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This paragraph resonated with me: The complexity of the world model was such that Ultima VI became the first installment that would let the player get a job to

by scott_s 10y ago

This paragraph resonated with me: The complexity of the world model was such that Ultima VI became the first installment that would let the player get a job to earn money in lieu of the standard CRPG approach of killing monsters and taking their loot. You can buy a sack of grain from a local farmer, take the grain to a mill and grind it into flour, then sell the flour to a baker — or sneak into his bakery at night to bake your own bread using his oven. Even by the standards of today, the living world inside Ultima VI is a remarkable achievement — not to mention a godsend to those of us bored with killing monsters; you can be very successful in Ultima VI whilst doing very little killing at all. I got into western RPGs only recently - I played only JRPGs on the SNES and then later consoles. My first western RPG was Mass Effect 2, and since then I played ME3, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Skyrim. When playing Skyrim, I realized that the wolf pelts I was accumulating by killing wolves as I walked the countryside could be smithed into leather armor! That leather armor would fetch considerably more money when sold than wolf pelts. My first thought: I found a cheat to more money! My second thought: I found a business.

Swizec 10y ago
Similarly, in high school me and my friends discovered that the best combination of accounts for UO is to have a miner blacksmith and an adventurer of some sort. The miner spends time getting ore, making gear, and selling it to town merchants or other players. You then use this money to fund your adventurer so he can buy good gear from other players who have better miner blackmiths than you do. Minerblacksmith characters were always the richest. There was like a serious economy running on the servers I played. It was great.
- egfx 10y ago
  Another way to get rich in UO was waiting for a rune shop to decay. The economy was amazing and unforgiving like that.
- sireat 10y ago
  Being a maxed miner battle mage was a blast. You would be merrily mining away in some cave when some unsavory types would come along for the seemingly easy pickings from the poor miners in rags. Little could they suspect that there was the best plate armor(forgot what it was called) under those rags. Corp Por Corp Por!
QSIITurbo 10y ago
The menial tasks you can do in these games were a mistake in my opinion. For example, the overly complex UI in Ultima Underworld and Ultima VII was more or less just to facilitate the use of these items that you maybe spent 1% of your gaming time on (fishing, putting fuel into light sources, baking bread, selling them, yay! Who gives a crap). UW could have been a real forerunner if it had had a simple mouselook with streamlined combat and without the useless complexity. Modern games have given up on that for which I am very grateful. Diablo and Black Isle games were the real forerunners in the KISS principle that revitalised the dying 2D RPGs.
- Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
  It's a matter of taste I guess. For me, that kind of details improve immersion, which is a big deal regardless of whether I spend more or less time in them. Better immersion is precisely one of the reasons why I prefer Ultima Underworld to Diablo (not really a RPG) or Fallout.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  It wouldn't have killed them to throw in a few crates.
- buzzybee 10y ago
  It's definitely a different taste in what folks want out of their RPG. Being able to bake bread and stack crates is exciting as a "world of possibilities" sort of deal, but it's also narratively dissonant from going on a big adventure where you are the Hero. It sucks up a lot of time and once you're done, you've forgotten what the adventure was about - kind of proving the point Sid Meier took home from Covert Action. However, at the time, again, it was definitely something new and different. Games in the 80's were more often conceived of as puzzles to solve, rather than worlds to explore: adding lots of surface detail was how Garriott perceived possibilities for immersion. A lot of games followed similar-yet-different paths of piling on stuff that made the games tedious in the early 90's. By the middle of the decade people were calling the whole genre dead, which is hyperbolic, of course, but reflective of the move towards streamlining and thinking about UX across the whole design, which left "traditional-looking" games out in the cold.
notgood 10y ago
Then the game becomes a little too realistic and the lack of wolves creates a over-supply of beavers which in turn screw up the sources of water for the villages and then you are prosecuted for the death of a lot of cattle by dehydration but you get away with it by bribing the judge; so _now_ you can say you are definitely a business.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Or the villagers do the usual thing, and recruit a hero to go after the "bad guy."
samstave 10y ago
OK - You must play Knights and Merchants. Its a game from 1997 - and someone on HN linked to an updated version that is coming out/out now but... You need to play the original bugged 1997 game as the macro-economics are so much fun; Y have to built a stone masons hut to get stone Have to build a wood cutters hut to cut lumber You have to build farms to get wheat Have to build a farm for pigs etc but you have to build out serfs who have to build the roads and then ferry all the goods back and forth between each business the fun part happens when your little village reaches around 100 serfs and the AI fails and all your population starts starving to death because the serfs attempt to go to the Inn to get food/beer/wine (which you have to make that supply chain) but there is no food because the village is to big and your little serfs start going HNNNNGGGG and evaporating... plus its multy-player and the challenge is fun when youre trying so hard to build your little village and the oponent comes in with lie ONE freaking soldier and can take out your whole village because you dont have enough resources to make weapons or armor or gold or you ran out of coal.... its a blast. frustrating, but fun, blast... give it a try http://www.knights.de/ http://www.knights.de/
- throwanem 10y ago
  Sounds like Dwarf Fortress!

by scott_s 10y ago

Swizec 10y ago

Similarly, in high school me and my friends discovered that the best combination of accounts for UO is to have a miner blacksmith and an adventurer of some sort. The miner spends time getting ore, making gear, and selling it to town merchants or other players. You then use this money to fund your adventurer so he can buy good gear from other players who have better miner blackmiths than you do. Minerblacksmith characters were always the richest. There was like a serious economy running on the servers I played. It was great.

egfx 10y ago
Another way to get rich in UO was waiting for a rune shop to decay. The economy was amazing and unforgiving like that.
sireat 10y ago
Being a maxed miner battle mage was a blast. You would be merrily mining away in some cave when some unsavory types would come along for the seemingly easy pickings from the poor miners in rags. Little could they suspect that there was the best plate armor(forgot what it was called) under those rags. Corp Por Corp Por!

QSIITurbo 10y ago

The menial tasks you can do in these games were a mistake in my opinion. For example, the overly complex UI in Ultima Underworld and Ultima VII was more or less just to facilitate the use of these items that you maybe spent 1% of your gaming time on (fishing, putting fuel into light sources, baking bread, selling them, yay! Who gives a crap). UW could have been a real forerunner if it had had a simple mouselook with streamlined combat and without the useless complexity. Modern games have given up on that for which I am very grateful. Diablo and Black Isle games were the real forerunners in the KISS principle that revitalised the dying 2D RPGs.

Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
It's a matter of taste I guess. For me, that kind of details improve immersion, which is a big deal regardless of whether I spend more or less time in them. Better immersion is precisely one of the reasons why I prefer Ultima Underworld to Diablo (not really a RPG) or Fallout.
ourmandave 10y ago
It wouldn't have killed them to throw in a few crates.
buzzybee 10y ago
It's definitely a different taste in what folks want out of their RPG. Being able to bake bread and stack crates is exciting as a "world of possibilities" sort of deal, but it's also narratively dissonant from going on a big adventure where you are the Hero. It sucks up a lot of time and once you're done, you've forgotten what the adventure was about - kind of proving the point Sid Meier took home from Covert Action. However, at the time, again, it was definitely something new and different. Games in the 80's were more often conceived of as puzzles to solve, rather than worlds to explore: adding lots of surface detail was how Garriott perceived possibilities for immersion. A lot of games followed similar-yet-different paths of piling on stuff that made the games tedious in the early 90's. By the middle of the decade people were calling the whole genre dead, which is hyperbolic, of course, but reflective of the move towards streamlining and thinking about UX across the whole design, which left "traditional-looking" games out in the cold.

notgood 10y ago

Then the game becomes a little too realistic and the lack of wolves creates a over-supply of beavers which in turn screw up the sources of water for the villages and then you are prosecuted for the death of a lot of cattle by dehydration but you get away with it by bribing the judge; so _now_ you can say you are definitely a business.

CamperBob2 10y ago
Or the villagers do the usual thing, and recruit a hero to go after the "bad guy."

samstave 10y ago

OK - You must play Knights and Merchants. Its a game from 1997 - and someone on HN linked to an updated version that is coming out/out now but... You need to play the original bugged 1997 game as the macro-economics are so much fun; Y have to built a stone masons hut to get stone Have to build a wood cutters hut to cut lumber You have to build farms to get wheat Have to build a farm for pigs etc but you have to build out serfs who have to build the roads and then ferry all the goods back and forth between each business the fun part happens when your little village reaches around 100 serfs and the AI fails and all your population starts starving to death because the serfs attempt to go to the Inn to get food/beer/wine (which you have to make that supply chain) but there is no food because the village is to big and your little serfs start going HNNNNGGGG and evaporating... plus its multy-player and the challenge is fun when youre trying so hard to build your little village and the oponent comes in with lie ONE freaking soldier and can take out your whole village because you dont have enough resources to make weapons or armor or gold or you ran out of coal.... its a blast. frustrating, but fun, blast... give it a try http://www.knights.de/ http://www.knights.de/

throwanem 10y ago
Sounds like Dwarf Fortress!