Experience point loss has removed the incentive to adventure and explore.

I think they can. The Whale's will give their last pair of pants to do so.

Since everyone can craft everything and you can also buy everything for real money .... it is long death.

I think the most People who are interested in such kind of games already bought or played it. Some People who bought it and wait for release will join again and some new players will come, but i dont expect thousands of players.

They want to release this Game unfinished, this will give them a very hard time on the beginning and a big amount of negative reviews. They will bring the content maybe 1-2 years later but then the mayority of the player base is already gone.

As this game is now, it is neither a successor to Ultima nor to UO. Maybe a spiritual successor to Ultimate Collector in a Fantasy World. Buy and put this things on your deed!

We are short befor release, there is no time to work on everything

 

@Budner Thanks for making me smile (not laugh though, since it's no laughing matter) with your "Caveman analysis of decay", which caused me to go hunt for another of your insightful quips from months ago that I still remember....

"Misguided succubus we call decay".
Oh how true .

Love your way with words, Budman !
And I hope when decay finally does go away and our adventures are fun and meaningful again, that you and many others I remember will come back and play.... We miss you guys.

 

Caveman wonder why Budner share secret caveman shame. Caveman sad Budner share caveman cry.

 

I have been hearing this for over two years now and I think it is disingenuous. In full disclosure, I haven't ever had the opportunity (until SotA) to be a part of an "Early Access" game to this level before, so I by no means consider myself to be an expert on these things. Having said that, I have "Beta Tested" a number of games through the years (including Ultima Online) and all of those games were at least to the level that Shroud is at now. I do believe, respectfully, that it is irresponsible to keep saying, "It's Early Access, things will get better. Their working on it." given the current state of the game.

With "Story Complete" (Portalarium's words not mine) the game definitely feels like it's in "Beta". One could debate the semantics of what constitutes "Beta" but at a minimum it's definitely beyond "Alpha" or "Early Access". You can run through the entire game world and complete the first episode and IMHO, it's awesome! That's not to say that their aren't some MAJOR kinks that need to be worked out, because their are. In that regard it behooves all of us, to politely and professionally, hold Portalarium accountable on the things that need to be addressed. In my, albeit limited experience, they do the best job they can when given constructive feedback. But, to blithely and blindly give them "carte blanche" when serious issue are still pervasive is just as bad as those who "troll" the game without rational reason.

Passion is one thing our community definitely doesn't lack, but it is something that needs to be tempered with a open mind and willingness to listen. Give me evidentiary support to your view, instead of just "We'll get there!" because I've been hearing that forever and I would very much like to listen to what you have to say. Or anyone else for that matter.

 

This is what I've been complaining about since day one of the death decay system. Soft cap is not the same thing as death decay. We have a really intelligent team, think outside the box (or look at any of the various threads in the last 4 years that had interesting soft cap ideas).

 

This is so very true, and it has gotten me and a lot of other people in trouble on these forums time and time again. In my limited recent return to posting in the forums, I have had to make a very conscious effort to be careful about how I say what I say.

I desperately want to like this game and want for it to be successful.

I'm just completely demoralized by the complete exodus of players from this game and the maddening dev decisions that drove them to leave.

I'm just completely demoralized by the fact that this game couldn't attract flies to it even if it had a rancid dead whale laying on top of it.

I'm just completely amazed that this much developer talent and icons of gaming can't/won't read the tea leaves and admit to themselves that what they have created so far just isn't making any waves and has almost completely sunk out of sight in the gaming market.

How bad does it have to get before someone who matters takes a step back to look at the bigger picture?
How blinded are the devs that they can't see simple numbers and concepts and understand their ramifications?

Let's use pvp for an example.

Richard literally said a few telethons back that the reason there was currently no viable pvp is because there simply weren't enough pvp players in the game to generate any.

#1 He says this AFTER huge numbers of players interested in pvp have already left the game due to lack of pvp content
#2 His statement blatantly shows his complete mis-understanding of what drives pvp activity
#3 His solutions is . . . . . oh well, just didn't happen, maybe sometime later

Meanwhile, hundreds if not thousands of players leave, and no one cares.

Then there is death decay . . .
then there is crafting and the economy
then there is the dual unimpressive combat systems
then there is a negative penalty on so much of anything you get or use or do
then there is non stop level grinding or resource grinding
then there is forcing you to learn every skill tree for defensive purposes
then there is killing the troll boss/dragon/daemon/etc for 20 mins hoping not to die for a whopping 8 gold then rinse and repeat
then there is the almost complete absence of anything that feels UO like (to me at least) other than names that make me recall a distant past that actually WAS fun and exciting to play.
then the list goes on . . .


Its just not looking good for the future folks, just not looking good.

Someone please show me some type of industry recognized measurement metric that might give me hope otherwise. . . . . .please . . . . . i'm begging you . . . .

 

@Grumpy You raise a number of valid concerns that I myself have wrung my hands about, but I also do think (at least to me) things have been getting better with the last two releases. Not being a game developer or in the industry I can only go by my personal enjoyment and if it makes me want to play, which it currently does.

However, longitudinally, these two points of yours have been ongoing concerns of mine for a very long time:

1) "I'm just completely amazed that this much developer talent and icons of gaming can't/won't read the tea leaves and admit to themselves that what they have created so far just isn't making any waves and has almost completely sunk out of sight in the gaming market."

2) "then there is killing the troll boss/dragon/daemon/etc for 20 mins hoping not to die for a whopping 8 gold then rinse and repeat"

 

Caveman Budner wonder .....

If @Chris is right, and half of players want decay, and half of players want skill caps, then ..... why not let players choose which system they want?

I mean, literally give us a toggle between decay and skill caps (putting aside for a moment the complex and mind-numbing arguments about how to balance the two).

If we choose to have skill caps, we're not exposed to decay upon death. If we choose decay, we can grind our way into GM+ levels of skill.

Hmmm? Hmmm? LET'S DO IT!!!!!

 

I get that no one is going to develop a game that does everything the way I like it. Personally, I could live with a lot of things that Shroud does and how it does them just for the sake of being different.

I just can't get past the real fact that numbers don't lie, and no one at Portalarium even seems to notice they exist.

How do you correlate over 100k backers and less than 500 active players?
How do you correlate a game of this fanfare, lineage, and heritage and less than 500 active players?

I just can't wrap my head around the bad numbers and correlate that to the fact that the 'professionals' in charge just ignore them and press on.

Honestly, it's an example of not being held accountable while spending free (other people's) money. I guarantee you if Portalarium HAD financed this out of their own pocket, someone would indeed care about customer count.

 

Why not? What could it hurt at this point?

I vote yes!


If Portalarium had done even just a few core things differently, we could have 20k players and 500k telethons.

It's not rocket science, its just math.

 

But, but, the Devs have put us on double secret probation...

 

@DarkStarr @Lord British

So just to Summarize 24 pages now, with even personal attacks on individual devs. And still no developer comments.

At one point I thought things would change when a Developer was called out for not even reading the boards. But the answer to that was a daily blog where he tells you what he is doing, and you can comment on what he is doing in another post that no developer will read.

The reason I mention Darkstarr and Lord British is because this game was theirs. It was started and funded based on their reputation and their names and they have the most to risk, their legacies.

More and more I am believing You may have come up with the Ultimate Online Conept and started something, But Origin is who made a 20 year old game last.

 

I struggle with this question myself and whether there is any path forward that results in a sustainable player population. I hear people suggest that the floodgates will open at commercial release, but I just don't see it. I listen to the Echoes from the Caverns podcast on a weekly basis and I hear the hosts suggest that Portalarium is preparing for tens of thousands of new players, but where are those players going to come from? I truly wish I shared the eternal optimism of @Lord Baldrith and @Asclepius, but I don't think there is any switch to flip that will bring in thousands, or even hundreds, of new players. If there was ever a switch, it was flipped at persistence. Looking to release as a magic bullet feels a bit like kicking the can down the road, and I fear for what happens next when and if the new players don't come.

Back to the original topic though, @Gamician made an excellent post and I completely agree with his points. There have been many ideas provided over the years, and I don't know what the best solution is, but I know there is someone smart and creative enough to create a better system than what we have today. Whether there is a hard cap or a soft cap, I don't think anyone should ever be able to achieve 100 GM's. Players should have to make difficult decisions on where to specialize. Regardless of how much time or effort someone puts into the game, they shouldn't be able to do everything on one character. I don't believe the current system forces the players to make enough meaningful choices in their character development and that is primarily a result of the current skill decay system not achieving its desired effect.

 

No one cares. . . . . they are probably still hung over from the telethon. Free money + alcohol sorta dulls the sense of responsibility.

I'm not seeing one myself, other than the one time opportunity of enticing the unknowing foreign newcomers from the recent publisher agreements. But if they can't even retain their fan base, that will be a short lived bump.

 

asnt serious

 

I don't disagree that there does seem to be some "sticking of heads in the sand", when it comes to player base numbers and active amount of players. I also cannot answer your question about how to justify it...because I don't think they really can without it coming across like an excuse.

However, Portalarium (i.e. Richard Garriott) did invest some of his own money into the company when it was founded. The article below doesn't specify but at one time I think I found the number was around $1 million.

http://www.siliconhillsnews.com/2012/07/10/portalarium-lands-7-million-in-venture-capital/

 

In any event, the bones are set. I am optimistic that this can all come together in the end. Really, the doom and gloom items are fixable IMO. Progress to date is significant and if Richard wants this puppy to succeed it can be done. Really we have come a long way on a measly 10 million IMO.

 

I also think this is true and it is important to remember how far we have come.

My only caveat is that we really need to get the story and the lore right, because currently it's a bit lacking.

 

I have avoided posting anything about skill decay because I've said all I had to say on other threads. While I have nothing new to contribute, I will offer these solutions as a way to mitigate skill decay even more than getting the 10k exp a day for logging in. It's a compilation from the thread below. My only goal here is to provide possible solutions rather than be upset:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...y-for-the-first-time.92700/page-2#post-832434

"I think death should have meaning and can have meaning. But if we are going to play a game where magic exists, then give me some magic that helps mitigate skill decay. Heck, we have guides through control points to mitigate the chance of getting killed when the control point gets tripped and the mobs are out. In adventure zones, why not have a mage who sells life insurance. You want to ensure you experience no skill decay *while in that zone* - pay the price. Weapons and armor will still take damage of course.

There are other ways to implement a death penalty. Ex: put the player in a severely weakened state that requires them to eat food and rest for a period of time. The time increases with each death. *Edit - rest time increases slightly with each death. Resets on a 24 hour basis.

There are ways to mitigate skill decay if that's *just how it's going to be* - 1) let players opt to pay x-amount of gold to the *Spirit of the Ankh* to avoid skill decay when they rez. 2) Allow enchanters to enchant the small crafted ankhs which in turn can be used once per day to prevent any skill decay.

*Edit - If you want another gold sink, there's two of them - you kill two birds with one stone.

---> If we want to see skill decay removed, then we need to provide ideas for solutions. My ideas may not be the best and I can't say if any of them would be easy to implement, but there they are.

Others made suggestions on that thread as well. Here is one where instead of skill decay, you have exp gain loss:

 

Not really; the game is mostly all carrot, from my perspective.

So, for instance, if you go down every type of mechanic in the game, for most, its that your choice either lets you do things less efficiently or more efficiently. If you don't have food, there's no real penalty, your regen rates are just less efficient. Because there's no barrier for low level magic, the choice between using a torch and a light spell, or a potion or a heal spell is just a matter of calculating efficiency. Reagents used to not even be required for any spell, they just made them more efficient -- though that was changed from last I recall playing with magic, and I'll get back to that later.

The design by the devs here was intentionally to cater to a min/max mentality, where you're always able to play any way you want and have nothing stop you, but you're encouraged to want to play in the most efficient way.

Decay is one exception in that it can be described as a 'stick', but the way it works is also catered to design to the min/max mentality, in that if you don't die every time you play, you'll generally earn more XP than you lose. But you're encouraged to want to play efficiently and not die. Yet for someone who plays a lot and doesn't die a lot, it also functions a lot like a carrot, because its about less efficient vs. more efficient XP gain.

The problem is the min/maxing style of gameplay sucks and is catered to grinding. Its made worse by the way the whole game is tiered into different levels, and how much adventurer level matters, so the game makes you feel like you have to constantly progress and grind more.

But still really how much you're affected by any of this depends how you play.

So for instance, if you're a role-player and like playing RPGs for immersion don't care about how fast you level up skills, how fast you regen, you don't care about any of this stuff -- you might not notice any of it and the game will seem very easy to you. To the extent that you're a powergamer or trying to maximize your progression in the game or minimize your playtime or your idle time, you'll start to notice it more. Second, you'll notice the decay more if you don't play a lot, and notice it less if you play in long marathon sessions since there's a cap on XP loss.

There's irony in each of these cases. For the first, role-players are the ones who want all the type of limits that come with an immersive environment, but they don't feel them as much -- the people who feel them the most are the players who don't care about any of this stuff and just want to progress. The design is kind of backwards, in my opinion. For the second, those who play a lot are the ones who the devs want to target with decay the most, not the people who play very little and who they're not worried will GM all their skills any time soon. This is also backwards.

Its also a case I think of making things harder by trying to make things easier. This min/max approach has all sorts of pitfalls with balancing game mechanics to make them workable. There was a period of heavy nerfing of low level spells, for instance, because there weren't any requirements to use them, and the devs didn't want them too OP. Balancing nightmares were eventually a reason for requiring reagents for higher level spells.

Getting back to the point... If the game had real player limits and real sticks, instead of relying on the "you can do everything you want, but with different degrees of efficiency" min/max approach to almost everything, I think it could be designed to be a lot less tedious in the end and much more fun.