Should Portalarium hire a strategist?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Kara Brae, Nov 9, 2018.

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  1. Kara Brae

    Kara Brae Avatar

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    I like SotA and I like the Devs. But I don't understand the strategy behind their game development.

    First of all, the game was supposed to have a terrific and immersive quest system. But from the start, the quest system has been terribly buggy, confusing and missing a prime component: A useful journal to keep track of quests. The journal we still have 4 years later is buggy, confusing, and unreliable. In my opinion this aspect of the game was mismanaged from the very beginning instead of being a top priority.

    Secondly, housing was supposed to be a rare commodity in the game. If this was the intention of the Devs, why did they put so many resources into it to make it the best aspect of the game? They could have just created a few lots for their early backers and concentrated on making the other aspects of the game great. Instead, they kept improving and expanding the housing system and relying on purchases of towns and placeable deco items to fund the development of the game. That seems to be a sensible move considering that housing turned out to be a highly popular aspect of the game. But they made it hard for players to acquire property, so only a fraction of potential purchasers of the beautiful homes and deco items actually need or purchase deco. At the same time many towns are practically deserted. The POT row lot that players can earn by completing the game doesn't make much sense to me. You don't enjoy the convenience of owning property while you are playing the game. As an incentive to get people to spend money in the add-on store, a free row lot is not ideal. You have absolutely no use for outside deco and large inside deco, a free house comes with the lot, and you can easily decorate a row house beautifully using only crafted items.

    Thirdly, PVP. The only thing I know about PVP is that people complain about it all the time so maybe something could/should have been done to improve it.

    Fourthly, the Devs had some unpopular ideas, but they stuck to them until very recently when they started making changes they dubbed "quality of life" changes. Examples: regional economies forced on players by walling off regions with dangerous passes, forced sieges, death decay. lack of fast travel options, etc.

    I've sometimes had the impression that the development cycle has been sluggishly reactive to the player base (except for the quest stuff which never got fixed in Episode 1) instead of having a clear strategy for a successful game. I do like the Devs, but I don't have much confidence that they have a clear vision of how to make Episode 2 successful. Would adding a strategist to the team help?
     
  2. Chrystoph Reis

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    Short answer is No. Having been and indie developer with a small team, it's not something that makes sense. People on the outside can always make conjectures, but without working on the team it's impossible to say.

    As for PVP, most PVP in MMOs suck. I have not found ANY MMO PVP "something to write home about". Outside of the fluid combat of NWO (which was THE only saving grace of it's PVP) I have never experienced "good" MMO PVP.

    sidebar: I played competitively in FPSes and Fighters for years. MMO PVP is always unbalanced and relies too much on "stuff" than skills.
     
  3. Steevodeevo

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    I think they should hire a virologist.
     
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  4. Arkah EMPstrike

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    The quest system was originally going to be minimally invasive and something more subtle you would have to discover by communicating with NPCs, so i feel like the players wanting highlights, attention grabbers, and a task list were a large part of the quest system we have now, which was not originally intended to have those things, which is why they have to rebuild the wholesystem from the ground up i think.

    They already mention alot of the things they intend to have in episode 2 and that its planned to be here in about a year, but like the episode 1 development, the suggestions continuously recieved from players and unexpected bugs will keep causing them to dynamically have to shift priorities.

    The only way they could stick to a concrete plan and timeline would be to act alot less or slower on playerfeedback and stick to the plan, and/or to have a larger team
     
  5. HannahAlpenglow

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    My take -

    1. Starr is the strategist- he is the executive producer; that is a key component of his job. The priority (or lack there of) of questing and the journal is his call. Another producer is not needed. Starr has admitted leaving the original questing system in place like it is was a mistake; I just wish they would not wait until episode 2 to fix it and have instead spent much time on other things. Would have been beneficial for the F2P players to have something crisper than we have currently.

    2. This should not be a shock - housing is by far the most built out system for one reason - it is the primary driver of selling huge pledges and things on the store. No other reason that, really. The prices of items are high enough that it wasn’t necessary to have everyone in a house. I agree now that the game is live and we are not close to running out real estate (one reason property was made hard/annoying to get) continuing to make it easier and quicker for players to get a house is ideal.

    3. People always complain about PvP. No way around that if it is part of a game.

    4. Long Held ideas that would “never” happen tend to go by the wayside when metrics and revenue make it clear that new players are not coming. The game was crushing to new players and the revenue from existing players probably made it clear that changes had to occur to realistically try to get new ones in and spending.
     
  6. HannahAlpenglow

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    The quest system was deficient and broken long before they added sparkles and highlights. It is a much more fundamental problem than what you suggest.
     
  7. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Before it had sparkles and highlights and a HUD tracker it was incomplete, that stuff was jimmy rigged in on top of what was there beforeit was completely finnished. The biggest things i hear about the quest system being broken are the sparkles and the HUD tracker, which were not part of the originally plannedquest system.


    So it just seems like anything thats broken that isnt the book journal or conversation itself is do to additional s
     
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  8. Greyfox

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    I think they should hire a phlebotomist and sell more blood.
     
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  9. Proteus Tempest

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    I do recall Starr informing us on a telethon/livestream that the quest system was getting a overhaul.
     
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  10. LiquidBlaze

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    Reading between the lines from a comment on a livestream, the quality of life changes were made after some members of the team that had strong beliefs in them had departed. I took about a 3 month break and came back to amazement. Combat and looting portion running smooth, used to have to wait for those windows and then again for loot to appear in window, not to mention the in game map is way more snappy now. Optional sieges and encounters, open passes, no more decay, universe chat, and now Fishing expansion. It's all far more satisfying to me. Now if we could only get the crafting ui to load the mats we want when selecting something to make or enchant/masterwork, perhaps even the item itself =) (That would really put the icing on the cake for me.) I'm really interested in seeing what the next 6-12 months brings and more! \o/
     
  11. Arkah EMPstrike

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    All that aside.

    They might benifit more if they have the ability to hire anyone at all from hiring somone to focus on the quest system overhaul exclusivly, if thats yhe boggest thing
     
  12. jschoice

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    The position you are suggesting is in fact Starr's position. With the team input, he ultimately desides the roadmap and priorities. So in essence your suggesting Starr should step down.

    I have said this a million times this team is dedicated to making this a great and different experience. No one who works at Port is stays my because they are rolling around in likes of cash. These are talented devs who could work at larger companies and make significantly more money but they stay and put up with our rants because they believe in what they want to do and they like and are invested in this community.

    Most of us are experienced gamers but little of us have been a developer so when we suggest something we really have little knowledge of the actual time it would take to put in the game and how difficult gaming what we dream up and figure out how to write the code to make it happen. Also having seen and talked with other developers what we are experiencing is what happens behind the scenes that the player base is not privy too. He are in open development. We see things very raw as they get implemented and that is often painful as one solution breaks another.

    I am very honest that there are lots of things that can be clean up and fixed in this game but I also see things that have not been tried in a game in a long time.

    Every time I get a bit frustrated with a bug in the game I take a break find something else to play for a bit but I always come back to SoTA. I played ESO for an hour last night and it was not enjoyable so I logged into SoTA for 3 hours.

    I do think it is fair to question why a new system like fishing was created when other systems need a significant rework is left untouched.

    One thing that I think is needed at one of the live streams is a deep dive on the state of the game. I know they covered the features for episode two but I really would like to hear how they feel the state of the game is now and specifically how they plan on moving forward. As we know promised or intended features will change as development is fluid but rarely do we hear raw conversation about priorities. I think without candor on the state of the game players are left to make conjectures which is never a good thing many companies fail not on the quality of their product but on their messaging or lack there of.
     
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  13. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    As a great fan of Storyline I did most quests 3 times over the last 5 years.

    And from my opinion, a few changes would give a better story experience:

    1. Journal with Chapters for each main path (love, truth, courage, oracle - with sorting ability for towns and maybe persons)
    2. Connect given quests with the map to see: [Start = Quest giver] - [Target]
    - MARKER on the map showing quest targets (for example: Coming from Soltown, entering Ardoris: even if I won't use the compass sparkle, opening the map should provide the information of the guards barracks at the docks!)
    [Only with these 2 points, no sparkles and tasks on screen would be needed - however we have them and that's okay for different play styles!]

    3. Tasks on screen should be more clear,
    for example:
    Task: - Find Guard Captain Cugel in Ardoris
    Mouse over: - Guard Captain Stanley told me to find Guard Captain Cugel at the docks, west of Ardoris, in the Guard Barracks.

    Even someone who won't read the whole dialogue would know
    - what to do
    and
    - where to do

    Well, it could be this easy from beginning...

    4. For people who like to use the sparkle and compass info:
    - debug quest marker. There are really not much bugged - yet! But they are bugged - unfortunately - since months of reporting :(

    5. To have more fun while exploring the lands (and following the storyline)
    Include what is in the Post Episode 1 plan:

    Map Improvements:

    • Fog of War: Hide where you haven’t been
    Especially this would be a great help, because if I am new, I am overwhelmed from the land masses. So it would be great to know, where I've been before and where not.
    A great amount of fun while exploring the lands is taken away, because we can see the whole land from beginning ...
    XP point for exploring also could increase the interest to travel around - by foot / horse ;)


    6. Last but not least: if the disturbing underlining of words will not be removed, it should be changed into a highlighting color for the clickable words instead ...
    It would support the reading flow and it would fit more the fact of 'listening' to a person, 'hearing' a word or a phrase we want to ask about :)

    So, I don't think we need another strategist, but we need people who follow a simple strategy:
    Fix bugged systems first. And one of them is the quest system ...
    I still hope, they will fix the known (and more than one time posted) quest bugs until End of the year so they can start with Episode 2 in time on January ...

    That's my greatest stretch goal ;)

    And I am really excited about the first information of Q1 2019 Schedule Update, and the first changes of the promised new quest system ...
     
  14. nonaware

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    I am available and anyone that's me will tell you I am perfect for this position...
     
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  15. Krissa Lox

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    I totally get your frustration here; I share a lot of it myself, but I will say a little bit in defense to share some perspective from the deveopment side that this particular problem is more of an industry issue than a company-specific one.

    I am a Comp Sci/Bus Admin/East Asian major with 15+ years experience working with game economies. There's all kinds of stuff I could rail on that "should" be done better due to my skillset, but a sad underlying reality is that, in the U.S. at least, people with high-level tech admin skillsets are either much more highly valued and compensated in other industries or have the ability to drop out of the mainstream economy altogether to go do their own thing, which leaves the game industry at large bereft of being able to reliably acquire such talent at an affordable price.

    So this is one area where I think expectations have to be tempered somewhat on the company level and better addressed at the industry level instead. I would certainly love seeing some better strategy happening here, but it's not something I feel I can fairly expect when I also know the interests of a lot of strategists would deviate pretty significantly from the company's.

    Personally I have some projects going on to work on trying to correct some of this (and my experience with Shroud has been a contributor to recognize the need to start pushing for changes now instead of waiting around for more support), but industries are monolithic beasts to try and tackle while trying to dodge their ire at being challenged, so substantial change would probably take years if not decades to accomplish.
     
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  16. Brewton

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    You’re hired!!! Please help fix stuff!
     
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  17. Proteus Tempest

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    Makes me wonder if I would stay or go if Starr left.
     
  18. 2112Starman

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    I like to compare SOTA with my old Never Winter Nights module. My module used their toolset, SOTA used Unity. Mine was heavily modified from Aurura and Port had to build SOTA stuff from scratch a lot but uses the market place a lot. I worked on my mod for 3-4 years solo and it was in size and scope about the same as SOTA is now. I had massive custom code and major systems including a completely custom crafting system which was based a lot on UO but followed D&D rules. My reputation system was far more advanced then SOTA something that I coded myself following D&D rules. For example, if you were a Paladin running around steeling things, you alignment shifted if caught slowly over time to the point where you would shift from lawful good and lose your Paladin skills. I also had a massive reputation system that effected you through the game, you may walk into a town where they would immediately kill you on site but if you wanted to, you could work on the rep to change that. I even had D&D orientated "dimensions" (forgot the term), if you were good, you could enter the levels of hell and literally destroy entire evil towns. Massive volumes of quests.

    All by myslef.

    In the end, at max, we had 4 shards up full of 25+ people on each (limitation of NWN). In total, I had anywhere from 200,000 to 250,000 different players play the module. I had whole sets of people who played it 12 hours a days for years.

    I only brought in ~$5000 in pure donations to the module with the specific purpose of buying new hardware to run it. That module started on a Pentium 4 proc desktop running 24x7 and I upgraded the desktop several times to keep up with load with that money.

    Compare this to the state of SOTA today just on a size level. The purpose is not to put them down but to describe to people what it takes to build a game like this in a toolset.
     
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