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Q4 2016 Schedule Update

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Sep 29, 2016.

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  1. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    Greetings Avatars,

    As we have stated previously, our goal is to once-per-quarter post an updated schedule for our monthly releases. Even though these goals will likely change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to provide you an updated roadmap periodically.

    Our goal continues to be to deliver our backers content each and every month so that we can get feedback and use it to iterate improvements. This continues to benefit the game, sometimes with sweeping changes like the switch over to use-based advancement. Meeting that monthly goal is our highest priority, but we require flexibility in our deliverables in order to meet that goal. As you have seen in previous releases, sometimes we push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

    For the fourth quarter of 2016, we will continue to polish the Path of Love while moving on to the Path of Courage. We will continue to expand Crafting with focus on Cooking, Food, Agriculture, Alcohol, and Fishing in particular. Combat will continue to be balanced and will expand to include cover as well as a refactor of Damage Types and Resistances. Town Sieges and Roving Encounters will also come online to greatly expand our feature set.

    [​IMG]

    As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers.

    RELEASE 35, October 27, 2016

    • Story: The Path of Love will continue to be polished with a focus on the Tower of the Shuttered Eye along with continued work on Ardoris. We will also continue polish on the Path of Courage.
    • Multiplayer Combat Balance: A pass will be made through combat skills, creature stats, player stats, advancement rates, zone difficulties, and other values for continued balance of multiplayer combat. We may also create additional skills, spells, and combos.
    • Player Towns & Player Housing: POT Owners will now be able to select from a set of start points for their town. Also, new housing content will appear; including new Elven homes for the Elven bundles and Testing Incentive Program decorations. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
    • Offline Reward Delivery: Reward delivery for Offline Mode will become available to players using this mode to play.
    • Roving Encounters: Potential encounters (wandering merchants, monsters, etc.) will appear on the overworld for players to engage (or avoid).
    • Crafting: Cooking, Food, and Agriculture will be the focus of Release 35, with one of the major goals being the reduction in reliance on purchasing ingredients from NPC merchants to cook food. This means increasing the number of plants in Agriculture and polishing Agriculture itself, including the addition of features like water harvesting. We also hope to add Alcohol recipes and Teachable Recipes. Finally, the visual effect for items that have been Enchanted or Masterworked will be redone.
    • Character: Ardoris will be the first city where we begin adding region specific clothing (Japanese themed) for the residents, including unique armor for guards, clothing for citizens, and regalia for royalty. Work will also continue on Summer Telethon items, including Flaming Bagpipes and Firedancing.
    [​IMG]

    RELEASE 36, November 17, 2016

    • Story: Path of Love polish will continue but primary focus will begin shifting to the Path of Courage with special attention on Estgard. We also hope to have the new PVP area begin coming online with the town area first.
    • Combat: We plan to refactor how Damage Types and Resistances work to better balance different weapon types, spell schools, and creature types against each other. This will also improve the variety of crafted items.
    • Player Towns & Player Housing: Towns with player housing will now dynamically update their icon on the Overworld based on various data, including number of claimed lots and online population. Additionally we will continue to expand the Dynamic POT Tool set. Also Obsidian homes for the Obsidian bundles will come online. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
    • Crafting: Crafting will be refactored to include the new Damage Types and Resistances. We will also add more Enchantments and Masterwork modifiers, including some related to Celestial Mechanics.
    • Character: We will begin work polishing the Kobolds and updating them to better reflect their lore (much of the technology in Novia can be attributed to them). We will also work on the Testing Incentives Program Wearables and Summer Telethon items.
    • Social: Guilds will now be able to form alliances with each other and we will be introducing a new default guild for all new players called the Outlander Guild.
    [​IMG]

    RELEASE 37, December 15, 2016

    • Story: The Path of Courage polish will continue with focus on Harvest and Resolute. We will also continue expansion of the new PVP area with the addition of the dungeons area. Finally, the NPC Conversation System will be getting a much needed refactoring and polish pass.
    • Town Sieges: The first iteration of Town Sieges will come online where periodically you will have to fight through battle lines to get into and out of a town under siege by the 8 Obsidian Cabalists.
    • Combat: The cover system will be introduced and will modify attack and defense values when you (or your target) are behind cover.
    • Player Towns & Player Housing: The first iteration of Player Owned Town Blessings will go live where monuments placed in POTs will grant long term buffs whose power and/or duration will be based on the population of the town. Also, more Obsidian homes for the Obsidian bundles will appear. The ability to Rent Rooms in a player home will start to become available to homeowners. Additionally, work will begin on the first Static POTs. Finally, updates to Dynamic Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game.
    • Crafting: Fishing will get an expansion and polish pass. We will also expand weapon recipes to include more visual variants (Elven, Norgard, Obsidian, Kobold).
    • Character: Valhold will be the second city where we begin adding region specific clothing (Viking themed) for the residents, including unique armor for guards, clothing for citizens, garb for merchants, and regalia for royalty. We will also begin introducing the first of the Obsidian Cabalists.
    [​IMG]

    We continue to be incredibly thankful for the support we receive from this amazing community. While the funding you provide makes all of this possible, it pales in comparison with the faith you have in us, the feedback you provide us, and the content you are making for everyone to enjoy. We are humbly grateful, and we cannot wait to see you again in New Britannia!

    Before I go, I wanted to include an excerpt from my original post about our Early Release Schedule that is important to set the framework for our ongoing schedule:

    As a crowd funded and crowd sourced project, we feel it is incredibly important that we provide our backers with information and access well before game studios would normally do so in a traditional development model. Traditionally, the players are given information and access only after the development team has already decided exactly how things will be done, and at times, even after it has already been implemented. By the time the public normally has access to the product, there is usually no time to meaningfully react to the public feedback.

    Shroud of the Avatar is different than the traditional model, as we intend to offer our backers extremely early access to information and even the game itself. With that said, we also want to be very careful that we only provide access to portions of the game when they are ready for a wider range of feedback. If we can play it internally and we know it is not ready, then there is nothing to be gained by having a wider audience come to the same conclusion. In fact, it could be quite damaging to do so.

    Our strategy over the next few months is to provide you with focused and iterative releases of content. Your feedback during these releases will be critical to making the final product the best it can be, and we appreciate that you are all so willing to devote your time to helping us. With each release, we will have specific tests we will ask you all to make. As we get closer, we will send instructions on how to download, install, report bugs, etc. After each release we will review the results and reevaluate the plan including the duration of availability of each release. Please note that game data will be wiped periodically during early access.

    It is important to note that all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change.

    Sincerely,
    Starr Long
    Executive Producer
    Shroud of the Avatar
     
  2. Spoon

    Spoon Avatar

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    Sweet, was waiting for this.
     
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  3. Gideon Thrax

    Gideon Thrax Avatar

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    Hooray for alcohol! Beer and Rye and Wine oh my! Any spoilers you care to share on new crafting table options for alcohol?
     
  4. Selene

    Selene Avatar

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    Yaaaaaay!!! All the things I love, finally!!! And hopefully farm animals you're "allowed" to slaughter. My truthiness is already super low.

    [​IMG]
     
  5. ldykllr

    ldykllr Avatar

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    Lots of good stuff here. Looking forward to it!
     
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  6. Lord Andernut

    Lord Andernut Avatar

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    Woohoo! It's a few days earlier than I expected :)


    I kind of want all this stuff.... now. Waiting, it is not easy.
     
  7. Waxillium

    Waxillium Avatar

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    As MGT is very social (really chatty in guild and Discord) I'm wondering if there will be /a for alliance chat?

    How many guilds in an alliance?
     
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  8. Jack Knyfe

    Jack Knyfe Avatar

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    @DarkStarr

    Please, please, pretty please...would you make the regional clothing also craftable, and have the recipes sold only by the tailoring vendors appropriate to the region?

    @Bzus
     
  9. Balec Fares deCani

    Balec Fares deCani Avatar

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    I'm surprised by how much of the post-wipe features/content is not on this list. It looks like there is another 6-9 months of work for the remaining items.

    · Player Housing

    · Magic Movers: Store/move a house/basement with all decorations intact.

    · Fencing/Wall Tools: Snapping together automatically and selecting complete sets to surround your lot.

    · Gear Decorations: Placing armor, weapons, etc., as decorations in your home.

    · Spawner Decorations: Placeable items that spawn a certain number of creatures like spider eggs / webs that spawn spiders and coffins that spawn skeletons.

    · Player-Owned Towns: Please note that following R26 we will have a thread in the forums to discuss PoTs and address specific questions about Static vs. Dynamic (among other things).

    · Dynamic Resource Spawners: Spawners that scale based on total population. The more lots placed the less resources (critters, minerals, and plants).

    · Tools

    · Snap-to-Adjacent-Lot for Lot Markers: Tool to allow you to place lots directly adjacent to each other and have them align automatically (useful for row lots in particular).

    · POT Connection Tool: Allows players to define connections between adjacent POTs.

    · “Lawn Mower”: Clears foliage and trees.

    · Water Lot Placement on Docks: Allows placement of water lot markers on manmade structures like docks and waterfronts (not just beaches).

    · Island Water Lot Placement: Allows placement of Duke and Lord of the Manor Island lot markers.

    · Player Customization

    · Armor Enamels and Leather Dyes: Ability to add enamels of different colors to metal armor and dye leather armor.

    · Custom Duke and Lord of the Manor Heads: As soon as we finish with overall character polish, we will begin work on these custom heads and the tech to allow them to be used instead of the heads from character creation.

    · Custom Family Crest (aka Heraldry): Unique art that can be displayed in game on shields, cloaks, and banners.

    · Multiple Characters: Multiple characters on a single account with shared property ownership, bank inventory and reputation.

    · Crafting

    · Public Gardens: Rentable planting beds in public areas for those who don’t own land but want to do agriculture.

    · Player Made Items in Loot: Crafted gear sold to NPC Merchants will have a chance to appear as loot on humanoid enemies.

    · Combat

    · Item Reputation & Affinity: Items will gain a reputation and affinity to the player wielding them after repetition of certain actions. That reputation will be represented by a name and an effect. For example, after killing 1000 dark elves, your trusty long sword is now called “Elf Bane” and deals an extra 2% of damage against dark elves.

    · Castle Defense Scenarios: PVP variations of control points.

    · Town Sieges: Story-related towns will periodically come under siege by the Cabalists. While under siege, the town’s functions will be affected.

    · World/Story

    · Weather Game Effects: Weather will affect game conditions including watering plants for agriculture, damaging gear (rust), and slowing movement rates when raining or snowing.

    · Shipping Lanes: Boats will become more than just teleporters to different scenes. They will have schedules and a chance to have random encounters while at sea.

    · Theater System: Rentable theater spaces with paid seating and audience rules.

    · Unique Scene Visuals: Once we get Novia filled with all the needed scenes (some created by cloning existing scenes), we will circle back and start modifying all cloned scenes to be visually distinct.

    · Unique NPCs: Once we get Novia filled with all the story-related NPCs and generic clones for all other NPCs (guards, merchants, etc.) we will circle back and add unique names and conversations for all the non-story-related NPCs

    · Player-Designed NPCs: Some of these will be present by the final wipe, but this backer reward won’t be entirely fulfilled until we complete the “Unique NPCs” task above,

    · Place Items Anywhere: Being able to drop items anywhere in the world, not just player property is a hallmark of Ultimas and we hope to support this as well. Please note that this may only be available in offline mode.

    · Shroud Finale: The culmination where all three storylines come together

    · Minimaps: While the system will be complete and in place, we may not have maps generated for every scene prior to wipe. Pre-wipe priority will be placed on starting scenes and Love storyline scenes. Post-wipe we plan to have minimaps for every scene.

    · Social

    · Voice Chat: We will integrate something like Teamspeak into the game to allow for voice chat between players

    · Leaderboards: These track player rankings in PVP, Guild Warfare, House Decoration (determined via voting), etc.

    · Name on Tombstones: Player names displayed in the Brittany graveyard and on the Ancestor pledge reward.

    · Name in Domesday Book: Player names displayed in the Domesday Book.

    · Mail: Players will be able to mail each other (or themselves) items for a fee. This might also be the way we deliver some content like vendor sale proceeds.
     
  10. Lifedragn

    Lifedragn Avatar

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    This is very exciting to hear. If it goes well I will have one extra thing to be very thankful for this upcoming Thanksgiving!


    Additional question:

    Is it planned for Regional Clothing Styles to be craftable items? It would actually be awesome to have quests in cities with regional items that provide knowledge of the recipes as a reward. Craftsmen with pride in their skills would then seek to travel the world to find and learn the various local flavors to add them to their own repertoire. Making the quests challenging and time consuming could also add a degree of pride for dedicated folk.
     
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  11. Lifedragn

    Lifedragn Avatar

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    I'd suggest locking them behind quests. Otherwise, you'll have folks buying them up and distributing them to vendors around the world and thus eliminating the need for craftsmen to travel to learn the trade.
     
  12. Jack Knyfe

    Jack Knyfe Avatar

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    I'm totally on board with crafting quests, with no-trade recipes as the reward.
     
  13. ThurisazSheol

    ThurisazSheol Avatar

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    BREWING! YAY
    @DarkStarr when you get a spare minute (lol) click here for a few ideas we want for brewing subcraft!
     
  14. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    I was hopeful that I'd see Duke custom heads.

    Still a very exciting list though.
     
  15. NRaas

    NRaas Avatar

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    Mmm... Tasty. :D
     
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  16. Mekong

    Mekong Avatar

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    Not a fan of the default guild. Sounds like a Berek idea
     
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  17. ThurisazSheol

    ThurisazSheol Avatar

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    i want to hear the justification for doing this before making the decision if i'm happy, mad, or indifferent to this..
    @Berek any way to give us an understanding on why, before anyone jumps up and down stamping their feet?
     
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  18. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    This was request of the Hospitallers to help them assist new players.
     
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  19. Grimbone

    Grimbone Avatar

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    As long as we can opt-out of joining the guild and not be forced into the guild then it would seem to be just fine.
     
  20. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    no one is forced into anything
     
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