The Game Is Regressing: And Here Is Why

Yep!

Chris showed some examples of this data during the telethon and explained how they use an Elasticsearch/kibana stack to analyse this data.

The Devs are looking at this live data and will make decisions based on this. They are still developing the game and these things will change once they flesh it out some more

 

I suspect less Gold in targeted areas was the right answer, not sweeping changes that affect the whole world. Not everyone was/is farming Deep Ravenswood and Halberds.

 

Methinks thou trusteth the "data" a bit too much...just because something is based on massive amounts of precise data, does not necessarily make it valid. Think astrology. Think medical research, of which large parts could be considered useless, not because of inaccuracy of data, but because of study design and related assumptions.

In a similar vein, just because there might be some kind of vague software dev community "consensus" about the validity of "extreme tuning" for some applications, does not actually validate it in any way, let alone make it applicable to all situations. Make extreme adjustments to, say, taming? Fine. Mess up royally with peoples' ability to pay their lot taxes, in a persistent post land rush situation? That raises a LOT of questions, and for a good reason. Have I seen a single developer commenting on this? No.

 

I bought the eleder elven mage armour and it has several significant graphical glitches. When you buy a product you expect it to work properly. I paid 20 USD for it. That's ridiculous. I should get my store credit back for this.

 

I quit the game. It's too buggy and incomplete which diminishes the fun factor significantly. It's very frustrating to invest a lot of time to find out something does not even work right. I just was not having that much fun. I was also really pissed to pay 20 USD for the elder even mage armor with all its graphical glitches only to discover that I could have bought COTO and converted that to gold in the game to buy much better stuff. I refuse to spend so much real money for a house in the game and I don't want to buy COTO just to get raffle tickets (all my gold goes in to reagents anyway).

I'll check back in over time to see how things progress. The quests and single player mode are pathetic. Game reviewers will not be kind to this game. The multiplayer mode of this game however I think will succeed. But personally I want the mystery and the quests and I can't see how in a year or more that they can fix the quests to make them enjoyable. Even if they remove the bugs the quests are still pathetic. Going around hunting in groups just is not that much fun for me.

I have gone back to using my Oculus Rift and I am amazed by VR and eager for more VR content. The only reason I gave this game a try again after playing single player mode offline in R31 and being externally disappointed was because the book Ready Player One inspired me to give SOTA a try again.

 

it's not a finished product, which I'm sure you must know given that you have to accept the disclaimer which says as much. So I hardly see the point in complaining about things not being completed to your satisfaction.

way negative attitude dood!!! cheer up

 

All these people who are saying that we should not be complaining and that "the game is still in development"..are you guys that incredibly dumb? The whole point of us playing and criticizing the game during the development is so that when release happens its the best possible game they could publish...it is literally our JOB to complain and ***** about things on here. It is how changes get made. We wouldn't ***** and complain if we didn't care.
In fact if we did not care..we might get in the forums and laugh at the people complaining.

 

Kickstarted said the esitmated delivery was Oct 2014. It's now almost 2 years past that day and it's still a long long way from what I would consider beta.

Early access is a euphemism for this game is way behind schedule and no where close to done but our backers have poured huge amounts of money in and or getting restless so let's release now and call it early access (and avoid the reviews) and deal with the problems this causes later.

The game is just not that much fun in its current state and based on how the quests are implemented so far I don't think it will ever be for me. I could overlook this if there was VR because VR is so awesome.

 

It's not. Waht your 'job' is is voicing constructive Feedback and reporting Bugs.
Bitching and moaning will get us nowhere. All it dose is poison the atmosphere.

 

It has not poisoned Port's business model so far. They were very successful at their last Telethon and the money keeps flowing it.

 

Honestly this kind of reply makes me wish there was a "Don't like" button. You are basically telling everyone to shut up while we wait to see what RG think is "up". I disagree strongly with that.

 

That hasn't much in common with the atmosphere here on the boards.
To clarify: that was what i was talking about.

 

half glass empty kind of guy, eh?

well all the same there's really no reason to doubt RG thusfar. He gaveth and then tooketh away, and top tier players saw it coming and held onto a little gp, unlike OP, clearly.

Has there been any negative consequences? Other than a little forum negativity, (which already existed anyways), it's simply too early to say things like items aren't selling on vendors, etc etc. R33 is only a couple days old, the majority of people wouldn't be spending as much anyways even if gold drops were boosted instead of nerfed. And if they were boosted? I have a sneaking suspicion that the same people complaining about not enough gold would be complaining about too much gold, just for the sake of complaining.

 

yes, but he did it once almost 20 years ago. The world has moved on since then, as have MMOs (and I have played them since UO in 1998). I've kickstarted this as a gamble, and I've been checking it out this weekend - reading forums, trying current version - and I really doubt that he will end up with a product that will convince enough players of current MMOs to switch to this one to make it viable long-term.

 

I'll say one thing on this. I played UO back in 98 also, and in fact I'm playing on 2 diff freeshards right now. I've played 50~ freeshards from birth to death, and aside from a few minor differences SOTA is the same as UO.

What I make of SOTA launch strategy sofar is that it follows the top ideal formula for longevity. Start with a large influx of gold, some fun way for players to be able to dig into some of the more advanced content early, and see what kind of bugs the beta testers didn't report.. then fix everything without leaving it too long, even if you have to bring currency generation to a complete standstill. You end up with a perfectly balanced economy and a large population if you do it this way.

All I'm saying is that there's more evidence pointing to SOTA devs knowing what they're doing as opposed to them being completely out of their minds, which is what it totally looks like to the layperson what with certain systems like taming going from one end of the spectrum to the other etc.

Believe me, if they did what OP suggested right now it would be way worse than keeping it like it is for as long as it takes. The last thing you want is that one player everyone hates with multi billions a mere few months after the final wipe. That's caused more mass population drops then I even care to count, and honestly I've never seen a mass pop drop over low gold drops for three days. What you're seeing here is that someone threw a chair, and there's more than enough people to keep the momentum going, but it won't amount to anything truly destructive.

but hey, feel free to go farm all the cupcakes and gummy bears you want in the meantime, if that is in fact what they use for currency on WoW or whatever games you kiddies be playin these days. SOTA will be here when you get back, thanks to the swift action of what can only be described as a professional MMO staff.

 

That I think I can agree with. SOTA I think will succeed as an UO successor. Though I quit UO and most gaming in 1998 (except for one period where I built a computer in college for the sole purpose of playing U9) and have have never played another MMO except for Euotopia (http://euotopia.com/). So I don't really know how MMOs have advanced in the last 15 years.

I started gaming again around 2011. Single player games have advanced a lot! Skyrim was amazing. The Witcher series is even better. SOTA is pathetic compared to these single player games but as a successor to UO I think it may succeed though as I said I don't know how it compares to modern MMOs such as WoW.

RG reputation as a business man has increased though his reputation as a game designer has diminished in my eye. It will be interested to see how Port keep the money flowing in the future. There are only so many 40+ year old members of the RG cult that will keep funding this.

 

It brings in a 'God' figure, basically where players can pay money to buy in game items, the more the players buy in game items with real world currency, the weaker the economy gets. The other reason CotOs hurt the economy is that they prevent the need for replacing gear, which is huge.

 

We are in the midst of the combat/economic balancing. Loot is part of the economic balance, and its very visible that its being worked on

 

He did not 'invent' the RPG or MMO genre, ARPAnet invented mazewar (1st MMO) in 1974. Dungeons and Dragons was released in 1974 by GYGAX's TSR, and holds the ultimate place in the RPG world. Please make reasonable claims based on facts. Just because someone has the appearance and confidence, it does not mean they know the best course of action. This 'method' is nothing but beneficial to them, and detrimental to the game. I understand that people have to make money, but with the small team they have, and the amount of funds they have raised, they should be fine for actual CONTENT patches for several months (Maybe even a year or so). Please read the post at the top of this page, it appears you haven't yet. ^

 

Please post some visuals from the game for me? Have you seen new items? The only change I have noticed is Control Points, and still no new items. Variety is key to success in any kind of game, it makes everything seem 'one of a kind'. Yet as we see here the same nonsense continues. All of the quests they had early were broken since the turn in items are not only a drop, but also purchasable from a store. What is the solution? MAKE A SEPARATE ITEM. Oh wait, they are to busy on add-ons and extras. These NEW RARE DROPS that they claimed to put in the game have not even dropped yet. THEREFORE THEY HAVE NOT BEEN PUT IN THE GAME. An item is only added to a game if someone actually has it, or if it is visible. So far I have seen neither of the two.