|
Kchama posted:As someone who played it at the time, it was absolutely buggy and unfinished all over, especially Serpent Isle. I played it too. There were a few bugs, some design decisions were questionable, and if you didn't have a 25mhz machine it chugged when there was a lot of stuff on screen. On the other hand the graphics were incredible, the story was good, and for the most part it was fun. Maybe you played an earlier version than I did, I dunno.
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2022 05:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 23:24 |
|
|
I said come in! posted:https://twitter.com/RichardGarriott/status/1572303133849817088?s=20&t=zD6VXaaT4RHH00jdRVG-Zw https://twitter.com/Psykhophear/status/1572131736569679873 Ultima 8? Rich colours?! 
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2022 06:51
|
|
|
I said come in! posted:https://twitter.com/RichardGarriott/status/1572303133849817088?s=20&t=zD6VXaaT4RHH00jdRVG-Zw Thank you for sharing his tweets, fucker blocked me for reasons I honestly can't remember. Probably mocking him being basically a total failure for years and years.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2022 06:59
|
|
|
Ultima 9 should have just been Ultima Online single player version. Sort of like Ultima 7, which was before UO anyways.
Node fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Oct 7, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2022 09:51
|
|
|
Lum let us know when your NDA drops so you can really fill us in on this boondoggle.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2022 08:51
|
|
|
Rhymenoserous posted:Lum let us know when your NDA drops so you can really fill us in on this boondoggle. Eh, it's hard to quantify when NDAs expire for companies that no longer exist, but it all mostly amounts to wild scope creep - trying to make a $50+ million MMO with a $5 million budget results in things like one person implementing the entire NPC dialogue and quests for 3/4 of the game. Plus a lot of frankly stupid decisions were nailed in stone early by a stakeholder (ie Richard or Chris) insisting on it (such as the dialogue system - Richard was absolutely married to the text parser years after it was obvious it wasn't going to work, was convinced it would be as good as Siri or something and then would spend days dictating how one NPC should respond to random questions about food). I wanted to rip the whole thing out and put in a dialogue tree system like literally every other RPG on the planet and was a few days from doing that when we all got told to get out. I mean, all of this was obvious to any outside observer, and add to that the (frankly justified, given the levels of funding changing hands) entitlement of some of the player base meant it was always going to launch headlong into a brick wall. Then when it was obvious it was never going to make any money back most of the dev team was let go and from that point on it became Chris' hobby project (almost no designers or artists were kept after the layoffs, so very little new content was ever going to appear). I haven't had any direct contact with anyone involved since the layoffs in 2018 so for the past few years have been just watching from the sidelines like everyone else. Wish I could say I was surprised about the NFT game but well, there's a lot of stupid money in that space (or was).
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2022 17:51
|
|
|
I think Richard Garriotts new web3 game Iron & Magic might already be dead. I was trying to find their website but it just links to a Facebook page that was last updated in July.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2022 23:14
|
|
|
Popete posted:I think Richard Garriotts new web3 game Iron & Magic might already be dead. I was trying to find their website but it just links to a Facebook page that was last updated in July. This article is hilarious: https://mmofallout.com/rantcakes-iron-magic-is-money-first-game-never/ quote:Iron & Magic leverages blockchain and NFT along with Lord British’s experience in selling overpriced digital land plots to people, as well as pulling off ridiculous publicity stunts, with Garriott’s other talents in abandoning unfinished games and leaving investors high and dry to be put in the back pocket for a few years from now when he abandons the unfinished ship like he did with Shroud of the Avatar. Where’s episode 2-5, Rich? Where are the signed Tracy Hickman novels people paid the $500 tier for? Where’s the legal accountability to SeedInvest or your other investors? Oh yeah, Lord British went out for ye old cigarettes and never returned.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2022 00:00
|
|
|
I can't wait to spend hundreds of dollars for nothing all over again.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2022 07:35
|
|
|
Node posted:I can't wait to spend hundreds of dollars for nothing all over again. Hundreds? That is baby levels, barely a backer even, for Garriot/Roberts level crowd-scams. Err crowd-funds.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2022 22:13
|
|
|
I wish I could laugh at Garriott's stupid NFT tweets. But he actually blocked me after I mocked Shroud pf the Avatar. Thin-skinned fucker ain't he?
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2022 01:48
|
|
|
I think at this point LB is basically "give me $500 and I'll put my name on anything." Kinda like Neverdie, except that Garriott was actually relevant at one point. It's almost a shame... 40 years ago when he was just a dude making games on his own, from what I heard he was a decent guy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2022 02:44
|
|
|
Gynovore posted:I think at this point LB is basically "give me $500 and I'll put my name on anything." Kinda like Neverdie, except that Garriott was actually relevant at one point. Capitalism is a cursed object. If you are one of the few who manage to use it to get rich it will turn you into an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2022 03:04
|
|
|
Hi SOTA thread! I love this thread. It's a time capsule of my hopes and dreams working for my 1990s-era heroes being crushed into a fine paste, sprinkled over noodles, and served to someone who paid $7000 for an ugly airship. Anyway, guess what! https://getpangaea.com/ Huh, looks like any other web3 "game" being announced, wonder who's working on it... https://getpangaea.com/About-us/ oh god, what https://getpangaea.com/About-Project-Rise/What-Project-Rise-is-and-isnt/#wbb1 surely no one is putting money into this https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/540043-03#funding whyyyyyyyyyyy
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 20:04
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:Hi SOTA thread! I love this thread. It's a time capsule of my hopes and dreams working for my 1990s-era heroes being crushed into a fine paste, sprinkled over noodles, and served to someone who paid $7000 for an ugly airship. lol I got a kick out of reading this post and then seeing who was posting it when I was a kid I used to read your site all the time while playing whatever MMO was big and now I'm old too I ended up on this forum because of people referencing it on your message boards!
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 20:11
|
|
|
They need more squirrels on their team.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 20:30
|
|
|
What does "session based" mean in this context?
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 23:09
|
|
|
Node posted:What does "session based" mean in this context? Usually means you match into a game, like league or overwatch or something.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 23:30
|
|
|
I don't know who Joe Scott and Chris Spears are and their names are so generic that I'm not sorting through Google but I feel comfortable saying if they got rid of those two and just kept the squirrels I would back this project, even though it's going to be an extraction shooter and never see the light of day.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2024 23:51
|
|
|
Chris Spears is the guy who took over SotA after Garriott wrung all the money from it. I think he was the community manager or something like that before.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 00:22
|
|
|
Joe Scott is from DeMeta which was the web3 crypto gaming company doing "Iron and Magic" for the approximately 3 weeks it was in active development.jabro posted:Chris Spears is the guy who took over SotA after Garriott wrung all the money from it. I think he was the community manager or something like that before. lol. No, he was the CTO and also the lead gameplay designer by default (Garriott was concerned more with story and random tangents he'd go off on; my job was 90% enabling those random tangents and story ideas). He came up with the deck system, did all the game balancing, and for good measure did a couple of dungeons (The Rise, Castle Atos). If you got mad about something in game not involving real money, it's a good chance it was his fault. He also was absolutely a true believer in the game (why not, it was literally his game in terms of gameplay) and that's why he ended up owning it. No clue why he handed it off to someone else later as I don't talk to him any more. Lum_ fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Feb 13, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 00:31
|
|
|
Oh crap. My memory on all this worse than I thought. Thank you for the clarification.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 00:42
|
|
|
So like already right off the bat this project has scam vibes written all over it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 02:38
|
|
|
My favorite chris spears memory was asking in a livestream what the plans were to fix the issues with aggro and him just being baffled like, "uh, aggro's working very well!" Bear in mind, there was effectively zero grouping more sophisticated than zerging down mobs in the game at the time so I'm not sure how he came to that conclusion. Among the awesome issues the aggro system had, there was an ability like the priest "fade" ability in wow- it'd dump aggro. Only, it did it by applying a debuff to a single targetted mob, and it would break on damage. Any damage. I worked out that taunting a mob that another player had Faded actually provided a net negative in terms of keeping the mob off the Faded player.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 03:39
|
|
|
Actually those guys really loving hated people playing together. The only worthwhile combat activity in terms of loot for the game's entire lifespan was mining silver in some high-yield places that spawned a lot of mobs to defend the silver nodes, and they decided that people were getting too much silver by grouping so they made it so that the silver veins wouldn't respawn on a reasonable timespan if you weren't soloing them. EDIT: Silver was really valued because all the gear was player-crafted, but it all sucked no matter what you did, but there was a period of time where players hadn't seen high-level enchants yet because leveling enchanting required like 10s of thousands of silver so people were sucking it out of the economy rapidly in hopes that there would be some way to make gear that wasn't dogshit (there wasn't)
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 03:41
|
|
|
The squirrels are too good for that game
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 04:27
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:Huh, looks like any other web3 "game" being announced, wonder who's working on it... Man... they hired a lot of squirrels for this.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 04:35
|
|
|
Do you think the engineers are fake to get investors? Or worse, do they actually exist and are hiding from the shame of being associated with a web3/nft grift later?
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 06:56
|
|
|
cmdrk posted:Do you think the engineers are fake to get investors? Or worse, do they actually exist and are hiding from the shame of being associated with a web3/nft grift later? Both; it's a scam and they haven't hired anyone yet to do the token "look like we're doing work" stuff, but won't find anyone willing to do the job because it's an obvious scam
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 07:07
|
|
|
Not wanting to be publicly associated with Spears is also a consideration. There are some members of the "fan base" for SoTA that are seriously insane. I don't mean goon-style posting on boards weird crap insane, I mean restraining order levels of insanity.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 16:23
|
|
|
BattleMaster posted:Both; it's a scam and they haven't hired anyone yet to do the token "look like we're doing work" stuff, but won't find anyone willing to do the job because it's an obvious scam I would absolutely work for an obvious scam since I wouldn't have to do anything. I would collect make-work money publicly and proudly.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 20:23
|
|
|
Scam outfits generally don't pay their staff towards the end of the grift.
|
|
#
?
Feb 13, 2024 22:12
|
|
|
30.5 Days posted:I would absolutely work for an obvious scam since I wouldn't have to do anything. I would collect make-work money publicly and proudly. lum alt spotted
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2024 16:42
|
|
|
if only i spent those years doing nothing. it takes a lot of work to write all the dialogue for a bad game!
|
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2024 22:56
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:if only i spent those years doing nothing. it takes a lot of work to write all the dialogue for a bad game! What are you doing nowadays? I'm so sorry that you had to work with Richard Garriot at one point. He sounds like a completely insufferable rear end in a top hat to be around.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2024 02:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 19, 2024 23:24 |
|
|
I said come in! posted:What are you doing nowadays? I'm so sorry that you had to work with Richard Garriot at one point. He sounds like a completely insufferable rear end in a top hat to be around. I'd rather not talk about what I'm doing now and I'm pretty much done with trying to work in design unless it's my own project. Garriott is only insufferable from a distance. He's extremely charismatic in person; like Steve Jobs he has a Reality Distortion Field(tm) where he can lie right to your face and you just smile and nod because he's just so goshdarn likeable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2024 16:16
|
|