State of Shroud of the Avatar. <Opinion>

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Greyfox, Jan 17, 2018.

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  1. Lifedragn

    Lifedragn Avatar

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    Yeah... let's not ruin the game with hard caps please and thank you. Hard caps are a complete non-starter for me, and I'm probably not even close to approaching where that bar would be.

    I don't much care how strong other people are, I just want them to design the content keeping a more sane playstyle in mind. At Adv Level 75, I've lost more experience doing the path of the oracle quests than I've gained from doing love, truth, and honor (300K). A few too many suddenly crazy difficult combats and way too many instant-death scenarios.
     
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  2. Vallo Frostbane

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    Thats the price to pay with the soft cap we have. Everyone levels until his own level of incompetence.
     
  3. eli

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    Not if the 1,000 hours was spent solo in the monkey room and the 1,500 hours were spent doing quests, helping friends, roleplaying and having fun.

    The problem is with the game mechanics and incentives, not with our attitude.
     
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2018
  4. hammadowna

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    Are we playing the same shroud? This game is a blast!
     
  5. 2112Starman

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    Absolutely and I agree. SOTA brings out the natural OCD in me. At least a thousand hours farming the same rotation in Ulfeim and hundreds of hours in the mage room in the Rise believe it or not is actually fun for me. But I can understand people who are not quite as OCD as I may have issues with it.
     
  6. GrayFog

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    I stopped after killing 500 or so Dragons, it's just meh...
     
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  7. Stundorn

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    Wow.

    I'm 79 now and i know exactly what one loose at 75.
    You seem to die through content :confused:o_O
    Like i used to just die hrough Vauban Pass many Month ago.
    Seriously you loose somewhat around 10k-12k xp for the first death.
    To loose 300k xp you need to die 300 times for the first time.
    Well...:rolleyes:

    Death Decay is a cool feature its the only thing that challenges me to not to die.
    And i die often and i loose something one to 20k now.
    And i can restock this in 15 minutes I'd say, let it be 30, but who cares.

    A death debuff would let me long out or sit out.
    And if this cumulates to 10+ minutes bye bye game Session.

    Death decay is a cool feature!
    In older games like EQ or VsoH you could loose entire levels. 2 or 3 or 4 with one single dead. And we dont talk about regaining it in a couple of hours, except you can get back to your tomb and save a good percentage of it.

    Imagine hard caps and hard limits in all trees and crafting.
    Suddenly all players want to interact and need among each other, because they cannot gather everything, they cannot fight anything, they cannot craft everything, they need a real healer, they need a real tank and people specialized against undead to cure the plague, they need to group for all bosses, because nobody is able to kill a boss solo.
    To me this limit would be 100 for skills and only 12 or so trees from all trees, including harvesting, refining and producing.
     
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  8. Stundorn

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    Because this is not limited pvp and economy is crap.
    Not against you personally, but your playstyle combined with the lack of caps destabilize the even playfield for everybody (or the 0815 casual) and makes pvp and a market obsolete, if you are not part of the players who share this playstyle.
     
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  9. Merlota

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    There is a very strong time component as well. How much safe grind time are you willing to invest before doing whatever is challenging at your skill level.
     
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  10. Oeneusc

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    I would be perfectly fine with death decay if there was a reason to challenge an area or a boss for something other than more experience points. A possibility of a crafting component, generic (unusable) weapons and a small amount of gold isn't reason enough. And really, if you're doing it just for the XP, why group? That's at least my experience with the lower level game play.
     
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  11. StrangerDiamond

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    yuup... we refused a ton of UO features because "it would split the playerbase" well I submit it is more than split... its shattered like the gem of immortality. One world one server... millions reasons to ignore everyone and play solo.
     
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  12. StrangerDiamond

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    Good you have the courage to point it out... I didn't because I thought I was alone to think this was ridiculous. I've been made to feel more like a nuisance than anything else in this community, for pointing out what to me is complete incoherence, so much so that pointing it out resembles a pure insult.
     
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  13. StrangerDiamond

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    For me, and I thought every other roleplayer, the lore based reason that on first death I lose the "quality" connexion or "spiritual" connexion to my avatar is reason enough to attempt not to die.

    Am I really that strange ? I don't need to be punished to trick myself in thinking a situation is challenging, any other analysis is preposterous and relies on reverse psychology tactics which I've grown to despise.
     
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  14. StrangerDiamond

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    it kind of puzzles me that you use that example... I didn't play EQ for exactly this reason, UO has and always had a much better replay value, minimal downtime between PvP adventures and NO LEVELS.

    I can't believe I have to remind you that SOTA seduced me by saying we would b a skill based game with no classes... now you use THIS example of all things to explain why its nice to have hard caps and class type specialization ?

    I feel like the current model is laughing in the face of both playstyles, that is quite an achievement IMO, still ask myself daily how this is even possible.
     
  15. StrangerDiamond

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    Surprising there are still any dragons left... unless the game makes no sense and is not a RPG.

    Oh wait... *facepalm*

    Now don't tell me UO this UO that... I also think UO didn't make RPG sense and that the automatic spawn system was just a placeholder.

    Maybe it was we will never know because EA takeover.
     
  16. StrangerDiamond

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    No he's playing the other shroud, the one without VR rose glasses.
     
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  17. Oeneusc

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    I'm not at that level but that doesn't sound like a terrible death penalty.

    I felt that the death penalty in Everquest was so extreme that it would discourage player exploration. As a dark elf there was a specific safe route I took to get around the world. They randomly added a bunch of halflings (whatever they were called in EQ) to that route after a patch. I lost quite a bit and that was the beginning of the end.
     
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  18. StrangerDiamond

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    yeah... I played like 3 hours and realized it was total commercial crap sony style. UO was a holy grail in comparison... a true MMO for players by players.

    Well until the RMT takeover that is...
     
  19. redfish

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    Agree with some of the OP, disagree with other points, but overall find a lot of common ground.

    I think you can escape in games that work perfectly realistically (even thinking of non-fantasy games here) because you're letting yourself get absorbed in another life and another world where you can experience different things, and where whatever in-game consequences you deal with don't translate to your real life. That's why even hardcore survival games can be fun.

    More fantasy elements in that sense doesn't neccessarily create more escape. But, on the extreme, turning players into gods who can do anything can on the other hand can hurt gameplay because it can make your choices trivial and meaningless, which is boring. Fun comes from dealing with the challenges of your environment, working within limits.

    An escapist point of view is also why I don't care too much for dance parties which are just social events; if i wanted to go to a party, I'd go to a party in real life - if I wanted to chat, Id open an IM - I don't need to play a game to give me a social life. Social aspects of Multiplayer are cool and all, but they're most fun if they respect and build on top of the immersive, escapist aspects of the virtual world and solo game experience.

    And remember that singleplayer games are popular, too, because they are generally the most immersive and least grindy.

    Most nobody likes grinding. Some people say they do, but I think for most the tedium of grinding is helped by chatting, socializing, and multitasking.

    The XP decay mechanic I think is a problem from many perspectives; I think if you play casually, you'll feel it a lot, but if you play longer game sessions, you come to ignore it, because the amount of xp you earn makes it a meaningless penalty. A big part of the issue is that decay accumulates while offline and there's a decay cap.

    Also, along with the "low XP" indicator, it feeds into the sense that the game really is about grinding and min/maxing your gains. Reminds me of the "low energy" indicators on mobile games where you constantly are asked to push in RMT or endure with painful gameplay.

    Besides XP decay, the huge amount of materials you push into crafting is also a problem for making the game feel grindy, as are the high tax rates.

    I think we have players coming from different perspectives, some Multiplayet and some Singleplayer, but there's a lot of common ground, and the devs can focus around that to solve a lot of core game problems and make the game more fun.
     
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2018
  20. Toadster

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    This post made me cringe.. not trying to be mean but your basing a decision on decay at where you are now, not where you are going to be In a long game. And yes at 79 with 20k for first death and restocking in 15 minutes is not bad. In another 11 Adv. levels at 90 your decay will be around 60k on First death, 30k second, 15k third, etc. and beyond that it gets even worse. And 15 minute restocking of those losses don’t exists outside of a few areas that I hope you built your template for.

    The one thing I Know, if the removed decay and replaced the death penalty with something else there may be a few that get upset, but I don’t believe they would quit playing. With Decay where it is at the higher levels I have seen decay first hand, destroy group play and cause players to quit the game with the mass majority of negative sentiment from the boards at higher levels.
     
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