My long list of questions I have not seen answered

Hi all! A few questions I have not been able to locate answers to.

1. They have said that Combat/Profession skills would be separate skill point counts. But have we learned if there will be a skill cap or stats cap? If there is a skill cap and we want to transfer our skills to new skills, will it work similar to UO, gaining one skill while losing another? Or will we simply reset our skills and redistribute skills points or something?

2. Rewards for donors. Will these same rewards be available in game for in game currency? Or are these rewards to be very rare in only ever being available to original donors? Will housing be available to new players in the game...? With lack of housing spaces it seems hard for any new players to the game to ever acquire their own homes?

3. Will there be an expansion of homes into the wilderness at all? Or will as far as it goes be villages? It seems the dual map creates a very large lack in housing availability. Where as in UO there was so much housing space available and allowing players to create their own towns a midst the wilderness. A large part of the game is players being able to work towards purchasing their homes, with a huge lack of housing doesn't it makes it very hard for players to work towards this goal. How will this work and will we see new housing locations?

4. Will the 4 additional episodes be expansion packs onto the original game? Or will they be entirely new individual games? How will they relate to each other? Will we continue our journey with our existing characters onto the new episodes?

5. Have mounts been addressed? Will they be a part of PVP if/when they are included?

6. How long are we able to donate for? When will donating be closed? How much will the game cost after release?

7. Will there be different races of avatars or will we all be humans? Has this been addressed?

8. My biggest question. How will the selective multiplayer work in regards to interacting with other players? How many other players will we be able to interact with in game? Are we looking at teens or hundreds or more visible to us?

e.g. If I have a friend message me asking for help in the black dungeon saying he has players after him. I quickly run to his aid... What is to say that these players will be visible to me? How is this determined?

e.g. I have a disagreement with a player I have met in the past, I come across his house and decide to wait out for him to arrive home. What is to say I will even see this player when he comes around? How does all of this work?

e.g. How will faction/guild wars play into this as well? Will all opponents/allies be visible to us?

Seems like quite a difficult system.

Thanks all!

 

We don't know that much at this point about what sort of cap. It sounds like likely there will be some hard cap (though I think DarkStarr said they would at least consider a "soft-cap" where your skill gain just goes down substantially after a point, making skill gain take too long to realistically max everything). I believe there was word of retraining skills (so gain one at the expense of another), but not much is known about the specifics.

Some of them are the same (for example, the village plots are as far as I know identical to what's available in game). Others are unique, but similar things can be obtained in game (the prosperity items are the same but don't need to be repaired, the donor lots are the same but are taxless). As far as the lack of housing, we're not sure exactly how things will shake out. There will definitely be ones for sale in game, it's just a question of how many. More will be added with each episode (1-5), though. RG has said that if things get out of hand (housing becomes too hard to come by or too expensive), they will consider some sort of instanced low-quality housing, like a room in an inn or something.

Currently I don't think there are concrete plans for this sort of thing. I don't think there are any plans for houses outside of plots, or plots outside of towns/villages.

Expansions, extending the game world.

No mounts in episode 1, unfortunately, but I think it is something on their radar for future episodes.

I don't know the answers to these.

RG is against different races. Other devs are for it. I haven't heard anything about it since the Kickstarter. I'm under the impression we're all humans.

They've said think in terms of "dozens not hundreds". This was way back in the Kickstarter, but I don't think this has changed. It will be much more clear when we're closer to release 3 (the first multiplayer pre-alpha release)

In OPO mode, certain people will be more likely to show up to you than others. I think anyone on your friends list (and presumably guild) will have top priority. Then those that you have interacted with before, those around your level (I think?), and maybe some other factors. Beyond those known things, anything I say would be speculation on my part. Others might know more.

 

What I have heard or think...

 

There will be a cap:

• [09:47] <+LoneStranger> Starr - How long do you imagine it would take someone to reach the skill cap? Months? Years? The entire run of Ep1-5?
  • [09:47] <~Darkstarr> LoneStranger: Months we think

• [15:26] <+LoneStranger> DarkStarr - I believe you have said there is a skill cap that would take months to reach. What happens when a new skill tree comes out? Does that cap increase by some amount, or do you have to lose some of your existing abilities to learn the new tree?
  • [15:28] <~DarkStarr> Lone: Not sure. Likely we would increase the cap

• [10:00] <+tekkamansoul> @darkstarr any word on what level of mastery one character can reach in different branches of the skill trees, or is that still being felt out
  • [10:03] <~DarkStarr> tekkamansoul: No single character can max out every skill. exact numbers will be balanced during testing

 

Hi Bronto and welcome to the community! I think most of your questions are addressed above (even though not much actual detail is still known), so I'll just give you some general info.

Here are a bunch of links that you definitely must check out:

- The original Kickstarter video that describes the vision for the game
- "What is Shroud of the Avatar" article on the same site
- The Stretch Goals that were achieved
- The official FAQ
- All of the Weekly Updates here
- Huge Dev post on Magic, Combat, and Crafting Skills
- Another big Dev post on Combat
- All of the Story Sneak Peaks in one post
- Shroud of the Avatar: 2013 in review -- great article one the major events that happened this past year
- 3 month demo video
- 6 month demo video
- Transcriptions of some important Dev Hangouts
- Early Access Schedule for backers is posted here
- Definitely look for any new posts in the Community Announcements forum -- there are some really good informative posts there by the Devs

Hope this helps!

 

Well I see that I am am not needed here! Questions answered and all that. Play me off Charlie! (dances off stage)

 

Good idea! Might as well add a few more links.

Fansites & Support post -- a great resource for even more info from the community, including links to unofficial Wikis
Pledge Reward Spreadsheet here
Heraldry mega thread here
Crowdsourcing of the Avatar dev post
Unoffiicial aggregate mega post of stretch goal ideas
Weekly questions for the Devs! Almost forgot about this...read here

 

Seems like everything was answered... get any more just ask!

Welcome to SotA

 

You're getting people's best guesses. But there's a huge piece of "i don't know" in there. People keep pressing devs for early information, but it's simply far from final. Until they have working systems, quite simply anything and everything is subject to change.