Thoughts from a longtime player and 120 crafter

Yea, I think its pretty clear the Number One issue on release was that all of the game systems were half-finished.

Its in fact why a lot of players at the time believed it was too early to release the game and all the unfinished systems would leave new players confused, a lot of players overall unsatisfied, and overall a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Yet, after release, and when the game didn't catch on, the devs have seemed to decide that the real issue was the game was too old-school and all they had to do was re-tool it more along the lines of a generic MMO and it would be successful. All this has done was bleed old players, and not attract enough new players to make up for the ones that were lost. That was after marketing campaigns done to attract players back to the game.

And, yet, most of game systems are still half-finished.

My opinion is still that in all the time they've been spending re-tooling the game, it would have been better to just finish what they started. I have no idea about the financial sheets since I don't work in Portalarium or have any background knowledge, and this may have played some role in their decision making. All I would say is I don't think what they're currently doing is going to rescue the game in the long run, and I still don't think making it more of a generic MMO is a silver bullet to making the game successful, and if they double-down on that, it will just be doubling-down on the same mistakes they've been making already.

They should just finish what they started. There's no silver bullet to getting more players. The best path is just creating a quality game, tying up loose ends and not leaving systems unfinished.

By the way, on the map issue, I think maps would have been easier to understand from a new player perspective if they stuck with the original inventory map system, developed it more, added more maps, created a better interface and UI improvements, found a way to introduce it to players, did map generation for POTs, etc. You don't have to explain to a new player why a certain map doesn't exist, if you have to obtain the map to use it, right?

 

@Superbitsandbob
You say (regarding Chris) that "He knows what changes are needed to help increase the population".
Has he stated anywhere what these changes are - that would increase the population, or was it during a private conversation ?

 

Does it?? Does it really?? Without optimism, even the extreme kinds humanity would have never achieved any of the great things we did while the "it can't, it wont, it never will" mentality will kill anything long before any optimism will. I will take my "optimism" any day of the week and twice on fridays.

 

People keep saying "limited resources" and yes they are limited but we are not talking systems that have to constantly be maintained. We are simply talking creating the systems fully and correctly in the first place and stop half assing and "good enough is good enough" everything. If you have the resources to create something to begin with, do it right and fully.

 

Care to provide some kind of proof for that? Please no conspiracy theory nonsens or vague blames on who ever you think the "establishment" might be.

Faith has nothing to do with it. There are dozens of companys that tried to be the new next big next gen next whatever MMO and almost all of them are dead. As much as I like Chirs and his good work and the rest of the team, catnip isn't even "small" if it comes to this kind of numbers, they are tiny.

 

I think you have misunderstood. It's not about taking away, it's about saying to these players that this isn't working for us, we have concentrated on what you want for years and this is where we are so we are going to try another way.

They can keep their bloated towns and XP, but the game needs a direction change. I get the impression Chris feels this also when I watch the streams. There is always resistance though from the same people who want things to remain exactly the same, where they have control over the economy or whatever it may be.

 

If you watch the recent streams, there have been a number of times where he has suggested something, about loot for example, and the push back has been childish to say the least. Wasn't there a recent change discussion also where he had to go back on it because a big backer got upset?

 

Again, can you provide proof? This "it's all the big backers fault!" story gets pretty old. I have been a big backer and nobody ever listened to me. We would have a very different game if they would have listened to the group I was with in the dark age of Sota. Different mind you. Not better.

 

I've put out a number of videos for SOTA and have had people take up the game because of that and stopped playing early, mid and even long term players. Here is what the common reasons were, some that have already been outlined.

1. When I entered a town the performance was terrible to a point where I could hardly move.

1a. Current situation. We are told performance continues to improve but as a 2080 Super, 48 thread CPU owner (with good single thread performance) it is still bad in many towns. I'm not sure what level of detail the devs are seeing improvements in but if you have to play on some of the lowest settings then why have the higher settings for supposed better PC's when they give such a bad impression. Watching Chris stream, his textures look very low res even taking into account stream compression so maybe the low settings is where the gains are.

2. The questing, chat and crafting interface and UI are unwieldy, unintuitive etc.

2a. Current situation. Still the same. Saying it is going to be improved at xx time is too late for those players who have already moved onto something else.

3. I enjoyed the glyphs system but felt the combat was lacking in tactics and nuance and many of the skills were redundant.
A tree I wanted to play performed poorly and I was forced to go into skill trees I didn't want to to feel capable.
Combat was a DPS spam fest.
I wanted to roleplay a necromancer but couldn't hit a fair percentage of the mobs and didn't like the other skills trees enough to continue.
There appears to be no raids to speak of.

4. I don't want to go through the crafting grind to outfit my character. I don't want to go shopping to outfit my character.
All I get from mobs is rubbish loot.
The loot tables are bad.
High level mobs seem to give poor loot.

5. Many early scenes I visited had no story to tell.

6. My favourite scene or skill tree was changed to a point where I could not go there anymore/was not viable.

Some of these comments are from a while ago but I don't think I had a comment about the NUE putting people off especially but I guess it must have done for some. With the amount of information out there available to players, even if it is just watching a video, you can get a good idea of what a game is going to be like. When I go into a new MMO I pretty much always look at what to expect beyond the NUE as for an MMO it is often the area most lacking. There is so much info available that players look ahead at what to expect. The NUE seems to be a red herring to divert the conversation away from unwanted changes.

 

You want me to quote the streams for you? Have a watch. There are a number of areas where Chris talks about changes and gets push back from the same few people. If you mean the other point. I thought it was common knowledge that Chris talked about changing dual wielding on some items and a big backer threatened to close their wallet. Then after much internal debate Chris said they were not going to change it. Sometimes 2+2 makes 5 but occasionally it makes 4.

 

So, propositional logic.
Or in other words: you can't proof it.
Yes we have different groups of people that are for or against different kind of changes. And yes that are always the same people. Like you. Or me. Or @FrostII or @Vladamir Begemot or every other person in this post. Some of them haven't turned on SotA for years. Just saying.
What you are basically doing is saying: if they are against my version of change they are big backers and per default bad people. And that will only get people riled up. Or maybe that's what you want?

 

It feels as though that is what you want me to be saying, so you can then say troll and dismiss it as often happens in here.

Anyone with even a limited understanding would see that in any game there are lots of different people with different views. My point is that the push-back does always come from the same minority of players who seem to have something to protect. Like loot change push-back for example comes from a place of "I want all of the control". You could say y and z was promised to us at the start (although I am sure promised is probably pushing it but it gives more weight) but we have all been into MMO's long enough I imagine to know that change, sometimes big change, happens for the greater good. Some of it we might not like or might be changes we were told would not happen but its about the long term health of the game.

When I hear Chris talk it feels like there is stuff he wants to do but it is the same players trying to block it. Even in some of the recent videos he has had some throws arms in the air moments in frustration.

I'm not here to convince you though. We will all take from something what we want. I want the game to appeal to more people and thus be more profitable in general and have more money to spend on development. At the moment it feels as though it is being developed for a minority who want to it stay as it is because they were "promised something". Just my opinion though.

Hopefully a middle ground can be found but until some fundamentals change like players being able to get good equipment in the ways they all enjoy and resources are spent on other areas that have needed a revamp for years, it'll stay the same.

 

No, it's what it sounds like. To me, I admit.

The funny thing is I agree with you. I mean, just look at the reaction to balance changes. It's insane.

Yeah because we are all spoilt brats. But that isn't a big backer thing. We have a lot of extremly vocal people that didn't invest very much into this game while on the other hand we have big backers that hardly say anything and just play their game.
I just don't want this big backer bullshit hoax to continue. I know it makes for an easy target but I am not going to let people blame me and a couple of others for everything folks think is shitty.

Yes we need more players. But what kind of players do we want? SotA has a lot of good, if patchworky, systems. I am not saying "don't chnage the game". I am saying don't streamline the game. Some people seem to wish for a WoW clone. And if I read posts of that people I really ask myself if their true goal is to kill this game.

I fully agree.

 

I never said all. I just said the people doing the push back are the same minority over and over and they do appear to be the rich crafters, using loot changes as an example.

I agree the game has some great points, atmosphere and immersion in some scenes for example are amazing. I don't want a WoW clone but there does have to be some give.

I think at this point giving players more thing to make or different types of metal or whatever is not going to bring in new blood. There is enough of that already.

Put out some videos or screenshots or an article of people engaging in some new, interesting PvE content where they are rewarded with new equipment upgrades has much more of a chance of attracting players. Even if it means the team goes back on some promises made 7 years ago.

 

I hear what your saying. Maybe Earl is part of that small minority and is running distract and discredit for the group....

 

*hands him a tinfoil hat*
You will need it.

 

It's going to be democratized sooner or later. Pretty inevitable once this game went f2p. There's not enough old backer money coming in to keep the status quo - and not all old backers are interested in the status quo anyway

 

keep it. I already have one.

 

Fair enough. I don't know much about their history. I've only been playing ESO for the last couple+ months now. My first character is approaching lvl 37 and Ice/Winter Magic really messes with the enemy's ability to fight me

 

I like ESO. I enjoy the stories the game tells so I normally play through new content and do a little PvP but then I put it down. I have played ESO off and on since beta and I have 780 hours in compared to 5000 hours in Shroud.

I really think Shroud is something special and I wish there were more resources to expand the team to help out the current devs. Chris and the handful of devs do work very hard and I think too many players dont always recognize it.