State of the Game

I love this game, I think it has some really great ideas, and I hope it continues to grow into something nice. I've put over 200 hours into game now according to steam and I think I can safely cut myself off because I think I see a trend here that I don't like. Back in 2000-2003 I lost most of my highschool years to ultima online due to 8-10 hours a day, every day, of constant gameplay and grind. I watched 4 years of my life disappear within the blink of an eye due to constant gaming and avoiding real life. It's unfortunate I see a similar trend developing in this game. I try to stick with more casual games, play couple of hours, done. Few hours here and there.

So I think I might have to cut myself off before the trend becomes all consuming like world of Warcraft or ultima online became. There are too many systems in place that promote heavy heavy time sink that isn't healthy to an active lifestyle to be perfectly honest. I am hoping that maybe in a year I can come back and maybe some of the many changes I have suggested may have passed or maybe the game might be slightly more casual to promote healthier gameplay.
My two cents, but I'm cutting myself off. I saw the "credits" so to speak so time to move on.

If there is any one single piece of advice I can give the devs, it would be to find ways of catering to play styles other than strict "hardcore" gaming. It's just not healthy.

 

Eat you later!

 

Hm, I've been playing since persistence, and I don't see what about it requires hardcore gaming. I just toodle around doing my thing. There's no raids or required raiding schedules, you can level at your own pace, etc. I would say that any pressure you're feeling to "constantly" play would likely be due to some kind of idea that one "must" constantly level up. Which just simply isn't true with this game -- You can do anything and everything at your own pace. It's one of the things I like about the game.

If you want to see a game that mandates you be online almost constantly, try ArcheAge.

 

A few weeks ago i got my shroud, for my mainchar...after 2 years and 2 months.
Pressure?
Hardcore gaming?
Dont think so.
As Mishikal says, you can do anything and everything at your own pace. Try it.

btw. without the help of the kind and patient avatar Asclepius, I would not have my shroud today. thanks again.

 

Could not agree more. And the guild I am in caters for all types - we have the hard core players, the more casual ones (I have a RL job and family) and some who only appear occasionally. There is no inherent pressure to play constantly - you are not competing with anyone else.
I will acknowledge that there is some self-imposed pressure - one can see another goal on the horizon, whether it be the next level, getting a skill to xxx level, wanting to defeat a particular mob or level. That pressure is real - I feel it also. But it's always going to be there, and after you climb that mountain there will be another one. So just travel at your own pace - this game will keep you happy for the rest of your days!

 

Maybe his pace is hardcore by nature, and realizing it might be negative to your life outside video games . Might just be the first step at beating an addiction. Kudos to you

 

Yes, I would say it is most likely that, but that's not what he implied. He specifically said:

My point is that there is no such pressure from the way the game was developed outside of one's own head.

 

IMO, that's just a personal decision on a players part. I've been playing these type of games for a very long time and have never felt any kind of pressure to complete, well anything. If you're not taking care of real life first, your responsibility to self and family, then one really has no business playing games. There has to be, should be a balance to everything in life.

 

Enjoy yourself and make this a great experience for yourself and others. Came here in May 2016 with nothing but wet clothes as I washed up in the shores of Pax Lair. Got my pirate galleon and left a path where nobody else travelled before thanks to a lot of people who believe we can create or own end game content with massive battles. So Far? New Heaven, Check, Dragomir Mori 24 February, Kahli, sometime in March. Want your city featured and want to host an RP/PVP battle. Let me or @CatherineRose know and we can make something happen R/Boris/El Pirata/Black Sails Forever.

A little something to pique your interest. *grins*

 

Well everyone has to find what works for them. In my years of gaming I am mostly an addict but I don't have responsibilities to interfere atm. I can do it mostly like I want. This game is really set up trying to be something for everyone but yes I agree we still need to fill in some blanks to capture some things. But really it is personal interest that varies between us all. So here's hoping that Episode 2 and beyond will capture the game play features it needs to be a huge success or at least successful.

 

Everyone here is right - the drive to grind comes from within. At the same time, the goal to do stuff also comes from within, and setting goals to be accomplished is the very heart and soul of the sand box.

(Using a friend's real experience here.) Let's say you made a modest goal of constructing your own bone armor. You need some recipes, but you can only acquire them in two ways: grind out 25k to buy bronze binding recipe from another player or grind out supply bundles. Next you need the materials, some of which are harder to come by than others. For the casual player who avoids the grind and uses much of his income for playing at various rewarding activities, making that bone armor has passed from weeks to months. Some people would consider that to be horribly slow and unrewarding.

Sometimes you got to grind. Slow and steady works for a lot of people. Other folks don't want to liken their action rpg experience to stalagtite growth.

I'm somewhere in between. You won't find me in Upper Tears very often, nor will you see me in bone armor. You also won't see me shopping in the POTs very often at all because gold, too, is a grind, and that's where glacial game pace can result in glacial economics. My alchemy vendor is empty most of the time because it's a grind.

Kund of forgot where I was going with this, but I'll just say that some folks are rabbits and others a tortoises, and the winners circle might be a lonely place.

 

I think if you are playing Shroud and fail to see how much of a grind it is or why people feel pressure to put the hours in to achieve stuff then, maybe you are playing another game that looks like Shroud but isn't.

You can plod along at your own pace and enjoy it of course, but you are then looking at months to maybe years of solid gameplay and not everyone has that amount of time. This ties in to other threads that are doing the rounds at the moment where people seem to think we all play the game in the same way and want the same things. The game needs to embrace other ways of playing and other systems so that we don't lose players like Kelanor. Simply saying "Well it's not like that for me," is zero help.

 

Surely it takes the same amount of game time to plod along over 2 years as it does to smash through it in 2 months? Also is taking your time and enjoying it not better value for money?

That being said, a couple of group scenes that scale everyones level I guess might be an idea to allow people to dip in and out to have high end exciting play time with little time investment.

 

It's not really about smashing or plodding through it. It's that Shroud is a massive grind and time sink in all of it's mechanics and seems as though it is designed around what appears to be a very niche section of the MMO market. Not everyone wants to wait from months to years to get anywhere and there is nothing wrong with that, although for some reason it is associated with a "must have it now attitude" which I think is wrong. There may be a number of reasons you want to play Shroud and buy into it but not want to spend a lot of your life getting anywhere.

Trying to appeal to a different type of player over and above the current hardcore is what is needed for long term stability or at least after all of these years and looking at where the game seems to be financially in 2019, it would make sense.

 

Another idea that nobody likes is to cap Adventure skill points, then you can get a top build much quicker than levelling every magic skill to be competitive.
By that I mean let everyone still level every skill but cap the number of points that can be in use at any one time. Fairer to those who have them all already and better flexibility and more interesting for trying different things.

 

I never said you didn't have to take time to progress in the game. You have to do that in any game. My point was, there is no *pressure* to do such a thing other than what you yourself create in your mind. On other games, there are mechanisms that *require* you to be on near constantly.

I've never made 1 million xp/hr or even come close to hitting that cap, and yet I'm about to hit 40 GMs. I had zero GMs when the game came *out* of persistence beta (i.e., official release), and nearly all of them have come about after the 2X XP became permanent. I don't worry or care about how many GMs other people have, etc.

People who feel they must go and grind Upper Tears or whatever scene is "hot" this month are creating that pressure on themselves. To claim the devs have made a game that *require* you to be online constantly is simply false.

 

The way that the XP to skills curve works (by design), beyond a certain point you're just forcing yourself to grind harder for less return. Some skills even have a decreasing effect per skill level, which doubles down on that. I guess some folks just can't get the concept of a "soft cap", or maybe they can't comprehend any other form of advancement other than bigger numbers.

Another thing to realize is that no matter how many GMs you have, the design of the game is such that you can only have a limited number non-innate skills on your combat bar. In a sense, it IS your character's "class". Any GM skills that you can't equip are useless except to come up with a new build.

I stopped caring after AL90, and I've only been in UT twice.

 

I feel like you are falling into the trap that because the words grind and pressure are used, it means we are talking about rushing to be something quickly like x GM's or we are falling to sleep in UT. I've never been in UT by the way and have 2 GM's since release so slower than most.

Shroud does, albeit in a less obvious way, force you to log in as the housing, crafting and leveling systems are massive grinds. If you don't invest a huge amount of time you will make little progress in these systems. You can go at your own pace as you have but there may be a number of reasons why that time investment, which is probably years for some of us, is not realistic.

And this is what this thread is about. Someone leaving a game, a game that appears to be struggling to reach new players and feeling the pinch financially, relying on the same people every month to keep it afloat and where many players have left because of some of the issues being discussed on the forums of late. As I said, saying "It's fine for me in my situation" won't help the game long term.

 

Lets see:

Housing -> Do one full set of quests in the outskirts, you get a row deed. That doesn't seem particularly hard or unrealistic to me. And it indicates the devs are listening. You get a second property deed for a village if you complete the full story line. Taxes have been cut dramatically to where it is trivial to pay your taxes.

(Adventure) Leveling: By the time you get *out* of the outskirts, you should be well up to Tier 3 zones if not further. The biggest learning curve I've found around leveling is simply figuring out what you should really focus on initially. But that's the case with most games. Once you figure that out and how to level effectively, things fall in place. One key thing I realized along the way is that while Tier 3 was yellow for me and Tier 5 was Red, there were actually certain Tier 5 zones I could XP in effectively and do better for my time. And that was *before* 2X XP.

Crafting: This is definitely the area in which it is most difficult (in my experience) to make headway, and it is a real grind. And that does appear to be by design. There are effective strategies there as well, and if you read the forums and are on discord, you can get good information on how to maximize your time and effort here. I.e., there are solid community resources, utilize them to learn how to level up crafting more quickly and efficiently.

If you actually take the time to peruse my many posts on the forums, you'll find plenty of things I've been critical about where the game is concerned. But I also acknowledge the many strides the devs have been taking to improve things.

And again, I will point you to what the OP said, which really is simply not true, and what my objection comes from:

It's completely and utterly false that this game only allows "hardcore" gaming. I'm purely a casual gamer and have no problem advancing in this game, especially with the changes that have come out in the last half year. Should the devs pay attention to areas that need improvement? Absolutely, and I think overall they've done pretty well at that. The numerous changes to housing, the double XP, etc, have all been done based on the feedback they've received.