Roma Victor
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| Roma Victor | |
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| Developer(s) | RedBedlam |
| Publisher(s) | RedBedlam |
| Designer(s) | Kerry Fraser-Robinson |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release | 2006 |
| Genre(s) | Historical MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Roma Victor is a historically authentic MMORPG or virtual world based on the Roman Empire in the latter half of the second century AD. Roma Victor is being developed by RedBedlam Ltd. of Brighton and Hove, England.
Roma Victor was released by RedBedlam on July 14 2006, with pre-order customers being let in 2 weeks earlier (June 30 2006).
The in-game world is a 30 x 30 km representation of a section along Hadrian's Wall, including several small villages and Roman forts.
Subscription Details
In contrast to most MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) there is no monthly subscription required to play Roma Victor.
The developers instead have decided to use variant of the Micropayment economic model, which consists of buying in-game currency (known as sesterces) with real money.
Unlike Entropia Universe and Second Life which both have similar revenue models, it is not possible to exchange virtual currency earned in-game into real world money.
Guilds
Guilds are player associations, or "clans" and form the basis of much of the social structure in Roma Victor.
Guilds in Roma Victor are (for now) exclusively made up of players - later, the numbers can be augmented by NPC members, which can be hired and assigned to various roles and tasks by the higher ranking guild members, perhaps protecting the guild's property, carrying out assignments or simply acting as a merchant on behalf of the guild; but not yet.
Every player also has their own Household. Household is the collective term applied to all the buildings and NPC's owned, employed and/or run by an individual player.
There can be many buildings and NPC's within a household and using the planned built-in household management interface a player can set entry fees on their property, assign NPC's to act as merchants or guards, summon NPC's as an escort, hire and dismiss staff etc.
Playable Area and Factions
There are two factions in Roma Victor, the Romans and the barbarians.
As of July 2007, the playable area encompasses the southeastern portion of Caledonia which is termed in-game as a playfield. As discussed by RedBedlam, there are further plans to expand this playable area and to create other playfields in different regions of the ancient world, if the server population should ever increase enough to warrant such extensions.
The playfield is divided in boards, areas with the size of one square kilometer in a 1:1 scale to the real world. Some of these boards can be built upon by players, but most are composed of uninhabitable wilderness. A few of these boards represent the historical locations of Roman colonies and forts, although creative license was used to create fictitious places. The transition of travel between these boards is seamless, since all boards are currently located on the same server.
In the current state of the game, the Romans live mostly in the ancient major regional town of Corstopitum over which modern Corbridge lies. There are also scattered player-made settlements close to the Hadrian's Wall including a settlement in the fictitious area named Villa Longinus.
The Barbarians live mainly in areas north the Wall, spread out in various small settlements, inculding the realistic Cilurnum which is based on Chesters.
Combat and PvP
Roma Victor features real-time combat, which is largely decided by character skills similar to the character 'levels' found in most MMOs. However, unlike some other games, there are several tricks that are harder to pull off than just pushing a button.
Roma Victor has hitboxes for each bodypart on a player, so that clicking the attack button while aiming the mouse on a particular part of an opponent's body will attempt to hit exactly that part of the body. After the character's automatic chance to evade the attack based on skill numbers, the attack damage will be applied to the hit points in that bodypart if the calculations failed. In this way, a player can repeatedly click at the weak or unarmoured parts on an opponent.
The opponent's shield is another hitbox of this type, but it must be avoided while clicking, since an accidental click upon the opponent's shield wastes an attack on an automatic block of the strike. Likewise, hitting the weapon of an opponent causes a chance to disarm the opponent if defensive character skills are defeated in a randomized calculation. Disarming can be useful, but one should always avoid striking a shield.
Death and the afterlife
When the hitpoints of a particular bodypart reach zero, the player will become incapacitated. When incapacitated (ie. knocked out) in combat, the player's character does not necessarily die straight away. He will be unconscious on the ground for a minute or more, unless someone administers basic aid or a killing blow. If someone administers first aid, the player will be back on his feet and ready to fight in a few seconds. If a deathblow is administered, then the player is taken away from the combat to Elysium, a small area for dead players. In Elysium, the player must walk toward a NPC that will return him to a designated spawn-in spot on the main gameworld.
Roman Provincial Law
Certain areas are well-policed by NPC representatives of Roman law, such as legionaries, who will attempt to uphold the law and prevent violence. In some places it is impossible to break the laws, while in others a player can attempt it at his own risk, since the NPC guards will telepathically know of the act and respond later.
Barbarians north of Hadrian's Wall are beyond the reach of the law altogether, so the barbarian lands are effectively a full PvP environment. However, a player running through the barbarian villages killing everyone that he sees will likely end his run very quickly by being killed by a different, more experienced, player or group of players. He may then be further punished by being killed near the spawn as he returns to the living world several times, until the group feels he is sufficiently contrite.
Crafting
Roma Victor features a complex crafting system, in which it is possible to find a huge amount of resources and components that can be put together using the hundreds of related skills. Currently many, although not all, of the skills are implemented and ready for use.
Every item in the Roma Victor universe has a current quality level (1-99) and a maximum quality level (2-99). The higher the maximum quality, the longer it will last. If one forgets to repair the item and it reaches 0/99, it will break and be lost. A warning of breakage is issued randomly when quality reaches a low level.
Construction
Construction is largely the same as crafting, only with the greater need of materials and skills.
When building anything from simple devices through to complex buildings like roundhouses, it is important to have a ready supply of skilled labour and a good supply chain to finish the job. NPC labourers can be hired to speed up the entire process, however it is possible for individual players to also provide a helping hand.
Roma Victor features an open-ended 'sandbox'-style environment in which players can rent structures to live in, build their own, or let them out to other players. Any structure can be set as public or private.
The construction is basically divided between devices and structures.
Devices are necessary in order to craft items, such as tools and weapons. Furnaces, forges, and kilns are examples of currently implemented devices.
Structures are basically buildings that may serve as housing, storage areas and advanced crafting workshops. Presently the only buildable player-made structures are roundhouses, extremely labour-intensive albeit lasting huts built mostly out of large quantities of dung, clay and mud.
In the upcoming updates, RedBedlam has stated it will be possible to build stone buildings and specific purpose structures, such as guildhalls.
Skills & Abilities
There are no character levels in Roma Victor. However there is a 'skill' tree[1] which replaces this function.
Character development in Roma Victor is designed to simulate real life. That is, if a player wishes to improve his woodcutting skill, he has to go out in the woods and cut some trees down. From those trees, he can then extract sticks and turn them into handles to train his preparing skill. Those handles can then be used by a smith to make simple tools.
All skills are measured on a rating of 0 to 99 points. A player needs at least one point in the skill in order to improve it further. To get this first point he can buy as many as six points from an NPC, or ask another player to teach him up to 17 points.
Unlike many other games, a player can make and equip almost whatever he wants. There are no level or skill restrictions, but the item resulting item quality suffers greatly when a person is not a master in every step. A player wishing to make high quality items must grind his skills, often over a dozen before producing good quality. Roma Victor has its own wiki with more details on how best to engage in this grinding for the least headache.
Combat skills are similar, in that an untrained character is highly unlikely to win in a fair fight against a highly-trained character, regardless of player skill and reflexes. A character automatically dodges and parries incoming strikes based on randomized calculations on the server, although blocking with a shield has both an automatic calculation and will happen if the opponent accidently clicks on the player's shield. RV is not an FPS game heavily reliant on player skill, although some calm and dexterity at the mouse does help in combat, since players must calmly target their opponents as they move about.
Historical Authenticity
In several areas the game world is based on real world archaeological data.
The RedBedlam team and the Roma Victor community have invested several years of research into bringing historical authenticity of this world. Some buildings follow the correct floor-plans; equipment and clothing is appropriate for the period and region; crafting activities are similar to the steps taken in ancient production - much of the world is based upon what is known and commonly believed about life in second century Europe.
A recent visit by the whole development team to the ruins of the Chesters fort[2] has shown that the ingame fort very much resembles to the one that stood there in 183AD.
Not everything is so authentic though. For gameplay purposes several adjustments have been made, like adding an iron mine to the area. Additionally some of the structures in the fort of Brocolitia, such as the Mithraeum and the Nymphaeum, do not represent the actual finds in those locations for the covered time period of the game.
The Natural Environment
Roma Victor features SpeedTreeRT™. SpeedTree generates species of tree and other plant life that existed in 2nd Century AD Caledonia. RedBedlam has stated that they are hoping to add some new features such as using authentic terrain topology in which the hills, rivers, flora and valleys of the 2nd Century British landscape are brought back to life.
Wind and rain effects are not fully implemented which has resulted in a long drought in-game.
Dynamic lighting has slowly been implemented over time as torches and fires help the player to see when travelling at night.
Criticisms
Unfinished and Missing Features
Many customers and reviewers of Roma Victor have noted that the game was released to the public before many of its promised pre-launch features could be added in. These included unfinished promises in all areas from combat, to crafting, to social activities like playing musical instruments and being able to sit down on a chair. Below is a partial list of the promised pre-launch features that continue to be missing as of July 2007.
- 30x60 km2 playing field with large city of Luguvalium
- Missile weapons and mounted combat
- Craftable legionary gear and barbarian armour.
- Land conquest features
- Full looting of enemies' inventories
- Economy that functions correctly
- Production process that requires interaction of specialised trades
- Diverse animals and functioning skills for handling them.
- Social activities and services like hairstyling, musicians, jewelry, tattoos
- Less emphasis on grinding than other games.
- Unique and detailed afterlife called Elysium
- Well-executed storyline driven by developer interaction
- NPCs with advanced AI that 'lead their own lives.'
All these features were promised pre-launch in a Jan. 2005 status report and in other posts on the RV public forums.
Performance Issues
Some players play the game on systems far above requirements and have experienced single-digit frame rates. RV demands a great deal of memory, upwards of 2GB, and may not deallocate it properly after use, leading to a memory leak that progressively eats up system resources until a reboot of the computer is necessary. Heavy lag between a player action and the server response also tends to disrupt gameplay on a regular basis, often delaying the server response by five minutes or more after a player has tried to perform an action. This effect is particularly noticeable whenever ten or more people engage in a battle within a populated area.
Customer Service and Relations
Red Bedlam has been accused of ignoring their customer base sometimes. For example, Kerry Frasier-Robinson, their lead developer, stated in September of 2006 that he would inform the community of the progress in game development every month, and then did not update his 'State of the World' blog for six months. Sometimes dissapearing from public view altogether due to circumstances such as the honeymoon of one of it's lead developers, having the flu or having a broken modem. Also, large feature implementations, such as 'The Escalation' [3] [4] have been delayed for a considerable amount of time. On the other hand, the lead developer is sometimes seen on the forum discussing ideas and there have also been several notable occasions where the developers have gone out of their way to help community members and implement community-suggested features almost immediately.[5] [6].
Occasionally, the developers have also appeared to knowingly misrepresent their product and its development status, often claiming a feature is almost ready to be put in, despite a year later the absence of that feature. Notably, the playerbase was informed a sudden 'data corruption' on the eve of release. This corruption allegedly destroyed the completely finished 30x60 km2 playing field that had been created for the full release version. The playerbase was presented with a poll whether they wanted to play the old 10x10 km2 test playfield by the original deadline for release, or to wait two more weeks for the larger area to be remade and for the addition of a dozen types of animals. The playfield a year later remains under 30x60 km2 and with fewer than three animal types that function as intended.
Since release, their forums are often host to complaints that they are slow in issuing refunds, and their system for buying accounts has quite often double-billed the customer.
Gameplay Issues
Combat has been described as being overly-reliant on the 'skill level' of the character, so that a low-level character finds it almost impossible to hit a character with a high 'Dodge' skill, for example. These skills are very tedious to train up, requiring repetitive actions for dozens of hours each before mastered. This repetitive training of skills or levels is known as grinding in MMOs.
Because of this preparatory grinding, criticism of the lack of 'twitch'-based combat has surfaced among PvPers. The crafting system suffers from the same grind- and level-based approach as the fighting system, but with less resistance since perhaps it does not draw any players used to fast-action games, such as FPS games.
Critical Reception
The above and other criticisms led to an infamously low rating in the August 2006 issue of PCZone. RV scored only 8 out of a possible 100 points, securing the dubious distinction of the lowest rating that PCZone had ever given a game.