Shroud of the Avatar - Progress Report Video

Graphics is more important for some games than others, i'd say. I still enjoy Gothic 2 for example, and even Fallout 1-2, but they're not sim games where you're supposed to walk around in your home, looking at the type of wood or stones you have decided to go with.. Again, i can see how that sort of thing could be kind of nice, but not with mediocre graphics like this.
 
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This was done to a large extent in U7, which many of you seem to forget. Many dungeons and places had extremely moveable objects, which allows for a large amount of immersion in the world.

To me, having the ability to move everything is pretty awesome. It was a loved feature in the older ultima games. Why anyone would think a static background is better is beyond me, perhaps because the majority of the RPG's we play nowaday's do that do to t he fact it is a lot easier to implement.

Who made a comment about that being a negative? They were talking about the housing mechanics - the only comment made about the moveable items was a positive one. Honestly mate, your sounding a wee bit defensive.

I think most of the people here are quite familiar with U7 - I've only completed the game about 15 times myself - it's just the vast majority of us are not getting that Ultima vibe from what we are seeing so far as has been discussed in the numerous threads previously.
 
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Who made a comment about that being a negative? They were talking about the housing mechanics - the only comment made about the moveable items was a positive one. Honestly mate, your sounding a wee bit defensive.

I think most of the people here are quite familiar with U7 - I've only completed the game about 15 times myself - it's just the vast majority of us are not getting that Ultima vibe from what we are seeing so far as has been discussed in the numerous threads previously.

Hmmm, not defensive, realistic and not pessimistic maybe. Stuff that has been discussed in numerous threads here has been not based on fact, based on conjecture.
 
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Graphics is more important for some games than others, i'd say. I still enjoy Gothic 2 for example, and even Fallout 1-2, but they're not sim games where you're supposed to walk around in your home, looking at the type of wood or stones you have decided to go with.. Again, i can see how that sort of thing could be kind of nice, but not with mediocre graphics like this.

"Graphics is more important for some games than others" - sure. And it's the player who decides where they are important and where they aren't. So what we have here is your biased personal opinion (which you are perfectly entitled to) and not any sort of in-depth analysis.

"…sim games where you're supposed to walk around in your home, looking at the type of wood or stones you have decided to go with." - oh for crying out loud! And people say that Garriott's team is obsessed with housing?!
You play with your house only if it's what you want to do. From what I'm reading I gather there will be plenty of other stuff for you to do.

But hey, here is a novel idea: why don't you, instead of obsessing about housing, wait until the game is released? Than you can decide if it's worth a shot and, if not, you can always go back to some game which bad graphics you enjoy?
 
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I think most of the people here are quite familiar with U7 - I've only completed the game about 15 times myself - it's just the vast majority of us are not getting that Ultima vibe from what we are seeing so far as has been discussed in the numerous threads previously.

Which particular "Ultima vibe" you have in mind? I-III? IV-VI? VII? VIII? IX?
 
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Who made a comment about that being a negative? They were talking about the housing mechanics - the only comment made about the moveable items was a positive one. Honestly mate, your sounding a wee bit defensive.

I think most of the people here are quite familiar with U7 - I've only completed the game about 15 times myself - it's just the vast majority of us are not getting that Ultima vibe from what we are seeing so far as has been discussed in the numerous threads previously.

Visually and in game systems it has an Ultima vibe since how dialog and interactions work is very similar to Ultima and there are many visual elements that remind me of Ultima. I don't think they are going to show much of the story since showing any of the story would be a spoiler and since combat isn't ready yet we can't determine how the combat is going to turn out.
 
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"…sim games where you're supposed to walk around in your home, looking at the type of wood or stones you have decided to go with." - oh for crying out loud! And people say that Garriott's team is obsessed with housing?!
You play with your house only if it's what you want to do. From what I'm reading I gather there will be plenty of other stuff for you to do.

But hey, here is a novel idea: why don't you, instead of obsessing about housing, wait until the game is released? Than you can decide if it's worth a shot and, if not, you can always go back to some game which bad graphics you enjoy?

Well ... the first half of the six month progression video is entirely devoted to housing. Without infinite resources of time and money, anything you put into a game means that something else has to be left out. And decisions of this nature spill over into the rest of the gameplay, not least because housing takes up space in the game world. The result is likely to be annoying housing spam that is irrelevant to anyone else, but the house owner. Odds are the game, if it takes off, will become a medieval real estate simulator with players paying ridiculous prices (probably involving real money) for high status plots.
 
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Which particular "Ultima vibe" you have in mind? I-III? IV-VI? VII? VIII? IX?

IV to VII, the good ones ;) It's just a gut feeling so far but sadly my gut feelings are normally right. Having said that, the latest video is a large step in the right direction, maybe if it had "stones" playing in the background it would appeal even more to me :)
 
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Well … the first half of the six month progression video is entirely devoted to housing. Without infinite resources of time and money, anything you put into a game means that something else has to be left out
1- From what I gather it started out as an idea offered by the devs and than ballooned due to the wishes/demands by the backers.
2- From my experience (admittedly limited to modding) with Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout and Skyrim designing player housing is not that difficult compared with the other aspects of the game. I don't think (please correct me if I'm wrong) that a huge team or a lots of resources are required to do that.

What's more, funds from the sale of the player houses could actually provide dev's with extra resources rather than swallowing them up.

And decisions of this nature spill over into the rest of the gameplay, not least because housing takes up space in the game world. The result is likely to be annoying housing spam that is irrelevant to anyone else, but the house owner. Odds are the game, if it takes off, will become a medieval real estate simulator with players paying ridiculous prices (probably involving real money) for high status plots.
Once again Roq: that's COULD happen only in the MMO mode which I'm not planing on playing. Right now I think that my pick will be the single player online mode.
 
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British is clearly very devoted to housing, probably as much as he seems to be in real life ;) To me it's especially sad with the generic and mediocre graphics since Ultima series was always quite ground breaking in this department (U7, UUW1/2, U8 and U9).
 
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Once again Roq: that's COULD happen only in the MMO mode which I'm not planing on playing. Right now I think that my pick will be the single player online mode.

Unless the single player mode is a completely different game with differently designed areas then it will be affected. What do you imagine they are going to put in the place of all that housing?
 
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Unless the single player mode is a completely different game with differently designed areas then it will be affected. What do you imagine they are going to put in the place of all that housing?

I know exactly what they are going to put.

I have actually followed the game instead of just making stuff up.

If you play single player online you will see those houses and if they have things you can interact with then you can. IE shop keepers etc.

For single player offline, I believe the plan was to have the game place houses in those spots so you are not just seeing large empty areas.

Personally, I think the online single player will be the one I play since I get the benefit of seeing a lot of the map changes without having to deal with nitwits.

Like I said before, just because assets are being used in the housing does not mean that they wouldn't be used elsewhere in the game. Housing is being shown because I think it gives the least amount of spoilers for the rest of the game.

Personally I thought the graphics were good, not great and definitely not bad.
 
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It's funny to read on here about graphics and the needing to type as a negative….I think you even have to read some things as well.

Have you ever played a game where you had to type to chat with NPCs? I have played one and it can be annoying, but not in term of time. This kind of system can be limited in term of sentence recognition and, well, spelling mistakes. Making some exchange tedious if you are unsure how to ask for something. Although, it's great for immersion.

I still think that Daggerfall did it better with the bazillion of questions you could ask to all the mindless NPCs.
 
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@Rune It still doesn't add up - would one really want to play a game where they'd dumped 100,000 (or however many people one might expect to play the MMO bit) empty houses into the landscape intended for a play style you aren't even playing. Sounds like nonsense. I've been thoroughly bemused by the design intentions of this game from the start and I don't think I'm the only one.
 
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@Rune It still doesn't add up - would one really want to play a game where they'd dumped 100,000 (or however many people one might expect to play the MMO bit) empty houses into the landscape intended for a play style you aren't even playing. Sounds like nonsense. I've been thoroughly bemused by the design intentions of this game from the start and I don't think I'm the only one.

many of your comments seem to indicate that you haven't read anything other then other posters on this site or small newsbits. You want to know more you have to go to their site and readup on it.

Really, it adds up since the way they are doing the maps is an overland map where you zoom in at areas(hexes) so in the single player mode or mp they can just expand out into the hexes around the city, which like it or not would not affect you in the slightest since you A) would not see it in single player and B) MP just don't go to the hex.

I don't think you are the only one who hasn't read much on the game or ignored any of the stuff other then housing.
 
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Have you ever played a game where you had to type to chat with NPCs? I have played one and it can be annoying, but not in term of time. This kind of system can be limited in term of sentence recognition and, well, spelling mistakes. Making some exchange tedious if you are unsure how to ask for something. Although, it's great for immersion.

I still think that Daggerfall did it better with the bazillion of questions you could ask to all the mindless NPCs.

Yeah, I agree with you here. They have touched on it, that the old game we played tended to be simplistic in what you could type. I can only assume that like everything else in gaming that this area can be much more in depth.
 
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They have shown the dialog system in videos and it looks much more dynamic and you shouldn't have the issue on trying to find out what you need to say. I think that with the travel being all on an overland map and that houses are in other hexes then on map travel locations should make having however many houses that are needed a non-issue since normally you would only see houses in cities and your own house unless you enter into random blank areas on the map.
 
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Have you ever played a game where you had to type to chat with NPCs? I have played one and it can be annoying, but not in term of time. This kind of system can be limited in term of sentence recognition and, well, spelling mistakes.

Some players are complaining about the dialogue wheel, some are complaining about the dialogue with too few options and now some are complaining about the typed in dialogue. There is no such thing as pleasing everybody.
 
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