What makes you a believer?

Do you believe in SotA?
Do you think playercount will increase, PoTs were filled up and playerdriven economy will rise?
Do you believe thinks will balance out and SotA becomes a successful online game?
With 200.000+ players ~1000 online a day?

If yes, why?
if no, why not?

I dont know what to believe atm.

I wish the game will be a success.
I wish i find some likeminded players who have same focus on RP, play at my pace and we just have a good time as a group. But i doubt that will ever happen.

I doubt without to make Row Lots available through gameplay and igg the world will fill up.
I doubt there are enough passionate players willing to invest a couple of hundred $ to get a home.
I dont talk of players who farm 24/7 i talk of normal casual gamers.

And i doubt on a healthy playerdriven economy.
Crafted gear if it's not +5 or more seems worthless.

What spells is highend gear to high prices but what still less than its really worth.

Why do we believe that in the End things will turn out good in New Britannia?

Release in November maybe?
And what should happen to change the hate anf all the ranting against SotA and Portalarium and what if all the backers who jump in after release are dissatisfied and rant too?

 

Do I believe it'll succeed? Truthfully, no. I kinda want to share my views. But I think for the health of your thread I'll refrain.

Do I hope it'll succeed? Hell yes I do.

There are times where I see a certain level of toxicity in this forum community that makes me lose hope.

But I try to block it out and focus on the other members who try and make this a vibrant community where views are respected and not pounced upon.

I also try and remind myself that most people in the game are nice. Not so much the forums.

Heh heh.

 

No.

At one point I had Rose colored glasses. Now I have taken them off, and see that I feel the direction has gone very wrong for a very long time.

No.

No. I do not think balance is achievable with this model. In fact it will be further separate the community with the new Seedinvest. The kickstarter made it seem like the LOTM would be the top billing. That is not true anymore. The golden castle will be. LOTM is second class citizen and that makes the village and row surfs. I wonder what people that do not own property will be called. I think they will be called "smart" personally.
About the RP in this game, it is just like you make your character Cosplay. Your character is not a functional role if you wanted to actually make your build like you wanted to RP with. So you can dress up like your RP persona, you can dance panda like your persona, but you cannot actually play your character like the character you want, unless you want to be a clone and do the be all end all do everything character.

 

I believe "success" will not be defined by "does it have more players than [insert other MMO here]."
I believe that regardless of how many players end up showing up, the naysayers will always say it wasn't enough.

But I think SOTA will be successful in the sense that it will continue to be developed into other episodes (how many I don't know, less than 5? Maybe. More than 5, perhaps?).

There are many reasons that I believe it will be successful, but the most important one is because of the design. As much as having single player modes mixed with online modes is a problem, it's also a great benefit. Where other games might feel dead with a low population, ours can always support a few hundred and it will feel "normal". You have to remember that there are MANY MUD's out there that have sustained a population of just a few hundred active players for 20+ years. Do I think we will only have a few hundred? No, I think it will be a few thousand, and I think Portalarium recognizes that the long term "success" of this game may be a low population full of very satisfied and very passionate players.

My long term hope is that the unsatisfied unpassionate players go find something else to do with their time. Maybe that will happen after they've declared victory, or maybe that will happen after they find another game to make things up about, but I'm confident our community and this game will survive them and be very happy in the future.

 

Could happen. My only serious complaint is the lack of players. There are far more places to go than people online. Empiness itself feels like failure. If the marketing can bring enough players in, it's almost a sure success.

I definitely want it to succeed badly and will stay until there is no place to be.

 

Success will depend on the ability to gain massive amounts of new players. Since this is an MMO. A lot can't be changed, but enough can be to make that happen. It would take drastic measures and an intense amount of stepping on people's toes. The gap between Steam and Reddit needs to be bridged. That isn't unachievable either.

 

Remember that quote from the movie, Field of Dreams? If you build it, they will come. Well, I actually believe that Most of the currently inactive player base is waiting for the game to be completed, which is quite understandable (Still A LOT of work to be done...) Like the OP, I am really into RP and have purposely avoided all the side quests (other than a few starter ones which I will reset in July) and the main storyline for now This is THE time to level up your character's skills slow and steady to a decent level (oh...about 80 - anything beyond that is overkill for the main storyline, if you ask me... ) and make lots of friends (and future guildmates...) at social events so when the game is finally ready for launch (realistically, I would say sometime in the second half of 2018 for it to be feature complete), you will be ready to dive right in When people see the finished product, they will come in droves

 

Leveling up and making friends helps for the people currently playing - to some degree. It sucks if I fly right through the story with no challenge because my level is so much higher than it was designed for. Friends though do help A LOT. But new player experience needs a lot of love. The developers know this and have been focusing a lot of attention on it. I've attempted to get 5 of my friends to play. 0 have come on board. The new player experience is what stops them.

 

One can hope. One can worry. But from my experience one cannot predict success or failure with any accuracy. There is nothing in SotA that is irresistibly compelling or egregiously bad. Much of SotA's success will depend on the tone of "word of mouth" after release. It's obvious that many people are unable to evaluate SotA as a work in progress. Instead they think that what they see is what they will get.

This is why it is crucial to get the starting areas right for release. Repeated exposure during pre-release is an excellent way to achieve that.

 

True, while the new player experience has come a LONG way since it's inception, it really still needs a lot more work I do believe that the Devs are headed in the right direction, though, and have made significant improvements to it based on player feedback.

 

The thing that I wanted was the Single Player Online as it was one of the 3 online modes presented at the kickstarter. I did not think it would be just a utility mode as it is now. Equality between the modes is what I expected, not a push for the MMO version of the game. As an Ultima fan, I expected the game to be more of a single player story that you could invite your friends to play with you, kind of like the old LAN system. I also expected companions that could be there or be hired to assist you to fight the tough bosses. I do like pvp also so I wanted to build my character in Single player online and come out to the MO (multiplayer online, not MMO as they say now) and pvp. I put a lot of time and effort into my character, I built extensive backstories, bought a POT when they first came out because they where only going to sell like 10-20. My ambition was to make a theme town for evil RP. Yes a RP town for evil characters. I'm not going to go into what opened my eyes to what changed my mind but one thing is that port changed their tune and allowed hundreds of pots to be sold. I got tons more but will refrain. I have said enough for now.

 

I haven't enough information to make an informed guess as to how the game will fair down the line. I think my definition of success is likely a bit more simplistic, in that if it can maintain revenue enough to keep the servers going, and still support developers to maintain the existing project along with modest future development then it's good. Self sufficient would be healthy. I certainly want it to be successful, as I think most do. I think the game will be different a year down the road, and continue to evolve, so I'm not very worried about the current state of development. Larger MMOs would likely shut down after a period of time, but I think the model here can survive with less income, and player population. As long as there's (enjoyable) content, people will play as long as the servers remain active.

There's so many different drivers for what people enjoy, I do think it's going to be hard to maintain population across the board. Social RPers rely on the ability to RP and interact socially. If that dries up, so does that portion of the population. Same goes for PvP. PvE focused people will still need content, events, and things to do. I play single player friends (solo for the most part), so it's a bit of an uphill battle tackling content. I think the guilds and groups that play together are likely in a position to get the most enjoyment out of the game at present.

I don't know how I feel about the economy. I sell next to nothing, and prices seem high enough to make me want to craft things for my own use. I don't feel like I'm a part of the economy one way or the other. I can't find what I'm after most of the time, or out of my budget when I do find it. It doesn't deter me, but does impact the pace of the game, and gate content. I think I'm just rambling at this point though. I'm optimistic, and patient.

 

I think things look grim for crowdfunded MMOs generally. I was actually curious as to whether many of the complaints people have about SotA are unique to SotA and they are not. Whether it's the pervasive monetisation or things not meeting player expectations, a lot of what I read seemed pretty familar.

I was also wondering how many crowdfunded MMOs had actually been successfully completed and I couldn't find a single one (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). Even Star Citizen seems to be engaging in the "We aren't going to do a traditional launch!" BS and that game has like a bazillion dollars and little more than a demo and some pretty spaceship jpegs.

I don't think I'd ever back any kind of MMO ever again - it just seems like a furnace you're shoveling money in to. Now single player RPGs on the other hand - many of those seem to do OK.

 

Oh and I understand that. And there is a lot of discussion that can be involved in that. As it is now though, it presents itself as an MMO and that is where the money comes from. I think at KS they should have been more clear on the exact direction the game was going, presented it better, or refunded people if they decided the direction had to change. I don't even view this game as a single player game. It just.. it isn't. Take the single player game version of this and put it up to any other single player fantasy games. It just isn't there. With their budget and size, they couldn't do everything they promised. I don't even see how they had enough to make an MMO. Now a single player game - yes.

 

General Colin Powell US Army Infantry


I served with Colin Powell in Korea. He was a Lieutenant Colonel commanding the infantry battalion I was in. But I first actually met him personally while on a training exercise testing the South Korean forces ability to try and catch a runaway North Korean unit. Our battalion, his battalion was to play the part of the North Koreans landing by submarine and then being pursued on foot for as long as we could by 3 divisions of South Korean forces of the time during the 1970's. For a full month we had walked, fought and ran which was wearing hard on all of us. On the final day we walked 25 miles with full packs and ammo with the South Korean divisions hot on our tails. We had walked all that day a full 24 of the 25 miles and there we saw it, it was the mother of all mountains that was to be the last mile to our journey's end. So there I was, full pack of ammo, M-16 and a large shoulder fired missile on my back along with it's very bulky sight. Our blistered feet had worn off long before as we walked on the raw flesh inside our socks and combat boots. I was cussing about every form of ranked officer above me that I could think of all the way up that mountain which reached past the clouds. yet that was when I first met him. I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned to see his silver oak leaf cluster rank (of then) lieutenant colonel and with a smile he said to me, "Dammed tall hill isn't it? Well one thing is for sure, it's all down hill from there" as he pointed up at the top as we climbed above the clouds.



I never met our Lord British before now, yet I remember cussing through all the UO server crashes while I was trudging through his many dungeons, wondering if my character would be dead when I was able to get logged back in. So I can only imagine what he would have said to me with his smile, but I expect it would have been very similar

"Lord British the Richard Garriott"


"I think Chris Roberts is one of them, Will Wright's another, Peter Molyneux is another. They clearly exist, but on the whole, I think that the design talent in our industry is dramatically lower than we need, as an industry. It's a very hard skill to learn".

"My philosophy is that once you get people compelled enough to sit down and play the game, the whole way you make the game successful is by giving them enough unique ways to do things. First, let them deal with pulling levers and things like that for a while. Then after they've mastered that, you give them something else to do, like getting through doorways by blasting them down with a cannon Next, you give them a monster-finding quest, followed by logic problems to figure out. You pace it that way. Assorted activities and the diversity of activities are what makes a game rich in my mind".

"Twenty-eight years ago, I created my first game on an Apple II in my bedroom closet at a time when the interactive entertainment industry was taking its first baby steps. Today the games business has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry and we are just at the tip of the iceberg. I'm thrilled to have been a part of this successful journey and I'm extremely honored by the Academy's Hall of Fame induction".
Quote~Richard Garriott~

"It's been a dammed tall hill Lord British and I'm truly looking forward to the downhill run". For the reading player you can take that either way, but I expect this year to accelerate our progress with the same intensity, speed and happiness as I ran down that mother of all mountains so long ago in Korea ~Time Lord~ I have, and have had great confidence in both these great men!

 

SotA has so much potential and has a lot of smart, dedicated people behind it; none of these persons are ignorant of the need to make the key areas of story arc and continual play MMO sandbox features arresting, compelling and lending themselves to long term satisfaction.

A wide player interest field is served by this game: from RP to PVP, diverse approaches to PVE from casual solo to competitive group play, from crafting to fishing and agriculture... key to all of these is sufficiently incentivizing each and every one of these fields; if I didn't have faith in the abilities of @Lord British et al in all of the above, I wouldn't be here.

Lastly, I'm of a mind to give this process time. This is a talented and able but small team; SotA won't get any good marks for releasing a finished product that is lacking in a) sufficient incentive for things to do, and b) a terrific story. In these key areas, we are better off in a world where people complain that SotA has not yet "delivered" than in a world where SotA has delivered a premature product.

 

How many folks that want to get likes post the same threads over and over so the haters will like it or the believers will troll war the opposite. Einstein said doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is madness.

So sick of the same post by diff persons saying the same thing.. stop the madness. Peace out

 

I get your frustration. Wouldn't it be better to just... ignore the post instead of involve yourself with it and imply that the posters just want to "farm likes"?

 

Many things make me a believer, but tonight I shall share just one of them. Maybe another tomorrow, depends how I am feeling.

Anyway, Peter Thiel is a founder and partner at Founders Fund that has bought into Portalarium. I am sure people laughed at him when he dropped 500k into Facebook and he took up 10% of the company when it was valued at 4.5 million usd. If he has money in Portalarium, I am not going to argue with his judgement...

Though some you may think you know better...

 

I'll Just say this.. They need to make people want to stay into the game.. Lift the nerfs and give us back Good exp spots. Take away decay... Give us back some good gold spots to farm.. Everyone wants the time they spend in the game to be worth it.. Not just a let down and a waste of their time! .... Dev's need to bring back things that we loved to do.. Made it worth our time playing.. Of course these forum warrior players who barely play.. Don't want us more then casual players to get more then someone who plays once a week for 1 hour.. Sad that portalarium caters to the forum warriors who barely play the game but patrol the forums daily.. /sigh