Population Concerns

it's true, and we could definitely use some cool events like capture the flag or king of the hill or something for the casual guy aside from farming based activities. But yeah methinks we're a ways off from that. It could be a justifiable reason why some people have left to go now that they've built their characters or secured their tax free lots etc.

 

anecdotal evidence at best. You may be onto something with your multi shot woes, but (all?) of these threads were created about ~5 patches ago. so meh

 

5 patchs ago.. with people still posting waiting for a response? and not a dev response in any of them? and confirmation after each patch that its still broken lol

 

ROFLMAO!!! UH OH! I knew lots of people met each other through UO, but I didn't realize THIS is how it happened.

 

Agreed. That would be really nice. I almost wish they would bring the hat quests back (even though I don't plan on ever wearing any of them and i know its a massive drain on the devs already tight coding time) as those at least had something different to do. The players do a really nice job of organizing things, but unfortunately, most of it happens when I'm unavailable.

 

I dunno man personally the fact that critical hit chance has been addressed in at least 2 or 3 patches since r34, including a buff and admittance that it was broken before and after, counts as a response from developers. But maybe that's just me.

 

I know my playtime has reduced significantly due to recent changes; game play has become more expensive (requiring more grind to finance adventuring) and now more tedious with the focus nerfs and the crit nerfs and the xp pool transfer rate changes. I just don't have the motivation to mine 2 million producer xp, 500 at a time, to try and make any progress in crafting skills at the moment. Especially if skill decay is coming as that will likely be the final blow for me.

It seems like when I log in I have two choices: grind adventure xp or grind producer xp, and while there are the occasional cool social events there's nothing really fun to do that is going to keep me on for 12+ hours a day like I was a month ago. If I was still trying to progress my skills it would be fine but its hard to know whether I should bother or not with skill decay potentially coming.

I've also seen a lot of friends 'disappear'. I just hope it gets better.

 

I am sure the population will increase, these monthly threads get more responses every time, and that should be evidence of a larger population! And for those of you who complain about things being harder, what if the game continues to get harder? What if this game wasn't being made with you in mind?

 

Well, purely as a devil's advocate... they'd probably leave the game and we'd potentially have an even smaller population. Much like why a bunch of the PvP people I used to enjoy chatting with are no longer with us. 8^p

 

Hey, personally I believe the easier or more convenient grinding becomes the more people will leave the game. Because it means the game will become more boring. So people will be happy that things are easier or more convenient, but then do all the content so many times without effort that its not interesting anymore and they'll just stop playing.

 

I'm honestly getting bored of SOTA. I hit level 102 w/ 40x GM skills, all my guild does now is farm Brightbone or Eastreach since nothing else comes close in term of xp gain / hour. It would be nice if there was more content or dynamic content, or champion packs to kill after some time in a CP, or active PVP, or world bosses, or more dungeons, or whatever. I was a huge UO fan and was an active player for years, loved logging in looking for fun PVP fights. Honestly, I don't look forward to logging in any more after these recent nerfs, and don't really play solo anymore. I can't see myself playing this game in a month unless something interesting comes along. Alas this happens with many games at release/pre-release, there's just not enough content to accommodate the hardcore players. Might be time to take a break from SOTA soon and play some other games, maybe come back in a few months and see if there's been any meaningful progress.

 

I think the majority of people playing right now, will end up taking a break for a while and coming back as things get closer to finished. Hopefully more people fill in during that time. But i think a lot of people feel that way, as its just to be expected with an Alpha, they cant add faster then we can burn through it hehe. Im about hitting hte point i wish i could remake a new character just to try something completly new with a fresh start. Of coarse then i realize how much grind id be throwing away if i deleted this one heheh.

 

I don't want the game to be easier.

I am hoping for a game that will take years to get where I want to be and I'm willing to invest years - provided that I can log in and make some sort of meaningful progress, be it in terms of gold, experience, gear upgrades, etc.
The recent changes aren't making the game harder, they are making it more tedious and putting more and more emphasis on grinding - or worse -not just grinding, but grinding trivial low-risk, boring repetitive content due to profit per hour efficiency due to current loot implementation. Decay will only further ensure that players are punished for trying anything challenging or difficult as you can effectively lose progress by doing so. I was really looking forward to learning/wiping repeatedly to harder content but with the level of risk this will entail, to my *crafting* skills even (!) none of that's going to be feasible. Pretty discouraging.

Half my available game time is farming cash and the other half is farming producer xp or watching refining progress bars.
I miss earlier days where I didn't have to worry about financing my gameplay and could just goof around, explore, help low levels do stuff, etc. but I simply can't cover the adventuring costs to do that anymore.

So no, I don't want the game to be easier, but it could do with being a lot less repetitive. Speed up some of the tedious tasks and stop adding additional cash sink obstacles that keep players from going out and doing what's fun. All the cash sinks are doing is forcing average players to spend all of their time in the pursuit of coin instead of doing something more interesting.

 

Most friends I have who backed SOTA did so for the story / quest based content so are mostly waiting for official launch to play.

 

Hard caps FTW.

 

or quit

 

As someone who found SoTA kind of late (about 4 months ago now) I can tell you a few reasons why I am not playing as much anymore (used to be 20 hours a week, about half that now). They may not be valid to some of you who have been around for years, but this is from the perspective of someone who had never heard of this game before (although I did play UO in the day) and came to it not knowing anyone in the game.

1. Start areas - I quickly went through the starter quests (most were ok, nothing too exciting, but it was good to learn game mechanics) and then realized there were no more quests. I later learned that yes there were other quests, either broken or I just didn't find anyone. I started doing the mail quests to see other cities and from there started traveling the map. I am low 50s now in Adventure Level and am a bit tired of the same grind each night. Talking to NPCs was a bit disappointing to me and I hope that is one thing that is improved in upcoming releases.

2. Quests - I quickly learned from the forums that the big quest lines were broken or being worked on and I wanted to wait to do those until they were ready. I find not having ANY quests to do takes a lot out of a game, where grinding becomes all that you do. It isn't bad, but I really miss getting the occasional quest to keep things fresh. I do realize I could do more with quests, but again don't want to get part way through a line and have it glitch/end on me.

3. Feeling like a QA Tester - ironically this is part of what I do at work The changes are really hard to work with from release to release. Gold nerfs, combat changes, this works, this doesn't...it seems there are problems everytime I log in these days. I understand this part of the game but it does tend to wear you out. I think part of this is the fact that most of the changes are nerfs now, as things start off too easy and are adjusted as the game develops to be more in line with where the Devs want it to be. While part of me knows this is normal and good for the game in the long run, it wears on me a bit.

4. Harvesting - I like crafting, so need a lot of resources. Unfortunately right now that means Friends Only right now, especially for mining. I'm not wasting the few hours a night I have running around sharing ore with others. It doesn't help that ore has been rather annoying to harvest lately with the changes to re-spawns, but that is part of the game.

One of the reasons I am still invested in the game are the people. Love the guild I am in, and the people I meet in the game for the most part. It is a great community and I really do want to see where the game goes post Early Access and into Release (or whatever we are calling it).

 

@kaeshiva

Based on previous conversations, I think we agree and disagree.

There are big fry issues and small fry issues. The current problems making the game grindy imo are the big fry issues -- high taxes for large lots, for one, and second, requiring a lot of crafting inputs for so little product. These things force the player to go out and spend hours trying to grind the gold or materials he needs, and leaves little time to do anything else. The small fry issues; the food system, travel time, gathering/crafting time, repairs, encumbrance, and things like that, imo are not that impactful and will make the game more well-rounded and keep it interesting in the long run. You can actually get a decent gold or material output during a short time of playing. The problem is when you need a lot. And killing 1,000 bandits or gathering 1,000 cotton, or ore, or wood, in one sitting is a pain in the butt regardless of any of those small fry issues.

 

40 GM skills in two months..

Being honest there are some real reasons to believe that the xp gain cap has been fixed too late, for "some". Yes, I'm talking about those who are waiting to launch and they are looking right now that some players has a real advantage thanks to some unbalanced mechanics in the past (persistance mode) in time and resources.

If I could get that in 2 months I would stop playing for a while too, but fortunately for me I'm not playing a game under development as a hardcore player.

I just wish and hope a good launch day, because that day will be crucial.

 

This is exactly me. I'll log in a for a few hours, a couple days after each release to "test" and then break for the month. I'm waiting for actual release before I go hardcore.