Steam negativity being a chip on SotA's shoulders

Just read through some reviews on Steam and while I'm usually VERY composed I couldn't help but get a little upset. This is usually not like me and while my girlfriend yells at me I usually just sit there and stare at her until she runs out of Steam.

It pains me to think that so many people are relying on these negative reviews to decide whether or not to buy the game. The comments range from "nothing ever gets better" to "devs don't listen" to a wall of post someone posted about the game that everyone is thanking him for saving them $45 on this train wreck.

This thread topic is about two things and two things only:

1.) If you haven't voiced an honest review of SotA on Steam yet, please do.

While SotA still had a Mostly Positive 71% rating on Steam, these often get drowned out by the other reviews, many of which are very dated and from people who played for 1.2 hours.

I'm not saying post anything except for your honest feedback on your personal experience with the game.

2.) I tend to get a chip on my shoulder very easily and if told that I can't do something I'll usually go bat-**** crazy and make sure I do it earlier and better. This is the reason I admire @Themo Lock so much because he's like me x10.

I think this is the mindset we all need to have - Devs and community alike - to continue to strive to make this a GREAT game and ensure it remains one for years and years to come. Those that thought differently can only then be wrong.

Cheers.

 

Good point. I'm gonna put up a review when I get time, this game deserves to get some good publicity. Sota is an amazing game that is still sprouting and has not flowered just yet, but I can't wait to play it when it blooms!

 

There have been a lot of people who say they are waiting to post a positive review when the game launches so they can be objective about the state of the game.

To that I say, you can edit Steam reviews later and it marks the version of the game you're currently reviewing.

There were a lot of people who wrote fairly unfair reviews because SotA isn't the type of game they're looking for. It would be nice to see those countered with honest, objective reviews.

 

Whatever gave you this idea? The world is full of negative ppl, but the positive ppl out weigh the negative by 71%, so I wouldn't worry about it...I have already posted my review, and commented to other's negative reviews, and have had my comments deleted by the reviewers themselves... So I don't put much weight in what they say, all I can do is give them a "Thumbs down" for their review as they can't change that...

If all it takes is a negative review to turn some 29% of the ppl away, I say Good riddance, we don't need that kind of ppl around... They will never be open minded or back the game, so they will always be complaining about something... It's such a small %, why worry about it...

 

I understand your concern. I did my part by writing a positive review. It does say mostly positive at the moment, which is good. It would be nice to hit the extremely positive rating. I know how I feel about the game; while some do not see that the Steam rating as a big deal, I see it as it could possibly attract/deter potential buyers. Extremely positive ratings pick up impulse buyers; I know I have bought a few games/ programs just for that alone. I just want to see this game succeed. IDK how I feel about the ability to give an unfinished product a review... I don't think it's fair either way because we truly don't know what the finished product is going to be.

 

Personally I am not worried about the Steam reviews now, once the game releases I think the reviews will be better.

 

I already do my job Sara
This my assume only while they feel negative about this game.
1)Many people on steam never know SOTA have website community and make they feel alone .
2)Actually Steam forum not help anything to solve their problem or give any advice to buy this game because I am who one like to discuss about game when I decide to buy it and if that forum already dead (low active) make me feel maybe many people discard that game because it not attractive to play.
That what I figure

 

Well I hate to say it, but the negative reviews are usually funner to read.

 

This game is an unfinished product that I believe will develop into an amazing one. Most of the people writing reviews for SotA on steam are kids or immature adults who don't understand what pre-alpha means. Indeed, $45 would be a waste of money if SotA were a finished product, but it isn't finished.

I wouldn't worry about it though. If SotA is a finished (loosely) and good game once it launches, then positive feedback and support will follow.

 

I just posted my review. Feel free to thumb it if you want... Here it is.

It's crazy to read through the negative reviews here of a game in Alpha! People are complaining about things that could change many times over before release.

I'm going to focus on the game's potential and the team behind it.

I played this game in 10/2015. It quickly hooked me and I spent a week straight playing the game. Crafting, leveling and trying out countless different glyphs (spells/abilities). You can mix and match from any glyph tree and certain glyphs can be combined with others to create more powerful abilities. As a death mage, I had an undead skeleton warrior to fight for me. Add a glyph of enlightenment and you summon a more powerful skeleton mage, who is more effective against armor.

With crafting, you do not have to grind through worthless recipes to level. You can "discover" recipes and craft only what you want.

Having said all that, does this game have bugs? Yes, of course it does. But it is WAY more playable than any game I've played in Alpha. The head dev was talking about playing his game for 8 hours straight because he was having so much fun. It's a very good sign when the head dev likes to play their own game.

The company developing this game is doing everything to stretch every dollar they raise. And Lord British put up his own money as well. When they moved offices a week ago, they didn't even hire a moving van. All of the devs moved themselves and some local fans came to help out. That is someone who respects crowd-sourced money and a good businessman.

Let me compare this to Star Citizen. I donated to SC when they had $16 million dollars. The dev team was in a cramped basement and they needed to move. They moved in to an office withn huge glass windows, a huge porch that ran the length of the building. No doubt the rent on this place is incredible. Same with the SC offices in California. Talk about high rents! To me, Chris Roberts is a horrible business man and does not respect crowd-sourced money. He's acting like he has already made an epic game. CR, if SC is an epic game that makes you rich and backer's ecstatic, that is when you can spend lavishly. Right now, your game is a year late and predicted for 2017.

 

This sort of sounds like a rah rah thread where people are saying that any negative comments shouldn't be there...

That shouldn't be the case if there are things that need work or if it has changed a lot since the kickstarter(it has) and people are upset about it. If you don't like someones review that's fine, but it is their opinion.

For the record I didn't leave a negative review, but pooh poohing on someone elses review like this seems offside.

 

I'm all for helpful criticism, of course . There are people on there saying things like "PVP will suck! PVE will suck!" That is what I'm referring to.

 

>disagrees with op
>rustles op jimmies
>is called immature by op
>sota logic

I hate to break it to you but this development has not been without fault. Broken promises , scope creep, an inflated add on store and a poor combat system to name a few. Some of these warrant a poor review depending on your personal preference. It's not a war, I'm glad you are enjoying the game. The standard lines of you just don't get it or you're too immature to discredit someone doesn't wash.

 

I thought DarkStart encouraged people on steam to read the negative reviews?

 

He does. He doesn't want people buying the game unless they know what it is. That's the funny thing.

Most of the negative reviews are saying Portlarium went out of their way to lie to people to steal money by marketing a full-loot, non-consent UO clone when they NEVER said that. The reality is the exact opposite. They'd rather not have money if it meant the people buying the game were expecting something different and were unhappy.

That is what upsets me about the negative reviews. They are accusing people of dishonesty when they are being dishonest themselves.

If I saw a negative review that said "This is more expensive than most every early access game, has little content currently and less than stellar graphics" I'd mark it as helpful even though it is negative. At least the criticism would be based on some semblance of truth.

 

Of course people are going to be disappointing with an unfinished product after they pay for it and go tell the world... How can anyone not grasp that? Captain Jack thinks that if the company were confident in their product they would offer some form of limited trial of it. At some point Captain Jack wants to see that as he is sure a great many people would also!

 

I posted a thread exactly a year ago on why I was worried about SOTA going to Early Access on Steam: "I have been playing every release of Shroud of the Avatar since the first version, and I am happy with the progress it has made since then. That said, this game is far from playable to a point where there aren't many things to do and most of the game systems aren't up. I understand this because it is still early in development and doesn't bother me. BUT I know for a fact when this is released on Steam's Early Access that this game is gonna get ripped a new one. I have seen many games get horrible reviews because the game is simply too early to be released. Anybody else thought about this?" And sure enough that's almost what ended up happening.

 

Agree Galamar.

 

What is important, is that people write fair reviews.
List all the stuff you like and all the stuff you dont like and if you think overall you had a good time post it with a thump up.

Besides some strange reviews, there are all sow fake accounts from people which try very hard that sota fails.
I dont name groups or names but they are out there.

Sota has a lot of good things going on, but that said there are all sow a lot of things which let me stretch my bold head.

I have for me 3 big negative points about the production of shroud.
The one i already named is the pricing on the store page and the pledges.

Wile for hardcore fans this is something they are willing to support, and a way to get money for port, it scares people away.
From the pricing on steam, which was/is with 45$ to high for pre alpha, the really high prices on the addon page, and the pledges, which scares away most of this people.

Even when the idea behind pledges is to give a opportunity to people to further support the game, for newcomers this is hard to understand.

 

I'm still of the opinion that SotA was released way too early as an Early Access game. The game as it is now is not representative of what the "final" game will be like - at least according to the descriptions.
There are other Early Access games that are way more advanced and when you compare those to SotA you could get the impression that this is what SotA will be in the end. Let's face it, obviously there are many, MANY people you don't read the description of the game, who are not aware what SotA is going to be. They buy the Early Access and judge the game by what they see. There are those who think that this will be UO 2 because it is a game made by Richard Garriott. Of course those are disappointed as many elements of UO are not present in SotA - after all this is not UO 2 and it will not be UO 2. Then there are those who expected a single player RPG, after all this is a game by Richard Garriott who made the Ultima single player game. But there is next to no single player content in the game yet. So SotA is judged by the state it is in right now which is not representative of the final game. I think that this leads to a lot of negative reviews, too.