2021+ Player Priorities Poll

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Sorgin Txakal, Jan 23, 2021.

?

In your opinion, what should the devs be focused on in 2021+?

Poll closed Feb 6, 2021.
  1. Balance/Debug/Polish/Completion passes on existing systems

    55.0%
  2. Centralized dev communication

    11.5%
  3. Community NPC voiceover submissions/contests

    2.3%
  4. Crafting System QOL Improvements

    33.6%
  5. Deeper competition across tamed and summoned pets, magic trees & builds

    11.5%
  6. Deeper weather/stellar mechanics

    3.1%
  7. Earnable, Buyable, and temporary competition-based titles

    5.3%
  8. Expanded POT functions (crier with Inky, scripted events, seige/spawn options)

    7.6%
  9. Farming QOL Improvements

    11.5%
  10. Global Vendor Search Need solution

    38.2%
  11. Improve pet commanding/buffing system

    6.1%
  12. Improve UI

    33.6%
  13. Increase Catnip funding options

    5.3%
  14. Integration of wiki/players guide into game itself

    3.8%
  15. Inventory Management QOL Improvements

    11.5%
  16. Lootable/craftable enchantment scolls

    5.3%
  17. Make cooking more competitive with other production skills

    7.6%
  18. Make NPC towns more desirable for players to live in

    11.5%
  19. Make public vendors more useful

    6.9%
  20. Make PVP more attractive to players & expand PVP scenes/mechanics

    10.7%
  21. Mentoring past GM

    1.5%
  22. More & More Detailed API Data

    2.3%
  23. More Achievements & Improve Achievement System

    6.1%
  24. More Avatar appearance customization

    9.9%
  25. More Combat Deck Slots

    7.6%
  26. More Combat Transparency

    8.4%
  27. More craftable/purchaseable items that exist in the world

    6.9%
  28. More daily quests (incl. crafting/gathering/fishing/etc.)

    22.1%
  29. More detailed character sheet

    6.1%
  30. More Dynamic Scenes / convert old scenes

    12.2%
  31. More engaging crafting

    13.7%
  32. More group based gameplay/scenes/bosses

    7.6%
  33. More INKY/Player-Quest Customization/Support

    8.4%
  34. More long-term/multi-scene quests

    10.7%
  35. More meaningful virtue impacts

    10.7%
  36. More QA before releases

    6.9%
  37. More skill/spec transparency

    9.9%
  38. More thrown weapons/bombs

    0.8%
  39. More/Better Crafted Gear

    15.3%
  40. New mobs & New Player Dungeon Mobs

    15.3%
  41. Overland Map improvements

    7.6%
  42. Performance Improvements

    22.1%
  43. Player Inventory UI Improvements

    11.5%
  44. Player Vendor QOL Improvements

    11.5%
  45. Quest system overhaul

    27.5%
  46. Remove Attenuation

    4.6%
  47. Send lots to property manage when lot expires if space is available

    13.0%
  48. Tie utility bar with combat deck

    10.7%
  49. Treasure Maps / Message in bottle

    35.9%
  50. Voice chat support

    3.1%
Multiple votes are allowed.
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  1. Sorgin Txakal

    Sorgin Txakal Avatar

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    The poll priorities were a response from the players themselves to this post: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/2021-player-priorities.166815/

    Catnip did not create or support the making of this list or its refinement from the 130+ submissions just to get it down to 50 that was the poll limit.

    So, if anything, this poll and the responses to the original post are more indicative of the varying desires of the players, which may potentially have contributed to the scattered way Catnip has played bop-a-mole with player demands over the years. I tend to agree though that sticking to a singular vision is generally best for any creative endeavor.
     
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  2. Alleine Dragonfyre

    Alleine Dragonfyre Avatar

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    This. Plus the ability, like some Governors had, to customize and mark their own POT maps.
     
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  3. Wilfred

    Wilfred Avatar

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    More details:

    Friday Stream Questions - January 29, 2021
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...iday-stream-questions-january-29-2021.167097/

    7:40 AlleineDragonfyre: !question
    are there any plans for Governors to be able to write on their City Maps?
    48:27 AlleineDragonfyre: !question
    Will Govenors have the ability to write on their City Maps, to name streets, POIs etc? THANKS!
    1:02:42 AlleineDragonfyre: POT Map Editing! hehe
    1:03:43 AlleineDragonfyre dreams every night of putting puffy little trees and street names on the Immortal City Map

    ----------
     
  4. Alleine Dragonfyre

    Alleine Dragonfyre Avatar

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    lol wow ;) accurate
     
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  5. Kelly O'Shay

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    My seven requests to improve the game and bring in a lot more subscribers.

    Fix the quest system, including the journal, the on screen list of tasks and the quests should be able to be dropped and re-acquired to start it from the beginning in any one task of the quest or the whole quest. The quest journal should only contain the quests you have. Finished tasks should be hidden, but available to view if a player wishes to see where they are in the overall quest.

    Always make visual/graphics bugs a priority. Fix the little black squares that float around with the spell graphics. Fix any spells that aren't always showing the graphics they should and correctly.

    Fix spells that give buffs and de-buffs to properly stack and to properly show up on the target and the caster as they should.

    Make crafting harder to master, but make the rewards for mastering a crafting tree much better so the weapons and armor created are epic in quality.

    Add spells for tamed pets that can be placed on the combat bar to make the pet use the attack or spell. Add buffs that can be cast on the tamed pet. Make the pet food more understandable and add options to allow flexible control of pet buffs.

    Do something to optimize the game for lower end client boxes so those poor players won't always hitch when they try to travel or walk through a city. Perhaps reduce quality of graphics for a few seconds until the background load can catch up or reduce the color to 16 colors or something so they can get on with playing the game and not be frozen up all the time.

    Fix the memory leak that forces us to re-log out and back in every two hours to avoid crashing.
     
  6. Sorgin Txakal

    Sorgin Txakal Avatar

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    One day left to vote bump.
     
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  7. Sorgin Txakal

    Sorgin Txakal Avatar

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    I guess I set up the poll wrong, won't be closed until 04:00 PST Feb 07 - so there will be time to change votes and vote this weekend after the live stream Friday after all :confused:
     
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  8. Sorgin Txakal

    Sorgin Txakal Avatar

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    Oceana, Pacific, Asia, & Europe Friday Poll Closing Bump
     
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  9. Wilfred

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    -
    The poll is closed, Thanks to everyone who voted! :)
    From the top voted item: 72 votes / 55.0% = 131 people voted

    There's a lot of interesting data in the results:

    Balance/Debug/Polish/Completion passes on existing systems - 72 votes
    Global Vendor Search Need solution - 50 votes
    Treasure Maps / Message in bottle - 47 votes
    Crafting System QOL Improvements - 44 votes
    Improve UI - 44 votes
    Quest system overhaul - 36 votes
    More daily quests (incl. crafting/gathering/fishing/etc.) - 29 votes
    Performance Improvements - 29 votes
    More/Better Crafted Gear - 20 votes
    New mobs & New Player Dungeon Mobs - 20 votes
    More engaging crafting - 18 votes
    Send lots to property manage when lot expires if space is available - 17 votes
    More Dynamic Scenes / convert old scenes - 16 votes
    Centralized dev communication - 15 votes
    Deeper competition across tamed and summoned pets, magic trees & builds - 15 votes
    Farming QOL Improvements - 15 votes
    Inventory Management QOL Improvements - 15 votes
    Make NPC towns more desirable for players to live in - 15 votes
    Player Inventory UI Improvements - 15 votes
    Player Vendor QOL Improvements - 15 votes
    Make PVP more attractive to players & expand PVP scenes/mechanics - 14 votes
    More long-term/multi-scene quests - 14 votes
    More meaningful virtue impacts - 14 votes
    Tie utility bar with combat deck - 14 votes
    More Avatar appearance customization - 13 votes
    More skill/spec transparency - 13 votes
    More Combat Transparency - 11 votes
    More INKY/Player-Quest Customization/Support - 11 votes
    Expanded POT functions (crier with Inky, scripted events, seige/spawn options) - 10 votes
    Make cooking more competitive with other production skills - 10 votes
    More Combat Deck Slots - 10 - votes
    More group based gameplay/scenes/bosses - 10 votes
    Overland Map improvements - 10 votes
    Make public vendors more useful - 9 votes
    More craftable/purchaseable items that exist in the world - 9 votes
    More QA before releases - 9 votes
    Improve pet commanding/buffing system - 8 votes
    More Achievements & Improve Achievement System - 8 votes
    More detailed character sheet - 8 votes
    Earnable, Buyable, and temporary competition-based titles - 7 votes
    Increase Catnip funding options - 7 votes
    Lootable/craftable enchantment scolls - 7 votes
    Remove Attenuation - 6 votes
    Integration of wiki/players guide into game itself - 5 votes
    Deeper weather/stellar mechanics - 4 votes
    Voice chat support - 4 votes
    Community NPC voiceover submissions/contests - 3 votes
    More & More Detailed API Data - 3 votes
    Mentoring past GM - 2 votes
    More thrown weapons/bombs - 1 vote

    ----------
     
  10. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    @Sorgin Txakal thanks so much for creating and running the poll. I've provided the link and a paste of the results to the team for review. Also, thank you all who've participated :)
     
  11. Time Lord

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    I go game hunting away from SOTA quite often because "game hunting" has allot to do with SOTA but I find that "game" does not.

    Honesty is the best policy and our forums haven't been a hot bed of creative activity for a very long time, yet the word "technical" does, but there's only a few seats being taken at this table, and there must be a reason for this.

    When I have my hand on my chest or finger on my pulse, I can tell that I'm breathing and my heart is beating, and when I log into our game, it only has math in stagnate statistics to offer with no effects of ebb and flow to it. The "technocrats" seem to have sterilized everything away from a nature's algorithm, taking "game" along with it. There's no "timing" to it, no season to it, and thus less life to it. Everything here has a known outcome no matter when you do it.

    SOTA, where the mood now never changes, but I do still spend allot of $ here due to "The Sims" styled available environmental creativity in home & décor design.


    Heart & Pulse... I'd like to see that because it would be "attractive". Otherwise, it just feels like playing with another very average Japanese sex doll o_O...
    Adding up all of the numbers of responses given within this poll, "it's not very many people at all".
    ~Time Lord~
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2021
  12. FBohler

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    I agree with Time Lord. Having less than 200 voters in this kind of poll is concerning.
    And the poll results are kind of an urge to real content. I mean, not empty new systems, but adding real content to existing ones.
     
  13. Alleine Dragonfyre

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  14. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    Most people I know don't come to the forums.
     
  15. FBohler

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    Well, to each their own right?
     
  16. Time Lord

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    It was very unfortunate that our game developers encouraged all they could to build outside web sites which lead players away from participating in our forums, but that's our history. In the beginning we had an extremely large SOTA community actively using our official forums here to exchange ideas, of which there were as many ideas as there are stars in the sky flooding in. The rhetoric was lively and sharp, even about those ideas which everyone entering the rhetoric would agree would never be able to be accomplished. Then as time passed and the web sites of the many took away from what there was, the number of posting members dwindled and any fan-boys left became white noise without an audience, as the excitement was gone.

    The Portalarium plan had worked, a disseminated fan base with no focal point of excitement or advertisement banner to wave as the crowd that once was, was gone. I thought it was a strange plan for success but "I told you so" doesn't help matters at all. Even those who ran off our great audience ran off. Portalarium had a strange plan that not only didn't work but caused our downfall or contributed greatly to it. If we had been on fire it may have worked, but as it was, the plan just sucked out all the oxygen extinguishing the flame until we were only left with this candle to hold in the darkness.

    Our game survives! It's survived in the face of all it's YouTube critics nay saying proclaiming it would fail. Portalarium was expecting a wild fire, but it's just a great game within it's small genre and it's the genre which had/has too many to compete with for the diminished audience it has.

    I would say that the best plans now would be those ideas that draw all the players there are back to our centralized official forums. I mean... one way of better advertising is to have everyone encouraged to a central place and find a way to integrate what there is to buy in game with COTO also advertised here as well yet still bought in-game. When we lost our "bundles, pledges and web site shop", we lost quite a draw for people to engage our forums. As an advertising billboard, our official forums seems lacking what it once was, because it doesn't offer what it once did.

    Did you know Star Citizen (aka the other #1 crowd funded game when we "were" #2), did you know they still sell their space ships on their official web site as we once did? AND, they still seem to be doing quite well with it, "even though our game is now more developed than their game" o_O... it boggles the mind about how we try to promote our game.

    Maybe we need to take our game away from Portalaium's wild fire ideas of advertising and get our Catnip to switch directions and start building gathering camp fire ideas in community building.
    We were #2 until we destroyed our online store and encouraging people away from our official forums.

    *just an observant fan-boy rant with run-on sentences o_O... ~Time Lord~
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2021
  17. craftymethod

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    voice chat support like DayZ.
    So strangers can interact more, not so much like discord, ive tried to explain several times but im not sure folks fully appreciate how it makes some games incredibly interactive.
     
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  18. Scoffer

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    Surviving isn't enough..
    Cockroaches survive but I wouldn't want to spend my time with one.
     
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  19. Elwyn

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    I'm not quite so harsh about it, but live prices would be a very bad thing for sellers.

    The most useful thing for both sides wrt prices would be to have a global "last 10 prices" that things were recently sold at, along with date/time. This actually works better with commodities market sales like FFXI auction house uses (actual ask prices remain hidden, lowest ask price wins), but some kind of recent price history, and clue of how fast things are selling, helps both sellers and buyers. This is complicated by being able to sell in arbitrary stack sizes, so doing the division too would be nice. (like "100 @ 10 ea")

    Searches should be to point you to who is selling an item in the town, similar to the "find a house" list from the town crier NPC. Adding prices to that just encourages a price sniping war.

    I still want a less clunky UI for sales
    , and have been waiting years for it, while combat changes almost monthly. I basically have quit a few times because it drained my soul to have to constantly switch back and forth between mouse and keyboard every time I wanted to sell or make a buy order. HOW HARD IS IT TO JUST MAKE THE BLEEPING TAB KEY WORK? Copypasta it from the login screen code! I'm a UI guy, I know that minor changes can have a major effect on the suck.

    Buyers being able to buy partial stacks is a distant dream, though now we finally have mounts. Can we have both of those relatively simple things (tab key and partial stacks) to improve QoL for sellers before architecting the Great Price Listings Domesday Project?

    And I would still like to see the Public Vendors made global. At this point they are almost dead, even in towns where they formerly were big. 10% is a steep fee, well worth merging all PVs into one, and help cut into the IGG money supply. Also stop the stupid "unsold items are trashed for pennies" thing, return unsold items to sellers. There is no chance that anyone will abuse PVs as a sneaky way to get more storage.

    At one point we had Discord integration, then Discord promptly changed their API.
    I am no fan of voice chat, I find it to be anti-immersive, but I have to agree that it needs to be integrated into the game such that we are not beholden to changing APIs.

    I have only recently started browsing the forums again, after more than a year away. I missed voting by only a week. And I'm sure that forum users are a smaller percentage of the player base than Steam users.
     
  20. FBohler

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    Peak players logging in through Steam is even lower than the poll voters. SotA can't reach 140 peak players for some months. Average players is around 80.

    Looking at ingame Leaderboards, I estimate there are about 1000 unique players logging in every month.
     
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