Feeback from a (former) loyal customer

If were truly this unhappy about a video game, I would just move on. I wouldn't rage quit in spectacular fashion (aka the actual posts going up in Reddit). I would just leave. I wouldn't then spend thousands of hours on another site ripping it apart and visiting every single review ever done of it on the internet and post tirades. I wouldn't rant on forums demanding people believe me and listen to my story, most people really just dont care what other people think of the things they may like (maybe I would send a PM directly to a dev without making a public spectacle of my displeasure). When it comes down to it, who really cares what I think of this game and I dont think or demand others listens to me and if they I say something like this claim they are being shouted down, people just dont care, its a video game. So many people today think they deserve to be heard. I would just pick up and leave on to the next video game. Because, in the end its just that... its just a video game among thousands of them in the market.

I am Starman, I resist the tyranny of people trying to demand I listen to their complaints in everything and anything in life. I dont care, I got my own issues to deal with.

 

Yeah so... here were are again. Once again, it's been an ongoing work in progress with installments every single month. Every single month.. and yet people keep rehashing the same old thing over and over. They talk about this stuff in the release notes and on live streams. They are pretty transparent on what they are working on. The quests they keep implementing go right to single player offline mode as well as SP/MP mode. But... no one wants to read or watch those... it may impede the negative agenda to stir up drama and negative views in the SotA/Portalarium community. It really shows when people have not played the game in a while as well with their complaints and criticisms too, as well as their disregard for reading the release notes, seeing it implemented in game, or watching the live streams which not only talk about everything going on but whats in the works to come.

Release notes:

Spoiler

R38: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_38
R39: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_39
R40: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_40
R41: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_41
R42 http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_42
R43 http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_43
R44 http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_44
R45: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_45
R46: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_46
R47: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_47
R48: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_48
R49: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_49
R50: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_50
R51: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_51
R52: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_52
R53: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_53
R54: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_54
R55: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_55
R56: http://sotawiki.net/sota/Release_56

All that content put in game. It's not just words on paper or text on screen... it's actually things developed, constructed, fleshed out and put in game. It's done every single month. Art, uncloned scenes, quests, story & story polish, bug fixes & tweaks, optimizations, new items and content, new housing and decor, pets, new skills, combat mechanics, balances, etc etc etc. Does it mean it's complete when they put out a release? No. But if you're actually watching and/or playing the game you'd see that they ARE working on the game... working on many things actually and are still working on the story driven parts and quests. Every single month.... and yes, it goes into single player offline mode as well as sp online mode as well.

If people want to cherry-pick through all that to find something that supports their agenda, "Oh this wasn't put in offline mode" or "this quest isn't currently working", or "the combat mechanics still aren't balanced", or "I can't complete a full single player game experience based on what they've put out so far"... even though the game is no where near finished... then that's on you.

There are those that keep posting the same stuff over and over again, same negativity spreaders, the same people on other forums like RAW/reddit, mmorpg.com, etc and they are constantly stirring up trouble, bashing the game, and/or dismissing any and all facts to keep their agendas alive. They only truly seem happy when they can spread their misery around. But don't take my word for it... visit those sites yourself and witness it firsthand.

@Vyrin - Why yes, i've completed most quests in the game. In fact, I make it a point to try out all the new quests every release and only have about 5 I haven't finished completely yet due to doing other stuff in game.

The point of this post is... yes, they are still working on it. Yes they are still implementing lots of things. They just can't drop everything and finish everything everyone wants when they want it. It makes no sense to do that. Besides, their storyline won't even be complete until Episode 5, right? Implementing more of RG's & Tracy Hickman's story/lore, right? Still waiting on third novel in Blade of the Avatar trilogy, right? There seems to be a problem with not giving reasonable thought and rationality to a lot of the complaints leveled at SotA/Port. But then again... you can't please everyone, and if you try, that's pretty much the key to failure.

I wonder if they'd even be happy or satisfied if the game was finished for single player offline story mode. It seems the negative crowd would still complain no matter what. You could form them up in a line at the Ft. Knox Depository, handing out 2 gold bars to each of them and you'd still have them complaining. "Why did they get one before me?" Why did you give me so much at once? It's too heavy, couldn't you have broken it down?" "Can't I just get cash?" "But I don't want gold..."

 

Very well said.

 

Enough people have taken your advice to the point where half of the team is out of work. Would you like the rest of us to decide that it's not worth it and move on? The dismissive way that customers are dealt with by this community that might benefit from not demanding that people listen to the fact that they "don't care what you think" so stop expecting to be heard. I don't want this game to be sent down the toilet. Crapping on people who aren't giving you the affirmation you seem to expect is not going to make our product any better.

 

The following message is classified 'NBC' Non-Banworthy Content, 'NR' Non-Reportable & 'NF' Nobody's Fool

The problem is those trolling another SP discussion thread, heaping piles of nevativity on it and pretending its irrelevant and trying to convince others to abandon it because it is contradictory to their desires. Very very selfish.

Customers are supposed to and have every godsamn right to express customer dissatisfaction, particulatly when the product obviously falls very, very short.

 

For me, the main thing is these posts seem to have one goal in common, bring the game down with their displeasure. The only thing these threads ever do is stir up some arguments that will never go anywhere because Devs will simply block the Thread instead of reading the good points. The result will only be to scare new players away, because all they see is the negative posts of original backers and get scared away, meaning the game can't grow in player base like it could. I have stayed away from a couple games because I read the forums beforehand and saw these kinds of threads.

 

Psst, I am an original backer from the KickStarter campaign time frame. I am still here since day 1 and am loving SotA. Not all original backers are not pleased (A small minority even).

 

Except when the complaints are just there to spread negativity while dismissing anything that counters their arguments... and a good bit of complaints have been by people who don't even play the game, haven't played in quite a while, and don't even look at the facts about what's actually going on in the game or what's been done. Instead they post negativity or link off-site bad reviews and trolling forums like RAW/reddit and mmorpg.com where you have these negative echo chambers where everyone "high-fives" each other talking about how they were used, abused, and lied to by SotA/Portalarium as well as any disparaging remarks about the game and it's players. I can accept some customer complaints.. but having dealt with customers/CS, no, the customer is not always right and their perceptions of what is acceptable can vary in the extreme to borderline insane.

 

back in the day this would have led to an entertaining evening at jhelom farms...

 

No... sorry. You don't get to relegate faithful backers to being trolls. When customers (plural... there have been many over the years....) consistently and repeatedly take the time to point out that your product fails to meet one of the PRIMARY goals you have set forth, that it in fact fails quite miserably to even take a few weak-kneed steps in that direction, then you don't have a customer relations problem, you have a problem with product development.

Not all of us are leaving, and participating in self-congratulatory high fives and body slams in some internet mosh pit. We are still here.

I'm here. I've played the game. Hell, I'm PLAYING the game right now (sort of...). I'm still here hoping they screw their heads on right, HONESTLY look at what they promised to deliver, and rearrange priorities so that they can not only fulfill those promises, but continue to make this something awesome.

But...

... I agree with everything @Corv has said.

I, too, backed this game for many reasons, but one of the primary ones was the fact that this was supposed to have a single player experience on par with what we had come to expect from the mid-to-late Ultima games.

It was supposed to have a deep story where I made choices and faced the consequences.

What it has is

• a ridiculously broken quest system that makes me not want to follow the story at all.
• no consistent lore that gives depth to the events, people, creatures, and places in the game.
• no consequences... at all.
• a decent story, being told in tiny scattered bits, strewn across the world in haphazard fashion, and sometimes being filmed by a spastic cameraman
  Spoiler: such as the events in this particular room

  The throne room scene at the end of the courage storyline.
• no sense of progression. The only way currently to achieve character progression in a way that lets you keep pace with the sometimes mind-numbing leaps in difficulty is
  Spoiler: kind of ridiculous.

  to go through all the starter scene, outskirts scene and starter town quests in all three arcs. even then you have to take a break to grind some levels so you can manage some more difficult scenes along the way.
• and so on...

I've given hundreds of hours towards not only testing things out, but reporting the bugs I find... only to have to repost them next release, and repost them... and repost... and...

It was only recently that they fixed a major, glaring hole right in the beginning of the game... and now they are reworking those scenes again, which I am loving so far, but there is one problem with when they decided to do this:

THE GAME HAS LAUNCHED!!!!

I don't care how slick you wanna be with the terminology. Episode 1 is DONE. COMPLETE. THIS SHIP HAS SAILED.

They played word games with permanence, and now they did the same thing with launch, claiming that the game is always "under development".

There are things that needed to be in the game at launch. A complete, rich and wholly satisfying SINGLE PLAYER experience (for what was it they said... 40 hours of gameplay??) is one of them.

To hear that the things that destroy it, and drive customers away, is on the shelf to be fixed in the NEXT episode, well... just another nail.

 

We are very sorry that some players feel misled by our communications.

The narrative that everyone seems to latch on to is that this was supposed to be a single player game and never a multi-player game. They then take a single quote “With Shroud of the Avatar what I am hoping we can do is to create a story-driven solo player experience that hearkens back to somewhere between Ultimas IV and Ultima VII" to prove their point.

However the full quote ends with the words "but that ALSO has the ability to play online”. So the entire quote says "“With Shroud of the Avatar what I am hoping we can do is to create a story-driven solo player experience that hearkens back to somewhere between Ultimas IV and Ultima VII but that ALSO has the ability to play online”

Then if you actually read the entire Kickstarter page we say multiple times that it is selective multiplayer and open play mode will feel just like an MMO. That is on the initial KS page. The quote everyone likes to use to prove their single player point is from a FAQ on the page and out of context. Here is the full quote:

“Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game. We will be describing this in more detail in our upcoming community blogs.”

Blog post #10, during the first half of the KS is where we clarified it. We said that it will feel just like an MMO but that we didn’t want to call it that because we didn’t know how many players we could handle together. Also, we say will feel just like an MMO on the front page and Richard’s own mission statement for it was “Multiplayer Online Game – which can also be played solo player / offline” right on the front page.

And then over time every single month we have been very transparent about out game development about how the game would play and we have delivered exactly what we promised.

Could the quality be higher? Absolutely.
Were we INSANELY ambitious to try to make an offline/online game that could be played single player and MMO at the same time? Yes.
Did we do this with 1/10 to 1/20 the budget of almost every other product that we are compared with on a daily basis (Witcher, ESO, WoW, etc.)? Yes.
Are we constantly trying to get better every month? Yes.
Did some people build certain expectations that did NOT match what we were planning because possibly our poor communication? Probably
Are we sorry that some players misinterpreted what we posted initially and then said during the evolution of the game? Yes, very, very sorry

Now at this point you can choose to accept our apology and our commitment to keep improving things or you can choose to move on.

In either case we thank you for your support and your feedback. Both have made this game happen and we are very, very grateful.

 

Yet, here you are listening, and commenting on another persons complaint. The OP's complaints are real and justified, and maybe he wants to warn those who may have been expecting a different type of game that it isn't what they want. Let's be honest, the storyline and quests are lame, in my opinion at least. Some of the puzzles and quests are ok, but the majority aren't. I love the game but I couldn't imagine being happy with the game if I had to play it totally solo. Yeah, the game has released but look at the performance of the game, which they are finally addressing. How can you call a game with so many bugs released. Don't get me wrong, this game has a lot going for it and for an MMO it is a lot of fun for me, but it doesn't mean that a backer can't be displeased about the finished product. Not sure why you decided to rag on the OP for posting a legitimate complaint, but maybe you should try a little harder to resist the tyranny of people trying to demand you listen to their complaints. You obviously did listen, cared and dealt with their issues in the fashion that you though appropriate, which I entirely disagree with.

 

Thank you!! Thank you so much for formally representing SotA on this topic, again, and pointing out all these over looked facts. I don't think this can be done enough, though I'm sure you all are tired of defending against the same stuff leveled at your company over and over again. It is appreciated.

I honestly don't know how you could possibly show more and be more transparent with the work you all do in the Release Notes as well as your live streams and all the information pages on your site as well as the Kickstarter, without spamming every user or potential users, or going even more out of the way to itemize everything like #of quests, items, etc etc on the main page like a wiki, just to show what has been done and how much IS getting done constantly. I just don't know. But I appreciate every single Release Note you guys put out as its rare to see that much information going out every month, from any game at all really, with what you all are working on and your live streams. You would think that if people really wanted to know what was going on or what they've missed they'd check them out. Maybe we can get a drop down on the updates section of main site page just for release notes too, so people can catch up on older notes as well (like just the links to the releases so they can read whichever they want without going back through all the pages in updates).

Thanks again.

 

My fear is that it's all hot air. They are pitching episode 2 as if it's going to be super amazing. Just like they pitched episode 1. So don't get your hopes up too much.

as for them taking funding for episode 2 when 1 isn't finished yet, blah. They shouldn't be spending ANY time building episode 2 yet, wait until they and us are happy with episode 1 first.

I know they let about half of their staff go and I know they need around $150,000 per month to break even, so of course they need a lot of money ($5k per day). But if any of the current episode 2 funds are used to fund them finishing episode 1, I fear we will be doomed before episode 2 even sees the light of day.

P.S. I said the word 'episode' way too much during this post.

 

Not saying every single one, saying there are the "usuals" that fit this. I believe you know exactly what I am referring to. There are plenty of people who complain but don't go to this level this group does. It's not helpful to anything other than stirring up trouble.

 

A difference here from other games though is a lot of these upset people have spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars backing this game. So we become attached. Then sprinkle on the nostalgia of "UO's spiritual successor" with some of the original UO team at the helm. Of course that's going to set the bar high for them and of course we will be here to go along the ride.

This isn't a game we spent $60 on, didn't know the devs for 20+ years and wasn't promised anything. Those situations are super easy to walk away from. but this situation has me no longer playing this game, but I'm on the forums daily, I read as many reviews as I can, the steam charts are on my 3rd monitor in real time. I spent a lot of my time watching SotA, just hoping and praying it will feel the way they said it would. so I'll probably stick it out until the game dies, or they dramatically change it and it works.

I apologize if I am one of those people you speak of. I just simply don't have much good to say about the game currently, other than if they follow through with their episode 2 promises, then that would be enough to bring me back, most likely.

As it sits, the only good things I can say are I appreciate Starr as a developer and I appreciate Garriott as a developer and as a person. That's all that remains for me. So yeah, I'm just jaded.

 

Really? How many games ever come out bug free? Especially MMO types... i'd say like this but there isn't really any other games like this one out there, is there? What quests are lame? I've done most of them and while the journal system is frustrating and lacking, there are plenty of good storied quests. How many have you done? Do you do all the ones every release? When was the last time you did them? I ask because a lot of people are basing all this off old information on a game they last played over a year or more ago.

There is still plenty of story to be incorporated into the game by episode 5 as well as lore and story polish.
"Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtue is the first of a 5 game series of full-length, stand-alone games (each using the same game system), referred to as Episodes 1 through 5. Estimated availability of Episode 1, Forsaken Virtues, is October 2014, with Episodes 2 through 5 estimated for subsequent yearly releases."
Whether you like the quests and story for the current game is up to you and your opinion, but it is there and you can play it. It says stand-alone, not fully complete and even lets you know more story is coming in future episodes. We know that more lore from the books are still waiting to go in as well. Some of it is already there... nothing about it being fully complete that I can see.

 

And they are not the only ones who spent that much either.... plenty are happy and still playing. Plenty who are on the ropes too and hoping they have certain things implemented soon as well. Doesn't mean they need to form the Goon Squad and bash, continually spout negativity, and rant/rave and carry the conversations back and forth between main forums and offsite forums like mmorpg.com and reddit/RAW, does it? No this is all about the way a select group acts and behaves and it is a minority... but a minority that makes a lot of noise, usually in negative ways, and then they wonder why they get moderated.

 

It was NEVER UO's Spiritual Successor...

It was the Spiritual Success of the Ultima Series which Includes Ultima Online as ONE of a Baker's Dozen of titles. Those that keep spouting the "Spiritual Successor of UO" line are either misinformed, deluded or being purposefully disingenuous.