Are there any plans to boost the game?

Why cannot Portalarium just provide the statistics from the non steam side? If it is a great number why not show it off?

 

OMG, so if you DO use Steam you haven't been being counted since April.

Attn: everyone, if you want to be counted go into your Profile -> Privacy Settings -> Game Details and set the to Public.

/facepalm

 

During a livestream not long ago Starr 'addressed' the issue. He said most users do not use steam and things were fine. A lot of people in chat then were asking that if they are fine, to please tell us. That would have been the perfect time to, but they passed on it.

If anything, telling us and them being low might not be a terrible thing, because then maybe the community would step up and help more? When people think everything is fine, they just play the game. But when people know it's not, they are more willing to invite friends, make videos, donate their time or whatnot to save the game they love.

I mean, Hell. Look at me. I haven't logged in for several months. Because I don't want to get hooked or spend money on a potentially dying game. But I'm still here because I need to know what direction we are going. If it's up, I'm coming back. If it's down, then I'll offer my help (I did offer in the pro bono thread my experience in social media marketing)

Out of all of this, I just wish I knew what Port was thinking. Are the numbers bad and they are being that ignorant? Are they freaking out? Or are all of us on the forums/reddit concerned about nothing?

 

Awhile back someone at port hit the wrong button and the servers were shut down.. they reset it. I logged back in through steam minutes after it happened. The queue 'for the game' said 225 or so if i remember correctly.

That.... was the total number of people logging back in at that time.

Not 1000 whatever.

 

This will be the case until people find real evidence from portalarium. Most everything that is asked from Port seems to be pushed to the side, unanswered, refereed to, moderated or brow beaten by loyal defenders. If answers could have been given they should have been given. This leads to uncertainty. This leads to negativity. This leads to deeper searching for truth. It opens the door for speculation and conspiracy. If port has the data, why not give it. If they refuse to give it then all we can do is think, dwell, draw conclusions, and have conspiracy theories. This could all go away with factual data.

 

Im not a coder, but this was posted in the API section of the forums by a Dev. Im surprised noone has done this yet.

 

I stopped using STEAM quite a while ago, because the stand alone version is much faster patch wise and I don’t have to load the STEAM app or deal with the daily Updating Steam.....

 

Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to negative reviews!

Sorry... it's late, and I'm slap-happy... had to do it

 

That's true, but still, devs told us that Steam users were roughly 1/3~1/5 of the total population. Even if you can't rely on absolute numbers, you can rely on trends.

And I hardly believe that the steam users who have been lost all went with the classical patcher (which was fixed long time ago by the way). If it was the case, we would have much better reviews on Steam, not mixed reviews, and more importantly : we would have a bigger population in the game (at least as much as we had when the game was released, two months ago, actually).

 

same thread:

 

Agian..
Cerus confirmed already that it was 30 %... ( steam ) .. and that was WELL into the trials.. so a lot of people keep saying * people switched over * .. and i say okay.. even in 1/10 ( genrous ) since then.. that means steams roughly 20 % ..

As for if thats a good pop or not.. is up to the devs.

Holy *hit im not on auto mod anymore.

 

I don't understand how people can dismiss steam numbers. I don't know if people realise this but Steam is the largest PC game digital distribution platform on the planet. It has roughly a little over 18,000,000 Concurrent Users Daily. You can't simply dismiss the trends. People are clearly buying the game and not coming back.

 

The mixed and less favorable reviews are because people don’t understand the basic potential this game has, and only compare it to the currently existing products available.

 

Then, if the game fails to convince people, it's the fault of the people who don't get convinced ? I wonder how Minecraft had so much success if people fail to see the porential of a game.

 

This, 100%.

SOTA needs a significantly better new player initial impact, a player tutorial or starter quest chain could help .

The Devs talk a lot about improving the 'new player experience' I've not started a new character of late so what have they actually done to make a new player go 'wow' this is cool!

SOTA is a unique fantasy game with a niche market and older player demographic. But niche in a global market is still a huge potential player base.

Even this unique demographic will assume and expect a modern mmo style interface and gaming experience with intuitive starter quests and a fairly gentle and informative first few levels. Similarly those buying for offline mode are expecting a rich vibrant world with a lot to do, but with a strong tutorial and starter quest chain.

Steam patching is fine, there is nothing wrong at all with running SOTA on Steam. Non Steam SOTA players are using the direct client for their own reasons.

Steam is now the core source of growth for SOTA, Very few new players will be added now via the game website, that is over before it started. The excitement and curiosity of launch is passed and the opportunity to market direct sales pretty much a missed opportunity.

To grow via Steam, like it or not, your audience requires a perpetual free trial. Steam potential players will install, have a dabble and uninstall if it doesn't grab them, but if the free trial is there, the early game content made fun and compelling and each update a new steam advertisement is uploaded with lots of colour and flavour, even a few percent of trialisrs who stick with it will be enough to grow.

So why no Steam free trial? Why no huge push at the new user experience (I mean significantly more than now)? What are Travian proposing?

 

If Steam is so bad, such a small player-base because nobody uses it, and full of nothing but trolls, then maybe Portalarium should update their "Community Rules & Guidelines".

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/community-rules-guidelines.54804/

And I never understood accepting a review or not depending on the hours played. Bad review with just a few hours are tossed out because they barely gave the game a chance. Bad review with a lot of hours are tossed out because with a lot of hours they had to have found enjoyment somewhere and got their money's worth. So basically just all bad reviews are tossed out.

At some point you have to stop with the potential of this or that. The Kickstarter was funded because of that potential. The potential of the game, not the cash shop. And most of those people are not around anymore. You can't give a game a good review because you hope some day it might be a good game. All you have is the current state. We keep being told about this next amazing thing coming, whether game feature, release, advertising, or anything else. And mostly, it has just fallen flat. People have learned to ignore potential and just look at what is.

Nor can you ignore other MMOs or RPGs that you enjoyed more either as a whole or in parts. This isn't a choice of playing Ultima IX or Shroud. Or a choice between Ultima Online or Shroud. Those are not the only 3 games people have a choice to play. And thus, not the only comparisons someone will make up on their own, without all the so-called social engineering, if they enjoy the game or not.

Most games you can tell a lot with just a few minutes, and decide if you like it or not. How well it runs. How it looks. How things move. The sounds. The music. Basic things that don't need hundreds of hours into the game. Don't need adventure levels above 100 to experience. Don't need to be in a guild, a POT, a dance party, to experience. It is amazing how easy and the number of reasons why so many people are quickly dismissed. But only if they say something bad about the game.

 

That, and the fact that it's not summer in half the world at present... but maybe we're putting too many facts in the thread.

 

Absolutely spot on, +1 for not wearing any rose tinted glasses!

It's because it's summer, people who play SotA have to entertain their kids during holidays, everyone's on a 2 month vacation period, need to opt in to Steam to recognise you, Steam isn't a true representative of SotA player demographic.............. blah, blah, blah, I mean really some of these conspiracy theories are farcical, do you really think with what you see in multiplayer mode now compared to say when persistence kicked in there is the same numbers in game? I switch between mode and always have done and it's a joke trying to find multiple someones on world map.

I just re-ran the twitch links someone kindly did yesterday and all titles linked had page full plus of streamers bar SotA that had two, one who wasn't in game and the other a re-run of NBNN, that to be frank, no one ever really watches anyway it's so dire.

It's rather clear how many active players are about if you use the new'ish LFG tool, as on a really busy day there's 2-3 groups running (UT or Ravensmoor) and even during the double exp weekend my 'teleport' (read friends) list was very sparse compared to previous releases.

However you want to spin it SotA has very very low numbers playing even at prime time and you're deluding no one but yourself if you think otherwise.

 

Thank you. They've never suited me, which is why I've always been straight-down-the-line, "This works..." or "This doesn't work..." when I talk about Shroud.

Unfortunately, over the years, it's seemed that anything less-than-glowing has been reported to the mods in a bid to be locked, or just stomped on, in general.

I wish that we, as a community, had been able to be more honest with each other and, to an even greater degree, the devs, rather than what we were allowed to be.

 

Recently was moderated because i made 3 points what are true, but arent allowed to say.
The game has bugs, the game feels orphaned and the game is released.

May it be moderated a third time,
May i get a Ban.
I dont care.

But this is what drives even players away giving it another chance, providing feedback and share their opinion.

But not everyones opinion is welcome.

So this is what they get if they only stick to their own convictions and arent able to open their mind and try to do it the other way, if the initial way seems to fail.