Company News Molyneux talking crazy again

[Binary]

It's hilarious that Ultima VII was brought up, as if no other game with a point-and-click interface didn't have the player characters performing context-sensitive actions.

I didn't bring up Ultima VII because no other game with a point-and-click interface had context-sensitive actions. I mentioned it because it was a rather elegantly designed user interface that allowed a two-button mouse to give the player all of the options he or she needed to interact with the game world. And Ultima VII offered a level of interactivity that is generally unmatched by any other game, 14 years later.

Let's just be honest about this: U7 is THE RPG that others have tried to compare themselves to, and match.

IMHO twice they could have made it (Darksun 2 & Faery Tale Adventures 2), but in the end, they fell short.

Good call on mentioning context-sensitive actions. It's just a tip of the iceberg of all the great things U7 had.

Oh, and made 14 years ago, U7 still stands as the only 100% full screen RPG ever (no menus whatsoever on screen).

 

[Lumpy]

It would either turn a game into a reload-fest or a God-like mode. Awesome.

And why would it become one?
How do current RPGs work? You hit the enemy with your weapon doing random damage each time, and drink some potions when your health is low, until the enemy dies, or you die. If you die, you reload. You have a big chance of defeating an opponent weaker than you, an average chance of defeating one equal to you, and a small chance of defeating one that is stronger than you.
How would it be different with this one hit kills system? More skilled characters are likely to defeat less skilled opponents in a swordfight. It's not worse, it's just different.

What he's basically suggesting is that we should have arcade or atari gameplay where you get 3 lives and die from one hit and badly timed jumps.

What he's basically suggesting is that you run through a two dimensional world jumping on turtles and snails.
Where the fuck did you get that idea from? He's suggesting nothing like that.

 

[Keldryn]

Let's just be honest about this: U7 is THE RPG that others have tried to compare themselves to, and match.

IMHO twice they could have made it (Darksun 2 & Faery Tale Adventures 2), but in the end, they fell short.

Good call on mentioning context-sensitive actions. It's just a tip of the iceberg of all the great things U7 had.

Oh, and made 14 years ago, U7 still stands as the only 100% full screen RPG ever (no menus whatsoever on screen).

Yeah, Ultima VII does stand head and shoulders above most games that were released after it. It lacks a few modern conveniences, but Exult takes care of a lot of that. Design-wise, there aren't a lot of complaints that I could make about it, other than the atrocious combat system.

Ultima VII is what we were trying to match with Ultima V: Lazarus. I think the team got pretty close, although the engine itself put a lot of limitations on how interactive we could make the world.

 

[Keldryn]

And why would it become one?
How do current RPGs work? You hit the enemy with your weapon doing random damage each time, and drink some potions when your health is low, until the enemy dies, or you die. If you die, you reload. You have a big chance of defeating an opponent weaker than you, an average chance of defeating one equal to you, and a small chance of defeating one that is stronger than you.
How would it be different with this one hit kills system? More skilled characters are likely to defeat less skilled opponents in a swordfight. It's not worse, it's just different.

I don't actually see a game where you can't "die" as so much of a bad thing... if you die, you just reload your last saved game. And if the player can just reload, then dying isn't really much of a penalty. Unless you can turn on a "hardcore" mode where you get one savegame and dying deletes your character and makes you start over. I don't think enough people would want to play a game that way to make it worth investing the time and money into developing such a mode.

The Ultima games -- at least the middle games from IV through VII Part 2 -- featured an essentially immortal Avatar PC. Your companions could die, but if the main PC died, (s)he would simply be either resurrected by Lord British (IV, VI), one of the Monks (Serpent Isle), or would be conveniently found by Elizabeth & Abraham (VII) and returned to Paws. Depending on the game, I think that there might have been a slight loss of XP. Planescape: Torment returned you to the mortuary if you died (IIRC), but that was also a part of the story. Dragon Quest VIII resurrects your party at the last church you visited, minus half of your gold.

I'm not sure why not being able to permanently die (thus ending the game and forcing a reload) is considered any worse than being able to reload your game a dozen times and try out different approaches to one challenge. A system that doesn't have permanent death, but penalizes "death" slightly -- but not so much that every player will automatically re-load -- is better, in my opinion, than one that just ends the game and forces a reload.

 

[Binary]

The Ultima games -- at least the middle games from IV through VII Part 2 -- featured an essentially immortal Avatar PC. Your companions could die, but if the main PC died, (s)he would simply be either resurrected by Lord British (IV, VI), one of the Monks (Serpent Isle), or would be conveniently found by Elizabeth & Abraham (VII) and returned to Paws. Depending on the game, I think that there might have been a slight loss of XP.

The above is 99% accurate, but let me add that in U7 you can actually die and need a reload: try to steal something in Trinsic before the copy protection

Regarding the loss of XP, yes it existed on U4-U6. In U5 (and I think in U4 too), you didn't lose xp if your karma was high enough.

In U5 it's actually nice to lose xp and levels! Every time you level up your statistics go up. When you lose a level your statistics do not go down! So rinse and repeat!

I'm not sure why not being able to permanently die (thus ending the game and forcing a reload) is considered any worse than being able to reload your game a dozen times and try out different approaches to one challenge. A system that doesn't have permanent death, but penalizes "death" slightly -- but not so much that every player will automatically re-load -- is better, in my opinion, than one that just ends the game and forces a reload.

Let's be honest: even in U7 a death always forced a reload. Are you actually going to get teleported all the way along the map? Not to forget that sometimes RPCs lose items when they are killed in combat and resurrected (due to the feature of dropping-items-when-fleeing).

 

[errorcode]

ahem....

FUCK YOU MOLYNUEX

that is all

 

[Vault Dweller]

errorcode! You are alive! It's been like forever, man. Nice to see you.

 

[errorcode]

Hey Dweller, i still lurk but i've been balls-deep in a new project. My spidey-senses alerted me that the hack molyneux was being discussed around here and i felt the need to come and insert my verbose and in-depth opinion on the matter.

If ya'll get bored and want to wander over to see what exactly i'm sacrificing braincells and small, furry critters to head to http://www.burningsea.com