If we build it they will Come

Ok something is preying on my mind. Many of you know me to be a very positive voice for this game and some do not know me yet at all but hopefully one day we will meet. I believe in what has been done so far and I believe in what could be done in the future for this game.
*****And sorry for the long post as I was reminded by some***** ***toe tapping long***
Shroud of the avatar being developed since 2013: see early pics to current pics below:













Here is us today and really beautiful to see.


We've come a long way baby, that is for sure. I hope to never ever to do this again. That is my plan. I want this game to be 'THE' game.


Ok so the point of this thread is to mention not complain about a couple of things that are preying on my mind as I mentioned before.

1-Every month brings more and more to the game. Things like: New items, new tech, new patterns, new recipes, new emotes, new skills, changing and tweaking of skills, new areas and newly uncloned areas.
Mostly NEW NEW NEW and new and improved, and sometimes new and not improved depending on opinions Which is expected and will continue throughout the development cycle.

2-So what is the big deal???? Ok for me every release I am so Psyched for the release to see all the NEW NEW NEW right? and so there is the anticipation and then there is the let-down, yeah my bad of course too. And you might ask why the let down, we are in development right? Answer: It's not done yet. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah I do know.

3- Ok so what and here is the let-down for me for almost every NEW we get we seem to be getting more new that is at an incomplete state. Not like new emotes, but the new adventure scenes, new skills and systems etc. And again why is that? Answer: We are in development. Right? Answer: Yep we are.

4-What was the last straw for me or last nerves issue that makes me write this?

Ok so in the NEW NEW NEW areas and content I see so much promise, new tech coming etc. This is so totally cool and exciting, but then after is the let-down and I see with this new the existing world is full of incompleteness.

5- We get all this tech that takes us to these fancy techy areas, yay right? a tech that will eventually make it so we can have boating even, and we get to find a few discoveries and perhaps the surprise may be a chest, in a hidden room or whatever. So for this example lets say 'yay we made it, we got to the chest'. Woo Hoo!!!!

6- So what happens then after figuring all of that out climbing here, fighting our way through many dangers to get to the chest? Well in this case it was one person only gets to open up the chest and then "tada" receives a lowly amount of loot for their troubles.

So you might ask 'so what we made it right'? but, but no that is not even the most disappointing part of this incident.

It was never about the amount of loot or the fact that it was the same old same old usual loot at all, nope not at all.

I know and yes even though that could and should be changed one day that was not it.

It was the deep disappointment of 'is that all there is here' just a chest sitting there free to open and nothing saying yay you've completed something, no click or anything, no hidden wall, nothing. It was Such a let down.

There was nothing adventuresome to the chest,. There was no lock picking needed, no figuring out how to open the chest, no risk verses reward etc. Just a chest sitting there beckoning 'open me' .

Really Believe me I did hesitate a moment thinking perhaps there is a trap or a trick to it, but noooo there was not. There wasn't any of the coolness that Maybe a ghost of a dead pirate appears saying oooOOOOoooOo 'if you open this chest and take my treasure you will suffer much ", but no nothing happened.


So for me as in all new things in new releases I find all of the new content so lacking in experience like it does not quite make the mark and it's always the more coming later even the 'not until episode 2' comment we hear over and over, which is fine but still no fun to hear so much about things that need to be in at release imo.

It is coolness for a moment but then I see the lacking, like ok been there done that, now what?

This happens release after release. So what, you might say? Answer: We are still in development wait it will happen one day.

Ok so in closing this bit of a rant here is what I have to say!!!!! My suggestion to our fantastic development team is STOP, take a breath and complete something already.

Look around the game complete fishing, complete agriculture, complete scenes by adding lots of discoveries, drop in in-game achievements, add lots of types of fishes, water creatures, and fish lore, fishing quests, different bait, fix old water, fix Hidden Vale, drop in achievements, add many side quests and any tasks, something.

And of course complete doesn't have to be the end. It means it is then fun, an adventure, rich and full ,and at a satisfying point in development.

It may be that we craft something and get a resource back or some cool thing or that we make 2 of something some time, or we make something unique, or we find a new recipe sometimes, or we get a popup that says if you do this you can save a part of what you are making to not be totally destroyed. Just Something please.

I just want to say Don't add any more world for a release or two. Just look at our world so far, what we already have and ask this question:

"What is missing the presence of which would make a difference to this game???? "

The game is missing in depth, rewards, challenge, and satisfying results over and over. How do we consistently miss having this in this game so far? GM misses it, Quests miss it, loot misses it., Exploring misses it.


What about taking a moment, taking a breath to embellish on what is already in the game, then move forward? Forget the deadline, forget the panic to release, don't add anything new and embellish and enjoy creating more to the world we have now.

We have the most beautiful game to play in now lets stop a moment to take care of it. Ok since it is really, really late and I'm a girl. This is dedicated to Shroud of the Avatar which one day will set the world on fire so dare to Dream, Dream, Dream for Shroud of the Avatar.



edited: long post disclaimer due to reminder lol

 

and those that hates the game now say... nothing has changed in 4 years...

 

Tz.....no manners @majoria70

You forgott to add one picture

 

I agree with you. I think this game should not hit release state simply with new user experience, final quests and few other features. It need more love. Each scene must look unique, quest must have observable consequences, NPC must have a life on their own, and every single important thing lying on the ground must have its story.

About loot :



Corpus got killed yesterday. He had only 5 gold coins on him. Not a single obsidian chip, not a single reagent, not even an underwear. I'm schocked. I can understand that I can't have luck everytime but, for my part, I expected this one could, at least, buy food for his horse. Even cultists have more wealth.

I keep thinking that the game is getting better and better. @Portalarium, you guys are doing great. But it's not ready to face game reviews, not even in 6 months.

 

1) Localise VOIP in game.
2) Create player run quests through some LFG system and have player run tour groups visiting parts of the world (sometimes peacefully?) telling explained history about that area of the world.
3) profit?

 

Nail head.....Your wisest words here so far Majoria!

I was thinking about this the other day actually. Lots new and also retuned content is being released each month and kudos to the devs for doing so much each and every release. I can understand their thought process. More content, more fun , more people....and yes that is true generally but if the content that gets released each month is not to the required finished standard and needs to then be worked on again at some point, which is always the case, its not efficient. With this process they have, a road map of X in Y release, r in Z release etc it leaves no time for these new area/systems/ideas to be fleshed out and finished/working/adequate for the finished game, meaning there's a massive backlog of things to be fixed and to get working as it should.

Respect to them for trying to create something fun for us each and every month, but i would like them to take 3 releases or more and get all they have, fleshed out and in a finished state they are happy with before creating anything new personally. I hear of Jira's 10's of thousands of entries deep, i see bugs that have been around for eons, i see systems that aren't finished totally( yes thanks for getting the systems in for us to play with initially but they need fleshing and finishing), performance that used to be a few months ago pretty good getting a lot worse so that i now am suffering in towns again. Ardoris and any town with some depth to it is a nightmare again for me. Performance is what will make or break it for many new players i think personally. This should be the number one priority....FULLSTOP!

EvE online suffered the same. Each new massive expansion bought new bugs/faults etc which is typical of all games, however they were very well known for not fixing issues that had been around for ages and just working on NEW content. I can understand that a number of releases with nothing really new added seems they have stagnated and the momentum has been lost but in reality, keeping on creating content that isn't perfect means they are getting swamped with things that need to be fixed/tuned and to be in a finished state. Please get combat/balance/loot tables/scenes/PERFORMANCE/AI/Quests/1000's of bugs/ each to a state that you feel is as perfect and as complete as you are willing to go and then restart on new stuff else i fear it will become so complex to fix in the end with everything new being added on top it will be too big a task to complete.

 

Agreed!
Some good suggestions/advice from a long-time supporter of SotA. (cheers Majoria!)

Of course, world builders 'gonna build , but I too would personally love to see more polish among existing zones/quests/activities. Especially since free trials are a thing now - let's make a good impression with what we have.

I'm sure they are following a schedule of "what to do when" , but Majoria's post makes many good points.

 

Just think! A lot of the "reviews" of this game were put out back then when it was in extremely early pre-alpha days. People giving it a review as if it was a finished product. Even the people who did so a year ago are in the same boat.

I would love to have the time to dig up all the old 1+ year old posts with people complaining about this and that not being in the game or unfinished (even though we all knew it was) and update them with "its in now, told you so".

Ill again express my belief that this early access in development idea is a failure, people just do not understand it.

 

fully agree

 

Problem is, even if the game is Early Access, you have to pay the full price for it. And if I have to pay the full price I want to know if it is worth my money. So I think, reviews even in this early state are legitimate - because the devs charge the full price for the product.
That is one of the downsides of this business. Want money, get an honest review - no matter what state the game is in.

 

I could be horribly wrong but I think the overall somewhat non-communicated game development plan is / was:

1) Develop concept art / lore / story - complete
2) Build a trial zone to test basics (Hidden Vale) - complete
3.a) Build the world - unique maps for all zones in Novia - in progress
3.b) Build the world - tech systems and gameplay mechanics - in progress
3.c) Build the world - rough draft the main quest lines - in progress
4) Build out all kinds of fun side quests and create the fun things
5) Polish, balance and performance
6) Call it launched and go take a nap

That schedule makes perfect sense project management wise. They have to bring in different talent at different stages to prevent a lot of re-implementation wasting a lot of money. But we've been living in the construction zone a long time. Great progress keeps being made but they haven't deeply gotten to steps 4 and 5. I can't really recommend the game to friends until there's a lot of fun and mostly finished things to do in it. I try to make my own goals and play fairly casually to prevent burn-out.

The hat quests were nice because that gave a sense of purpose to each release. It would be nice if they did something like that again even for a less tangible reward. If people are grinding bosses for loot unbalancing the game maybe they need to add tech so you get worse loot each time to you kill it to make it more fun for less hard-core players?

 

Wow, if @majoria70 is having a moan, then this is serious.

As far as I understand, the "add new stuff team" and the "performance" team are distinctly different and it's not a case of taking from one to give to another.

But this is what happens when you let us behind the curtain. Sausage making 'aint pretty.

Central Brittany is a no go right now because the performance of the game slows to a thick, gloopy blood trickle down the neck of a dehydrated Orc.

It may be that with the tech issues facing them, it's just too complex or expensive to fix. btw, here's some flowers to throw over your head.

I still have faith, but cannot yet play the game. It is unplayable, but bits of it are OK.

There is a lot riding on the success of this game and it is the commitment of Port that keeps me coming back.

Once it is playing as smooth as Elder Scrolls, it will be a cool game.

But until then.

Performance, performance, performance.

 

I have a house in central brit, right to the left of zone in. I've had lots of time going in and out of there. While I can see the dif between it and another zone, I dont have these kinds of issues that you describe. I zone normal zones in 20 seconds and cent brit takes me about 40. But, I usually have perfectly fine frame rates in there.

They can improve performance but like many new games, you do need to good rig to start and hopefully in 2-3 years even cheaper new rigs can play it good.

I plan on replacing my GTX980 when the 2080 comes out next year and I would bet it runs SOTA exponentially better.

 

@2112Starman Yeah I get that you need a newish rig for games these days. Always been the same really, but I have no probs with other games, SOTA is the only one that crawls in places with lots of dynamic light. Therefore it's not that I need a new rig, but that the game needs a performance polish. I think this is well established and it looks like R43 will solve.

You never have to asked a player if they have a high spec machine, as they will always let you know. "What is this crawl you talk of, why I have a massive computer, I see no problems. Your computer must be weak and puny, muhahahah"

I'm not taking a pop, just pulling your plonker

 

The difference between SOTA and other new games is quantity and not quality (dynamic light, dx12 kinda stuff). For example, I ran the new Lora Croft game with all the DX12 features at max resolution great.

Sota is bogged down by shear numbers of deco and all the little dynamics and shading of each. There is a reason why the world in WoW is extremely simple, very little interaction and "numbers" of content around for the video card to render. This allows them to make a beautiful game but it lacks detail. SOTA lacks beauty but has massive volumes of detail.

Think of another online game with possibly dozens of people in a single zone that has the level of detail that you would find say in a metro PoT thats near filled up with people, houses and deco.

Its a trade off.

 

I miss our running around the ocean and getting past broken spots on the over world. 8^D

 

Coming from you, this is pretty good read. ( As in someone who has always been very positive, its a good read in the sense that you hit the nail on the head, and word it in a nicer way then most people would lol )

I agree fully. Im a big fan of their intentions. Im a big fan of what they seem to be TRYING to do. But your right, its taking entirely too long and more effort is being put into expanding more incomplete things, then finishing up and stamping things *done* or at least *passable for now! *.
It is unrealistic for them to spend 100% of their time on one thing.
But it is realistic for them to have 100% of their level builders focuse on one area of scenes. And to have the story or side quests being done to intertwine with it at same time.

Its completly realistic too ask that they stop and finish fishing, while also adding fishing recipies and trophies. Not doing 1/3 of that, then saying they will come back to it * Soon * .

Even combat balancing has been annoying me lately. Im all for chris' elaborating on his blog and explaining his line of thinking at least a little bit. But they went from * Balancing polearms, bludgon, light armor* .. into the HEAT system?! Now the heat system is half wonky, and the balancing on the actual skills never got hashed out. Now he is moving onto the next thing ( adjusting decay and such ). I really feel they need to properly adjust and finish something, move on while its tested, then make time to come back and adjust following that release. Not jump 5 steps ahead, 8 steps back, 3 steps to the right.

Anyways im rambling.
But yes. Very good post.

 

I find that reddit is entirely to shifted one way.

I've always hassled the devs and been open about my feelings on certain issues in sota. But Reddit is bad in the aspect a lot of them copy and paste the same argument. In a few cases they are posting outdated information or just blatently wrong information. And i find its as much a () jerk as this forum turns into sometimes.

I find the official forums can be extremely shited one way, where the posts arent even factual, and just as bad as reddit is.
That being said, i find the official forums at least have a few players still involved who arnt happy with the product , but still play it and say. *this is how and why i dont like this *. Which at least SOMETIMES can lead to good discussion. I rarely see anything on reddit in that regard.

Almost an extreme both ways sometimes. And moderation has been an issue on this forum. But i find reddit to be almost so focused on hating every aspect, its not even a productive conversation.

I prefer to test, and continue posting what i dont liek and why on here, untill i give up and move on completely.

 

that was definitely a long post! but you can see the difference from day one to now! I totally agree on what you said about putting stuff in that makes it seem rewarding, i also am so tired of the same ol , same ol crap! From your post i gather you really like to fish!

I on the other hand do it when im bored! To add to your post from my perspective a different type of player, i would love to see more monsters in the game besides a billion skeletons, and 5 billion wolves, billions of bandits, billions of Kolbolds and billions of Spiders and bears, and a few boss creatures that dont drop anything worth a damn to someone that is not a Crafter!

What i would lvoe to see is maybe an Ettin type creature, maybe a Cyclops, or Minatour, in a maze instance, couple of giants with weapons depending on thier surroundings (earth air water etc...) it would only take a second to open a monster manual from D&D (i know some Devs still have that stuff), and see the wide variety of creatures and monsters that can be added to game along with more better drops! That make me feel like i accomplished something, and now have some decent loot from it!

I agree with you Majoria on focus on what we have, and add stuff into it or fix whats broken or a waste of time! *EDIT- Im adding this thread cause i think it is relevant to this post as well
Short Stories for Random Encounters!!!!!

 

Yes you get the purpose of the thread very well. And it is not just that I like fishing in a game more than other things, I just wish it to be a fun completed system that leads us to other directions like fishing up treasure maps, or finding a clue to a fun and interesting adventure, like fishing up a cursed amulet that does something to us ummm like curses us with a debuff so we need to solve the mystery.

I want the things we do to matter and lead us in directions that are surprising and unforseen. I do not want to put frosting on mud and have every experience just like the last. So to me it is not about fishing, crafting, or combat. It is about all of them, they do not connect. Nothing gets finished just frosted over. Our experiences do not connect, surprise, or lead us in the journey and an awesome adventure, even though some of the story is there, the links are broken and disconnected still. No amount of story will make it feel like a story when the game is broken as it is.

I don't say it can't be wonderful, just that it is missing basics and focus at this point. I am calling to my fellow community to ask for focus and to focus on what's missing that will make the difference to this game still and not more, more, more different as in content but fix the broken and then add the content. Yes I do say it with a lot of words but I just want you all to read and consider for the good of this game. Not take us away from solving this.

Look at games that failed. One was Vanguard Saga of Heroes, which was a lovely, huge world game, where the development team had huge ideas for this game, lots of cash for that era was spent on that game and things were added, added, added, lots of world, lots of areas, lots of really amazing things. It was a huge endeavor and then one day it fell apart. Someone came in and fired the development team or most of them and the new people did not have the code or knowledge of what had gone on before them to fix it for one thing. It got released before it was done with tons of bugs and tons of things never finished. So through the years the team that was there did try to make it go and those loyal followers tried to hold onto the dream of this game and to the sad ones who stayed, the game got taken down as in shut down. I do not compare this game with that one, but I do ask for a moment to consider. We are not that game, we are Sota still with a chance.