553 reviews on Steam and 154 Negative

Where do you get this information from? Source?

My experience is, some are more expensive than SotA. And possibly most are lower priced. That should tell us something.

 

Just think what the percentage of negative reviews would be without them asking people here to leave good reviews.

 

There were a bunch of threads on launch, although the reviews don't seem to stress that point. http://steamcommunity.com/app/326160/discussions/0/617330406656799586/

 

Which seems to suggest that those who have these concerns just never bought the game =)

 

Yeah, you are right, it's not the cost that most reviews are complaining about, it's the fact the game is in alpha. I think people have skewed perceptions of what alpha actually means, thanks to stuff like Destiny and Hereos of the Storm "Alphas", these were basically demos. A real alpha doesn't have all it's sound and animations, which is what the negative reviews are citing. reviews are complaining about that and "pay to own housing".

 

I disagree as there are many early access games that get better ratings. I think people know quite well what pre-alpha means. There will always be a small percentage of people with weird expectations but when your game is doing worse in reviews than comparable early-access games it is not the fact that it is early access.

 

Welcome to the game! It's amazing what the Portalarium team has developed so far. Hopefully you'll stick around to see the continued progress, and put in your own review when you've had a chance to play for a time!

Related to some of the other comments, developers of any game are always excited to get players in to see what you think, but have to consider the risks in doing so. Sometimes the reason to get early face-time on a community platform like Steam is to compensate for development and budgetary limitations, or simply to try a different marketing strategy. It's expensive to promote a game at any stage of development. Thousands of dollars can be spent on a single campaign. Steam is a valuable tool for getting the word out to those that may have not heard of the game otherwise.

With such a talented team as Portalarium that connects so well with its community, the benefits can greatly outweigh the risks. Being a developer myself, I think it was the right call to provide early access to ensure feedback was heard right away. Changes to a game can take weeks or even months to complete, so early feedback is critical. Numerous meetings (and thousands of dollars) can be spent on figuring out if the progression path for a certain level of a character makes sense, or if a community created content piece can be added into the game. Balance issues take an entire QA team to vet and make sure that the results don't affect other parts of the game.

Back in the day of Ultima Online, a game's Beta content was in many ways more incomplete than Shroud of the Avatar at its current stage of development. Today a Beta is now usually regarded by the community as feature complete. Betas are the new way to promote what is essentially a demo of a game. Now we're approaching a point in the industry where an Alpha is not far behind this same expectation. Teams are finding it a challenge to ensure the public understands what stage of development the game really is in.

By industry standards today an Alpha is a work-in-progress and is guaranteed to have many missing and broken features, as well as deep considerations for things like a single player mode. The game is in a state that may not even work on your computer without new hardware or adjustments to performance. What we should see in an Alpha like SotA is a growing dedicated community helping to build a product not yet finished. If you are jumping in with the hopes of a complete experience with no intention to accept the issues that are bound to come up, you will be disappointed.

About the reviews, there are always going to be these critical comments, and that's a good thing. The developers need to hear from the community, as long as it's constructive feedback of course. Some will be written with assumptions about what the game is like ahead of actually playing, or someone plays briefly and comes across a bug that they feel is inexcusable to exist at all. They may not realize at what point in development the game is actually in, and that is where the rest of the community can help to clarify .

There are of course going to be many valid 'negative' reviews as well. I'm sure the dev team reads as many reviews as they can, carefully weighing what to do about the suggested changes. This is precisely why having an Alpha for a Kickstarter is important though, to ensure all voices are heard before the game is released. The team will have several opportunities in the future with the community's help to successfully market the game once it's completed, in spite of existing reviews.

 

To be fair though, you are pretty happy with the whole thing because you DO get a lot of input into the game. One could even say the PoT's are a direct result of your input....wouldn't you say?

I would love to hear how this game brought back the experience of the originals.

 

How can anyone realistically judge a game before its finished. Wait and see after launch if it is not what they promised to complain. SMH.

 

If someone tells you they will make a car with cubic concrete wheels and no suspension, would you have to wait?

 

did you buy the car? If so why? If I go to an assembly line in the Flintstones, and they have a granite rock and chiseling out a wheel, it probably does not look like a wheel until its done.

 

Just to be clever
http://mathtourist.blogspot.com/2011/05/riding-on-square-wheels.html

 

So I am sure all roads will be adapted accordingly.
After all its not that it is a bad game, it is that the customers are the wrong ones

 

Sadly,
i lost interest in SOTA...im really sad about this fact, i had LOTS of hopes....backed day one of KS as Duke...and after selling i think im left with immortal adventurer. The fact is that the game resulted pretty different from what i was expecting from KS.

For sure this game has a TOP AAA+++ community, and for many people that is enough...happy for them, as im sure they will have lots of fun.

When i logged on to UO it was like everything was surrounded with a special, magic aura...i felt like i was a citizen of Britain...musics, skill training, everything was making me live that dream. i loved UO so much, that i was picked as one of the three Italian counselors by EA...that period, im sure, was one of the best experiences i received as a player...amazing.

Probably my mistake was a big one: i was expecting SOTA to be a sort of revamped UO with todays technology. Same people creating UO, just with more tools...

Unfortunately so far the magic didn't work for me. I never ever had the feeling of living inside a unique world....i always had the feeling of playing a sort of Final Fantasy type of game with a central map working as a Hub, connecting each and every scene. Each scene i feel like it's an independent piece of game, confined within its boundaries, timframe monsters etc.

There is no continuity in SOTA so far. To me this is crucial, i need to believe the world im living in its real, i need to feel that each scene is not a "scene" but infact just a zone of the same world im existing in...

It's now few weeks i don't log ingame (except once few days ago for two minutes...i was in Ardoris and the city was absolutely desert...).

I dont think that being this an alpha or pre alpha will allow the game to reach a competitive status by launch. I dont want to sound negative....but this is my feeling. I really hope this miracle can happen and Sota turns into something amazing...by the way, few months ago i wrote a positive review on Steam...i will not change it as i really hope Garriott & co will be able to make this miracle come true.

All the Best
Lordy aka Lord Vulcano
aka UO Official Shard Europa: Former Counselor Chronos

 

Maby that helps you:

Singelplayer is developt as we speak, we want see anything about it untill maby late beta?
The house argument, well support the game or let it be. Peaple who love it try to support it and if they have the money let them.

unanswered questions are part of an alpha

 

@Lordy2: sad to hear and i hope u will come back at a later time!
But i understand your reasons.

 

Sorry to here that you dont enjoy it.
Maby you should wait until its finished.
I know how hard it is to have pations until somthing take shapes or finishes.

Maby we see us in Episode 1

 

This is right, that's why UO died because of the non consensual PvP, oh wait, it was actually the opposite when they released Trammel that killed UO. Everyone knows that. Why did they make SotA PvP bland as .... goes beyond me.

 

UO completely died, which is why it had amazing persistence and still lives today. Sorry, but refrain is broken and untrue. Non-consent PvP is why new players often didn't stick with the game. The change is why so many did stick with it for years to come after.

 

IMHO.... i think the biggest problem is that when someone who has only played uo and remembers the great time they had in the past and the read this is the spiritual successor their expectations are a ramped up version of uo new graphics same game. its this initial wrong conception of the game in there minds should be leaves them to be disappointed. i will admit i had several early disappointments when i found out some of my favorite things in uo would not be here. i stuck it out and have found a love for this game through community and the game its self. it was my own perceptions of what i thought it was going to be to what it is going to be had to change and bottom line after playing this game close to a year now i like where its going. still miss things but times changes and so do the games. they cant build something of the past and sell it in today's market. yes the old hard core uo gamers would play it but we would get very little new blood and what we did get would move on to more flashier games.