1. Here you will find official announcements and updates. These announcements are also linked in the Official SotA Discord server.
    We encourage comments from the community! To keep the announcements official, we ask that comment threads be created in the General forums for player input.

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Company Status

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Jun 19, 2018.

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  1. GraveDncer

    GraveDncer Avatar

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    The Sunk Cost Fallacy. The Misconception: You make rational decisions based on the future value of objects, investments and experiences. The Truth: Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.

    I sunk over 8k into this plus uncounted hours, it’s time for the devs to ungrind the product. I’ve done my part.
     
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  2. redfish

    redfish Avatar

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    @Mykll All this talk makes me miss Railroad Tycoon btw ;)
     
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  3. Gorthyn

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    Am in no way a hater I like the game and want it to succeed. Labelling anyone who offers a criticism of the game as a hater is inaccurate and unfair. And unhelpful to the devs too to be honest.
     
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  4. Gorthyn

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    They do need a proper advertising campaign too which showcases the strengths of the game. Fingers crossed we will get that soon. I had thought the Seedinvest funding was supposed to have paid for that..
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2018
  5. Old Man2

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    In your case perhaps.
    Mine is purely prospecting. It’s black and white.
    Cost, trends and industry experts creating a product.
    There are no blinders here, and I clearly know the value of investment, profit/loss ratio.
    I enjoy being a member of this community, and the type of gameplay this offers me.
    This game is not for everyone. The continual business of it, the waiting, the changing of the product, the realization of the economics of the delivery of this product will fluctuate.
    This is a volitile process. No guarantees.
    Keep your chips on the table, or cash out.

    Fortune favors the bold.
    ~Cristiano
     
  6. Sentinel2

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    Fortunately I was not labeling anyone anything in that post :D
     
  7. Roycestein Kaelstrom

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    It all comes down on how the person describe their feedback and communicate with other players.

    For example, there is a big different these two conversions:
    Conversion 1:
    Person A: This feature X stinks. I wish I never play the game.
    Person B: Shut your trap, feature X rocks. Period.

    Conversion 2:
    Person A: This feature X is great I love it because of Y and Z reasons.
    Person B: I disagree with that. There is a problem with feature X because of O and P reasons.
    Person C: That's not quite true, have you tried A and B approaches?
    and so on...

    Conversation 1 is essentially a flame bait. Regardless of those who are in favor or against, neither are aiming to start a conversation, but rather focus on shutting other who had different opinions. Eventually it will be shut down by mod and leave everyone in sour mouth.

    Conversation 2 at least sparks people to think of things differently and it will actually help the devs seeing things from different perspective.

    Again, it's not about what you say as much as how you say it.
     
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  8. Mykll

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    And in some cases, who says it.
     
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  9. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    I miss one version of Railroad Tycoon, the b/w Mac version. Used to play that on my Mac Plus.
     
  10. mass

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    It's interesting that this is actually an advantage for them at this stage. If they had been funded by a publisher, the project probably would have been shuttered ages ago simply from a BOD not liking the way it looks on their balance sheet. As they have done it though, they can continue as long as they can keep the lights on and really see if they can make it successful.
     
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  11. Lifedragn

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    On one hand, I would love if the game was less grindy. But then I have to wonder what players would actually do with their time. Roleplayers would largely be fine, but a vast majority of people I see online are grinders. Removing the grind removes their reason for playing. Producing fresh new content at a rate these players would burn through it is literally impossible given the current state of technology. You'd basically need an AI generating environments, stories, and quests to keep up with speed of consumption.

    Without that grinding, many players just drift away. When they drift away, they stop spending. When spending drops, staffing has to adjust. With less staff there is less content being produced and general improvement to the game slows to a halt. Then more people leave and then the game has to be shut down.

    The game is very grindy to a point that I dislike. I agree there. But without the grind, I do not see any feasible way to keep the game going. And granted that we do have so many players happily grinding away, then maybe that is exactly what they wanted out of the game when they funded it.
     
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  12. 2112Starman

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    The new PvP trials should help.
     
  13. Aeryk

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    I always appreciate your posts @redfish. You are direct and genuine, and add value to conversations. In this case i think you are missing that all of these systems are both multivariate and interdependent. Additionally, what you call play systems i call game systems. What i call play is much more broad. I absolutely adore Raph Koster, but he too misses this point in much of his writing. Yes, good game mechanics trigger happy juice from the brain, but so do other play activities that are not strictly games. Millions of people adored the play in Second Life. They did not need game mechanics to make that happen.

    It may be that some people prefer game elements and some people prefer play elements, but there is no evidence from my experience that there is any sort of globally true hierarchy that requires one set of elements over the other, nor that any one must exist first for all player types. Indeed, almost always it is a mix that makes a given experience enjoyable to enough people to be considered a success.
     
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  14. redfish

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    @Aeryk

    IMO, its just the fact that the number of people dressing up at Star Trek conventions is always smaller than the number people who watch the show, and the people who dress up at the conventions (or write fan fiction, etc) are only there in the first place because of the show.

    Its not that being creative isn't enjoyable, I'm a pretty creative guy myself am an interested in doing creative things in Shroud. But games give you a limited set of building blocks to be creative with, and there's got to be some incentive there to be creative with them.... I think I've told the story here about why I quit UO (on the freeshard I was playing). I saved up gold to get a lot to build a library, because I wanted to put some lore books and other items in the game. By the time I raised the gold and found a lot, it was basically an inch away from crazy decorated lots with vendors shouting on the roofs, with orcs roaming around the corner. Then, I discovered I needed a bunch more gold to actually create the building I wanted. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it, and abandoned the project. Basically, what made the idea of putting creative work into the game interesting to me was the idea of adding something to the game world. But that depends on the game world being an interesting place to be in and to add to.

    That's the virtual world.

    Otherwise, the game ends up basically being chat room, and I don't know why I'd choose to be in this one versus another one, or versus meeting people in real life. I don't know why I'd choose to do something creative in the game, versus say writing a book, creating a film, making a painting. Or making my own game. But, like most people who go and dress up at Star Trek conventions go because they like the shows, most people who are here are here because they like Ultima.

    So, its why I've said before you can create a community around a great game, but not a great game around a community.

    I would say to you the same thing I said to Vladamir about Second Life; I think people exaggerate its success. It has a small number of concurrent players, and it even only has the number of players it does because of name recognition. Which isn't to say I'm putting down anyone who enjoys the creativity and social elements in Second Life, because I like the potential for that here in Shroud, too... and I'm planning to do a bunch of stuff myself when I get things ready.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2018
  15. Bubonic

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    indeed.
     
  16. Rhiannon

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    This was discussed in last week's Community Livestream right at the beginning. Richard said that Travian(sp?) spent a lot of the marketing money to supposedly market but as players and the Devs themselves wondered: where did they market? None of us saw it. They did not get the numbers of new players they expected. So now they are gathering the marketing info (where, when, how, results) to analyze and will be making adjustments to get it done properly.
     
  17. Gorthyn

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    Thanks for that - very interesting, hopefully the lessons have been learned !
     
  18. Jordizzle

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    I saw a banner advertising SOTA on the side of a MassivelyOp.com page once, but that's the only place I've ever seen any sign of marketing.
     
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  19. Sentinel2

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    I've seen it all over facebook, mmorpg.com among other sites.

    You need to get out more ;-)
     
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  20. Krissa Lox

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    This post isn't directed at you personally, Rhiannon. I'm just placing it here to tack on to the info you brought up.

    1) The Community Livestream really needs to be uploaded to YouTube asap, because people who haven't been watching previous livestreams but are interested in this one may not realize they are put on Twitch first and then assume nothing's been put out yet when they don't see it on the YouTube channel. Plus from a marketing perspective, YouTube should be the social media channel of highest priority to support. Even if it's not as easy to work with as other options, as the next largest search engine after Google and a wider range of device-reach than any other video service, it's far and away the most bang for the buck over anything else in most situations.

    2) Marketing =/= Advertising. If all that was done was simply buy ad space, then that was incompetent and almost certainly doomed to fail. However, an effective marketing campaign takes months to ramp up to start seeing its sales potential come to fruition, so it's also possible that marketing efforts can be in process that are completely solid and will be yielding profitability but the timing was faulty in not getting them started sooner before launch, so a band-aid advertising campaign may have been thrown on top to try to minimize the gap between launch and profitability. A lot of high-yield marketing activities are more a product of time and labor than cash expense, so it's not uncommon to see the largest allocation of cash go to venues of lesser profitability, especially when time-to-yield is an urgent priority due to immediate cash flow needs outweighing overall effectiveness and efficiency.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2018
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