What's the status of Episode 2?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by oplek, Dec 30, 2020.

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  1. Superbitsandbob

    Superbitsandbob Avatar

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    None of them are finished? And yet they are all in the game which is live that people are playing. It does no good to have all of these unfinished systems and scenes. Put them on the test server, finish one properly, release it and then move onto the next one. It's more unfinished content stacking up on top.
     
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  2. Arkah EMPstrike

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    There are quests in 3 of those scenes, a unique drop for crafting in one of them. One is a dungeon to challenge the absolute strongest people.

    Theres another scene with unique artifact and deco drops and treasure chests with a nice little chunk of gold in them. And a scene that offers some substantial stat bonuses when completed.

    4 of those scenes are unique and 2 are straight up clones.
     
  3. majoria70

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    Oh I do agree with you. I always hated the idea of rolling an expansion out this garbage way. Get it done first as with all systems of the game. It never changes. It's been a very frustrating game to watch especially if you've been here since 2013 as I have. I was just letting you know the status as I've heard tell
     
  4. kaeshiva

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    A lot of good feedback here about the state of things, ep2 or otherwise.
    I haven't been to the new scenes ...watched someone streaming one and that was enough to deter me. Its just more of the hodgepodge lets throw random creatures in and add crack zombies to make it "hard" (ie, frustrating/annoying for non-fire-dot build) but have the loot be exactly the same as Tier 5 and lower scenes for time spent. Didn't see the point. Anything good you might possibly get is rarer than winning the lotto. That's always been the case whenever 'new stuff' is added in the combat sphere.

    What attracted me to play and invest in Shroud early was everything else. Collecting/crafting stuff - of course, what you could craft has been eclipsed almost completely by superraredrop artifacts in the gear area, or by purchasable fancy stuff in the deco area, and there's not been any attention to long outstanding crafting issues other than making it even more expensive to get even more powerful combat related stuff. Meanwhile I still have a quest journal that looks like something from the mid90s, a recipe book I can't search, maps that don't work, etc etc etc. I find it very difficult these days to find something to 'do' as everything revolves around combat, and unless I pick one of the cheese builds going around, that the new content seems to be balanced for, there's not much in it. So its hard to find goals that don't involve "grind" or "just buy it." What's the benefit of actual game play? More experience and more gold have long ceased to be relevant.
     
  5. FBohler

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    The total lack of lore to make the scenes feel at least a bit consistent dates from ep1. Once I read a rant about Tartarus, just like this: why do a lot of elves live in what is seemingly an abandoned dungeon literally behind a wall, in which you can find undead and elementals, not to mention a whole maze underground filled with satyrs who are known to carry human bandit gear (why?)... makes zero sense. And behind that wall above mentioned, there's The Rise. A place filled with elves, but for some reason there's a freaking dragon living with them, in a room with a gigantic statue and some giant bones. Makes very little sense. These scenes are so disconnected from the rest of the game and its lore that they don't even have a physical location in the world.
     
  6. Arkah EMPstrike

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    The rise has a physical location in the world beneath an area controlled by obsidian elves, and the dragon pit is like a rancor pit so it makes sense.

    Tartarus is further beneath that, but doesnt have any lore to speak of besides being a hidden training area for obsidian elves.
     
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  7. Superbitsandbob

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    Do you mean the turning in quests to the NPC at the start of the zone? Spindelskog has one right I think with no reward worth it. The castle has one? When you say 3 of the scenes have quests it sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is when you look at what they are. I think a lot more should be expected than a couple of basic turn ins. The challenge dungeon is terribly designed and makes no sense in comparison to Chillblain's which is the only other one I think.

    Maybe I have missed a ton of content somewhere but a few turn ins, an artifact and some deco drops seems poor fare for half a dozen new scenes in a new expansion.

    I guess this has all been hashed out before though. :) At this point you stay and accept that it is how it is or move on.
     
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  8. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    ep2 as it stands is still pre-release ie (alpha/beta) that is why its prerelease only access right now.

    with the list of everything they are working on for ep2 content there are many exciting things:

    1. Well of Aldur completely new scene with new bosses, loot and mechanics
    2. Environmental dmg
    3. all new creature coming
    4. PVP queue system
    5. new artifact salvage system coming
    6. new Inky emotes and other coming
    7. Pattern system changes to allow over artifacts
    8. LB Castle
    9. The Breach Raid scene
    10. New crafting materials are already starting to show up which we don't know what they are for yet :)
    11. new recipes, artifacts and more uses for components


    these are some on the list that were not listed above

    Not to mention that the main story is being worked on and will be coming once everything is in place. Scenes that may not have much now in ep2 short of a few quests and or things will be expanded on with the story stuff.

    Its took ep1 about 5+ years to get to what I would call pretty complete and ready, so suspect ep2 will take another 3-4 years total before its released. but that is just an opinion.

    As to existing systems they have been going back over a few like that of cooking as well some of the skills. They will do the same for dungeons and other things that are in various phases of over all complete.

    Look forward to see it all once its done and will continue to keep working on my stats and the likes :)
     
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  9. Arkah EMPstrike

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    No thats the jist it. Thats whats been put into episode 2 thus far. Those new artifacts, the new dragon heads and potions and quests and insane dungeon thats great for polar bear heads and proving youre a badass but not much else ive heard of thus far.

    When its done its supposed to have just a handful of scenes that are larger than most episode 1 scenes. And new creature models, but havent got that far
     
  10. Vladamir Begemot

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    Maybe they'll do a TED talk later. I personally have started using Shroud's development as lessons on what not to do.

    Don't start a million projects.

    Don't get one project 80% done and then drop it, and then ignore the lamentations of your customers.

    There are dozens of others. It is going to be a great lesson for game design degrees.
     
  11. majoria70

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    I've been playing some single player games. I hate games that are all about combat. I love building a character and enjoy watching it evolve for a purpose with depth not for just something to do. I'm a big fan of Gothic games. Loved Dragonage Origins, loved The first Divininity Original Sins game. Games with character building for a purpose are enjoyable. This game had chances to be more than it did. It still has that chance.
    Yes so true. We've always missed the flavor in this game to pull it all together. So many missing little details. When we had a bigger team mostly world builders at one time who built scene after scene without filling them with wonder and lore and lots of discoveries. Preferably we could have built many less scenes and added more to explore and discover in each scene instead. Anyway that's all would of should ofs and spilt milk. OK OK I'm off on a soapbox that does no good at this time. As always hoping for details, journal that helps tell the story of the game, lore, and many more quests that also tell a story. Yeah right and we have a handful of devs only. Maybe we'll get a miracle.
     
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  12. Vladamir Begemot

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    So basically what you're saying is, combat with a few bones thrown to the rest of us. But gnawed on bones, dried out bones.

    Lets see:


    1. Well of Aldur completely new scene with new bosses, loot and mechanics
    Don't care
    2. Environmental dmg
    Don't care
    3. all new creature coming
    Don't care
    4. PVP queue system
    Don't care
    5. new artifact salvage system coming
    Artifacts ruined the game, so doubly don't care
    6. new Inky emotes and other coming
    That's cool
    7. Pattern system changes to allow over artifacts
    Don't care
    8. LB Castle
    Don't care
    9. The Breach Raid scene
    Don't care
    10. New crafting materials are already starting to show up which we don't know what they are for yet :)
    Don't care until the crafting window gets some love, did he every put in that MAX button he promised 2 years ago?
    11. new recipes, artifacts and more uses for components
    Artifacts are all that matters so don't care. Caveat, if its deco that would be cool, but who has the energy to slog through the outdated crafting window? We gave them 5 years of patience. So really, until that's fixed, don't care.

    This is just Chris's combat sim now. Why not screw up some other system by making something like Artifacts to replace it?
     
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  13. macnlos

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    The story of SotA development.. Never Done. NOTHING is ever done.
     
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  14. kaeshiva

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    Things like "being able to pattern over artifacts" for example honestly feels like something that should have been the case all along. Almost every game out there today has a way to have "cosmetic overrides" on equipped gear and most pull it off a lot more gracefully than shroud, requiring a pattern-item to override a particular gear-item with unnecessary type restrictions. Would have made a lot more sense to just have a 'wardrobe' equipment window and put in the stuff you want like most games do - you can still monetize outfits and more wardrobe slots as account unlocks - which tends to feel better value-for-money-ish than paying $ to mod a single piece of equipment. Unfortunately its another example of committing to a system based on something that looked good on paper and then leaving it in an incomplete state - so while I can express positive sentiment for them going back to a system and fixing one aspect of it, I'd question why we continue to bandaid a system that is clearly overcomplicated and will require fiddling with to make every new item added into forever patternable instead of a simpler alternative.

    New scenes, new monsters, new loot? Difficulty seems to be balanced for the 'extreme' players - any scene that has those stupid, pointless, nuisance zombies is one to avoid. Its like the generic answer to "how do we make it harder" - lets add it full of nuisance mobs that drop nothing relevant. Similar to the death metal slimes in a mining area. New loot that never drops may as well not exist. My threshold for how many times I'm willing to kill something and get nothing has been getting gradually lower over the years and my threshold is now zero. Change how boss loot works to make every kill matter and I'll consider it.

    Why do we need a new artifact salvage system when you need literally over 100 of any artifact to get it to its highest combinable stage, and some of the artifacts in question in over 5 years of play I've seen maybe ...3 drop?. Unless this system is junking crapifacts and being able to repurpose them into artifacts you actually want, I don't see the benefit.

    I can't even get excited about Inky, because there's not much exciting about just having an NPC signpost. I'll get excited when we can actually set quest flags and create content with them. Was expecting that around the end of 2019 when this was first implemented. Still waitin in 2021.

    I'm dubious about a raid scene as well, we'll just see people figure out how to cheese/solo it like everything else, and actually going with a group of non-extreme players to try and kill whatever it is is either doomed to failure or disappointment when it doesn't drop anything. Hard pass.

    New crafting materials from ....combat? Hard pass.

    Maybe I hold out for Ep3 ?
     
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  15. Arkah EMPstrike

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    I like those death metal slimes. They drop artifacts like half the time at least and drop 2 or 3 at a time sometimes
     
  16. kaeshiva

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    Admittedly they do have decent drops. They can also 1-shot me with 1400+ hp if they are in a mood, and at any rate I don't wanna deal with them if I'm in a scene for MINING, but yea.
     
  17. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Ouch

    I think the most they hit my for is like 600ish if they crit me. But they gotta be stunned for me to kill them unless i use a ranged attack.

    If i wanted to just mine they are pretty easy to avoid with a jump ring by jumping on the rocks or in a river.

    In the hallways, not so much
     
  18. kaeshiva

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    Yeah I'm not suggesting that they aren't killable or aren't avoidable, it just seems to be hodgepodge design. Nobody is going to a scene for the purpose of mining ore where they have to deal with this calibre of nuisance mob - its simply not worth it. I understand we need to have 'fighty things' in mines to try and stifle people using bots or whatever, but the cost of doing so is an untenable inconvenience to normal gameplay and it is a poor solution.

    The end result isn't "Oh, harder mine, I get better stuff, or more stuff, or more ore per hour."
    Its "mine with nuisance crap in it, spend half my time dealing with nuisance crap, do better in lower tier scenes, why bother."
     
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  19. Sulaene Moon

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    That's the whole discussion of risk vs reward / scaling that needs to be fixed with every scene/mob/boss in the game.
     
  20. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Yea harvesting is pretty boring on its own too. Like watching a loading screen
     
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