This game is so focused on making crafting rewarding that it makes adventuring feel pointless.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Aetrion, Sep 7, 2019.

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  1. Elrond

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    If his title thread was -- WE NEED BETTER LOOT -- no issues from me and full support ... instead he chose
    --This game is so focused on making crafting rewarding-- .... sneaky .... i dont like sneaky ... I hope the focus on crafting continues ..we need more components , more skills for cooking, more enchants ..more more and more for crafting...
     
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  2. Spungwa

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    I would actually like to see the T3 component mechanic hugely expanded, rather than adding more artefacts.

    I think achieves a few things.

    1) Dependency between crafters and adventurers is increased. Rather than the full dependency of crafters being on gatherers.
    2) If it is like the current ones, different enemies drop different weapons with different components. So the player can pick which components to "farm".
    3) The components provide the rewarding loot, people seem to need. I personally don't see this, as in a player run economy, in game currency is reward enough as that allows you get everything else.


    Regards
    Spung
     
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  3. Heradite

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  4. Aetrion

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    Most people just don't enjoy crafting. Why should they have no way to advance a character in a way that's meaningful and fun to them? Crafters benefit from more non-crafters in the game, because they are potential customers. You just can't have a game that's set up so that if you don't craft you're basically just a pointless hole that resources disappear into. That's not fun. Salvagable bowstrings don't make people feel like they occupy a meaningful niche in the ecosystem of the game where they can do well for themselves.

    Sandbox and Themepark are the ends of a spectrum though, the vast majority of games fall somewhere in between. If you follow WoW at all, it has lost massive amounts of players over the years because it went way too far in the themepark direction with no need to ever just explore the world and figure things out because you can just groupfind for everything. Classic WoW is hugely popular again because it's much more freeform, giving you room for emergent experiences. SOTA is more on the sandbox side, but it has some themepark elements as well, such as the starting zones, or the shroud quest. I think it's very clear that the most popular MMORPGs have ever been is when they strike a good balance between giving you emergent gameplay through sandbox elements but also a clear path of advancement instead of a treadmill.

    That's not what the thread is about, and better loot would be worse for crafters than what I was trying to say. The whole point I'm making is that they put so much emphasis on creating a flow of items from crafters to adventurers that they completely neglected creating any real reason to go out adventuring. They simply assumed people want to beat up monsters so we can attach a cost to doing so and people will just continuously pay it without question. The numbers seem to bear out that that doesn't sit right with a lot of people, even if they can't articulate it. As far as I'm concerned a reason to adventure doesn't have to be loot. Let me unlock character traits, perk points, additional skills. Give me a way to reduce the cost of advancing in my favorite skills to where I can reasonably work on them further. Just don't strand me half way through my character's advancement with no real way to get stronger except shopping for gear I have no hand in creating.

    It simply isn't fun when half the power of any character isn't yours to earn but someone else's to sell or give away.
     
  5. Elrond

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    You dont like to craft you can go buy the gear .You dont like to hunt for days for a dolus hood you go buy it from another player ..... you just want to hoard gold and dont spend any of it ..its an option also ..but no gear no dolus ... you want the gold and the dolus and the crafted gear get more involved in the game .

    I dont like adventuring ....i dont do it at all .. should i make a post complaining about the fact that i dont like adventuring and i want to be able to craft a dolus hood ? Why should a dolus hood be obtained only via adventuring ? I want to craft one .

    It was when i first read it ..but since you keep editing your first post ...i guess well never know what it was...about ... might as well discuss about aliens cause one just showed up via edit .

    [​IMG]

    So ask for those ..why do you have to bash crafting in the proccess .... weve been waiting for a better crafting system for years now when its finally here you show up ... to tell people that the emphasis / focus on crafting is wrong ...when actually we need so much more to be added for crafting .
     
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  6. Aetrion

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    What the heck are you talking about? I edited the post one time 6 minutes after I originally posted it to fix a typo. The thread creation is timestamped and the edit is timestamped. What kind of a bizarre accusation is that supposed to be when everyone can see that the thread wasn't edited at any time after you posted?!
     
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  7. Vladamir Begemot

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    I know that achievements seem to have totally gotten forgotten, but as someone who will play 40 hours in Civ just to get two or three achievements, I really wish Shroud had them.
     
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  8. Vladamir Begemot

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    Something that would be nice for adventurers is post creation socketing or embuing or something. So as a healer, you can get a healing essence or whatever and out it in without a crafting table. Locked in, perhaps upgradable by putting more in as well.
     
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  9. Sol Stormlin

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    I like the idea of an adventure that rewards you with some pretty amazing gear or gear components. I'd also love to see more of an adventure while doing that. Think of the movie, The Goonies. Everywhere they went there was a challenge. Not a creature, but "booby traps". The traps in SotA are soooo easy to get through, they're annoying at times but they hardly do any damage, they're also not very clever. We recently went through several ruins to help a friend with his shroud quest. The ruins are well designed and have a sense of adventure. The traps are cleverly placed and there was some fun in that. I still think making them a little more difficult would actually give you something to be afraid of. Give you a thrill. Thrill makes adventuring fun, and when you come out at the other side it gives you a sense of accomplishment.
     
  10. Sol Stormlin

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    Crafting is on the right path. Yes it can be tedious, and yes they have been trying to add to it. It's a great way to make money from players who aren't crafters, or just a great way to make gifts for people. It takes the same amount of time as it would for a non crafter to go out and kill creatures then sell the loot to an npc merchant. Because in some cases the crafter might need to use tin, which takes a long time to get. I don't think crafting needs to change, but I do think adventuring could be thought out a little more. I hear they are working on a new questing system so I'm hoping that will help in our feeling a sense of accomplishment while adventuring.
     
  11. Aetrion

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    Something like that would be great I think. It doesn't have to be without ever having to touch a crafting table, it just has to be something that can't be removed from that character and is earned by accomplishing specific heroic feats in the game. Like I said, it doesn't have to be gear, it just has to be something that shifts the weighting of where your power comes from away from half your character being stuff that someone can simply hand to you, and the only thing restricting that is a durability meter. That just doesn't make you want to play the game.

    It changes the game from being an adventurer who goes into the unknown to bring back something useful to being a soldier who bears all the fruits of their tribe's industry into battle. Your tribe is never under threat though, so the role of soldier isn't rewarding. That's the critical distinction between SOTA and Eve. My crafter friends aren't in danger and need need people like me to guard them. They don't need my help to make things, I just need those things so I can do what basically boils down to extreme sightseeing.

    A ton of my gear was simply given to me by friends who enjoy crafting, and I'm really thankful for that. I don't want them to have less fun in the game, I just want the devs to understand what that means to the motivation of people who aren't into crafting. Within the role that I want to play in the game there aren't any pursuits that manifest as a powerful reward, while within the role that other people choose to play the rewards are so plentiful that they can give them away.
     
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  12. Black Tortoise

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    Im guessing the OP wasnt part of kickstarter or early access?

    :-/

    this is all by design, and its great! :)
     
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  13. Aetrion

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    What's so great about people who expect fun adventures out of a fantasy world being perpetually disappointed?
     
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  14. oplek

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    You do realize that, hypothetically, there'd be new people entering the game after the KS. That's not really happening, but still.

    And yes, it's such a great design that they've had to repeatedly take rounds to *fix* it over the past year or so. It's such a great system that it keeps spawning people complaining about how hollow and pointless the adventuring is. Awesome!
     
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  15. Aetrion

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    Yea these posts that basically just go "I like it so don't listen to anyone who doesn't" aren't in any way productive, that's exactly the attitude that got the game into this mess in the first place. Nobody is arguing that crafting should be removed from the game, just that it's not fun for people who don't like crafting when half the power of any given character is for crafters to create and pass around at their leisure while there is comparatively little to be gained by actually being out there spending a thousand hours practicing magic or combat.
     
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  16. Vladamir Begemot

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    I think we are at the local maxima on many things. We have reached the peak of the mountain that was climbed, and in order to get any higher we are going to have to go down (throw away a bunch of working things) the mountain before climbing the next.
     
  17. Lained

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    Would item affinity solve this issue? It's an adventuring only way to improve an item, it takes a concerted effort and you can focus on different mob types to either improve your own weapon or improve one to sell.
     
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  18. Violet Ronso

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    So let me get this straight....

    1. You are complaining that loot only items (like artifacts) ruin the game, because you have to adventure to do it.
    2. You are complaining that crafted gear ruins the game because it can only be crafted.
    Basically, would you like it if there was a chest in the middle of DevTown with all items with every combination there, and a training in DevTown that can set your skills how you want them to be, and then you will be happy to run out and do what you want? Sounds like it.

    What adventuring needs is more worthwhile loot on most monsters (rusty spoons and wooden mugs are not loot sorry). This can happen via more resources being dropped, tier 3 components, or even the stupid "essences" I keep suggesting to get the "choose your enchant" mechanic in. By getting these in, crafters like Elrond have more reasons to GIVE ME MY DAMN MONEY BACK, so that I can give it right back to him again to buy gear lol.

    Meanwhile crafters need more enchants and masterworks, and means to make low tier gear (non Exceptionnal) into better gear, and ways to increase their potential.

    I think that this game has an awesome way of making a market where players depend on each other, and they simply need to expand on these principles, not merge them together to make it so you can get the same stuff whatever you do...
     
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  19. oplek

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    It's an interesting take on injecting more value into adventuring, however, it further mires us into an virtually non-existent economy that keeps adding things, and rarely ever removes them. Now people won't want to lose their stuff even more.

    If 10 bows, 5 couches and 100 meats are crafted each day, then 10 bows, 5 couches and 100 meats should be removed from the game each day. Some way. Some how. People keep thinking that the reason the economy is doing so poorly is because there aren't enough players. That's hogwash. You can have a functional economy on 10 players. It's about balance, not the size. If we suddenly had 10000 more players, yes, for some time, stuff would be bought up. Then, after a time, as crafting demand recruits 5000 of those players as crafters, the system would equalize - and without the item loss, we'd be back where we started.

    If loss was high enough, then we could have good loot drops AND player crafting barely able to keep up with demand. It's just that the key ingredient would be that the item loss was actually fun, which itself is extremely difficult to do.
     
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  20. Steevodeevo

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    A lot of folks say that Arti drops are so random and rare that players can't manage the bonuses they are working towards for their characters. This would be true if players weren't expected by design to co-exist and interact with each other to evolve. The market seems structured such that (primarily) adventurers can support the gear economy by trading and combining Artifacts and buying player made armour and weapons. In order to make an exceptionable and desirable Artefact it is likely that a player will either have to purchase at least some from the market and support the economy and then combine them for sale, or else (or in addition to) co-operate in a structured way so that groups can farm Arti's in a structured way, which I believe is what is happening.. This all seems a good idea to me. Then when we get item affinity, the imminent crafting tweaks and loot drop improvements we surely go from strength to strength?
     
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