Four Years (or, Why free passes re: development have to stop)

Wurm Online which predates MineCraft, in which not only can you decorate your house with crafted items, you fight the mobs so you can clear the land and pave the roads, only then are you ready to build a house. But first you have to learn blacksmithing so you can forge the nails. And you did not need $$K investment to build a town, you just got a community of like minds together and you just built it.

There are a lot of SOTA players that need to be playing more games if they think SOTA is innovative housing. The only thing innovative about SOTA housing is turning the usual low cosmetic shop into a higher priced collectibles market, but that is not a new idea - in fact that was Portalarium's first game that failed.

 

Well, as we can talk about swg housing and crafting (super cool), we should also talk about the combat system (terrible bad) or how they destroyed, literally, the game just after 2 years.

It's not fair to compare SotA with other games if we are gonna talk only about good things. I played a lot of them (except daoc and ac2) in the past and none of them was a perfect game, or nearly perfect. What about if we talk about the status of those games when they released? someone played the EVE Online first year in 2003? full of exploits, bugs and bad mechanics. Nobody would have bet on, and see what they did with that game.

SotA housing is good? yes it is. SWG housing was better? yes, it was. One good thing does not make the another one bad. This is something important to understand.

There are some valids point in this thread but when I talk about good things of old games, I try to push myself to talk about bad things too. Thats the way how you can see what we have experienced in the past, and not let being charmed by the nostalgia.

I don't think I need play more games to consider that SotA is a good game tbh. I'm agree about innovation, but they are not selling any innovation about housing, at least from my point of view.

Try to make a list about how many games has a better housing, and later make the same list with games with worse housing compared to SotA. I think I don't need to say which list would have more names on it

They can give us a lot of more, even a better housing? of course, and they have the tech to do that in the future. But the housing is good enough right now, today, to talk about the good things and not just about why we can not get the swg housing system.

 

Well yeah, in that case they sacrificed the world design as they were basically Barren landscapes and the combat systems were quite dreadful even by 2003 standards. EverQuest had far smoother combat in 1999 though, of course... no housing. So you are really proving my point

 

I am? I thought your point was, "I'm not sure I've played any housing system as robust and well implemented as SOTAs..." and then I mentioned how SWG had a heaps better housing system. Combat doesn't enter the equation.

As for "world design", like combat that's neither here nor there if we are discussing a housing system, but I'll still comment that was actually an open world, sandbox, done right. It was glorious to have that much area to play in.

 

Sounds awesome, where can I download it? Oh... right.
The thing is and I think some of the devs and even some of the community understands that Bubonic, you as well as some of our more harsh community members give Portalariun some touch love. Whether or not they choose to listen remains to be seen. I always said "wouldn't it be cool if some folks who wanted a great game got together and did so?" This is the closest thing we're gonna get to that. It seems that we've go no excuse. We can't blame the publisher, EA or even Steam (my personal favorite scapegoat for games sucking as much as they do.) We've got a pretty supportive community and the industry/US economy are not optimal but far from being the kiss of death so what can we as a community do. Giving Portalarium more money is not the answer. We're already pretty supportive if not weary and some of us offer some amazing resources.
The folks who have accepted the game warts and all have gotten us over some big humps and now those humps are getting taller but are not a vertical cliff or wall. The folks posting in this thread most actively are some of the sagest folks we've got.
I know that you guys aren't professionals per se but you have experienced some instances that you think are successful. You may be tired of saying these things and some of us and the devs are probably tired of hearing it but parents don't constantly bug us to pick our coats up when we come in for the hell of it. They do it because here we are yet our coats are still on the floor.

Keep on fighting the good fight. The game you want done right is always worth it.

 

There is no excuse for 4 years of development and vital game systems aren't even designed yet or they just keep us in the dark on how they are supposed to work. It has been badly managed and things like Chris's Blog etc. are first steps in making things transparent again. Still we know nothing about the game and where it is headed.

 

I hope they heed your warning sir. There has been a few of us that has seen this coming for years and have been voices in the wilderness. I know people here do not think much of me but one thing I have been is honest. Thank you for saying what needs to be said as well.

 

Another sad thing is that we have been waiting for a great single-player game and offline mode for years. Time and again we have been told to be patient but next to nothing has been done in this regard. When they worked on this part of the game it was half-heartedly. For example the companions. They are just talking pets looking like humans and they are not even fully implemented yet.
Now we are just months away from "release" of episode 1 and the single-player and offline part still plays like 3 years ago. This is disappointing especially when you think about sentences like "SotA is basically a single-player game with the option to play online" or that it would be a high-quality single-player game which Richard Garriott said right at the beginning of development four years ago.
Now patience nearly has run out and frustration sets in and with frustration anger comes, too.

 

I'm sure that other games have certain aspects that are better. If those other games aren't cross platform (Linux) then they don't even exist to me.

 

A steamer reporting Wurm ran just fine on Ubuntu. It is written in Java and has OGL graphics so Wurm is inherently multiplatform, it is more of an issue of tested and supported since they are an indy studio (some would say even amateur). So you have no excuse for seeing what better sandbox housing really looks like.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/366220/discussions/0/343786745994961273/

 

It doesn't matter that SWG has closed; the point is that the system was better and it was done 14 years ago to boot. ie: A game in 2017 shouldn't be able to just replicate, but should be able to fly past it with absolute ease.

SotA doesn't do that, which is frustrating to me in general terms, but equally frustrating that people say SotA is the best ever iteration of housing in a game when that certainly isn't the case by any stretch of the imagination.

See, here's the thing... you can still LIKE a game, whilst also remaining factual when it comes to the history of videogames, and be able to point out where things simply aren't as good without being seen as "hating" on a game.

 

...in your opinion. The topic is highly subjective.

Yes... Star Wars Galaxy's housing system was great... My main was an Architect... It also wouldn't work in Shroud of the Avatar. It would lead to the same urban sprawl that plagued UO. There's nothing new here... All of the design decisions that went into the creation of the housing system for Shroud were debated years ago. The housing system is a workable collection of compromises the maintain the playability of the game within the constraints of the system... One of the largest constraints being a Single Instance of the world. The dev team has been quite forthcoming with the reasons for their design decisions concerning housing since the earliest days of the project.

I don't recall anyone saying that Shroud's system is or will be the best iteration of housing in a game... If you have some references, I would love to see them.

To what purpose? Do you wish to affect some major change in the system at this date?

Personally, the housing system in Shroud is what moved me to dump many thousands of dollars into the project, and carve out my own little virtual fiefdom. I hope to be able to use it to provide a place for hundreds of others to live and play for years to come. Come the rental system and a couple of other less important features, my little scene could easily provide that.

 

A lot of people thought this way. Problem is the 100 players arent there to populate the oversold POTs. They forgot to build the game so to speak.

 

Er... I'm replying to them earlier in the thread. It's the whole reason I'm even talking about the topic, because it's not one that even interests me. But it was raised... so I replied. Look back through the thread. Cheers.

 

IF they release this year.
They're going to kill the game right away.

Not a lot of people playing, they're waiting for the game to be better. If it does not get better.. nobody is going to play.

Then, they're going to get a 2nd Kickstarter. They will fail, just because of how they dealt with the first chapter. ( if there is a 2nd..)
If that's all you can do with 10MiL.. you won't do better with a few more.

There is literally zero hype about this game. Outside this forum.
Nobody is streaming the game (or almost), discussions about weak points of the game, used to be locked.
The game is being bashed on other forums.


Please, don't tell me, the game doesn't advertised much.
Because for a game like this, with LB, the expecting hype should be really high. Even without the advertising.

They sell a single player game, we end up with a multiplayer game with a really expensive cash shop and almost nothing for the single player.
In business as in life, you get what you deserve......

 

Edit: Sorry. Posted this under one of my kid's accounts. This is Twiggi Fizzlesticks.

It states clearly on kickstarter home page under features:

They also stated on kickstarter home page

They also mention PvP, and sold pledges for non-instanced housing for 100s and 1000s of dollars. How is was that being sold as a single player game?

They did not sell a single player game.

Now after they officially release and have finished all the quests and have them polished, and they don't have

.
Then we can all complain.

 

I could link tons of videos , but I wont play that game.

Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”.
Clearly a single player experience with multi-player capabilities.
NOT a multi-player game with single player capabilities .
Ultimas IV-VII Single player?
Oh and they did not said a word about a cash shop in your kickstarter page either. Wanna talk about it?

But it's alright.
If you don't see any flaws, fine.
We just don't agree with you.
And the sells too, they don't agree with you either.

 

It matters very much to me that a good game that people enjoyed closed like that. With no one to answer to but ourselves it chafes me to see bad things happen to the game. I get the feeling that we're under some sort of pressure to be able to call this done in some sort of way. They have told us that this game is going to be in perpetual development so we have to hope that we're all going to get what we want. In view of the pressure that we seem to be under, what state does the game absolutely have to be in? The goal posts keep moving with all of our posts (even mine.) There will always be examples of games that do something better.
I say to the ESO folks, please stick around here and help us make this game and other games better in the interest of keeping the developers of your favorite game honest.
I chose Android in the smartphone jihad but I try to be encouraging to iOS users because iPhone innovation is what drives Google, Motorola and Samsung to stay sharp.

 

This is the 'free pass' that the thread is all about, people telling us not to complain because this is in early access. Did you ever wonder why the devs started doing free trials? It is because they know the old forum guard is not giving them the feedback they need to finish early access! They was too busy demanding beer brewing than insisting on a starting game that keeps people engaged for hours that will convert them into paying customers.

The entire purpose of early access is to play the quests repeatedly and say what is not working, what do you not like, is it too long or too short, are there gaps in the story, is it too easy too difficult. We control their purse strings, if we don't like where they are going with the story, then we can stop funding the game. And maybe they will actually hire quest writers to recapture the lost store sales and get those players back. Maybe they will actually make single player offline a playable game. But certainly that will not happen if people stop critiquing it and instead just keep parroting that the game is great because RG and DS make nothing but great games - because both of those devs have said they need critical feedback.

And yes they do owe us a single player game, that is exactly what 'single-player offline' is supposed to be in the very quotes you made from kickstarter. It is not supposed to be an offline MMO with content and economy that requires groups. While you can argue about where the balance should tilt in the online modes - single, friends, multi - the kickstarter is not complete unless a playable single player offline exists (as both RG and DS have owned up that is not playable as of now).

 

So let's see what is missing that was said during the Kickstarter campaign:

- create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII
- Players will adventure in an interactive world where their choices have consequences
- the main quest line will provide greater than 40 hours of focused, story driven content
- A fantasy role-playing game that will focus more on player choices and discovery than on level grinding.
- organically derived game-play responses to player behavior and fundamental virtues and consequence of actions
- Fully interactive virtual world - If it looks usable, it should do something
- Physical game components will be available: Cloth map, fictional manuals, trinkets