The game feels incomplete.

I read that statement lately, and I agree. But I wanted to take a stab at articulating what and why that is.

It's about the implied spaces.



Here we have a map of a city twith two roads, and a bunch of buildings. This doesn't feel incomplete to me.



... but this does. A shack was added outside of the city bounds. If you were to walk from the city to the shack, what's in between? Rocks? Trees? A road? Quests? Ambushes? Or is it just a flat featureless plane all the way? That would really feel like there was supposed to be something there.

So here we have the basic principle - disparate features create empty spaces that imply something should be present. This applies whether we're talking about a map, art direction or conceptual features.



I've always maintained that good art direction and consistency is more important than fidelity. The Long Dark has essentially a watercolor painting theme, and it doesn't feel incomplete... because it's done well and consistently. If suddenly a photorealistic element were introduced, that'd suddenly change.

The Shroud of the Avatar devs, at times, seemed to almost boast about having no consistent art direction, not realizing how much that'd still plague them a decade down the road.

Fidelity

I don't have any handy examples, but I'm sure we've all seen them... objects sitting side by side that have different levels of texture detail. It's a monumental task to ensure everything across the game has the same "texture density", for sure, but the fact is, with that being inconsistent, it feels like the game isn't done.

It'd almost work better to have all textures be lower quality, consistently.



Grabbing random items from the asset store creates these gaps in quality and direction. Many things were actually modeled and textured by the team, but most were whatever was on sale on the store.

Mounts and Beer

There was nothing in the game, prior to mounts, that implied they needed to exist. You almost spent more time in loading screens, than it took to run from one side of Novia to the other. Areas were intentionally small. It wasn't like classic WoW, with vast expanses that could take 20 minutes to get to where you're going on foot. That kind of expands creates an implication.

... but then adding mounts to the game, as disparate from the rest of the game as they are, that starts to imply that there's supposed to be more.

Horses are typical, and if they kept it at horses, it wouldn't have been too bad. Then came the cat mounts. Then more cat mounts. Then orbital bombardments of quadrillions of slightly different cat mounts. Or a handful, I don't remember. But adding in cats creates that implied gap - what about other types of mounts? From that point on, they created yet another gap to be filled. If they take the WoW route and add in motorcycles, then why not other machine mounts?

Cats were also now abundant as pets. Octillions of.. a bunch of new pets that were specifically cats. I'm guessing they got a cat asset bundle on sale, and therefore all new pets would be cats? More cats doesn't fill in the gaps the way that different animals would. But at least pets were an established thing already, which implied more variety.

When brewing was being introduced, my reaction was,



"So you can get drunk", I was unhelpfully answered. Brewing was just kind of... there. But adding it made the game feel like there should be a point that'd integrate and mesh and complement the rest of the game.

Instead of filling out something implied, it was something external.



Adding these two features make the game feel less complete, not more.

It's like writing a book, and just adding in new paragraphs and chapters to have the book be longer, not because they're important or complementary to the rest of the plot, and in the process, implying that's there's more to cover, because new character and subplots are tacked onto the end.

This is what we mean when we say they need to finish what they've started.

Alcohol was changed to add in buffs. These buffs were not needed nor implied by the previous state of the game. That helped it be more relevant, but didn't help the game feel more complete. The game wasn't missing yet more buffs. It didn't feel like it was missing yet more buffs. This wasn't filling a previously existing gap.

Beyond that,

• There's still a lot of mid-teir zones that feel copied, empty and pointless.
• Character progress is very unregulated and imbalanced. They even indicate that you can shoot to AL 100 within a day or so... like that's a good thing? Shouldn't 1-99 be as much of an adventure to enjoy as the rest? Instead, we have this large gap between low and high that's not fleshed out. All the new zones are high-tier, and nothing new is being added for mid-tier.
• PVP is just kind of there. There's a few things to keep people busy, but with as much PVP mechanics (and arguably an entire skill tree)... there's not much to do with it. It feels like it's incomplete.

And yet, at every turn, at nearly every one of these releases they're adding new outliers, instead of filling in and completing what's already in the game.

It's almost paradoxical - they keep adding more to the game, and yet the game feels increasingly incomplete - a rudderless visionless caking on additional layers of monetary opportunities to keep afloat for another day. That's what new users are sensing when they try the game out.

To quote Markiplier vs "Hello Neighbor"

I wanted to get that off my chest, even though I don't think it'll actually do any good. The event horizon was passed long ago.

 

Thanks for taking the time to articulate some of your thoughts on the game. I actually quite agree with a number of your thoughts on them, and others not so much. But we all have and share various opinions on various things. That was actually interesting to read.

From my understanding (you may or may not know this from reading various posts from Darkstarr over the years), the Cat creatures were the next slated selection of pets to be added to the game. And now that part is now done. As for what will be in the future for more variety of pet types? No idea.

Agree with that. It felt like it was added.... just for the sake of being added. It feels like it should have been a part of something(?) I don't know what that would be though.

There WAS once thing that Brewing was supposed to do (if I am recalling correctly), in that crafting brews was supposed to be something that could provide a profit. I *assume* through selling it to an NPC, similar to how growing cotton actually is profitable.

A flaw with the brewing process was discovered, and then the "profitability" part of it was removed (selling them to NPC's for a profit). I don't however know right now, *if* brewing is actually something profitable, or not. It actually might be. No idea, never tested that.

Agreed. It does give our game that lifeless, unfinished and dull feeling, entering into one of those zones. But unfortunately, the development time for Episode 1 is... basically over. Obviously finally un-cloning those scenes and actually making them unique and enjoyable scenes would actually be really nice. But that's complicated..... Maybe remove them? I don't think that's the right solution though.

Basically the "goal post" as it were went from 1 - 100 to now 100 - 200. It's to basically allow new people to get "caught up". I'm currently playing a completely new from scratch character on a new account. I'm currently enjoying my progression from what I'm observing and documenting from the 1 - 100 adventure (doing the 3 outskirts).

The last new scene added to the game was Grusk Factory, a Tier 8+ Adventuring Area. I consider that a mid-level tier scene? There's also The Outlaws' Run and Bunker C (anyone can enter that scene, it's on the Novia Continent).

Agreed. It's there, and that's about it. A few people still PvP here and there. What is however badly needed for that is first a robust Faction System (which I don't recall was ever a part of the Episode 1 design goal, so was never added). It is however something Chris has discussed working on, but it's very complicated. But that may come to be, some day.

 

You really nailed it there @oplek

This is the only thing I actually disagree with. I think it would benefit the devs and the future of this game greatly if they took this feedback very seriously.

 

Bravo @oplek , this is a very nicely worded critique to the game as a whole.

The main problem in my opinion is the lack of general direction, basically every dev does whatever they feel like doing. This is not creative freedom, this is chaos.

 

Mid-Level?
For those players/avatars that I know IRL a 5+ is still pretty high, especially when being mobbed.
Much of the Ep2 I can barely survive with out just constantly running with no time to really look around and appreciate the graphics.

 

What makes it worse is bugs.

BTW, I did that in all indestructible gear.

 

I think that the main issue here is that you can have someone like me AL162 with AL1 take them out on one adventure and they will hit 100AL in 1h. with no level restrictions on anything it makes for easy leveling. Even gear. I can take my 160 Enchanted/MW gear and hand it to a level 1 and they can truck through zones solo like its easy. Not sure on a good fix would be but but think that this should be looked at a little.4

 

That's kind of a specific case. I'm not grouping with anyone, and just using NPC bought weapons and a shield. The sense of progression so far, feels satisfactory to me. And this is even without double xp on.

If a low level player, however, wishes to engage in groups, they will most definitely start going up levels and gain xp, at a pretty damn high rate (In a high level scene with high level players). This is at least a form of encouragement to actually group with players.

I don't really see that as an issue, as that is entirely up to the player to decide for themselves. They can choose to not be in parties, or choose to go into parties with higher level players. OR even, group with closely similar level players. It is entirely, and totally up to the individual player on how to decide how they wish to advance.

 

Very well thought out and articulated post.

I guess we all wish things were a bit more polished and fleshed out. I could deal with low fidelity/high fidelity items if the systems in place let me go about my business (whatever that might be on any given day).

I understand the dev team has some Ep. 2 goals that want to be met, and that's fine. However, they really should consider adding more dynamic events for players to just spend time in. One thing I keep bringing up is overworld encounters. There was a time the devs seemed to be showcasing what that could entail when the overworld had a bunch different monsters on it - remember the dragon by Britain? We got the Lost Vale around that time, I think. Which was unique and fun and challenging. I was hopeful we'd be getting a lot of varied mob encounters in the overworld. Maybe things that were dynamic. I mean, we got the town invasions, which seemed to be going in the right direction, but those got played out and happened (at one point) almost in every town constantly - so much so that they added a "Bypass" option in the menu.

Dynamic things like this I know take time to make. Maybe they don't have the resources anymore. But it'd be a nice thing to add more varied overworld encounters and some other types of random but repeated events to spice things up.

And, of course, they need to focus on those mid-tier zones. There was a time they were on a cadence of re-doing zones that WERE copies of other zones. I think they completed that, but they just left a lot of those zones bare or less inviting because there wasn't much to do there. A shame, too, because not everyone is 100+. I've been at like 113 for a year now. I don't grind regularly, so that's my own fault. But the gap seems so huge. Catch up is not really in my DNA.

 

As someone that has followed the game from the beginning, the best way I can sum up the current shortcomings of SotA is that when the project began promoted as game X, the funding and talent they received was sufficient to make game Y and behind the scenes, those at the top really wanted to make game Z. The gaps between X, Y, and Z are the source virtually all major issues. The gaps between X and Z is what drove away thousands of original backers. The gaps between Y and Z is why the game has dozens of types of fish and clothing dyes, but the combat experience for archers is just backpedal and shoot. The gap between X and Y was, probably, the justification for attempting to make Z in the first place.

Y could have been a good game, maybe even a commercial success. Leave the world twice the size of the Hidden Vale, limited to no multi-player, make it a tight 50 hour experience tops and have it out by the end of 2015 or Q1 2016.

X could have been a good game, maybe even a commercial success. Making it would have required making a deal with a publisher, but RPGs were all the rage back then, so finding one that wouldn't have require too onerous conditions might have been possible. Keep the world the size of episode one, have optional, but complete coop mode and add some PVP, basically what Elden Ring did, but eight years earlier, and aim for 200 hours of content but have the three quests for the artifacts done in any order, but one at a time with changes depending on the order to give the game some replayablity. Release late 2017 or early 2018.

Z was the issue, it required far more resources than X or Y, though it did allow for alternative funding methods. However, back when the dev team was public information, it was clear they were never able to staff for it. I'm sure progress towards Z was fine until the money gave out, then came the soft launch, prioritizing fund raising over progress towards Z, etc., and given the March of technology progress towards Z was outpaced by added time to make Z commercially viable at completion.

Honestly, making and releasing Y with the promise that the twenty thousand some odd backers would have gotten the follow up Z for free, even though I think Y could have been made to cover the promises of the Kickstarter, was the way to go, hindsight being 20/20. It's basically the model 38 Studios tried with Kingdoms of Amalur, but by design, not as a desperate move once the money ran out.

 

I'm no artist, but indeed, I think my word to describe what's missing is continuity "sprawl". Not much, just a dash more here or there would do in most cases here in our current game development. Sprawl and Blend seem similar cousins.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f.../wishlist-requests.161778/page-9#post-1344707

I'm now depending on Thailand's recently legalized substance to help me excuse what could be better arranged or configured here in our game. One thing that does come to mind is so much pristine seems to amplify our few long term blemishes.


SOTA, "You're pretty when I'm drunk"
c/bloodhound gang 1995 ~Time Lord~

 

Could you give us a specific sample or two of what you call "continuity sprawl" ? @Time Lord

 

@oplek Damn… and Damn, it’s easy to recognize a brilliant mind when it decides to reveal its self.

can’t say anymore the chats I post in always gets locked.

 

In our game, Ardoris is a good example: Asian styling isolated with no surrounding instances which have any "outskirts" from Ardoris. There should be a touch of Ardoris style (plant, tree, structure or statue) in all of Ardoris's near by instances. It doesn't take much, even just a piece or two here and there, as if a real Ardoris's countryside. There seems less "urban country" than there should be throughout our game.
There are some, as a few of the instances outside Owl's Head, but more often then not, not enough to represent a major city's sprawl. A place like Ardoris for example, which should be done in the style of the major city the minor hunting instances surround.

Sprawl is only a few pieces or structures that can be found just outside most modern cities as well as old ones, where the culture of the farmer, or urban outlander has attempted to bring civilization in failed or strugling state where it was abandoned and left where it stood.

Ours is a world where most have been driven back to embattlement walls, yet what they left behind should be still seen, in the same style as where they ran to.
We have allot of open countryside and forests, which before should have been inhabited and therefore have representitive sprawl left behind in the wake of the abandonment.
~TL~

 

I remember a 4 page post in what the water texture should look like to make our game feel more complete. Players like to think about the game in our spare time and I always think that's a great thing about our game and the pace at which it's crowd funded developed. A player can't do that with a finished game because what there is always will be and nothing more, yet with Shroud, thinking about game development is an extremely healthy pastime and contrasts well with thinking about our player dungeon development or POT deco designs.

SOTA is a designer's game built to design and talk about the designs of all things, because the more interested in design we become, the more we will buy from our store to design with, because our store is full of nothing but design stuff.

It's in this way that everything everywhere is incomplete and what seems somewhat complete, we as players are comparing what we see to the dreams we want to see and from those wants come the manifestations of what can or might be able to be done.

Shroud of the Avatar is only 20% monster bashing and 80% SOTA deco designing.
It's our deco designing that drives our needs and desires to go monster bashing.

It's a dream world, and we dream in designs, even when we're not logged in, we're still thinking of the game, not monsters, "but designs".
~Time Lord~

 

I don't disagree with everything you wrote, but though I always disliked tiny zones, the zones didn't need to be large to justify mounts with the original design of the game, because they would still come in useful for the travel map, and in cities for saving time in traversing areas. What happened since then is you can teleport anywhere and everywhere and chug potions to increase your travel speed. Thats why mounts seem pointless. And pack animals will seem pointless when they're in because everyone can carry endless amount of things without them.

I also think the current dev focus on player quests is odd given that that was geared towards RPers, and because RPets like immersion, the change in design of the game has pushed away a lot of RPers from wanting to invest time and effort in the game.

And of course its the same thing with Shardfalls feeling pointless, or control points feeling pointless, or a hundred other things.

So a lot of the current dissonance that you're talking about is simply because they designed the game to be one way, then all of the sudden changed direction. So they're building a house on a foundation designed for a totally different house.

And IMO this is the way its going to stay.

And I still think it would have been much better if they stuck with the original design and spent time to make it work. Of course I'm partly biased because I liked the original design direction, but I've also noticed all of the things that dont really quite work just because they changed what they were doing midstream.

I also don't know if the devs really feel they can do much else at this point but work on it on this level and hope things work out. I know there's a lot making it in the game now that would have previously been rejected due to quality standards. Why is that? I don't think they have the same luxuries now that they used to have.

 

The direction changes were sort of all natual direction changes...

As Starr rightly said, "it's allot like making sausage" and single ingredient effects the entire plan heading forward.

Like any planned build within a POT, knowing what's needed and then looking at funding those POT build needs, comprimises are like the fleas that come with the dog, we paint the scene as best we can with the amount of paint that we have, not the amount that we need.

That's why I've been a sausage maker in my own designs ever since Starr said that, in not expecting each outcome that was planned, but expecting the outcome where the build may take me to see it's completion.

Starr saw every bit of what went into Ultima Online all those years he was with it, which was from start to finnish. He wasn't a programmer of any note but he was one of Ultima's greatest creators who had eye witnessed, seeing many things through. Rather than a plan with a definitive outcome, he knew better in his wise creative words of creation, he knew it was making sausage which is not a definitive outcome.

Currently I likely have the largest collection of fog generators and fireflies, not to mention the largest collection of dirty rolling pins, teleports and conversationalists, but making it all into good sausage is a very difficult thing.

I still have yet to program all the Thai Food recipes into all the conversationalists for the final outcome of a "Som Tum" quest because ...

"It's all sausage!"

~Time Lord~

 

Then, pick a freaking sausage recipe and stick with it. Lol had to.

 

That's never going to happen when players attempt to turn anything they can gain control over into slightly more gaudy Las Vegases.