553 reviews on Steam and 154 Negative

This thread is a self licking ice cream.

So many people here think everything is going fine and you all sit in here ragging on anyone who disagrees or dumbing it down to ex UO players having a whinge.

Here's the FACTS

SOTA is late
SOTA has cash flow issues and new income issues. It needs to release.
SOTA now has 7 mil when wanting 1.5 for a game.
SOTA had vague Kickstart that could be read into in different ways leading to scope creep
SOTA combat system is questionable

I'm not going into opinions but these are the core why it is getting neg reviews.

 

Release without content or systems? How would that be beneficial?

And when the Kickstarter first launched, Richard mentioned in interviews they'd need a development budget of $5-$7 million to make the game. They haven't raised quite $7 million yet, and even if they did, that isn't a development budget of $7 million. They need to produce and ship physical goods, pay for infrastructure costs, payment fees, Kickstarter fees, etc. However they seem like they're on pace to have the budget they expected for development by launch.

 

Seriously? You know that's not what I meant.

Every day it stays in EA or prealfalfa is hurting the public perception of the game.

Portalrium has investors so money raised here isn't their only cash.

 

Source on the investors?

Releasing early hurts the perception of the game. Staying in pre-alpha is the only course of action when the game isn't feature or content complete.

 

Exactly hence Steam was an epic bad decision.

Staying in prealfalfa does just as much damage . I'm not saying release now I am saying development should be further down the path. Nov 14. Was release

Ender you aren't interested in a discussion . You can have the point. For those grounded in facts and reality all is not well for this game.

 

What specific change do you want them to make?

They literally can't leave pre-alpha until they finish features, which they are working on. But until they are feature complete, pre-alpha is the description of a game that isn't feature complete. It isn't a decision they made to be in pre-alpha or not be in pre-alpha. It is merely a factual descriptor of the current state.

 

This is relevant to my interests.

Source?

 

I think there is a mix of sources for this.
Richard said in the early interviews and the game dev school speech that when starting Portalarium itself it had investors. That when they were running down on money they asked themselves what they were good at they came up with Shroud and a KS campaign. This since they couldn't turn to their investors for more money.
So we know that there are investors.

There has been no further talk of more investors after that.

But the KS money isn't paid just because the goal is met, so we know they had to go back to bank/investors and get the funding for the first year or so.

We can also do a ballpark figure on costs and revenue and conclude that they might be running slightly over revenue but only marginally so.

Which to my guesstimate would be that there are investors involved for sure, that those investors has been active in this project, but that the investors are not pumping in money.

 

Google + Portalarium + Investors = Answers

 

Is there a way to see how much money each user has spent on the Kickstarter?

It would be great to know who's in denial backed by their large investment.

 

You can have an incomplete game and still have fun with it... like some people have been experiencing.

Problem is, those who have the most fun are experiencing social events and NOT the game; they're only using the game as a platform. Fair enough, but where's the game?

How combat flows and how the various UIs work are the kind of stuff that need to feel spot on. They don't. You release that !@#$ on steam, you're going to get !@#$ upon.

Add that to the fact that level 1 content is practically non-existent and the game doesn't communicate where players should be going ~ WITH THE EQUIPMENT THEY WERE GIVEN... the game is a colossus mess.

I've been messing around in SotA since R5 or R6 and I still don't know where the !@#$ I'm supposed to go to level up... and leveling up is the only thing you can really do in the game (aside from socializing).

If you're going to release an incomplete game that doesn't flow right, you're going to get bad reviews.

Minecraft (as an example of a game that progressively got better over time) didn't magically come to existence with all these recipes, animals and biomes. However, the core activity of punching blocks and placing them elsewhere felt great.

SotA has tons of recipes and what-not but that "punching blocks" feeling is unsatisfactory and downright frustrating.

Crying about bad reviews or snobbing other players because you think "they don't get it" isn't the way to go.

 

I don't know if that's possible. What is sure, is that those people that click under a disclaimer on the button that says "I understand that this game is unfinished etc" and then go to post a negative review on steam saying the game is unpolished might be the ones in denial...

 

If the game was really going in an awful direction, you'd just as likely have people who are bitter because of their large investment, because they'd feel cheated out of a lot of money.

What a weird claim that they'd all be in denial.

 

The Portalarium investor page was posted in 2012 when Portalarium was working on mobile/social games.

Richard said in interviews at the time of the Kickstarter that if SotA didn't raise enough in crowd funding he might turn to investors. But since then I've read in interviews that they hadn't had to look for investors because the funding has come in at a decent pace.

They also said in the R20 postmortem a few days ago that the hiring for staff has been dictated by the crowdfunding, because that is the only way they can afford to pay staff.

There is no evidence of investors in SotA other than crowdfunding.

 

The claim isn't without merit.

The majority of opinions on here from deep pocket backers are positive. Those that are negative have already sold their account.

Just look at the comments from the thread where they accidently enabled pvp for the towns. It should give you a sense of who this game is for.

You can cry all you want how the systems are not in place yet. That doesn't excuse the fact that the base system is awful. No matter how much you polish a turd it will still be a turd.

The older crowd here will love (and are loving) a glorified virtual chat room / costume & house designer, so Sota will be fine.

 

I would certainly hate that and it is not what is being delivered so no need to worry.
do your research better

 

But where is my point wrong? If the game were really going in an awful direction, the high-level backers would feel bitter about it. They're being cheated out of their money.

I'd point out most backers aren't even participating in the forums, and that includes most low-level backers. So you got a lot of low-level backers who aren't selling their accounts, but not participating in the forums. Contributing a lot of money could mean you're just more interested in the game's development, and so it figures if you'd contribute money, you're going to talk more in the forums.

The point is you're just making a bunch of assumptions that could be turned around. I wish we could just talk about the game and not try to psycho-analyze the backers, either the ones being positive or the ones being negative.

 

Because your view of what is being delivered is somehow more accurate than mine?

All I'm saying is the state of the game even in pre alpha is not impressing.

Go look at Project Gorgon, a PvE game that has only two developers with a 20k Kickstarter. Why is that game that is still in development a much better experience than SoTA.

My view might be subjective but the output of an entire dev team vs 2 developers is disappointing to see.

I mean it's Richard G. w.e're talking about. I could have almost cried of joy when I heard he's making another mmo since I missed the original UO experience.

 

I found the investors in Portalarium with that google. You cant do that?

Dont argue semantics you think Ultimate Collector was what the funding was for? It was for the entire company.

It sad that OP brought up the issue with the development and some people here just come in and tear it apart with half baked arguments. To YOU everything is ok, and thats fine but if you dig around a bit and see the public opinion of SOTA things arent ok. As said before it has a perception problem. Why put yourself open for review then diss the people reviewing? Whats the point of that? EA Steam was another grab for cash and has been met with resistance from wider community members.

It is not a personal attack on anyone, so why take it personally?

We can call it a niche game cool if thats whats being aimed for then it will really please the few hundred people who love this game.

 

Never said your view was not important. I was saying that we all have different views, and yours is one of them.
The state of the game in which posted is also your opinion.