Ep.2 and development decisions opinions

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by oplek, May 22, 2019.

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  1. oplek

    oplek Avatar

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    Apparently Episode 2 housing is higher priority than fixing the quest system, among other things.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 22, 2019
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  2. Dhanas

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    It's an Amazing home, realy beautiful, but why are they working again in housing in ep2? Wasn't ep2 the one focused in new races, new lands, new pve experience and PVP contents? I am not following too much atos' s streaming ( only comunication from the company ) but are they getting rid of all promised stuff to focus on housing and deco again?
     
  3. Gorthyn

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    No doubt because in the short to medium terms at least fixing the quest system (amongst many other broken, half completed or absent game systems) does not hold the promise of generating a bit more income to keep the lights on for a bit longer. Whereas of course housing and other pixel crack does....
     
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  4. Aartemis

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    Travis is not the quest system building guy. They have more then one guy working there and although they all wear many hats they also have areas where they focus.
    While I don't argue that things like the quest system are important, knocking them down because a world building/designer/vfx guy is working on new houses
    isn't correct either.
     
  5. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    Beat me to it.
    Seems to be a common enough missconception that if you are "doing suffz in IT" you are able to do "all stuffz in IT" which is of course wrong.
     
  6. Aartemis

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    ALSO - even if you CAN, perhaps that is not where your time is best spent! :D

    I am 100% sure they are at work at all the important tasks for EP2. Some things are just easier and faster to show/highlight then others.
     
  7. oplek

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    Except for Chris of course. That guy does everything... even things he shouldn't. Let's not forget that they've already set the precedent of wearing many more hats than they should. If they can't reallocate human resources to get someone to address direly needed improvements, then maybe it's time for Travis to learn some new skillsets. We already had the Schrodinger's CEO doing customer support, shipping, level design, server setup, general development, taxes, etc.

    So no, I'm sorry, this just doesn't fly. It's too late for that argument.
     
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  8. Aartemis

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    So what your saying is, because the electrician is busy, lets just have the plumber re-wire the fuse box? Not really sure I want go there...

    You have valid points, and the communication of what people ARE doing at Port is now severely lacking as to what we used to get. Would you feel better if you knew the quest system WAS getting the work and love it deserved at the same time new houses and content were being built? I'm sure even then someone would be upset SOMETHING is not getting worked on.

    I will most certainly say that since they lost their office, daily communication has sunk to an all time low, and unless you have a couple hours a day to watch live-streams, you don't hear anything. That is not the transparency we are used to getting from Port and its frustrating to have a black hole where we once felt very good about knowing which way the ship was running.
     
  9. oplek

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    This is not a good equivalence. Otherwise, it'd already apply to Chris. That hasn't stopped them. Travis isn't in any particular risk dying by working on the UI or quest system. They should have had an accountant do the taxes, and not Chris.

    We're talking about basic business decisions. SOTA's problem isn't a lack of stupefyingly over-the-top expensive housing. It's broken UI, broken quests, tedious and unfun gameplay. If businesses resources are going into the former, they need to be reallocated into the latter, somehow. More players means more smaller store purchases.

    At this point, what'd make me feel better are demonstrable results. People will be upset at anything, yes. However, we are also talking about a demonstrable reality where the reviews of the game never say, "Don't buy this game. There's too few keep-sized Unity asset flips"

    I agree. What I wish they'd do is restructure, at let us know what to expect, instead of saying "I'll try to do two daily blogs a week" and "We've restarted the standup notes" and then leave people hanging. They can have a "work smarter not harder" approach to communication too... and when ... I don't know how much... 20 hours a week including on weekends?.. go into streaming as a form of comunication, they're falling into the latter more.
     
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  10. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Sannio has been working on quest bugs and following up with playtesting for those quests every day. His #1 prioity is quests, List's priority is worldbuilding, Chris is currently working on Loot (which has vocally been a big issue with folks in the game), previously working on combat balance which has been an outcry from tamers and PvPers both, and I believe is now changing focus weekly and dubbing them thigns like "balance week" and "artifact week" etc.

    Im nto sure what subtleton does (too subtle) but he is addressing a variety of bugs daily so his focus may be general bugs excluding quest bugs
     
  11. jiirc

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    I believe it is a coincidence that them working from home coincided with things like standup notes. Chia, Rick ran into back problems at the same time they start d working from home. And as Chris is said, he hates updating the standup notes., so they don’t get done. I’m sure that if Chaox was there daily we’d still the same level of detail as before from him.

    True Darkstarr hasn’t been as active in some threads, but i’m not sure how active he really was, then versus now. There seemed to be more presence with Berek, Sara, and others were around. But they’ve gone and so has their presence.
     
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  12. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    I apologize for being obtuse, but I don't have time to watch Twitch streams. :D

    Am I correct in understanding that the only Episode 2 work currently being done is more housing/property and pixel crack? Has there been any talk about quests and the continuation of the story?

    Thanks and I apologize if this is mentioned elsewhere.
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2019
  13. Leinad Laurelwreath

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    Well, according to the website https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=9085&open=1817 and everything we've heard. Ep2 is just new land masses and stories and none of these have even been started development or being talked about (well, we saw a map, that's right)

    There's no plan to improve or create a new quest system, just an idea @DarkStarr said once and didn't even appear in the Q1/Q2 schedule update.

    Adding housing or items is always a "priority" and will continue no matter they develop new systems, episodes, quests or anything. As many have said this can be done in parallel, the problem is that nothing else is being done besides it.
     
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  14. Astirian

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    Well, I will say one of the things I've noticed with a lot of the games I've backed is that once the first one is out the gate (and of course assuming all the physical rewards are out), if the financials are good they're sort of not beholden to keep backers in the loop anymore in a lot of ways. They can work on the second one off of their own backs so to speak. Now they don't have to listen to publishers OR a massively vocal backerbase. #win

    This is what Frontier Development does. No one hears squat, until they do a big announcement.

    I mean, I watch the SotA stream sometimes whenever I can, and I'm not a Twitch guy and fair play to @Chris for doing them. Would I like to see way more information on the forum? Absolutely. I'm refreshing this general chat several times a day. Am I entitled to get more info? Well... Probably not.

    And this is coming from someone who hopes beyond hope they get some decent UI polish/Journal/Presentation upgrades in for Episode II (AND retro-actively too. They said they were doing this so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, Keeper of the Word and all that :) - they have made good on promises on numerous occasions!) so I am absolutely egging to play the single-player experience, but I'm trying to be patient, I want that feeling that it is close enough to old Ultima series so I can experience it fully and richly.

    In the end, I would much rather believe (and I do) that this is the course they are gravitating towards, rather than just a sort of... Quiet abandonment. I hope that we will be positively wowed with the enhancements of Episode II as the development happens under a veritable shroud. ;)

    If I am wrong when this is all over, then so be it. When the dust settles and they all move on, I'll play the single-player game and it's a thing I'll have, whatever it may be.

    But for now I'll keep up the hope. I've lasted this long! (And making vendor mans and decorating while I wait is actually a lot of fun it turns out)
     
  15. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Details recently outlined by devs on episode 2 include:

    Plans for the new landmass to have much fewer scenes but have those scenes be much more massive and fileld with various content (adventure and NPC town scenes combined etc) There was a very len gthy discussion about how to implement the new landmass, a desire to make it as open-world as possible for less scene transitioning, how to integrate player owned towns into that, and NPC work to lessen the performance burden of having massive scenes full of NPCs, and using that tech to also flesh out NPC towns more.

    Possible plans for new skills that can only be learned in the episode 2 continent, and how to go about implementing those skills.


    Having the new continent contain mostly very high tier scenes.

    New quest interface still planned but still only in the design phase according to info from a stream recently.

    And sailable ships with Water encoutners planned later on in episode 2.

    Treasure hunting systems and a handful of other things. These are items discussed by devs in the past few months.
     
  16. rebbieforever

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    That they add some houses doesnt mean they wont do anything else

    That is just overblown speculation and nothing more
     
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  17. Arkah EMPstrike

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    This is false. The cash shop is not a good place to dig up info on development direction.
     
  18. Almar

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    In UO I loved my house and it's various upgrades. I took immense satisfaction in all of it and looked forward to logging out in it at the end of every adventure.

    I didn't buy it in a shop, I grafted for gold and rare deco over several years. To come to Shroud and pretty much find the only rare house or deco in the game was stuff I couldn't afford with RL money, well - it was a big disappointment.

    Upgrading my tiny shed in Trinsic Forest to (eventually) a large tower and the rares to go with it was the work of seven enjoyable years.

    SOTA wasn't that experience. It's all buy with RL cash and then have a dance party.

    Not even close to my best gaming experience.
     
  19. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Pledge reward houses were/are only available for RL money(inless somone sells it in game which is incredibly rare.). Anything available on the crown store is available for in game gold.
     
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  20. Barugon

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    They already said that the new quest system is for episode 2 quests and they will not be gutting the episode 1 quests in order to replace that system.
     
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