Traditionally, role-playing games (RPGs) have let players assume the roles of noble knights or space-age technologists who fight monsters and solve quests to both gain experience levels and acquire vast treasures. In recent years, they've incorporated online multiplayer, even going so far as to be "massively multiplayer," which allows thousands of players to adventure online with one another in persistent worlds. One of the earliest of these massively multiplayer games was Ultima Online, which was inspired by Origin's now-classic Ultima role-playing series. The next game in the series, Ultima X: Odyssey, will continue the adventures of the series' famous paragon of virtue, the Avatar, and the series' infamous villain, the Guardian. However, it will also attempt to remedy issues that are common to online RPGs in general. In this designer diary, designer Jonathan Hanna explains how you'll fight your battles in the game.

The Quest to Make a Game Like No Other, Part One

Ultima X: Odyssey will present exciting, fast-paced battles.

In the first two diaries, we talked a lot about the ideas behind creating Ultima X: Odyssey (UXO), such as focusing on fun gameplay, reducing downtime, and removing tedium. For the next two diaries, I'd like to talk about the two core elements of UXO that these ideas have helped us create. UXO focuses on strategic combat and grand adventuring--two features that have consistently been lacking in massively multiplayer games. In this diary, we'll focus on UXO's combat.

When designing combat, we set our main focus on creating something that allowed for real strategy. We looked at 3D fighting games, action-oriented role-playing games, and just about every other kind of game that we felt had cool combat. We purposely didn't look at other massively multiplayer games because we genuinely felt that most of them have taken a step backward with regard to combat. The focus of these games is so strongly skewed toward creating an online social experiment--or a "virtual sandbox"--that core elements like combat are implemented almost as an afterthought. Most of these games have turn-based combat that makes you feel very disconnected from your character, as he or she automatically attacks monsters, thus requiring only occasional input from you. We refer to this as "sandwich combat." That is, this is combat that requires so little interaction and is so repetitive and predictable that you could almost start a fight and then go into the kitchen and get a sandwich--returning later to get your loot from the kill. It's funny, in a way, when you consider that so many games that supposedly focus on letting you "be" a persona actually give you so little control over your character's choices in combat. We set out to change that.

You can read about the components of combat on the official UXO site, but I'll give a quick overview before continuing. In UXO, you control every sword swing, every block, and every spell. You have a variety of ways to engage an opponent, including standard attacks that damage your target and allow your character to gain momentum, special abilities that include powerful melee attacks and awe-inspiring spells, and abilities that allow you to defend against your opponent's attacks. These components can be used in different ways, so you have a tremendous number of options. But these components alone do not create strategy or tactics. In order to achieve this, your opponents must behave in different ways and perform actions that require appropriate reactions from you. This is where monster artificial intelligence (AI) is important when creating a fun combat system.

In most massively multiplayer games, monsters have very simplistic AI. They may bring allies into a fight, cast spells, and switch targets based on who attacked them last, but that's pretty much it. Most fights work something like this:
-Someone attacks a monster
-It brings some friends
-Someone stuns all but one of the monsters
-Everyone gangs up on one monster, being sure not to hit the others
-Once that monster is dead, everyone switches to the next target
-Repeat and until all monsters are dead

The game will incorporate strategy into its fights.

This is not real strategy because each fight becomes an identical routine. And in most cases, if you deviate from these steps, the party dies. Think about the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where the heroes are fighting the orcs and the cave troll. Imagine if--instead of the exciting and heart-pounding melee portrayed in the film--Gandalf just stunned all of the orcs, and the fellowship killed each monster, one at a time, while the other orcs just stood there doing nothing. It would make for a pretty boring battle scene, wouldn't it? It also happens to make for some very dull and repetitive gameplay.