The problem with Sota from a casual players point of view

Your confusing me with @Preachyr

My reply to you is literally my only ppst about beta / alpha tags. As i personally think along the lines of how i broke it down on said post.
Hes the one who will argue the dif.
Myself, regardess of it, i think they have a long way to go to make the release not a massive dissappointment, and hit their goals / promises.
The tag means nothing to me. Lol
And rage.. is a strong word..
More like i see them , and others use the * its an alpha not a beta * excuse to cover bad mechanics that they either seem okay with, or have no information out for players that yhey arnt happy with it yet.

But yea i ll let someone else tackle the alpha / beta argument, and ill stick to the missing core mechanics, content etc, dont worry.

 

I challenge you too. Lol

 

Adding more fast travel won't increase player interaction.

 

I would use player vendors more if i could bind points of good ones.
So there is that.
Tho that is a weak counter.

 

If traveling in the game reminds you of a commute to work either the game is no fun or it's no fun to you.
Removing travel from the game isn't going to make it more fun.

 

There are other ways to address player vendors which imo is a separate issue.

Here's an idea that won't gain any traction because I didn't donate enough : Instead of player vendors being static npcs make them caravaneers with other vendors from the same town. Have the npcs travel from town to town on the world map peddling their wares across the world. With their goods still accessible at their static location as well. Crazy right?

 

Interesting

 

Looks like a new thread for a new discussion.

 

And would it decrease player interaction? And your arguments?
I think this is pretty much speculation and either way you have no way to prove it without changing it. So this is absolutely not leading anywhere.

 

Well seriously. Be more constructive or just leave this thread. You are just making statements without any arguments to back them up.

 

So the last three pages have had zero connection to the topic again, but at least no one was insulted.

 

I would say that this is a concern only to a moderator if they fell this way and its probably worse for someone to thread police and attack people for being constructive then go off topic a bit since it is basically a passive aggressive argument in the thread that also has no bearing on the topic.

 

Sorry, my mistake.

 

I have to agree.

Shopping is going to be more time consuming than UO but many will sell on public vendors and @Baratan had great idea about a caravan that moved around Novia. A public vendor there would be neat but all in all its hard to replace runes and recalls.

 

Ok I just logged in and went to Port Graff to check a little bit on the vendors there.
I found most vendors empty, one has teleport scrolls at outrageous prices and the rest had stuff which does not really interest me. That took me roughly 10 minutes. Now considering that vendors can change their inventory anytime, I will not travel to a town to just check vendors without fast travel.
My problems regarding travelling might be aggravated by being an archer. I usually have 1500 arrows on me, enough for two hours of hunting.

@Baratan
Also I just travelled to Ardoris: Took me 13 minutes from hometown bank to Ardoris bank, just rushing through everywhere. Not too bad a value, but going there and back adds to 26 minutes.
26 uneventful minutes. No player interaction, no nothing.
I stay by my opinion, this is not "Fun" for anyone, no matter how much one likes exploring.

 

Anyone else logging out of the game and logging back in to save the time to get to the world map?

 

I think that could only be solved by making the overworld map more interactive.. More valuable random encounter... Maybe rare Ore spawns... maybe ambushes setup by players or guild outposts... Nothing else I could think of at the moment.

 

Rather than make travel quicker through a boring area, it might be better to make travel take the same time but be more interesting. The overworld map should be much more dynamic with secrets to discover. I liked @Baratan idea; maybe a roving encounter could be a trade caravan. Instead of the NPC vendor we used to get, it could have 20 randomly selected player vendors in the scene, with a note of where their home location is. You could shop in the scene and when you found a great vendor, you could note it's city of origin to find it again.

But there should be other dynamic things beyond roving encounters, like treasure maps that randomly spawn or roving quest givers or factional PVP areas that change depending on faction control of the area or control point.

I suppose my main point is that if we are going to have regional economies (and I think we should definitely try until it proves to utterly fail) then travel must be challenging; that doesn't mean it also can't be fun. The problem is not difficulty of travel, it is the boring (pretty, but boring) overworld map.

 

This is a great design that many of us enjoy, and is a hallmark of this game. "Its not like other games" - or a similar variation - is what you will often hear as a reply to features such as these. If youre looking for a clone of YetAnotherMMO, then SotA is highly unlikely to satisfy you.

That is the intention.

Yup - you guessed it - this is the intention!

...btw, you do realize it takes just a few IRL minutes to walk from the furthest to the furthest points in all of Novia, right? I am, by your definition, one of those "hardcore players" (though Id never call myself that), and I pretty much never use scrolls. Ive used maybe 2-3 teleports since persistence, period. Ive used recall about 8 or 9 times total. I walk all over Novia almost all of the time, I live near Elysium and often hunt around Serpents Spine, Grunvald, Hidden Vale, Ardoris, etc. I never once think to myself that its taking too long to get around, in fact, Novia feels way too small. It takes me a very, very short time to get from Elysium to Deep Ravenswood, and almost all of that length is loading screens.

Although I am sure it wasnt your intention , your whole post sounds like a botter that is upset that she/he cant bot. Someone thats upset that this game isnt the exact predictable theme park forumla as every other game, and cant be turned into a droning, pl-and-gold-spamming, botters paradise.

I think you might be confusing an opportunity to "be the famous blacksmith" with "everyone is the worlds best blacksmith" - the latter being the halmark of YetAnotherMMO games. Due to the very mechanics youre objecting to, you finally have the opportunity to "be the famous xyz" - cuz theres a lot more to it than just clicking a button many times and becoming YetAnotherWorldsBestBlacksmith in a week of powerleveling. You actually have to find a way of marketing your self, finding markets for yourself, getting your goods around the world to new markets, etc. Its not some scifi sort-of-fantasy where everyone has a console that instantly materializes their +5 sword from an ethereal transaction with someone else on the opposite site of the world. You have to actually go buy the sword from the vendor you like.

I call this a feature, and it makes me /smile.

...if you never tell anyone you exist. You know, there are printing presses, and you could run around handing out flyers to everyone you meet that you exist and have "+5 bananas" for sale on your vendor thats near the east entrance to Jhelom... erh uhm I mean Xenos .

I disagree. I think most people are willing to make the 4 minute cross-global trek to your house if you have a cool event.

Btw you might be going to the wrong player run events. The ones Ive been too had so many people in attendance Ive had to leave! Tortoises dont need that much stimulation .

The 21st century affinity for hyperbole is surely something to jot down in the annals of sociological history .

Btw if you follow the game development, you will see that a lot of attention to transporting goods around the world will address many of your concerns. You might want to re-evaluate your anguish and torturous suffering at the behest of the malignant local banking after 3 more releases or so.

Speak for yourself . I need this game to not be YetAnotherMMO. Id love it if you joined our party for good and stayed a SotA player for life, but again, you might wanna check out the latest YetAnotherMMO if youd like to maintain such a bias.

That sounds boring! Try having fun for a change! I usually have fun when I log in. I find that it is a much nicer experience that way.

Perhaps its the time of day you play. I play random times, sometimes its 8am, sometimes 8pm, sometimes 3pm, sometimes 11pm, etc, and I always see people every time I am logged in. I often cant do my drive by /wave anymore cuz theres too many people running fast.

Im not sure why you dont just do that. How is it impossible?

While I am a frequent player, I am a very, very casual player. Ive been playing longer than most of the people who know way more about this game than me. Before all else, I evaluate games on how well they cater to casual players (since thats all thats gonna work for me), and I find that SotA suits my needs well. I also predict it to work out well for me in the long run. I think you just might need to follow the game's development a bit more closely, and for a longer period, and most of the things that upset you know will make sense when cast against the backdrop of early access + direction of development (over time). Adapt to the game, its a bit new and different. You might find it refreshing after 16 years of YetAnotherMMO.

 

So I agree with you - it feels really awkward to use people like that. To me, and especially to my avatar, it dilutes the true meaning of friendship, and diffuses the honor in relationship integrity. So I dont let anyone on my friend's list that I havent met. Except Lord British, I /friend-ed him before I met him. I dont add others to my friends list just to have access to fast travel. I dont care that the game mecahnic works that way, but to me it feels weird and unimmersive, and as Ive stated, makes friendships feel "millenial" in that fake plastic facebook kind of way.

Black Tortoise has slain for less than dishonoring the sacred bonds of friendship and divine rites of Hospitium.

I would encourage you to stick with this early access game's development much longer. Embracing such freedoms as abstaining from mechanics which dont make sense, and enjoying those that do, will surely improve your experience.