All the bad things about Ultima 7

Macaw · Post by **Macaw** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:49 pm

Now we all know ultima 7 BG is the greatest RPG ever, but what does everyone here think is some of the things wrong with it? (not including bugs and stuff)

I for one think that the biggest stuff up is the fact that its just to easy, its too easy to get what you want and where you want, and because of the carpet and stuff it ends up making the world seem a lot smaller than it actualy is. It loses the feeling that you are just some adventurers within a huge world that the earlier ultima's had.

Bomb Bloke · Post by **Bomb Bloke** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:17 pm

That would depend... You see, the carpet is not the first thing you find when you play through the game first time round.

New players would grab horse and carts, buy many boats, etc. Back in the day, a journey around Britiania took me a while. Even with the rug, it takes many hours to loot the whole planet!

Come to think of it, what if you required a deed to use the rug? A deed you could only get from the Mad Mage of the cove (the heck I can spell his name!). Perhaps for a sum of money, even. It'd slow down the pace for veteran players.

Yet another extra request.

Macaw · Post by **Macaw** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 11:44 pm

Yeah and the deed will have to cost about 1,000,000 gold... That would give everyone something actualy useful to do with their money, apart from buy spells of course.

Bomb Bloke · Post by **Bomb Bloke** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 12:18 am

I think that sum is a bit excessive... I'm not sure you can carry that much gold without exploiting the game somehow.

(I knew a way, but that doesn't work under Exult).

Gradilla Dragon · Post by **Gradilla Dragon** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 5:18 am

Lets check the facts. Rudyom gave the carpet to some group of adventurers, so if you want the carpet you should locate those adventurers' corpses and see if the deed is there. That would mean crawling inside the dungeon. Also, what if the deed is now in rags and you have to find all the pieces?

Giving the carpet a price is just plain silly.

SB-X · Post by **SB-X** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 7:52 am

Or just have him give the floor rug to you, claiming it is the magic carpet.

Bomb Bloke · Post by **Bomb Bloke** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 6:54 pm

Mrm, the idea is to stop peeps from being able to go and get the thing straight out of Trinsic... Money is a good way to achieve that, as collecting 10K takes a while. Getting the deed off the mage for free won't work, as it doesn't take too long to hike to Cove, and if you've got a cart it's a hop-skip-and jump affair.

Finding the deed in a cave, now that could work... As you at least have to fight (run away from?) stuff to get there, and perhaps you'd need some spells to get to the deed as well (unlock magic).

Daemongar · Post by **Daemongar** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 8:33 pm

I like the quest that takes you all over for peices approach like Gradilla mentioned - sorta like the U6 pirate map. That was a good quest.

Putting the deed behind magic doors is just as good, or another example would be it is defended by a creature that is only vulnerable to a 5th level spell, only purchased by the mage on the Isle of the Avatar, but the Golden Ankh is missing, etc...

Putting a price on the carpet would be very difficult, since it's not easy to move around lots of money in U7.

But other things I don't like (once you know about them)
- the free boat in Vesper (the Golden Ankh)
- the speed at which you can gain power in FoV
and others

Bomb Bloke · Post by **Bomb Bloke** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 8:52 pm

In SI, there's nothing stopping you from going straight to SS and gaining a ton of trainng points (not the mention the items).

Many people go there and grab the keyring etc, but leave without finishing it. They don't realise just how easy that place is; even if you do take the time to kill everything that moves.

The boat in Vesper didn't bother me, since I didn't start off with the expansion version, I'm not used to it being there. It's easier, faster and all round more practical to just go for the rug.

Even with the rug, it's not a fast game to play through.

SB-X · Post by **SB-X** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 10:32 pm

I don't like the free boat in Vesper because I didn't find out about it until I'd already purchased a boat. >:|

dino · Post by **dino** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 11:39 am

Why should you stay buying the magic carpet or finding the deed if it was yours in the first place (Ultima 5)?

Gradilla Dragon · Post by **Gradilla Dragon** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 12:24 pm

More precisely Lord British's.

And yes, you are right. These are just two silly attempts to make it harder for the players to get the magic carpet. The one about the million gold was the most silly, though; sounds like one of those modern games where you spend 90% of the time fighting for experience and gold, which is exactly the opposite of what Ultimas from IV on are. Also, carrying a million gold could be impossible without cheating. How many stacks are necesary? How much gold fits in all the party's backpacks?

Gradilla Dragon · Post by **Gradilla Dragon** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 12:38 pm

Ok, I just tested. Each backpack can hold up to 7500 gold. That's a total of 75 stones in weight. So, you need 134 backpacks to carry a million gold. I have not tested with chests, but maybe later.

Gradilla Dragon · Post by **Gradilla Dragon** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 12:49 pm

Decided to test the chest as well. A chest can hold 10,000 gold coins. Chests weight 10 stones, plus 100 for the gold's weight. Total weight is 110 stones.

And the backpack weights 1, so for the backpack the total weight is 76, not 75.

So, if we use chests, we only need 100 of them

That means we will be carrying a weight of 11,000 stones. Using the 134 backpacks would be a total of 10,134 stones.

Belial · Post by **Belial** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 2:59 pm

well i think it is safe to say that it is highly unlikey that anyone is going to carry 134 backpacks at a 10134 stones, but as for the magic doors or invunrable creatures that is more practible.
so far... a scattered deed, going through dungeons, finding corpses, too many pieces of the puzzle, magicaly locked doors, invunrable creatures, locating the carpet,and i think learning a certain mantra or incantation to activate the carpet would be good to.
other than that... the carpet could be randomly placed in certain locations at the start of each game. so you dont know where it is and cant fly around looking for it. but there are only so many places it could be placed and it would only be a matter of time before you knew them all.

Daemongar · Post by **Daemongar** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 3:59 pm

Maybe they could give the carpet to Sullivan the Trickster as a quest - and you have to track him down a la Eliz and Abe. You have to undo all his tricks or something.

I always thought he was one of the most imaginitive portions of U7 that made the world more real. Nobody believes you are the Avatar because there is another guy running around ruining your good name...

Gradilla Dragon · Post by **Gradilla Dragon** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 4:05 pm

Yea, 134 backpacks or 100 chests is just impossible without cheating

Even the weight is impossible: 60 STR allows you to carry 120 stones. 8 characters with 60 STR adds a total of 960 stones. Falls too short.

Macaw · Post by **Macaw** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 9:35 pm

Whoa whoa whoa, when I said 1 million gold i was just being sarcastic, hahahaa, its hard to get sarcasm in written form.

But yeah, imagine this: "Ultima 7 BG: Expert"

A new version of ultima 7 that cranks the games difficulty up by taking away the free boat and making is harder to get the carpet, among other things... could be a good idea.

Neutronium Dragon · Post by **Neutronium Dragon** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 12:58 am

I'd really rather not have things like that added. I like the fact that U7 doesn't make you jump through a lot of artificial hoops at every turn, even for the 'fun stuff'.

In any case, the carpet isn't *that* big a game-breaker. With appropriate use of the Orb, mark/recall stones, and ships (they aren't that hard to get, even without the free one), you can get pretty much anywhere without too much trouble anyway.

Neutronium Dragon

Post by **artaxerxes** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:05 am

and how about having the deed in random location every time you start a game?

Say for instance we use the 8 dungeons. When a game starts, one is chosen by chance and the deed is put there. It's now up to the Avatar to find it. If you were lucky, you'd find it in the first dungeon. Otherwise, you'd be running around for a while.

Artaxerxes

Warder · Post by **Warder** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:13 am

That would seriously detract from the U7 feel for me.

RazorBlade · Post by **RazorBlade** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 6:24 am

Let's see whats wrong with U7, one of my 3 favourite games ever?

IMO the worst part is combat. At least when your party size is 5 or more. Got fixed in SI though.

Again combat, not knowing how good something is, how strong an enemy is hurt. Yeah I don't even need to know that weapon has a speed of 2.3 and a min/max damage of 3/12, I'd be happy with this weapon is slow but does great damage. If it's accurate. And I don't need to see that that bridge troll has 57 hit points left, knowing that he looks pretty healthy would be enough, easier to read in combat would be a percent based bar though, like we already have for the party with the exult engine.

Sometimes I forget what I was supposed to do actually. According to Warren Spector the player should always know what (s)he is supposed to do next to proceed in the game. I like that attidude, although you might know what you should do but still the game doesn't let you decide how you do it which to me was often the same as not knowing what to do ... That's why I love Deus Ex.

Reward. Again Spector, also well done at Blizzard, whenever the player achieves something, he should be rewarded by the game, no the warm fuzzy feeling in Ultima 7 is not always enough (although sometimes it is

), even though you are the avatar heh. Ultima 4 was all about not being a bad guy to win, in Ultima 7 you still need to kill random dragons and bad guys to get their treasures, you won't get rich or receive cool stuff by helping little farm boys. You can rob mages though.

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 9:35 am

These are the things that I miss from Ultima VI:

being able to control each party member in battle

as written above, being able to determine the state of enemies in combat

non-menu driven dialogue.

Post by **Dominus** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 10:05 am

you can determine the state of the enemies and we do give a little bit more control in combat. Problem is that you are required to read the documentation to learn how to do this...

Gradilla Dragon · Post by **Gradilla Dragon** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 4:45 pm

Macaw: Using the smilie of tongue in cheek (:P) helps denote sarcasms.

Bomb Bloke · Post by **Bomb Bloke** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 11:31 pm

You can break the plot with the carpet. You don't need to join the fellowship. I doubt that was intended by the programmers, given that you needed the manual to join up.

Macaw · Post by **Macaw** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 4:03 am

And you can land in skara brae with the carpet.

In my oppinion combat is fine as it is. Sure it may be a mess as far as the actual action goes but all the stuff like not knowing exactly how good a weapon is, or not knowing how much you've damaged a enemy is good in my oppinion. You only really need to know that stuff in games like diablo 2 or baldurs gate, but Ultima 7 'feels' like an adventure game of sorts, and having weapons as mere items not being accompanied by texts about how much damage they do helps this fact. I also feel the 'free move' inventory system as opposed to the slot based inventory reinforces this fact for some reason... It changes the feel of the game, but at the same time makes it feel more like a traditional pen and paper rpg. I hate slot based inventory systems.

Post by **artaxerxes** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 4:12 am

agreed that a better combat system is _the only one_ piece missing from being the RPG with nothing lacking.

DrCode has done an amazing job at adding control in combat (see Documentation) and that really helps, but as mentioned earlier, the ability to control each member in a turn-based system was simply brilliant.

Artaxerxes

SB-X · Post by **SB-X** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 4:31 am

Some containers should keep your items organized, and others rearrange the items each time you open them.

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:49 am

I thought that the question was about the original Ultima VII without the features that Exult added. Oh well....

Most serious players wouldn't use the flying carpet to cheat. or get past certain parts of the game. In my opinion anyone who plays U7 to just finish the quests is missing what makes the game so good, the interactive world.

Bomb Bloke · Post by **Bomb Bloke** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 9:12 pm

The carpet doesn't let you cheat, it just speeds up travel to the point where it's excessive.

Concerning carrying gold, what if you used crates?

Concerning combat, it seems a very good implementation of a combat system in a game world that doesn't change state. That is to say, you don't change into a combat mode like Diablo, whenever you leave town; and you don't go into an entirely different system whenever you find anything to fight, as in Final Fantasy. This means you can fight anyone, anywhere, anytime, in realtime. Seems pretty unique to me.

More control over team mates is a bit much to ask...

Tristan de Inés · Post by **Tristan de Inés** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 12:41 am

I don't understand why you dislike U7 combat. I love it. As "Bomb Bloke" sorta said, combat works seamlessly in the game world, without changing to any other system. All the people, running around, chasing, retreating, dishing it out and swearing to each other... the chaos and the limited control over what's going on makes it feel like "real" combat.

Tristan de Inés · Post by **Tristan de Inés** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 12:51 am

Also, not knowing the exact stats of weapons and armor makes the game more interesting. You have to try weapons out for yourself and experience will teach you which strike faster and what seems to hurt your enemies more.

Also, usually powerful weapons or strong, heavy armour should hinder NPCs which don't have the abilities to use them. Meaning that if I equip my strength 18 Iolo with all plate armour and a two-handed sword, he should be incredibly lame and slow, and thereby useless, in combat, making leather armour and lighter weapons more appropriate for him.

Or equiping a dex 18 Dupre with a bow would make it very hard for him to hit anything.

This is more realistic and fun, because you don't have your party all looking the same, wearing the toughest armour and strongest weapons possible.

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 4:31 am

There is a book in the game that describes the realtive strength of weapons.

Post by **drcode** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 8:03 am

Currently (in Exult, and I think in the original), weight doesn't slow you down. Not a bad idea, though.

Also, dexterity only affects the delay between strikes or shots, and this was only added to Exult after the 1.2 release.

RazorBlade · Post by **RazorBlade** » Fri Sep 17, 2004 8:21 am

>> I thought that the question was about the original Ultima VII without the features that Exult added. Oh well....

Exactly my thoughts, but you don't want to take away opportunity of sarcasm from dominus do you?

Think he isn't happy if can't use the RTFM spell at least once a week.

Bomb Bloke · Post by **Bomb Bloke** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 5:47 pm

Peeps being slowed down by equipment sounds like a dangerous idea... I mean, say you've got seven people walking around after you, and they can't keep up? Urgh...

SB-X · Post by **SB-X** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 5:22 am

Are you slowed down by inventory? In Flee mode party members drop their things to get away faster. It doesn't seem fair that they'd do that when it's unnecessary.

Bomb Bloke · Post by **Bomb Bloke** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:11 pm

My party members never do that.

Having people drop stuff for 'speed' is logical, even if the game doesn't change their speed for their efforts. That is to say, you could take the feature out, but it would just make the game less interesting.

Generally, I only see NPCs drop items when they are severly injured and they manage to get away from my squad. Usualy, they don't make it that far, so it's not a common event.