An Open Request to Portalarium

Not only is it harmful for the peace of mind of the person expressing such negative feelings but they never stop. Negative feelings begets negative feelings. They become a terrible habit that is almost impossible to break. Negative people will always find negative things to express in any situation. Nothing will ever be perfect because no one is ever perfect. Peaceful living requires knowing there are problems in life and in a game. Doing all one can to make the problems better and then living in the joy of today. Who knows but you may not have life tomorrow so why not chose to live in peace today?

 

I hope that you can understand the disappointment of people who backed the project during the Kickstarter phase.

This description made many believe that SotA would be something like Ultima 7, a story-driven single-player RPG with the option to go online and play together with others in a persistent world:
"Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”.

• Shroud of the Avatar is infused with rich storylines, deeply integrated into game play, developed by Best Selling Author Tracy Hickman and RPG legend Richard Garriott.
• Players will adventure in an interactive world where their choices have consequences, ethical paradoxes give them pause, and they play a vital part in weaving their own story into the immersive world and lore surrounding them.
• Shroud of the Avatar is a Selective Multiplayer game, allowing players to choose how they want to play! Whether in Single-Player Offline mode or any of three online modes, the main quest line will provide greater than 40 hours of focused, story driven Content."

And now we seem to get an MMORPG in which we can play without seeing other players. At least for me those are two fundamentally different types of games. I can't imagine WoW becoming the Witcher just because the game is played offline...

 

At what point is there any indication that single player WON'T be story driven? Nobody's seen it yet.

Ok let's look at that description shall we?

"Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII" This has nothing to do with single player or multiplayer. It is simply stating the game will have a story and they want that story to be more compelling than IV-VII. It says nothing about that story being exclusive to single or multiplayer.

"create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII" Again.. what play mode does this reference? Interactivity refers to being able to interact with objects in the world.. it says nothing about single or multiplayer.

"develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online" Yup.. we have multiplayer.

"and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”." Still multiplayer.

"Shroud of the Avatar is infused with rich storylines, deeply integrated into game play, developed by Best Selling Author Tracy Hickman and RPG legend Richard Garriott." Yeah ok.. no mention of single player or multiplayer here.

"Players will adventure in an interactive world where their choices have consequences, ethical paradoxes give them pause, and they play a vital part in weaving their own story into the immersive world and lore surrounding them." Again...

"Shroud of the Avatar is a Selective Multiplayer game, allowing players to choose how they want to play! Whether in Single-Player Offline mode or any of three online modes, the main quest line will provide greater than 40 hours of focused, story driven Content."" Yes it will have a single player offline mode AND several online modes.

Please explain to how ANY of that description specifically says any of the following.

1: Single player will be worked on first.. or finished before multiplayer features.
2: Single player is the primary focus.
3: Apart from play mode that single player has anything that multi-player doesn't.
4: I could probably go on but you get the point.. I hope..

There is NOTHING in that description that even implies that SotA is not on course to deliver their objectives.. Not a darn thing. Not one. And if truly does fall short of any part of that description we won't know it for sure until at LEAST Beta..

Edit: Oh and incidentally I'm greatly looking forward to single player offline.. and I backed during KS. and I'm quite happy with the progress as a whole.

 

The mention of the single player games alone is an indication that the single player series is meant. If someone says "We are doing a story more compelling than Ultima VII" then I think of a single player game as - let's face it - no MMORPG has a good story or a good way of telling a story, which is simply due to the fact that it is nearly impoosible to tell a great story in an MMO.
Again Ultima VII is mentioned in terms of world interaction which again makes the single player game appear in my mind.
The mention of "rich storylines, deeply integrated into game play" as well as "choices have consequences, ethical paradoxes give them pause, and they play a vital part in weaving their own story into the immersive world and lore surrounding them" scream single player game, as choices and consequences don't work in an MMO.

The mention of story, world interaction as well as the single player games BEFORE anything related to multiplayer gives the impression that this the focus of the game. But we see nothing about this right now. Many years after the Kickstarter campaign those things which many people thought to be the focus of the game haven't even been developed yet. I remember the developers of Gothic 3 say that they just had six month to integrate quests and the story into their game and we know how that turned out. So if the story and quests etc. are the focus of the game and work on that hasn't started yet, when will the game be released? Everything right now points into the direction that SotA is a sandbox MMORPG. And now they hastily have to include the story and quests as fast as they can which doesn't make it the focus of the game anymore.

Also building a single player game on top of an MMO simply doesn't work for me because there are so many mechanics in an MMO that don't belong in a single player RPG whereas there are so many mechanics in a single player RPG that don't make sense in a MMORPG. This at least for me means that we will get an MMORPG - even in offline mode. And an MMORPG is not a single player RPG - even if you take out the other players. It will still play like an MMORPG, feel like an MMORPG and not like a single player RPG.

 

It's never good seeing people leave, especially when they are members of the community that have gone from actively supporting the game to selling off their account. Seeing such matters publicly unfold on the SOTA forums can lead to other backers questioning their support, especially when there are problems and uncertainties surrounding the game that inevitably can lead to people loosing hope/faith in the project. I think this is only amplified for the high level backers that have invested so much financially, as it's easy to get cold feet and they may wish to recuperate their funds if they feel the game isn't heading in the direction they would like.

While I do believe the delays warrant a genuine problem, I think the issues go deeper than that and resolving them is going to take time and money along with some bold decisions. This however is not uncommon in game development and as the game is being run by industry veterans with a proven track record I feel it's a pretty safe bet we'll get a good game at the end of this. Like yourself HoustonDragon I do hope this trend of people departing ceases and right now I just look forward to one day hearing a release date.

 

Making something "appear in your mind".. is not the same thing as stating that's how it will be. You have.. and continue to read a lot into it.. and that misconception is entirely on you. You're basically blaming Portalarium for your own misunderstanding.. and even if that were not the case.. you're are still pre-judging an incomplete product. We haven't seen single player.. yet you're convinced it won't be what you thought because it isn't in yet?

One should not take "impressions" as promises. Read what is actually there.. not what you want to hear. And again.. at what point are your impressions of the single player mode.. which we haven't seen.. not being met?

How are we supposed to understand frustrations born from promises not made with nothing to back them but your impressions of then and now?

I don't expect to dissuade you of your frustrations (as much as I would like to).. but there really is no reason to worry about this until you have something you can see to worry about. They've always said single player was going to come late.. now it's finally on the schedule..

 

I payed less attention to a royal founder duke selling than i did the fact that the royal founder duke account with a mark up sold instantly. The earliest of backers put money in with very little idea of what the game would be and a % of them were always going to not like the final product regardless of what direction it took. As somebody who spends allot of time helping new players, i noticed quite a large increase in both new players and old backers playing for the first time as of two releases ago. On the weekend we even see log in queues. While it is always sad to see old names go, most of them did not actually go anywhere.. they just traded their larger accounts to play on with a base pledge level. The money doesn't evaporate, the accounts get picked up (low to mid level ones extremely quickly).. its just new names living in a castle while some old names play forest hermit. It is not all that surprising that some people who have complained or campaigned for changes for a very long time would shed assets as we get close to a release that is not exactly what they wanted.

 

I think we can still hope that we will have rich storylines such as in Ultima VII. I haven't seen any concrete indication that we will not.

I am wondering about your statement that choices and consequences don't work in an MMO. So many people (not me) are upset that the pledge reward giving them three character slots for their account stipulates that these characters will have to share their reputation, making it impossible to have a virtuous avatar and an evil one on the same account. If choices and consequences didn't matter, this wouldn't be a problem.

 

Then the description of the game should have been made much more clear from the beginning. When I read articles about SotA on different websites the game is next to nowhere described as a selective multiplayer RPG. Most of the time it is an MMORPG. Why? Because people didn't understand what this game will be. They got the impression that it will be an MMORPG. I think that many people here on this forum also think that it will be an MMORPG. Whereas it says on the Kickstarter-site "Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game." So even if it is said very clearly without any doubt that this game won't be an MMORPG people still believe that it will be one.

As for why I think that the single player of SotA won't be what I think a true single player game should be like - just look at the UI. It is the UI of an MMORPG. Look at the dialogue-system. It is a chat window and not what a dialogue in a single player game looks like. The spell system is clearly made for PvP combat. The combat system itself is the combat system of an MMO... If those things stay the way they are now, SotA will not play or feel like a single player game. Other things like the graphics. At some point it was said that the graphics will not be as good as a single player game because of MMO-demands. For example too many bushes or grass would be too much of a performance hit and would allow players to hide from others (if I recall correctly). So this is another thing that is clearly made for an MMO and not for a single player game.
There will be a player driven economy but no NPC driven economy in the single player mode. The items in the offline part will be the trash that carries over from players who crafted it in the online mode - no unique hand-made items like in other single-player games.
We know nothing about how the companion system works, we had to beg the devs to include it but we know nothing about how it will work. And this is an essential part of a single player game. Also, no sleeping to advance time? Why not? This is in nearly every single-player game...What about all of those lots in the cities? Will there be houses on them? Will those be the ugly houses of the online mode carried over just like the crafted items? Will the lots be empty? How complex and deep will quests be? We don't know anything about how quests in the final game will play out. Will quests branch out? Will there be surprises? Will they be linear? Will they be repeatable? How much of an impact can we have on the game world? Can our decisions destroy whole cities? We know nothing!
At one point I asked if events would trigger quests, too. For example that a thief would run out of shop and the shop keeper would yell "Stop the thief!" But it was said that such things wouldn't work in an MMO. But such things would work in an single player game and enrich the experience. Still, we won't get it because of the MMO part...
It really seems that single player related things will make it into the game as an afterthought, without having been thought through right from the beginning so that everythings fits together...

Lets take an example:
I meet an evil Lich in the game who murdered many innocents. I can kill him or I can try to save his soul so that he becomes human again, having to live with the things he has done. How would this play out in an MMO?
Every player would solve this differently.

Or what if one of my choices leads to the destruction of a city. Would this city be gone for every player in the game, too?

You see, decisions with consequences don't work in an MMORPG as every player wants to decided and have an impact on the world.

 

I am guessing the majority of the money comes from smaller/moderate backers, not large/huge backers. I don't have the numbers but I think I'm right. Making a game for the 500 people who backed alot vs. the rest who backed a less would be disastrous. Large backers who are unhappy because the game is not what they want...the phrase 'Disposable income' obviously came from somewhere right? The next is backing a project with large amounts of money and believing it to be a UO clone or exactly what you want it to be. Expectations are innately subjective. Putting up $5k, $10k and even $30k on an unfinished project? I thought I was insane for spending what I've spent. My wife certainly thinks so. And then there is the insane amount of items out for purchase. Have you walked around the towns and villages? They are polluted with hundreds of the same objects stacked into towers, walls and cluttering up the landscape. It looks terrible. Sure the game needed money for development but dam that just looks bad. I hope town owners ask people to limit what people throw out there on their lots. Single Player chapters that can be purchased at release for far less money than what many backers have spent. These installments do not require property to play them. This entire aspect/side of SoTA is completely different and can be disconnected from the MMO side if the players do not want to engage in the MMO. So when you 'buy in' what exactly are you buying into, the SPO? Or the MMO? If you buy a town, house or decorations, I will assume it's for the MMO.

Lastly, limiting the PVP, grief factor is making alot of large backers unhappy. Thankfully for the game however, they are the few.

 

Good point Themo...anytime you can sell what you have w/o taking a loss it's generally considered a good sign!

It's possible that the people picking up the more expensive pledges having been playing a while. I think it's easy to get the perception that the support base is shrinking when maybe it is as you say....just moving chairs around.

For my own part, I too have hit a spot where I think my ingame time (which has become a little tighter of late) needs to focus more on helping the brand new player. Now when it comes to that, I'm definitely a "teach then to fish" type. I respect the approach others take but in *my* opinion I feel like it does a disservice to just load up a brand new player with a ton of cash and full gear set etc. That takes me back to Diablo 1 and my "buddy" who hooked me up (duping was THE thing at the time) with full godly stuff. In retrospect I feel it robbed me of the experience and sense of accomplishment when you do it on our own.

Anyway, as a committed backer.... I'll voice concerns when I have them (and fwiw I think my greatest strength is I'm always "willing" to be wrong) and champion causes I think will be for the greater good. For example I would consider myself to be a strong supporter of the idea of having a moderated global chat. One could be restricted to a "help" channel for the first 10 levels or so after which (and I'd have no issue seeing this as a ingame gold/addon store item) a communication orb could be purchased. I know a lot of people think that would break their immersion (turn it off DOH) or wind up being spam central but I feel with moderation.. which could be done by volunteer "staff" it would serve as a great community builder. The mechanics are in... we have a "Nobles" channel but uhh...

"Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great."
Carlo Goldoni

Let's give it a test and see how many truly Great Ones we'll unearth
Heck.. if it's a bust it's Pre Alpha for gosh sakes...easy to nix ~~~

EDIT: when all is said and done...I think it serves us ALL to figure out what we can do to make SotA a place people want to be

 

As myself being a newer backer (last week), I've been following this game for over a year just biding my time as I wasn't sure of the direction the game was going. But I have faith (maybe blind faith but still) that this will get done within a time frame acceptable of the quality that's required considering i'm still seeing interviews done etc. There is still marketing being done and the game may be in a sort of development hell but that's because in my opinion the meaningful details haven't been ironed out. Hell a lot of the posts on these forums are still talking about "skill/Class" balances and the main story quest line isn't even in the game in its entirety yet.

Do I believe summer is a good timetable? Not at all, This needs another year unless they have enough people to work on it to get it where it needs to be by summer. I believe it warrants about another good year of development. But the core systems wouldn't be able to be shifted or changed in that time or you would have to iron other systems to adhere with that direction I.E. Exp pool which I believe is pretty recent?

3-5 years, that's how long for a decent game, 3-5 years MMO or not.

 

Who's fault is it that people believe non-associated websites over Portalarium? Could they have been any clearer during KS when most of the game hadn't even been designed yet? You have to be very careful about what you promise. Portalarium isn't run by Peter Molyneux.. they're a little more cautious about what they put out there.. (Not to speak ill of Peter M.. I still love his games).. Portalarium is making good on that description as it is written. (3rd party impressions aside).

Having played MMOs and many single player games I'm not finding this to be a compelling argument.

Most single player games don't let you type in responses to NPCs.. of course it doesn't look the same. Are you disappointed then that NPC dialogue isn't exclusively clicking through like every other single player game out there? Even if it were only single player you'd still need a dialogue box of some kind. Of course it doesn't look like a typical single player dialogue.

And yet I note they work just fine in single player.

We always knew from the beginning we wouldn't have AAA graphics.. this is a moot point at best.

Says who??? We don't have single player yet and I've never heard a dev every even imply such a thing.

Of course we don't.. it's not in yet.

Who says it won't be in single player? Which.. at the risk of repeating myself.. isn't in yet.

I kinda hate to put it like this but.. now you're just being pessimistic. Note a key phrase you put out here.. "it really seems".. you're admitting here that you're pretty much just worrying because you don't know. It's pre-alpha what do you expect? There's always going to be stuff we don't know about until they're ready to start the actual work in earnest. That does not mean they haven't been discussed, vetted, debated.. objects thrown over and whatever else that happens to get the best design they can come up with.

 

Hey @Baelzebub

welcome to the zoo

 

When I signed up I expected it would take years to complete. I was thinking 4-5 years to have a good quality game completed too. It's only been a little under 3 years since it was kickstarted. I don't feel it's ready, judging by it's current state, to be released mid summer for sure. Another full year in 2016 to get it in a better state. There's still too much it seems that needs to be done. Combat, crafting, gathering, need adjustments to make it better, and a lot of content needs still needs to be added to make it feel like a game world. It's still bare bones to me. The skeleton is there, now it just needs a lot of fleshing out. The only thing at this point that would make me want to sell out and run as fast as I can from the project, is if it were released in the state it is now.

 

Remember also though.. development doesn't stop until they shut down the servers.. a new release.. every month.. from now until Lord British casts Armageddon some time hopefully years after the release of EP5.

 

I think that we would simply need much more information about all of those systems and how the single player will ultimately be like.

Also regarding the dialogues: Actually I like it that we can type in words and sentences. So this is not the problem. The problem is the look of it. It looks as if we are doing an IRC chat with the NPCs as opposed to really talk to them. You can even move around the window into some corner of the screen. This is not immersive which is the general problem between the MMO-part and the SP-part of the game. SP needs to be much more immersive than the MMO-part.
I did a mocup of how I could envision the dialogues to play out like in offline mode. But it was said that it would be too clumsy to have the dialogue shown above the heads of the NPCs and scroll or click through it. But - sorry - having an IRC chat window is clumsy too as this does not create the appropriate atmosphere nor make the dialogues immersive. It is an IRC chat....

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...an-playing-online-”.32672/page-17#post-479451

 

@Lord_Darkmoon , I do understand your frustrations. What I see in this thread is many people shouting you down for your perception of the kickstarter was stated and for you opinions on how this game is going. All feedback is good, and Portalarium needs to hear your voice. I would just aim your feedback at Portalarium and put some earplugs in to silence all the shouting down.

Now watch them attack me for supporting you.
Edited for content.

 

So disagreeing and having a discussion is shouting down and chastising from a hive mentality?

 

Well once the core features are all in perhaps they can be persuaded to make some improvements to the UI.

More information is always nice but there isn't always information to give unfortunately. With serious work going in this quarter hopefully we'll start hearing a lot more about it.