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Release 33 Post Mortem Q&A (those that got missed)

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Sep 9, 2016.

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  1. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    We did not have time to answer all the questions during the hangout so I'm going to try to answer them all here.

    Lots of questions revolve around "when will...." As a reminder we release our schedule on a Quarterly basis. The Q4 schedule will be coming out right before R34 goes live at the end of September.

    My answers will be in yellow below. I am not going to have time to do follow up discussions on these so please set your expectations accordingly. :)


    PETS & TAMING


    BloodOmen:
    • Could you make death pets locked to Passive, Aggressive, or Defensive even after they die, so that we don’t have to change it each time? STARR: Good suggestion! Adding to JIRA
    Theleb K’aarna:
    • Will tamed pets eventually have skills and stats that have to be trained and developed just like players? STARR: We have considered this but at this point outside scope for Ep 1
    • Will tamable pets ever make use of the color palette and super duper uber rare colors spawns? STARR: perhaps

    ECONOMY, VENDORS & CRAFTING

    GraveDncer:
    • Will leather armour ever be dyeable? Will we see more craftable clothing varieties in general? STARR: Yes
    Kaffien:
    • Will there always be a maximum amount of gold per day that an avatar can make? STARR: Yes
    Alexander:
    • Will players have access to the variety of book covers available in game for player crafted books? Currently there are only two options available. STARR: Yes
    Baron Drocis Fondorlatos:
    • Is the plan to allow players to put consumables into glass jars? Reagents, herbs, food, drink, etc. STARR: Great suggestion.
    Nolove 0369:
    • What are the chances to remove the Random from the Enchanting and Master Crafting skill, STARR: We do not plan on doing this. It would be destructive to the economy if everyone could create exactly the same item at will and destroy all rarity in the system. It would also eliminate an important sink in the economy.
    • Are there going to be adjustments to the crafting recipes to reduce the huge amount of resources needed to make a item, (IE 10 metal ingot to make a ring or 12 scrap per ingot). STARR: No. This would lead to a huge glut of items and prices would crash making crafting a completely unprofitable profession.
    • Will the NPC vendors be adjusted to where they buy items and pay the players higher prices, as the item prices increase until there back down to the Base price. STARR: No. This would create an endless faucet of gold that would lead to hyper inflation in the economy.
    Alfa:
    • If you are going to keep the merchants paying low are you going to lower the prices for Crafting supplies, Reagents and repairs? STARR: No. We want players to supply those things in the long term and compete with lower prices.
    Browncoat Jayson:
    • Crafting in general is fairly lackluster, mostly because there is no interaction. its simply click-and-wait. Can there be some Active skills added STARR: For every player that wants to have something like this there are many more who would hate to have to do this and find it very repetitive. We do not have any plans for this at this time.
    Coder1024:
    • What happened to the original crafting table design where you actually put the items on the table as demo’d early on? STARR: If you play in Bag Mode that is how it still works.
    Amethyst25:
    • Would it be possible to put a cancel button on the crafting table? STARR: We can consider it
    Bowen Bloodgood:
    • Can we please remove corpse wax as an ingredient in beneficial potions. I refuse to craft or quaff health potions (or any other kind of potion) that uses human remains of any kind as an ingredient. My characterS are not cannibals. (Plus it doesn’t make any sense to begin with) STARR: Your objection is noted.
    Logain:
    • Could we get a rough timeline when we’re going to able to craft crafting tools and crafting stations? STARR: We release our schedule on a Quarterly basis. The Q4 schedule will be coming out right before R34 goes live at the end of September.
    Jaanelle Dejure
    • What is the overall plan for Cooking with respect to making all the ingredients gatherable/farmable or at least available? STARR: The plan is to make all ingredients except for fuel gatherable/farmable.

    GATHERING & INVENTORY

    Nolove 0369:
    • I have noticed that there is no difference in speed in Swift Gathering skills above 70, is this a known issue or a intentional game design? STARR: There is a difference it is just that since the growth curve is exponential your gains at higher levels are smaller than they were at lower levels.
    Jaanelle Dejure:
    • What is the overall plan for Agriculture with respect to what items can be grown, water sources, moon cycles, time-to-harvest, etc STARR: Agriculture will be getting more attention in Q4 and we will have more details to share then.
    Blackheath:
    • Arrows currently weigh 10x what the ingredients to make them weigh. Can we please have lighter arrows? STARR: Ranged combat has a strong advantage over melee and weight is one way we balance that advantage so we do not plan to reduce the weight at this time.
    • May we have deer hats please? STARR: Great suggestion
    Frederick Glasgow:
    • Have you or would you consider making seed planting and watering have a option for 1,2, or 4 at a time? Or do you think this would make it too easy for avatars? STARR: Yes
    Athanil:
    • Can we please get more items that we place on blocks? I’d like to be able to place things like braziers on them as well as those statues. STARR: Because of how stacking works we have tech constraints on this
    Vaclav:
    • Do the Replenishing Snowball Box and Replenishing red Rocket Fireworks Box work? STARR: Not yet

    HOUSING & LOTS

    Blackfire1:
    • Besides the Lottery and cash shop, what other options will players have for getting deeds? STARR: Those are the only options
    Govenor Ruin:
    • I know these things are coming but my treasure room has no bling. When? (droppable gold piles, displaying armor on stands, quivers for bows, etc.) STARR: We release our schedule on a Quarterly basis. The Q4 schedule will be coming out right before R34 goes live at the end of September.
    Postulio:
    • Could outdoor trees get another look at their border collisions, it’s extremely difficult and frustrating trying to fit them onto village lots alongside other decorations etc, especially the taller palm trees. STARR: They have to have large collisions so you can't grief your neighbor by shoving tree branches into their house.
    • Could the smithy and smelting stations not be considered as lighting sources? Having them on one’s roof fills 2 outdoor lighting spots but their light is negligible if present at all. This is especially frustration to village owners since many houses have roofs and the light limit is only 6. STARR: Yes. We plan to fix this. Just haven't gotten to it

    DancingShade:
    • Can we get shardfall themed decorative objects for our houses, such as twisted plants? STARR: Great suggestion!
    • Any chance of more elven themed homes and/or elven bundles along the lines of the existing kobold/viking ones? STARR: Yes! We just added the Elven 2 story row house today in fact!
    • Would we be able to get crafting stations with slightly different skins so they fit themed homes? i.e. a dark metallic blacksmith station made by kobolds STARR: Great suggestion!

    Polaris Pernguin:
    • Will fishing be updated, and perhaps we can have an aquarium to add to our houses? STARR: Yes & Yes

    EXPLORATION & SCENES

    Kaffien:
    • Will there be treasure maps? (perhaps similar to Ultima Online treasure maps) STARR: Yes
    Ribbon:
    • Will there be more puzzles inside dungeons, like the torch one in the ruins of ravensmoor? If so, could you tell some examples? STARR: Yes. Check out Kiln Cistern!
    Duke Avery:
    • With tons of available lots and overland access, is there any chance that Coral Cove will get a makeover and a bump up from PRT to NPC status, given some story, and an unclone? STARR: All scenes will eventually get uncloned but no PRTs will get upgraded to NPC status
    Koldar:
    • Will the Drachvald region be economically balanced to make it easier so entry-level and casual players to enjoy the region? STARR: No because it is not near any of the starting locations.

    DISCORD/TWITCH QUESTIONS:

    Spoon

    • Question: Why does the limit of 3 non-pot deed claims exist in after persistance? Why must we run extra accounts if we have more than 3 non-pot claims? STARR: We are discussing lifting that restriction in a few months but only after in-game lot owners have had a chance to claim property.

    WrathPhoenix
    • please tell us exactly what to expect in release 34 with regards to cooking, food and agriculture. STARR: We are meeting Monday to discuss details so unfortunately I don't know yet exactly what will make it.

    MFWalter
    • IS the rent for the housing lots a set thing or still in flux? STARR: it will be in Ep1

    <CrayeLontra>
    • Are there any plans to improve night vision? Maybe as your skill inproves some color could start to be seen. I'd like to be able to see metal nodes while using night vision. STARR: No planned changes for Ep1

    Rhiannon
    • are there plans to adjust the growth rate on plants on porches/decks? Right now, it takes weeks for my deck pots to sprout (if at all). STARR: Once Agriculture skills come online maybe so

    Nemesis2
    • will we possibly be able to resize decor possibly. STARR: No

    Alcedes
    • For Chris, recently there have been a lot of questions about "Plate" vs "Chain" when augmenting mitigation with Spells....There is a strong movement growing that "Chain" is winning this battle as 'Superior Protection'; Especially when an actual Shield is being equipped. Would you mind speaking on this please? STARR: Will have Chris answer this

    MFWalter
    • Any chance for name changing on characters? STARR: Maybe

    Headquake
    • Is there any title that we gonna be able to earn playing the game ? Like Grandmaster Necromencer for getting the good amount of skill or some other from completing quest path etc.. STARR: Yes but probably out of scope for Ep1

    Oakenhammer
    • What is the current schedule for the uber asset packs? STARR: "soonish"

    Tahru
    • When is EP2 coming out? STARR: Formula = After Commercial Launch of Ep 1 + Successful Kickstarter for Ep 2 + 12 Months + Unknown amount of time to respond to feedback

    Farrokh

    • will there be a change in tax rates for lots? STARR: Maybe

    Nemesis2
    • will we be able to reset our virtue truth etc STARR: It might be possibly linked to when we let you reset your story flags to replay the story when we do commercial launch

    Gemini
    • will elderberry dye be tradeable? STARR: Maybe

    ThurisazSheol
    • when can we expect to see another pass at the cooking system? STARR: Maybe R34, but R35 for sure
    • how much more time can we then expect to see brewing being worked on once cooking is in place? STARR: We release our schedule on a Quarterly basis. The Q4 schedule will be coming out right before R34 goes live at the end of September.
    • any word on the chaos shrine POT asset, We havn't seen hide nor hair of that yet. STARR: We release our schedule on a Quarterly basis. The Q4 schedule will be coming out right before R34 goes live at the end of September.

    Schneider
    • can you give us an estimate of how many player owned towns will be going with a static build, and if so how many are there compared to dynamic. STARR: Currently 18 of the 330 POTs have chosen to go with Custom Static

    Latnem Chaos
    • You talked about PvP getting some Love have you talked about it and can you give an idea of what that is STARR: Soon!!!

    Cramit845
    • Do you have plans to increase amount of group content and/or make different styles of group content?STARR: Yes

    Ember
    • There is currently no way to link a friend to a specific item's pop-up/info tab on the Add-On store. Is that something you all can add? Direct link to specific items on the store. STARR: eventually

    Himura
    • How's the Status of the localisation for other languages? STARR: moving steadily but we haven't been giving it the attention it deserves for the last quarter. In Q4 we will be giving renewed attention

    Latnem Chaos
    • Can the glow on enchanted be adjusted for the gem type Green emerald and so on STARR: Yes

    Raven Swiftbow
    • I see they've been "reworking" elves - are they going to make them a little easier to look at? (ie not quite so much like a monster?) STARR: No. They were manufactured by the Obsidians as shock troops so meant to not be pretty. Meant to be in stark contrast to their embracing of nature in current incarnations.

    Bubonic
    • Can we please get some information on the plans for brewing beer? STARR: Yes, but not now sadly. Q4

    One Zero
    • Will wands and staffs be fixed in R34? Wands shoot no ranged magic . Staffs are behaving like 2 handed bludgeon weapons. STARR: They will not be ranged but they need some attention

    GamesoftheTentacle
    • are the animations of player models going to be improved? STARR: Yes
    • are there going to be europe based servers? STARR: no
    • how about taxes on income / wealth that you have in the "bank" STARR: no

    MFWalter
    • I miss the musical abilities from UO. Any plan to have things like peacemaking, provcation, or enticement? STARR: Not in Ep 1

    Amber Raine
    • When will we see more Chaos emblemed clothing and remove the virtue symbols? STARR: Yes!

    EclipseMaiden
    • Question: Has any of the suggestions from Dragon Con been discussed with the team LB? STARR: Yes

    Astor_Cerberus
    • Question - Magic Movers: still coming? STARR: yes

    LoneStranger
    • Will there be a craftable small iron greenhouse? STARR: Maybe eventually but not anytime soon
    • Can we get the chest looting while in combat restored; and boss/mob death unlocking the chests instead? STARR: Maybe eventually but not anytime soon

    Seth Aeva
    • The strenght bonus damage seem not apply on auto-attack, this is normal ? STARR: please report as bug in bug forums

    Nemesis2
    • will there be a wider range of pets ie:dps, tank, cc, etc STARR: Eventually
    • will there be ways people new to the game can achieve possibilities of getting their own town? STARR: Not in Ep 1. We have as many POTs as we think the game can sustain. However if we get a HUGE influx of players we may revise that thinking and make an in-game way to get a POT.

    Headquake
    • Why is there no skill cap on crafting skill to prevent people from just crafting everything they need ? making a crafting skill cap could help the player driven economy. STARR: We don't believe in skill caps but we do need more recipes that are skill level limited.

    JockeZockt
    • When can we expect women clothing and more fashion for RP Players and crafters? STARR: Soonish!

    Tahru
    • Will the moon tree ever get an offensive spell? STARR: Yes

    Nuku
    • Question: weapon visuals - will equipped weapons/shields ever be visible while not wielding them? STARR: Not in current plans

    Coral LLTS
    • Someone told me that naturally occurring rain counts as watering our plants. Is this true? STARR: That will eventually be true yes but it it not yet working

    Abydos
    • Can you talk about Zoning while PvPing, Skill does not Decay, and option about set a key for Sprint. THANKS STARR: Will have Chris answer this

    gopostalman

    • Question Me! - Darkstarr/Richard - Sorry.. new to the convo... Is there going to be a GUI update, or most importantly a Journal update in any recent patches to come? STARR: Yes the UI will get some polish, especially convo UI.

    Umuri

    • Will bug reporting before the new incentive program count for partial credit? STARR: past performance will be taken into consideration when R34 rewards are awarded.

    Monkeysmack
    • Can we get cheap weapons and armor removed from the NPC vendors so that crafters have a market? STARR: We will evaluate increasing prices perhaps

    Ashron
    • would it be possible to have pack animals to carry items and resources? STARR: Out of scope for Ep1. We had a stretch goal for this that was not met

    Gurney
    • do you have any plan to make the game more multi-player friendly? STARR: yes

    Calindel
    • Is it within the vision of SotA to have it where a character can purely be a crafter/merchant and only adventure in 1-2 skull areas? Will the economy eventually support that? STARR: Not by playing without interacting with other players

    GraveDncer
    • will piercing shot get a balancing pass, right now it does very little damage and appears to not be any more effective against armour then the other archer skills STARR: we will evaluate

    One Zero
    • Can you add an option to disable the "shaking screen" when elementals or players cast "Earthquake"? STARR: Yes

    Shodan AndFriends
    • The implementation of the abc/mml for playing ingame songs is great. Will there be the feature to allow multipart songs? When in a group everyone plays the same part currently. STARR: We are working on this right now as part of support for the One Man Band
     
  2. Themo Lock

    Themo Lock Avatar

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    Wow, thanks Starr.
     
  3. Gideon Thrax

    Gideon Thrax Avatar

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    Duke Avery:
    • With tons of available lots and overland access, is there any chance that Coral Cove will get a makeover and a bump up from PRT to NPC status, given some story, and an unclone? STARR: All scenes will eventually get uncloned but no PRTs will get upgraded to NPC status
    Thanks for the reply to my question @DarkStarr this is fantastic news! While it would have been really fun to see this player run PVP town get some NPC story integration, knowing it'll get an unclone at some point is really exciting!
     
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  4. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    So based purely on protection numbers, Plate is superior to Chain. The challenge with plate is that it interferes so much with delicate magic casting that it can make Air, Death, and Fire magic too high of a risk to make it practical. Shields have a passive defense element, just like wearing armor, but their real magic is in the ACTIVE defense they can provide. The add the same to chain and plate but the max percentage of a hit that can be stopped by the passive element is higher in plate than chain.


    We still intend to have penalties with cowardly fleeing out of PVP zones. The big thing is we plan on having a sort of escrow system where you don't own anything until you've held onto it for a while. While that won't permit cowards from escaping, it will make sure they don't benefit when they run from a PVP scene.

    Skill decay does work BUT not correctly. There is currently a bug where it takes xps sometimes and not others. Not going into details or else everyone will go use the broken setting. :p This will be fixed for R34 and there is already a bug for it.

    If this is in regards to the double tap sprint, then yes, we need to make that rebindable. If you want to bind a non-combat skill to a key, I would LOVE that too but it is a bit more challenging. We will get something in there soon but R34 is filling up fast.
     
  5. Jack Knyfe

    Jack Knyfe Avatar

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    You're going to love the new "Buccaneer's Den" town once it arrives.

    (Also, another prompt to name the town "Butthole Bay". ;) )
     
  6. Gideon Thrax

    Gideon Thrax Avatar

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    I wouldn't at all mind it if this "new" town was named Coral Cove. I'm pretty happy with the claim I've staked and I'd be able to greet every new resident with a welcome gift and some pie. :D
     
  7. Link_of_Hyrule

    Link_of_Hyrule Avatar

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    @Chris are meteor shower, stone wall, fire wave, and polymorph, and incognito skills so planned? Hopefully soon!
     
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  8. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    Disappointing. It can't be any more "repetitive" than the way gathering and refining work currently. Click, wait, click, wait, maybe get a meticulous, click, wait. If there were some actives so we could DO something during the wait time, and might give us better results/shorten the wait, that would be awesome. Especially if its completely optional, and doesn't hurt people who don't want to learn those skills.

    @Ember, you can actually do this now. Just take the base URL for the Add-On Store, https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=9085, and add &open= and the name of the item in all lowercase with underscores instead of spaces or special characters. For example, the URL to open the Wedding Dress is https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=9085&open=wedding_dress__digital_.

    Its not automated, but its easy to create the link manually.
     
  9. Tahru

    Tahru Avatar

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    This is great! Thanks for answering all these questions!
     
  10. Mykll

    Mykll Avatar

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    I can't seem to find this in the original KS before it was funded. A KS for each additional Episode? All I can find is essentially some tiers having the additional Episodes and this:
    What happens when a KS is not successful? Or us backers will have to keep paying additional funds beyond what we have already given through the Add-On store over the years to get something already mentioned we would already be getting in the original KS? No doubt the KS per Episode is kind of a slap to the face for the already backers that may have upped their pledges partly to get the additional Episodes, especially when the new KS will come with items that will never be available again.
     
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  11. mass

    mass Avatar

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    Are you kidding me? Kickstarter for an episode that was included as a pledge reward for the original kickstarter? You guys might want to review the kickstarter TOS for both rules and spirit.
     
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  12. Koldar

    Koldar Avatar

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    @DarkStarr @Chris
    While I don't like all the answers, I REALLY appreciate the extra effort you guys went to by posting this. I know you guys care as much as we do about Shroud, but the touchy-feely communication like this displays your commitment to the community.

    Thank you.

    Have a great weekend.
     
  13. Albus

    Albus Avatar

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    Really nice finding all these questions answered like this, much appreciated! That is just so cool :D
     
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  14. Syipress

    Syipress Avatar

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    Hey Starr, having a great time playing the game so far. I had to laugh during the Post Mortem when you guys kept saying "exponential" after talking about how players are using the wrong nomenclature when referring to player vendors vs NPC merchants. I believe the term you are looking for is "logarithmic" since you see diminishing returns in power gained as a skill levels up. An exponential increase would mean slow returns early in the progression, with vastly increasing returns as you leveled.
     
  15. MIdnightvalkyrie

    MIdnightvalkyrie Avatar

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    This is rather unclear...
    Does it mean that Yes, you are considering it, or Yes, you think it would make it too easy?
     
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  16. Mitara

    Mitara Avatar

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    THIS is about money, did you really think it was about making a good game? :)
     
  17. Duffrey Blake

    Duffrey Blake Avatar

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  18. Wayfarer

    Wayfarer Avatar

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    Yes? :D

    I'd be interested in the answer, too--anyone with planting beds would probably appreciate it.
     
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  19. Womby

    Womby Avatar

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    Exponential is presumably the correct term for the mathematics involved (equation with an exponent). If it was logarithmic it would involve taking either a natural or common logarithm. The term exponential covers both exponential growth and exponential decay. Starr's use of the term exponential was therefore technically correct. The best kind of correct. :)
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2016
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  20. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    I am incredibly sorry that you misunderstood the reward you were receiving or how we would fund future episodes. Our kickstarter campaign was for Episode 1 and we felt that we were quite clear about that but we are very sorry if we were not. It was not a campaign to pay for all 5 episodes. There is no way that the funding could have ever paid for that amount of content and again we felt we were quite clear about that.

    Your reward that you purchased was the ability to not pay for further episodes when they came out. When the new episodes come out you do not have to make any further purchases for access to that Episode (you will have the equivalent to a First Responder Pledge).

    But please understand making a new episode will cost money and we do need a way to acquire additional funds to do that while still keeping the live service operational and adding content on a monthly basis so naturally another Kickstarter campaign is our current plan. However if we are incredibly successful and attract tons of users we may make enough money that we don't have to do that and then all this is moot and that would be awesome!

    Again please accept our apologies if we were unclear about any of this. It was not our intent.
     
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