What kind of game is SOTA and what will it become?

Yes the horse masks are beyond ridiculous. What on earth were they thinking ??????

 

I think what scares me more is that someone at Portalarium thought adding horse masks was a good idea.

 

Yes and unsurprisingly the Stretch Goal total for mounts is crawling up.

If Port can't think of things that excite and inspire players already here to contribute to stretch goals then they really have no hope of achieving any of them.

 

I was really hoping for some sort of mount -other than- horses.
I'd drop money right now if I got some sort of rideable big cat. Its a fantasy world. We can tame bears and wolves and soon WYVERNs, we can summon meteor storms and launch fireballs from our hands, we have all manner of "immersion breakin" nonsense (cycling dyed furniture now, cmon) its not a stretch to be able to ride something more interesting than a few different colors of horse. And if they did that, a lot of other stuff could be put into that stretch goal store that doesn't have to be distinctively horse-themed.

 

Want to see the Mount Stretch goal really rise fast? Add horse driven carts, carriages and buggies. Add some carts that are filled with (decoration only) crates for the merchant players to use (pulling their wares from town to town). Add a cart that is hauling hay (or produce). Add a fine carriage. Add a Vardo Wagon.

 

I'm predicting no significant increase in playerbase growth or player retention with the changes. None.

For all the complaining some of you do about travel time, it's a joke. There are only a few things that really needed to be done to fix it.

The control-point teleport wizards needed moved to the overworld map; possibly make their cost scale with level. That's it. The teleport wizards never made any sense, because by the time you entered the scene you've already done the most time-consuming of running a pass; but if they are on the overworld map, now you save two scene loads. In addition, the control point can be made to be open or closed if the control-point is player-controlled. Maybe guilds could have settings about who they give free passage to? That would give a reason for doing the control-point that doesn't need a sink to counter it.

Sieges didn't need skippable, they just needed to not be so frequent. If they appeared in a random 2 eligible towns for each celestial period, few would really complain. It would also make more sense: the cabal has limited personnel to siege cities.

These would allow them to still have meaning, rather then gameplay equivalent of the coccyx.

Just as troublesome, feedback given years ago about the shallowness of the mainline quests are ignored. Years old bugs in the chat system ("wee! your talking to me? How about I just walk away?" "You're halfway through reading the detailed dialog? Let me helpfully close it for you!") remain. These are all things that needed to be fixed before release; I'm not even sure anyone's paying attention to them.

That said, I don't want this to be all negative, there is some good stuff in this release. For example, having a button on top of the dialog for banks and shopkeepers is a great improvement.

 

Developers trolling about the horse mount requests.
I love their humor hehe.

 

We were talking about something similar in TS last night: let us tame and ride unicorns and nightmares. Also, wouldn't it be cool if we did have fun mounts, they could be used with the carts, carriages, and buggies? Why just horse-drawn, when I can have a BEAR DRAWN buggy?

I think it's worth noting that, now that the bank is universal, there really isn't a NEED for mounts anymore. They'll basicly be cosmetic as you can just shove whatever you want to move in the bank, teleport to your teleport poi.... I mean "friend" then pick it back up at the destination.

 

This is exactly right and I heartily agree. It wasn't that they needed to be removed just reworked, but maybe that is more complicated than doing what they did.

In the end, if reworking them was impossible due to money/time restraints, then this outcome is fine with me. The game needs less time sinks, not more and although this is an extreme, it's better than what it was. IMHO.

 

I'm just disappointed that it looks like things are getting scrapped that with a few smaller tweaks could have added more dynamics to the game.

 

Good points about the control point wizards and the frequency of sieges. My only question is whether these options were considered by Portalarium or not.

Which is a natural segue into your next point about the lack of bug triaging.

As I read about the bug fixes with each release I am always left the following questions: How are the bugs chosen for fixing? (What is the triage process? Who is deciding what gets fixed? Who is prioritizing the mountain list of bugs that needs fixing?)

For example, in this release, someone decided that removing the ability to click on vendors through shop windows took precedence over many other bugs. For instance, what about the horrible windows that popup in the inventory and obstructing everything?

A lot of the bugs that get fixed seem random. Really hope that the selection process is not simply fixing the lowest hanging fruit that will be fixable by the next release logic. -_-

 

Again, I completely agree! I just don't know how much bandwidth the Port team has currently, outside of the current scope of development. So even small tweaks might be extremely difficult to implement.

I am still waiting for all the NPC's in the various towns to have names, dialogues and schedules. Reading the R57 notes, I'm not even sure this is going to be done moving forward.

 

Steam Horses!

Giant Bears!

Giant Boars!

Giant Lizards!

Mounds of bones piled up and glued together in a monstrous mostly horse shaped horror!

...add in a skill tree that allows for mounted combat! With a chance to get knocked off your mount and be stuck at a disadvantage if you have your mounted combat deck with nothing as an Alternate! (No mounted combat inside underground areas, because that would be ridiculous.)

 

Well putting on my professional hat for a moment, that *IS* always a consideration when deciding bugs to fix. If somethings in JIRA (or whatever bug tracking you're using) and can be fixed in 5mins there's always a mind set of "lets just get that easy one done." While more complex changes that are going to require talking to higher-ups, who may be busy with their own problems, are harder to even get started. I'm not saying that as a condemnation of Portalrium. That's just my experience from my own life.

 

I apologize, it was a loaded question on my part.

I hope that someone at Portalarium is keeping track and not losing sight of the larger more expensive bugs that need fixing.

 

All I know is that someone switched the economy back on last week.

 

Smaller team, focusing on smashing bugs and implementing some newer systems and elements.

I imagine that swinging back around to those elements you speak of could be a thing they could look at in the future, but... I doubt they will return the locks on the control points, BUT they can and should make them a bit more enticing, beyond just piles of XP for holding a control point.

 

Once the systems are all in place, they will probably try some new things with them probably. We still have a few more to go.

 

I'm frekin 50!

 

Thing is, this isn't 'back to basics' in any way. In any version of UO you could GM everything in a week or two as long as you knew what you were doing. crafting look longer of course, or not if you just bought resources to craft with. Even so, buying such materials wasn't out of the realm of possibility if you adventured since it didnt take NEARLY as long to gather them as it does in Sota. If back to basics means another game to you, i'm interested in hearing about it. I played all the MMOs in the late 90s and Sota is definitely a slog compared to them.