Concerned about immersion slippery slope

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Zapatos80, Sep 7, 2018.

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  1. Zapatos80

    Zapatos80 Avatar

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    A lot gets done under the name of "convenience", but IMO it's not always a good thing when it comes to MMOs. The biggest difference between vanilla World of Warcraft and today's game (which might as well be a completely different game) is that vanilla felt like an actual World, with actual people playing the game. Travel time, flight paths, player interaction, all these things made the world feel real, and is one of the main reason I love SotA so much, that design philosophy.

    However, seeing this trend, i'm getting worried : all banks global, no more having to enter certain zones to pass on the world map, no more having to pass a siege to enter a town under siege... sure it's convenient, but those are also all things that made the world feel big, real and meaningful.

    To come back to WoW as an example. Is dungeon finder convenient? Of course. You click "find dungeon, select your role (tank/dmg/healing)" and you're automatically transported to the dungeon with 4 other random players that may not even be on your server. Convenient, right? Sure, except the world might as well not be there. Hell, the other players might as well be 4 bots. You just enter, plow through everything without saying a word, and never see them again.

    Back in vanilla WoW, you had to actually find 4 people to group with you and actually talk to them. Then people had to venture to the dungeon, get through the initial elite mobs outside the instances (in many cases) and enter. Less convenient? Sure. But it made the world feel real. It's also how I met a lot of friends in-game. When you have to play with people on your server and someone is really good, you notice, you talk, you make friends, you join guilds, you develop actual relationships in an actual virtual world. The whole reason to play MMORPGs in the first place!

    Now WoW is pretty much a Facebook game where you just blitz through everything without any thought at all, and it would really sadden me greatly to see SotA going down the same road, which is what I fear when I see changes such as those mentionned above. Please don't let us down, Lord British & Port!
     
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  2. Nelzie

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    Wow. So much doom. So much Gloom.

    These issues you note about the recent changes to Shroud has been a life send. I only have so many hours a day/week to play the game and these changes make it so that I can be more effective with my time in the game.

    The way the game was? People were leaving, as changing between five scenes to get somewhere, when now you can do it in two scenes is amazing.

    Global banks are fantastic! I can get more done without having to slog all the way back home, in fact, I hardly use Teleport and Recall scrolls now, so... I also tend to end up overburdening my avatar, giving me penalties which can raise the challenge up just a bit.

    These changes were needed. I'm sorry you don't see it the same way, but they were needed and they are great changes.
     
  3. Floors

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    Those changes should have been made in 2016 when we first asked for them lol
     
  4. Rufus D`Asperdi

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  5. redfish

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    Yea, a lot of people left because they were going in this direction in the first place. As for me, I'm less and less interested in playing, too. The changes don't do much except make grinding easier, which cements the idea that the game is about grinding.
     
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  6. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    Curious as to how you spend/spent most of your time ingame ?
     
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  7. Vodalian

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    You are right that it’s a slippery slope. There will always be an urge for more convenience. But when the journey isn't the point any longer, then we don’t have a game. That being said, I can live with the changes so far and I’m willing to compromise since we all have different views.
     
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  8. Andrew Silverston

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    Which it is, no matter how you spin it... But to each its own. Some people like to use it as a Bingo alley, others want to play a video game and satisfy their inner Ultima raised nerd. The effect we experience in SOTA right now is a result of the cause, which was always a small budget, small dev team and ideas catering to older gamers, who enjoyed the old style gaming, which was rough on the edges, very plain and unrewarding. Cause and effect. Not saying it's bad, is just a consequence.

    Not saying that they never should have done it. It's good for what it is, for whoever can find enjoyment in it. But it won't ever be anything else, but a very niche game. Port doesn't have enough resources, to make it anything else, or to make it to appeal to wider audience of gamers. If they try to hybrid the game though, they may end up alienating those who like it in its current state, but this small gamer core audience won't be enough to keep the game afloat. So yeah... It's like riding an old bike. You keep lubricating it from time to time, but it's still an old bike, no matter how you turn in.
     
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  9. redfish

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    I don't spend much time in it anymore, since I started losing interest once the emphasis has been on grinding.

    I have for a while only been in to do a certain quota of grinding solo just because I needed the gold to buy some things, because I had already planned with some people to do some POT building and needed those things to help build the POT. Absent that, I probably wouldn't have logged in the game at all. I just find it terribly uninteresting, nothing much to do except grind and socialize. Sometimes while I'm on, people invite me to events and I go, and sometimes they invite me to party up with them for dungeons and such and I go, but those are just grinding runs.
     
  10. redfish

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    If you say so. I think they started out the dev process right and could have easily iterated over the same direction over, improving the game and cleaning its rough edges. But a lot of wrong things happened in the development process and they locked the game in a different direction.

    To each his own, but there are many other games on the market that are grindy theme park games, the world didn't really need another one. Certainly not what people expected when they pledged.
     
  11. Andrew Silverston

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    I hear ya, I am not a fan of grind either, that's why I primarily switched to the Offline Single Player, whenever I decide to play SOTA. It's much more rewarding than online modes and the lack of other players doesn't really bother me that much, since SOTA in general is quite empty game either way. At least in offline SP I have 3 companions who are always there, my trusty bear summon, I can play it the way I want, actually get rewarded accordingly to the time I spent, with increased loot drops and harvest node drops and just have fun. Considering I don't have much time to game anyway, it suits me well. Grind will always be there, there is no way for a small dev group to make anything better happen, but through grind. It keeps players occupied, provides a feeling of achievement, if you have enough patience, and gives devs enough time for a very slow development cycle. At least the changes they made so far, make the game feel less tedious. EXP rate increase, faster travel feeling, will contribute for players sticking around for a bit longer, perhaps.
     
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  12. Nelzie

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    It's like you've never played UO before...

    I kid... a little, but UO was crazy with grinding.

    These changes had to be done, because they were aggravating to players and there were plenty of people complaining about those issues and then... they just stopped playing the game. People MIGHT be leaving the game because these changes have been happening, but... I can't see why removing mild inconveniences that CAN still be experienced (I mean, I'm totally going to be hunting Huge Corpions today, which WILL be taking me to a Control Point...) would seriously be a reason to throw one's arms up and quit the game.

    The game is a sandbox game, you have to make your own fun within the confines of what is available. Pick sides, join a guild, go PvP with another guild. They're working on making that more meaningful in the long run, but with a small staff, that will take time.
     
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  13. redfish

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    No, I did play UO, and quit. For non-PvP related reasons.

    Before that I played the single-player Ultimas, which UO was trying to emulate on a multi-player scale. And I think the devs are making some of the same mistakes they made with UO, and then borrowing some from games made afterwards.

    Well, we've had these discussions before on the forums. And I've explained many times why it changes gameplay and makes it unfun for a lot of people. But sometimes it seems like people who don't agree just aren't interested in listening, because the topic will come up five months later, then five months later again, and the same people talk like the discussion never took place, and they still don't know why people disagree with them.

    Anyway, like I said, many have quit over the devs going in this direction in the first place... and if it were only about the devs listening people who were complaining and quitting, we'd have a totally different game today.
     
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  14. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    Couldn't have said it better myself. Exactly right and on point. Granted most MMOs have some aspect of grind but here in Shroud, it is untenable.

    The RARE occasions I do log in is to get Oracle welfare, pay my taxes (all of which should be lowered) and 10,000 xp. MAYBE I party up and do something but usually I just log right out.

    The only thing that could reinvigorate me to play again, is the addition of filled bookshelves that store books. So FINALLY I can pursue my dream of having a library filled with books. In fact @redfish, if you remember many many releases ago, it was your monastery/library that inspired me to have my own.

    It's a shame really, but as Wesley in the Princess Bride once said, "Get used to disappointment!" ;)
     
  15. Zapatos80

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    Pretty much this. If I play a MMO, I want to play in a living, breathing world, with all its flaws and inconveniences, exactly what UO was before EA ruined it. If I want to play a convenient game, i'll just play present-day WoW, which is an infinitely more polished/casual gamer MMO-type game.

    Why do you think there's a crazy high demand for vanilla/classic WoW? Because those games felt like real worlds, not polished, well-engineered, hand-held theme park-type experiences. As has been said, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's just not the rich gaming experience I expect from someone of LB's pedigree. To be clear, i'm not saying we're there yet, but I see the pattern, and i'm worried, hence the post.
     
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  16. Micmatty

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    I think your main issue is using vanilla wow this is supposed to be a Ultima/Ultima Online successor and well sorry to tell you but UO had global banking, Runebooks, Mounts, and working moongates.

    And in terms of vanilla wow atleast for me it isn't the lack of QoL that made me enjoy it was just the way the talent trees were being able to be a hybrid druid and or a two handed windfury shaman, one shotting in pvp was frustrating but damn enjoyable when you did it also 40 man raids, was a hell of a time being in a guild with 100+ online, The traveling sucked, spending hours and hours just to form a 5 man group sucked. At the end of the day it's the play style I miss not the lack of polish etc..


    The biggest reasons I'm playing Sota is in hope that it will eventually be closer to the UO experience and some of these changes are, the binding will give the runebook feel and that is a wonderful thing.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2018
  17. Nakro

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    Yeah I don't want to see this convenience cancer infesting Shroud, this is extremely upsetting. If you want that convenience then go play WoW, otherwise, what's the point? This is a very bad sign, and I really don't like where we're headed. I think we should actually pullback from some of these changes. NO BYPASSING zones or sieges. Its completely unrealistic and plain stupid. And keep banks separate... please.

    If we're just going to make the game convenient then just give everyone a billion xp, billion gold, and every item because hey.. that's REAL convenient! Heck let's get rid of encumbrance and debuffs while we're at it! /sarcasm
     
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  18. Genner

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    Agreed stop making the game more like world of warcraft
     
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  19. Blightlord Knightmare

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    Well said Zapatos! Stop this crazy train before the game gets ruined. If they do more damage, like add in a dungeon finder, then I'm done with this game and frankly, I'll be pretty upset.
     
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  20. golruul

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    More quality-of-life changes, please. Especially in regards to making objects transparent if they would otherwise block your view of your avatar (i.e. fighting in a forest while zoomed out). I want to fight enemies, not the UI.

    Everyone against the recent convenience changes can go through the sieges/CPs as you did before -- nothing was taken away from you. If more loading screens complete your game experience you can still have them. Make sure you walk in Overworld, too, rather than run, because it's just not realistic (and immersion breaking) sprinting from town to town. Meanwhile I'll be quaffing my wolf speed potion and 5-stacking Sprint just before I leave a zone so I can more quickly get back to actually playing the game.
     
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