee
combat has no skill whatsoever, and that spell-casting is a simple
paralyze/lightning bolt formula. Blah. There are far too many details
about good ways to accomplish skilled combat to cover here, but no
matter what the system, I'll tell you one HUGE key. It's the next law.
(BTW, remind me to tell you how to solve your current PK problem. I've
got the perfect fix.)
4) There must be a reasonable level cap. Hey! You think I'm wrong on this one, don't you? I can hear you and
the players bitching already. Trust me. Here's the deal: killing
creatures, and punching the dummies, and doing repetitive tasks are the
main way to raise your skill in Ultima. Guess what? It's boring. It's
a means to an end, and that's all it is.
Climbing the ranks is a neccesary evil, because it's what defines who
has paid their dues, and it IS interesting for some amount of time. But
it gets real old. What happens when you reach your level cap? You are
forced to interact with fellow players. You stop just banging away at
raising your level. You investigate better ways to fight, smarter
combinations of skills, deeper strategies. People pride themselves on
knowing these things. They don't pride themselves on having punched a
dummy for two hours.
Also, when you hit your level cap, YOU START TALKING TO PEOPLE. Role
play begins where level-raising ends. The Atrophy of skills is PERFECT
for this, because it ensures that there IS still a good reason to
adventure, but it makes it a liesurely enough demand that you can pick
and choose who to adventure with, how to role-play it, etc. If you just
HAVE to keep banging away to keep up with the next guy's level, you
eventual get tired of all that practicing. Because raising your level
is just PRACTICE for the real meat, which is interacting with players on
equal footing. When is a soldier proudest? When is a merchant most
self-satisfied? When do people feel happy about what they do? When
they're good at it, not when they're a peon. No reasonable level cap
means perpetually being a peon.
5) Bad documentation Sound stupid? Too bad. A chief defining factor between the adept
player, and the newbie is knowing the in's and out's. If you can find
all those out on your first day by reading the docs, then who cares. If
instead you need to join guild and learn from a mentor that a
successfull smith can avoid the crowds and problems of mining by doing
it from a ship... well then! That's cool!
There are others, but you probably stopped reading/listening a long time
ago, so I guess I'll quit here.
Anyway, that's some of my thoughts.
Regards,
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Hedron