An Open Request to Portalarium

Rant time

Ok, I'm personally getting upset seeing folks who have been around this community and have been solid backers starting to drop off like this. It's a cyclical effect, especially when you have large backers who have put forth some ample funds to ensure Shroud's success.

I'm not trying to do a "fix your game!" post or even a critique on the current gameplay. The issue that continually gets repeated lately is the game is taking WAY longer than anticipated (the original schedule had release for Q4 2015), and we're still kicking around in pre-Alpha stage.

What I would greatly appreciate, and am hoping that the Developers recognize, is that we need an updated and more accurate timeline on how this game will be finished. Yes, there is a lot of fun to run around the unpolished version, but it also carries the same troubles of being unfinished, temporary, and ultimately, not what people expect for the amount of funding that has been raised.

I trust Portalarium's passion and desire to see Shroud come to life. I'm asking for some reassurance and knowledge how they will get to the finish line, before we see more invested fans withdraw, and take others with them in their wake.

 

I am not sure if it is the "unfinished" product, the state the game is in or the longer development time which "drives backers away".
I fear that it is the direction the game is going into. It seems to move away more and more from what was announced during the Kickstarter camapign. And backers backed because of what was announced during the Kickstarter campaign. So if the game is now becoming something else, it is understandable that those backers are unhappy, sad and maybe even angry about this.

 

That's fair, but the overwhelming comments I keep seeing is that people are becoming impatient at the length of development. There will always be critics surrounding the game itself (I'm a single player fan as you, and am far more interested than other aspects), but I'm seriously concerned when I see players that have put forth thousands of real money towards this game abruptly departing.

I do not question the desire for the fans (and myself) to play this game. I do have a serious concern exactly how and when that schedule will be met.

 

Well you can find the Next Quarter Plans here : https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/q1-2016-schedule-update.42479/

If you take a moment to read what Darkstarr wrote:

Our goal continues to be to deliver our backers content each and every month so that we can get feedback and use it to iterate improvements. This continues to benefit the game, with sweeping changes like the change over to use-based advancement. Meeting that monthly goal is our highest priority, but we require flexibility in our deliverables in order to meet that goal. As you have seen in previous releases, sometimes we push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

The focus of the first quarter of 2016 is to get us as close to Alpha/Feature complete as possible as soon as we can. However we are balancing that Alpha goal with polish, performance, and service hardening to prepare for our final wipe as soon as mid-summer. If we have to make a choice at any point we will favor getting to final wipe over hitting Feature complete. That is why you will not see quite as much content listed as last quarter, despite our increased staff. We feel that it is better to get the game into a more polished, playable, and secure state sooner than it is to check off every single feature.

I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty straight forward and open to me. The only REAL date that matters to me is when they stop wiping me and I can play for keeping what earn. Story, Content and other features can be added as we go. It seems to be their thought as well. I am sure if you have an exact question, they will try to answer it as best they can without creating fictitious dates or plans they are not sure they can commit to. That is why they only post one quarter at a time.

 

Can you give some examples of this for us newcomers to Sota?

IMO in modern game development, a 2.5 year dev cycle is really not extreme at all, given the scope of the project. It's a "catch 22" because I assume the original scope was based upon a much smaller budget, then over time the budget grows - which thus grows the scope and ultimately the development timeline.

 

I think you will see a much higher attrition rate when we go to alpha and beta.

Lots of people (5k) bought in at Kickstart or within the first year (another 5k). Most of those did so with wishful thinking about how the final product will be like. As time has progressed lots of that wishful thinking has grown. But when such wishful thinking hits reality of the direction the game is heading there is bound to be attrition.
And that is regardless of which direction it would head since one can't please all.
A year ago I predicted that we should have about a third of those who bought the game 'unseen' leaving when we get closer to release. We are not even close to that figure yet so in my guesstimates I'd say it will get worse before it gets better.

This since how many times have you bought a game of the rack/STEAM without a trial first? How big a percentage of those were not to your liking even if genre and such seemed to indicate it would? Add a big monetary ledge on top of that.

I'm keeping an eye on the player market and so far all small or midrange pledges are picked up quickly. That means there is a healthy equilibrium so far for emigration and immigration into New Britannia.

Now if the devs were to do what the OP suggests then according to my reasoning above we will see an increase in people leaving. Not a decrease.

 

During the Kickstarter campaign the game was no MMORPG. On the site you can read:
"Will this be a MMO? Can I play with my friends?
Yes, you will be able to play with your friends! Multiplayer games encourage social bonds that go far beyond what can be accomplished in a solo player game. I remember the depth of these bonds in players who met in-game only to get married in real life, how people who died in the real world were deeply mourned and celebrated by their online friends whom they may never have met face to face. Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game. We will be describing this in more detail in our upcoming community blogs."

The game made the impression that it was basically a single player RPG just like the old Ultimas. A story-driven game in a highly-interactive, simulated world with the option to go online and play together with friends, do some housing, crafting etc.
Now the game seems to be a MMORPG with the option to go offline and play without other people. All of the game mechanics seem to be that of an MMORPG - just look at the chat window that is used as a conversation system to talk to NPCs. I believe that many who initally backed the game because they thought that it would be a single-player RPG with the option to go online are now very disappointed that obviously we get to play a MMORPG just without other players in single-player mode.

At least I got my inital impression of the game by this text from the Kickstarter page: "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”."

 

Various reasons I believe for recent account sales. Some who spent a large amount of money feel their level of influence on development should be greater. Some wanted to spend enough to be unique. Some expected different styles of play to be supported. Some simply cash out because others have cashed out.

Development is very fast for a project of this size. Check out the glacial pace of some other Kickstarter or Steam Greenlight projects. Shroud currenty has a very solid foundation and according to the Quarterly plan very close to releasing during 2016.

Being impatient for release at this point is like retiring from a job after 19 years when a full pension is offered after 20 years. I believe best at this point to wait for release and if unhappy sell. I highly doubt the value of a pledge will decrease and could in fact increase substantially.

Just like stocks, buy low, sell high. Good time to buy a pledge from someone cashing out when the market is low.

 

If you want to drill down into what being worked on, this thread would be a good resource.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/standup-corner.2315/page-32

Accurate timeline isn't something that exists in software development world. At best the project manager can pad hours on the estimate to allow the team enough time to complete the tasks should they encounter unexpected issues (e.g., let's say Unity engine bug that requires external parties to solve the issue) or pressure the team into meeting the dateline set up by the marketing side, which may end having trade off with product quality.

For me personally, as long as they are being upfront about what they are working on and keeping me in the loop on where we are, timeline isn't much of the big deal.

 

What are they supposed to do, release the game today? It's not done. We can all see that. So what's the point of the OP? To say that you don't like it? Well I don't like it either. I'll bet the devs don't like it. I'll bet there's no one on the planet that likes it, except for a few people that want the game to fail.

News Flash. Waiting isn't fun. Developing games is a lot of hard work that takes a long time. What difference does it make if the game takes 1 year or 10 years to develop as long as the end product is good?

 

Once they reach "final wipe", that is, the point after which there will be no more character wipes/deletes by Portalarium, that will be "launch day" in the eyes of the public. Doesn't matter what people on this forum think, or what Portalarium wants to convey as far as perception, the last day of character wipes is launch day.

So far, they've used the phrase " as soon as mid-summer " (summer being June 1 to August 31 in North America) which could mean as early as July 15th, by that definition.

Having said that, I've never seen a game under development hit a date more than 5 months away, so I don't believe they will reach that goal. At all. Not even a little bit.
I would imagine, considering the game was supposed to be 'ready' back in 2014, that we'll be having these same discussions a year from now, with full character deletes still normal, based on some grandiose reveal on the part of Darkstarr/RG justifying another year of glacier-slow development.

I'm not apologizing for my tone. It's embarrassing this game has taken so long, considering how poorly optimized, slow, buggy, ugly, and RSI-ridden it is.
Months go by with bugs unaddressed. Months. With over 10 developers, that's.. insane by any methodology of software development.
I hate to be the one to say it, but I'd rather big games fail early when set deadlines by massive publishers versus dragging out an inevitable death over years.

 

1.There is none, some think this game was originaly designed to be single player, it wasn't. It was made as a multiplayer that is good enough to play single player.
Ive read every kickstarter promises and plans they had before they started.

Some don't understand game development.

2. It was the other way around, they thought they would get a MASSIVE amount of money and made plans/projections based off that.
They did not get what they thought they would. They actualy said the game would be out in dec 2014 BEFORE they started. which was a silly move.

From a business point of view, this is why they havnt gone out of prealpha state(we are technicly). They know the game isn't totally finished and needs a lot of work.
If they were to say "were in Beta now" it would garner a lot of publicity, and new players. That would ulimatly be turned off by the unfinished state or just do the common Steam review.
So even though, we could totally say we are in a beta state, for them to promote it right now would be unhealthy.
Thus why they seem to be waiting till they feel good about all the features they want to have.
Mainly I feel a lot of story/quest content will change us to the next stage.

Be patient, rmember they can always come back.

 

Also most MMOs take 3-5 years to make..
RG is not a real wizard unfortunaly.

 

Yeah. No. In my opinion it's the loudest that are leaving at the moment. Read "loud" as a neutral term in this case please because I personally will miss some of them.
The loudest backers are not necessarily the biggest. I know a handful of big backers you hardly see posting on this forum.
2000 post doesn't mean your account is old. It just means you post a lot ;-)

 

Well a lot of points I would liked to have made have already been made. A lot of spot on comments so far and I'm just going to stop reading and post as I can see this is going to be the hot topic of the day.

I'm afraid my opinion on the subject is not what I would describe as backer friendly.. I have little sympathy for those who quit because they've pre-judged an incomplete product based on their own wishful thinking and misconceptions or simply gotten impatient due to unrealistic expectations. Especially those who aren't paying attention or engaging in the process as the devs have been gracious enough to let us do. For which I'm extremely grateful.

I'm not sure how much more forthcoming we can reasonably expect the devs to be. People talk about being unhappy with the direction of the game when most systems are only in their early iterations. They throw up their hands and give up rather than sticking with it. Or that what we're getting is somehow not what we were promised.. only that usually seems to turn out to be what they THINK was promised was just their wishful interpretation. Only to find out their perfect vision isn't the same as reality.

Then there's the whole "they don't listen".. well.. this team listens but listening to the community is not the same thing as agreeing with the individual.. many of whom often do not consider the merits of how an idea will impact the game as a whole.

I have a feeling that a lot of the big backers who have or will leave before launch will eventually regret that decision. And a lot of people out there are going to have egg on their faces. Lots.. and lots of egg..

 

As a person who has distance himself from the game for my own reasons and has sold his RF pledge, I will say that the exodus you see is unfortunate but these things do happen. 2.5 years is not uncommon in the world of game development cycles. However, when lack of content and integral changes occur, people will naturally question the direction or the state of the game. You can only be told so many times to be patient before the natural instinct of asking, 'for how long' comes into the conversation. The community funded the project and the community is entitled to know realistic timelines. This isn't a matter of the game not being in beta, this is about the confidence people have with what they've been given and seen as results.

To me and the conversations I've had with some people leaving is the game is not what they were sold on. That is the bottom line and I agree. It doesn't matter if you backed $45 or $45,000, the developers should be concerned that something has changed, shifted, cascaded or whatever and now people are up and leaving. From a business perceptive, it is time to address the potential hemorrhage before it creates a financial situation and development is compromised or extended even more. My $.02.

 

I don't have quite

I'm curious is to how you know this?

I come with a lot less baggage not being any early supporter. But from my vantage point, a dev cycle for a full featured MMORPG of 2.5 years is not bad at all.

 

There is no lack of new content or integral changes. They happen every month.

 

I think it rather easy to assume when you look at their projections. To complete a game like this in less than a year, you would need 50mil easy.
Most MMOs have a 30-100 million dollar budget. Its just looking back at history.

They also had the same sorta plan as Star Citizen and came out right around the time KS was getting these crazy backed projects.

 

What are you talking about? And where are you getting your info from?