Solo vs Multiplayer (Feedback from my R12 play)

I love the idea that the intent is to play this game solo or multiplayer. Here is my feedback with regards to that.

Please keep in mind the following details about myself:

• I joined at the tail end of R11 and only could play it a couple of days
• I've played the entire Ultima series growing up and revel at the thought of getting immersed in a game like that again - I really would like to see it happen
• I played UO extensively primarily as a Mage or Archer and when I got a bit bored I found new fun in anti-pk and pk hunting
• I played Everquest extensively
• then I had kids.... (thus now have very limited time to game - in fact, no time until I saw SoTa and have tried to make some time in late hours of the night)
• I'm by no means an avid gamer - I've watched some streams on twitch of people playing League of Ledgends and WoW and it blows me away at how those games appear to have become like the arcade Gauntlet series. I'm not at all looking for that kind of play
• my current plan for SoTa is to play the story line at least solo first, then look for continued adventuring opportunties (which are not required in the story line and can't be accomplished solo) afterwards (or perhaps in the middle of).

Thus far in R12 I've primarily played solo. There are several reasons for this:

1. I find the Multiplayer aspect of modern MMO's including SoTa is very detracting from game immersion. I have recently found myself playing single player online just to avoid these things and try to enjoy the scenery. I can think of several reasons and some possible solutions:
   • Player Names vs NPC names: I want to play the questing aspects of the game therefore I sometimes want to be able to easily see the NPC names. However I don't care to see the vast quantity of immature names people pick for themselves, or the 50 character long guild names, or the PvP acronyms. Some suggestions here: Allow an option for showing NPC names, but not player names. Allow that option to be toggled on/off (as it is now) or just trigger for say 5 seconds then fade away (as I think it was for UO originally). Instead of tagging people with PvP just color their name or come up with some other visual nuance (a glow or coloring that can be turned on/off?). As far as the childish player name choices there likely isn't anything that can be done about this - many games have tried through intelligent filters, auto name pickers (which are always a choice and not mandated), and name moderation (which is just too much overhead for the creators).
   • In town PvP: Why does that make any sense at all? Its distracting and annoying to the PvE players and you 'have' created specific areas for that (which of course don't get used, b/c you can fight just anywhere). The 'dueling' feature doesn't help - its just another way to fight in town. Perhaps if there is some story enhancing event that can be allowed temporarily but I don't feel that PvP should be allowed in towns where guards are present. Additionally this town battling creates a ton of 'noise' both audible and spam that detract from the great music and sound effects of the town.
2. the chat system is just plain horrible. I have a difficult time being able to peg what the problems are - I just keep thinking, wow I don't remember it being so difficult to communicate with people in UO or Everquest which had wildly different chat systems. I think the biggest issues for me with the current chat system are:
   • there are focus issues. Very often I've found myself with the keyboard focus on chat when I didn't want it to be and visa versa. I think any click in the chat window should focus the chat text-box as otherwise its just too small to constantly be clicking. I think any click outside of the chat window should unfocus it. Maybe those two changes alone would make for a better experience
   • there are spam issues. I realize that you can create tabs and toggle the various kinds of msgs that appear but this doesn't appear to be enough. If I'm in a battle, or crawl, I want to see combat messages yet I still want to not miss that occasional holler from someone I know online. Perhaps messages should have some sort of a timeout or scroll delay such that private messages persist the longest, party next, local next, and combat last. This way a private message would start floating to the top of the window, while combat chatter fades away more quickly and you don't have to go and keep switching tabs looking to see if someone is trying to talk to you.
3. Difficulty Soloing: While I hope this will be resolved through continued tuning the current game seems to be difficult to play solo as some class types (I will post another thread with my feedback on pros and cons of playing various class styles based on my experience thus far). I'm currently trying to tackle the Ravensmoor Liche lord (because I have been more or less asked to do so in a quest). This particular quest seems like it is very possibly linked to the main story line. I have spent many hours now trying to complete this and I just haven't figured out how. I can make it all the way to the bottom where he is, but either I can't handle the pressure of him and his 5 or so skeleton helpers, or I haven't figured out how to control their respawning (if I kill a few of them then rest down the hall they just respawn in the few minutes I'm gone - this is completely inconsistent with the rest of the dungeon which appears to be an instanced dungeon with no respawn, which I like). While I think it would be a complete shame to make every aspect of this game solo-able, I would also hate to see the story line extremely difficult to solo (the whole die, rinse repeat aspect is not very immersive - you should be able to retreat within an ounce of your life, heal, re-strategize). I'm hoping that there are epic battles that can be participated in that are perhaps part of the story line but not required to complete solo.
4. There is no facility for finding a group: I don't have much time to look for a group or contribute in a group for long period of time thus grouping has just meant grinding in one area, which isn't very fun for me. My limited non-scheduled hours means I'm probably not going to find the same people to group with often. I don't really have the time or interest in joining a guild where I'm spending a ton of time chatting with people in other out-of-band applications or modes. It would be nice if there were some place you could go to find like-minded people who are currently looking for a group for an adventure. I could see this implemented with in-game bulletin boards that act as some sort of real-time chat interface, an NPC that offers the same features, or some dedicated chat channel in the chat window.

I hope this feedback is helpful and thought-out. I'm excited to see what changes are to come!

- Tim

 

Really good observations here.