What Makes SotA Better Than Others?

Or not....

 

That made my day. I really laughed

 

Most fans of a game, dont get that a game dont have to be finished to be reviewed fairly, just finished enough to see what direction it is taking.

 

Some fleshed out loot drops would already make a complete change for me. If i spend more time grinding i might get nightmares about broken swords

 

I own a <expletive deleted> town.

 

Hahahahaha... oh... you were serious? I just tried (and failed) for a 4th time to get into this game. I can't. I give up.

I like the concept of the decks for combat. There needs to be something (other than fellow players) that walk a new player through that, though, because until somebody else walked me through it, I didn't have a clue it even existed. Also, there aren't enough combos, and as a new player you choose your skills long before you even know combos are a thing, so if you choose the wrong set of skill you could be screwed out of having combos entirely.

NPC interaction is.... a good idea, but poorly implemented. There are so few things that the NPCs actually understand ("He's in the bar." "Where is the bar?" "I don't know what you mean") that it just becomes a source of frustration making me long for standard MMO chat windows.

Crafting, from what I understand, is great... but I don't really have any interest in that. Ditto housing.

Maps (or lack thereof) are horrible. In the 10 total hours I spent trying to learn to enjoy this game, I probably wasted 2 of them just trying to find where things I need to find are. Seems like maybe it's gotten better since the first time I played, but not better enough.

Combat, which is really the core of any RPG, is just.... horrible, for lack of a better word. I forgave it when I first tried the game, but now we're well past final wipe and all the problems seem to still be present.

Now, my buddy who got me to throw my money away on this game, he loves it. Absolutely loves it. Won't play anything else anymore. I don't get it. (but he does love crafting and housing, so maybe that's really the strength of this game?)

 

Part of the reason that in-game costs are so high is that the economy is still being tweaked and tuned. I understand that they would like COTOs to eventually be worth much more than they are now, which means the economy needs some inflation. It is still way too tight right now for inflation to happen, especially until we get an increase in player numbers.

That was a big reason why they did persistence when they did. Because it would take months to get the economy tuned.

 

Ghost town

 

Feeling alone in Multiplayers Online World or all PvPers are gone ?

 

Picking up more residents... Never expected it to be full day one... I'm happy with the progress made thus far. 36 lots claimed to date.

 

Yea, but owning a town is by itself, if you consider that feature in isolation, is not much different than owning a private estate in Second Life. Its not what makes the game unique or interesting.

 

... no, not really... you can have an RPG with with no combat at all.

 

It tries to combine a lot of elements into one game. It is definitely ambitious. But I think the only thing it does better than other games is housing and that is a scarce resource. So their best and most polished feature is not available to most of the playerbase.

 

That, to me, is a strong indication of how amteurish the design team is. Something like this should have been tested WAY before implementation, it just... wasnt :/

 

Nothing yet.

The key to getting a niche and a USP for SOTA is to mix the elements they have, but the average quality of all parts of the game need to be raised pretty drastically.

Sandbox games are starved for story based worlds and SOTA should be the game to occupy the space as a model product, distinguishing it from the murder boxes most sandboxes are right now.

 

It is to me. Considering any feature in isolation serves no purpose other than, as you've done, stripping enough uniqueness away until you get to a point where it can be compared to something somewhere. It's akin to asking what furry animals you find unique and interesting and then saying "Yeah, well... they're all mammals so that doesn't count."

The ability to own my town is The Thing that made Shroud of the Avatar unique and interesting enough to move me to contribute more than a Lord of the Manor pledge to support the game. If not for Player Owned Towns, I would likely be at my original Royal Artisan pledge.

 

The chance to relive my teenage years in UO, in a relaxed and open environment.

Dare I say UO2?

 

Yes, its strength seems to be crafting and housing. Aspects of UO i never had been really interested in either. Especially not in housing. I hated the house craze, or first virtual property bubble, back in the old UO days. SotA is for poeple who like a medieval sims online with some occasional, but please secure, monsters bashing.

Have a look at the community section, there are tons of exciting topics like house decorating contest
Then you can find info about new, fashionable gaunts for community events and what to wear on halloween..

Love-Bears conquered Ultima.

// Armar

 

Nope?

 

Yeah, you're most probably right.