Mythic community manager Gene Makely dropped a pretty significant information bomb in a thread on the official Ultima Forever forums recently, in response to some fan misgivings about the development and direction of the game.

There’s actually a fair bit of information in the post, but this is probably the most significant change that Mythic will be making to the game in the next major update to it:

Looking ahead, we have a forthcoming change in the next update that will further mitigate the “sting” of repair costs: Worn items will no longer be degraded as a result of combat damage. Instead, gear has a chance to be damaged only upon player death.

The repair costs associated with gear damage have been a bit of a sticking point for many people who have played the game, and have probably been the leading source of accusations that the game’s free-to-play mechanics amount to a “pay to win” model. The removal of this aspect of gameplay will hopefully put to rest that claim, as well as make it easier for those who wish to play Ultima Forever casually to do so for free.

Of course, not all is roses: Makely goes on to reveal that there will be no level cap increase in the coming update, and gives a very good summary of the sheer volume of development work required to effect that sort of change in the game. It is not a simple change, by any means!

This is also a good bit of fodder for further discussion, I think:

Story Depth

As mentioned a few times previously, we have sought throughout the development process to remain true to the “Ultima ideal”, and have struggled to find a balance between paying the appropriate homage to the franchise, while still being our own game, and being accessible to the mobile market. Ultima Forever has often been touted as something of a hybrid between an MMO and a mobile game, and this was actually part of the excitement attached to developing the project for many of us: we could bring the world of Ultima to a larger-scale audience, on a completely different platform. That also came with its own set of necessary compromises, as we also wanted to be as accessible to today’s mobile gamers as possible. As such, we chose to incorporate a little more of a linear design than we might otherwise have chosen. For some, this meant that our game wasn’t going to be the Ultima experience that they may have been used to from previous Ultima games (less depth, etc.).

Discuss.