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Shroud 2020 Vision

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Chris, Jan 6, 2020.

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  1. Spinok

    Spinok Avatar

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    Hm didn`t want to derail the topic, just made a question to Chris. But seems it is a pretty sensitive question.
    Hey guys, any fair poll will show that MAJOR part of players wants some kind of global/regional search. UO style market (as we have now) is outdated for 20? years and honestly in 2020 it is just a shame.
    Defenders of UO type system here make conclusions that are pretty far from reality. The more automated search for goods will be, the better for the economy. In RL(to compare in SOTA), not the internet is killing small shops (single vendors) in the world, the walmart type organizations(city type markets) do it. And finally, competition is making ANY(99%) economy better and healthier, if you don't agree with this then economic book from school should be your next book.
    P.S. IMHO best solution is regional search with prices, but to buy you should physically come to the vendor(to avoid automated market activities, which I think probably can work in SOTA but not now and only if its online will be like in EVE).
    P.S.S. About searching only towns, its awful and would not solve anything, With 10-30 seconds load time, visit 50 towns it is 50 loads, twice if you dont want to use zone teleport. There is no fun in 50 loads.
     
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  2. Sol Stormlin

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    I agree, it should be global. In-town only searches defeats the purpose. We have MANY towns that are out of the way, and those people will never be visited if it's a town only search.

    The vendor search should include the town name, name of vendor, and name of lot owner. That will direct people to the town so they will STILL have to go there, but they will have the info on where to go. Talk about quality of life! This will truly help us all, so we don't have to spend 5 hours searching.
     
  3. Sentinel2

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    Put my ship in storage and turned the lot into a floating water garden. Growing whatever I need until ships are a thing.
     
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  4. Elrond

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    If our economy is built with a solid foundation it will survive a search engine ... if prices start dropping rapidly and stuff is no longer worth making or sold at a loss we can all blame Chris ...:)

    Without an actual count of all ingame supply of stuff available on the market we can only speculate on what will actually happen .
     
  5. Barugon

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    Exactly.
     
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  6. Restless

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    And who said sota isn't p2w? :)
     
  7. Sol Stormlin

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    It isn't pay to win. You can complete all quests without spending any real life money, and completing the shroud quest is essentially winning the game. You can create all armor and weapons, potions, get artifacts, etc., without paying a penny. So this game is not pay to win.
     
  8. Sentinel2

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    ESO sorta has one. I've been recently learning more about it. Used a few times. So far seems ok. I believe the search is across guild sellers only.

    I think...
     
  9. Restless

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    Wrong. This is an MMORPG without an endgame. Just completing the storyline does not mean the game is finished, otherwise none of use would still be around. If someone wants a town, they must buy it from Port or 2nd hand. Since Port no longer sells towns, on the secondary market - you either pay little for a low traffic town or high for a town with a lot of traffic. p2w.

    Additionally, looking at the ridiculous amount of hours required just for a good set of gear - it is time prohibitive for 90% of players. This means they're either buying gold on the secondary market or cotos from Port to trade in game for gold. p2w.

    Should we also talk about the deco market that is one way or another bought from Port for 90% of items?
     
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  10. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    I was out for a few days and tracked the huge number of postings with great interest.
    There are alot of good ideas.
    And it made me think ...

    1. Even if most of us got their boxes / items:
    Please deliver the last few missing boxes BEFORE delivering anything else

    2. Plesae deliver what was promised for Episode 1 AND Episode 2 (the whole last year):
    - Quest Journal overhaul including story/quest relevant maps
    I want to repeat it: having chapters for different paths and tabs for towns would be a good start
    (similarly for crafting book: tabs for better sorting / finding).

    Regarding to this, please don't count too much on LUA and community to fulfill what was promised to be fixed ...

    This game has a lot to do with COMMUNICATION:
    - communication with NPC:
    Stoy, Quests, Vendors ...
    - communication with other Outlanders
    /T, /z, /u, /l ...

    So I would suppose to make it more easy to communicate for enjoying
    - the story / Quest parts
    - bargain
    - communication with other players

    And, of course, crafting (similar framework like Vendor windows)

    And yes, we know, you can do it in a good way.
    Example 1: auto fade for player stats and quest tasks? [auto fade/hide possibility for all kind of screen information would be fine]

    Example 2: as the crown shop was integrated in game
    YOU SHOWED that you can do a kind of well sorted, easy to use categories list, in a (very) short time!
    With easy to identify/use ICONS. Just do the same for Vendor and Crafting Windows, please.
     
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  11. Vladamir Begemot

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    I know of people who have bought towns from their in game efforts.

    I know of others who easily could, strictly from in game effort. A town is not that expensive, about 23 million gold for a cheap one right now.
     
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  12. Vladamir Begemot

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    Right? And for the Quest Journal as well, please.

    It's not like the UI is out of reach, it's that they purposely threw it under the bus despite overwhelming rejection, critique of the current versions. The dialog UI was roundly panned when it was new in 2017! But the develop method is "If it functions (somewhat) it's done, moving on!"
     
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  13. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    For sure, for the quest journal as well ;) What am I talking about the last 6 years in so many posting ? ;)
     
  14. Vladamir Begemot

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    Maybe they better spend some more time tweaking combat for the billionth time, that'd be better than fixing 6 year UI problems once, right?
     
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  15. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    I don't think so ;)
    I would assume, testing and balancing combat would be a very nice task for LUA (enthusiastic players) ...
     
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  16. smack

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    23 million is not that expensive? I would love to see an update on the economic health of the player base. It was last stated back in 2016 that "the top 10% of players have 90% of the gold while the bottom 90% are incredibly poor and can barely afford to play" -- I wonder what that metric is like today...
     
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  17. Beaumaris

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    Its a good 2020 vision.

    I'm wondering if only a few things make it into 2020 though. The interesting discussion about the 'Post Release Plan' not being a valid comparison got me pondering this. Granted that past list was a 2-5 year vision. But only a few Pre-Release Plan items have been completed in the past 2 years, and many on that list are similar in scope to the 2020 list. If the past predicts the future, for similar level-of-scope items with a smaller team, will only a few (not most) of the new list items make it in 2020? If so, what is that short list? What must that short list be? Are there 'must haves' vs. 'would be nices'? When will we know?

    I'm also wondering about Episode 2's 'release' now being 2021+. The time from Kickstarter (March 2013) to Release 1 (March 2018) was five years. Five years to build the game from the ground up. But now 3+ years to release another maybe 40 hours (?) of story game play using the systems already built? Made me wonder if there is enough focus on story vs. other stuff being iterated on again?
     
  18. Vladamir Begemot

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    If you're trying to get a town, ostensibly THE end game item, 23 million isn't that much. It'll take some years if you start with nothing but a free account, but on the other end you've got a town. If you're just grinding out loot sales, it might not be possible, but if you are operating more proactively, running a vendor, selling quest items, crafting and selling the profitable stuff, claiming and selling good lots, reselling under priced things, you can do it. There are plenty of examples of players making tons of gold.

    Do it with some friends and you'll speed up the process significantly. Ask in Trade, there are probably a lot of ways to make gold I haven't even mentioned.

    Things have changed a lot since 2016. Even in 2018 it was a lot tougher. It's a different story today, the gold faucet is open. But as I said, if you only rely on the faucet it's going to take you forever to buy a town. If you, however, leverage the gold you get from the faucet to gain more gold, you can do it.

    If I wasn't so burned out I might do another experiment, this time "Race to Owning a Town". But that's not happening. Someone should do it and document it though.
     
  19. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    It's rampant in ALL MMOs that allow price-listing! And honestly, if it happens, a lot of the vendors that play this game for the economic system we already have will leave. And given this game is overwhelmingly full or crafters and shops.

    Why do some people assume SoTA is immune to this behaviour? We're overrun with RMT people, gold hoarders, guilds planning monopolistic takeovers and general economic pvp. It's gonna be shiete.

    Just give us regional (not town) vendor search kiosks a la Star Wars Galaxies, in the game, and call it a day. It's that simple.
     
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  20. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    Says the owner of an entirely vendor driven town that participates in RMT on the regular, and even has started their own RMT discord channel. That's not an attack, just facts.

    My entire purpose and reason for being such a pain in the ass about this is because I'm trying to keep this fair for everyone.
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2020
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