We need new content....

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Dyonisys, Sep 27, 2016.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Ristra

    Ristra Avatar

    Messages:
    3,942
    Likes Received:
    5,442
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Location:
    Athens
    They have never touched the dynamic content. The purpose of the hex map and zone design was to be able to add zones and patch them on the fly. A zone can be changed without waiting till a weekly/monthly patch date.

    That means content that happens while we play. Big bad boss guy doesn't sit in an instance waiting for us to come to them. They have plans.

    Or that's what they sold to as in the Kickstarter. Time will tell.
     
  2. Pepsy

    Pepsy Avatar

    Messages:
    50
    Likes Received:
    240
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    California
    The fact that the game is PRE-Alpha and your only complaint is content only strengthens my resolve that this will be one of the greatest games ever made.
    All of the things you are asking for basically plug and play into the game. New mobs, Naming Npcs, and Quest's? All the hard coding for this stuff is done, now the monotonous tedious task
    of adding the content to the game begins.

    A Pre-Alpha game with only 2 months of content? The only mistake SOTA has made IMO is allowing so many people to enter early access, opening it to a flood of criticism and personal attacks.
    Although I'm not sure there was another path to take with their choice of funding.
     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2016
    MrBlight, Rada Torment and jammaplaya like this.
  3. Dexter4

    Dexter4 Avatar

    Messages:
    26
    Likes Received:
    45
    Trophy Points:
    3
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Jaanaford
    for them to create new content , they have to fix everything they freaked up first . keep nerfing stuff till you kill the game . make it as much like a real life job and no fun . make everything mandatory with no choices . forget all the people asking for more when what we have is crap and it gets worse week by week . he's an idea , maybe make the game fun so people tell their friends and the activity goes back up ? if i am wrong with activity drop post the stats . when the game is good there is high activity , when its bad it drops . i would love to see the statistics for activity after every nerf they did since persistence . Theres plenty of content but its just screwed up . ibad crying again . i dread thursday and more bad news is coming . please dont chase me and half your user base away . sincerely a major cry baby named ibad.
     
    Fister Magee likes this.
  4. DepGames

    DepGames Avatar

    Messages:
    280
    Likes Received:
    562
    Trophy Points:
    28
    I remember it being alpha at one point. Are we moving backwards?

    Yeah, they shouldn't have let us into early access two years, nine months ago. God forbid people might want to see come content in such a short period of time.

    So, another 2-3 years?
     
  5. evillego6

    evillego6 Avatar

    Messages:
    458
    Likes Received:
    798
    Trophy Points:
    43
    This is something a response I often read. Certainly a 3d artist is not necessarily the same person one might want to code or to write quests or what have you. I will agree with that. However, a choice is made to keep that artist over replacing that artist with someone who can code or is a professional writer.

    Maybe it sounds heartless to advocate for replacing someone because the project may be in need of other positions and money is limited. Its a choice they made and defended before though, and the community accepted when Rustic Dragon was let go from community management because the project was 'transitioning to another phase of development' (paraphrased). If there are 5 artists and 2 writers, one could certainly make the argument that there should be 4 artists and 3 writers. There is a decision to keep artists and those artists create things for the add-on store as opposed to maybe hiring a professional writer and getting more content going.

    None of this is to say they should do that, but saying 'artists are not world builders' is meaningless. An artist could be a world builder if you let the artist go and hire a world builder. Portalarium makes the choice of which is more valuable to them at a particular time based on their priorities. One of those priorities could just as easily be increase funding placing the artist position over the world builder.

    Sure, the resources (employees) cannot be utilized for the areas of the game he's demanding, but its possible to get employees that could be utilized in those areas.
     
    Rakain Cobal likes this.
  6. evillego6

    evillego6 Avatar

    Messages:
    458
    Likes Received:
    798
    Trophy Points:
    43
    It was never alpha. It was pre-alpha and as of January 2016, Portalarium stated they were no longer using the pre-alpha, alpha, beta terms and were instead simply using 'Early Access'. I'd actually agree with them that using the terms pre-alpha, alpha, beta at this point is meaningless. beta is when polish happens, but they are doing much of that now. systems are still being built, which is often done is pre-alpha. So they're all over the map and calling it pre-alpha is as incorrect as calling it alpha or beta or a final product.
     
    DepGames likes this.
  7. DepGames

    DepGames Avatar

    Messages:
    280
    Likes Received:
    562
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Maybe "a mess" would be a better term?
     
  8. Hunter Rose

    Hunter Rose Avatar

    Messages:
    139
    Likes Received:
    339
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Desolis
    Well there is the case of keeping the game funded right? Maybe keep those blokes on staff to crank out the chimney's people are looking to throw $ down for to keep the development engine going? How do you imagine games get created? I love using Destiny as an example here: 500 Million dollars (although Activision and Bungie disagree on this) as an investment (enter shareholders) for Bungie/Activision to develop Destiny from a start dev date of 2010.

    Sorry but based on how much time I'm spending here, and the game is pre-release, and they own the property... the sky's the limit here.
     
    MrBlight likes this.
  9. Pepsy

    Pepsy Avatar

    Messages:
    50
    Likes Received:
    240
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    California
    Thank you for proving my point.... No the game is not even in Alpha yet, let alone Beta....We are in 'Early Access' now I understand this can be a little confusing for you to understand
    but this game was 'Crowd Funded'. Anyone playing now paid to take part in the development of the game, and are essentially volunteer bug testers, content providers, and in some cases game developers! Thats right, some of the players here are even lucky enough to have some impact on the development of the game!!!

    You know that button you glaze over every time you log into SOTA?
    [​IMG]
     
    Dreech and Hunter Rose like this.
  10. evillego6

    evillego6 Avatar

    Messages:
    458
    Likes Received:
    798
    Trophy Points:
    43
    I never claimed otherwise.
     
  11. Hunter Rose

    Hunter Rose Avatar

    Messages:
    139
    Likes Received:
    339
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Desolis
    so ... there is no :

    "... choice is made to keep that artist over replacing that artist with someone who can code or is a professional writer."

    No choice at all : absolutely keep that artist that's making you money to fund the game.
     
    Apollyon9515 likes this.
  12. Snazz

    Snazz Avatar

    Messages:
    650
    Likes Received:
    665
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    SK / BKK
    It will be slow going with new skills, tons of bugtesting and balancing gains within persistence to not completely alienate players at launch.

    Tall order
     
  13. evillego6

    evillego6 Avatar

    Messages:
    458
    Likes Received:
    798
    Trophy Points:
    43
    I'll be done with this here, but this is incorrect. It is a choice in that the keeping of the artist extends development further by not allowing the game to be fully marketed and released as a final product. The longer the project runs the more it must rely on add-on store sales as opposed to actual sales of the retail copy, which could bring in additional add-on store sales.

    There is absolutely a choice.
     
    Hunter Rose likes this.
  14. Ristra

    Ristra Avatar

    Messages:
    3,942
    Likes Received:
    5,442
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Location:
    Athens
    So when they have layoffs of one sector to hire more in another sector. Then follow up with layoffs of that sector to higher for that first sector again. What pool of employees do you think they recruit from?

    Haven't done much HR work I take it. Management in general more like it.
     
  15. evillego6

    evillego6 Avatar

    Messages:
    458
    Likes Received:
    798
    Trophy Points:
    43
    I wasn't advocating they do that or criticizing them for not doing it. I gave an example of an alternative choice they could make (not that they should make) to show there is always a choice.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2016
  16. TEK1

    TEK1 Avatar

    Messages:
    186
    Likes Received:
    510
    Trophy Points:
    18
    The problem here is that SotA has been launched in every way possible, player housing system, player advancement, and a half done story line that is all now persistent and prone to massive exploits. The only thing keeping Portalarium from calling it launched is they are waiting til they actually start paying to advertise and market the game, although affiliate deals and organic marketing has already begun. Personally I believe it is a great disservice to all of those backers who put way more of their hard earned money into SotA then any other game ever. Calling any game "early access" that by any other measure is officially launched is bad ethically behavior in my opinion.

    Are we now going to say that Ultima VIII was not launched too early and incomplete but was simply early access? Was Tabula Rasa not launched too early and incomplete but was just early access as well? By this measure we need to give passes to all past games that were launched badly and apologies need to be given to Electronic Arts by developers who bad mouthed them for pushing them to release incomplete games as clearly they were only "Early Access". :)
     
    Ibad, Kaisa, Apollyon9515 and 5 others like this.
  17. Pepsy

    Pepsy Avatar

    Messages:
    50
    Likes Received:
    240
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    California
    I'm not saying it's my favorite way of releasing or really lets call it what it is...developing a game, but it's what we got....

    Although I would love to get in a discussion about the morality of 'Early Access' games with you, it seems a little redundant when the basis of all your arguments are that those games are or were 'bad' and that is just simply a matter of opinion. I for one got quite a bit of enjoyment, and playtime out of Steams storm of early access games.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2016
  18. Lord Dreamo

    Lord Dreamo Avatar

    Messages:
    1,016
    Likes Received:
    1,840
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Western New York
    I've spent too much time socializing and doing town stuff I haven't seen barely any of the game yet lol. Perfect game for me I'll probably never do everything.
     
  19. Hornpipe

    Hornpipe Avatar

    Messages:
    1,492
    Likes Received:
    3,519
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Female
    Some ideas :

    - Dynamically created content, like town sieges (with NPC whose level is adapted to the levels of inhabitants), encounters on overland map (bis in idem).
    Most of this is already on the todo list of Portalarium.

    - Escort missions, hunting missions, crafter missions generated by the game, in connection with the economy and the player skill level.
    I don't know if it's in the devs plans right now.

    - Open PVP between two guilds at war (don't know if it's planned/done or not but PVP needs some love, for sure).

    The quests are static story line as they are written by the devs with a start and an end. They will be given some love until the release but they wont allow end game unlimited content.

    It is very difficult to produce sustainable content if it is not systematic, repetitive or generated by players like it is in Eve online. Think about a film : it will last about two hours for you but it's made with months of work. Now a hardcore player can play several hours a day!

    This situation is the biggest problem of the devs, in my opinion. It will require that Portalarium, without neglecting the solo content (we are expecting a good show), continues to provide tools for players and the game to bring New Britannia to life.

    Good luck @DarkStarr, @Chris and all the team !
     
    Jens_T, majoria70, Chatele and 3 others like this.
  20. Ristra

    Ristra Avatar

    Messages:
    3,942
    Likes Received:
    5,442
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Location:
    Athens
    Just as one could use divorce to avoid cheating on their spouse. Sure, you could call that a choice. But what if you have a spouse that's worth never letting go. That's no choice at all.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.