What's the hook?

Hey folks,

I play SotA every few months, for a few days at a time. I don't want to burn out on a pre-release game.

That being said, I've always found that the game lacks a "hook" to draw me in and keep me playing. I think it all starts with the terrible new player intro experience and the feeling of being lost in an empty world when you get dumped onto the world map.

Have these things been worked on? Is the intro experience better? Does it at least guide you to a place where you actually see other players and feel like you're part of an inhabited world?

Half of you are going to hate me for this, but I really think a lot more people would stick with the game if there was a World Chat that you were in from the beginning, that would allow you to easily chat with other humans and find some direction and encouragement. To make you feel less alone. I know, people say join a guild. But in my guild, at least, there is rarely anyone on. For those who are dead set against a World Chat, all the developers would have to do is give you the option to leave or join it at any time.

What do you think?

 

I think it should be handled with 3 new player guilds, 1 for love, truth, and courage. The new player guild has the Oracle as their guild leader and the message of the day everytime you log in is the command on how you may leave it. Dark Age of Camelot uses this system.

 

The hook? We've invested between 100~10k usd.
Also, most of the current player base seem to think this game will last them 20 years like UO did.
It might just take 20 years with 4 years a episode

 

We have zone chat. It does not feel empty. So check it out yourself and tell. We have all new starting areas coming in, one is in to test out, we got a new quest designer and we are moving forward.

 

Zone by default is not ticked. So most players don't even know it exist, especially newer players. I seen the most 5 messages in zone so far, out of which 3 are spam. Maybe that's why there is no world chat.

 

I don't normally use it but it is there. You can set your individual chat tabs up differently to view what you want. Someone can shout out in zone and ask where something is or someone.

If someone doesn't want to see it they filter it out or anything they filter it out. I usually keep 3 different types of chat tabs, one for just whispers and party. One I have for all combat things, and one I have everything.

I check my whisper tab if I'm talking to someone usually at a distance. When around others I might need to see their emotes, when alone sometimes I just want to check on damage I'm doing and other things. I like our chat filtering system now. They are going to add ability to drag the chat Windows out where we want them someday. You probably know but some don't *cheers*

Edit: use the little blue flowers to apply filtering.

 

The answer to your question "What's the hook?" will be different for different people.

Since I started playing back in 2014 I reveled in discovering new content, exploring the land, and improving my skills to reach certain goals. That was my "hook", and for several years I had a blast!

Unfortunately for me, every achievement in the game revolves around being good at combat, and the bar is being raised constantly to make it more challenging and less boring. Since I suck at combat, that means that ever more parts of the game are beyond my reach. Until recently, one of my goals was to be able to solo a 5 skull area like Ulfheim or Deep Ravenswood. Now that they've added even more difficult mobs to these areas, there is no point in my even trying because I know I will never be good enough to manage them.

 

Yes it is being worked on. Each starting path will have a "outskirts" scene where new players are expected to stay for the first couple of levels and which will include learning of the systems etc.

However I would wait another 2 releases.

Read these two articles and you will get an idea.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=71524
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=71450#Bloodriver

 

I have not found one as of yet, I am merely playing to stay ahead of the curve. if this game is a bunch of scenes and loading play grounds, theme parks. an over world that serve no purpose, other than to look at as a map. enough! with the eye candy already, get down to business lets see what cards you have in your hand, kinda thing. Man can not live on bread alone.

 

The game currently lacks one and the team doesn't seem to be working on one. SotA is currently a generic MMORPG with a small group of high invested players, its strong feature is the medieval Barbie angle.

 

IMO, trying to communicate with other players in game while doing anything else is a futile task. The UI just does not support it right now with a single pane visible. Yeah you can make other tabs but either you get chat text or combat reports, chat text or npc text. It is far too easy to miss a communication attempt. This is trivially fixed by allowing tabs to undock but doesn't seem to be a priority.
Right now there is discord for communication. That is outsourced like the maps, perhaps we need another window.

To the OP, the hook for current players was the high buy in cost. I know it is the only reason I even follow this game any more.

 

To alter a pop-culture reference: "There is no hook."

And that is the beauty of the game most people don't see. To me, it's the best Single-Player game ever made.

A little food for thought.

When I was a baby, I had to be fed.

When I was a child, I wanted to be fed.

As I grew older, I learned to feed myself.

To my estimation, worrying about single-player Kickstarter promises puts you in the middle of the above spectrum. And while I have no doubt the Single-Player RPG aspect of this game WILL be made, I also have no doubt that those that don't like it will drown out all other voices with their doomsaying - even if they are in the minority.

Sounds crazy when most people think of single-player Ultima games, or other RPGs out there. But see, they are thinking of being spoon-fed a single player experience.

This is a Single-Player experience like no other, and that experience is yours to make. It is not some scripted thing that we can all critique, although there is some of that flavor in the game.

What this has become for me is a sandbox where I can do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like. It is a buffet. Some people are sooooo caught up on the prime rib, and whether or not it's too rare; they forget all the other wondrous stuff on display at the buffet table, and the stuff that is being planned or prepared to fill the table EVEN MORE.

I am not drinking the Kool-Aid. I am living an alternate life in a game like I cannot do in any other game.

And is all of it perfect? No. Please, there is no perfect game. That's why there's hundreds to choose from and why some of us bounce around between two or more (I am guilty of this). And that's fine. But I, personally, always come back here.

Why? TL;DR

There's crafting. There's crafting of different things. There's gathering of things needed to craft different things.

There's fishing. Although I hear its boring. But I also hear that its going to get improved upon and gosh darn I also hear that you can fish up artifacts.

There's random encounters on the Overland Map. And while it's not as challenging when you are of a higher adventure level, I do hope they make it so it scales and I also hope they make more varied mobs for those encounters.

There is PvP and PvP only zones and dungeons. But PvP has no structure in terms of leaderboards because we need leaderboards to measure E-Peens. Even still, there are some community organized PvP events. PvP is consensual, but I suspect that turns off some of the PvP'ers off because they need to flex that E-Peen and they need to play the Wolf.

There are some places for group activities, like Control Points. But no one does them any more because they are pansies, err, because they nerfed the rewards and made them harder(?).

There are dungeons. Single-Player dungeons as part of the story. And open dungeons you can run in multiplayer or friends mode. Gosh darn The Rise is big, and dangerous. Yes, there is like one percent of the population who goes there and treats it like a day spa, but who cares?

There is role playing, if you are into that.

There is housing and decorating, and man it can swallow up a huge chunk of game time - if you are into that sort of thing.

There are town/PoT sieges with Cabalists who drop sweet hoods and gear. And I got to run one with @Lord British once and that was really fun.

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Don't get me wrong. The game needs a bit of work. But since we are persistent it matters not if you start back up again now or come back later when it's well-baked.

Good luck.

 

For some reason I picture you saying this with bright blue lips

The ability of a game to allow you to create your own hook with enough effort isn't really an impressive accomplishment. Folks have invented hooks for playing Desert Bus, so players will suffer through anything if invested heavily enough. A good game provides a solid hook to invite you into the game and let's you invent your own hooks if you choose to later, like Neverwinter Nights.

 

This is a false equivalency. None of what I mentioned was created by me or other players (well, except the community PvP events and the RP). My point was that there is a ton of stuff to do if you choose to do it. I spent a ton of money on ArcheAge. I let it go. I have not played the game since January 2016. I won't be going back. It's the same here, if I am no longer wanting to play I am not going to play just because I invested money. Besides, there would be more incentive to divest myself here as I could just sell all my stuff - making it easier to part ways.

 

Yep pretty much the same for me :/

 

Sadly Agree..

 

I don't miss communications. I tab back and fourth. I know it's not perfect, but soooooooo much better than it was

 

Is there a release date set for EP1?

 

No there is not. Lots of new developments that will make it likely to go to the end of the year or first of 2018 if we can convince them more time is needed to get this game polished

 

And it could be soooo much better if they just let us undock the tabs. You constantly check and don't miss things. I do not so may not see a message until 15 minutes have passed.