The power creep is getting silly.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Aetrion, Oct 24, 2019.

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  1. Adam Crow

    Adam Crow Avatar

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    The issue with artifacts is a real one. But the combining of them isn't the problem at all. You seem like you showed up late to the party and a lot is your opinions reflect that. Combining of artifacts fixed a huge issue where artis were essentially worthless and now they are not. It gives all players something to hunt for and collect and also makes loot more valuable. The real issue with artifacts is they sometimes don't have alternatives that compete with them. Some of them are the best in that particular slot and are almost necessary for certain builds which is a big issue in my opinion.
     
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  2. Aetrion

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    The whole thing about artifacts being necessary is design. Chris mentioned this on his stream while making new artifacts that he wanted to give people options like "Give up your weapon to be better at a specific skill", which I think is perfectly valid as a character building choice, but it has the unintended side effect of also eliminating a crafter's sale.

    I do think the artifact stacking is a problem. I simply don't earn enough money or enough artifacts to ever afford even a legendary, let alone the higher tiers up with the frequency needed to replace them when they break. So when I look at those systems I don't see anything motivating, I just see a giant middle finger.
     
  3. Barugon

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    Chris was talking about giving up an equipment slot for a taming artifact.
     
  4. Aetrion

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    Yea, but that still implies a design philosophy of "Sacrifice equipment for specialization in specific tasks", and makes someone use an artifact over a crafted item. It's not a bad idea either, there are just side effects, which is why I think artifact slots should be separate from gear slots and the opportunity cost to using any given artifact should simply be the other artifacts that go in the same slot.
     
  5. Astirian

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  6. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    I gived up my dolus hood for a bone helm as a wizard. Just cause of some cool pattern ;p
     
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  7. Aetrion

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    I completely agree that getting power from gear is generally not all that great in games, it's just a very simple device for making games addictive. If you designed a system that was actually about being the most fun moment to moment and not about occupying people's time for as long as possible gear would be primarily used as a set of mutually exclusive choices that determine your character's capabilities, with those capabilities being the thing gear provides, rather than arbitrary bonuses to your stats.

    That's not something Shroud can still try to change to, because they have too much invested in the idea of burning through thousands of hours worth of resources to make the perfect sword that hits things better than every other sword, but I would prefer a gear system that's more about making interesting choices than about trying to find the most powerful items.
     
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  8. Adam Crow

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    You aren't the only person playing the game. It shouldn't be changed to your exact playstyle. Many players really like the combining of artifacts and as you invest more time in the game you will have artifacts that you combine to make rare and even legendary. Item's don't break down as fast as you are implying, not even close... You can repair and major repair an item for an extremely long amount of time... months And months. And an item with major repairs can eventually be upgraded into the next level effectively wiping out those major repairs.
     
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  9. Mylady ‘Gin Gin Darlin

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    The ultimate problem with such things, as with all things introduced to the game, is that they haven’t been properly play tested and balanced before being thrown into the works.
     
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  10. Aetrion

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    You're not the only person playing the game either though. I'm asking for a system where people can advance at their own pace. The current system makes them compete with each other for artifacts in a game where wealth is acquired by grinding and RMT, both of which are massively unpopular in the wider gaming community. Supply and demand dictates that as long as the supply of artifacts isn't so huge that they are worthless they will always find their way into the hands of the richest players. What makes people rich in this game is spending $$$ or spending a huge amount of time grinding. It's absolutely no wonder that this game has a terrible reputation when it's set up so that the two least popular things in MMORPGs are the primary factors of who gets to have the most powerful gear.
     
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  11. Arkah EMPstrike

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    just this part in particular i will say the only way in games im aware to make money without grinding is trading. Theres a handful of folks in shroud that do that pretty effectivley but i dont consider it something everyone can get into due to limited supply and demand. EvE online's wealthiest people were traders too but its either a long wait or a wait and pounce game.

    I hate grinding, becaus eof that XP is not my motivation. But ill look for where the money is in the player market and go grind that stuff when i nee dit, otherwise i do shrouds current version of treasure hunting, i look for them rare drops that sell for a nice chunk. The artifact ccombining re-ignited the value of those "treasures" which is cool, but others have suggested making them salvagable and yielding components that let crafter craft more crafted artifacts.
     
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  12. Boris Mondragon

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    Brother look at it from a much simpler perspective. This game attracted a lot of people with ample pockets and it breaks up the populace into at least 3 groups. Some grind, work hard and make igg by selling things they don’t need. They can buy what they cannot obtain or craft with those proceeds.

    Some have a large discretionary spending budget and buy IGG to acquire items and xp by being power leveled. If I had money to piss away as a hobby I might have bought a more things.

    The last of these I will mention are pure business types that supplement their income buying and reselling. There are more types but most in my eyes fall under those three types.

    It is what it is. I will sell what sells and buy what I want. I will sell the extra IGG and spend it either in game if Portalarium sells something I want or preferably taking my wife to dinner.

    It’s adapt, improvise and overcome, if you want to enjoy the game or walk out the back door and say your goodbyes if you are so inclined. You are not going to change the game, you can continue to complain to no avail or go with the flow and make the best of it. Fair winds and following seas to you on your personal crusade.

    R/Boris/El Pirata from House Serenite/Black Sails Forever
     
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  13. Violet Ronso

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    Can you explain to me how people cannot advance at their own pace? I mean honestly this statement right here baffles me!

    I've been playing since persistence, less in the beginning, more now, with little 1 release breaks from time to time. When I log on, I am mostly a window shopper or theory crafter, I plan out a whole new playstyle for myself. I have most of my crafting skills around 80-90, so it isnt all that great. What I do is I craft gear myself, so that I can try these build ideas I got, and you know what? I cant grind Tartarus solo just fine, I can hunt in the rise by playing smart, I can join groups hunting big beasts and I feel like I participate! Yet in all those months since persistence, I don't even have 200m exp accumulated, so CLEARLY I am playing at my own pace.

    When you start off this game, everything feels like a mountain. Then, you get some decent beginner gear and start tackling bigger challenges, and getting more gold for your next upgrade, and you repeat the process. At some point you become strong enough to fight in zones with a decent supply of yellow bundles (and heck Crag Foothills has a decent one, so the challenge level is not all that high). When you reach that point, you can get a steady income of gold, with some decent chances for artifacts that you can then sell off and boost your gold/hour even higher, potentially getting you the gold needed for that uber tier item.

    The reason why you feel like theres no place for people to play at their own pace is that you want to go 0-100 real fast, but forget the actual progression that other games force on you, and now you don't manage to give yourself a sense of direction and progression.

    The progression and pace is there, you simply dont know how to handle so much freedom.
     
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  14. Violet Ronso

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    Can you explain to me how people cannot advance at their own pace? I mean honestly this statement right here baffles me!

    I've been playing since persistence, less in the beginning, more now, with little 1 release breaks from time to time. When I log on, I am mostly a window shopper or theory crafter, I plan out a whole new playstyle for myself. I have most of my crafting skills around 80-90, so it isnt all that great. What I do is I craft gear myself, so that I can try these build ideas I got, and you know what? I can grind Tartarus solo just fine, I can hunt in the rise by playing smart, I can join groups hunting big beasts and I feel like I participate! Yet in all those months since persistence, I don't even have 200m exp accumulated, so CLEARLY I am playing at my own pace.

    When you start off this game, everything feels like a mountain. Then, you get some decent beginner gear and start tackling bigger challenges, and getting more gold for your next upgrade, and you repeat the process. At some point you become strong enough to fight in zones with a decent supply of yellow bundles (and heck Crag Foothills has a decent one, so the challenge level is not all that high). When you reach that point, you can get a steady income of gold, with some decent chances for artifacts that you can then sell off and boost your gold/hour even higher, potentially getting you the gold needed for that uber tier item.

    The reason why you feel like theres no place for people to play at their own pace is that you want to go 0-100 real fast, but forget the actual progression that other games force on you, and now you don't manage to give yourself a sense of direction and progression.

    The progression and pace is there, you simply dont know how to handle so much freedom.
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2019
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  15. Aetrion

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    You can't pursue the top level gear at your own pace for a simple reason: If power is traded it must adhere to the rules of supply and demand, that means the price always trends toward where supply and demand meet. If you're not rich in the game you're not going to be able to afford the most expensive items in the game at the frequency you consume them because their price was set by what the richest players can afford at the frequency at which they consume the item.

    The fact that nothing you acquire in the game is ever permanent also makes it so that whatever you do to get items isn't something you work through to achieve a goal, it's simply a permanent share of your playtime. So if you don't enjoy that part of Shroud the whole game simply provides less quality entertainment to you, even if you love open world MMORPGs otherwise. You guys need to stop pretending that just because there is a small core community that doesn't mind all the circular systems and power trading there can't possibly be an audience for Shroud that is kept out by them.
     
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  16. Ent

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    Aetrion is right.

    I would like to point out that I haven’t played this game since late 2017 when I bug reported a crash and asked for help and the devs deleted my post and told me it was a problem on my end, that the game couldn’t possibly be putting undue demands on the computer’s processor and power supply. Whether that was true or not, not answering my request for help for whatever their reasons were was cruel and unacceptable. But I still lurk and have since I helped fund the KS.

    Aetrion speaks for me. He has good game design sense and an idealism for perfecting systems and providing an egalitarian experience that I share. This game is unfinished and needs good advice - but there is so little hope of sweeping change, both because of the scope the developers can actually handle, as well as what the remaining players will seem to tolerate. Which is why I will probably never install it again. I don’t need to try the game again or put in long hours to it to know that the core experience is the same as years ago - I just have to read the forums to see that quests are still a dull and shoddy chore, there are still no caps in the skill system, the gear situation is as seen in this thread, etc.

    The early development of this game inspired and still does inspire a great many ideas in me as it does in Aetrion. I continue to peruse here because I learn by observation. I just put my ideas towards my own projects because this one kinda just... is what it is. Also, I don’t have Aetrion’s legendary patience.

    To you Aetrion I want to say: rock on and carry on.
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2019
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  17. Beaumaris

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    I play SOTA and mostly have no idea of what you are talking about. I am not competing with anyone, I have never found anything here that forces me to compete, I am free to continue at my own pace as I wish, and I'm not worried about having the best crafted or artifact gear right away because I must have it. It is absolutely very possible to proceed at your own pace in SOTA.

    The discussion is interesting. But I'd just observe that one thing is constant in MMOs: A desire amongst competitive MMO players to make the game's problem about 'Keeping up with the Joneses.' Honestly, it seldom is the problem. The issue often is more about competitive players not liking the competition getting an upper hand. I learned this when I stopped playing MMOs to compete, instead just to relax.

    So my thought is dont make this about my kind of player. We are just fine here, thank you. Instead, call a spade a spade. Admit the desire to compete, admit the envy that someone has for someone else's progress or stuff, succumb to the 'dark side' and argue from the point that the game isn't enabling competition in the way that you really want to compete.
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2019
  18. Floors

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    you need to max out on all your legendary arties brah.
     
  19. Barugon

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    This is simply not true. Set private mode and you have a scene to yourself.
     
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  20. Violet Ronso

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    I mean I don't understand who he is competing against, towards what goal, and what he is competing for.

    This guy seems to want the game to be ENTIRELY changed, from the ground up, and to include barely anything from what is actually in the game.

    Like I said, if you want to go from 0 to 100 without the middle work, all whilst having this imaginary competition, playing Shroud of the Avatar, and not another game you want this to copy, you might actually enjoy the game.
     
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