Who's with me and prepared to show support?

I think at the end of this journey we will mostly all be happy. It is never a good ride unless there's a few ups and downs and I've been entertained so far, not quite my money's worth but it's getting there.
It's bad to give the players too much freedom in the direction the game takes, it's good to listen to us and take note of interesting ideas, but I'd be disappointed if they didn't develop the game with 80% of their vision and 20% ours. I think after episode 1 is released they may seriously look at some of our ideas but i imagine at the moment just getting the roof on before winter is the necessity

 

I've been showing support by opening my wallet and trying to champion this game to others.

 

I've spent a couple of hours in Ultima 4 at best just because I was curious to see Richard Garriott's design philosophy but I have not officially played any Ultima games nor have I grown up with any of them. I backed Shroud of the Avatar because I understood what he was trying to do; he's doing something that games haven't even BOTHERED to do in almost ten years. I'm not regretting my investment one bit, HOWEVER:

Everything is new to me... and here lies the issues I have with some of the arguments that come along these forums:
- "Kids these days don't ~" [insert derogatory comment on stereotypes]
- "That's how it was in the previous Ultima games"

You guys seem to take all of your Ultima experiences for granted. For a new guy, a lot of it currently seems underwhelming. The most important feature of the game (for me) is NPC dialogue and it is still lacking.

The map: I'm indifferent about it. 2D, 3D, no map... that doesn't matter. The problem I seem to have in general is the transition between a play area and the map itself. What triggers the transition and how the transition is handled needs a revision. Why is the fading based on distance from the border? Do you know what happens if the player stops moving midway? The screen gets REALLY dark and you can't tell with way to go in order to get back from where you came from. I actually got LOST in the blackness of my screen. That's not cool!

If you're going to use a map like this, how about giving me a prompt that says "Hey, you're about to leave the area. Click <ok> to go to the world map." instead of gradually removing important visual data from my view.

Combat: Combat is practically non-existent. I've seen screenshots about some card system and I've read discussions about it but, as far as I know, that's a myth! As of this writing, I'm condemning the system because, if there is one, I have yet to SEE it in action inside the game. That's bad! If there's a secret button I have to press to figure out how this stuff works, it's not an intuitive design and that kind of thing can kill games.

If it can only access it once I reach a particular level or whatnot. Why? We're supposed to test your game. Let us test it. Worry about character progression when you're in Beta!

"Get used to it" is NOT a good mindset to have as a player nor a developer; it's a deterrent to progress. If you're building an immersive world that we can interact with, then your stuff needs to be intuitive. From what I've seen, combat is "select target, right click on it and hope you kill it before you die". That alone would be intuitive enough if it didn't rely so much on the roll of the dice; something that the UI is omitting for some reason. "I can kill this spider. Ok. Oh crap! I can't hit this second spider! WHY? They're the SAME! HIT DAMN YOU!" If that's all that's in the game right now, that needs to be revamped ASAP.

Don't just make combat a way to clear out spiders in a cave. I know the purpose of the game is to not merely rely on combat but that needs to be fun! You give me 3 days a month to figure it out and to test it. That's not enough time for game that lacks documentation.

Runes: I haven't seen runes. This is what happens to new players! I'm in the same game as all of you and I don't even know what you guys are talking about. Judging from many discussions, I'm assuming it's some coded text that you find throughout the game. If that's the case then the whole discussion about runes is pointless at this stage. It would mean that the function of the runes is to make the game more interesting. It'd serve no practical purpose to game-play. Whenever they exist or not only affects flavour. Sure, flavour is an important aspect to any game.... but for an Alpha? Why have this discussion at all?

If it sounds like I'm angry, or that I hate the game or whatnot. I'm really not. I like what (little) there is right now. I just want to shake the devs a bit and have them realize that a GAME is supposed to emerge at some point, here. Right now Shroud of the Avatar is like Minecraft; it's a glorified sandbox.


This is my way of sharing my love and support. Love hurts.

P.S- Do you guys have any recommendations as to where I can find space for me to settle down and put a house? I haven't even managed to find a place to try it out yet. Everywhere I go, it's taken.

 

Tried this when it first came out and was bored in five minutes. Nothing was interactive and there was no atmosphere. Was it ever finished and released to the public?

 

lol GIX and again that's not the map or the combat. and a hearty welcome to you. You will catch up.
Being new sucks because it's like being in a foreign land. Enjoy the ride, you will see more and more and then you wont be new anymore.
If i understand you correctly when mentioning runes. In Ultima there were small runes that you could enchant to teleport you to areas
in Ultima. There was even a mark spell so you could mark your spot on the rune and name it. Then you could run off to the bank and
put stuff away and get back to your spot and whatever you were doing until your bag got too full. I don't know that SOTA will have
runes but some of us loved the freedom, but oh well the game has much more that will be wonderful for us.

 

It is an urban legend, you are correct.

The system was delayed until more of it could be implemented. So we have yet to see any of it in action so far.

I have high expectations it will be included in R7.

From what I heard, there were a number of village lots still available in some of the outlying player villages. At least that is what others said, I personally never bothered to check (except in Valemark, while testing the Town Crier conversation functionality).

Hopefully the next release the schedule will be back on track, meaning that some of the mainland will be available for population. That should help with the overload we have been seeing thus far.

 

Cool thanks! I'll check both of these out once R7 hits.

 

Never! But, ey, we can see in the back the Baron house!

 

Just to make it more clear for Gix, since he tried to figure what runes are on his own. Runes are stones, or at least in Ultima 7 they were special stones, that you could atach to places and use them for instant teleportation back to those places. Last time I used a rune was in Ultima 7 (and of course during the whole shrine cleansing on a later title) and it was great because it activated with a simple double click and made travelling way faster. To my memory there was no restrictions so any place was valid to mark as long as you had reagents for the mark spell, I don't think recalling had any cost.

 

So, yeah, a kilometer is not a mile.

A mile is 1.6 kilometers, so... 128x 128 tiles @ 2 KM (1.24274 miles) = 25303 sq. miles not 40k.

Also, the LOTRO comparison is for LOTRO Vanilla. It includes zero expansions like Moria or Lothlorien, etc...

Compare it:

http://images.mmorpg.com/images/newsImages/192010//worlds1.jpg

Which could mean bigger or smaller. Now I don't want to argue about the size of the current hexes, but it sure don't feel like 2km except maybe the open plains if you go corner to corner, but since you can't know where the corner starts....

Now I say feel because there is scant way to know except to use the /loc command. If I am going by that, then there is a serious scale issue because a minor "step" seems to come out as 20 feet. 20 feet a step? and how do I know the math? Cause I started collection coords in game since R4 and just go look under my googledocs. The intent was to feed the google map I was making, but I am still waiting on the Lat/Long to be fixed on the overland map of Novia.

And while it is cool to compare something like LOTRO in terms of accessible landscape to walk on, you are comparing an almost 100% open world, minus instances, to something that you exit hex (load), enter overland, move to next hex, enter hex (load), walk across map, exit hex (load), enter overland, walk to next hex, enter hex (load)...

That is completely crappy for the person who wishes to explore. But I guess who cares about them, right?

 

I cannot stand zone lines and how they break immersion. I want to explore what's over the hill, not run into an invisible wall while being forced to slide right or left.

Hexes may allow for more square footage and multiple instances to allow everyone to play the same "server" separately, but it totally demolishes any concept of an open world and turns the game into a glorified theme park with different attractions.

I would prefer they used hexes on the back end so I don't know they even exist and do away with the overhead map altogether. There are many ways to increase travel speed (portals/recall) if that is what people wish, but let there be one large world and not 100+ smaller ones.

 

This is assuming that we have unique scenes for every hex, and if you're going to do that then how far off are we from simply creating one seamless world?

Re-using one 2km scene for 20 hexes doesn't make 40km worth of world.

 

OP: I've given the development team of SotA over 1 year of leeway before voicing any concerns. Based on my experience as a developer for almost 20 years now and having monitored the development of countless games over 3 decades as a PC gamer, I'm legitimately concerned about the direction this game is headed in.

 

If you have really worked as a software developer for twenty years and understand how game development works, you would understand that one year is not at all a whole lot of time for a small team to develop an entire game even of the calibre proposed for Ep. 1 from the ground up using a not so spectacularly refined tool as Unity. What this team is doing is very impressive by industry standards.

 

Size in games are relative. But I had in my memory just one fact: The Daggerfall map was WTF big.

 

I disagree with that notion.

Actually, game studios with similar resources make vertical slices of projects to much higher quality standards in much shorter amounts of time on a regular basis to get funding from publishers.

For over a year of development, SotA is not impressive at all in my opinion. I did not expect the game (episode 1) to be complete in 1 year, but I expected something more promising than what they have come up with.

From here, it's going to take a lot more work to achieve the quality standard I expected of them.

If we were talking about a team of amateurs, I would not disagree with your argument.

 

I can't show support with my wallet... coz' I have none... T_T
hopefully, writing about it in my blogs and uploading gameplay videos are enough to be considered as supporting the game...

 

The dev's are not new to message boards, they realize for every vitriol filled post now there are thousands of us who are willing to wait for an actual game before we start complaining non stop about it!

 

I should mention the technical side of the team has done a pretty good job so far in making progress on the technology for the game.

But the design, direction and vision of the game is something that was underdeveloped to start and has been taking far too long to pin down.

The game's story and flow is also something that I perceive has held up a lot of the development. Richard cited it as a reason to hold off on art production quite a while ago. A novel does not a game story make.

The weakest parts--where things are most lacking--is with the art production, world building and content generation. I believe we should have seen a solid year of art production happening right after the Kickstarter, not only of concepts but 3d art assets, enabling world building and content generation to ramp up greatly, but instead we've seen very little. The early boost they got from Unity Asset Store purchases and crowd-funded assets can only get them so far.

The whole thing gives me the impression they are learning on the job.

 

I know that constant complainers here on our forums that have nothing but contempt for our game don't help future funding which is the only way any game can afford any upgrades to achieve what we all desire to see in RG's vision. "RG and his team of innovators have always put out the best of PvP and online worlds" by which all other games now mimic. Constant complainers are nothing more than game killers from other games in disguise as SotA supporting players. Then there are those that just think it's cool to constantly rant to feel empowered which took the bait of the industrial saboteur. This type of posting behavior only costs our game $, but the real pledges keep coming in so I guess the industry harassers are just pumping up the volume on our forums now.
I've seen the saboteurs come and go here on our forums, every industry has them...
~Time Lord~