Why did I love UO, and am 'meh' about SotA?

Im glad I got into the game 14 months ago and not in kickstarter. I remember seeing the kickstarter and wanted to donate but somehow I just didn't. I was in a lul for video games for a few years.

I started playing this game just to play it, I didn't even really know what their plans were other then it is a spiritual successor to Ultima.

Maybe this is why Im far more accepting of the game.

 

i beg to difer. UO and even UO freeshards with pre t2a ruleset have more people playing active than this currently.

 

Thank you.

 

Constructive feedback?
Since 2013, people have made A LOT of constructive feedback.
None of them brought a change in the game. Tell me, what's the point to give constructive feedback, when you know, devs won't do anything?
I mean, this game was suppose to be a single player game with some multiplayer elements. Where is the single player now, well.. we all know the state of it.
and I'm not talking about the $$ shop.


We backed the game because LB said that he was going to make a great single player game. NOT an MMO.
So far, I didn't see the devs backing up on something because the backers and fans said so.


Instead.. we got the game we have today. And the first to be satisfied by the devs should be us, the backers. Without us, PORT wouldn't exist.
Because before the Kickstarter they had 3 months of funds for their company..


The day I will see, LB and DS, sitting at a table with a webcam. And ask, what is wrong with their game.

Then I'll give constructive feedback. Untill then..I'll go with the flow and wait till the boat sink.

There is plenty of games out there.

 

UO was released Sept 24, 1997, so if my math is correct,it is approaching 20 years. I can't recall Lord British ever saying that SoTa was the second coming of UO,as far as I know he never has. He only said it is the spiritual successor to UO,which means in the spirit of, not like UO.
Everyone has the right to their opinion, as the OP does also. I mean I could sit here and type in length how some SoTa features don't compare to UO, Warcraft, ESO, CoD,the list could go on and on,so why don't I? Because it not only doesn't matter,it is not relevant to SoTa. Honestly,this thread like many threads before it and many threads yet to come, has no useful purpose except to draw responses.
The reason I say this is,yes once again everyone is stating their opinions,but it has no meaningful purpose as to the game itself. If threads contained @DarkStarr or @Chris and asked a question, such as, "We had (insert whatever here) back in UO,have you all ever considered adding this to the game?" and stating the reasons why it would be a productive addition,well I could see that having a purpose. And then the follow up post by the community and/or development team would give the pros and cons of it being included and what the issues might be by including it.
Again, I am not saying the opinion of the OP or anyone else does not matter,but you can see from the responses that people fall on one side or the other of the fence of "why is SoTa not like UO?" In the business world,when people come to me and complain about things,they know they better have potential solutions,because otherwise I view it as a waste of my time and theirs. And not seeing any real suggestions,questions or solutions,please overlook my bluntness in saying if you are going to cast something in the light of "This doesn't seem good enough to give me the feels." then bring some meaningful questions or suggestion to the table. Apparently,that is what the development team has said multiple times that it is what they are looking for.

 

Jonathon, I respect your stance. The truth is that we have asked many questions over many years. Hell when I sold my duke account I had to sell my forum account with it because it was bound to steam. That account had like 11000 posts. This account has significantly less. I have Made many many threads on topics and discussions. VERY seldom, and I mean super rarely did any dev comment on them. If they do not like your questions they flat out ignore you.

 

Maybe im simplifying it too much.. but doesnt people explaining why they are unhappy with Sota, how they feel deceived, or talking about whats missing, or the timeframes on deliveries being bad, isnt that all just as important as saying * more is coming i have faith!*
Its relevent because they used UO supporters to fund this game with the idea its going to be the game to meet that audience. If its not to a lot of people.. its pretty important that gets said and goals adjusted or explained.
Or you end up with people feeling they got screwed out of their money.

You can argue technicalities of wording and w.e. reality is it was implied and came off as this was going to be the next UO to a lot of people. I mean you can say it wasnt, that thats not how you read it. But clearly people are here because of that? So its actually pretty fair to make these comparisons and want more.

 

Underworld Ascendant is a Kickstarter title described as,

UNDERWORLD ASCENDANT
"Far more than a dungeon crawl, Underworld Ascendant is a next-generation sequel to the legendary fantasy RPG's Ultima Underworld & Ultima Underworld 2. It not only modernizes the series' visuals and user interface to take full advantage of the today's powerful PC's, it innovates in bold new ways."

This title entered Kickstarter a short time after Shroud of the Avatar and is only a single player game.

Total Funding Underworld: $934,380.

Total Funding Shroud of the Avatar: $11,059, 856.

To be blunt. The MMO/multiplayer side of Shroud is where most of the bills are paid, PERIOD.

Now the single player has been neglected a bit. This will change. Will the single player Shroud of the Avatar be as good as other single player games from major studios? No!

To say the Development team doesn't listen to all of the player base is wrong and a lie. They listen but do not always implement all of our ideas. There is a difference.

Enough fake news and false narratives.

This game will never be perfect or entirely please everyone. I understand people are disappointed. Yet we all keep coming back because something about this game definitely hits closer to what we want than anything else on the market.

Everyone voice your concerns but do so constructively.

 

Never was a more untrue sentence ever written in this forum! I have my beefs with SOTA but will also say that the devs are INCREDIBLY encouraging of feedback AND responsive to player feedback/criticism/suggestion. Can't think of any game that has more interactivity between the player community and the devs, and in which the devs clearly integrate player suggested content and mechanics on a regular basis.

 

Well, I never said more is coming have faith. I can say if I were @Berek I would have one thread that says "Complain about SoTa here" and there would be one thread containing the complaints over and over in one place. There are how many threads now that people started? As I previously stated,don't complain without have suggestions or solutions. Maybe people feel that is unfair and I am trying not to be offensive. I just feel that beating a dead horse over and over without any real suggestions on how to fix said issues benefits neither the players,nor the game.

 

Star Citizen handles repetitive thread topics like a Katamari Damacy, and rolls them all up into a single thread.

Great idea, imo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy

 

So you think, the MMO/multiplayer side of Shroud is where most of the bills are paid. Because SotA has more total funding as Underworld Ascendant. I doubt that. Maybe most of the money for SotA came from the single player Ultima fans, nobody knows that exactly. Here is another way of comparison of Kickstarter funded games

Pillars of Eternity (former Project Eternity) - a single player rpg in the spirit of Baldur's Gate - was founded with 3.986.929 $ with 73.986 supporters
Shroud of the Avatar was founded with 1.919.275 $ with 22.322 supporters

This means there is a market for single player rpg games. However, more important as this fact is the success of the game. Here are some stats



Shroud of the Avatar -> http://steamcharts.com/app/326160



Pillars of Eternity -> http://steamcharts.com/app/291650

I know, Pillars is released and SotA is not. I could make some further comparisons - maybe with Elder Scrolls Online, Skyrim or Witcher 3. But I shall limit myself with games developed with a low budget. It seems there is still a long way to go for SotA. I can only hope, that SotA will have the necessary success someday. If this game is a failure, Lord British will be out of business. I hope this will never happen because I'm still a huge fan of him.

 

I played UO since 1998 for several years, I remember how frustrating it was, there were so many bugs, we had so many crashes, a lot of lag and those horrible server reverts, but you know what ? I never felt disappointed I loved the freedom UO gave us, the freedom to travel an open world, the freedom to choose our play style with a great skill and combat system, the freedom to find a spot to settle and place with pride our home and of course the freedom to join the fantastic PVP experience. I cant find the same feeling playing SotA because SotA is not UO, basically because SotA has a scene based game with overland travel system , a level based skill system, a random deck combat system, !!this game has not even been release and its filled with player houses bought in Addon store !!, it might be UO spiritual successor but "NO" SotA is not UO.

 

Opinions differ.

This 'feature' was born of a bug originally that the dev team failed to correct in time before it became ingrained. This was one of the things that killed UO for me, making the world smaller... It ceased to be a world, and became instead a collection points of interest and your access to them was dictated by the contents of the rune book.

See above. With runes, the world became a disjoint collection of points of interest.

All elements of the main reason I and many many other left the game and it became necessary to implement the Trammel/Felucca split to save it.

I might be mistaken... but I don't believe SotA has hard skill caps... I know that there has been a theoretical maximum of of around 200 stated by @Chris, but I'd believed that was more a function of mathematics. Why are skill caps objectionable, but a hard cap on the number of GM skills preferable? That seems inconsistent.

UO Launched with none of this... It was all introduced later. Do you really expect SOTA to launch with feature parity with a game that has been in development for decades? Also, all but one of the above is already in the plan.

Also the major contributor to game killing lag. Partly a symptom of the low population in game currently.

Planned and will be delivered before launch. Additional slots to be sold in the Add-On Store. Buy as many as you feel the need for.

This is a function of population.

We have dyes now...

 

I would even go so far that the spirit of UO was missing in the beginning.. It slowly reappears now that we get more content and more conflict in the game.

 

Agreed, the dev team has been awesome....

Its a matter of style I think alot of us expected them to follow what many of us see as one of the greats (uo). This does not mean that Sota cant become one of the greats, I just dont know how it gets there from here but im willing to w8 and see how they do it.

 

We would like to see everyone view Shroud of the Avatar as it is by its own merits, not comparing it to other games (especially games that are released and finished for over 15 years running), and certainly not comparing to games that we are not comparing to ourselves. SotA stands on its own with its own awesome community, so let's focus and celebrate on that ideal, instead of worrying about what it isn't.

 

Yes but no... It was kickstarted on that premise. Then you guys should not have kickstarted it as a successor ^^

 

I think comparisons from other games are where we get our ideas and tell us what's still missing from the game that we like. I agree that also SOTA should be based on what we like about it that is great, but really we are not quite there on the things that will keep everyone engaged in the game and coming back, but most of us are aware of that this is still getting tweaked and defined and is in the works. The Devs have got to be able to listen to all the feedback when determining what's missing the presence of which will make this game the best it can be. It is hard to listen I'm sure sometimes and some feedback is not feedback but just complaints without supporting the idea people want to convey. I think if someone says I don't like it, they should say and here is what I would like instead. That would help immensely.

edited

 

This isn't true. Off the top of my head, I posted about being chased by stags in overland encounters, and it was fixed fairly quickly. Gathering water came from the agriculturalists (yes, that needs some tweaks, which we also gave feedback on, and they have already said we WILL see it soon.) The watchers were reduced in annoying scenes due to player feedback.

I wish I could remember more, but I've had several experiences where I saw a change and got to think "Hey, I reported/suggested that!"

And I remember Darkstarr saying "That's a good idea" to player submitted feedback on the postmortem, and then whatever it was showing up afterwards. Chris changed things in the next release after saying "That's should take me about 4 hours, that's some low hanging fruit."

I bet if someone had been keeping a list we would be in the thousands of user initiated changes/additions.