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Shroud 2020 Vision

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

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  1. Drilikath

    Drilikath Avatar

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    We should not have to spend time outside of the game world tracking down information for simple things like this.
     
  2. Astirian

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    This sounds like it could easily turn into a missed opportunity depending on what is meant by a higher reward scene. Unless the procedural scene generation is very strong, players will get bored of doing "just another encounter scene" (albeit with a higher reward).

    Treasure hunting would be a perfect opportunity for players to visit existing scenes they haven't necessarily been to yet. And they get to find a treasure by working the map... Like, that's the fun of treasure hunting... But I suppose you need a good map system for that though.
     
  3. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    I'd like to remind everyone in this post to continue to offer feedback, but keep things constructive and be kind to one another. Albeit every feature did not make it into the 2020 vision that will ultimately be a feature of this game, many more features beyond 2020 are coming as we have many episodes ahead. Thanks :)
     
  4. Astirian

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    I pray that they stop at horses and pack llamas. Horses would be fantastic. I have this really bad feeling though that the game's gonna end up with Kobold Harley-Davidsons, fluorescent pink dinosaurs and Mini Krampuses with coconut bras left right and center.
     
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  5. Numa

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    Ditto. Let's hope those monstrosities never come to pass :eek:

    Me, I'd be happy riding this:

    [​IMG]
     
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  6. Vladamir Begemot

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    Well, at least they'd be consistent. Meh, another treasure map. Just like encounters in most cases, best to be avoided.

    Treasure maps don't require a new scene, they require a map that leads you with difficulty to an already existing place within an already existing scene to a fat treasure chest waiting to be dug up.

    Not only that, they just gated it into high level people only. Sorry newbs, no treasure maps for you!

    No longer excited about this.
     
  7. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    Don't paint the devil on the wall, please ...
    Instead beat the devil out of it ;)

     
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  8. Sean Silverfoot

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    I'll just disagree with you and leave it at that. You can continue your usual negativity.
     
  9. Spungwa

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    While this is a great aspiration. I find this is rarely true for any game that has a reasonable amount of depth and complexity to it mechanics and systems. Deep and complex games are usually learnt from talking to other players or watching video/streams of more experienced players explaining things (if they are not multi player). Most players don't have the time to work everything out themselves from scratch, better to learn from each other and build the collective knowledge as everyone learns from each other (same as RL).

    For a game like this one, taking this too far would be a dev time sink that would quickly come up against diminishing returns, but that my opinion. I would rather them use that time on other things.



    Regards
    Spung
     
  10. kaeshiva

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    Exactly this.
    Also bear in mind that fumbling along figuring stuff out is, for a lot of people, an important part of the experience/discovery of a new game. And you pick up bits of information from other players and/or research along the way.

    When we first started back in like R14 or thereabouts there was a fraction of the systems we have today, but even then, it was a matter of "what's this do?" methodology. While we certainly want to make core systems intuitive enough that a new player can start and actually do stuff, exploration and discovery and understanding new features/systems as you encounter them also has benefits.

    I made a new character after the new user expierence changes and frankly, I found I didn't really like being led along by the nose so much through a series of set dialog/tasks when what I really wanted to do was go see what's --over there-->.
     
  11. ShurTugal

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    Friend, you missed the point of my post. I forgot I needed the blueprint. that's on me. The point of my post was to point out the disaster of a vendor system we have that doesn't promote getting buyers and sellers together and as a direct result allows the select few to extort players out of their gold. If we had more competitive markets, the customers could find those willing to sell items at a more reasonable price and as such those wanting to extort players would be forced to either lower their prices or not sell it and don't tell me people will just try to game that system. Of course they will as they do to the current one but In that approach, there are things that can be done to mitigate that. that was my point. I of course am all for learning and exploring and I have watched my share of you tube vids to expand my knowledge.
     
  12. Ancev

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    Not everyone enjoys endlessly grinding mobs. I always feel like I'm falling behind in the skill system and I feel obligated to grind mobs.. I would rather gain XP by PvPing and maybe through battlegrounds or something different.
     
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  13. Elwyn

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    I have to agree with you. The player models are rather boring, but the NPCs are much worse. There was one NPC model that was a cute girl for about one release, then she caught the ugly virus too.
    I like the idea of it having a range, even if that range is "entire town". Global should be right out.
    Seriously, even merely making the tab key work in the sell/orders windows would an amazingly major improvement. Literally an hour of work, and how to do the tab key can be cribbed from the login screen.
    AND MORE RUSTY RECIPES FROM SALVAGE!!!!!
     
  14. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    All I can say is if you get global "auction houses" or whatever with price listings I guarantee you're going to hate it. I strongly, very strongly, urge @Chris to keep price data hidden. The dissonance between what people are asking for and the lack of ability to foresee the consequences is something I have tried, and apparently failed to describe with examples of what has happened in other games already here.

    And whoever said "WoW is still around" has either never played it or had no ability to see the difference between a game with JUST an auction house and this game, with private properties and vendors. Two completely different game systems and completely not comparable in the least.

    Be careful what you ask for because you might just get it.
     
  15. Lars vonDrachental

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    I have thought about it…and I would say regional economy is since several years not anymore the plan. As I understood the original plan was the idea that resources are not uniformly distributed in every region.
    Best example might be ore. Basically just in the mines it was planned to get a decent amount of gold, silver, copper,…
    Even if you could get some ore outside of these mines everyone looking for a specific kind of ore would have concentrate on the one mine this ore is available in masses and this way this kind of ore would be cheapest around those mines.
    For every kind of resource this was the plan even for agriculture. E.g. while you could harvest 10 cotton in every region just in the Perennial Coast region you could harvest 15 cotton out of the some kind of cotton bush.

    The next idea was that processing will be most beneficial in regions that are not a good natural source for said resources. Taking again cotton weaving could have been e.g. most effective in the North Paladis region. This way you could live with the loss of effectiveness or carry the resources to a more effective region including carrying the materials in your inventory or hiring someone for doing it with the constant fear that bandits rob you or monsters eat you on your way.
    This way the devs would have defined hot spots for specific goods. If you would have searched something there would have be always a region you would most likely have found said good as the region would have had a reputation for it.

    This was in short the initial plan for regional economy as I understood it….but as I can see this is not the plan anymore. Regional economy of this kind is not working with e.g. global banks or teleportation and that way we should agree that this kind of regional market is not achievable in SotA anymore. In this context the vendors and their system seem to be a remnant of said regional economy plan.

    As everyone is getting free lots (quest reward) also everyone can have a vendor and this way we might adjust to this.
    Instead of using vendors as bound to the lot merchants we might instead use them as employees who are selling our goods more dynamic. As searching vendors seems to be a pain why not do it this way: If you are handing an item to a vendor he will continue to offer the item on your lot to bypassing travelers but the vendor also will search at other vendors if someone else’s vendor or even NPCs are interested in your offered item to at least your set price and if so the vendors will make the trade in your name. If we would like to have some regional influence on day one the vendor might just search in “his” town but the more time goes by the more distant offers will be checked.
    The possibility to check the offers of a vendor would stay as an option but for most avatars this would get an automatized process…just create an offer or request and the vendor will do the search for a customer.
    Prime spots would still get a lot more sales as casual customer would still passing by but even vendors in a dead-end village could sell stuff even if it may take some time till the search radius of the vendor is large enough.

    I guess even with the current fixed stack size this might be a working solution but at best the devs finally let us purchase/sell part of a offer/request as we can see it all along at NPC traders.

    In this context some change to the vendor pricing might be needed too. E.g. as long as the vendor is standing on your lot he could charge a small daily salary (gold sink) while the formally tax free vendor might charge a reduced daily salary...maybe even with the possibility to use Cotos to upgrade a normal vendor to a "tax free" vendor similar to the possibility of upgrading deeds. If you do not have something to offer/search remove the vendor from your lot to not pay him for standing around. If you have no gold left the vendor and the offered items might move to your bank account. This would hopefully reduce the number of empty vendors. ;)

    I absolutely think you are right that there is a lot of work that adjusting the trade till it is all good…and I really like the picture of the Tome of Knowledge that is bringing back some memories. I think too that something like this is missing in SotA and would add a lot to the game. Something that is displaying your achievements and progress in a beautiful to look at interface…and a book would be indeed fitting. Maybe handed to you/found while doing the starter scene.

    Killing your first wolf and an entry it added to the bestiary…killing 100 wolves and a knowledge article is added to the book…killing 1000 wolves and a “howl of wolves” emotes unlocks…

    Something to browse your quests and that is updating if you find something new about a quest just as if your avatar would make notes. Also making your choices of non repeatable quest readable…e.g. you helped the waitress instead of the farmer and there you can read about the outcome of this choice or how you completed the main quests with each step displayed by one or two sentences describing your doings and forming this way your story.

    The skill trees could be placed in this book with a double page per skill type. E.g. the fire mage skills are on the left page and a description and animation of the skill your mouse is currently at could be on the right page.

    Special achievements could be visible in this book…some hidden until you unlock them (killed a special dragon…bam…the hidden achievement "dragon slayer" achieved)...some hidden until you meet the requirements to see the possibility of an achievement (e.g. you have to kill one bandit with bare fists and now you can see that if you kill another 99 bandits this way you unlock an achievement)…but for most you might see from the start what you have to do to achieve them.

    As already said housing could have a section in this book. E.g. one or even two pages per lot displaying who has access to that lot, what items and NPCs are on the lot, the current decoration limits, prices to upgrade the deed,…

    This book could contain also your friend- and ignore-list with all the currently available info.

    But most of all this book could contain same basic info about how to play the game...simply the basics questions new avatars are asking every day in chat.
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2020
  16. ShurTugal

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    I to have played many other games that have different and in my opinion much better market systems that have search features and prices showing and I completely disagree that I would hate it. I am not a market trader that plays the markets either. I am simply a consumer and as a consumer I find little enjoyment hopping from vendor to vendor litterally hours of my time just for ONE item which I need to advance my cause. As a consumer I want to get in, find what I need, and get out and get on with playing the game which is where the fun lies. If they implement a search feature without a prices check option, that defeats the purpose of the search feature because as a consumer I need to see the price to 1 determine if this seller is offering a fair price based on others in the space and 2 can I afford it and should I waste my time traveling to get it. Everyone against this keeps throwing the word "auction house" around as a negative trigger word but many of us advocating this change are not advocating a "auction house" per se. there are many ways this can be implemented without the feared "auction house" so I believe that tactic is being used as a fear tactic. Also, there are many games out there besides WOW. WOW in my opinion is HIGHLY overrated. Maybe we can stop throwing WOW around as the example we want because its not necessarily the case. :)
     
  17. Elwyn

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    The auction house in FFXI worked backwards from that. You could see the last 10 prices and dates that stuff sold for (and people had bot accounts that constantly scraped those last 10 prices for a 3rd party web site that a lot of people used), but you could not see the current prices of listed stuff. So you had to make an educated guess bid. Things sold in order of lowest ask price first, then earliest listing date. It was basically a commodities exchange system.

    Oh, and they only ever let you list 7 items per character (same-account alts each had their own 7). Originally it was broken up into four auction houses, with one in the two biggest cities, and the other three in the starter cities, and all had branch locations in different small towns throughout the world. When the player base collapsed, they were merged. That 7 limit was for all of them together. Listing fees were on the order of 1% plus a fixed amount, with a higher fee on those two big cities when they were popular, but not the other cities on that auction house. You could also only list a single item or a stack (12 or 99 depending on the item). If an item failed to sell after about a week, it was mailed back to you.

    Undercutting was to cut ahead in line to sell sooner (and make the most use of those 7 slots), and if you just had one thing to list you could usually get away with it and still get the current going price. But people would bid a bit low to probe for that, and if you did it too much, you started eroding the going price. That not only cut your own profit, but everyone else too. Sometimes undercutting reached a point where things were listed below the NPC vendor price, and people would cruise for those under-valued items that could be sold for instant profit. Likewise if an item was rare, things would get listed with prices above the going rate. Sometimes it was only a temporary bubble due to one person's demand, sometimes it would be the price going up to its natural value. When an item was newly added from an update, the price often started very high, because there's always someone who has to be the first to have it.

    It also had a second system called "bazaar", where you locked items in your inventory for sale, and got a nameplate icon. But this encouraged 7/24 AFK when you weren't playing, and contributed to congestion in the big cities. So they added a tax to it there, which ended up with everyone standing in a field just outside town as an impromptu shopping mall.

    SotA's system is of course completely different. You see all the listing prices, but none of the price history. Listing fees for the public vendors are a shockingly-high (to me) 10%. And items are trashed if they do not sell (for a mere penny if they were not vendorable!). Although now there is some feedback of price history, and that's a good thing. Or it would be except that the vendor UI is such a pain that I for one can't be bothered to figure out how to take my sales log file and feed it into a web site, I just want to run away and do something that is not SotA. It also does not help that I do not do web stuff on my game PCs, I use a separate laptop, so it's a pain just to access that file. And file management is more of a pain than usual because I play on TV sets at couch distance, and it's difficult to read the small text.

    I dislike the trashing of items more than the 10% fee, but that high fee is a big reason why public vendors are generally dead. The first thing I would change is lower the fee to 2%-5%, the second thing is to only trash items with an NPC price, or remove that entirely.

    And see, the thing is, they could always add prices later if no-price didn't work out. But if they put in prices from the start, nobody will ever let them remove prices on the chance that it would be a more fun system overall. That is exactly why it should first be without prices.

    Public vendors are mostly irrelevant because of that 10% listing fee, but the chance of losing a rare item to the ether is also a problem. They were a default thing (from UO?) put in before they could have any idea how the market would work today. Apparently part of the reason was actually a fear that people would use it for extra inventory storage. (What? But why would they do that when anyone with a lot would have more storage than they could ever use? 300 multiplied by a few dozen chests limit including your basement is a lot!) There's also an item limit on the PV, for which you could strategically list low-price junk on a popular one to reserve spaces for when you had something real to sell. I did that a few times when Owl's Head had a 400 limit back in the day. I think the limit is now at least 1000.
     
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  18. Elwyn

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    Please note the subtle difference. That is a price history, not an index of current listing prices. Seeing what something actually sold for in the past is not the same as seeing a live price listing of what people are selling things for right now.

    And guess what, this is a low population game, so demand is pretty shallow to begin with, outside of a very few important basic commodities. That means it's not far from a race to the bottom, and it would die before we could get a decent population. We already have some form of price history now, we don't need live remote current pricing.

    I finished the Ep1 quests a long time ago and haven't had to deal with the quest system in ages. (Yes, I know, new players have to deal with it.) But I have to constantly deal with a vendor listing UI which is a pain in the arse and makes me want to log out and do something else, anything else, once I've finished. And my biggest problem with it could be fixed in a couple of hours by simply supporting the freaking tab key so I don't have to keep switching between mouse and keyboard multiple times per item. The second fix would be for the client to remember the last price I listed at just a minute ago, so when I list two or more identical things, I can just click through and not have to type the same damn number in a dozen times. But, ya know, they're not working on that system right now, so they can't touch it at all, even for a minor fix to a big UI pain point.

    2016 was long before lot taxes were reduced. That was a big part of what "barely afford" meant. But clearly IGG is much easier to acquire these days, or crowns wouldn't be above the 200 mark (20,000 per old crown).

    There's no need to wonder. It's mostly going to be due to staffing levels, and that is going to mostly be driven by getting a lot of new players. If they get a lot of new players and then hire more devs, it will happen sooner.

    Wasn't that when one machine had a massive hardware failure? They're already promising new hardware just for the map server, so that probably won't be a problem for much longer. I'd rather they have reliable data backups before fast servers.

    Buy orders don't get enough love, mostly because most vendors don't have them, and unless you click on the tab, the only sign you have is a tiny number on the tab that's easy to not notice.

    If you want to see a race to the bottom, just make that optional. The towns that have it will be ghost towns almost overnight.

    And I remember when it used to be Owl's Head. I started in R20 when Ardoris was new and Brittany was still over a year away, and I could see immediately that Owl's Head was destined to become a back water. Meanwhile, people continued to fight for Owl's Head lots for a year after persistence. Outside Brittany may be the place now, but new lands and new population could change that. It's only a service token away for towns to move to the new hot place.

    No prices doesn't mean no quantity. The search interface at the minimum should tell you that Bob only had one silver ore. Where did you ever get the idea that anybody wanted to hide the quantity?

    In other words, a system that's only going to be "used" by 300-400 towns (probably half of which are dead being owned by RMT until the game takes off), as opposed to thousands of players, with the current level of dev staffing? No thanks. Not until we have a healthy number of players first. Towns and the town system are doing just fine; they need to prioritize the pain points that drive people away.

    It's a gold sink, it's supposed to go into a black hole.

    They were going to. They never did. And besides, everyone whined for fast travel to everywhere and no control point blocks, so there's nothing that keeps such items from getting to the Brittany area in five minutes.

    Last I checked, I still don't want to play WoW. If you want to, I'm not going to stop you from going there. Just don't bring it here.

    And you tied it to your belt, which was the style at the time.
     
  19. Elwyn

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    Great. What do we use coconuts for again? Other than as a """mount""", that is.

    Not very many people are arguing against having any kind of search at all, just how many towns it should search. But many are arguing against live prices. Clearly you didn't need live prices anywhere near as much as you just needed the thing and wanted to know who had it.

    Yes, THAT, which only had to search a single list of items that had no geographic location because they were instantly created upon spending crowns. That's totally the same thing.

    You know the kids are just going to go nuts over wyvern mounts.

    I would be disappointed if it was a fixed scene, and not algorithmically generated using something like the player dungeons system.
     
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  20. Arkah EMPstrike

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    This personally is why i want it
     
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