A serious problem... and a solution.

I think a lot of it comes down to passion that and people clearly have different things they like. People disagree with me all the time and I’m cool with it, I like a good discussion over a topic.

The exception I have is for people trolling and no real idea what their talking about or who have no skin in the game.

 

@Maya SaintClaire
I think you have some good points and even if I like the social aspect of the game with the mostly very friendly avatars I always try to avoid unreasonable “pamper” offers. I’m simply not interested in getting a clone of someone by following his suggestions…I want to make my own mistakes and find my own treasures to be able to look back and be proud of how and what I achieved with the help of some friend and my own two hands.
This way I guess it has to be more a individual judgment what kind of new avatar it is and what effort is too little and what effort it too much.
And about the Hospitallers...well I guess their felt need was reduced once the universal chat was implemented but if at least some new avatars really feel uncomfortable using this chat maybe the devs should add a help-chat-slider that is more focused on help instead of daily talk.

@Aetrion
I personally would say the glyph system is quite adjustable to your needs. Either using the classic fixed glyph system you can see in nearly all games with one glyph always just in one slot or you use random glyphs of a defined type by adding e.g. 5 glyphs to one slot or complete randomness if you just put 60 skills into your deck and let them appear at random times and at random slots. As the slots are limited it’s simply tradeoff between the skills you would like to use and their availability.
About the balance…well…I personally would say if I’m a specialized fire mage it sounds naturally that I’m just using fire magic. This way I would suck at the other school but especially in water magic and also fighting fire resistant enemies would be a pain and this way I would need others to fight those monsters or to heal me or… but as far as I understood this is something most avatars would not accept as the basic strategy is if you can learn everything you have to learn everything and this way the mechanics adapted to this basic concept. E.g. the recently added warding skills is as far as I remember more or less a reuse of the original attunement concept were each skill point in e.g the life skill tree added life attunement making you more resists to life spells and your life spells got stronger but this gained life skill point also reduced the contrary death attunement and this way your effectivity of death spells and death resistance.

I generally liked that event too even if participating with a more or less low lvl was a pain.

 

Fixed glyphs still get massively penalized on their cooldowns, focus costs, and that really slow stacking bar, so you do get forced into using the draw system if you want to be as efficient as possible. The general idea of integrating the deck strategy of a TCG and the ability to combine multiple cards into more powerful effects is pretty good, it's just executed poorly. The system could probably be salvaged, but the community and the devs need to stop being in denial about how laughable it actually is to the MMORPG audience at large in its present state.

Locked glyphs and all that jazz are really just proof that they never made the actual idea of the system work, and instead just layered on compromises to try and appease detractors. They have all the pieces to make a good system, they just need to separate the hand from the hotbar, and make the game control like a locked deck while being more reliant on draw strategy by not letting people stack glyphs to increase their hand size.


I'm imagining something like this, with new glyphs being drawn into the hand, and the hotbar really purely existing to spend the glyphs in the hand. Stacking is accomplished by holding the button, same as it is with a locked glyph, but it draws glyphs out of the hand to make the stack. Only one of the stacked glyphs goes on cooldown, the others are placed back in the draw pile immediately same as right now. Glyphs stay on the hand in the order they were drawn, when the hand reaches a full 10 glyphs they start to discard on the left to make room for a new draw.

This would actually be an interesting system, because in order to produce full stacks you'd have to cast strategically, rather than just playing a weird finger bending minigame or getting screwed over by sequential cooldowns. Make people actually work with the draw system instead of making the draw system suck so much that half of it exists purely to allow people to ignore it as much as possible.

 

I have been playing this game for the past month or more and have just lurked on the boards for updates and quest help until today. I can say this game has one of the best communities and players I have ever met. I met a Hospitaller my first few hours in the game. I didn’t know what his title actually meant until I found it on the boards when looking for help with something else. But that first day I started he took me under his wing and showed me so much about the game. He also gave me a room in his inn to store my stuff and gave me some starting armor and resources. Others have helped when ever I had questions in global chat. I never felt intimidated by people in chat. A few whispered me and asked if I needed help or had other questions. My first week or two I was invited to fishing tournaments, dungeon diving, and a qust ball game? Everyone I have met in this game has gone above and beyond and way more then I have ever experienced in any other game.

Maya, perhaps you and your friends just came into the game at a bad moment and there wasn’t anyone on to help. Although each day for a whole week from starting I received some type of help or another from a stranger, so I find it odd you hadn’t.

I did join with a friend on the same week, but he quit the game. It was mostly due to the performance issues he was having. While running together, he would rubber band a lot, crash, or take forever to load into a city. In the end he decided he would go back to playing ESO especially since a new DLC came out.

While I do find the scenes spectacular to look at, I do have issues with the UI, quests, character choices, and map system. I find the UI so arcane or outdated for the reason I can’t move any of the different bars etc around to arrange them how I would like. There are not even player mods to install to help the look of UI. It looks really bad.

The quests are crazy glitchy. I found a few quests where I click on every underlined word or words listed below the line and nothing would happen, the quest wouldn’t continue or complete. One day I logged off and when I came back the next day the quest worked. The later that day I had the same issue with another quest. Recently I stopped doing the quests as they really don’t give anything special except XP.

Each and every character in this game looks almost the same as everyone else with the exception of the armor they are wearing. You don’t have the customization options to really make your character different from the others. I couldn’t make a short and fat fellow like I was hoping to make.

I found many posts about the map issues that I will just leave it there.

I’m also having some recent troubles running this game with my graphics card and computer in general. It starts to heat up so bad that it sets off some of my Bios alarms. It doesn’t happen in any other game I play like ESO or BDO which has much more modern graphics then Avatar does.

To sum it up Maya I doubt I will play this game too much longer due to the issues above, but it has nothing to do with the players as you stated in your OP. I never had the issues you had and I found the players and community to be the best thing in is this game. I wouldn’t change a thing or ask the payer base to do anything differently. Everyone seems willing and able to give assistance in this game when people ASK.

Keep up the great work community!!

 

Over the past several years, I've posted many thoughts that could help SOTA improve their player retention problems. Forgive me if this post goes a little long.

1) Rule #1: if a game is not fun, people won't play it. If you fail at this first rule, anything listed below does not matter because you've already lost the player.

2) Keep the player engaged. Yes, SOTA is a sandbox game and excels in that respect. There are plenty of tools to keep the player engaged in regards to housing/deco, crafting, trading/shopping, and mindless mobs to kill. But there are other ways that most MMO type player want/need:

2a) Daily Quests. Implement several NPC's scattered about that issue one quest from a list of 4-5 quests randomly each day. From the "go kill X number of Y", to "I need 2 dining chairs for my next party, get/make them for me". This offers players of both combat and non-combat persuasions to engage in quests that are easily found and rewarded with appropriate rewards.
Crafter NPC's need materials (ie Carpenter: "I need 50 Pine or Maple Wood to finish my orders for the day, and Bruce is sick. Can you help? I pay well" ...in XP and gold, and maybe a recipe).
Guard NPC's need help stemming the growing bandit problem (ie Guard: "Those Red Sash Bandits are at it again. They raided another caravan of alcohol bound for Kingsport. If you can retrieve the stolen cargo, I'm sure there's a reward in it for you")
Have several NPC's from an area issue quests either in the same area, or one other area (like Kingsport NPC's issuing quests that take place in Kingsroad, or some other scene). Have the dailies pop randomly each day.

2b) World Encounters. Basically add some more spice to the world. By this, I mean add "Attractions", improve the way that Control Points work (right now, control points are merely spigots of monsters), add territories.

2b1) Attractions. Instead of having just a bandit camp in some section of a scene, create a tiered compound "event" area that the player(s) must work through to get to the end and accomplish some goal (such as kill the bandit leader). Part 1: Defeat the guards outside the compound. Part 2: Breach the main gate. Part 3: Defeat the first "mini-boss" encounter. Part 4: Work deeper into the camp (ie, clear the trash). Part 5: Solve some puzzle which would allow you into the inner section of the compound. Part 6: Defeat the second "mini-boss" encounter. Part 7: Defeat the inner guards ("elite" mobs). Part 8: Defeat the "final boss" encounter.
The compound can be laid out in such a way that the players must complete each encounter before moving on to the next. Even though some encounters may be avoided (by sneaking around, or some other mechanism), other mechanics (like unlocking the gate, or solving a puzzle) must be completed before continuing. It's basically a dungeon encounter, with a purpose.
Or, as I posted in a previous comment:

"Another way to improve things might be to make "attractions". My meaning in this is, instead of having a little bandit camp to roll through, set up the camp as some sort of maze; make it like a mini-dungeon. Start off by taking out the guards near the entrance. Then work into the outer portion of the camp ("clearing trash"). Then you meet the first "mini-boss"; the watch commander. Then you break through the second lines of defense. Clear a several more groups of guards (different type of trash than the first). Then you meet the second "mini-boss"; the guard captain. Then you breach the inner camp. More guards, perhaps some environmental traps/puzzles, perhaps free some prisoners (to complete a quest), perhaps recover a stolen item. Then you meet the camp boss. Defeat him, and open the camp treasure chest (that can only be looted 1 time every XXX number of hours for each person). Theoretically, you could change things up a little so the camp is not always the same; you go in one day, and there are prisoners to save, go in the next day, there are are stolen items to retrieve, etc."


2b2) Control Points. Personally, I'm not a fan of the current form of Control Point. It's merely a wave battle that increases in difficulty, ad nausium.
It's like a grind where the mobs come to you (instead of you running around the area looking for them).

From a design perspective, I would like to see a control point area split into 3 different lanes, like so:

Entrance
. . . . | . . .
. / . .|. . \
.1 . . 2 . . 3
. \ . .| . ./
. . . . | . . .
. . .Exit .

Your group enters the area and picks a lane to clear. Combat ensues. Wave after wave come. After every X number of waves, you get a reward and the difficulty increases for the next group of waves. Continue to the last wave where the "Boss" (could be a solo mob, or an "elite" group of mobs) comes out. Defeat the final wave and that Pathway is clear for the next X number of hours (or until another path is cleared. Then the path becomes active).

Each path could have a different layout, different mobs, different "puzzles"/challenges to deal with during the encounter. You could even scale each path so that different levels could tackle them (like Path 1 is Adv Level 20-40, Path 2 is 41-80, and Path 3 is 81+, for example).

So, for example, if Group A clears Path 1 (which will remain clear for, say 2 hours) and Group B comes along and starts clearing Path 2....the moment Group B clears Path 2, Path 1 becomes active again, and Path 2 is clear for the next 2 hours.

2b3) Territory. Another fun idea to liven up things is to set up an area with "capture points". On one side of the map, is the entrance to the scene. On the opposite side of the map is the Bandit Stronghold (or the Kobold Stronghold, or the Satyr Stronghold). Between the strong hold and the player entrance are 5 capture points (say, 2 villages, a small cave/mine, a wooded area for lumbering, and a fishing camp on a pond). The point of the "game" is to maintain control over the 5 "capture points". To capture a point, you (and your group) must defend the point and defeat all incoming attackers (X number of waves, or X number of minutes). Once a point is captured, you can move on to the next one and capture that.

So, as an example, a party enters and approaches the first capture point (the first small village). The players raise their flag in the village center which starts the waves. The players defend waves of attackers (trash, trash, mini-boss, trash, trash, mini-boss, trash, trash, main boss...or whatever). Once the players have defended the village for as long as required, the village is considered captured. If the players continue no further, do not press on to the next capture point, or leave the area...the npc's will start attacking after X number of minutes and re-take the village (if no players are around to defend it).
If the players continue to the next capture point (say, the fishing hole), they follow the same steps as the first capture point. Since they are actively engaged in the next capture point, the previous capture point(s) are considered safe and won't be attacked (since NPC's would have to fight through the players to even get there).
This continues until the players capture all 5 capture points. After capturing the last point, the players are on the defensive. They can stay and keep fighting to hold the last capture point, or can leave, and the npc's retake what they lost.
This sort of event gives meaning to why the players are fighting. With the introduction of mini-bosses, and other mechanics, you can spice things up beyond a simple grind. You can introduce caravans between capture points the enemy already possesses as a target for players to raid...or even caravans between capture points the players possess that the players must defend from attackers. There could be prisoner-of-war that players must save in enemy encampments. The sky is the limit.

2b4) Dungeons with more intelligent critters, with a reason for being there beyond "come kill us and take our 4 gold, apple and potion of healing". The fact that there are only a small handful of dungeons that offer appreciable XP, so much so that they become the only place people go, is shameful. There should be no one place that everyone goes in order to get doused with a fire hose of XP, so much that they have to be shut off artificially (attenuation). Dungeons are meant to be explored; not monsters spawning from a location and running at you.

There are several systems currently available that do randomized dungeon creation. Some being based on seed number generation, a randomized dungeon could be generated and synced between server and clients with little to no trouble. "Trash mobs" could be placed in hallways, "Lieutenant" encounters placed in key rooms, and a "Boss" encounter placed at the end. Quest items, based on the type of dungeon (ie, cave system, sewers, dungeon, etc), the location of the dungeon and the critters living in the dungeon could be part of the loot table. Quest NPC's can also be inserted. Puzzles and traps too.

2b5) Raid type dungeons/encounters. See above dungeon comment, and scale for large groups.

3) History. There are a lot of places in the world (and under it) where elves live in sewers, bandits inhabit camps in the woods, and so on. More information about who they are and why they are living where the are living, and why they keep trying to kill us would be wonderful.

4) As a side note, Reasons why an animal will attack you:

a) when cornered
b) when defending its young
c) when defending its territory (and thinks it can win)
d) when defending food (and thinks it can win, or dissuade the offender)
e) when it is starving (and thinks it has a chance of winning)
f) when it is ill (ie, rabies, etc)
g) desensitization to human contact will have some impact on how the animal interacts​

A wolf or bear just wandering around more likely than not will not attack a human. If a human is toting around fire, even less likelihood of an attack.

 

And on top of the frustration of that, you have the added frustration of knowing that if crafters could sell their stuff into the loot tables without losing money, it would solve the problems for looters and for crafters. Instead we just end up shaking our heads and not understanding why the devs won't fix such a simple thing. :-(

I will disagree with the notion that the crafting/decorating etc. is a niche market. It's a HUGE market -- just look at the past successes of The Sims 1 and Second Life. It's just that they aren't reaching out to that market, and the percentage of players who fall into both non-casual RPG adventuring and non-casual decorating markets is small. @Aetrion said it was a strong roleplaying platform, but I very much disagree with that; in fact, it's why they can't currently pull in that huge market of potential decorators. Most of those potential players do NOT want someone else to establish their backstory or future the way SotA does. I know a lot of folks don't want SotA to be the Sims Online, but I don't see why we shouldn't include whatever strengths we can draw on, as long as we're not excluding other playstyles. After all, the adventuring heroes are special because they're not the everyday townspeople; if we had more everyday townspeople who spent their days decorating, it wouldn't hurt the adventurers and would give the game the added population it needs (maybe even enough that they'd let us private folks stay in private again).

 

What I mean by strong roleplay platform is that the game includes a ton of features that let you play out a scene that has no mechanical payoff, but is simply playacting. I think the game does a good job of that, and the ability to create houses and such are a big part of that. I'm not sure how SOTA establishes your backstory and future, just through the Avatar storyline? That's easy to ignore, in fact it pretty much assumes that everyone ignores the fact that everyone else is playing through the same storyline.

 

@Sulaene Moon, please PLEASE repost that entire comment in the New Player Experience Feedback forum. The devs don't respond there, but they DO read it -- I've had several suggestions I've made there show up in the game a release or two later. And the things you said in your comment are exactly the things they most need to be hearing.

 

A potential reality here is that the devs would love to do so much more, add tons more content and overhaul systems that need major re-dos. But there is no immediate money in making quests, adding content or adding more character options, etc. - things that *might* get new players into the game and stick better. So if Port is really that reliant on month-to-month funding from existing players, you can see why we have the current cycle and focus. Such major items might require a fair chunk of new investment, and that isn't likely to be coming (i.e., no more kickstarters, seedinvests, angel investors).

That's a bummer thing to type out, because the possibility is that the ability to change the game to get more players is not happening (i.e., the point of this whole discussion is not in any way feasible). I think the game will be around for a long time to come, but am starting to make peace that minor, incremental changes are what we can expect (like the past year), with the focus on things to primarily just keep existing players playing and paying.

TLDR - agree, things like mannequins and fishing might be really awesome to some existing players, but will never be the things that move the needle to make this game attractive to new players. And sadly, Port may never have (non)month-to-month funding/resources to do the things needed to move the needle. It's not the end of the world, but has me re-calibrating what is actually possible versus what is not.

 

They are based around real life though. I'm not convinced the market is the same for elf and dragons.

 

I had looked into doing that and was told by people in game to leave any comments I had, but as I started to peruse the posts in that section, I saw the same issues I have were already brought up many times before. I don’t think that one more post will make any difference in my opinion. I only created an account on the forums to respond to the OP, as I believe that the players in this game have done so much to welcome new people and that if anyone is to leave it is not because of a lack of a welcoming committee. Also, a lot of the things I brought up seem to be getting fixed in the next episode which is good.

 

I did exactly the same. The make peace thing. I am currently enjoying watching my numbers change and as a big fan of UO taming I am enjoying that, but I came to realise that what I want from an RPG will come slowly and sporadically. It's just how it is.

 

This game is my very first game to play other than something like Candy Crush or card games. I am many years older than most of you and have learned over years that where there is complaint about anything that often it is the way we view it that makes the biggest difference in whether we enjoy something or we only see the bad and then dwell on that and soon the bad is all we can see. This is many times because the complaint grows when we do not become the part that helps solve the problem.

I started playing this game when my son-in-law introduced me to it during Kickstarter. At that time there was a huge learning curve especially due to having to just learn how to make my character move forward and then backward. One of the most exciting things for me was the day I was able to jump on a little rock.! To some it was funny but to me it was a great accomplishment. It could have gone the other way and become a discouragement. Over time I have learned so many things and know without a doubt that had my son-in-law not looked past the challenges I had which took him a long time to help me with. He never ever complained as to what I should be able to do . He had been playing WOW, Ultima for many many years so he could have complained because looking back there were just as many or more problems in our game as there are today.

I think the secret to making our game great is like Maya said...here are some of the problems she sees. She did not leave it at that but continued to say..... and here are some solutions. To complain about anything whether in a game or in real life places in us a huge responsibility.....to offer and do the work it takes to solve the problem. If we can not be part of the solution to solve a problem then imo we should not be part of the problem by making it worse. Many times we don't know of a solution but if we keep our eyes open and learn to listen with our mouth shut we will learn how to solve the problem and in time we will become part of the solution. Time , motivation and work will work many wonders...even in our game.

It is my desire to play this game the rest of my life and to do so I must figure out ways to help.

 

If SOTA succeeds, as we all hope, the success will be due to the players.

Most of the Developer decisions have done more harm than good. I was going to make a list but decided best to stay quiet.

My hope is for the Developers to give us more tools to create the game WE want and to stay out of OUR way.

 

You are aware there currently are 4 daily quests? The Extortion quest (can do it virtuously/ or non virtuously) , The Rune Bag, The 5 Letters, and the Cabalist.

 

Yes. Still needs to be more, and more varied. Some for low level players, some for mid level players, some for gatherers, some for crafters, etc.

 

Well said Catherine.

 

It makes a difference please just copy paste it. They give a lot more weight to new player posts and you highlighted some stuff they ignore and need to be reminded of.

 

Wow! I wish you could all see the huge grin on my face after having read the responses to my post here. I would love to thank each one of you personally for taking the time to read it and to reply. So many great points made... and the thing that strikes me most is that even though not everyone has the same opinions or ideas, EVERYONE wholeheartedly believes in what they expressed and feels strongly about their particular perspective.

That's a great foundation for constructive and positive conversation, and hopefully.... possibly.... some solutions to some of the things addressed. Would it be fair to say, we are all on the same team here? Could we agree that we all want essentially the same thing? .... a successful, fun, responsive, satisfying game with a long, long future? Maybe we all have different ideas, and opinions about what defines success, what's fun, what we consider responsive and what is particularly satisfying, but our common ground seems to be that we all have notions of what those things mean to us personally... and are willing to concede that different players need and want different things. Right? As a community, can we look around at each other and agree that we all have good intentions, even if our assessments and ideas are different?

That said, please allow me a moment to clarify a couple of issues, and to try to get us back on the narrow track I intended for this particular post.

1 - I want to assure you all that if my original post made you feel that I "blame" the player base here for our low new player retention rate, that was not my intention at all. I may not have explained my analysis well, or you may have misinterpreted my view, not sure, so let me explain.

I believe the unique and particular circumstances of how the SOTA game project evolved created a very unique and adverse situation with some unfortunate side effects, not the least of which is the current mindset of the existing, long term player base.... which in turn absolutely affects new player retention and a variety of other undesirable consequences, in a variety of ways. I am NOT saying I think its the established players fault this situation exists or came to be this way in the first place. Likewise, I don't believe its the devs fault either. It's nobodies fault. But it's here, it's real, and has to be fixed.

A lot of you have opinions about our new player attrition that differ from my own, and that's fine. In fact its great! ALL opinions about how to solve player attrition need to be put on the table, talked about, tested, and solutions drawn from them. I don't pretend to know what will be the ultimate actionable solutions to the problem.... but I do know the specific issue of new player losses has to be front and center or nothing else will matter.

I haven't been here long enough to know or have an educated opinion about many of the things you have all discussed here. I can't opine on all those things because unlike you I don't know enough about them to add valid points to those arguments. So the way I see it, everything you all say about what REALLY causes new players to leave may be just as valid or more valid than the points I have made. What I don't see here is any of you saying player attrition is not a problem in SOTA. There may be some differences as to how big that problem is, and what the consequences of it might be, but I sense that we all agree its a problem. That said...

2 - Allow me explain why I personally feel it's our biggest and most dire problem, and that's not saying any of the other issues mentioned are not also important, but that I simply see this one like Climate Change, fix this or nothing else matters.

This to me is the singular issue that if not addressed, then none of the other stuff will matter anyway because we won't be here to argue about it. Richard, Starr, Atos, and all the folks at Port have lives. They have skills, they have lots of interests in the world. They have families, They're human, and mortal. Same goes with all of our invested players who have years and lots of money involved. If any member of the dev team or their familes get sick, this game wont be in their minds at all. If the game slides into an unprofitable state or becomes a financial alligator, its not likely the dev team would continue to apply time or attention to it. They have skills, they have lives, they will move on. How close are we to that point and how could we affect it overall? Do we want to? Does it matter enough to us to take action? Arent these the real questions or do we as a community want to just ride this horse till it falls to the ground and gasps a final breath?

How about you guys? Many of you have lots of money invested here. You all have lots of time invested too. But you also have lives outside SOTA, families, skills, other interests.... and there are other games to play. Havent a lot of the original players already gone into hibernation? At what rate are we losing our core base of players?

OK, so heres the question. You already know my opinion is that unless we fix new player retention, the game will fail. You know I believe its something the players themselves need to address. That's not saying Portalarium should not address the issue either, but that's not who I am talking to, and I don't believe they could address it unless they believed a strong shift in that direction wouldn't cause a mass core player exodus. So what do we do? Nothing? Something? What?

Catherine has it exactly right. As a community we complain, but what do we DO to solve the problem? Complaining only closes the door to the devs tighter and makes us more frustrated and them less effective and responsive. I do not believe any one of you could tell me honestly that you believe there is nothing we could do to help this game lose fewer new players. You may want to tell me we already do enough, we already tried, that's not our job, we're the customers here! You might want to argue that it's too late, it doesnt matter, or that other problems are greater and deserve our attention, not this one. You could also say, f--- it, I'm out anyway, have fun everybody! But.... if you want to see this game last a long time, succeed as it should, get fixed, grow with the times, address your own pet issues, and be the game it could be for you personally, then I am asking you to set aside enough time to participate in a community effort to address the issue of new player attrition.

I propose we establish some group of players who will take the time, and devote the attention needed to figuring out what we can realistically do to stem the hemorrhaging of our new players. Or.... ?????????

I want to thank everyone who has responded thus far and encourage all of you to continue to add to this dialogue. I also want to give a shout out to my good friend @Greyfox whom I suspect may have refrained from posting what he would have liked to so as not to ruffle my tender newbie feathers , and to assure him and all of you that my feathers can take a lot of ruffling. Please know that I have no ill intentions with my post and I have no reason to believe that any of you have any either. That said we can all feel free to say what we believe and voice our ideas and opinions freely without attacking one another and /or being rude.

Looking forward to hearing lots more about what you all think about new player losses, how and why you think it happens and how we might fix it.

 

I didn't understand it that way.

That being said:

I actually DO blame (parts) of the playerbase for the low retention. Not solely of course. It's a mix of issues. But the community IS part of the issue.