Population Concerns

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Allistaire, Oct 6, 2016.

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  1. Raistlyn

    Raistlyn Avatar

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    sorry , I just thought if "I've become pretty hacked off with where SotA has ended up. It's terrible, IMHO." you would not be actively recruiting, no offence intended.

    We all want to provide the devs with constructive feedback. :)
     
  2. Numa

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    My house is set for guests only. To be honest I do want to impress the people I care about but (surprisingly) I do enjoy figuring out which stuff goes together. Customizing the 4 story row house i have stamps my personality on it and makes that tiny corner of SOTA entirely mine.

    The small public library I'm setting up on the other hand is for people interested in books so it's public access. Hopefully the still evolving interior design makes it conducive for visitors to stay and read. It's also a community effort since it's going to take a lot of effort and I'm having to reach out to pioneers in the field like @Vyrin and @Womby to complete it ( yup, this is a heads up that I'll be buying books from you guys ;) )

    Housing done right is a community builder - just take a look at Pax Lair. Doing all these also gives all my hunting, gathering and crafting efforts a central purpose - at least until the central storylines finally come along.
     
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  3. Canterbury

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    I'm not actively recruiting myself; I don't talk about it at all. The guild is absolutely recruiting, however, and even picked up some great members this past week. I'm happy to help my friends by continuing to display the banner.
     
  4. Sir_Hemlock

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    Then you have low standards.
     
  5. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    Well, for me the game is far from being terrible :), and also played any MMO since 97 gold age.

    Started playing 2 years ago and still enjoying SotA. No one of our opinions makes the game terrible, bad or impressive. Its not fair to just say " this is terrible", always better to talk about pros and con.

    We all know the game still needs a lot of work and time, much more time. So its depends on you, as player and backer, if you want wait and go through this process (development) enjoying what we have right now, or not :)
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2016
  6. Kaisa

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    Exactly the basic systems should have been nailed down well before persistence. Instead other then I guess housing basically everything else is still a mess.
     
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  7. Canterbury

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    Which I have done before (and which is why I don't do it every time I make a quick comment on the game), but, at the expense of repeating myself:

    PROS

    - The presence of RG who is someone I have long looked towards in gaming, always with an interest in what he's up to. (That said, however, it seems his hand's not been on the steering wheel. I don't sense his input.)

    CONS

    - Desire to be "old school" in a world that's moved on. Indeed, many of the systems that are "old school" were only like that, back in the day, because programming couldn't do anymore. Not because they were great systems.
    - Funding model based around selling ridiculously priced real estate and 'fluffy' items, en masse, rather than biting the bullet and having something more like a subscription model that covers the lot. For niche games, they work.
    - Systems that seem like they were barely thought through at all before someone started coding the game. Resulting in a hit-and-miss, let's-see-if-this-works approach to vitally important stuff while the game's in a persistent state.
    - Graphically, the game isn't great. "But graphics don't make a great game, man...!" I'm sure people will say. And that's fine, because I agree with you. But, as a selling point to a broader audience, the game looks dated as hell.
     
  8. 2112Starman

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    I have high standards for old school players. Does not sound like you would qualify
     
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  9. LittleRay

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    I started playing in '93 or '94 on Batmud, an OLD style MMO that used text and your imagination for graphics far better than anything available today.
    I'm glad to be in on the early development of this game and watch it build.
    I'm big on crafting.
    SWG had a great crafting system, nothing else i've seen does as well.
    Crafting looks very good here, and it seems that it will get better as time goes on.
    Patients counts with these things.
    I like games best that have no PVP at all, or an "opt in only" system.
    Two good examples of PVP my way are LOTRO and Entropia.
    It seems that this game may be another good example for me.

    To be complaining about this game in it's current phase is like complaining that a 10 year old girl is not bench pressing 200 kilos [440 lbs.].
    It's better to be making recommendations and/or constructive critique than complaints.
     
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  10. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    Don't take it badly but when I read things like "dated graphics" is when I see that some people think their own opinion are shared/global, even when you know that some people has zero knowledge about that subject (easy for me to check). I see this every day on internet, is shameful how easy is to talk about everything nowadays (not talking about you).

    I won't discuss you the other points, but let me tell you one thing. As a CG artist, I can say that graphics of SotA are not dated. You don't like them? its ok, but you need much more than just a personal player impression about graphics of a game to just make a sentence like that. If you want go further, I'm willing to show you that graphics are not dated.

    You are not gonna see me talking about **** sounds or music in a game if I'm not a professional about that, or at least I already learned how that works, but I can talk about which sounds/music I like more or less. Two approaches basically and one is wrong imho, the difference is big.

    The game needs lots of things but believe me, graphics are not one of them right now (only performance :D).
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2016
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  11. Resolute

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    The game just feels dead.

    They need to honestly revisit some form of proper regional chat (not just zone chat) and honestly force multiplayer on the overworld map.

    At least the world would feel a little alive then.

    They also really have to stop listening to a small vocal group of whales.

    Of course none of these things will happen and the game will eventually die shortly after launch as less and less players (who aren't in the small vocal whale category) play and as the whales start to drop off as they can't afford to keep throwing money at the game willy-nilly.
     
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  12. Resolute

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    As much as some people like to bury their heads in the sand, the truth of the decreasing population can be seen in the steam numbers.

    Now I know that not everybody plays via steam, but the % of steam players playing is decreasing therefore it is logically to assume the percentage of non steam players is also falling by a similar %.

    Shouds current steam numbers can be seen here:
    http://steamcharts.com/app/326160
     
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  13. Canterbury

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    I'm glad you're not talking about me, because I made it clear that I don't think graphics make a game. But as I said, I think the look of the game -- and this includes the animations -- is very poor to attract the masses.

    I think sometimes when someone says graphics people think of just one thing, but I think many us mean how it goes graphically, in terms of that overall look, which does include other stuff, like animation, etc.

    The expression, "I may not know much about art, but I know what I like..." was made for moments like this. The consumer of a product might not know how it was made, but they know whether it works for them or not.

    Another example might be, say, a sports writer who might be the greatest writer going around and knows more about a certain sport than anyone else. But it doesn't mean that had to play that sport themselves, either.
     
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  14. Sir_Hemlock

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    Yep, Resolute. Its strange to watch them deny the obvious, as if there can be anything more useless...and unconvincing. They must think people are as stupid as they are.
     
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  15. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    Its easy, if you already know what you need to look at. If you think graphics are dated because the animations, talk about animations, and stop saying graphics are dated (as example).

    Art is one thing and tech is another thing, both inside graphics. All I can tell you is that the tech side is not dated. And about the second part, I guess you know that art is totally subjective :). So, if you think there is something dated from graphics, as a CG artist, and I'm sure Port artist team think the same, I would appreciate you could specify more than just sentence a bad graphics.
     
  16. Canterbury

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    How the game performs graphically includes the animations. So when people talk about graphics, I believe they mean more than some people, perhaps even yourself, think they mean. Yes, it's confusing.

    So... let's talk about animations. Our character runs along like he's laid a log in his pants. And when fighting, doesn't have one ounce the dynamism or interesting moves of many, many games -- even indie games.
     
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  17. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    We can talk about animations but not here for obvs reasons. I invite you to make a feedback post (game-features forum) and I'm sure the animation team will take a look on that.

    When you make an indie game, with a limited dev team, you may end using some third party tools. I know they are using some (not talking about Unity only, its more than that), but I w0n't make any mistake with the information I got. Animations are always complex (you go through several steps before you can animate your character), and I have no idea if you ever touched any animation software and any game engine to go further and talk about animation workflows from creation process to export and use them for real-time softwares like video games.

    I can agree with you about some animations in the game, but not all (the rigging system is solid and good). Some good animations, some can be improved, but like I said, we have better places for these talks.
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2016
  18. Ashlynn [Pax]

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    Art direction is a big thing when it comes to graphics. I don't actually think the SotA graphics look bad - infact a lot of things look pretty great. But it seems like there is absolutely no art direction or any idea of what kind of theme they want. It's just a case of "well lets shove this in to the game - that will be cool, right?"

    And it looks a mess.
     
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  19. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    You need an entire art team, supervise by one art director to make something "special" or "unique" (in a movie or a game, not just a picture or a piece of art that can be made by one artist). At this point, this is not one priority for them and thats good because in a game under development there are higher priorities. I'm a graphic/art whore for obvious reasons but I'm realistic about what they have and what they can do.
     
  20. Bluefire

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    Couple all those with the clunky mouse controls (are you not in combat? You can move! Are you in combat? Turn on auto-attack and NOW you can move!) and you about summed it up for me.

    The first couple of times I swear I read "LOL taxes" cause they may as well be.
     
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