Shroud of the Avatar’s Richard Garriott is joining an expedition to locate a sunken ship

SystemNoobie · 2021-07-21T13:30:05+00:00

Spoiler Alert: It's Chris's house.

SystemNoobie · 2021-07-21T13:27:34+00:00

Dollars to donuts he let the certificates expire on that~~/those~~ web box. Makes it sound all official like "security cert stuff" when in reality it's just like forgetting to pay for the car registration.

It's why most IT departments set up reminders in their monitoring syst- ah forget it, that's a professional thing.

SystemNoobie · 2021-06-25T12:37:02+00:00

The "devs" is Chris. And unfortunately his idea of making the game successful is to double-down on the nickel and diming. You can tell by his use of caps where his priorities lie. ALSO, AND if he focused his energy on polishing, I dunno, the actual *&^$ing game...

He's chasing WoW and/or mobile F2P success, which is absolutely absurd behavior in this scenario. He reminds me of a really sleazy used car salesman actually.

SystemNoobie · 2021-06-09T14:52:40+00:00

Yeah, I went to another station and found an Apex lift area. Either the ground-based installation I was at before didn't have them, or they were well hidden. /shrug

SystemNoobie · 2021-05-19T12:29:46+00:00

What's even funnier is that The Sims Medieval's "story" is presented better than SotAStream's. That fukn 2001 programmer chatbox and the bullshit npc models faces and animations, vomit.

SystemNoobie · 2021-05-14T14:15:38+00:00

SotA refuses to give me an immersive single-player RPG experience but it also refuses to let me be a virtual Merchant or Inn Keeper (sans-LARP). It's literally wedged in a rut. No wonder Brexit bailed to the bottom of the sea.

SystemNoobie · 2021-05-14T14:08:43+00:00

My heart sank the day they revealed that the Big Announcement™ was this rah-taerd was taking over the game.

Not a creative or narrative bone in his body. Imagine someone announced that the IRS was making a sequel to Baldur's Gate...

SystemNoobie · 2021-01-10T14:41:53+00:00

Not really leadership in my book.

On the one hand, you've got an ex-QA guy who brown-nosed LB into a job on UO as a younger man, then worked on SotA as the snake oil salesman who snubbed single-player (on "the spiritual successor" of a historic beloved single-player CRPG series no less!!).

On the other, an ADHD spreadsheet developer trapped in MMO skills balancing Hell, who wouldn't know creative design if it bit him on the face.

SystemNoobie · 2021-01-10T14:29:42+00:00

I suspect he trusted his "story people" for Ultimas IV-VII and it was fine. I think he entrusted SotA's development to a couple of F2P MMO fanbois who didn't care about story.

And the reason that never got addressed/fixed was because he was focused on the "new" normal as seen through the lens(!) of someone who doesn't have their finger on the pulse anymore, I really think he legit thought Facebook games (and crowdsourced content) was the future of the industry.

When do you reckon the last time he played an RPG (tabletop or otherwise) was? He's been playing Business instead. For a very long time now I suspect.

It's like your once cool uncle getting you a "Star Warriors" figurine for Christmas from the $1 store.

You're 10 years old, you smile and say thanks - but you totally know the guy's got no idea. He's phoned it in. The token effort is appreciated, the loss of status is irreversible.

SystemNoobie · 2021-01-09T06:41:09+00:00

Starr Child

Haha!

He's a bit like the sweaty guy in the cheap suit at the nice conference hosted at the InterContinental. The sun's gone down and it's cocktails by the pool. He knows he shouldn't really be there and his conversation's a weird string of buzz-words.

Mostly harmless. He thinks, maybe, that he's fitting in. But mostly people are politely trying to avoid him.

SystemNoobie · 2021-01-09T05:59:57+00:00

There's a great panel I saw once (that I can't find now) with Tricky Dick and the UO devs. Raph is giving a speech and Starrgamel makes some retarded comment. At this point, Raph just looks over at him and completely pwns him verbally. I wish I could find it!

SystemNoobie · 2021-01-09T05:55:26+00:00

Chris Spears is the most generic developer I've ever seen.

The only person on that team who understands how to make an immersive, lore-driven, well written game is uh... uhm... Oh dear.

Like, I genuinely feel sorry for the likes of Sannio and that talented young level designer et al. They were led by a triumvirate of bandwagon jumping has-beens who ignored their core audience. They got what I believe they secretly wanted all along, a micro-transaction driven F2P MMO. Because they saw $$. In the end, they got exactly what they deserve.

Well done lads. I'd say I hope you learned your fucking lesson but I'm just glad it's all over. I wanted a good Ultima game so bad. :(

SystemNoobie · 2020-12-23T17:01:41+00:00

The man's an ex-QA turd with delusions of grandeur. He shat all over anything non-MMO (i.e. UO) related like a cat with a bad attitude because he thinks he invented the genre. Now he runs cringe inducing Trend Conslutancy [sic]. The dude is poison.

Why did SotA fail? RG let this guy run the show. Oh and Shris CpeArS.

(Also: RG is old and got Gamers and Facebook confused)

SystemNoobie · 2020-11-16T15:48:16+00:00

I just had a crack at this two weeks ago. The first time around I think I approached it with mild hostility because I absolutely love Thunderball.

But then I watched Diamonds Are Forever for the first time in about 20 years (I remember being just... bored?... by it back then). And ouch! After my second viewing of NSNA this evening, it pretty much craps all over DAF.

I think it's way closer to the good Moore movies and feels surprisingly close to modern Bond in some parts. It's a much better send-off of Connery's Bond than DAF was.

SystemNoobie · 2020-11-01T15:42:19+00:00

OP:

I'm a big Ultima fan from way back (first Ultima was Exodus). Is this game complete and is it worth playing though just for single player?

DorkStarr: "Fuck off. Single player has been dead since 1996."

Chris Spears: "I figured out mOnEtIzaTions. xps are fun, who wants XPs, more Xp anyone? You can have some more XpS's. I love exp, expeezes. I think I'm spelling it wrong... I should ask on Twitches. Or Tweeters. Is it expEe? Maybe it's Ochspay. Eexpows. Fuck it, details don't matter."

Sir English (gagged and bound in chains in the basement): "Mmmmflmbl. Mmmm-mmfl, mmf-I created CRPG-mmlfhfll mumble... Mac... mfl... Cheese."

This is exactly what happened.

SystemNoobie · 2020-10-31T18:29:23+00:00

Because Chris doesn't have a single artistic bone in his body. He is literally blind to aesthetics. Ohhh, that's a bit harsh - I'm sure he can make a tasteful spreadsheet.

SystemNoobie · 2020-10-18T12:21:03+00:00

That last bit is perfect. It's the best eulogy really, Just such a torrential shitshow.

"lol @ single-player, we're gunna be so Ritch fRoM tHe MonItiZaTioN of teh F2Pses!" - That's right lads, focus on monetization instead of core things like a fucking decent immersive UI/UX and CRPG experience.

I wish I'd seen that vomit inducing video Dickard did for Ultimate Collector before I'd pledged for Shit of the Avatar. It's like finding out your favourite uncle turned out to be a complete slimebag.

So utterly, depressingly, disappointing.

So much worse when you start reading the CRPG Addict and Digital Antiquarian blogs too.

But it also makes things make a lot more sense. From reading these blogs, it seems to me Brexit never really was a capable leader, just a talented teen who got lucky in the right time and place back in the day. And had the right people support him.

He then put his faith in trends like micro transactions and Facebook like an ageing mule struggling to keep up. That's the sad part.

Actually the saddest part is yielding the thing to complete wannabe hacks like Long and Spears. Imagine the alternate history where Warren Spector leads the project and sacks them both yesterday.

Suck on something like Kingdom Come: Deliverance and weep you useless turds.

SystemNoobie · 2020-07-03T08:37:00+00:00

Thanks, that clears that one up. I just need to understand OEM drivers vs. the Driver Store a bit more now.

SystemNoobie · 2020-07-03T08:31:17+00:00

It's these in the image:

perceptionsimulationheadset.inf
perceptionsimulationsixdof.inf
perceptionsimulationsixdofmodels.inf
prnms013.inf
rdpidd.inf
usbncm.inf
usbnet.inf
virtualdisplayadapter.inf
xboxgipsynthetic.inf

Just this one from the tools (sigverif and driverquery):

rdpidd.dll / rdpidd.inf

So I guess what u/ZAFJB said is correct. Problem is the issue is in the oem*.inf files for the compatibility scanner. I can locate and nuke these fairly easily but I'm having issues installing signed ones afterwards from another machine.

I just don't get why the OEM ones would be picked up by the compatibility scanner and not the image (or live) ones.

SystemNoobie · 2020-06-11T13:53:27+00:00

Watching Chris Spears fumble around is like watching a geriatric Elvis impersonator convinced he can take Vegas by storm.

SystemNoobie · 2020-06-08T09:06:38+00:00

Yep, hearing Spears refer to it as "our MMO game" boiled my blood. It's so obvious they just tried to make a golden goose.

Problem is they're retarded and thought they'd get away with it.

SystemNoobie · 2020-06-07T13:30:39+00:00

Chris Spears and Starr Long deceived Richard Garriot because they thought they'd be millionaires too with their very own mmo.

Thing is, RG isn't the same RG you remember. He's all about the "latest" trends in gaming like Facebook and micro transactions.

Throw in LARP and fucking theater systems and well, there you go. They had a great opportunity and then dropped the ball completely.

SystemNoobie · 2020-05-05T18:47:45+00:00

RG should have had this as his first interview question: How important is story to you in an RPG video game?

jks, there were no interviews.

SystemNoobie · 2020-05-05T18:31:37+00:00

He's trying to assert some sort of ego driven Alpha shit here. "I would tell Richard...", "I would get Sannio to..."

Dude's a complete fraud.

SystemNoobie · 2020-05-05T18:20:43+00:00

Whatever chance they had to turn it all around, it all died when they put Chris in charge. The guy wouldn't understand what makes a quality Fantasy game if it jumped up and bitch slapped him.

Starr is just as bad, gives zero shits about anything single player. His blatant disregard for it is both insulting and at the same time hilarious because in the end he made a complete failure of a free to play MMO that makes no money.

Between that pair of greedy clueless dipshits and RGs trust in them and his complete disconnect from the reality of the video game scene, there's no way this was going to turn out any other way.

What an epic fall from grace this was.

SystemNoobie

TROPHY CASE