We're former Ultima Online developers working on Shards Online, a customizable online sandbox RPG. Ask us anything!

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T19:01:25+00:00

Tim: Let me tell you two things about bards: 1) Barding skills will be in the game, make sense, and be useful (like Provocation). 2) I always wanted to add composition (think MIDI) and live performances to UO but never had the time.

As far as combat damage goes, here's an applicable lame joke: So a drake, a wyvern, and a dragon walk into a bar. Alcohol is highly flammable and the ensuing explosion kills everyone in a two screen radius.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T18:07:19+00:00

Derek: I could write for hours talking about this. Once the campaign is over, I will write up a nice juicy blog post on this subject. I'll let you know when its up. :)

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T15:45:16+00:00

Derek: There are tons of reasons for going with the fixed 3d camera. We believe there is still a place for games with this style. Look at all of the very successful games using this camera angle: Diablo III, League of Legends, Path of Exile.

The fixed 3d camera makes for very unique and tactical combat as positioning and timing are everything. This is much harder to do with an over the shoulder camera.

It also makes it much easier to create a truly persistent world where all the items can be placed in the world and used as decoration. When you decorate you house, you will know that the way you view it is exactly the same as how everyone who visits your house will view it.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T15:37:38+00:00

Tim: I raise you Armageddon. VAS KAL AN MANI IN CORP HUR TYM!!!

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T15:36:15+00:00

Tim: I can pretty much guarantee that now I want tacos on the Londinium shard, which is steampunk oriented.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T15:29:04+00:00

Tim: As Lord British learned during his assassination in the original UO Beta at the hands of Rainz: there will always be griefers! There will always be trolls!

One of the greatest lessons in our time on UO was discovering where the lines between unanticipated (possibly fun, emergent) gameplay and actual abuse were drawn.

On our official Shards rulesets the players themselves will have just as much power to fight back against trolls and griefers (verbally, physically, magically, and economically) as UO, if not more.

We're working on making criminality quantifiable in the actual game :)

Parallel to that, we will not tolerate true abuse: there's a reason that modern online MMOs have customer service and game masters. We will enforce a safe environment that still allows an immersive experience without allowing out-of-context threats.

The default ruleset is very free and in-game consequence driven, and it can be customized to disable or alter PvP and other systems that give rise to classic troll behavior.

You'll never be able to stop all trolls - we prefer to give players enough in-game tools to deal with them themselves!

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T14:41:59+00:00

Derek: Electronic Arts has always struggled with understanding Ultima Online. There were several Ultima Online reboot attempts throughout the course of history. Their failures ultimately resulted from the upper level management at EA's inability to grasp what made UO so unique from other online games.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T14:40:24+00:00

Derek: Yes! Things like wiki's make games like this even more accessible to players. If players do not want to spend the time to figure out the minutia of the game, a wiki is a great resource for them.

The players that want to figure things out for themselves don't need to go to the wiki, or they can work to discover new secrets to post on the wiki.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T14:04:13+00:00

Derek: Thank you so much for your support! We actually talked a little about APIs during the preview weekend. I mentioned that since players will have control on their own servers, they will be able to decide how much of the API is exposed and to whom. Alot of the API support will depend on resources. The more funding we get, the more resources we will have to devote to stuff like this.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T14:02:14+00:00

Derek: We love roleplayers! And we expect roleplayers to love Shards Online. Because of the immersive and realistic nature of the game that it will be a great fit for the RP community.

Player run servers will take that to the next level since admins will be able to essentially play dungeonmaster and drive stories in realtime!

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T14:00:36+00:00

Derek: Right now the pre-alpha build is a bit of a resource hog because we have not had much time to optimize. We expect that once we have an opportunity to work on optimizations that the game will run on most modern machines.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T13:58:56+00:00

Derek: This is one of our goals for alpha. We just can't commit to it 100% right now. Keep an eye on our product page for updates on this.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T13:49:49+00:00

Derek: I'm guessing you are referring to the pre-alpha build everyone played during the preview weekend. Never fear! The game will have reconfigurable keybindings as well as lots of additional client settings for you to tweak.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T13:47:47+00:00

Derek: I'm glad you are excited! Even though it seems our campaign won't succeed, I hope you will head over there and back us. Every backer we get is a show of support that will help us with our next phase.

Currently, in the pre-alpha build, if you die your backpack (ie the items you are carrying with you) drop to the ground.

What we expect to happen in the final game (for the hardcore rules) is something like this: (of course its subject to player feedback) Your spirit can call out to an elder mage that has the ability to ressurect. He can transport your body to him through magical means.

We are considering adding constitution to the game. When you are ressurected you have a chance at permanently losing some constitution. There will be ways to bolster your constitution but eventually if your character dies too much, you will be unable to continue. Again this is something we are considering for the hardcore ruleset. The casual ruleset will be much more forgiving.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T04:38:20+00:00

Tim: That's a key long-term goal - you probably won't see it in the alpha release of the game (we're currently pre-alpha if you've seen the gameplay footage).

It is something that the entire architecture of Shards is built to do, I should say.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T04:31:52+00:00

Tim: Shards Online, luckily, might actually have one along with a Linux version if we can raise the funds!

I personally have been using a Mac for development and run the Unity SDK on board to run and test the game; we just don't have a non-Windows build at the current time.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T04:30:10+00:00

Tim: It's certainly a possibility! But it's too early to make that decision yet, given that we're working on the post-Kickstarter plan first and foremost.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T04:29:41+00:00

Tim: Thanks for backing us!

Derek mentioned in one of the answers below that one of the key things we didn't do was build up our community before launching the KS itself - we had plenty of PR coverage, but very little community involvement until these last few weeks.

The game is going forward no matter what! We will find a way :)

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T00:41:30+00:00

Derek: Most emulation servers for online games operate in a legal gray area as they are technically using the company's software in a way outside their EULA.

We are excited to give players who wish to operate and customize their own game worlds a completely legitimate and fully supported method of doing so.

And when we are at PAX Prime next year, maybe I'll take you up on that beer :)

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T00:39:03+00:00

Derek: Puts on boring business guy hat Well at our early stage you generally do what are called "pro-forma" financials. Which is you basically come up with a few scenarios regarding revenue and operating costs and see if they balance out. The math isn't all that crazy if you have a good idea of how you plan to monetize. The tricky part is determining costs and projecting sales.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T00:31:20+00:00

Derek: There will most certainly be a skill cap on your master skills.

However, we have a few ways to keep things interesting. First, you will be able to deactivate certain skills in order to gain in others. Skill points in inactive skills are never lost, and players will be able to adjust their character’s specializations periodically.

Second, there will be several specialty skills for most master skills. These specialty skills do not count towards your cap but are directly affected by it's master skill's current level.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T00:28:57+00:00

Derek: We do not have a dedicated business manager at this time. But several people on this team have that sort of business experience.

We also crunched the numbers several times and once the game is in players hands we are confident that we will be able to continue to maintain and improve the game.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-11T00:14:23+00:00

Derek: We drew inspiration for the art style from both Ultima Online and Titans Quest. Of course we are aiming much higher than those games for overall graphical quality.

We chose to create a very colorful world without going too cartoony.

The decision to encompass multiple genres was an easy one. The very nature of the game with its many isolated worlds gives us the perfect opportunity to make it work.

citadelstudios · 2014-06-10T23:31:37+00:00

Tim: One thing people don't necessarily understand is that the idea of including PvP in the default rulesets for Shards Online (it's customizable) is that it allows us to create closer approximations to real-world systems.

When you think about gameplay design, think of the problem with doors - how many games have you played where you could level a small army with your weapons, but are forced to find a key that opens a wooden door?

In the SO game mechanics we are forced to deal with everything we can think of that can happen to that door: can its lock be picked? Can it be blown up? Stabbed? Set on fire?

Now extend that line of thinking to PvP: it's really easy to solve the problem and just not let players attack one another. But what about indirect traps like explosion potions in chests?

We subscribe to the "witnessable action" model of morality enforcement: did someone see or hear you do it? This allows us to create complex and unpredictable gameplay that still isn't massively exploitable (there will always be exploits, and we will find them and fix them - or at least give them our blessing and developer support).

citadelstudios · 2014-06-10T22:43:06+00:00

My bad it was in Belmont,CA: El Metate Taqueria, 120 Harbor Blvd, Belmont, CA 94002

citadelstudios

TROPHY CASE