Massively OP update

No more than a pre-season game is a "real" game. They play and try to win, but usually not the premium team (b-c team players hoping to make a cut) which mimics us still not ready to show the a-game (i.e. proper release and launch).
This is actually what pissed me off the most when they announced the decision to change development models and go persistent was everyone would take this as meaning its go time (and reviews have definitely proved this fear well founded).

Agreed, but anyone who gauges the potential success of a team based on pre-team games or draft class is premature until the season actually gets going. You can definitely see solid trends that may need addressing (and boy do we have A LOT of those).

The only defense I give this is its their attempt to help reinforce that we aren't ready yet. Not at all the right way to do it, but honestly, short of another wipe, i don't know what they could differently at this point (and that would DESTROY any credibility they had and kick up a massive **** storm).

I'm confident they dealt in good faith and actually wanted to push the game into something successful and not just use it as a stepping stone to other stuff... I've been wrong before though.

And this is an important part. Being able to actively say no we aren't ready for full sales yet, let us get there and then take a look is a major part of future success.

 

LIES!!!! THIS IS THE INTERNET!!!! *kicks the "wrong view" holder into a bottomless pit while wearing a loin cloth*
8^D

(sorry couldn't resist) *edit* Well I could have but didn't wanna. 8^p

 

@Frederick Glasgow

Yea, but to make up for lack of hand-holding, all the game would really need to do is introduce you to the basic game concepts as you begin to play. Its not very great or very consistent in doing that. There have been positive steps in that direction, like the outskirts scenes, but its still not that good.

And I'm also still of the opinion that the UI is also a cause of a lot of new player frustration. That's a whole subject I can get into.

But to give you a comparison, none of the original Ultima games were really hand-holding, but I would bet even most modern gamers could get into them and figure out the game concepts pretty quickly (once they got past the dated graphics, etc.)... because most of it was straightforward, and what wasn't straightforward was introduced to the player as he went along.

 

This encapsulates my worries about this game - that the younger generation aren't interested in it. None of us are getting any younger after all, it would be nice to have some continuity.

 

That is my dream. I think this game is not mature yet. I believe that once everything is in place many of all recent generations will flock to it, if only for something of more realism than WoW, but less x-rated and marriage breaking than 2nd life.

I am just hoping we can get past whale-love. I freakin hate being a whale here. I have done way more selfless free gifting than most people ever will IRL. I find the idea of whaleism highly obtuse to who I am or ever want to be.

 

At this stage, I'm not sure how many of those in the older generation, even those who grew up on Ultima, are that interested in it. Many backers have been hanging on just for the promise of what SotA can be. I know many who have quit. Most didn't back the game to do grinding or dance parties

You know, I think generational differences are overstated, they always are; whether in playing games or in politics or in any other issue. In this case, gamers young and old just want a fun game. And there are young players who want something casual, and some who want something hardcore, and some who want something in between. I think you just have to figure out whats getting in the way of SotA being as fun as it has the potential to be, and first you have to decide what type of game SotA is supposed to be, what its supposed to be about, stick with it, build vision around it, polish the gameplay around it, make it enticing.

 

I completed the entire Ultima series,although I never played UO. I never felt frustrated in the Ultima series.but I was excited to log in and see what would occur that day.

 

Yes, exactly my point. Some people will want to say, if only SotA were less like Ultima, more like a themepark, with more hand-holding, then new players would get into the game easier and like it more. But Ultima was not that frustrating to play or hard to figure out. And I don't believe that's nostalgia talking -- I really think SotA is a bit more frustrating than Ultima ever was.

Just a reminder that there's always more than one way to fix something...

 

I feel you - it sort of accumulated over a period of several years for me. That's why I'm stubbornly sticking to a row house for now - it's a good reminder of how I started and how many new players are starting out (with a rented room in some row or village inn).

 

So I only read the first page as that was enough to agree with a lot of the commentary about the whole review (I read the whole review, first page of this topic).

I think that the blandness of the NPC's is my problem in which I basically don't give a damn about any of them. "All ya'all look the same" (that's racist!). Hopefully it's in the works to customize these NPC's so they're noticeably different looking.

With the main quest "done" hopefully we'll start seeing more things along these lines in the coming months.

And FFS, I hope we see some changes in crafting. As it stands crafting is a 3+ month long SOLO grind in mines to do ANY meaningful crafting, not just smithing. If this goes "live" like this with crafting being the only source of gear, this game will be roasted in every review and nobody will play it.

 

You kind of missed the point I was making...

 

(more) Intelligent NPC behavior is something that would benefit both offline and online play. Right now the NPCs you really care about can be counted on one hand - with a few fingers left over.

I have half a dozen favorite nieces & nephews who I've invited (repeatedly) to join me in SOTA. They've played a wide range of games, some of them unusual. Not a single one has bothered to pick up this game despite all the incentives I could offer. There are also empty houses in POTs I know that were reserved for sons or daughters but remain unoccupied to this day.

I agree that it may not be the case that SOTA is intrinsincaly unappealing to younger generations but the enthusiastic "that's cool" response is missing. Maybe it's because the things we find "cool" are buried deep and require many, many hours of immersion in the game to discover.

 

You are right but most of the positive comments come from this forum here were always the same handful of people are posting and defending the game - the hardcore fans. And it is understandable that they defend SotA - because they like the game. But there are so many places were the game is heavily criticized, the player numbers are really bad for a MMORPG (and this is not because of Early Access, imho. Other Early Access games in a state even worse than SotA draw in many, many players and are successful). I can't help myself but think that there is only a small portion of players left who like SotA and play it and support the devs with lots of money. The game has problems and some of them are rather big which can alienate many gamers. I hope that I am wrong because despite what others think I want SotA to succeed so that I someday get the single-player Ultima-7-like experience I am looking for. But I am not blindly defending the game when I think it has some serious issues...

 

I agree. Well, partly.
The part with the few players is wrong. Because math would make us all filthy rich. I know a couple of people that avoid the forum because of us heavy users. We are toxic to them and there are times where I have to agree.
Non the less they happily spend money from the sidelines watching us fight our mostly pointless battles between each other.
But yes, we need more players. The actual player base will only carry us so far.

 

Fair article. Not everything is right but he got some good points.

To be honest, the Storyline especially the beginning is not that deep to suck you in that rpg feeling. Random player who do not follow the game for a long time get lost pretty easy in the beginning. And the Story is not that big to call it a story based game. Virtues do not effect anything at all and the choices have consequences System is not present like we hoped. This will change later while the game will progress (we hope) but the article mirrors the state of game now, not what it can be in 2 years. You can not blame him for that.

 

Just a reminder: zone chat is turned off by default for new avatars.

I'm not sure how? This is what you said:

And my response was that he writes for a site that only does MMOs (i.e. he's big into MMOs, not shooters or RTS). What point did I miss?

 

"I’ve also been informed that the interplay between skills and dependencies pretty much flattens out to nothing at the higher end, which is… disappointing, to say the least. Restrictions breed creativity; no restrictions breeds an environment wherein everyone is a teleporting fireball-throwing death machine, because if you have no reasons not to be why wouldn’t you be?
I suppose you could also be a lightning-chucking death machine, but now we’re just debating flavors rather than concepts."

good Point - fits t some actual discussion

"After a bit more wandering, I decided to head back to Aerie and actually advance the Path of Whatever Path It Was I Was Told To Go Down. (Truth, I suspect; I could look it up but I don’t particularly care.)"

Maybe the problem he has and i had not :-D

That's a matter of taste.
A workmate said Destiny 2 beta is boring and dumb as hell, and you just need to pew pew left and right, no challenge, not fun.
He also dislike SotA
Another likes Destiny, also likes SotA...

My conclusion is, a lot of people just dont like it. That's not because it's bad, it's a matter of taste.

I dont like Diablo3, i dont like TESO.
Bad games? No, i just dont like it.

Many people dont like SotA, because of many things. Grafic, death decay, GUI, Combat... etc.
I like it exactly for this.

 

This game is the next big "thing" in MMO's. I bet my livelihood on it!

 

there is a map integrated into the game
there are visual cues on quest givers

Other than those two corrections to inaccuracies, the big bulk of the article about there needing to be more to do and more things to discover in off-beaten areas i agree with.

 

Why do you think that?
I whish SotA the best but judging from what is popular and successful right now, SotA doesn't fit anywhere in... SotA is a niche game and in this niche it only caters to a small audience, imho.