Dont know were to begin

I have paid over $600 dollars for this game and had high hopes because I loved UO. The Music is Very annoying screeching violin. The Death is way to long, the player creation is 10 years old graphics wise. Game play is Very slow and Boring. Granted this is Pre Alpha, it needs a lot of improvement to sell. Maybe I will wait till beta. But as of now its a bit of a rip off. You can flame me all you want I don't care. I am playing other games that make this game very very outdated. As for one try Archage if you like crafting this games crafting is lame. Yes I was a WoW player but WoW is crap now.

 

Okay then.

Hope to see you sometime in the future, once the game finally lives up to your expectations.

 

If it does, I honestly was hoping for a Ultima Online style world where people lived together fought together and travelled together where the whole world had wonderful sights to see places to visit, I wasnt expecting a overworld map with tiny pockets of land scattered hear and there, it doesnt feel like a world at all to me in all honesty

 

yep both valid points i do miss the old way of traveling on the map since you can see the country side and mobs along the way the old ettins where pretty good for loot along the way graphics i deffently needed to get used to was so used to the old UO graphics

 

First off, you paid 600$ for a reason. I am sure you saw their kickstarter campaign, and thought "i like the sound of this!"... well that sound has not changed?
When the game gets released, then you can "begin" to call it a rip off... doing so in PRE ALPHA, is just... well...

Have faith, if you liked what you saw and read, i am sure you will like the endgame result.

 

IMHO SotA would be much better off with beautiful, modern day 2D graphics (or 2.5D, like they did in Bastion) than trying to go for full 3D experience and... well... failing miserably.

In many ways this game looks more like a trip back to 1999 with higher poly characters, and few nice shaders here and there, though in other ways - it's actually worse than some of the '99 titles (eg. interface or arts consistency (eg. Tower Village Home is godawful, Loft Village Home looks decent) ).

I didn't back it for 600$, but yes, for me it did change. A lot.
Looking at the concept arts and descriptions I was like... Oh my god, this will be an outstanding, beautiful game.
Screenshots were rather troubling, but I thought that money from the campaign will be put into a good use creating an actual graphics to the game, and what we see are all early placeholders as they simply couldn't do better with money they got. That's all nice and fine.
But now we're at release 12, and by all means: in some fragments it looks worse than it did on a screenshots (better in others, but still), GUI is a constant struggle, and many elements are just... jaw-dropping bad (eg. already mentioned character creation, or the general impression of a dead, void world with just a few "action points" here and there).

I hoped for an amazing immersive game, got something I doubt I'll spend more than 8 hours with.

Mind you - I did not play Ultima, ever, so I didn't know what to expect, but from every story I hear about it - Ultima was a game you can truly immerse with, something with a large living, breathing world. I see nothing of that here. I see animals that trigger when you approach within 5 meters, and otherwise stand still, perhaps move 10 meters left or 10 meters right, I see void, empty world that is hardly affected by anything or anyone, I see walls covered with a texture to pretend "deep forest", I see combat that's so totally and utterly unexciting that I don't even know what to say...


The only other game that somehow I can compare to SotA is Anarchy Online - but then again: Anarchy Online actually had an interesting combat and a world full of possibilities. I got totally immersed in first half an hour of Anarchy Online and couldn't stop playing in a first day. This game was truly fun and amazing experience, even for a game from 2001 that I played around 2010 (so it was already very aged title by modern standards). Shroud is just... "meh" on every fragment. Even crafting - something that I usually adore in MMOs - feels totally uninspiring with very little to none potential for future.

 

I do miss the old persistent world but after playing for awhile I realize for housing to work having a 2 scale map system makes much better sense. The developers have the freedom to update the town scenes to expand it or change it's looks for in game events and not have to worry about spacing constraints.

If the game was in one persistent world i would imagine towns to be gigantic monsters to provide enough land (and it can never be expanded) and the wideness will have to be even bigger for the world to feel realistic (It will be weird to spend 15 mins running from one end of a town to the other but only 5 mins to run from one town to another). Traveling then will become hour long journeys that will be really boring, at the end of the day everyone will just port around the map to cut traveling time and that will be a lot of wasted effort for the developers to spend time creating the wildness landscape.

Heck just look at WoW, you can get to max level without ever leaving town if you so choose...

 

honestly when I bought into this game and heard it was a Ultima Online style game but with 3d graphics I came in here expecting a Sosaria style world with an entire huge gigantic world to explore and love and live in, with cities and houses scattered as far as the eye could see, I wasnt expecting to find a map where u just click travel to X place and then u can enter into a piece of land no larger than say an old UO style Castle and then after ur done doing whatever in there you exit back out to a map to travel to the next spot, I am sorry I feel this is extremely poorly thought out and I am thankful I got to test the game this weekend before I invested any more into it. I will continue to test and provide feedback on the gameplay.

 

Thanks for the constructive pre-alpha feedback!
Perhaps bashing the unfinished elements of the game will suddenly make them finished!

 

yep true it is a bit small now. least by the time it hits episode 3 since we are both paid up to that point we will have a better idea of how big the world will be my biggest concern at this point is if one or two chars can max out every crafting option the one thing I hate if I'm in a guild is not being able to craft anything in the game that a guild member would need

 

Then you obviously didn't read anything about this game.

 

I don't know what's more annoying; the OP bashing an alpha or the white knights blindly defending an alpha.

 

You guys have to make up your mind...am I a white knight or a basher its getting confusing

 

I can say bashing people's opinions certainly wont get the game elements fixed *faster* for sure.

Have a little more patience, be a kinder person, treat other's as you would want to be treated.

Or, make the community look as bad as the descriptions of the game from above.

Your choice.

Cheers.

 

Agree.

I couldn't bring myself to test R12.

Originally, I defended some of the features I now utterly despise.

The hardest thing to learn was 'SotA is not Ultima. Nobody is ever going to make another Ultima'.

 

I just dont understand why it isnt a world though? is this just a pre alpha thing or is this the actual way the game is designed? is it going ot eventually be an actual world to explore? or is it going to be a map to explore?

if size is an issue then why not have housing on a housing server or something and then have the towns on the world map kind of like u travel the world then arrive at the town and then zone into the town? I guess its kind of the same thing but I just dont really understand not having a world to explore

 

I think the bottom line on this thread is that if you don't have the stomach to test (not play) a game in the state of Alpha, then you are better off not testing it. It can be a very painful and messy process where 'constructive' criticism is required as well as feedback on what is working well.

What isn't helpful is the continuous referrals that 'it isn't UO' or 'it isn't Ultima'.....It never was and never will be. Those games are past.....this is about looking forward and taking good elements from the past games as well as new ideas to create a fresh game that players will love.

With respect to the OP, you have pledged $600, you have access to all elements of the forum including Dev+, you have been a member since the start..........why only 58 messages when you could have been more active to help drive the game in the direction you are looking? just seems a very strange approach to create a thread like this.

 

Who exactly is defending an alpha here?
It is obvious some people have not done their homework.
I started playing this release, i saw 1 kickstarter video long ago, and even i knew the world would be nothing like UO.
Does it suck? Yeah, i'd love UO 2... but this aint it.
I hate instances, but i decided to try out this game anyways, so far, i actually enjoy myself, its 4 in the morning, and i have been playing way to long. Night!

 

I have been Alpha and Beta testing MMORPG's since Ultima Online in 1996 I know full well what it takes to test and I know full well the difference between a finished product and an unfinished product, THAT being said my question still stands, is this map setup in its current implementation the way the game is going ot actually be designed? travel on an overworld map only to drop into some city or town or run in to some random encounter and then and ONLY then actually enter into a small piece of a persistant world looking environment? OR is this just the first iteration and the game will eventually evolve into an actual world of its own that we can explore and wander freely like most other MMORPG's, you may not understand the concept but the game could actually go either way at this point so it is an actual valid question I am hoping someone higher up on the totem pole than you might actually be able to answer, IF this game is goingto just be an overworld map with drop into events like basically a Browser game then that isnt good, if it is actually going ot evolve into an actual WORLD to play in then that is something I would be interested in investing more into.

 

World map is here to stay.