6 skull zones asap

Well I am up for compromise for sure. I just want to be acknowledged that I have a valid point. I will concede that there needs to be multiplayer activities. There should be world bosses and such that the avatars should join and fight. But for the adventure "scenes", they should be balanced from the single player aspect. The hardest aspects in the game should be such places as control points, the forge at hilt, and stuff like that. Put a dragon flying around randomly that attacks towns. Town sieges could be very hard situations for grouping. These could be the "new" random challenges for groups to join together for. IMO the hardest challenge in the game should be the pvp zones and the content within. PvP players are the hardest mobs in the game.

 

I want to group with a buddy or 2 and do stuff thats fun. Killing mini bosses has no staying power past getting the skill tree open, dragons require full groups. The only solution I can see are zones a bit hard for the single player or specific instances for group play.

5 skull zones were fun to do a month ago with friends, now its a race to wipe out a zone we each go our own way.

You have a point that there needs to be single player content, I think portalarium has a problem coming though that needs a solution the way this game is designed this ballance will be difficult to provied engaing group play for various size groups.

They can keep making new zones but thats gonna take resources they dont have, or not make new zones and less and less people will want to group.

 

I can understand this but you are saying that the devs should add more high level areas to make the MMO part and grouping more interesting.
But what about the single player (offline) fans? They don't have anything right now. Where is the reason to play offline without a real offline experience? So wouldn't it now be time to concentrate on this part of the game?
SotA is not a MMORPG, it is a Selective Multiplayer RPG with an offline part - so the devs should try to work on all parts equally and not favoor one part and neglect the others.

 

How About a Special Skull Red Colored that are scaled multiplier according to the highest in the Group, Colors can vary on the scaling.
Then we can avoid 1.2.3.....20 skulls.

 

Ive been playing single player and wishing I had harder single player content.

I know the games new, but after week 3 it became a single player only game for me.

 

I would love scaling for groups, that would be the best solution. They could be put in their own scenes even.

 

~The Single Player Offline Hireling Equilibrium~
I've been thinking about this one, and it comes to mind that maybe there's a way to beef up online content, while on the single player offline, add temporary hirelings that could also fill the function of overtaking the same target or extend the single player's reach into such an area depending on how they chose to enter it (aggressively and not pull back, thus expending all the hireling troops, or conserving, which would mean loosing less troops but maybe not getting so far in.).

I hope they can add equipping companions and such hirelings, so that such a thing as described above could become quite a challenge to play with.
All wishful thinking I know... but knowing what to wish for sometimes fills the gap of what they would wish to provide.
~Time Lord~

 

I don't think higher skull areas are the problem... Frankly the dev team is so small we will never see hard PVE content in form of raids I believe.
I would prefer the mines and dungeons to be filled with Lich Mages, Demons, Balrogs etc. We need more high level mobs to kill... Zones we have enough. But they are filled with the same boring mobs everywhere ^^

 

I remember Richard talking about this very thing. He mentioned there should be low level and high level mobs intermingled in zones. You should be aware and know when to fight and know when to run!

 

I like the idea of content that scales for groups/levels. I don't like the idea that 80% of dev time should be spent to address the concerns of 3 % of the population.
Just out of curiosity I'd like to see a breakdown showing the number of people playing listed by levels. In other words.. what % is affected by what.
I do not disagree that there are those for whom the game has become a bore/grind. Then I think.. uhh gee.. I have quite a bit of $ invested....I play a fair amount but as I have a lot going on in my other game (RL) I do not have time to "live" the majority of my waking hours inside the game. We're 2 short months post "non-launch" and there is just So much left undone. The game is supposed to be player economy driven and yet here we are still at a state when I can start a day one char and outfit it with the best stuff that $ can buy and go beat the crap out of everything.... how about gear gating? Btw..what of those extra character slots?

 

Control points maybe?

 

Retreat points maybe ...
Having places to retreat from all the argo may be a necessary step.

~Time Lord~

 

That's what Ankh's are for.

 

Every MMO I've ever played has this problem that a small percentage of players eat up new content in a very short period of time and then complain that there is nothing to do. Many times this results in Devs creating low quality content that simply allows for skinner box satisfying skill gain for those 3%. As well, this usually makes the economy seem worse to new players as the class gap seems to infinitely widen. I don't think any Dev team can successfully develop high quality content for players that play 6+ hours per day, every day, that will last any more than 6 weeks. I wish everybody could get what they want, but I think it will do more harm than good to simply put a new scene with uber giant toothy wolves (that look just like grey wolves) just to allow power levelers to continue relentless consumption of content. They will have to create those scenes at a pace faster than they can ever polish them and make them meaningful, and we'll have a world full of crappy, grindy, content.

 

Death should never become the only retreat.

I agree. Tactical areas are much better for our game than any add-on monster. If an area needed tact to negotiate, then larger more powerful opposition can have it's place.

Standing and fighting till we run or die makes for a bad 2 tactic only system. Currently I don't see these types of more deeply thought out combat locations. Instead what I see is place holder scenes which look nice and are able to have tactical modifications then added to them by another artist of tactics, where the artist of beauty could never see was ever needed.
~Time Lord~

 

It's not really 3%... You have a large group that have been doing the same 1-80 stuff for 1-3 years. Imagine one gets rather proficient at it!

Many builds tested, and a few decided upon. A bit of extra utility / decks for situations..

They should have expected this. No idea why so many low zones exist. They could add those at public launch

 

Although, I should add that catering to the actual 3% that went nutso and are 16x GMs is a bad idea. Pretty sure those are PvP players mainly (or Guild leaders hoping for a raid UI/content)

 

Where is this 3% number coming from? Even if it is only 3% struggling to find content, the number will grow the longer persistence has been in effect due to the 'casual' player being able to put in enough time to advance. And it would be an exponential growth rather than a linear one. If it's been 2 months since persistence, and 3% of the population has put in the time to advance as much, then in 2 more months, the people who've put half as much time in as the original 3% will also reach that mark. Each phase of groups reaching the high level content will most likely be significantly larger than the last. So if 97% of the population are casual adventurers, there will be a time in the near future where a bulk of them also run into the 'i don't have anything else to do' problem. Which means less people logging in more often, less resources gathered, less people participating in the economy, etc etc.

None of us in this thread have asked for the devs to drop everything and only focus on this issue and ignore everyone else. But I get the feeling from some of the comments that have preceded are requesting that we be ignored and the devs shouldn't 'waste time' on us. How is that helpful to this conversation? Enough people are obviously interested or this thread would have been dead the minute it was posted.

If i am arguing against something, there generally needs to be an alternative solution put forth, otherwise I'm just naysaying for the sake of it. I'd like to hear more about people's proposed solutions if possible. The scaling zones is a good idea, but it seems that I'd still just be killing and doing the same stuff at the same rate just in the name of advancement. I'm still in favor of the focus on mechanics that someone mentioned earlier but currently don't have any ideas of my own to speak of.

 

It was arbitrary... I think most get the point

 

97% of all statistics are made up