A few rants, raves, and ideas

Rants, raves, a little of my story (for perspective) as a player and some ideas for some additions and improvements to our beloved SOTA.

First of all, let me apologize if any of this has already been addressed or discussed. I'm really not a big reader. I'm dyslexic and find it to be a huge chore to read. Also, I apologize in advance for any typos or repeat words. Just kind comes with the dyslexic thing. With that said, here's what's been on my mind about Shroud lately:

I started out playing SOTA as a noob (thinking it was a modern day UO clone) with no idea what to do or where to go. I got some help from a few key people. I'd like to name them here. Blackheart, Lagerfeld, and Shady Death. They weren't the only ones to help me learn but they were the primary ones. Thanks guys, You didn't have to take the time to teach me but you did and I'm grateful. I LOVE this game. I can safely say I've learned quite a bit about nearly every aspect of the game and now I teach people. It's my pleasure to do so. Moving on, once I got my bearings with the basics, I decided I was going to do everything in the game, and I mean everything. I've GMed several production skills, taming skills, and have gotten several combat skills and spells very high but not GMed (on purpose) as to hide my capabilities. And yes, I've even taken to thieving. GASP Ohh no! Stealing! Quick shut the game down!!! ******** STAREEEEEE, jk, jk.. but yeah, I do everything. (no carebears were harmed in the creation of this lengthy write up) I've actually made a lot of new friends stealing people's crap. Most people find it kind of humorous and I've returned several things upon people asking nicely. Some people get crabby and I just keep their stuff. Ohh well, be more careful where you flag I do hope this post is taken constructively and not as an attack on the devs or their hard work. I have the utmost respect for what you guys are doing here. I'd just like to add in my 98 cents.

Overworld map activities - Sure, we have roving encounters. They're neat and I'm sure most of us would like to see a bigger variety of them but they are a bit annoying at times. They offer some good resource gathering opportunities but are rarely any challenge to most players and are generally seen as a nuisance. (Let me add that allowing us to be invis to avoid some of that has been a great boon! thank you!!) How about having lower level roving encounters ignore higher level players and have higher level roving encounters hunt us down to kill us? Kind of how low level wolves run from high level players.. same concept.

What about mining, tree chopping, or foraging on the overworld map? Wouldn't that be cool to find the ocassional thing to harvest on the overworld map? How about pickpocketing on the overworld map (pvp flagged only of course)? This would deter people from zoning out when they suspect a thief is nearby and instead force them to deal with the threat. What about pvp? What's wrong with the idea of pvping on the overworld map? That would add a great amount of depth to our already fun (yet under utilized) pvp system. Dueling, basically the same as the pvp idea. More movement options? Ya know, Dash, Sprint, Blink to get over those pesky streams and rivers. I mean, cmon, we dont have mounts.. let us use our movement abilities. I get that the overworld map's primary function is for travel but why not make it more exciting and immersive? I keep seeing all of these water sources on the overworld map. I walk up to them and often think to myself, why can't I fish here?

Earth magic - Excellent and well thought out magic tree, but a bit over powered right now. Where's the earth resist option? Other trees have built in passive resistance skills you can learn, so why not earth?

Mez being broken by a pick pocket attempt in the same way damage or smelling salts removes mez. This is kind of an issue for rogues (thieves). Unless you intend on the mez being broken at the END of a successful or failed pick pocket attempt, that would be more fair. Stealing from flagged people is nearly impossible as it is (without some sort of stun) since being invis doesnt really do much other than make you look like "the predator" ya know, from the movie. The only exception is if they're AFK. It's incedibly easy to spot an invis person walking around. If someone is AFK and flagged and you steal all their crap.. I mean, I guess thats ok but where is the fun in that? What if they had an emergency or something? It's boring for the player that's playing the thief and sucks horribly for the person that just had their kitch catch on fire. I dunno, just some ideas guys. I'm sure you'll find a good balance.

Invisibility - Camouflage, Silent Movement, Vanish, Shadow form. 2 of these are stationary invis options and 2 allow movement while invis. I've yet to be part of a circumstance where I would prefer the stationary versions over the movable version, for any reason whatsoever.At a 1 skill of any of these you have a distinct "shimmer see through" and at 50, 75, 89, and 111, you still have the same exact amount of shimmer. This means another player can see you just as easily at GM as they can at 5 skill. This needs to be changed. Perhaps the amount of shimmer seen should be the amount of skill the person hiding has VS the amount of "perception" another player has? A new skill perhaps? So, someone with GM perception would see the same shimmer from someone with GM Silent movement but someone with 12 perceptions wouldn't see anything at all. It would just be as if no one was there at all. This would be useful for PVP and PVE. A simple solution to a complex problem. This also ties into the (moonbeams, dazzling rays, sap), pick pocket "issues" that people keep complaining about. If there was more of a purpose to having a high sneaking ability, then immobilizing someone wouldn't be nearly as important for pick pocketing.

Fishing - Look guys, I wanna fish up treasure maps, and treasure chests, and sea monsters that require a group to fight. Maybe catching something other than 3 basic fish and the ocassional boot would be nice too. What about fishing up some magical gear? Or maybe some unique items that you can only get from fishing? MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE PLZ, TYWhen I find a treasure map, I wanna be able to follow that map on land or water and go dig that bad boy up. Maybe it's guarded by some ancient evil or by some vorpal bunnies, or not guarded at all, or maybe its a map to a bottle that contains a riddle that gives you clues on how to find the treasure in question.. You guys get the point. We need more content like this. We wanna catch shark, large fish, get pulled into the water by a killer whale that tries to eat us, sting rays, jelly fish.. We want casting nets!!!! Fishing could be so wicked! We want fish tanks to put fish in that we catch. Maybe we could harvest fish eggs from certain fish?

Agriculture - We want irrigation systems, we want clockwork automotons that water our crops for us, we want mass planting. We want a clockwork plant picker that harvests for us but takes some sort of fuel to run. We want an actual SKILL that can go up that gives benefits as it's raised like increased crop harvesting and the ability to extract some seeds from what we harvest. We want Aquaponics to grow black pearls! We want birds that swoop in to steal crops that we can kill and put on display to scare off other birds that might consider stealing our crops. We want scare crows to have a % chance to scare off these birds. We want the ocassional deer or other scavenger to come try to get crops only to get snared in a trap we set for them!

Magic, Inscription skill - The ability to write scrolls that someone can cast or learn a new spell from. For the fighter that isn't really a mage but wants access to the occasional spell?

Mining - How about Sulphur mines? Salt mines? Coal mines? How about coal mines where you sometimes find some sulphur in your harvest? What about some salt mines that cave in once in a while and maybe cause you to fall into a strange randomly generated dungeon?

Crafting - Guys, if we fail on masterworking or enchanting. I get that we should have some losses but all we get back is scraps? How about 1-3 silver ingots for masterworking and 1-3 gold ingots for enchanting? Or something along those lines. Maybe someone with 20 masterworking gets back 0-1 ingots and someone with gm masterworking gets back 3-4 upon failing.

OMG THE MATH. MAKE IT STOP. Please The math is so wonky guys. Make the %s we see actually make sense. If we see a 98% chance to succeed on something, it shouldnt fail 3-4 times in a row. No, Im not exaggerating, that's obscene. There is even a term for it in the community that I often hear. People refer to it as "Portalarium math." "Dang, I had a 95% chance to enchant that and poof, gone. That was my 2nd one in a row too." "Well, that's Portaliarium math for ya" will be the normal response.

Lastly, having been in a very large guild and now running a guild of my own, I'd like to say that there are some nearly constant complaints that I hear.Slow loading times between zones and lack of content. I'm sure you guys are working on constantly optimizing the game and that's excellent, but guys, we need more content. We need more stuff to kill. We need more of a variety of mobs, we need control points that make sense and that exist in varying levels of difficulty so that mid-level players can also do them.

And I know a lot of you don't wanna hear this. But, there sure are a lot of people that want gate scrolls and rune books. Maybe not an exact clone of what UO had but SOMETHING that is kind of along those lines? That would be pretty neat and a lot of people would love you for it. Once mounts are introduced, it's not like recalling on a rune or gating somewhere would be all that much faster than just riding a llama over.
GIVE US COOL SYSTEMS GUYS! I just gave you some cool ideas. You're welcome.

We also want underwater mounts, flying mounts, floating land masses that can only be flown to, and air ships. I could keep going. I'll stop now. <3
You know what? Screw it, just hire me as a consultant. I have loads more ideas. I'll help you guys design some cool systems. I'll consult for cotos and/or some place anywhere deeds! I have some free time

P.S. Please don't ban me, I'm just trying to help. <3 <3 <3
P.S.S. I think you devs are doing a great job. Keep up the good work. Hire me.

TLDR: I love SOTA, we need more content, hire me

 

BTW Lagerfeld is the BEST. In case I didn't emphasize that enough.

 

Thanks for noticing.

 

"Agriculture - We want irrigation systems, we want clockwork automotons that water our crops for us, we want mass planting. We want a clockwork plant picker that harvests for us but takes some sort of fuel to run. We want an actual SKILL that can go up that gives benefits as it's raised like increased crop harvesting and the ability to extract some seeds from what we harvest. We want Aquaponics to grow black pearls! We want birds that swoop in to steal crops that we can kill and put on display to scare off other birds that might consider stealing our crops. We want scare crows to have a % chance to scare off these birds. We want the ocassional deer or other scavenger to come try to get crops only to get snared in a trap we set for them!"

Yes, please.

 

Ohh yeah, I forgot to add cannibalism and body parts. We need those too.

 

Excellent ideas, I want all of these things and maybe I can do husbandry on my lot with pens stables and animal housing, just a thought. +1 for all these ideas...

 

Yes, Husbandry is going to be a great addition when it gets in.

 

Looks like one of my wishes is already coming true with Zeppelins over Bloodbay!

 

You might want to look up the terms Theoretical Probability and Experimental Probability in terms of occurrance of a given outcome.

 

I'm familiar with probability but hey, here ya go, since you asked:

Theoretical Probability is the likeliness of an event happening based on all the possible outcomes. The ratio for the probability of an event 'P' occurring is P (event) = number of favorable outcomes divided by number of possible outcomes.

Experimental probability is the ratio of the number of times an event occurs to the total number of trials or times the activity is performed.

During a telethon, some of the devs already admitted the math was wrong with various systems, including crafting. I'm guessing you don't watch the telethons? Try this, buy a 100 sided die, roll it, and see how often you roll over a 98, or even a 95. Then, get back to me. Thanks for the reply though!

 

I asked you to look up these terms in the hope that you would glean a better insight into why you may sometimes have failures to produce an item several times in a row.

This was the main point I was trying to convey. I meant, rather than you recite the definitions to me, that you try to actually understand what Theoretical vs Experimental probability is all about. Anyway, here is a good video the describes the apparent anomoly between the two.

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/pr...ring-theoretical-to-experimental-probabilites

You never mentioned that the maths being used in the calculations dealing for success chance in crafting was flawed, or that the developers acknowledged this. No, I don't watch the telethons, which is beside the point. I was only addressing your complaint, which suggested that, give a 98% success rate that you shouldn't be getting 3-4 failures in a row.

This statement, given the correct math, is factually wrong. There are times with a 95% chance of success that I have failed 5 times in a row. I don't freak out over it though, because I know that mathmatically it is entirely possible(although it pisses me off .) Given that, the math is the math. Not everything will work out the way you want it to, or the way you expect it to.

Good luck getting accurate outcomes using a Zocchihedron! LOL Regardless of medium to get your outcome, mathmatically, the math is math.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zocchihedron

 

Thanks for the insight.

 

No worries....just wanted to point out that it happens. I feel your pain man. Sucks when you have a 95% chance at something and it fails(much less 3 or 4 times in a row.)

 

Well, the devs did say the math is wrong. I mean, it is a thing. Honestly, I'm not too worried about the %s but I have plenty of friends that get very bent outta shape.

 

Please not another stats discussion/lesson lol


BUT great ideas Applerust!