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June Login Rewards: Potion of Guidance & 250K XP

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Jun 14, 2019.

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  1. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    [​IMG]

    250,000 Adventuring XP + Obsidian Potion of Guidance!


    As a special limited time promotion we are rewarding all players who login by the end of June with two rewards! Every player who logs in will receive an Obsidian Potion of Guidance (increases how fast your skills use experience out of our experience points pool) and 250,000 Adventuring Experience Points!

    To receive the rewards simply login to the game before the end of June and check your rewards tab!
     
  2. Aartemis

    Aartemis Avatar

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    Are the 250k XP something that gets applied when you log in, or is it when you open the bundle bag (meaning it can be saved and used later)?
     
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  3. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    The exp pool runs out so quickly in our game :( I still have my potion but my exp is already drained.

    I think there's something (exp) wrong with our lower levels that causes this to happen, which is very anti-motivational to continue.

    Exp is easy at the top and not so easy at what should be common levels of play areas (1-2-3-4 skull). Just my observation, yet also these are very empty areas of players playing in them. I don't know if your company statistics reflect this same observation, but I think it may be worth a look into.

    Such a thing could be stifling the growth of our gaming audience.
    ~TL~
     
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2019
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  4. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    It occurs when opening the bag. You will claim the Login Reward (June 2019: Potion and XP) item, and when it opens you get both the xp and the potion.
     
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  5. liz_the_wiz

    liz_the_wiz Avatar

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    Pool management is indeed a skill, getting a number of skills to 40 isnt so bad, past then, depending on what quests you do, limiting things to 1 or 2 at a time before they get to 80 is a plan. some skills take more xp than others, such as gust is the lowest, things like dex/int are much higher.
     
  6. Sean Silverfoot

    Sean Silverfoot Avatar

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  7. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    So, How Much is Player Retention Worth to Our Game? o_O It's a Matter of Balancing, "Talent"...

    I do agree with what you both are saying here, as I've been doing exactly that throughout our game's development (it's great advice, it truly is), yet when doing something like that becomes "required", that's when fun ends, work begins and the appeal of other fun which is presented throughout the gaming industry seems more appealing to participate in rather than shutting off the reward valve in order to refill the exp pool.

    :rolleyes: What I'm saying is that there's something wrong with that mathematical gain curve, we shouldn't be running out, we should be running up, because I wasn't draining all that (Darkstarr gifted) pooled exp on monsters that were green to me... they were yellow.

    o_O What we are accepting here are explanations instead of better balanced exp reward for fun value, and those mathematical explanations don't equal fun for the player. Explaining a road bump placed on a highway doesn't remove the danger it presents to player retention once they hit it... "or I hit it" :confused: I personally know what I've done so many times in the past as a "dead:eek:icated" player of our game: I shut stuff off, play a few weeks and thus alleviate my problem until I can again, drain all the fun back out of my gaming experience through re-emptying my exp-pool.

    :cool: At the top of our player food chain, exp is plentiful and at the bottom it's sparse. We are currently looking to retain or entertain more players, "as we have lost the interests of many, as being their go to game for gratifying, gaming fun time". This imbalance is currently being addressed through our 250,000 exp June log in reward. <---<<< If that remains, then great for everyone, but a bit more (as reported here) is needed... yet if it's not there again next month, then I'm certain those at the top will still be satisfied, while those at the bottom are left wanting and again leave for the brighter gaming pastures of other games. This is a balancing issue which has become a problem which (among other things) is reflected within our player retention. This is not about the have's and the have nots at any odds with each other either, this is about the common citizen, the ambient player, the common person and their place being as rewarding to them as we have accommodated for our upper tier players.

    :cool: Our Gaming Zen is something we all have in common when playing our game for extended periods of our gaming time. The talented players reach the heights and will always wish for higher content, yet we must not forget that the common player, comes in many differing levels of gaming talent in abilities. Currently we are attempting to appease and please the highest through "re-filling" our world with more common players.

    o_O Fact: There has not been an improvement or expansion in many of our 1-4 skull level areas since their initial creation. They are small, confining, un-interesting beyond their mostly sterile environments which are mostly devoid of intrigue.
    :rolleyes: Certainly there is the excuse that we are currently in a funding crunch which limits what we can and cannot work on and we certainly can't please everyone <--<< :confused: Yet there's the rub of it! :( Our game is in a pickle.

    o_O That 250,000 June giveaway didn't phase those at the top of our gaming talent, it attracted our middle and lower talent classes back to our game... and if the right correction amounts within our exp deficits do not come to an amicable balance through log-in bonuses or combat exp reward values then we will see this giveaway in hindsight as a failure, when in actuality, it may help find what is needed as a final solution for audience retention.


    [​IMG]
    ~Time Lord~
     
    Last edited: Jun 15, 2019
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  8. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    The adventure level of your character doesn't do anything for combat other than give some health, and doesn't help you kill anything quicker. It's 100% in your skills and stats and how you use your deck.

    The color of a creatures name and adventure level are things that us older players still use just as a general reference, but just like in your situation, it can be confusing to folks who just go off that and wonder what they are doing wrong. Theres even folks who have had trouble killing thigns that are green to them at lower levels because they spread their skills out from the start. That's one reason I tell some folks who are told to get every skill to 40 first to ignore their adventure level, and just go off the level of the skills they fight with in the current deck they are using.

    If you drank a guidance potion at a low level, and find your pool empty a lot, that just means you cant take full advantage of training 3x as quickly with what your currently doing. But as long as you're killing stuff, you are still getting that same XP per kill put directly intot he skilsl you're using.
     
  9. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    :rolleyes: (Off Topic) I do appreciate that very correct advise, yet you're missing the point of the thread and thus the point of my post.
    I do apologize if I haven't been clear enough, but you are off topic, the thread is clearly about :oops:
    :rolleyes: Such a giveaway wouldn't have any value what so ever if our exp gains in game matched what players needed to happily continue to play our game and remain dedicated SOTA players.

    o_O The potion aided the upper talented players and the exp provided through June's giveaway benefited the lower talented players. That's not a bad thing, that's just a fact, and coupled with player retention and player recruitment as the giveaway's goal, then we come to the true meaning of the thread and all I've commented on. This isn't about how "I" burn exp, save it or squander it, this is about the lack of exp through lower combat and what values are needing to be added through both monthly giveaway and gains through killing monster.

    We need more on the exp side, or we will loose those lesser finger talented players through their exp pools becoming depleted.

    Technical players tend to be nimble fingered people and nimble fingered, technical people tend to be at the top of our talented players. This has shifted the blame of our game's deficiencies to the player instead of to the gaming imbalances that lesser finger talented players or ambient, common players encounter during the game time they have. Technical players earn more, more quickly... that's just a fact that will never diminish. Yet with each drag of a common player into the world of the technical with their excuses as to why they too should be as talented and gifted, turns another gamer away through such pushing into content which does not suite their own particular comfort in gaming Zen.


    (The following is Slightly Off Topic :oops: ... but necessary due to my not being clear enough what the topic is... even though it's in the OP header, "June Login Rewards: Potion of Guidance & 250K XP")
    I currently have 9 characters, 2 of them on separate accounts and 7 on one account and half of those characters are dedicated to the study of early SOTA character development in a vast variety of ways. So o_O if you think that I'm posting somehow to find out why I'm running out of exp and a remedy for it, "that needs to be on another thread, because that is not what I'm addressing at all, nor is it needed (yet I agree with the good advise, but it doesn't apply here).

    (Back on Topic) :oops:...
    What I am addressing is the need for more exp which clearly is indicated as being needed for player attraction and retention by offering this June giveaway.
    There is an imbalance and that imbalance strikes the lesser finger and technical talented. The talented got the potion, and the lesser talented got the exp, and I'm saying that this giveaway addressed that imbalance, rewarded the talented justly, yet through the amount of exp, left the lesser talented still wanting, "even without the potion" :confused:


    (Background)
    Our game currently has people's pictures to hang on it's walls who don't even play our game anymore. Our game also has many ONBE who don't even play our game anymore. And... many of both who don't play our game as their main game anymore.
    :rolleyes: Those potions were a good incentive for them to return or at least log in.

    There are a more vast number of normal game players of normal talents who abandon our game, and most because of "have and have not" issues, including a lack of exp in their pool.
    :rolleyes: Those 250,000 Exp points were a good incentive for them, yet if I am an example, then they too will soon run out or have run out of exp and thus very possibly won't be playing our game as much at the end of this month as they did at the onset of the June 250,000 exp offer.

    o_O I'm just asking (as a stock holder and long time well invested player) to look at the statistics and judge for themselves in Portalarium whether or not mine is a just observation. Afterward, take appropriate action, which I believe is to increase the amount of exp a player receives from lower level monsters so that our player's exp pools don't run dry and thus we loose those new players back into the larger world of other games to play.

    ~TL~
    (SOTA Player Since January 2014)
     
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2019
  10. Mishikal

    Mishikal Avatar

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    Questing for XP in this game is generally an utter waste of time (which to me is a problem with the game structure). You're much better off (once you know how the game works) finding a low-level tier 5 area and strategically killing the mobs there to boost your XP pool. I've taken several low-level avatars through this route w/o having to do silly stuff like be in a UT party and hang back to soak up the XP. It's perfectly easy and possible to get enough XP to trivially raise multiple stats to 80 (and the more that get to 80, the faster it goes) once one understands how this game works. But that last bit is really the key.
     
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  11. Turk Key

    Turk Key Avatar

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    Yep. It's nice to get something, but for someone with skills at 100+, quaffing an experience potion, setting a skill to learn will take less than 5 minutes of play to use up the 250,000 exp. Perhaps less. I guess what I am saying is that 250,000 experience would be great if given to crafting trees (for everyone) but if applied to adventure trees it can only be desired by the beginner (who should absolutely ignore the potion).
     
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  12. craftymethod

    craftymethod Avatar

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    Seems this project is throwing XP at us in a real generic and kinda meaningless way.

    Maybe if characters are in a town they generate some kind of Civil standing like XP with that town?

    Another layer of XP subsets might be considered? Hook them up to the night sky?
     
    Last edited: Jun 15, 2019
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  13. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

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    That Adventure XP certainly was much appreciated by me. As well as many of the new players I’m sure.
     
  14. Steevodeevo

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    I'm pretty sure Time Lord is spot on. On reflection, managing the exp pool is not fun and is as much an unfriendly task as many other fixes that have been made in the name of QOL.

    If you look at the serious players efforts, they have to go and grind for hours on end (subject to attenuation - another sticking plaster on the exp pool concept) in order to get enough exp to drive levelling, which at higher levels eats so much exp and requires a very large pool to apply appropriate percentages to get a ding.

    At mid and low levels for casual players, the pool is constantly running dry or else is maintained far to low to level adequately. If you're in the mid to high 90s and run a pool less than 1,000,000 it will take you weeks or months of casual play to get an adventure level and skill advancement will feel broken to you as it will be snails pace.

    If you're a very casual player, play now and then for fun, don't use the forums much etc (these folks are still worthwhile players and needed by the game) then you won't grasp pool management at all, will run with too many skills open and have zero pool, give up and leave.

    Time Lord is clear that pool management is a skill, cna be viable but exp point gain curve is way off. I agree. There should be a lot more exp granted per mob and for quests at all levels. The pool should still run dry if you're leaving a crazy number of skills switched to learn, but with reasonable management your pool should be substantial and you will then see decent slugs of exp applied to skills and a decent pace of learning.

    There also needs to be way more transparency to the exp pool model. How exp is gained, how it is applied to skills, why having multiple skills open is bad, how higher level skill gain is expensive etc.

    We ditched most of the 'it's a hardcore game, you have to work this out for yourself' stuff way back unfortunately, but now that we have QOL'd the game from top to bottom, the opacity of the skill system sticks out like a sore thumb and exp gain and consumption and the rediculous attenuation system to fix a broken concept is unfriendly and harsh. All of this is wrong.
     
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  15. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    As I was thinking about this while reading over everyone's posts, I think there's another way to distribute needed exp which we don't have yet and that's through...

    Cookie Monster Encounters o_O

    [​IMG]
    "The next logical step is more allure"

    To lure the player into not just logging in, but also to lure them into hunting something down. There are many ways to implement such cookie monsters and here's just an example:

    The Long and Grinding Trail,
    Teaching a life of SOTA Zen...

    [​IMG]
    Milestones among Th'dribble.

    In Zen Grinding, for most of us, there are things in our world that we as individual players just love killing allot of, no matter what that one thing is to any single individual. So, one simple solution would be to have set amounts, or goal posts at differing quantities of killing those monsters, with an ultimate goal of an ever rising number of them equaling a higher exp gain from that single milestone exp cookie monster. If such a thing is successful in getting players to play longer, then many other things within such a game becomes possible. Maybe the distribution of any "certain thing" could effect how many a player may have to hunt down without logging out, in order to get to the exp cookie monster of that thing.

    "Do you know how hard finding and killing enough bunnies would be or even squirrels o_O?"
    :eek: That may be as difficult as finding and killing enough dragons to get to the cookie :confused:


    There are many other possibilities when talking about cookie monsters...
    [​IMG]
    It's a natural progression that our exp rewards should allure us into hunting.

    I just think it would be a shame to have our June giveaway boost in player numbers be suddenly cut off, expect them to stay and enter our game's grind without what they came for.
    ~TL~
     
    Last edited: Jun 15, 2019
  16. Black Tortoise

    Black Tortoise Avatar

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    I think folks should understand that this game is simply discouraging you from maxing ourt every possible skill you have.

    Its completely fair to get to 80 in most skills, and you can access most game content with a handful of lvl 80 skills. Getting to level 40 in most skills is trivial, which is also a point at which a player can access a ton of Novia content.

    You dont need to force your avatar to GM all the skills at once. Pick one and concentrate on it. For Obsidian's sake, they even took away the death penalty, which IMO took every last challenge out of the game completely. Its jsut a matter of button mashing your way to the top now, and now people complain that thats too hard?

    Let go of the idea that you have to be "at the top". Forget the exp pool. Stop leveling the skills. Just adventure and roleplay and stuff (even if LB hates RP'ing ;) ). Build towns, forge alliances, stage town invasions, build cool dungeons, establish trade routes, have pirate parties, whatever. The point of the game isnt to grind skills to the top.

    Running out of 250k exp quickly is good feedback - youre either extremely high level - good job! - or youre leveling too many skills at once, or you dont understand how powerful that high tier skill youre leveling really is. This is feedback that the game is working well and you need to adjust your strategy.

    I dont want a game where everyone easily becomes grandmaster of everything, there is no "end game", and we have to sit around and wait for them to crank out new episodes and raise the skill cap each time, indefinitely (like EverQuest was, although EQ was otherwise an awesome game). I want a game where most of us have significant power, but only few of us are the "elders" with extremely high skill.

    This isnt a game to burn out fast on (although many players seem determined to do so). This is a game to enjoy for a long time :)
     
  17. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    When will we receive it? End of June?
     
  18. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    you should have received it two weeks ago. most people did. this announcement is just really late.
     
  19. liz_the_wiz

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    Just to add to Alley's comment, you get it on login, it does tell you, if you arent told you got it, you almost certainly already had it
     
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  20. Mishikal

    Mishikal Avatar

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    Yeah, a well thought out and developed system of doing trading would be great. I posted suggestions on how to do this a year or 2 or 3 ago, but there are of course other priorities for the devs. But generally any successful online game is going to have to develop multiple methods to keep people interested. It's been interesting over the years to see the ways in which WoW has steadily expanded what people can do outside of the grind to keep them interested.

    Once you start working on getting skills past the "base" GM level (sorry, it's no where near the top ;) ), yeah, you burn XP pretty quickly. I can generally keep "even" in my XP pool with a non-passive skill in a zone like UT (even meaning, I end up about where I started) going from 100-125 (which, with the new wave stuff, is about 450k xp each in approximately 20 mins as 2 person group).

    As far as leveling, I generally found (that at least for me), the best strategy was to go in rounds on most skills... I.e., get my "core" group up to 40, then 60, then 80, etc... I remember getting my first GM, it felt quite the accomplishment. 60 GMs later, not so much. ;) I barely play at all anymore, because XPing has gotten utterly boring, and the thought of having to get *literally* billions of XP when the XP rate is capped just screams tedium. I am curious to explore Tartarus once more of the bugs get worked out. The dungeons have been some of the most interesting/best done parts of the game to explore.
     
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