What's the status of Episode 2?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by oplek, Dec 30, 2020.

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  1. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

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    I don't think so, though. I may certainly be wrong, but while satyr-like in shape, I don't think they are actually a distortion of the satyr model. They feel like they were done by a different sculptor. Which, given that it was probably a purchased asset, is likely. Especially when you see them next to satyrs (the Krampus model gets reused for satyr bosses in Tartarus.)

    But I'm only like, 70% sure on that.

    If not Krampus, then...boars?

    I suppose technically the obsidians, but I would imagine they are just stock humans in new armor sets, and not new models in the sense I'm thinking.
     
  2. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Good point... If I bought in now, got to level 50ish and finished the main quest in a few months as a casual player, I'd be like, "wait, I have to grind how long to be strong enough for episode 2 content, which isn't free?" Pass.
     
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  3. Barugon

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    Their original plan for episode 2 was that everyone would start with a new avatar in Mistrendur. After blow-back, they decided to go with areas that could level scale. Now that they have that mostly worked out, I assume that story areas will automatically scale to your level.

    [edit] That's assuming we even get story.
     
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  4. macnlos

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    For whatever the reason was, when the game transferred to Chris and became part of Catnip I held a glimmer of hope. Transferring the game offered the chance for him to reset the path of this game. Because he could say now that is part of Catnip it had to be re-evaluated and this is the new direction of the game... Unfortunately he did not choose to do that. Not only did he not do that, he did not even take the game down the path they were on. As @Kara Brae said, the new Quest System was a big promise and we ended up with Inky. < - - - That is just a finger poke in the eye. Go back, look at the goals and direction, how much did they actually progress on it?

    Game is sad. I have an empty PoT that is just a waste of $$$ and digital bits.
     
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  5. Vladamir Begemot

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    Well he DID take it in his own direction, the "No more collectables because I don't like competing with my players" direction.

    Unfortunately, he didn't get the memo I guess. The collectable crowd were the big spenders.

    Never kill your whales, they don't grow back, and soon you're begging for scraps and bits.
     
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  6. Bioxide

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    I am pretty sure the death of the rares / collectible was a intentional sacrifice for new money infusion into the game.

    It did have a long term effect in two major ways, 1st people lost trust in the rares market and that created the 2nd reason. 2nd people began dumping rares houses (esp when tax rates lowered) and deeds crushing a once strong market. If your holding a tax free deed you originally paid $$$$ you find that 33% or less of your original value.

    I’ll admit the rares market is something I was very interested in initially but quickly decided selling early was my only hope to avoid going to the cleaners with thier new funding strategy.
     
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  7. Beaumaris

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    I'm with the OP. It would be great if Catnip leadership could provide a simple update post listing intended Episode 2 features vs current status. Not everyone listens to podcasts weekly to keep up with it.
     
  8. Vladamir Begemot

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    And third effect is that the new money infusion will never again be thought of as having value. So from then on out it became vanity purchases only.

    Oh, and they wasted almost a year building all the systems needed to crush the collectors. There's the real status of Ep 2. "We spent it screwing over the collectors."
     
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  9. AoiBlue

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    You are forgetting the Castle Raid.
     
  10. FBohler

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    I never been in that scene. Is it any relevant? I saw some people playing it when it came out, but now absolutely no friend in my list is ever in that scene
     
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  11. oplek

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    It kind of reminds me of Fallout 76, when they said they were surprised that few people seemed interested in PVP. They didn't seem to understand their audience, despite the background of the Fallout series.

    Obsidian trials. Food rework. Streamer Rewards Program. And even group-based zones... they seem to consistently show that the developers are on their own wavelength, and aren't reading the room, even if the room is filled with people holding protest signs with clear, succinct messages. You'd think that after so many years, there'd be enough data for Catnip games to have a good understanding of the audience.

    I occasionally throw a month at WoW Classic, and I love it every time I do.

    [​IMG]

    Last time I played was back in May I think, and it's still going strong (we think we do want that, and we do). There's still no "low" population server, and most are high... so much for people not willing to pay subscriptions anymore. It knows what it wanted to be, and it resonates with people.

    I then turn back to SOTA, and I don't know what's happening with it. My impression is that they're hovering just above maintenance mode, and that's why they don't seem to want to do anything bold, or risky. They're spending more time on trying to get snow working correctly indoors, when I'd rather they just "bag mode" it, and spend the time on something more meaningful.

    I keep saying they need to work on the core, but I created a thread trying to gauge others' opinions, because we may be talking past each other. They seem entirely reluctant to do this. Like with the quest "rework", I think they've ultimately decided what the core is, and this is it. We may see some ancillary fluff additions here and there, but this is it. Plus some more zones that people lose interest in very quickly because they're off the mark.

    I don't think they'll ever see the light, until the leadership starts playing the game in earnest. Problems don't "exist" until they do.
     
  12. Powersurge

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    I still think it goes back to the things i have said over the last 5 years i have been playing the game. If you ask 100 people what they would do to improve the game, you get 100 different answers. They have been entertaining about 10 people. They have 90 more answers to work on...I have heard people say that the game would thrive if they just had mounts. I heard MULTIPLE people say this...well mounts are here and no one appears impressed. Where did those 10 people who requested mounts go? Let's look at the positive...the Lord British invasion is very good...the Compendium style encounter was a breath of fresh air. Spindle is good...especially for those people who needed high level challenge...yeah the loot isnt there but at least you can die there at high levels. The cooking improvement and the artifact combining was simply an excellent addition. And Despair was a big plus although i know it is a bit older. I'm probably missing some other great additions. One big plus is the increase in player created events. In some ways, we need to play a bigger part in the game. As older players we GOTTA help new people just starting out. The first week a player plays this game can make a lasting impact on whether they continue to play or leave. I helped one player this week. It is the first time in close to a year since i stopped and help him for about 2 hours. We must start answering questions and get these new folks starting in the right direction. Imagine a new player starting out in our game. There are about 1000 things to learn, and they must learn at least 20 of them early. We have to help in that process...as for content. Help those new players while you wait. Build up our playerbase and lets see what happens.
     
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  13. Vladamir Begemot

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    Except for cooking, everything you mentioned is combat oriented. There's the problem. Combat gets all the time, and is the least unique (or likable to a lot of people, many just do not like combat in Shroud, but like a lot of the other parts) part of the game. Combat is not a unique selling point of the game, and all the additions, tweaks, nerfs, futzing, will never amount to anything.

    Of those other 90 answers, about 45 of them were "We want a story that doesn't look like I'm reading it on a calculator."

    The other 45 were things to do with the housing, vendors, and crafting interactivity and improvments, and the only real work done on that (other than cooking it seems) was ways to make it worse, or to monetize it. Ironically, the housing was already monetized well, if they had just not dropped the ball it would still be making them good money.

    The parts of the game are all here, but the captain just wants to futz with combat and shiny things, and has no idea who his audience is. The previous captain failed us hard by not showing up in game, not insisting his vision of the interactivity of the world was completed, and not being a good leader and insisting combat get a rework before it was too late.

    So here we are. More high level scenes for the handful of people who can stomach the grind/wonky combat.
     
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  14. GMDavros

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    well said. I lol'd, but it is the truth.

    Fenris
     
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  15. Powersurge

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    Well like I said, if you ask 100 different people what they want to see, you will get 100 different answers. Most of the folks I talk to, want more varied combat areas. Sounds like you want many of the things not related to combat. But here is the rub....combat drives the need for cooking, crafting and vendors..without combat..the need for those things is 100% cosmetic. So i say once again, it looks like the things you want to see in the game are non-combat improvements. I specifically want horizontal progression. I have forever wanted something to do other than crafting and combat...I wanted treasure maps...I didnt get those...

    I also disagree about the combat not being unique. It is the most unique system i have ever seen..allows for maximum flexibility and you can incorporate your own playstyle. I see so many people doing the archer/tamer builds...these are extremely linear and can make the combat feel a bit uninspiring...

    Try playing an air/death/earth/moon magic user...the possibilities and styles of play are endless...I know a guy doing a swords/death build and he is doing some amazing things. This is one of the most intuitive, flexible, challenging combat systems ever conceived...

    What build do you have?
     
  16. Vladamir Begemot

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    The reason you are only hearing from combat people is the rest of us hit the road when it became obvious only combat gets real love.

    I didn't say combat isn't unique, I said it is the least unique part of Shroud. It is the part that most of us put up with to be able to do the rest, more unique parts of Shroud. The parts that haven't gotten a second pass since 2017, and even then it was pathetic (dialog window, I'm squinting at you).

    And in the case of combat, IMO unique doesn't mean great. Shroud combat is fair, but it won't ever win any awards. One shouldn't build their game with it as the core feature, or they won't have a userbase.

    Infinite choice is not by itself enough.

    I did both archer and melee. Melee sucked, archer is fun for a bit but doesn't really stand up as a core game selling system. Fire mage is too cheese for me to stomach. My combat build now is "Going on an adventure in Satisfactory." Or Battlefield, or This War of Mine.

    Anyway, I don't want to detract from your fun. Keep at it. But if combat were going to save the game it would have done so by now. It's gotten most of the dev hours. If it turns out I get to suddenly take over and be the new lead designer, it's getting thrown out. As Will Wright says, sometimes you have to go downhill in order to get to the next highest peak.
     
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  17. AzazelReborn

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    Your 100% correct most players do play solo. The reason for this is that Shroud disadvantage group play. Let me give you an example, most MMO share loot vastly different from this game. Loot is shared among the player evenly i.e. if a group kills 3 creatures, all the loot from each of the creature is shared for each member, like player1 gets all of loot1, player2 gets loot2 and player3 gets loot3 and its repeated as the loot drop and the only thing that is globally shared is gold itself.

    However everything in shroud is shared, gold and every item in the loot. The only exception to this is field dressing loot, dragons or any thing you have to harvest before gaining the loot, but the gold is globally shared.

    Which make soloing the most efficient way to play and to level due to the way XP works.

    Good example is why group play is so bad in this game, imaging killing a mob that has more than 20k health, takes you over 5 min to kill and you get less 100 gold a potion and a scroll. Imagine sharing with with 3 players or more, is it worth it?
     
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  18. Barugon

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    Most open groups that I see are for experience, so saying that you get more from solo play is simply not true for the majority of players. I can personally get maybe ~3 million experience per hour solo where I can easily attenuate at more than 8 million playing in a group.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2021
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  19. Superbitsandbob

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    It's always funny reading the discrepancy in view of how development time is dealt out and the reality. PvE is a perfect example (although I suspect the people moaning about it are hurting about the fact that they can't collect and sell rares or whatever anymore as if that is what made the game popular in the first place).

    I logged in for the first time in a couple of months yesterday and went straight to episode 2.

    First Tanglemire - You could argue it is an NPC town scene but there is nothing to do here. Why is it there?

    Second Spindelskog - Again, after about 15 minutes I realised there is nothing to do here other than gain XP so moved on.

    Third Myrkur - Beautiful looking zone with the worst mob placement I have ever come across. Killed two lich's at the entrance and went to try (yeah right) to get the mobs up the hill to behave in a way you would expect when trying to pull mobs and the lich's behind me immediately respawn. Killed them again and they didn't respawn immediately. This is not fun dungeon design. There needs to be some rules in place. Why is there a section with a dragon, undead and spiders all bunched angrily together? Who is that for and what is the lore for it? Why are there super zombies sprinting around even on the lowest difficulty? As a player or even a group, how would you ever strategize doing a dungeon crawl here other than the usual drop loads of fire DoT's and run around manically healing. It's just a mess and feels like the creator thought to themselves that the only way to make it challenging was to drop as many mobs as they could which is the reality of where the PvE game is.

    Fourth the castle thingy - See above. It's just rooms with none of the fun or panache of Chillblain's. Why are skelingtons and elves spawning in the same rooms? Why does the last encounter have such a random mixture of mobs? What is the reward?

    And my rewards for all of this? Some gold, bows and the usual rubbish. Normally my visits back to the game will last a couple of weeks but after the hours I spent yesterday I have no desire to log in today. If anyone thinks the only people playing are the PvEr's then that is pretty delusional.
     
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  20. majoria70

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    These areas aren't done I hear. So to fully judge them before that time does no good imo. The devs say lots of details are not added to the new areas. They will be adding details.
     
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