Population Concerns

I must strongly disagree with your claim regarding the community and opinions surrounding PVP. I know there are a few very loud forum personalities who openly denounce PVP at every opportunity; but the smart money knows that a large majority of this community (and future community) will enjoy PVP regularly once the mechanics are properly fleshed out and incorporated. Meaningful PVP has been a widespread community desire as much as any other game mechanic. But don't take my word for it... just wait and see. It's already been noted that in the next few releases PVP will be getting some attention.

 

Let's leave the "but the game isn't released!" stuff behind, really. Persistence means that fundamental game systems will not change. If they do, there will need to be a wipe and people will be upset.

Do you know how long people have been saying "But it's not released yet!"? A loooong time.

 

good thing we left this thread open. Good info within.

 

Care to wager a guess as to why?

 

Because of the erroneous belief that the current state of the game is "not" a reliable indicator of the direction development is moving

 

Exactly. "It's not released yet!" was a reasonable argument a long time ago. But as "launch" (whatever that will be, I have serious doubts) gets closer and closer, obviously, the game is going to change less and less. And your dream game is getting farther and farther away. The end result cannot remain a far-away hopeful dream forever. Today's game is close to what you're going to get. To hope for dramatic change at this point is pointless.

 

Most forums won't allow de-railing and doomsaying to the degree that this forum does. Might have something to do with the population.

 

First forum i went to test this was the WoW forum. Front page has a post discussing if the director of legion is a failure.

Not sure what Internet you access but i see negativity on every forum.

 

Alpha game should set itself to a higher standard regardless of popular demand. Popular demand of course meaning the dozen or so trolls who somehow defeated community management in this textual armwrestle of late.

 

Wow...you should report all posts that signify any negativity so Portalarium can get rid of them. That way they can do anything and everyone will appear to be happy.

 

I've already reported your last triple post. With the recommendation to lock the thread, despite what the bullies might say.

 

Way to go!

 

Be cautious. If you get involved in a back and forth with someone it tends to end up in a locked thread.

The posts that contribute to the discussion on either side are pretty easy beyond the ones trying to marginalize and distract

 

When UO was released, the attitudes and arguments on forums were no different. Then everyone started the game and became murders and theifs across the board... actually proud to kill the noobs. This says a lot about society and it hasn't changed much since. I still say to this day that people early in UO probably ran off half a million possible players.

I remember being one of the few voices back then bringing this up.. "hey... back off the noobs, you are running them off"

 

Heh...I played pretty early, but was not one of the PKs...they actually terrorized me! But it added some excitement.

 

Ya, imo it was a problem with the game, not the players. Players will play the game with the mechanics you support, and the behavior your game mechanics incentivizes.

 

Yup. These are video games after all. You can't say people are evil and bad for killing others in a video game. These are probably reasonable people in their daily lives. In fact, thank God they are releasing their pent up aggression online, instead of on the street.

 

The reason most players go solo, is because they have no clue what could be done in a multiplayer game. Unfortunately, none of the MMOs support multiplayer in a good way and that has completely destroyed the genre. If players had fun in multiplayr, then things would probably be different for most.

There is also a limit to how much fun PvP would be in a singleplayer game...

 

I believe devs should prioritize updates based on most requested features that support immersive gameplay.

At the moment I can see massive amounts of work for:

- the story and the quest lines;
- more fun/challenging solo/group encounters (sorry, you cannot solve this simply adding to monsters' health pools);
- crafting should be more rewarding for dedicated crafters.

But I got an impression (maybe I am wrong here) it is the fluff stuff that has the priority. So the population will slowly dwindle with balance more in favor of add-on store customers who would want to protect their investments.

 

I really wish SOTA would drop its insistence on "hardcore story" quests and just add a bunch of simple quests like other MMOs have. People complain about "fetch quests" and "kill 10 of this or that" quests, but guess what: it keeps people busy. It gives them something to do, it allows for character growth, and it's a way to make gold.

I get where Portalarium is coming from, I really do: their inspiration (so they say) are things like Ultima 7 with a killer story. But even Ultima 7 had side quests, and in this day and age, an MMO cannot get away with only having story quests. I get the feeling that it's some kinda philosophical thing, i.e. "We're a cut above the average MMO" but guess what, you're not. At this stage, SOTA needs something that will give people something to do, and also to attract new players.

The combat isn't good enough to keep players grinding that way, and the "delivered any time now" story quests aren't there. Give us some goals, even if they aren't Ultima-worthy.

EDIT: Oh yeah, crafting...I don't know 'cuz I don't care a lick about crafting, but it doesn't sound like this is working yet either. And at any rate, to craft and be successful at it you need other players to craft for.