Please stop trying to make this game so easy.

Umm no. Not only do I disagree with pretty much your entire post, but this line is especially ridiculous. Because you can see what is in your (list) inventory rather than have it all bunched up in a bag, that somehow "breaks immersion"? lol, wow...

 

I'd consider it as me having an extremely well-organised backpack.

I've seen screenshots of people's very carefully arranged bags, but I was so happy to find the list option to use instead! It was a struggle to focus on just the right tiny thing I wanted to move and manage to click and drag it where I wanted. I really don't see being able to scroll through a list of items as immersion-breaking - that's a phrase people seem to use for almost anything they don't like. Heaven forbid we should actually be able to find the item we're looking for.

 

Agree 100%.

Also, I think this whole phrase "breaks immersion" is really getting overused of late. Hey, maybe I'll start using it too. Example: I don't like the sheep roaming around in Owls Head. They break immersion. lol

 

Immersion breaking is a terribly overused term and seems to be confused with simple frustration over a game element without knowing how to overcome it or be willing to discuss an alternative.

The concept of an inventory is one such suspension of disbelief as you simply cannot avoid the abstraction of an otherwise simple idea -- to store items in a backpack.
I mean so far we have been literally whipping out tables, braziers, metronomes and giant oracle heads out of thin air (proof that all Avatars are Time Lords and we each wear a portable Tardis!). Is that making things too easy? Should we have to manually carry everything we own? How far down the Scale of Implied Toughness do we go?

From my experience with SotA, the list inventory view could be graphically enhanced a lot more to evoke the 'feeling' of a backpack. Same with the other UI windows to make them look less software-ish.
The bag style could also use some kind of sorting feature as well as a more streamlined method of transferring multiple items as the existing system is far too unwieldy for prolonged use (some cues from Minecraft et al wouldn't go astray such as numbering items in a stack, being able to 'split' stacks with a single click and drop items from a held stack). On top of that I would like Portalarium to consider a zoom feature for the bag windows so we can see an enlarged view of the bag to spread the items out.

 

Disagree it's still "Pre-Alpha" come on
i've had some post I made posted it then thought hmm no I'd better not [delete] button

 

an example of a really easy game is Blade 9... almost everything is automated... it even has a built-in bot feature that will let you play all day without sitting in-front of your machine.... just turn it on, load the game, set your bot, leave and come back later... it even distributes your stat points for you...

 

Friendly Fire is in, I just produced it in a fight against one of the lichs .

 

Removing corpse runs – A game that is punitive can turn away new players, which can kill the game early. I want this game to thrive for years to come. The most successful games in the world have no or little death penalties.

Resource nodes – This adds to immersion. Seeing a tree actually fall over when you're chopping it is nice. Gathering resources from some random place where you can't even see a node doesn't make sense from immersion.

Loot Ransom – I personally think this is a fine compromise. There is some risk in dying, but you don't completely drive new players away. RG also said something that I found interesting. I believe he said in a duel people can set the loot levels however they want. Want to challenge someone to a full loot duel? I think you'll get that chance.

Item Repair – You either turn to crafters to replace an item, or you turn to crafters to repair an item. Either way, crafters are involved. If items aren't destroyed quickly, they can gain histories and that becomes really interesting.

Gear Treadmill – Video games are a form of skinner boxes. Keeping players motivated to continue playing is important. RPGs generally have gear progression. The SotA devs have said repeatedly that they plan on avoiding the WoW model where gear is everything. They want to focus on player skill. And Ultima games typically weren't huge on gear progression. I don't think you have much to worry about here.

Inventory – It is optional, but almost necessary. In the early releases so far, it was near impossible to soft through crafting mats in my bags.

House Decay – It really seems like you want to push for systems that will drive people away from the game permanently. Real life happened and you haven't logged in for a while? As it is, you'll lose your lot. You want to push for losing every item in your house and having to start over completely from scratch? That's a good way to destroy your player base.

Friendly Fire – It depends how this is handled from balance, but when/where did they say officially there is no friendly fire?


Criminals & Murderers – We haven't heard details on other types of crime.

Overhead Map – Single scale map is simply not an option for the game.

Ghosts – You're saying there is less interaction when players are ghosts for shorter periods of time? It is harder to interact when you're a ghost. Returning people to their bodies sooner gets them back into an interactive mode quicker and actually increases player interactions.


Instancing – They haven't said how many people they can get into an instance yet. They're trying to determine technical limits. As many as the game can technically handle is what we'll get. Having one shard for the whole world arguably increases interactions. You act like they're going out of their way to make sure players never interact.

Hexes – Again, technical limitation of the design for a dual scale map that has been gone over at length repeatedly. That particular topic cannot be revisited or changed.

Most every single MMO on the planet has healthy crafting systems with no loot on PvP at all. Crafting still thrives. The argument that crafting will die without full loot has been proven unequivocably wrong with every single MMO on the market. Furthermore, since repairs are also a part of crafters, you still need crafters even if you don't lose your items.

 

Do you have actual data to back up that claim?

I'm surprised that you believe that the amount of crafters has any relation to the amount of adventurers... as if the economy is the only thing driving people to kill monsters.

A strong economy is always welcomed but it's not a necessity for a video game. You could argue that it can trivialize content difficulty but that really depends on 1) how the player decides to play his/her game and 2) how the devs decides to handle difficulty and 3) how they handle trading. I doubt Richard Garriott wants to make his game in such as way as to have item power being the de facto way to success, either.

Even then, Diablo 3 depends on item power and the economy is practically non-existent... Didn't need it back when there was an auction house, don't need it now with most items being bound on account. Hence why I say the economy is a distraction.

Also, last time I checked, this game won't have a subscription.

 

Developers have stated that crafted items will be on par or better than mob specific items. If crafted item demand drops because items do not leave circulation as a result of the protections put in place by the developers, then their value will also decrease. As this continues, there will be less and less of a need for players to adventure in dungeons for better gear. Even adding crafted items sold to vendors or looted by monsters to loot tables won’t make them any more desirable in the long term.

If you keep adding crafted items to the environment and item removal is bottlenecked, there is going to be an ever increasing amount of crafted items for the same number of players. You won’t see the negative effects immediately, which is why I always add the “long term” caveat.

Either people stop crafting because it is not lucrative, or items devalue so much to make adventuring unrewarding (in regards to loot). This will then force the developers to add loot-able items that are of better quality than crafted ones in order to incentivize adventuring. Repeat.

 

I’ll use WoW as an example.

As I recall (it may have changed during and after Pandaria, so correct me if I am wrong), crafted items were generally of medium quality comparable to easy five-man instance gear. Most items from raids and heroic instances were better than crafted items. Crafters were mainly profitable by selling gear augments and consumables.

Every year, WoW essentially purged the servers of all items by introducing highly inflated gear to incentivize adventuring, and then roll out additional raiding dungeons six months later to maintain hardcore player interest.

SotA will be different because the developers have stated that crafted items will be on par or better than looted items. They have also said that there will be occasional increases in gear to incentivize adventuring, but they don’t want the gear treadmill found in games like WoW. This means there will not be yearly purges of all gear and a bottleneck will eventually form because items do not leave the world easily.

Regarding the need for repairs from crafters – it will essentially turn into item repairs found in WoW, except players in SotA have the option to do the repairs themselves instead of going to an NPC or crafter. A repair bot is not my idea of a viable crafter.

 

If we can fit whole pieces of furniture in our bags then it seems clear to me that, if the game is to remain a modicum of realism and immersion, they are magic.

I remember that many D&D and AD&D magic bags had, as an additional effect, that the character just had to think which item he wanted, and he would grasp it. This actually makes the item list immersive, or as immersive as you can get without a mind reading module.

(Warning: the above comment may contain sarcasm )

 

Actually...

I do play games like the whole Elder Scrolls series, the Fallout series, the Baldur's Gate series, etc, with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of mods, some of them mods that I make myself. No need to hire a game designer when I can already tailor the games to my liking myself.

Part of why I'm not really fond of console games. Being able to mod the game more or less doubles the value I see in the game, and this doesn't apply to console games, unfortunately.

 

While we don't have enough information about the involved systems to have a real discussion about this, I have to say: betcha anything you're wrong.

 

They do! I mean, who lets their livestock just wander around town unhindered? They're not even marked to show who they belong to. It's unreasonable, I tell ya!!

 

Pfft. They are hired by the city to keep the grass cut.

How else do we explain those immersion breaking non-growing lawns ?

 

Magic!

 

*chuckles*

Sounds a little frivilous. But maybe magic is just that common-place in New Britannia.

"Have a weed problem? Try our brand new Weed-Be-Gone Death Magic incantation, on sale now for 199 gold! Summon us now, operators are standing by!"

 

Easy mode for Easy People

 

Aandd. Its pre alpha. Do you think people having their houses built go in during construction and complain that theres no furniture when they are still pouring concrete? Looks like you are putting the cart before the horse, sure if it were my game id make it different in some areas, but its lord britishs game that you play. Not the other way around. If u want uo then u will never have it, back when it came out mmos were new and ypu are imhabiting his world.