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An open letter to Lord Brittish

Discussion in 'Release 33 Feedback Forum' started by Redemption, Aug 31, 2016.

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  1. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    While some honest mistakes are undoubtedly made sometimes, i know for certain the devs value the opinions of the community backing the game and have sewn the game together with the threads of feedback and compromise. I got no strong feeling about the raffle ticket thing except that it gets tickets to folks who have not yet been able to afford them in game or were abel to purchase a lot deed with RL cash. They are all in the race now with better odds than they would have had before.

    Guild affiliation should not matter. And it in fact reduces the odds of the wealthiest people winning the raffle, as people that may not have held tickets before will now hold tickets.
     
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  2. Redemption

    Redemption Avatar

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    Yeah you did misunderstand. I am glad that they have given raffle tickets to the guys who cant afford to buy a lot. I am disapointed that they pushed the raffle back on those people without stating a valid reason why. I am not here to argue either. Not my intention either. I want a healthy community as well, I want to have years of outstanding game play from this platform. As I have been eluding to my words are not meant to benefit me directly but to benefit me through my shared experience with a healthy community.

    I both agree with you and disagree at the same time, large wealthy guilds can afford to pool gold to purchase raffle tickets to offset their chances. I am happy they have given tickets to those who can not afford to buy them, nor afford to buy their lots.

    What I am not happy about is that they pushed back the outcome of that raffle to R34 making those players wait much longer and increasing the chances that they will lose interest before they potentially win.
     
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  3. Mekong

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    One thing I'd like to point out to you..just so you know. If you think things in Owl's Head are competitvely priced you may want to consider getting out in the world more. Owl's Head prices are pretty much the highest priced vendors in the game. I appreciate the original posters sentiment but I just completely disagree. Mistakes will be made by the development team when it comes to balance particularly this early in development. (Yes it's still early) Watching them cower to the whining was very disappointing.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 1, 2016
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  4. Aliana Berry

    Aliana Berry Avatar

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    For your info my post was not refering to Redemtion. It was refering to @Mekong post. I am one of Redemtions guild mates and I agree with everything he said in his posts. I never farmed xp afk with a pet. So to have other players say I did is insulting.

    But I think these posts got a little of topic. This thread was not purly about pets. But just shows you how hot a topic pets are atm. All this with the pets and the raffel for the deeds has cused a drop in the player base and also not many left using pets.
    I myself have went and got a water elemental and I am just as strong as I was with a tamed pet. My water elemental can even heal me, my tamed pet could not. So anway the point is there was a lack of respect from a dev. As players who backed the game and as players who would continue to back the game. Don't we deserver to be treated with respect and or feeling on things that are importent to us be taken into account ?.
     
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  5. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    While we all have the knowledge that the game is in early access and subject to changes, many people including myself have pledged money into this game based on a vision that seems to be unravelling before our eyes.
    I pledged early - one of the lower level pledges, and sat back and played a bit release after release to see how things were shaping up.
    I decided I enjoyed the game. I thought it was something I'd play for years. With this in mind both my husband and myself upped our pledges. Then we upped em again. We have an amazing guild and adjacent houses and I have an impressive collection of outfits and we can go mining and we can make shiny things and everything is happy.

    What I pledged into then was a game where I could harvest and craft and maybe make a little money doing so, where I could explore the entire world without having to deal with PvP and find my own little niche in the market selling whatever, have a house to decorate with stuff and make friends. What the game has become over the series of patches since persistence is now a game where I have to fight/grind/level up to even be able to access harvesting spots. Crafting is a money sink with little to no profitability - you're better off selling raw ore. And now several areas are off-limits because some really high level player can swat me like a bug. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not complaining about the shardfalls being multiplayer -I think its a sensible change. But it shows the paradigm shift from the game that I "paid for" to the game that we currently have. Its the same thing with taming - it was too powerful, so its been nerfed into uselessness. This extreme kneejerk reaction is often the answer to everything - the focus regen masterwork is another beautiful example of something cool that was thought to be too powerful so it was nerfed into utter pointlessness. The recent economic issues were for many, the final straw, and I will say I'm pleased that this has been addressed.

    The CotO thing....yeah, I mean at some point you're going to have to look yourselves in the eyes and realise that currently, the game is pay to win.
    Gathering speed was slowed way down - here, buy a CotO and it can be a lil faster.
    Reagent burn rate increased & income nerfed to where mages can barely afford a restock - here, buy a CotO you can burn less reagents
    Crafting too expensive, can't make nice gear? Here, buy a CotO you can reduce your armor getting beat up...or here, buy another one to repair it completely
    Lets make the game so people can't make enough money to pay their rent - but , you can buy a CotO to pay it instead!

    I even saw a player vendor called "CotO ATM" which is a sad, sad reflection of the above.

    However

    The most BAFFLING

    thing I have seen is this raffle nonsense.


    There is zero reason for it, no reason whatsoever, and I'll try to explain why as simply as I can.

    There's a limited amount of land, and a lot of it has been gobbled up already by backers.
    • Some of this land is in Player Owned Towns, whose owners can restrict who gets to put a house there.
    • Some of this land is in non-player own towns, where anyone can claim a lot.
    We sat through this land rush so people who paid more could place their stuff in all the prime locations and then the people who paid less could scurry round trying to find a back alley spot.
    So now we have a handful of spots left open in non-player towns, and we have player towns sitting empty because most folks who own the town are restricting the land for their guild or friends, which makes sense.

    So there's a raffle on taxable deeds which are limited according to how many spots are available. This is not going to work and is not very well thought out.
    Once these deeds are handed out, then what? Lets say someone leaves the game and the lot goes empty. Nobody can buy a deed from the NPC because well, they aren't there.
    And lets face it, its a lottery, the rich will always have higher odds because they can buy more chances. It was a nice gesture to give a couple of free tickets to homeless folks, I guess (though a slap in the face to people who paid real cash for deeds), but yeah okay fine.

    So basically what we have are two things:
    NPC Towns
    and Player Owned Towns:
    who have space but all lots are restricted or markers aren't even placed
    New member joins the guild. Oh here, you can have this lot. NOPE, you can't buy a deed, not anywhere, you have to wait months and maybe get lucky and win one in the lottery! Really? This is the plan?
    Meanwhile, guild is holding this spot for this guildmember and nobody else can place there either, whether they've got a deed or not.

    The thing is the solution to this problem is just to leave it like it was.
    Make taxable deeds or at least taxable POT deeds available for gold from the vendor.
    I'm not sure what problem you were trying to solve, but there was no problem!

    Rich person buys 20 deeds from npc and goes and claims up a whole bunch of space. They now have a very expensive tax sink as long as they want to hold those spots. I don't really see this as a problem.
    Why are we worried about having an infinite supply of deeds available from the NPC? If there's nowhere to put it, you shouldn't have bought it! But making the option completely not available except by random chance is not the way to go. You don't need to limit the deeds because space is already limited, and by limiting the deeds to the number of available plots, half of them will be worthless since all the PoT slots are for the most part, reserved. There is no reason not to have the estate agent sell taxable deeds for in-game cash. The problem solves itself.

    In fact, the only reason I can fathom to implement this sort of system is the same one I said early above.
    Want a house? Here-buy one from our store!


    When are we going to stop pretending this game isn't pay to win?

     
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  6. jammaplaya

    jammaplaya Avatar

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    @Redemption And before you go picking my post apart and rebutting the fine details out of context, because I see you're the type, i'd like to put things a bit more into perspective for you.

    All the high end backers now have all the good plots and all the gold, because all the tamers from month 1 who made good gold spent it on the backers items before r33, incase you missed the river of tears.

    And regardless, even if there were a ton of exploited gold out there, waiting to be spent on raffle tickets, people will be literally shooting themselves in the foot if they spend all their gold on tickets because the odds will still be against them.

    And finally, even if you waited until after the raffle was over, and it worked out that all the major ticket buyers ended up with all the plots, it still wouldn't be enough to inspire all these tears because it's, you guessed it, a raffle and hence completely random.
     
  7. jammaplaya

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    The game is only 'pay to win' based on your definition of what winning is.

    I like to define winning in SOTA as the ability to exist in a world regardless of how balanced it is, and at the end of the day have enjoyed the experience.

    If this is the last of the gariott saga then I'll want to remember it as a good time, even if it means I'll have to sacrifice my ambition of being regarded as the top of the top players of all time, the richest of the rich, the king of all kings. There's really no sense in rushing a good thing and thus ruining it, and that's exactly what will happen if you set your goals and expectations too high in this period of balancing.

    You're so lucky, to have someone to share the experience with, and to have what you have. Don't ruin it by questing too hard for precious shiny things!!
     
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  8. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Thanks Jamma...I agree with you on this. I'm one who made the financial investment to get my tax free house and I'm less affected by the raffle and the rent prices and the rest of it.
    I do see new players coming to the game, seeing our great city and getting excited and they want to put a house there but doing so is behind a pay wall. They're trying to craft things and get gear and they want to gather materials/make it themselves and then we have to tell them they need 496 raw cotton for that set of armor which, without a house and access to agriculture, takes a pretty long time doing it one bush at a time. Or they want metal armor but can't survive the mines without an escort, and then it takes 10 hours of 2 people mining to gather the stuff. Then its "Oh, you can gather it faster if you pay." "You can get unbreakable tools if you pay." Then it breaks trying to masterwork. and you start again. And so on and so forth. And then I see those players stop logging in because they just can't seem to get anywhere without paying.

    I don't object to having to pay. I've invested more in SotA than I have cumulatively in MMOs in the past 10 years. I want the game to succeed and I want to support the game, but I think we're dangerously close to the line when paying becomes a prerequisite for just about everything or for a reasonable 'quality of life'.
     
  9. Shade Cido

    Shade Cido Avatar

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    I don't think painting all tamers as power levelling, exploiting crybabies is a mature argument or a good way of debating your case.

    If you bothered checking out posts from true tamers, they have been complaining about the use of high level pets by low level characters way before the final wipe.

    Most tamers never had an issue with restricting the use of powerful pets to the players with the relevant invested skills. But when you invest 540 skill points in a profession and have it nerfed so badly that a newbie Mage with 180 skillpoints in the water tree gets a better pet, without the sacrifices loaded onto tamers (necklace slot, summon cooldown, massive focus drain,pet death, rare resources and a skill tree that is, apart from one skill, of no use whatsoever unless you have a pet summoned) then it's understandable that a lot of tamers feel their profession is disliked, and -unless being nerfed-ignored by the devs.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2016
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  10. jammaplaya

    jammaplaya Avatar

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    Oh I definitely don't see the taming thing as an exploit at all, and I'm sure the staff doesn't either. I believe RG even stated in the second telethon that they knew about taming going into final wipe but didn't see it as a huge issue even after. In retrospect, they handed out those obsidian books and I'm pretty sure it's to negate any complaints about wasted skill points now that they hotfixed the issue.

    And remember, devs are only human, meaning that they aren't technically incapable of wording things not totally politically correct in times when there are many who were threatening to quit over the hotfix and being kinda rude, I just see it as he's responding to those individuals rather than 'all tamers' etc because that's how it really is.

    And yeah I know there was posts complaining about the taming pre-nerf, but trying to compare them to both the volume and dramatic-ness of the complaints post-nerf isn't exactly a fitting argument either :p

    I just got my first summon, and trained it to level 9 and then locked it, as soon as i realized how much the focus cost was gaining. It's totally unbalanced right now and by the look of those obsidian books I don't see rebalancing as much of a priority right yet, so it might be best to transfer those points into something else for a while and be done with it. Pets are annoying anyways, they block the corpses and get in the way too much hehe

    But yeah, I can understand that devs frustration. I mean I don't know any of the backstory or care really, but I hate seeing players try to force the developers hand by being threatening and I'll chew people out when I see it even if my words aren't entirely nice or polically correct either. Give feedback without all the idle threats and respect lecturing and forget the personal agenda ****, that's all we're entitled to do, and threatening isn't the way to achieve good game balance anyways.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2016
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  11. Toff

    Toff Avatar

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    Why does everyone act like we are playing a finished game? This is still pre-launch, the the Devs need to test the limits for game balance for Combat, Economy, skills, crafting etc. They need constructive feedback, yes things will be nerfed, then un-nerfed then re-nerfed in these efforts. (DEAL WITH IT). It is our job to help them find this balance not complain about it. The only thing we can count on now it house placement, that's it. If you placed a house you got it, it's yours. Everything else will continue to change all the way to launch. Try and help the Devs like adults not yell and scream like children.

    Just my 2 copper pieces.
     
  12. Toff

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    One last comment..... Everyone needs to understand that we early access avatars are "Play-Testing" not "Playing". I wish everyone would understand the difference and realize that Play-Testing comes with a certain level of frustration and expected responsibility to help the game develop.
     
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  13. Katrina Bekers

    Katrina Bekers Localization Team

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    The OP feedback is very interesting. But I fear the subsequent namecalling isn't appealing enough and constructive discussion and healthy debate is wishful thinking.

    Too bad.
     
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  14. Berek

    Berek Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Thank you Redemption for the honest and thorough feedback! I want to say right away that the entire team is about making this game better. It is our passion, or livelihoods, and we thus want to do well for the game and its community. We are here for you, and that's as it should be.

    We understand that the taming adjustments have been not well received by some, we get that. It was honestly necessary though, and we spell out the reasons why in previous update posts. The first time we made an adjustment though, we definitely went too far left field, ad we admitted our mistake there. We are also still considering adjustments as well to further improve the balance of taming.

    Taming won't go back the way it was originally, it can't because it was broken and being abused. Will we work with you and the rest of the community to find a middle-ground that works? Absolutely. That's why we respond to post like this, because we give a damn and care about the community. Otherwise we would just ignore you, and we're obviously not doing that here.
     
  15. Berek

    Berek Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    For the rest of you, this was an honest post. The devs can take care of ourselves against critical feedback... it's part of our job :).

    We do NOT shame or demean others because we simply don't like their opinion related to a prominent developer and his game. Keep it clean, or please PM one of our team before you publicly respond to a thread.
     
  16. Gnarxly

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    Anyone claiming taming wasn't in need of a nerf has no credibility in making any suggestions whatsoever. And no, I did not like the nerf.
     
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  17. Duke William of Serenite

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    You brought up a point I wanted to address. Taming before the latest release was totally broken. Anyone with zero skill could summon a creature 5 times more powerful than the avatar.

    None of the skills did anything. You would level creature level and your pet didn't advance. Now devs fixed the skills that were broken and now you have to actually put some points for your pet to be stronger. Now this is a new system and it may have bugs, if you do find them report them in a professional and helpful manner and the devs will help out. They always have, no one is turning their backs on taming.

    Everyone has been patient. I am a melee fighter and right now we are useless in PVP. I haven't even bothered to post about it because I don't think its high pri. I just want the exploits to be worked out to stabilize the economy first and foremost.

    For a staff of thirty people they are incredibly efficient and I still have faith, as it is I am enjoying the game more than I did back in the UO days. Yes I said it, I enjoy this game more than UO and its not even released!
     
  18. Mekong

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    I agree with the basic sentiment but the fact is there are no more wipes. Therefore, we are in fact making an impact on our characters and the world.
     
  19. Mekong

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    Credibility is in the eye of the beholder. Everyone who is here has paid for the right to be here and express their opinions. No matter how micromanaged and moderated those opinions may be.
     
  20. Galder

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    In my humble opinion the raffle tickets should be available only to the players who do not own any land. It could have been another type of raffle for the land owners, such as home upgrades.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2016
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