553 reviews on Steam and 154 Negative

I'm sorry but it seems like the development crew here is in denial. While Steam can really make you some serious cash quick, it can also kill your game in a second.

You can make all the excuses and talk about Alpha all you want but 154 negative reviews is nothing to just brush away.

I played Ultima Online, it was my first mmo and I loved it. At the time it was ground breaking. As a lurker to this project I'm not taking sides but I see that there is nothing new or inventive being designed. It's another MMO where your decisions and actions have no effect on the game.

You are letting people play in offline mode. That's just a big mistake that the gaming community is going to tear you apart for. If you want to have safezones that's one thing but to let people separate themselves from the game in their own world is a mistake. You can't please everyone and you can't be politically correct about every decision.

I think people were hoping that this was going to be something different and are now realizing that it's just an out of date designer with out of date ideas.

Sorry but 154 negative reviews and you have to stop and make some changes or your going to be done. I would take a look at all those reviews and start making some hard decisions. No one supported this endeavor for just another bland mmo. Have some balls and make something special. 154 negative reviews already means that your ideas are not working out.

Trying to say people don't know what an Alpha is, is not going to help at all. Maybe you have been out of the game business for a while but there are a ton of games in Alpha and everyone pretty much knows what that means. It's one thing to be in Alpha and it's another thing if your game is sucking and you just keep blindly plowing ahead.

I hope you figure it out.

 

I see you're new here, Welcome!

 

A lot of the negative reviews are people saying:

"You're not forcing non-consent PvP and full loot! This isn't a full clone of what UO was at launch, so that makes your game terrible!"

There isn't anything you can do about those reviews. Starr and Richard felt forcing people into non-consent PvP was a bad idea they abandoned very early on in UO and they still don't like it now.

Why are you upset that some people will play offline? Are you aware that offline and online will never meet? You can't take an offline character and then suddenly bring them online.

You want changes. What changes? Please provide specific constructive criticism of what you want to see changed.

 

They have to allow those play styles....why does it matter if people play offline? What reasoning do you have to say it is bad? They obviously didn't want to play with you(or others) which won't affect your game at all.

 

Welcome Maxxgold!

 

Actually, no. There are numerous reviews that are very well written, with thorough explanations about what they don't like. Many have nothing to do with PvP.

But, having said that, 154 people out of 55K don't really give the full picture.

It's hard to really know how well the game is being received outside of Steam. I don't know how many people linked their accounts to Steam. I also know people who did not link to Steam and can't write a review unless it is linked. And some of them have some pretty critical things they would like to say but haven't.

I think the devs listen sometimes, and sometimes not. They can't please everyone. But what has bothered me is when I don't see the actual KS goals worked on first and foremost.

We all want a working game that's released and not perpetually in alpha stage.

 

Don't worry, player owned continents will be next release

 

At launch and during production, Ultima Online got quite a few negative reviews and many people simply didn't understand the whole concept. We all know how that game turned out

 

I disliked it as an ultima....so yeah...look how that turned out.

 

Welcome Maxxgold! I'm Winfield from PaxLair on Chesapeake UO (Player Town founded in January 1998, and still there) and we are still going strong there after 17+ years. We (PaxLair) are also in SotA too!

I personally love that option, as I grew up on Ultima offline games and now Richard and Starr have brought that experience back to us too with SotA. Hooray! I can play SotA offline over and over again, to challenge myself in different ways, like I could in the old Ultimas.

I've seen how Portalarium is doing their design work with players' ideas completely integrated into their process. I am in engineering and I think they have a very good approach to this design. They constantly balance game mechanics with graphic artists with story-tellers and builders with network/server IT. The pre-alpha is letting us players constantly test, enter feedback, and offer new design ideas. We are affecting their designs... and that is a great developer-to-user approach in my opinion.

I can't say much other than I need to offer a positive review on Steam (I keep getting sidetracked with all the thrilling new designs that come out each month) -- and maybe my review can help educate people more about how SotA is being designed with players in mind.

Welcome to Shroud of the Avatar! Can you join us this weekend in the game? There are a lot of community activities going on.
See: http://avatarscircle.com/community-events/

Online Radio (http://avatarsradio.info/) and Twitch Streamers (http://www.aethervision.net/) are also up and running for live feeds.

 

I hope as we get nearer to retail launch that people will revisit their negative reviews if they were based on the pre-alpha state of the game.

But some people were just sour grapes because they wanted a different game than what this is.

 

Some just wan the game they kickstarted.

 

I recall a KS that from day one said it would have selective multiplayer and serve as a spiritual successor to both single player Ultima games and UO.

Yet if you ask some people they heard "it was said to ONLY be a spiritual successor to single player games and any online mode is dishonest and not what I backed!" or "I was promised UO 2 and if this isn't an exact clone of UO at launch, then I was lied to because that isn't what I backed".

 

Well it has very little in common with the older games...tell me I misunderstood all that and what we have today with the PoT's etc is what I should have seen.

 

The PvP fans used to say "PvP isn't in the game yet, so clearly it never will be! It isn't designed, no one gave it thought and we were betrayed by the complete absence of PvP". Yet systems for it were planned out ages in advance. It was just waiting on other systems to go in first.

The single player campaign is going to be the last thing added. We're starting to see the first signs of an interactive, alive Ultima world. Again, that stuff is coming. Just because you don't see it yet doesn't mean it isn't part of the design.

 

I hope your right.

 

The Tower of the Shuttered Eye quest is the first real story quest you can play from beginning to end right now and it is a good sign.

 

A lot of the negative reviews come from those who barely played a few hours. You can't get the scope of the project in that short amount of time. If you're not willing to...then why even bother with a game still in development? Yeesh.

I doubt most of them came to the forums and read anything about the plans. Judging from some of the reviews, maybe reading is not one of their hobbies. In which case, maybe this game won't ever be their cup of tea.

It seems a lot of them are not taking into account it is pre-alpha. They expect to be handed a finished game on a silver platter despite disclaimers.

People seem more inclined to write negative reviews than positive it seems. I have been playing since R15 and am guilty of not writing a review on Steam yet. I'm sure there are plenty more like me out there.​

 

Ya. Just no.

I want a game that was advertised. I don't think that was too much to ask.

 

No ender, this is what I heard.

"Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. 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”."

We can all debate what that means. We can criticize each other that our ideas are off base. But if anyone sees this as the true spiritual successor, I'd have to question in what way.

The spirit seems to be missing for me personally. If the primary objectives were on the single player games, that's yet to be seen as single player has yet to have been developed. The multi-player capabilities "beyond combat" - well, there's a lot of debate over combat alone - and I've yet to see a bold new approach.

Well, unless selling houses for $275-$12,000 can be considered bold. Probably that is true.

Many of us aren't even sure how the "Selective Multi-Player" is going to play out with more than 200 people logging into the game, or if blocking a person will have an effect on that if people you venture with don't have them blocked.

There are many unanswered questions.