Concerns with Selective Multiplayer

ITYS

 

All online modes are essentially the same persistence world. We see the same houses, same owners, we see the same vendors. Each mode just allows you to filter out whom you want to play with.

Right now SPO and FOO are WAYYYYY off balance compare to MPO due to the non-compete of resources and mobs. The 25% bonus is merely shifting the balance toward MPO. I don't see anyone feel like being forced to be in a party in FOO or MPO when being in party give a huge bonus boost a few release ago here.

 

What gear are you going to lose? you do understand you do not lose anything unless you chose to not pay the minimal ransom.

And if they made it so gear was actually lost or the cost so high to make it actually "lose" they are once again going against what they said they would not do.

They are shooting themselves in the feet with just about every step they take.

 

I don't know how long it's been since you've logged out and seen the main page, but SotA is being clearly marketed as a sandbox MMO. SotA is a MMO. There's a lot of other stuff going on that includes an offline player mode, selective modes, classless systems, etc... it's all on the front page. You must realize that everything is still being developed and the MMO must take precedence because everything in SotA depends on it. There's nothing to add-on to the game if the MMO isn't there.

 

New Interview with @Lord British http://culturedvultures.com/interview-richard-lord-british-garriott-creator-of-ultima/

he mentions that it's too early to judge SP:

Q: There are many players who are not a fan of ‘multiplayer only’ games – I was hugely turned off by ‘Titanfall’, for example. Does ‘Shroud of the Avatar’ have a full single-player experience, for those of us who are terrified of human contact?
RG: Absolutely! In fact, I have been playing purely solo player offline for the last two months. This allows me to have a party of friends and hirelings as I play. For people who will play ENTIRELY offline, I would wait to join the game when it is done. At the moment, the solo player mode is too rough for “early access” play.

I am happy he sees it this way.

 

In real Life, this "issue" would sound like this: Off line player or SPO: "My imaginary friend has more money, is loved by more people and have an overall happier existence than me. I HATE the reality i live...". Maybe your concerns would have more weight taking in account those players on multiplayer: "My friend earns more XP for nothing! (PvP), i wish i could do nothing too.. oh wait". The point is that there is a reason for you (and others) to not flag themselves PvP: risk of losing XP when murdered, annoyance of to have permanent awareness of your surroundings, eventually griefing, dislike of the idea of hurting other people, etc. The fact is that the gameplay of the player in PvP is different from a non PvP player, and seems reasonable to me that Protalarium tries to balance that gameplay accordingly.

 

I am refering to the Kickstarter in 2013, which was when I gave my money for the vision and concept that was presented back then. On the Kickstarter site "MMO" is only mentioned once in the FAQ and there it says: "Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game."
This was how the game was presented to get the money from backers in order to even start developing the game.
Now suddenly it is a MMORPG...
And you are right, NOW the MMO part does take precedence but this hasn't been the case during the Kickstarter campaign.

And also according to the text you posted: Where is the single-player narrative? Where are the consequences? Also single player (and even offline) mode are always mentioned first which implies that this should have priority. But still looking at the game, the state of the "single player narrative", the offline part and how SPO and FPO are treated compared to the MMO-mode everything paints a very different picture.

 

The game hasn't launched yet. I'm pretty excited about the single player narrative, quests, and offline mode too - but I don't expect to see any of it until launch.

 

Even though RG already stated that he thinks the beginning of the game up to Ardoris is "pretty" final in terms of story, quests and quality?

 

Not for nothing but the developers, Chris, Darkstarr, Lum, RG, everyone in Portalarium... they all beat the early access drum loudly and regularly and everyone here participating in these forums and in game knows this is early access. Iterative development is iterative. Save your grade for launch, because none of it's finalized or ready for prime time.

 

Yet now is the time to still voice concerns about certain things, even the direction the game is taking. After launch it is too late...

 

Certain things? Dude, all you ever do is attack the game. I have concerns and I get locked onto things (taxes) and raise a little too much hell from time to time - but you just bad mouth and trash everything like you've got some kind of vendetta. If you're truly unhappy with how development has matured since 2013 and afraid you'll never find any joy in the game being created I will buy you out - right now. I will pay you fair market value for your pledge and you can move on and leave all this stress behind you.

 

You know what I want? An honest statement about the game. About the single-player narrative, the offline mode, the choices and consequences and how the game has changed since Kickstarter and why.
All I and those on my side are ever told is to wait until release. Release should have been in 2014 and is now planned in a few months. Will we really get all of the things I mentioned in a few months? Will it all magically come together to not only create a good MMO but also a "real" single player experience? Real choices and visible, lasting consequences? If not why are those things still being advertised?

How do you think others would feel and react if SotA would have been advertised as UO 2 during the Kickstarter campaign and now the single player part would be focus with the MMO just being tacked on? "Hey guys, wait for release in a few months, I'm sure then it will be UO 2 all of a sudden"...?

And no thanks, I don't want you to buy me out.

 

I think both sides of this argument believe that the game should fit in either one genre or another. I definitely have my personal preference, but if we don't let them experiment a bit, we won't ever get anything new. One of the main reasons I was interested in this game is that it seemed like it had potential to be innovative. Selective multiplayer is part of that innovation. I hope they can make it work.

(Of course, it would have been nice to have worked this out before persistence. I think I should make that my sig )

 

If the intent of Portalarium is to push people into MP mode, then they should reevaluate the core design of the game. Early on they were claiming it was not an MMO and as such they desigined it so that there is a Master/Slave relationship between players in a scene. One computer is the master and other are slaves/clients. My understanding is that the master and the Portalarium host server communicate for data synchronization. So we have a menage-a-trois between the various computers.

The problem is that when I am playing in friends mode with a friend who is overseas, there is a noticiable lag due to this design. In multiplayer that same situation seems to occur, depending on where the Master is located in relation to your own computer.

To scale to be a real MMO SOTA need to have a different architecture. Speed and playability should be the same for everyone. I cant't tell you how many times I has seen a screen saying "Waiting on <player> to start the instance". For a real MMO this would be unacceptable. For PVPers I would think it would be even more so, since the Master would always be ther first player to enters the scene and therefore have an advantage to immediately attack other players as they enver while their chars are still in that semi-frozen state where they can't move. I know I have often had mobs hit me immediately after entering a scene, before my character can even have a chance to move and fight back.

So if everyone changes to MP/PVP how is that gonna scale? I would like to see Portalarium address some of these concerns in the upcoming telethon. Maybe an hour to field questions relating to the underlying architecture and its robustness for dealing with the changes they are now making to claim this is a MMO. In a real MMO, there can be 100 or more players in an area fighting mobs or each other. Is that even possible in SOTA? I doubt that it is.

So how about it Devs.... can we get some discussion on why Portalarium is trying to pushed more players into a scene when the underlying architecture design seems to work against that goal? Maybe they have made underlying changes in the architecture to allow this to work with hundreds of players in a scene. I would just like to know it not a push into a huge lagfest when the game hits release and we (hopefully) get a large influx of new players.

 

I've edited the title of this thread to remove the rather blunt sideline attack against the devs. Create threads with meaningful non-inflammatory titles that get to the topic itself, or we will edit them.

 

Why does Port reward the play in the multiplayer online mode? Because most people are playing in friends only and single player online mode and therefore the mmo world appears so empty! They do this because they can gather resources faster and more often. No other player can steal the resources and hinder its play experience because the player plays alone or with friends. So the single player online mode is the favourite mode for gathering resources. The 25% experience bonus is the carrot to lure the players into the mmo mode.

For me this is just to fiddle about with the impacts, I think this will not solve the problem. The problem is that a resource is only for ONE person. If the resource was gathered by one player, all other players have to wait for the respawn of this resource. Other games offer better solutions. In Guild Wars 2 - for example - if a players fells a tree, only this player sees the tree fall to the ground. For all other players the tree is still standing and each player is able to fell this tree for oneself.

@DarkStarr , @Berek , @Chris : could this approach not also be a solution for SotA? It is possible, Guild Wars 2 is the proof

 

Personally, I will go into MMO mode only if I chose to group up with other players. This 'so-called' incentive will not entice me to spend more time in MMO mode, but I will continue in either solo, or more preferably, in friends mode if I chose to just adventure with a small group of people, without having to deal with larger groups in MMO mode. My choice.
Lord_Darkmoon has made some valid points here.

 

I can't belive i am going to say that but WoW has an interessting solution for this.
You mine the node. For you it is done. You can't mine it anymore untill it respawns. But every other player still has the chance to mine it for roughly 60 seconds.

 

For I see it as balancing the modes of play around the risk/reward that is central to pretty much everything. This in no way forces anyone to do anything they did not want to do. But it does give people a reason to play in the mode that is most out of whack currently. This doesn't make multi better than the other modes, it is a step toward making it inline with them. Right now SPO and Friends only provide too much incentive to play in them by having 0 contention for resources and exp. As someone who likes to play in Multi I'm excited to see something done to balance out that added contention for the resources in the game with the reward you get for that mode of play. I hope they split it to a layered bonus where part is for being in multi and part for being flagged for pvp. If they continue to tweak this to promote a balance between the modes and keep it fair to those who do actually want to play multiplayer I am all for it.