SOTA: Opinions on the product so far.

I'd like to know is how people interpreted the KS.

I envisioned a U7 style adventure in a 3D world, nothing ground breaking but full of that old Ultima charm that opened up into a sandbox world after you finished the story. Where you did the multi-player stuff and extra quests and pvp. I thought UO style pvp too. Selective multi-player seemed cool though I wonder how the tech works. Thought I'd be playing with the pvp crowd and those into the more open world thing and surprise of enemy players. Wanted a siege perilous style for my multi-player component. Which I understood was possible coz you round only see the players who suited your tick box / style.

Ultimately it was all words with very little info on actual implementation. The warning signs were there.

I read how they were using unity so the community could add scenes so I imagined new dungeons adventures popping up each week crowd funded similar to the forge in neverwinter online. It was also they could quickly make the game and content.

I didn't expect super amazing graphics just solid story and game play. What I came to expect from Ultima.

Now for me the idea of scenes being made by the community was the best idea. It allowed devs to work on the key components of the game and not stress but content. It's worked well on other games and been proveno to work. This is just one of the broken promises from the Kickstart. If player content is being produced it's not openly shared or linked to. I loved those scene competition back in 2013.

Anyway I've rambled.

 

Oh a remark: The last update did show a Solo Instance they made - so actually a good sign.

 

Is this not you also claiming to speak for others? You say 'most of us are having a blast play testing' as if you are the consensus speaking for the majority, sounds exactly like what you accused him of.

Factually, there are plenty of people who are not 'having a blast' as evidenced by the multitude of threads of disappointment, confusion, and dismay. I don't claim to speak for them, their own words in the abundance of threads are sufficient.

 

I expected something similar. Let's say it like this:
I expected to play an Ultima-7-like single Player RPG in a interactive, "living" world with NPCs going about their business, companions that join me, help me, have their own personalities, a great story with interesting quests full of decisions that alter the world and the story. Let's say something like The Witcher 3 without the fancy graphics and the cinematics.
But you can also add some friends to play with you or even play online sandbox-style with strangers.
This was the impression I got from the Kickstarter.

Right now my impression is that we play an MMORPG and you can deactivate seeing other players. Something like WoW without other players...

 

Indeed we're getting closer to beta, but let's all remember the majority of the features are not implemented yet. Patience and feedback will deliver the product you want. Develop your suggestion and make it known on the correct forum.

Cheers

 

This was not only what I expected, it is what drove me to pledge to dev+ in the first place. The complete drying up of all crowd sourcing (aside from music and the participation of a very select few community members) is definitely a sore point.

 

I interpreted it as what they were describing "a single player game with online aspects", but I also watched all the following Dev Hang Out videos explaining how development worked (they were doing it quite often, but now it's once a month)... and what their "visions" were for the game...

1- they needed to get major systems online (not to be confused with the internet) because there isn't much difference between an "OPO' game and a "SPO" game. they don't need the internet for SPO... But all the systems need to be there (and not to be confused with a "final" version)...
2- they explained that they were using the "unity engine" to build this game, I know what that means, I went over to their site and watched their presentations...
3- they have always said this game would be the "spiritual" successor to the "ultima" series, not and extension of Ultima Online, not a sequel, but in the spirit of, in the style of.. Because I understand "copy right laws", I understand RG sold his interest (for quite a lot of money) to EAGames... But this guy has so much talent, so much vision that he wants to do it again with a completely new concept...

I feel they're complying... and it just keeps getting better... IMO...

 

Watched the Video

Read the comments

Pretty sure I'm getting trolled here. Logical Fallacies out the wahhzooooo for your arguements, the 1.5 second delays are too much for you to handle...

This is just trolling. Trolling hard.

 

Watched the video and i liked it.
He made many valid points, expecially about combat.

I like the current quest system and the overhead worldmap thought.

 

Lathiari,

Your review is spot on.

Hoping the developers listen to sound critiques and make the final tweaks needed to really release an amazing game. Sooner the better with regards to the combat issues. I simply can't enjoy combat, and tend to avoid it completely.

 

Critiques the game because his preferred combat style (locked) has a penalty... tries to show it, fails, and brushes it off with "well my character is high level" when he's is in Ravensmoor (a zone you can't do at lower levels). You actually took the time to showcase both combat styles for comparison: ergo, that penalty isn't so bad is it?

Besides, if you remove the random drawn abilities, you'll still have that "penalty" of yours... why would abilities suddenly be less expensive?

Also, that's a balancing issue.

The only thing I agree with is the idea that asking everyone in town whenever or not they have a quest is questionable... and clunky. But I actually like not knowing where the quests are... or that if I move on from an area, I won't have this constant feeling that I skipped anything because there's no mental checklist of quests if you don't have an idea of how many there are in any given area.

 

@Gix I can't be mad at you for being upset of my claim of having a problem with the penalty to locked combat because I was in-fact WRONG. I have stated many times in this thread that I was wrong and even went so far as to add an annotation in the video to correct that misinformation please keep up. Before this release there was a penalty to locked combat which resulted in losing allot more focus than those using the random, I was running on old info. Please also keep in mind that allot of the things I bring up in this video are from the perspective of someone who has limited exposure to the game, this is yet another reason I have gone out of my way to state 1000 times that this is simply an OPINION piece. That said, I think it's important to look at this video in the light of "well here is what a new player might think of the game" which would ultimately result in showing that the game needs to do a better job communicating things to the player. For instance, there was no way what so-ever for me to know that Ravensmoor was a high level zone, I simply saw the same skeletons I have seen in other areas and attacked. Beyond getting ones ass handed to him/her there is no way to understand this, as to my comments about my higher level player I was simply making an attempt to highlight that I would have a higher focus pool than a newer player and would not have to worry about the penalty as much.

I continue to play shroud daily, and my opinions will evolve over time. Currently I have flipped my character from a warrior in heavy plate to a "battle-mage" wearing cloth/leather and a 2-handed sword. I have also began using the random combat exclusively alongside the suggestions posted in this thread and I have to say it's better than what I was doing with it in my video. The combat still isn't great, but it's infinitely more manageable with the suggestions other players have given me in this thread. I now have all spells related to healing randomly drawing on '4' sword attacks on '1-3' and combo spells/abilities on other keys. I have also locked the final 3 spaces with skills I will typically only use once per battle such as defensive stance. The "combo" system is also allot better now that I understand you do not have to "drag and drop" the ability, you simply press R followed by the corresponding hot keys. I still don't think the click to use "action" combat option is very usable, but that remains simply my opinion - I also still don't feel our current combat system is all that fun and my eyes still tend to stay locked on the hot-bar for longer than I would like but at least my outlook has improved somewhat thanks to the replies here.

Thank you for watching and commenting, I have enjoyed the debates/discussion this thread has provided.

 

IMO combat is improving but it's still awful.

 

I've been preaching this for a long time so we do agree with one another as the game practically does nothing to help out save for the (very limited) tutorial.

My biggest problem with the combat is that Free-Attack mode (which I feel is more fun than Auto-Attack) is terrible for when you're trying to use abilities that require a target... because targeting requires clicking. Tabbing doesn't target corpses... or won't allow you to target monsters too far away.

Having to deal with looking at the action bar is the disadvantage to use this system over the locked system. I prefer random because it makes the fights more intense and a good player will spend more time organizing a good deck like a Magic: the Gathering player does before entering a match.

Not enough healing abilities? Add more to your deck or remove extra combat skills to increase the odds of a heal to show up.

 

@OP One of the best things I have enjoyed about SotA has been the open development process. Everyone has strong opinions about not only this game but games in general. The problem I have with this video is it comes off very trollish to me. Your commentary went way beyond feedback or opinion. I would of expected more from a person who claims they have followed this from the beginning. SotA was never ever advertised to be UO2.

Your understanding of the combat system is was very biased. Not only has the focus penalty and slug system been redone, the random deck system which allows you to assign multiple cards to a slot which allows you to design a deck to be more predictable and fluid so you can focus on combat.

I do agree that the leashing of mobs can be a pain but I also noticed you have either didn't have crowd control in your deck and if you did you never used them in the video to know down, slow, or stun the archer.

You also failed to provide details on the crafting system which is a deep system. You were very superficial in your understand which again is surprising for someone who proclaims to have been here from the beginning.

I have been very critical of parts of the game but I try to understand systems before I comment on them. This video actually passes along a lot of miss information to people who have not heard about the game. Your video would of been much better if you showed the systems with greater understanding.

 

I'm not going to really drop much commentary - but I clicked through randomly to around 17 minutes - the 30-60 seconds I watched seemed kind of a condescending/negative tone that turned me off, and the comments on combat came as if you hadn't really done much combat or releases thus far.

1) The skeleton has "decided" we're going to fight and I haven't even moved anywhere yet! (I don't see how monsters attacking you on their own, whether it's later in the scene or on entering the scene is a negative but it was presented that way)

2) The random cards system (people are still saying cards even though it's just cycling skills and glyphs, perhaps because the abilities are square) - "as you can see you have no control over which cards come up" - that bar was a mess, you can in fact control what cards come up where by assigning them to slots. Even without locked combat - if you use 10 skills (this is more than D3 gives you) you can assign each to a spot. And it basically works like combat and cooldowns. I'm not weighing in on whether combat is fantastic or awful, just that it is not as advertised in the video.


Perhaps if you have had more opportunities to experiment you can do a new video? The tone for the small part I watched just seemed negative, but also just not informed - and I knew the rest would probably get under my skin if it was the same. You seem to feel combat is totally random and without control (never mind being able to assign glyphs to specific slots in the non-locked system, and combine locked glyphs with non-locked glyphs). If you have not discovered how to do this in the last few releases, then perhaps you should try it out now and create a new video or post suggesting how they can improve communicating combat to players.

 

Just a few posts above you I have already written that I have done what you are asking for. I understand that you did not want to watch all of the video and yes, I added annotations and explained that my opinion on combat was based largely around outdated info and that is my fault, however not every problem I had with combat at the time was outdated. I think I will hold off for awhile and wait for some more significant changes to the game before I do another video but this has been a learning experience for sure, when and if I decide to do another one I will make sure not to include outdated info in any of the segments.

If I were to re-do the combat section of my video now after playing with the changes provided by the community I would say the following:

"I still don't like the click to use *action* combat system as I feel it doesn't do as good of a job as the auto attack and I don't understand how it fits into the overall game. The glyph order can in-fact be locked to slots of your choosing but the timing of when the glyphs will appear in combat is still a random occurrence which can be a big problem for things like healing spells when you desperately need one. The random combat is allot better when you assign the skills to slots strategically and there is some depth here, in my personal opinion it works best when you combine it with a few locked skills as well. It is clear that the combat in SOTA still needs allot of work but I think what we have right now isn't a complete waste, just a little rough around the edges."

As for the skeleton, to each his own - I just don't believe a target should start attacking you before you have had a proper chance to zone into a new area. I also think people are calling it "cards" because of the general language used in the game with words like "deck" and "shuffle" it just makes sense to call them "cards" don't you think?

 

I really liked how I write in my dialogue, really really liked this.

My first interaction with the community was when I asked "Where the wenches at?" to which my new aquaintences replied "What means this wenches? I'm French" then he drew his bow and I thought he was going to fire a warning shot into my head.
Perfect.

Then I came across the houses and vendors scattered around selling their master's stuff.
Finally I saw some random mage summoning monsters in the middle of town.

So far I'm loving it but I'll mostly let it collect dust until it's ready to be played.

 

Well this is an old Video. There are so many changes since then.