Is shroud a game

Exactly.

The thing that attracted me to shroud in the first place was that it would have oldschool values where things took time and progression was spread out over many months unlike the vast majority of MMO’s these days where in some cases it’s possible to hit the level cap and gear in a week or two.

 

If only the world wasnt full of easy to play, easy to understand and easy to do whatever MMO's. The point why people ask to stop being taken by the hand is simly that...enough is enough. Activate ElderScrolls online and woooo...of you go with an easy to play game. Thing is that ES became free to play in under two years simply because...people realised that there are no more surprises in it.

Dont take me wrong, I am not saying your point is not valid or telling you to go elsewhere. No! But open your eyes...the world is full of easy games...and I, for my part, I dont want SotA to become just the next game people stop playing after 2-8 weeks.

 

thats a clear +1

or put otherwise, if I ever find a YouTube vid showing lvl 1 to 50 (or the SotA version of it) marathon in under 24 hours...I know the time has come to look for another game.

 

In fact it is "Stable, Fast and Fun, in that order."

 

First of all, I'd argue that SotA isn't a game yet.

I'd also argue that "I have a life" and "I have a job" are no excuses to have things handed to you with little to no effort. If that's how you feel (and I'm not suggesting that this is the case), take comfort in the fact that the game will last longer and, chances are, the content won't get old or repetitive.

With that said, as much as I want a challenge, some people's idea of challenge is forcing the players to run around with no indication of where to go what-so-ever. They fear that conveyance can only be done with "quest arrows"... or they think that challenge is allowing low-level characters to pick up quests that make you go up against monsters that are impossible to defeat because they enjoy facing a brick wall for no reason.
... none of these are actual challenges, they're just bad design hidden behind a "talk to every NPC possible" or "grind more".

 

The harder the better imo.
I like my games to give me the old slap and tickle.

But im odd I suppose, I Love hardcore games.
Rogue-likes, Dark souls, Dayz.

The thrill of death and loss can be highly addicting weirdly enough.

 

Never played DayZ but I absolutely LOVE Rogue-likes... and hate, hate, hate Dark Souls II's design despite liking it's predecessor.

There's one boss in DS2 that swallowed all my gear and forced me to punch the damn thing for 12 minutes. That isn't fun.

My biggest gripe with the Souls series is a lot of the challenge is dependent on your understanding of the various stats (and they don't bother explaining any of them) and there's a crap ton of them. You might be saying "Yeah but Rogue-likes do this too!" but 1) Rogue-likes don't have as many stats, 2) Rogue-likes have the decency of changing the layout and encounters each on each attempt.

Worst of all is the targeting. Worst thing ever. In a game that heavily relies on it, having monsters that jump, !@#$ up your camera's orientation and then lose the target-lock is infuriating.

Those are the kind of "challenges" I don't want in the games that I want to play... Especially in a game like an RPG where I shouldn't be funneled into a specific way of dealing with monsters. My point is, we can't use broad strokes when talking about what's challenging (or what game is) and what isn't. The Dark Souls series, for example, is challenging but are some of those challenging elements there for good reasons? A fair amount of them yes but others, not to much.

 

The problem is a certain sect of the community equates time spent grinding to skill. As if you earned something spending excessive time in a game doing repetitive mindless grinding.

I understand the logic we don't want everyone to be GM overnight. We also don't want our playerbase dying off due to heart disease and a multitude of other health issues due to excessive sitting. Fact is long sessions of sitting is as or more harmful medically than smoking. Fine line to balance fun with rewards. We need to be able to log in an hour per day and see progress.

So please for the health and sanity of the community, everyone stop pushing excessive grinding to accomplish anything.

 

Aye, I like challenge in a game but grinding on mobs to no end for experience is not challenging and/or fun gameplay for me.

 

What I see is that many suggestions are simply to make the game harder with no thought to giving players something to work toward. Simply making the game harder to play will not help it in any way.

 

And this is where I think most (if not all) RPGs are flawed by concept:

• Typically, a lot of an RPG's challenge is based on your character's numbers vs your opponents... meaning if the content is too hard, then it's more or less expected of you to compensate your short-comings by increasing your numbers (aka: gear and/or grind).
• If you remove the numbers out of the equation, then you find yourself with the issue that you should be embodying a particular character... so the game theoretically shouldn't rely on the player's reflexes.
• So the only real challenging game-play that you can <reasonably> offer is through puzzles; and the enjoyment of doing those puzzles heavily relies on your ability as a developer to think of multiple ways to solve them. Giving the tools to the players to come up with solutions of their own. There's a reason why we don't see these as often, because developers tend to be really bad at this... especially since it's important to let the players continue to play and enjoy the game (doing other quests/activities, etc) even if they can't solve them immediately.

Beyond those points, you're left with moral dilemmas that RPGs can confront the players with. As rich and interesting they may be for the game, those offer very little game-play... making the game less attractive. They amplify the game's experience... if you got nothing to amplify, you still end up with nothing.

 

Level and gear grinds are what killed the MMORPG. The never ending hamster wheel of one more level or one more piece of loot is dying along with those gamers spending the exorbitant amount of time to compete.

Fact is spending 8+ hours per day playing a game while sitting will kill you. Especially considering the population in this game skews older.

So why would anyone support an endless leveling treadmill? Make the game FUN and provide meaningful reasons to play and most will stay. Requiring endless loot and/or levels to reach some pinnacle of virtual success and you are killing your players and the game.

There should be incentives to only grind a few hours per day such as bonus experience pools. Perhaps 2 hours of bonus experience equate to 8 hours without. The bonus can accumulate for a week to encourage a day of extended play. The same should apply for crafting experience.

Right now the game is far too grindy and this is with the 4x bonus.

Time spent sitting and playing isn't earning anything of value and costing you years off your life. I hope the Developers take the health concerns seriously.

 

Disagree. What killed off MMORPGs was a lack of innovation while developers tried to copy WoW under the demands of the money men to cash in.

The genre is coming back to the people it belongs to being relaunched by developers who love the games and aren't just trying to cash in. I'm just surprised Raph Koster isn't doing something similar.


For people coming to SotA it needs to be underlined that episode 1 is implementing the foundations and a limited feature set. Especially now, judging the game to come on what's in place is like looking at a pool of concrete in the ground and making your mind up on that about what the house to be built on top of it will be like.

 

Why are you guys talking like MMORPGs is a dead genre?

 

Well I don't see it as that it needs to difficult as much as detailed. So to bring up some points mentioned that I've mention at an earlier time of development. The difficulty of the quests for example is not as much that they are difficult but fun. They may not be doable just like you must kill so many of something, but the quests will be completed over time as you discover clues. Hopefully we have many of the such detailed quests.
Also not only quests are detailed but more detail and interest on how you even learn to do combat and moves and magic. We have to search for trainers and perhaps some ask us to do a quest to get better at it. I hope more details like that are coming.

So regarding my thinking on quests Perhaps you fish up a note in a message in a bottle that says 'Please help!!! I have been kidnapped by bandits and am being held someplace dark and damp feeling'.
a)So you don't know who has been kidnapped so you may have to ask around about missing persons.
b)you don't know where he was taken, so you may need to ask around about bandits and hideouts.
c)you don't know where the person was taken from location wise, perhaps a clue was dropped at the scene of the crime.
d) You don't even know if the person kidnapped was a man, woman, or how old they were.

So where to start, well it wouldn't be like ok go kill 50 bandits, well unless a clue you discovered by a camp lead you to the camp. Then you might find something perhaps even the body of the person you were trying to help, but earlier you during your research you had discovered he had a sister and talked to her. She was looking for him and gave some more clues for you, perhaps even offered you a reward, well let's hope lol.

So my point is if you have interesting journeys through the game either by quests, fun and engaging combat, and rewards and incentives to play and to keep playing then the game will have longevity. At this point not much is in that will give that to someone. So we make our own.

The Sandillox Wrestling event was so much fun as an example of fun things. I am not a Wrestling fan but I am surrounded by them and it was adorable and engaging. So perhaps I am a Wrestling fan now. lol The dialogue was extremely funny and watching the moves the Wrestlers made and seeing them walk out to the ring or rink hmmm lol was fun, they were flexing their muscles and cheering and the announcers were describing them as they came out with fireworks going for each contestant. So we engage ourselves now and then later we choose our engagements as the game develops.

Edit oh so many typos and fixed for clarification. I was on my phone. Sorry.

 

It's a good thing I break that up by playing ice hockey 4, 5 or more times per week.

 

Oh no!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/health/sitting-will-kill-you/

For the lazy, I'll quote the take away:

"The studies showed sedentary behavior can lead to death from cardiovascular issues and cancer as well as cause chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes.

Physical inactivity has been identified as the fourth-leading risk factor for death for people all around the world, according to the World Health Organization.

Prolonged sitting, meaning sitting for eight to 12 hours or more a day, increased your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 90%."

What killed the MMO genre is the endless treadmill perfected by WoW. Don't repeat the same errors in our game. Make the game meaningful and fun without an excessive grind. Not everyone can be Themolock. The excessive grinders should not be the only group providing input into leveling design.

No offense @Themo Lock , but you grind too much and are skewing the data.

 

Anything that gives you a Feeling of Ever Camp or Wow needs to be on the cutting room floor. anyone that requires more than 2 groups same thing. This is a RG game and that's how it should feel.

 

Welp, I'm *munches on a frosting covered hoagie* screwed. Between work and gaming I spend about 16 hrs a day on my butt...