The Tooth of Time... (The Future or Past of New Player Welcomes)

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Time Lord, May 17, 2019.

?

Should our game follow "Past Lord British's" opinion, or the present game entry build?

  1. We should keep a single entry point for all new characters to enter the game

    8 vote(s)
    33.3%
  2. We should follow "Past Lord British's" advise and create multiple ways to enter into our game.

    12 vote(s)
    50.0%
  3. Lord British didn't know what he was talking about at the time.

    6 vote(s)
    25.0%
  4. Lord British knew exactly what he was talking about at the time.

    4 vote(s)
    16.7%
  5. If Lord British said this, do you think it's coming in our future?

    2 vote(s)
    8.3%
  6. Do you think it's not coming in our future?

    2 vote(s)
    8.3%
Multiple votes are allowed.
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  1. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    "Conflicting Ideas from Moments within our History" :confused:
    [​IMG]

    Trapped in a Moment...
    There was a cave-in within the Time Tunnel which manifested itself in epiphany, trapping the Time Lord to a single moment very early within our Portalarium's history when it was only a vision, a hope and a dream within our Lord British's brain.

    :oops: Here is the moment of time in question... (please forward the video interview to time stamp 30:00 to continue your quest)

    :rolleyes: (This I believe is the most important and telling interview with our game's creator and chief ever made and "Great Thanks to Our Markee Dragon" for having asked such relevant questions into the dreams that became our game)

    :rolleyes: The entire interview is well worth watching, as it not only sets the tone and scene, it also back up the point of time in question with solid basis for why our Lord British's opinion should be well considered within the present stage of our game's development.

    o_O Make no doubt, this is a quest which could create and open up new gateways through new choices and new destinations in how each player could "choose" to enter our world through".

    :rolleyes: With the above in mind, our world is, within it's core mission values, a world of choices to be made, yet currently, we force a single pathway upon our new players through a single entryway which is not of their own choosing, only forced upon them and that's through "Gawain's Amulet" o_O There's no doubt about it, Gawain forces you into immediate battle to get his Amulet delivered.

    :eek: New Britannia's Converging Conflicting Timelines... :confused:
    There's also not doubt about it that this situation, though it gets the job done, is not the best outcome to what our Lord British is saying he wished for within the video. o_O The opinion and dream within the video cannot exist within the same space-time as our current game :confused: ! :eek: "It's just impossible for them both to be true in regards to our current game's entry point".

    :rolleyes: There are no reasons that I know of that these two very different visions of our future could not be both hosted within our existing artwork/scenes/instances, because all that's needed is there to be easily modified. o_O At this point make sure you note well the video where Lord British himself describes a world, just like our current build is with a single entry which leads into combat, as being a failure in today's world of gaming. Lord British is quite specific that to succeed, a game as ours should be able to be entered into as a baker or other profession such as fisherman without ever touching a weapon or combat. I bade ye' mark well the story of the dungeon hero and the fisherman which granted great epiphany into the future of gaming while he invisibly watched and listened in on within the earliest times of online gaming. That epiphany needs to be marked well and remembered, for that was the point in time where our Lord British gained great advantage over every other online gaming producer :cool: Some may think that's not as important a moment as I point it out to be, yet it's a moment where shooting himself into actual space became more possible with every creation he there after made.

    From what we have...
    Arabella remains, yet our little girl could easily lead our new players/new characters, through an short tutorial and world entry point which would allow the player to have chosen to be or do anything from baker to fisherman and strait into the game doing what that player wanted most to do here in the first place... that motive which brought them here or what sparked their interest in the game. They could be there doing what they wanted to do in no time. Then, if and when the player wished to visit any city's local Captain of the Guard, they could be directed strait to exploring into Highvale where they could "then meet Gawain" and continue on their desired extent into our main quest content, which, no matter the path of love, courage or truth, "they all lead to combat" :cool:

    Links in training when time...
    It's my belief that a registry of helpful "how to" videos needs to be accessible and pointed out with a single "in game link from an NPC" to our forums where such player made videos and player video channels are readily available to suite each chosen profession, by way of the ending of each of our little girl's beginning basic path tutorials.

    :rolleyes: All the gaming mechanics and instances in order to have such multiple entry points are already made for the needed minor modifications. For instance, entry into becoming a fisherman could end in the player "from a city which was best suited for the fishing profession", instead of having to fight their way through Highvale.

    If it wasn't that important to have made such things as this, then our Lord British in 2011 was wrong, or he predicted what would be our failure so long ago... "dumping the crafting player strait into combat" with only a combative life ahead of them consisting of many more hours of gaming toleration while they try and make their way to the content they most wanted and came for.

    I am not a Tech Minded person o_O I'm just a goofy Time Lord trapped as I ever am within what I think are important moments and turning points in time.

    I am not misquoting Lord British o_O...
    This tooth came strait out of the horse's mouth, and if it's not true, then throw it back into our past, but "if you believed what Lord British himself once believed in, then please make some suggestions or comments which could help these two timelines to converge, 2011-2019, because I'm still trapped in 2011 with no way home which includes this tooth that was pulled away from our distant past, when our New Britannia was just a dream...

    Geniuses are often times forgetful, quite mad in their mind and pulled into many directions by others...
    Our Lord British is a genius and sometimes such men can become influenced by the Guardians of the Boardrooms, which is the best reasons why he always did better when he stuck with his own thoughts in the worlds he's created.

    :) Your comments are needed and necessary for such things to come to life. Our game is created by Portalarium, yet we players do play and very significant role in helping to guide it's development.

    I apologize for all the reading involved here...

    [​IMG]


    "For Our Fellowship"
    [​IMG]
    :cool:~Nystal~:cool:
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2019
  2. Spoon

    Spoon Avatar

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    Yupp.

    Back in 2015 I tried to convince Lum that each key feature should have a tutorial quest and who better to give it out than the character that exist in all three starting scenes? (Back then it was Edward, nowadays that is Arabella).

    This so that if you are interested in Music, you get a questline of making an instrument and a 'tune' to play etc. If you are interested in crafting you get a questline for that, preferably divided to main skills. If you are interested in writing books you get a questline for that. etc etc etc
    This since most of the cool features are hidden away and only reach new players through word-of-mouth through guilds etc than through actually playing the game.
     
  3. Beaumaris

    Beaumaris Avatar

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    Pardon me. But what difference do multiple entrances to our world make if a preponderance of NPCs a few steps after have nothing to say but 'buzz off Outlander!"
     
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  4. Girlsname

    Girlsname Avatar

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    GM Field Dressing and I’m still disgusted! :<

    (Disgusted being the sound we, the Avatards make when skinning dead creatures)
     
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  5. GMDavros

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    Avatard. damn funny. almost spit out coffee on that one.

    Fenris
     
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  6. Vladamir Begemot

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    Three entries for no reason other than three entries.

    That is a waste.

    If there were some difference then fine. But there isn't, ultimately you have do go to all three, and number two and three you are over powered for.

    This is a waste.

    We are noyw stuck with 3 starter scenes that are combat oriented. Only one is not overwhelming. Solace.

    With what we have now, remerging the timeline, it should work like this.

    At the lunar rift, the Oracle asks you if you are an adventurer or a homesteaders. If you are a homesteader, you get a quiz to do with that. What is your angle? How many people do you want around? Player is sent to a twin that matches that.

    If you are an adventurer, you start at Solace. When done you get teleported to (or in Soltown Arabella sends you) to whichever outskirts has the least number of quitters (Dev metrics). When done there, go to the last one. In my idea that should be Aerie, as you will then start on the easiest quest line, Truth.

    This allows devs to increase the mobs in the second and third outskirt as well as bump tier 1 and 2 scenes up because everyone should be tier 2 at least by the time they finish all three outskirts.
     
  7. Astirian

    Astirian Avatar

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    Sorry Time Lord, I haven't had my Acid yet tonight. ;)

    All I can say is, Ultima VII dumped you into a CSI nightmare and Iolo in full PTSD. It was great because it just basically said "k go." It also had a very solid legacy to build on. It's the start of GoT Season 7.

    The gaming landscape was different then, less choice, less RPGs (were tutorials a thing yet? I seem to recall printed manuals but I need to Gandalf that via the Tardis)*. And it was BOLD. Ultima VIII does the same, here's someone's head getting chopped off and fed to a lake monster, "k bye!"... It's effing majestic. It's up to the player to investigate!

    These are two of my all-time favourite games but Bob Dylan was a prophet, the times man, always a-changin'.

    Ultima 9 comes out and 3D is a thing now. It's a new thing, that requires tutorials. There is literally a whole new paradigm. Mario 64 has opened the floodgates!

    ... Time passes... Gandalf leaves... Thorin sings about gold.

    UO begat Everquest begat WoW begat The Rest and then LotRO went F2P (And then the mobile race to the bottom happened). Then a million games hit Steam, then EA and everyone made loot boxes (YAY!) and then everyone had too much choice and became entitled to boot. And then... Oh deary me. I'm officially a "get off my lawn" gamer.

    Meanwhile, Back in the Single-Player Cave (na-na-nalala-lalala-laaaa), Bethesda became a powerhouse. Gaming really came out of the shadows with CoD4 and by the time Skyrim came out it was on the side of BUSES on the street. It's still going.

    What's remarkable is that SotA even exists. :)

    I don't think I have a point.

    The time stream is messing with my inner monologue.



    *Sidebar: someone please make a gif of Gandalf pouring over 90's video game manuals at Minas Tirith!
     
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  8. Astirian

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    Port's biggest challenge is trying to make a single-player game that's an MMO that's a single-player game... That's an MMO (But it's not an MMO).

    I really do think there's every chance they can pull it off ultimately (HAH!) - And it's amazing to be a part of it (should it result in an actual paradigm shift that slaps the face clean off of Theme Parks and Survival Betas, then even better!) - But it sure is one hell of a ride watching it mature. :)

    The funny thing about "Zones" is... Shouldn't it just be a world? But we need new players onside, so we should make "Outskirts" so... Wait what?

    I tell you what, it's a design problem that fuels nightmares.

    Maybe they should have just made an in-game Codex. Like a slick Compendium for the Age of Avatars. A Tome. An epic resource of Knowledge accessed through the legendary "T Key". Just park this guy on the Isle of Storms and be done with it:



    :D
     
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  9. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    I went through the opening again a few times to find out exactly why it feels to me that we're not fulfilling the original dream...

    [​IMG]


    It was almost 2 hours into the opening scenes when I finally couldn't take it anymore and bailed to the open map. For a game of so many options, the opening scenes/instances are a prison. There's no decisions to be made, there's only, "you do this and that". Taken in it's entirety, from the entry all the way to being set free... :eek: "it's much like trying to escape from a WWII POW Camp" :confused:

    Each piece of it that was placed there to do, was like a bad rendition from Hogan's Heroes o_O... There's no discovery to it, there's only "get through it", which takes a very long time on it's single track one way railroad.

    The descriptive words, "Demanding & Confining" immediately come to mind :confused:

    The only hope the player has to a short confinement, is to log out and re-starting on the world map as soon as possible.

    [​IMG]

    One time after exiting the boat making my way along the road, I was met with 3 new players all asking me how to get out of there and expressing how bad the game was, all with descriptive words we can't use to describe our game here on our forums. It's so much different than what the rest of our game has to offer :confused:

    It's a POW Campsite, something that takes a very long time to escape from, with only one way out ~Time Lord~:(
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2019
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  10. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    Before we reach the point lb is talking about there is much work and refining to do in every aspect of the game imo... A cook cant only enjoy being a cook. Need more complex system, but i agree thats the way to go.
     
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  11. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    :rolleyes: That's very true, we are very much a game under construction o_O but our new players who enter that initial POW Camp don't know that.

    For me and my part, what this current opening says to me is that our game suffers from lack of player suggestions into how it could be better, before our producers place so much of their time into their repairing or constructing efforts.

    Something took the wind out of our forums around here :confused: there are so few people now when compared to when our numbers did provide Portalarium a great deal more of player's collective imaginative suggestions.

    Throughout the earlier days of our forums, it became very clear from the contentions between the company, our players and between players, that we players have more time than they did to sit and imagine things.

    :rolleyes: But there's the rub... there's the quest in it all, do we attempt to think of better or rely on those too busy writing computer code to find time in their busy scheduled to place all our hopes on?

    Each attempt by our Portalarium to make things better with our opening welcome scenes seems to have been met with failure and with each failure a waist of programmer's time pounding on their keyboards for those failures. We seem to have left it all up to them and they just don't have the time (which is not neglectful on their part, they're just busy doing what programmers do). It's neglectful on our part :( That is to say, "I just don't think we're paying anyone at the company to smoke joints, drink beer, sit on a couch and think up all of what's needed here" :D which should be our job in all of this o_O... "What could be better?" and not only just better, but "done and done well" before our programmers pound it all out on their keyboards?

    This is why I'm thinking "modular" instead of all clumped together, where there are decisions to be made, more options of entry and for god's sake a shorter time to get through and on to our main game. I'm thinking that each "thing to be", in a general but specialized way, needs it's own entry, with a linking NPC in the world, which can lead the player back to any other way of playing's entry whenever they wished.

    :rolleyes: That's a way generalized suggestion, but when it's modular, then a more simple scene/entry point, can then be later modified with minimal programmer's time needed to make such changes or minor adjustments. Currently we have many all lumped together and therefore takes a very long laborious time to get through with certain content the player either doesn't want or need at the time.

    In order to not get to wordy, I'll stop this comment here so possibly others could offer their own visions of what our opening needs to look like, other than a POW Camp o_O
    ~Time Lord~
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2019
  12. Vladamir Begemot

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    No. First, by the time we see a scene it is too late to alter the trajectory of it. We gave tons of feedback, much of which is acted on, but the foundation is built. Many many things were changed based on player feedback though.

    Second, the devs are still working with what appears to be an incredibly bad quest creation system. So no matter how much we or they want to do better, the amount they can do is pretty limited. I have yet to see a complex scripted event, and any quest is strictly limited by the dialog system.

    Third, they built 3 entry points rather than focus on one. Bad idea unless you're making entry points for entirely different races, like in WoW. In our case there is no long term difference between where you start, so from a resource management perspective, there should only have been one starting location.

    It sounds like they are getting ready to give players the option to skip the Outskirts and go straight to the sandbox, by giving them a deed as soon as they get to an Outskirt. I guess sometimes you just have to start from scratch.
     
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  13. majoria70

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    And what if you are a homesteader quests include things to do like place your house, plant some plants, craft some things for your house. Homeowner stuff with instructions.

    But of course at the point of selecting home owner quest line players are advised they can later do the storyline anytime.
     
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  14. Jason_M

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    I like the three entry points idea. I could be excited about 6 entry points, or 8 - one for each virtue! Why the heck not, it's a sandbox!

    ... Except when it isn't. When it's a single player RPG, the three entry points and "parallel" paths don't actually work. The player is responsible for knowing and understanding the sections and transitions of the three paths, except the player doesn't because he/she hasn't played them yet.

    If the paths dynamically scaled to accomodate the growing and maturing avatar, then these three paths could work. Players move in mysterious ways and they tend to flounder about, back and forth, when they're confused (and inevitably frustrated).

    I like the three paths. But they were not designed with players in mind. 3 tutorials sounds great for a sandbox but players don't need 3 tutorials interspersed throughout the middle of the story :confused:
     
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  15. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    This contradicts Lord British's first rule to success within the video. In our own way, we have sabotaged our own game's entry points. Also, with an extremely thin batch of players as we have within our participating forums (when compared with our past), our intellectual feedback pool could not help but to have suffered. "I'm not saying you're wrong at all", I'm just pointing to what Lord British had stated as successful in the video and the fact of declining player numbers here within our forums.

    I'm not saying you're wrong here either, yet NPC script tech even in the 1990s of UO would seem adequate, as a player could marry an NPC on Moonglow island. Have we lost ground in NPC script tech since UO, not to be able to properly guide a quest? I just don't know o_O

    Again, I'm not saying you're wrong, but entering into UO's world of the 1990s, players had the choice and ability to enter into many different cities when they chose to first play the game or create a new character.

    This to me indicates that there's a gaping hole within our ability to write even the most simple of quest or linked, "go here deliver or produce that" talent among the team, or a lack of time to "currently" deal with it within the work schedule. Or possibility number #99, where the company are still dealing with or providing "place holder quest scenes", because the future of our game has more that needs to be accommodated for within it, still being developed.

    Personally, I think we're still dealing in placeholders here in many facets of our game and that each episode is no more or less than numbering the stages within it's development. This is to say that I believe that we are still an unfinished game who only aggressively recruits the bare minimum into the game just to maintain enough players to be able to keep testing it.

    In short, I think we're all still just a single guild of lab rats held within a game producer's Rat Utopia, displaying the same behavior as did the real rats within the experiment...

    Which I also believe is symptomatic of what happened to have depleted the participants our forums o_O~Time Lord~

    :eek: The Lessons of... ~Universe 25~ :confused:


    [​IMG]
    [spoiler/]
    [spoiler/]
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2019
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  16. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    ~Consider the following~


    [​IMG]

     
    Last edited: May 19, 2019
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  17. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    ~Mechanics, Impact and Spectacle~
    [​IMG]
    ~Beginning Dialog~



    ~One can't look at our game from old eyes and expect the same vision as what new eyes can see~

    :rolleyes: When I look at our opening, it seems disjointed from our game, a holding cell. This is why I believe placing these opening quest dialog/quests, need to be embedded into our game, instead of a passage of rites or obstacle course to overcome in order to be allowed to the enter the main content.

    It took about a week before I became curious enough on UO's Moonglow Island, before I began inquiring about things with the local NPCs I was encountering on a daily basis, :eek: "then I found out I could marry one" :confused: *igniting my first spark of curiosity*

    o_O If "I"... am "The Avatar", then what are all these other people doing here?
    [​IMG]

    ~There's no "wonder" in our world when we're treated as cattle~

    I believe it falls upon our NPC town's NPCs to make us feel at home, which would involve more mundane and local characters, such as a few normal families which could help entice or pull our players more slowly into the main questing content. One can either lead players by reward, or by a more powerful force, their own curiosity o_O... or a bit more of both... Many times we've seen in real life, how people can win on a lottery ticket, then be broke or had spent it all within a few days and then be right back buying another ticket to play. Our COTO store should be something we get addicted to, instead of something we see as funding the game, though it does. We need some cheaper content that low COTO level new players can get addicted with. Some is dangled with the "specials", yet we could do with some dirt cheap low level stuff which never needs discounted or placed on special. I'm not going to mention what those items may be, but that they are needed, or more COTO need to drop for the new player and then as they rise gaining longevity in the game, then it needs to taper off to a certain average level of COTO income no matter the level content. Allow rares to take over from that level forward for player retention.

    Think clearly, think with a 15 second attention span and then think about the entry points to our game.
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:



     
    Last edited: May 21, 2019
  18. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    You are not the avatar, you are an avatar.
     
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  19. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    That's the point,we are addressed "as the avatar", yet we seem to be a crowd of cattle in a sift to find out if we truly are.
    Our dialog needs to reflect what is and what could be instead of "we are all avatars".
    You didn't watch the videos aye?
    ~TL~:rolleyes:
     
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  20. Vladamir Begemot

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    You suddenly made me crave an MMO where new players are the scum of the earth, at least according to the evil government that is letting them out of a FEMA camp or something.
     
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