What are you guys Waiting for?

Just fix the loot so I can at least come back an casually play with a sense of fulfilment. I have spent literal weeks maybe months (its a running joke with me and my friends) On just killing bears mainly because experience was optimal and I could get stuff that I could use for crafting. I've tried and wanted to beable to just go out and explore killing random things but the loot is so abysmal that I feel I'm wasting my time. Have been here since before release we have had forward momentum but we are not there.

Also the fact that my houses went into the bank since I had not been active for awhile has made a HUGE WALL for me returning because the first thing i have to do is find a plot and get space to put things i get from adventuring or placing everything thats in my bank again which can take literally days.

 

I'm so desperate for immersive content. I just had leftover rice and shrimps. It was all in the same container, so I mixed it all together and pretended that the shrimps were buried treasure. The cats, those evil monsters, were looking to kill me and take my treasures. Oh the lols!....

 

Have you tried late-game scenes or bosses? I have had a decent time in terms of loot in the following areas :

The Rise : The dragon drops an artifact at least 25% of the time for me, with minimum 500 gold, and a bunch of other things. The elven mages drop supply bundles and artifacts, and most mobs drop elven essences and obsidian chips that sell for a decent price (20g each by most players!)

Tartarus : The first floor has a room filled with small chests, and 1 orange bundle tiered chest, while the 3rd level has the Satyrs that drop Bandit gear (very valuable) along with a decent loot table.

Ruined Keep : Torc'Dawl, Baerndude and the other big one all have high chances of artifacts (got a vexlyn and the other fire wand from there, along with tons of attunement rings), and all the trolls there have chances of dropping troll essences that sell for 750-800g each.

The Fall : The white pit Dragon is here, same thing as the Rise's dragon, minimum 500g, ttons of ressources, and a high chance of artifacts. The ebon Cultists here drop between 50-250g each, the liches give great exp but less loot, and all mobs here have a rare chance for artifacts (PVP Zone here, but hey, its worth the risk sometimes ).

Solania Catacoms : Vrul. Pretty much the only thing worth killing here, but Vrul has chances to drop artifacts, last kill I got more than 600 gold off of him, recipes, ohh and don't forget that very valuable heart of vrul!

Compendium of Pain and Suffering : While the loot on the mobs isn't all that special, every 8 waves you can open a chest with 500-2000 gold in it, with a bunch of other ressources, blueprints and recipes. I used to run 16 rooms then reset the dungeon, pretty worth it if you can't clear the above.


These are some of my favorite zones in terms of loot. I wont say loot is amazing, I still wish for an update, but when you compare the 5-10 gold coins you can get from T1 zones, the loot does scale, and these zones all have decent chances for even better stuff.

 

Violet Ronso

I have 1700 hours in the game, I don't party to much, I did with some friends and did a little at times, but no massive exp grinds on whatever that skeleton place is and i'm level like 92. Can fight some mobs in the Rise, The Compendium was alright I made it a little ways, Dragons kill me, liches kill me, really anything that is decent in loot I can't handle and especially late game and bosses. I made my way up to my level all on my own grinding so hard just hoping to get strong enough so maybe I could solo some decent content. And when new stuff comes out I go hunt it down to see if i can handle it. There is a huge jump from say 80 to 100 where 80 is suppose to be like where you are suppose to beable to do some fun solo things, but its more like level 100 and getting from 80 to 100 on your own is extremely time consuming. For a casual player they will never beable to make it to those scenes to get "alright loot", and that is the problem!!! I also am a crafter and have all my gear like +12 or higher, I have also changed up skill trees multiple times to try and find optimal builds following guides from other players.

I really should just grind the hell out of the one place you can get good experience so I can maybe do my casual fun. But I wanted to get there more organically on my own and its just not set up for it. Also this furthers my reasoning if the only place to get decent loot is end game content and bosses then what are new players doing from level 1 to 100 just hating life, getting crap loot, and wishing they were stronger. Its like all the good content is for the top 5% and everyone else just has to grind to make it there.

You shouldn't have to work so one day you can enjoy the game, you should be able to enjoy the game and one day be able to take on the big baddies

 

That is what I thought at first as well, don't worry, I had the same thinking as you, that these hard zones were for the elite only and what not, and that loot scaled poorly.

1 thing is for sure, fighting animals wont get you loot, unless you get lucky with some artifact drop or something. Fighting humanoids, undeads, or bosses is the way to go. You ever tried the twin trolls in that one passage? Those guys drop troll essences as well, 800g per essence, with gems that sell for 200g per gem, and a few other goodies, you can make some decent money, and I soloed those trolls at lvl 70 or something (and maybe even earlier).

Also, have you gotten your deck and build checked by anyone? You have 1700 hours so you might know what you are doing, but often times a quick change in a deck can result in being able to clear content 2 to 3 tiers higher than before, trust me, I helped quite a few guild members go from being okay in a T4 zone to being able to breeze through T5+ zones, and have it hard but still be able to do T8 zones. Theres many factors here that make it so a lvl 92 can do some content that another lvl 92 could never imagine doing. All in all, if you want some tips, hit me up, and I could look into what you could change, and where you could hunt, but loot progression is there, just not necessarily as obvious for some!

 

Implement Town Based and/or Regional/Universal Vendor Search with prices @Wilfred

 

Both of these posts are correct in what they say, yet the focus point of where the issue is remains the key...

• There's light loot in lower level content, light enough that it becomes a mid to lower level player's concern and effects their play satisfaction.
• The following answer after that becomes "jump yourself out of that content and you will be more satisfied".

Result = Lower content is unsatisfying and will remain unsatisfying, join the top tier group or become one of their minions, "in order to devastate our game's economy through inflation" ...
"Welcome to our quagmire, would you like to get out of the mud" ? That is our game's welcome mat to any new players

And now, a totally necessary, descriptive music video...


I'll take up the deeper part within that issue another day, but for now, I'll keep focused on the immediate issue at hand, "our content for newer players forces them, through lack of gaming enjoyment, to jump over our early level content". Most all high level top content players agree and offer new players help to escape our new/low/mid level player's content. It sucks more than a Hoover Vacuum It sucks every bit of gaming satisfaction out of any player wishing to gain anything but exp-points from it... "because you need those points to help escape it, or become someone's minion, to escape such an unenjoyable gaming content" hmm... If we could just get every player into our highest content more quickly, we could then gain even more support for higher level content being developed.

Our low to mid level gaming content seems less satisfying due to it's low loot being it's major lacking issue.

Possible solution (of which I'm certain there's many which I'm not taking issue with here):
Our low to mid level content should be "where the COTO grow"... because ...

• when you're getting something from lesser content, then you feel less like you are playing a futile (feudal) game.
• when you as a new player are getting something tangible (though virtual), the thought of "having something from the COTO Shop" means you are less likely to leave that something behind in search of another game which may be using (inflated) gold loot amounts in their drops as new player lure bait.

I think our COTO need to become more abundant within our lower level content, to a point where our loot doesn't suck our new players away to other more loot enticing games.

The other issue I will not bring up here and have not touched on lay "under my thumb" "in a very mixed bag of worms"
Just another player's perfectly harmless opinion ~Time Lord~

 

- Key system for chests and doors
-Conversational NPC Emotes
-NPC and Conversational NPC pathing / Patrol
-Conversational NPC give / receive items
-More dungeon options
-more single spawner options
-Single Spawner loot and xp
-crafting skill level to make it more spaced out between GM and 140+ crafters
-new higher tier crafting materials
-new artifact break down for rare mats

I could go on forever lol.

 

• Global Market Place is what will take this game to the next level.
• Locking the cursor to Shroud window so we do not drag other windows and die during combat. I am so surprise that people have not mention this before after 5 years of this game. I have only been playing this game in such a small time and noticed it very quickly.
• Local profile per character to allow UI position to be remembered by the game when it loads. Window layout is always changing, if you have multiple account or character they share same profile and window layout. This archaic and we should move away from this. It would be wonderful to be able to always log on to the game that remembers where each window, bags and frame position is located.
• Developers to look into people with mega-farms. With the way agriculture is currently working there a big issue with people with mega-farms, this currently takes up majority of the day to maintain. This is a small issue but something to be looked at in the future.

 

Most people probably play full-screen.

 

In full-screen the same thing happens. We do not actually have full screen, it is borderless window. Check it out yourself. Your cursor is not locked to the shroud window.

 

Well, inadvertently dragging other windows is not a problem for me. I would say that it's probably due to Linux but since nobody else complains about it, it's most likely something to do with your specific setup.

 

The cursor should not be locked - the whole point of borderless window is to enable people with multiple screens having other windows such as maps / discord etc open at the same time as having the game on main screen. Locking the cursor into that window would go against the whole reason for having that type of display mode. Can't say I've ever died from this in Shroud or any another MMO I play in this mode (ie all of them lol)

 

There is fullscreen and borderless. Alt-Enter to toggle.

 

That's an interesting view @AzazelReborn
I'd like to hear more about your views about the SOTA farming game play.

I think the development team is heading in the correct direction with the "Trophy Pumpkin". I'd like to see all other crops have special items (or whatever) to farm for.

For me, I think our game play in agriculture should be in search for unique advantages to motivate agriculture game play. "Real world lottery" chances come to mind when thinking of what a SOTA agricultural farmer should expect within prize loot and in prize loot amounts, because this is the real motivator for this type of play style. Without such "loot" to be strived for, our SOTA agricultural farming game is as dull as hourly wages, or prison labor.

This below is what it looks to be and very fitting to what our SOTA agriculture's spirit currently feels like...

Adding trophy pumpkins was a brilliant idea to combat this.

Our agriculture farming game should have the same "loot design" as any hunting area has, because there's no difference between the two when it comes to danger and motive. A hunter farms an area hoping expecting a normal amount of loot, yet hoping for a special drop of loot in proportion to their gaming time spent within their chosen hunting area. The hunter risks their life (which isn't much to risk in our gaming world), while the agricultural player risks real world time and effort. If a hunter loses their life, their gold is not lost, yet if a agriculture farmer misses a single time watering their crops, they do lose their expected potential loot amount, or worse, they lose all their game time invested along with losing all profit, or even worse still, they stand a chance to lose gold from within their actual bank account, through having invested in seed and water, yet missed all their crop's following watering times and effort. There is also the risk in great disappointment if the agriculture farmer missed the 3rd watering, knowing they lost money, yet still having to make sure to not miss the 4th watering, or they lose even more.

Unlike hunting, SOTA Agriculture is without a doubt, a very, "pay to play" game, as most "SOTA agriculture mega-farmers" do their farming on tax free lots they have purchased with real world money.

The proposed Sota space cannon (in the other thread) is not a pay-gate and would be funded in the same way as sota mounts were, yet sota agriculture in mega-farming is a pay-gated sota community...
"Agriculture on mega-farms is a pay-gated", as there's no other way to mega-farm with adequate enough loot to motivate any player, due to taxable lots.

It is for the above reasoning, that I think there should be a way to cut lot taxes, through designating any player's lot as "for agriculture use only", thereby forbidding any decoration and allowing only planters to be able to be placed on it. This would take away the "pay-gate" to sota's agriculture mega-farming game.

I'd also like to see "fish hatcheries" be able to be had on our water lots in the same way as our current land based SOTA agriculture is. I know the western real world loves fishing "in the way that they fish", as a sport, yet I live in Thailand, where sport fishing is a thing, but not as a big a thing as it is in the west. If a Thai-person has a pond or a lake on their property, it's most likely they will have a fish hatchery on it where fish are fed food on a regular basis and then harvested with a net. <---<<< That proses seems exactly the same as our SOTA land based agriculture system.

Currently, our SOTA agriculture farming helps pay for our game's development in a big way, through our COTO Store lot purchases and ingame upgrades which cost real world $, which is a very big "+" for our game's development, yet does "pay-gate" that portion of our game, if a player wants to become a "mega-farmer". Yet... The SOTA agriculture mega farming game is a full time venture in gaming, as it cuts deep into the amount of time any player has to play our game. Agriculture farming on a mega-farm takes time... allot of time! and hunting has far better profits to be had with far less risk and allot of free time to be in or out of game with no risk through schedule obligation as agriculture has.

I recently purchased a taxable town lot from our COTO Store, which I will not be placing until a certain planting season comes, then I will use my "Lordy Scepter" on it to cut it's rent in half while it's placed, reducing it's $1000 gold a day tax to $500 gold a day.... But I wish for a world where lots could have an option to be designated "agriculture" within it's house choice options, to reduce (for example) that town lot's $1000 gold a day tax to $500 gold a day in tax, which after using the "Lordy Scepter" on it, would make it $250 gold a day in taxes.

Our water front lots could do the same things as our land lots if they were able to become fisheries, or have "fishery cages" to place on them, in the same way as our planters are on our land lots.
If our lots could have their taxes cut in half when we designated them as agricultural, I think this would cause taxable lots to be better used and wanted to be used by players as farms, thus eliminating the pay-gate SOTA agriculture mega-farm game currently has.


~Space Cannon~
~Time Lord~

​

 

I am not sure this is the right thread for this but here's my thought on it.

As a fairly new player to the game, I initially created a farm for the sole purpose of harvesting cotton and to supplement my reagents need for my build. As time passed I realised that farming was an extremely good way to gain producer EXP.
Since I am a min/maxer I quickly started to expand my farm. I currently have 1685 outdoor and 10257 indoor and underground farms. I plan to double and quadruple this but I can not do that as the current agriculture feature we have prevent me in doing that for the following reasons and the reasons you mentioned above.

• Time: The time you have to invest to maintain a farm is extremely vast, meeting the timers for watering is sometime exhausting and failure to do so is extremely punishing.
• Visual: With a mega-farm when the initial seeding and watering can cause huge stress. Due to that I am forced to create a spreadsheet to maintain this stress. The stress being sowing seeds on a 1685 field and realising that you missed 5 spot. It is extremely hard to see what you have missed, that is why I use Night Vision and Light skills.
  • Maybe some kind of feature could be added to highlight missing seeds or missing water spots. I do not know maybe people can comment on this. You could spend so many time going back and forth looking for what you have missed.
• Red Rings: I use Chaotic Feedback to speed up my farming. Every time I get a Red Ring when watering or Harvesting, to recover you either have to cast a spell, jump or move in order to resolve this. I do not think it's due to Chaotic Feedback because I get this issue without using it but I do get it more with the skill.
  • If you attempt to harvest or water too quickly you sometimes cause an error which prevent you from casting any spells that has reagent use and you will not be able to consume anything. You will then see Kindred, Trustee, Co-Owner or private displayed next to your character depending on what you decoration placement setting is. To resolve this you will need to log out and log in again.
• Lag/Slow Loading: The row house you see in the picture below is full of barrels planters only in order to min/max the deco space available. I figured to do this for my future expansion but however the game loads each barrel planter one by one.
  • When I seed, each barrel get seeded one by one, same with watering. So If I was to do this with a village or a town, it might be unbearable.

 

you just have to wait a few seconds. it'll resolve on its own when the server catches up. it is related to chaotic feedback, but only in the sense that that's what allows you to go so fast it builds up some lag in recalculating the spot states.

 

All of what you said is true.

Our SOTA Farming is still in it's original state of development. The trophy pumpkin is the first real change our agriculture has had in all of sota history, so your comments are very important to this piece of our game.

I never worry about things like this, because anything worth saying is worth saying anywhere.
(I never hear anyone complaining about how mixed up a conversation is on discord, so I never worry about being 100% correct here and on topic here in our forums)
If we wait for a more appropriate thread, then things like this may never be written to be read.

Thank you always for your very insightful comments. I think we players need to think of things that can make our sota agriculture farming more fun ~Time Lord~

PS:

You always sound like one of those old Wisps from UO to me @Alley Oop , they always sounded like they were talking about something really supper technical of which I most likely will never be able to fully understand until I reach full enlightenment

 

Here is an ELI5 for y!

Server = Turtle
Chaotic Feedback = Rabbit
Farming with Chaotic Feedback = Rabbit racing the turtle
Red Circle = Cooperation obstacle

So what Alley said is : Rabbit has to wait for turtle to catch up to clear the obstacle.

Better?

 

lol