Spindleskog after changes

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by aragorn lancermane, Jun 27, 2020.

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  1. aragorn lancermane

    aragorn lancermane Avatar

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    We went in earlier tonight to see what it would be like after the changes. In our group we had the following:
    1 tank
    1 healers
    3 archers / 1 with a pet
    2 fire mages with pets
    1 bard
    1 young player that we decided to bring along

    If this was set to easy then okay- I get it. The initial AoE of healthbars dropping was surprising but easily manageable. We were able to kill everything in clumps.

    What I had noticed was the following:
    • Everything could be rounded up and killed by AoE.
    • I didn't take much damage as a tank. I had aggro on everything- outside of the AoE, my party did not take any damage at all and just learned to keep a distance as I had everything on me.
    • Fully buffed with barding I had 2.4k hp, 185 damage resist and 108 avoidance. Again- didn't take much damage.
    • I was able to chain pull one mob after another or round up and kill.
    • Another zone with no boss fight.
    • The map didn't work for me.
    • The initial awe of a new zone diminished quick after going from one spot to another killing stuff. The problem is, even if it were scaled to be harder, what would the point be?
    • All the zones are the same- They have either undead, trolls, dragons and wildlife that you just kill in a circle or go to a control point as a group and kill stuff in one location.
    1. As previously stated in my earlier posts, there are more than enough zones that can get farmed or solo'ed.
    2. Where is the risk vs. reward?
    3. Why are all the zones in essence the same? All you do is run in a large circle killing stuff.... or go to Eastreach and do the same thing in one spot for more exp. (This is why ERG is so used up. Where else can we go and "farm" stuff that is worth the time? Where can we go to do something else interesting?)

    My suggestions would be:
    • Make more dungeons or zones with the topics I had discussed in my previous post on the Despise clone that was ramped up.
    • Make the risk worth the reward. Outside of a daily quest, why would anyone go in here? Why would any group venture in Spindleskog?
    • Make each zone have a boss or multiple bosses with a main boss at the end.
    • Use something other than trolls, or wildlife for enemies. But mainly........ seriously........ NO MORE UNDEAD!!! They are used up like a woman on menopause keeping the same... nm.....
    • Use more dragons, use more elves, use something else other than Undead, trolls or bears.....
    • No more control points..... please no more.
     
  2. AoiBlue

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    OK, so you want a control point with Zombie Trolls, right?
     
  3. Sulaene Moon

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    Unfortunately, since it's the same devs working on the game for 7 years you are only going to get the same game play, with minor changes. They only change the names, HP, resistance, and color of the bears, wolves, spiders, troll, and undead and call them new. The scenes are different, but the mechanics stay basically the same.

    Sadly it's the way it is and will always be.
     
  4. oplek

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    We do seem to be in a "we can't win" scenario. We say they should eat their own dogfood (play their own game), but that's clearly impossible. They have lots of standing, staring at walls, talking to chat, to do. Besides, the players are supposed to provide feedback, of which they listen to about 0.01%, many QA bugs being in the other 99.99%.

    My position tends to be that brewing, player dungeons, treasure maps, mounts, fishing, low-interest gameplay (There's maybe a good few hours of fun for new player) etc... they're symptoms. There's a root problem - prioritization. There's no clear, core vision or pillars of what the fun is supposed to be, so they end up throwing thousands of things at the wall, to see what sticks. We get a discombobulated mess accumulating at the base of the wall, as the rest dribbles down. Prioritization will span anything from whether to polish, to whether to focus on minigames versus meaningful core mechanics, to monetization.

    I think their prioritization has been consistently off-the-mark. I think they need a fresh perspective to take over the decision-making. Someone who isn't mired in the company culture or history.

    The trajectory they're on (just cloning scenes, creatures, and other low-hanging-fruit/cheap-changes) is more reminiscent of people who are trying to coast as far as they can get, before abandoning the car. It is possible that the leadership is in its own bubble, and genuinely thinks things are going fine.
     
  5. majoria70

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    I agree I feel a fresh perspective would do wonders. It is so easy to get stuck in a box not seeing what is outside that box. Now this is not to say the devs are not talented and capable, of course they are but being aware that sometimes you just need a fresh unbiased perspective to take a look would be very constructive imo. Sometimes You can't always see the forest for the trees. This games development has gone on so many years trying to find the right blend and importance of the something for everyone it tries to be that so much gets left up in the air. Now I do like that it tries to be something for everyone but so far there is not enough of many of the somethings for everyone. Focus and funding can't handle the load.

    Now that could sound confusing but as can be seen that's what is many times looking players in the face. All the why's, what for, and if only it was taken a bit further with more detail. This game always deserved all basic systems to be put in. A good mapping system, an in game achievement/task system, a good journal, searchable recipe book, and in game knowledge that is brief and easy to see and read, put in tabs and outline format. Like we have housing, here's how it works.

    Edited typos
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2020
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  6. kaeshiva

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    After being on a bit of hiatus playing other stuff, and trying to 'get motivated' to log into Sota, the biggest thing stopping me is …"what's the point?"
    Read about new dungeons like this one.
    What will this dungeon offer me?

    I mean, even cranking out millions upon millions more experience at this point isn't going to change a great deal. So that's not a motivator.
    So um...loot? We've seen time and time again with new places opening up they follow a pattern:

    The monsters which are 100x harder than the 500 hp equivalent that you can 1 shot, often drop the same crap. (looking at you, spider queen) I shouldn't say often. I should say, 99% of the time. Its simply not worth the effort. The chances of actually getting something - anything - to drop, particularly in content that's meant to require a group that is then going to have to ROLL on that item, are so bad that again, its not worth the effort. When there are nice things /unique drops - a handful of builds can steamroll it, and its impossible for everyone else due to complete lack of insight in monster resistances, capabilities relative to how our skill system works. When you shoehorn people into specialisations, making something completely immune to or highly resistant to a damage type makes that build worthless. And yet we see it again and again.

    The only potential saving grace here is to offer the player some consistency, some sort of way to incrementally work for the items they want, instead of logging in every day hoping today's the day I win the lotto and when it isn't, trying to motivate them to try again tomorrow. Killing a mob with 50k+ hp and getting nothing just shouldn't be a thing. Ever. If you want to have a rare chance to drop something, fine, but then add a common item you need 100 of that is a sure thing, so at least you can work toward it, instead of just staring at the login screen wondering if you can take another day of disappointment.
     
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  7. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I am going to slightly give them the benefit of the doubt on this scene, for at least a few releases. I don't think they're ready to include any episode 2 story elements yet, and so it is entirely possible that the scene will become important later.

    That said, it doesn't feel like it will be a scene that will be revisited much, even with some story elements added later. It'd be nice if Shadow beasties dropped something unique.
     
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  8. Beaumaris

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    Itemization often comes up as the underlying 'no fun' issue. We circle up the mobs for XP grinding, with no worthy loot to report. We kill a 50K HP boss, with no worthy loot to report.

    Do we know why that is so? Yes we do. It came about because SOTA's loot system was built to empower crafters' game play, who were vocal advocates around which the game's itemization structure was designed early on. The game design is that adventurers are supposed to find mostly low-value stuff for use in crafting or salvage, the notion being that this then creates roles for player crafters to step up and create better loot out of those materials to sell on their vendors back to adventurers who need that gear. Adventuring loot was deprioritized so that this crafting role could be made more significant. This isn't a problem with one scene or one boss, it is the game's loot design and has remained so despite some tweaks.

    The key questions now are: Can the game survive with this design, yes or 'no'? Is the game loop retaining adventuring-oriented players, yes or no? Are adventurer players happy to have to run around to crafter vendors in burned out towns to find loot instead of finding it in adventure scenes, yes or no? Has the game's crafting player population remained high enough to truly create and sustain 'vendor loot excitement' for adventurers as designed, yes or no? If the answer to each of these is no, then what really has to change? (hint: not just one scene).

    Its easy to blame the devs for poor loot rewards during epic scene runs or boss fights. But the fact is its bigger than that. They are dutifully maintaining an old crafting-driven loot system, designed for a different level of player population, driven by a vocal (and now largely gone) crafting community. Want to 'fix' the adventuring game, then make adventure loot evenly compete with crafted loot. Until then, SOTA for adventurer-focused players will be about picking scraps off scenes, using coins from the salvage to shop at harder-and-harder-to-find player vendors.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2020
  9. aragorn lancermane

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    I had to read it in its entirety before I understood your meaning. With that being said- I agree with your last 2 sentances!!!
     
  10. Rook Strife

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    Should just sticky this thread and maybe make a printout they can pin to their wall
     
  11. kaeshiva

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    That may have been the initial idea, but that ship sailed long ago with best in slot artifacts existing for nearly every single equipment slot, and crafting relegated to rng-infested gap-filling or actually trying to "combine" and "improve" the best in slot drops. Except the drops are few and far between. If crafting was actually the meaningful go-to for equipping oneself and adventuring was actually irrelevant as you suggest, then the lack of loot wouldn't be a big deal - you'd work your progression through another means. The problem is right now, there is no means to do so other than blind luck and slot machine mechanics which plague the crafting system as well as the adventuring system!. Its Slots of the Avatar folks, where your hours played, your skill, your determination, and your persistence mean very little against the roll of the dice, and the dice hate you.

    The key answers are:
    Can the game survive with this design? - It could, but the design you describe is not what we actually have.
    Is the game loop retaining adventuring oriented players? - No
    Are adventurer players happy to have to run around to crafter vendors in burned out towns to find loot? - Absolutely not
    Has the game's crafting player population remained high enough? - No, because crafting is the same RNG-addled frustrating mess with the added insult of high production costs and slower progression.

    You're absolutely right that the problem is "bigger than that." But crafting is not driving loot, adventuring is driving loot, and adventuring is driving crafting, both in the rare drop BS as well as being heavily required to get crafting resources and to finance crafting which has no way to sustain itself economically without being 'funded' by killing (and okay, agriculture, but the profitability for time investment of such is significantly lower by comparison to grinding trivial mobs). This has been the problem since day 1.

    Adventuring loot, when you actually get a drop, already outclasses crafted loot at the high end. Crafted gear that uses harvested materials cannot hold a candle to artifacts in ANY slot, no matter how high your skills. Which is why everyone needs their cabalist hood and their artifact belts and their artifact wands and their artifact bows and their bandit armor and their attunement rings and their warlock chains and so on and so forth. As a crafter, it has been pretty pointless for me to craft gear for a long time, 99% of what I do is enchant/mw artifacts and occasionally make a piece to fill in the gaps. The only time I actually craft gear anymore are for lower level folks or people trying out new builds who don't have their arties yet. I'm sorry, but I don't consider "fixing up ultra rare artifacts" to really fall under the definition of "crafting." Honestly, I think allowing artifacts to be mw/enchanted was the final nail in the coffin for actual crafted goods.

    --------------

    The point is, you can't blame the crafting system for there being unrewarding, unsatisfying rewards.
    Rewards aren't just 'gear' - experience, achievements, and resources could all be part of that system. Itemization could be refined so that if you needed a particular item you could farm a particular mob instead of so many things being 'world drops' and you can go days/weeks/months without seeing a drop because 'random luck'. Incremental rewards that drop often enough to actually make adventuring meaningful that can be used to work toward a goal would be a beautiful solution. As someone who spent over a year farming sieges every day to NOT get the hood I needed (someone gave me one out of pity, eventually) I simply can't get excited about new mobs and new drops, because I know from experience that I'd be better off grinding trivial crap for gold and buying whatever it is from someone who got lucky. Or I'd be better off just buying gold for cash to get what I need if I don't want to do tedium grind for gold. It unfortunately drills down to simple mathematics. Buy a sages sash for what, 150-200k? I can get that in a day's grinding and selling trash easily. I've gone weeks/months without seeing one drop. From an efficiency standpoint, the most lucrative thing for me to do is farm trivial crap for coin, and that ceases to be exciting or meaningful gameplay after years and years of the same.

    Of course, then I have to hassle with the player vendor system and lack of searchability and price gouging and 10 million load screens checking vendor after vendor in town after town and all the joys that come with having no central market. At some point it just stops being fun. New dungeon? Yay! Now I might find something new on a vendor somewhere for a silly price. That's what it means to me at this point.
     
  12. aragorn lancermane

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    I largely agree with you but in all honesty there are some artifacts that can't compare to player crafted gear. Tanking gear is primarily my example.... there are no tanking artifacts worthwhile... Shield of the wicked king and Sheild of Attraction simply don't cut it for me.... I want the combat block modifiers. Bacchanal belt- the Strength is nice but the drunk effect- hells no... and in all honesty...... artifacts with negative effects for the sake of "balance" in games has never really sold players or kept their retention.... especially those that min max BiS gear. Crafted gear comes with no negatives/side effects. In all honesty, I'd rather the crafted Augmented Supple Leather armor set over the Bandit gear for single target fights.... but then again, thats my preferences.

    I do agree with you and your viewpoint to it all. There needs to be some semblance of balance and the key point I'm trying to make is that the team at Catnip can't please everyone- However we need to make changes that the game needs to attract new players whether or not it upsets the average player to the community of whales. Its why I've been trying to provide feedback and be as fair and impartial as possible with the experience I've had in other successful games when it comes to raiding / dungeon content.
     
  13. kaeshiva

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    I think there are a few key differences between itemization in other (successful, more populated) games:

    1: Equipment requirements are nonexistent in Sota
    Get your level 1, slap him in the best end game superenchanted stuff and send them on their way. There are no level/skill/any requirements to put on anything.
    While this is nice in some ways, it pretty much ensures that if you started out that way nothing you ever loot is ever going to be worth picking up other than for the purposes of gold-fauceting.
    It also means that there is little to no market for anything other than the highest end stuff, you don't need to 'work your way up' upgrading as you go.
    Due to the RNG fiasco of crafting, high end stuff that's just slightly not right is often just given away since the crafter has to make 30 more to try and get what they actually want, again killing the market or incentive for a new crafter to actually make their own stuff.

    2: Equipment trading in Sota.
    The other problem is because there's no bind-on-equip or similar, things get handed down and reused until they fall apart. You can't make stuff break faster (high end stuff already wears out far too fast) but the fact is that I can make myself something, use it for a few weeks, make a better one, hand down the other one, and so on. Used gear can change hands many many times. I know Sota tries to be 'different' but bind-on-equip is in a lot of games because its a system that works to ensure that everyone has to get their own stuff and once they bind it, they can't keep passing it around. It means new stuff has to be generated, creating demand.

    3. Permanent Dura Loss / Disposable gear
    This one's a headscratcher. So we've made gear that takes permanent damage, like in a survival game, but made it extremely difficult to get what you actually want, and once you get it, it doesn't last. While on the surface you'd think this would help crafters, the reality is that getting 'the right bonuses' takes so many resources people usually just settle for good enough rather than pay what something actually costs, since its going to wear out anyway. Why would I spend millions to make a set of gear that will not last me long enough to go earn what it would take to replace?) The big argument you hear is well, you dont NEED that level of gear to get stuff done. And that's the problem. The game actively encourages you to embrace mediocrity and if nice stuff isn't necessary then why pay for it?
    Permanent durability loss is not seen much in MMORPGs anymore because it does not work, it just encourages people from wearing their nice stuff and you don't see it in many of the big group/raiding games where death and dura loss is a fact of life. It works in survival games where items have set stats and you have to replace them as part of the item sink process. It doesn't really work in a game like Sota - instead, you add a cash sink to repair it every time you're in town, which will help with our gold bloat problems.

    4. Gear itemization in loot table in Sota is ultra-rare only
    In most games today you can gear by crafting OR by adventuring, and in games that are well done, optimizing your character requires a bit of both. (look at ESO crafted sets vs. dungeon sets vs. trial sets, even in high end groups crafted sets have a place). The crafted sets offer you the consistency of 'go here, make what you need' and you slowly replace with better/compatible drops. In other games (look at Everquest2) crafted gear has a place in progression (level-requirements to wear, upgrade as you go) and at end game through gear adornments/socketed stuff requiring a crafter. In both of these examples both adventuring and crafting play a vital role in kitting out your character. I love the idea put forth in Sota of 'all the best stuff is crafted' but the honest truth is since the introduction of artifacts that statement has been absolutely false and gets falser by the day as the artifact power creep keeps shifting to the right (epics now? really?) , Until the RNG is done away with, crafting as a main source of gear is a crap shoot at best, an exercise in frustration at worst, and adventuring as a main source of gear is completely unreliable. To make matters worse, our market system is not fit for purpose to actually get goods to the people who need them. The idea of cycling vendor-sold crafted goods into the loot table was another 'looks good on paper' thing but the truth is only real garbage ever gets vendored, because there's no bind-on equip you'd be better off selling it or giving it to a lower level to use than getting 16 gold from an npc for it which wont even cover the fuel cost to make it lol. In Sota you never fight stuff, and loot something you can 'put on and use'. Its all about chasing the super rare arties that then need to survive the horrible RNG process. Other games address this by having generic gear drop as gap fillers with random stats, and crafters exist to give you the custom stuff. But sadly, the RNG inhibits this greatly. Then there's another tier of adventuring (ie heroic/raid content) that drops stuff that's better than the basic crafted stuff. Then there's another tier of crafted that uses harder to get / rare materials that trumps that, and so on. So gearing your character is progressive and can be done by multiple means.

    Going back to the point of this post, the new dungeon - what I'd personally like to see are materials from specific locales that give specific bonuses to crafted gear, which give a purpose to those dungeons beyond killing the same crap. Add harvestable nodes specific to a certain area, even. This gives people a reason to go there, and something they know they can get while they are there. Killing the same crap in a different place for the same lack of loot does not a fun and interesting dungeon make. Consider set bonuses using materials from certain places that are applied as another layer onto crafted gear (post production) and you'll get people going to those places to get those things, as long as getting them is reliable. Spending 6 hrs murdering things that are supposed to drop something and getting nothing pretty much just ensures I'm gonna go farm gold for 6 hrs and buy it off someone. This would be fine if we had a better market system.

    All in all, we've got a system that's been cobbled together over the years without any underlying thought on how creation-consumpion is supposed to work. I get really frustrated because I see how potentially awesome this game can be if we just got some of these core system ducks in a row, made a decision, and went with it. But often times this would require such an overhaul that it never happens, instead we just get...new dungeons that nobody will bother with unless they add something that is better exp than whatever the best exp place is, and then that one wont get bothered with. (RIP Krul, RIP UT, hello ERG).
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2020
  14. Barugon

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    I argued against having gear that ultimately breaks from the start. I knew that it would keep people from spending fat gold for top gear but all I heard was how gear needs to eventually break to have a healthy economy, which is total BS. There are enough changes over time to make people want new gear but they're not going to spend big if they think the gear will just wear out.
     
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  15. kaeshiva

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    Exactly.
    If it wasn't for perma loss, there'd be a lot more business in alternative gear sets, and people would always keep trying to push harder, get better, knowing that once you've got it, its yours.
    Its the only way that our RNG crafting makes any sense is if once you nail it, you can keep it. Then people might actually pay what stuff costs to make.

    I feel like there's a sliding scale here,

    Customization ---- > Randomness
    Permanence ----> Destructibility

    If you want 100% customization, at the cost of 100% destruction - that's fine. It can be replaced. Survival games are a good example of this.
    This gives you the necessary consumption of gear through destruction.

    If you want complete randomness, then you need permanence - once you get what you want, that's that slot sorted unless you find better.
    This gives you the necessary consumption of gear through constant trying to upgrade. Even if the cost of permanence was a bind-on-equip system to prevent it from being passed around, that'd be a decision you'd have to make. You could even make the binding process a gold sink either as a one-off or in the form of upkeep (such as many games do with repair).
    It also means every time they add a new masterwork, enchant, buff, material, etc. everyone goes to make the latest and greatest thing since with customizability, you can ensure you are getting results instead of just throwing resources into a drain. Basically adds gear progression to the game. Most MMOs embrace something like this.

    What we have is high randomness and high destructibility, which is why it doesn't work.
    Looking at it the other way, if you had high customization AND permanence (basically go the opposite way) it isn't as much of a disaster. The progression of gear still applies but not as frequently, so less consumption.

    The only type of game that really does high randomness and total loss of gear are roguelikes whose very nature is the repetitive process of finding stuff and throwing it on knowing its probably not going to last beyond this play session or rebirth or whatever. Its simply not suitable to a long-term game such as Sota.
     
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  16. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Well, that put into words what I've been trying to type up for the last ten minutes. Every part of the crafting process is a sink/limit/barrier of some kind, and they all multiply each other. All of which would be perfectly fine, if the end result was what I wanted, and I got to keep it until I could make, buy, it find something better. I'm perfectly content to grind for weeks to get enough wood and bark and tin and copper and beetles to make great gear. But you can spend months gathering materials, and still end up not getting the thing you want. But dat new BBQ tho...
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2020
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