🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <bmartin.2...@origin.ea.com>, bma...@origin.ea.com (Brian Martin) writes:
>Hello There,
>
>My name is Brian, and I am one of the many Ultima 9 team members. Right now, 
>U9 is in the early developemental stage, and we want to know what you, the RPG 
>fan, would like to see in the next Ultima. 
>
>Let me first state that it is our goal to make U9 a much more traditional 
>Ultima. That is to say that we want U9 to be more like U4 than U8, (yes, we 
>learned something from U8).  U9 will take place in Britannia, will be very 
>interactive and non linear, and will bring the party back to the Avatar. Any 
>other suggestions concerning magic, combat, or any other aspect of game play 
>would be very welcome. Please post any suggestions to this board. Myself and 
>other U9 team members will be watching for your comments and suggestions.  We 
>want to make a game that you want to play, so who better to tell us what to 
>include than you?
>
>Thanks for your time,
>-Bmartin

First of all, let me say its great to see someone is listening....

One thing I'd like to see is a revamping of the combat system. I must admit,
although all the animations are nice, the real-time combat system that appeared
in Ultima 7 - 8, isn't really practical. One suggestion I made on here a while ago
is a comprimise between the turn based system I grew to love and the desire 
to see nice graphics presentation is the ability to pause combat, set actions,
choose spells to cast, etc... The ability to choose specific players to go after
specific targets using certain weapons. Let me choose all of this, while the game
is paused, unpause the game and let it go until I feel I need to change an option 
or two.  This would effectively give me back the full control I had with the turn 
based combat of Ultima 4-6, and allow me to sit back and enjoy all the nice sword
slashing, blood spurtting animations. (AND NO MORE DOUBLE CLICKING!!!! The most
annoying thing about Ultima 7, was 5 guys attacking one guy and me trying to find
the one pixel I needed to double click on to get in a hit!)

This was one of the reason 2 of my friends stopped playing Ultimas after
Ultima 6. Combat became less tactical and more random.


One of the other things I missed, is 3-D perspective dungeons. They wouldn't have
to be of Ultima Underworld VR quality, but it would be a nice feature to have back. 
Top down exploring of the dungeons got too monotonous. At least with neat wall 
graphics and full screen sized monsters to look at, it might keep my interest....
I don't know how feasable it would be to put this element back in the game, but
I was sorry to see it go back in Ultima 6.


And on a last note: BRING BACK THE MOONGATES!  (Ultima 7 was annoying enough when
you hurt yourself whenever you tried using one, but got really annoying when they
disappeared altogether!!!!)