Shroud of the Avatar: Interview with Starr Long at IHateMMORPGs
In one of the most excellently-formatted interviews I believe I have ever seen online, Miguelito at IHateMMORPGs chats with Shroud of the Avatar executive producer Starr Long about his history at Origin Systems, modern MMORPGs, his favourite games, and of course the game he is currently working on.
Here’s a taste or two:
Miguelito: Shroud of the Avatar’s progression system is classless. Are there skill cap limitations to promote specialization and cooperation, or is it a ‘capless’ (EvE-like) system where everyone ultimately can do everything?
Starr Long: While the progression system is classless we will still have levels so you will have a finite number of points to spend on skills based on your level. This will indeed require some specialization and cooperation. However since you can have any mix of skills you will be able to play different roles depending on who you are grouped with so that specialization can vary from adventure to adventure.
Miguelito: In Ultima Online, there was a very real meta-game to bag arrangement/theft-prevention. A classical (and cumbersome) free-form bag system in Shroud of the Avatar is going to baffle many younger gamers. I suppose my question is, will there be a purpose, like UO, other than being retro for the sake of being retro?
Starr Long: The bag debate is a big deal on the team and we continue to go back and forth on it. As you mention there is a real meta-game to bag arrangement but that comes at a cost that some consider very tedious. At this time we are still not decided if we are going to have the free form system or if we will ultimately end up grid based. If we do go grid based, some folks have threatened to do a kickstarter for a game that is only about bag management. 🙂
I would totally back a bag management game if it allowed me to use the well-known Ultima 6 capacity trick as well.
Looks like a genius was responsible for this.
Um…thanks!
They really keep being contradictory. I mean we were basically told the game would have both freeform inventory *and* grid based one and you could choose which one you like most, but Starr says it’ll be one or the other depending on what they choose.
They said they were investigating both, and it would be easy to add the option to switch between them, but nothing was final. They really need to pick one over the other, because the ability to switch between them defeats the purpose of each.
Personally, I prefer a freeform inventory, with perhaps a search function to find a specific item in the inventory and pop it to your cursor.
I don’t see how having both defeats any purpose really – it just allows people to choose how they prefer. As a matter of UO has had both since Stygian Abyss, and both works fin without impeding to the other system.
Ultima Online only has both options today because they cut off its balls with Trammel. If they had a grid system in early UO, thieves would have had free reign to steal anything they wanted.
Sure, a grid based system would have meant hell in early UO, but that’s not my point. (SOTA ain’t gonna have any form of freeform thievery anyway.)
The point is having both freeform inventory and grid inventory works fine in UO now, so there’s no reason it wouldn’t work in SOTA. And let’s face it: after seeing it at work in that tech demo that’d be immensively dissapointing is SOTA didn’t use this freeform inventory.