Dance parties and fishing tourneys with light sabers...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Artomus Sumotra, Jun 24, 2020.

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  1. Gorthyn

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    Well if a large percentage of the population was still playing the game and paying in money, Port would never have sold the game off to Catnip and the Dev staff would be somewhat more than Chris plus a couple of part time helpers. It really isn't rocket science and folks continual denial of what is totally obvious really isn't helping the game.
     
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  2. Bowen Bloodgood

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    There's a huge difference between 'denial' and pointing out when people make statements that are little more than theories that happen to fit perception. That's not rocket science either but people keep doing it as if it's established fact. It isn't and it isn't helping the game. It also isn't rocket science that pointing these things out is NOT denying things could be 'better'. A leap to conclusion that folks also seem to be all to willing to make for some reason.
     
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  3. marthos

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    Over 60,000 players had pre-ordered the game way back in 2017. Where are they now? There were thousands of new players since then who have joined and bolted.

    Steam shows about 100 people playing, and Chris said that 1/3 to 1/4 use Steam. That means about 300-400 people playing the game.

    The over world map is empty. On launch the new player areas frequently had 2-3 different almost full instances going at the same time. Now they're also empty.

    The forums are MUCH quieter. Topics get stale on the first page.

    The game's revenue was disappointing to the point where the dev team shrunk from 30+ full time to about 3-4. And the outlook wasn't good enough for RG, or any investors, to put in millions more.

    There isn't any reason to think that this game hasn't lost the vast majority, closing in on 100% of it's player base right now.

    I get the appeal of being a big fish in a tiny pond, but that pond is evaporating. It scares me that the loss of a couple of whales could cause this game to close up, and there isn't much sense of urgency to remedy that situation. Perhaps those remaining whales relish in the level of power they have now and actively fight against any change to their status quo, or perhaps this game just isn't going anywhere period.
     
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  4. marthos

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    Server wide war would be interesting and definitely give this game something to advertise besides dance parties. I love seeing those reports of massive battles that take place in EVE, it's good advertising for that game.

    But from the PvP perspective, what are we fighting for? We can't conquer star systems like in EVE.

    On the PvE side, one of the coolest things that Shroud did was the meteor in the sky that kept getting bigger and bigger - culminating in the destruction of a scene and it's replacement with a new, devastated version. The way this game is built lends itself to more of these situation where the world can be more dynamic.

    Imagine if every month, there was a threat (or multiple) to a scene. It could be some powerful wizard summoning moon chunks to destroy the land, and if we don't complete a server wide quest another zone gets destroyed. Then the next month there could be a reclamation project to restore that scene to it's original state plus yet another threat to avert. You could tie in the sieges with this system, where sieges could actually be successful and cities get switched to a "conquered" state where the server has to fight hard to liberate it. Enemies from another continent could land raiding parties that take-over scenes until they are pushed back (nice setup for whatever new areas are discovered in episode 3-5). There is so much potential here that could be realized. All of this requires vision and a sense of urgency from both the devs and remaining players that change is needed.
     
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  5. CICI

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    Be Positive Not Negative!
     
  6. Bowen Bloodgood

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    In my experience, most people don't stick around for much more than a year regardless and it's pretty unreasonable to assume or argue as if everyone who did leave did so for the same reasons.

    Those aren't actual stats you're referencing.

    Lot of topics get stale on the first page. That's pretty vague. Quieter than what? A stadium filled rock concert?

    The dev team was NEVER even close to 30+ full timers.. That's just simply incorrect. In fact it never even approached 20 if memory serves. It's always been a small team.

    People have been saying things like that since before EP1 launch. It may seem reasonable on the surface just because of what people perceive but to me it's just crying wolf. Folks have been doing it for years and if they were so accurate the server population would be well into the negative by now. Either that, or enough new people are trying it every day to keep things going which people may not want to admit to the way they go on about how many people are always leaving.

    Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everything's peachy or that there's a huge online showing 24/7. But if you're going to make a case, you'll get a lot farther doing so with case by case game design and implementation.
     
  7. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Actual, meaningful control points would've been a good start. That is, active world changes depending on who controls the zone. That would've been something.

    One of the things they did right, the ability to alter the map at will. Lot of wasted (so far) potential there if you ask me. They should be doing stuff like that every 6-9 months.

    What they really need is one person dedicated to running events who could run an on-going series.
     
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  8. Turk Key

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    Steam shows about 100 people playing, and Chris said that 1/3 to 1/4 use Steam. That means about 300-400 people playing the game.

    [/QUOTE]
    Leaderboard 7 day PVE unique character name activity shows 1281 players. This is only those people who have public data option choice. It is also only those who did PVE combat over the 7 days. So it would be safe to assume that there are more than 1300 active players. Now some may be alts, I admit, but I doubt that someone with alts would use more than one person for combat, yet that may reduce the number of active players in any case. That said, 1300 players IS anemic.
     
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  9. Gorthyn

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    Honestly the sale of the game to Catnip and the vastly shrunk Dev team and the snails pace of new content isn't enough of a red flag to you ?

    It's not perception it's the painfully obvious !
     
  10. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I don't know, I was in an ERG group Saturday where people were swapping characters pretty regularly. We'd find ourselves with out a tank for a round, so somebody would swap to their tank. Or healer, or whatever. I think double XP has a lot of people logging in alts to level them up, then switching to a main for doing other things.
     
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  11. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Appearing "painfully obvious" is perception. The problem is people are so eager and willing to interpret 'red flags' and announce doom and gloom. It might mean more if people hadn't been doing it pretty consistently since kickstarter. Instead of any constructive feedback such as "you know in this economy the prices are too high for most under level X" too many people just go straight to "people are leaving by the thousands, this game is doomed.. that's proof it's all over!" and they've been saying it for years. Not constructive. Not helpful and usually misleading.
     
  12. marthos

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    I never said they all left for the same reason. But, it's safe to say that they all left because they found something better or more entertaining to do. The specifics may vary, the result is the same - they all left and we're worse off because of it.

    Huh????

    Back in the old days we had a lot more folks working on this game.

    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=67218

    I count 36.

    Maybe some were part-timers or contractors <shrug>

    Oh, I'm not trying to make a case. That's already been done. The case is closed. The verdict is in and the appeal has been denied.

    Now the question is what do we as a community do from here? I want to move forward, accept the shortcomings of the game, and show the developers that if they decide to make some big changes around here, that I will not just support them but also encourage that mindset.

    When someone leaves the game as the OP did, the "don't let the door hit you on the way out" mindset is not helping matters. A frustrated customer will be more likely to give the game a second chance if he feels the community finds common ground with him. This can give him a sense of unity and hope ("wow, all these people feel the same way but they're sticking to the game, maybe I should give it some more time"). The developers, seeing this unity, are more likely to make changes to stop the bleeding of players.
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2020
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  13. marthos

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    That sounds about right, the 300-400 players from Steam & Chris's comment would be for concurrent players at a given time. If that average holds up all day long, and the average play session is about 2 hours, that works out to something like unique 3,600-4,800 players/alts.

    Is the public data option on by default or is that something we have to enable ourselves?
     
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  14. Turk Key

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    I know I had to enable it. That doesn't mean I hadn' t messed with it before. Cannot remember what starting state was.
     
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  15. Bowen Bloodgood

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    But the same argument can be made of any online game over time. Only a percentage ever stay for the long haul no matter how good the game is.
    Wow look at that.. well spotted! Though several of those aren't actual devs. Some are community peeps, couple are business etc.. One was web, I'm not sure if he actually did any in-game work. Ok I'll give you 20+ something. :) Unless someone can put names to faces.. I don't recognize all of them. I'm not entirely sure but I don't think they were all on the project at the same time? I do recognize a few that never actually touched the game.. (enough to make it less than 30).

    Most of my comments here are not directed at any one person. It seems quite common to me that people usually argue with their feelings and make a lot of broad statements that are often misleading, incorrect or simply unfair to devs and/or players. Stuff like tens of thousands have left in the context of this game has issues etc. They're trying to argue the doom and gloom rather than what could be done.

    That common ground should not be based around misleading statements, misconceptions or general negativity.
     
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  16. evillego6

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    You can go back to stand up notes from 2017/2018 and find more than 30. The seedinvest documents also listed them as having 30 or more employees.
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2020
  17. Bowen Bloodgood

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    I was in fact thinking of suggesting just that and having a refresher, but employees is not the same as actual developers. If they aren't directly involved in development in some way then they aren't 'developers' are they? Perhaps I'm getting hung up on semantics here, but I don't consider business, community or tech support part of the "dev team" as they aren't developers or directly involved in the creation of content or systems. That was the phrase used "dev team", not employees. Though I will concede the point that total staff regardless of role was probably the intended point. I tend to be very technically minded when it comes to word usage.
     
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  18. evillego6

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    I appreciate the clarification and understand where you're coming from.

    edit: your to you're
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2020
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  19. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    Thank for letting us know that our dance parties at Avatars/Virtue Radio are a popular activity in this huge sandbox game where you can choose to do whatever you want, including not attending Dance Parties!

    That said, we've been asked multiple times if we "could" cover other events besides dance parties, such as PvP events, raids, book readings whatever the creative minds of our community come up with. Our answer is and always will be YES we can. The problem is that the community rarely asks us to do so other than for Dance Parties. That's the community's choice, not the developers. So, we do what comes naturally for us...we run our radio station whose content is music and spoken word that people dance to and/or group up to enjoy.

    In true sandbox form, this game is designed for players to create their own adventures. Our job as a radio station is to cover your adventures and be directly a part or just provide music or even report on the activities going on. If you create the event and invite us, WE WILL BE THERE! It's just up to you if we are.

    I think what you're tryiing to say is that the game is a collection of unfinished systems and that we are in need of fresh game content. Well, we are definitely waiting on those. You are confused.
     
  20. Superbitsandbob

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    SOTA has been at the end game for a while now but that doesn't necessarily mean it is about to go down. End game in this case means reaching a point where whoever is running it are not capable of dealing with the unfinished systems or moving the game on to the next level. This could be part creative/talent, part financial and part pushback from the games oligarchs. Look at the streams at the beginning of the year. A list of really interesting stuff that got me hopeful again but six months on and pretty much all of them have not come to pass. We had an expansion release that had no new content in it! When has that ever happened in the MMORPG sphere? The release of Episode 2 pretty much sums SOTA up although I am sure there will still be players who will say its still in beta or not finished yet.

    Come back in a year and things will be pretty much the same. Lots of new items to buy in the store though!

    Dance parties and those kind of things are organised by Catnip because they know that is what the minority who are left and still pumping money into the game want. That and the store is the only way the game is able to carry on and so that is the focus.

    SOTA has been done as a story driven, PvE/PvP centric RPG for some time now. Not done as in complete but done as in the people behind the game are just not able to fulfil the required work to fix the bugs, improve the systems that need improving and create new content, whatever the reason may be for that.

    The argument that it takes time, small team etc etc were valid at one point. After all this time though it is clear the team is just not up to it (not necessarily their fault though or at least not all of them).
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2020
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