Dear Mr. Garriott: the questing experience...

Dear @Lord British ,

Two months ago, you invited us to restart the story stating that the plot lines and motivations for player participation in the story have been refined.

Skeptic yet optimistic as I am, I waited until Release 52 to experience the story anew only to confirm that the state of the questing experience has not changed. To be perfectly frank with you, it hasn’t changed since 2014.

While you could argue that there are, indeed, more quests, more NPCs and more dialogue, it is easy to suspect that you and your team do not understand the feedback we (very loudly) provide. Maybe we've failed to make it clearer for you and your team, maybe we've been too loud but, regardless of who's to blame, the core that makes the SotA's questing experience has not changed.

Is it by design? By ignorance? That's not what I write to you about:

The issue is not in terms of quantity but in quality; it is not about the “what” but the “how”. The stories themselves could be really well written but it doesn’t matter if they fail to execute mechanically.

• The quest triggers that progresses the player through each step of a particular quest are overall really, really buggy.
• The entire logic behind the sparking-blue glowing quest markers is inconsistent. It cheapens the experience by highlighting items that we would’ve easily found on our own while, at the same time, fails to highlight those that are near impossible to find. I don’t know who twisted your arm to put these in the game but that person should at least learn how to properly implement them; it’s better to have no guide than to have one that can’t be trustworthy.
• NPCs don’t always wave their hands to lure people into a new quest. Again the entire logic is inconsistent.
• The journal and inventory are progressively being filled with quests and items that cannot be removed regardless of whenever or not the quests were completed. Something as simple as a “abandon quest” function would do wonders despite not being a complete solution.
• Many quests are being spoiled by the tooltips displayed when you mouse-over the “objective list” on the left side the screen.
• Some quests are designed “backwards”. To get to the quest giver, I have a particular path that’ll lead me to a monster. Get the quest that asks me to kill the monster I already slain to get there.
• Some NPCs (like Arabella) suggest players to take Lunar Rifts but don’t really explain how they work. No one is going to sit there for 8+ minutes to see the laser beam aligning itself to a different rock much less wait 45+ minutes so that the Lunar Rift will finally be set to the appropriate destination.

Lets not forget the inconsistencies I mentioned because it’s really, REALLY hard to play when we have to constantly second-guess what the game expects us to do. I'd point out examples but, there's just too many.

The thing is, I'm willing to brush off everything that I've just pointed out if it wasn't for what I'm about to say next:
Truly, what makes SotA’s questing such a lacklustre experience is the dialogue system:

• NPCs bombard us with dialogue that don’t even fit the dialogue window.
• Directions are either non-existent or convoluted; having to rely on external websites or the Im-totally-not-role-playing-anymore-GPS map that takes forever to load to find what we’re looking for (when NPCs should be able to provide directions) is not my idea of a good questing experience.
• Already used keywords (at the bottom of the dialogue window) do not return to their highlighted state when the NPC has new dialogue on the subject/quest.
• NPCs assume a lot out of the player. They'll assume that we remember one-off characters, for example. They will often talk as if the player said something in particular to which the player has no knowledge of. The keyword “avatar”, for example, is often used to state that a player’s character is an avatar but, other times, it is used to ask about the avatars.
• Most of the NPC's dialogue are written in such a way to inject world building into each quest yet lacks the information necessary to do the objectives with any practicality.
• Often times the quests expects us to use realistic solutions to our problems yet we don't have any tools what-so-ever to do it through dialogue.

Everything adds up.

The very subtle changes I’ve noticed in the short amount of time questing (while replaying the updated N.U.E. ~ especially the Path of Courage) are genuinely welcomed but it does not fix the “uncanny valley” we experience when we have conversations with the NPCs. I mention the “uncanny valley” because Ultima 4 did the whole keyword system a LOT better. Each keyword had a very specific purpose including the ones you'd learn on your journey.

If an NPC mentions something in its dialogue, then the player should be able to query about it. If you believe that is already the case, then you are sorely mistaken.

I implore you to push your team to fix what you currently have before they start adding more content. When your team adds a quest, get as many people as possible to troubleshoot it. The current workflow is clearly not enough. We, the players, do not have the same tools you do to repeatedly approach each quests from different angles.

If you go by @DarkStarr ’s “Stable, fast, fun” philosophy (which, in my humble opinion, it should be “fun, stable and fast” because who cares if the game runs if it's not fun?), the game itself (as a piece of software) might be close to the “fun” part (which is open for debate, really) but the quests themselves are extremely unstable/fragile. No, the game application doesn't crash, but the player's suspension of disbelief does.

Your game is officially released, we are no long pre-alpha testers. I can’t speak for everyone but I expect to play a game where the questing experience isn’t interrupted by faulty/buggy quest triggers.

From the Reddit community. Sincerely,

Gix

 

Greetings

I restarted the storyline last release.

Well, I would like to say, all these points described by Gix are new and will be fixed soon or old tasks which are already fixed ... or will be with next patch ...
Unfortunately they are not.

To confirm just one point of Gix' thread, please have a look here.
Or for three Ardoris - illogical - dialogue bugs here.

I am watching the Story/Dialogue presentation now for a long time.

Not the story itself, not the dialogues are the problem - the presentation and so many disturbing/distracting moments while playing ...

Please try to take it more serious, what we are talking about - unfortunately not since yesterday or 4 months - but for over 4 years ...
--> And this is not said because we don't like this game!
We love this game and we feel sad, because with less things story and questing could be so great, as I talked about here! <--

I am happy, Darkstarr told us about focusing on Quest Journal in QII. That's one important step in the right direction

 

Writing in to agree with the OP here. The quests are better today than they were a year ago which is great - but they're still nothing like I expect to see in a released game. They still feel like they're in a beta state.

Biggest issue, because it affects everyone, is the buggy nature of it all. Sometimes you complete a task and the quest updates. Sometimes it doesn't, but you're still clear to do the next step (if you already know what it is).

I also don't like the way the quest series pushes people into high tier adventure zones VERY early, when you're nowhere near those levels. Perhaps during development everyone was such a high level this was overlooked?

It's very frustrating to be in the middle of a story you have no hope in continuing with until you just go and grind for days (or even weeks depending on how often you are able to play), to catch up levels. Other games don't do this.

There are secondary issues, and I call them secondary because these are more about personal taste, such as the heavy dialogue based nature of quests and also the writing quality in general. Overall, questing is VERY disappointing.

And I think the MOST disappointing aspect of that is that the game is sold on the back of Ultima, and the Ultima games had such great STORIES in them. Quests are our window into this story - and it's unfortunately a broken one.

 

This, more than anything. Fix what you currently have before adding new content.

Not that the new content is not appreciated, because it truly is !
We have wonderful scenes, and decent deco - few would dispute that.

But I have often wondered why adding even more content would EVER come before fixing what currently doesn't work at all or doesn't work as expected (and I am in no way referring to questing only here) !

 

I didn't play this game from 2016 to 2018, so I don't have the level of game fatigue obvious from the frustration level of these posts.

Coming back and seeing how much had changed and gone on, and how much is changing release to release, I had a great time. I did 2 of the 3 titan quests in a week. Yes, they were buggy as hell, but I still enjoyed them.

Were they masterpieces of game design ? Not exactly, but I really did like a few things - I like the little side quests where you end up with items you can use in your housing. That is really cool.

I like the virtue armor quests, I like some of the quests in the towns where there is a dungeon.

I would suggest people are so jaded from 4 years of open development they're not probably thinking about the experience from a fresh point of view.

Exactly how many games can actually keep people interested for a long time period, anyway ?

And as far as content, without new content (all the time, btw) and quests, items, etc, there isn't much to do, so I definitely think new content is important. Yes, I think the quest lankiness could be improved, but this is also

a rather ambitious game. While far from perfect, it does have a bunch of other cool systems that other games can barely dream of doing so I think people should cut it a little slack, and when they are getting frustrated do what I did.

Take. A. Break.

 

Can I point out that, for the record, I've taken the past 12 months off? I returned at launch. So my comments aren't from someone jaded or frustrated. I'm just looking, in a released game, for something that works.

 

I came in at persistence, took a year off until "release" due to fatigue and it's already coming back rather quickly.

 

Unfortunately, my experience is the same as the OP’s. Well, a lot of bugs in individual quests have been removed since 2014, but basically the description is accurate. I would add that the journal is confusing and buggy. Personally I also dislike having to refer to the journal for vital details that aren’t mentioned in the actual dialogue.

 

From my understanding, the reason R52 was called "Release" was primarily for legal reasons related to their sales to other companies to keep this thing afloat.

I mean, what does release even mean anymore for an online game that gets updates every month ? It doesn't really have any meaning.

To be frank, many, many people have written this game off long, long ago and so I'm kind of past complaining about stuff and just trying to have fun atm, and I'm able to do that.

I understand if others don't tho.

I mean, let's be real. 4 years of constant negativity on these forums and if that is not enough, on reddit, and steam has really made me wary of the value of "open development"

With friends like this, who needs enemies, right ? Lol

 

I disagree. The term "release" means, "Hey, everybody, here is a game that's in the most bug-free, systems-finalised state we can get it into... expect updates to expand on it from here on."

That's how every online game works. So for a user to expect basic stuff to be in place, like quests not glitching in the simplest of ways, I think isn't too far a stretch for a launched game.

 

Well, I mean.... That's not reality tho, is it.

Was Ultima VI, VII, VIII, or IX "the most bug-free, systems-finalised state" ? No, not even close ! They were notoriously problematic.

What other online games were completely bug free at launch that you are talking bout ? Archeage ? Black Desert ? ESO ? Hmmmm..... I don't think so.

There are so many games that have issues on their 1.0 version. The fact that, with the constant unhappiness and harping about every single possible issue that this game even made it to
the state it's at right now, where it's actually worth sinking a few hours into on the weekend, is to me, pretty amazing with what's its had to contend with.

Just my opinion though. Gripe away - it's not like it's going to solve anything.

 

Well as I'm typing this, I'm playing another crowdfunded, open development, MMO that I've been sharing time with SotA that's 3 years in and it's been a different experience altogether so far both in how devs and the community handle things.
I'd love to have a reason to login and put in a long session like I used to enjoy doing when I first discovered SotA at persistence, but I'm just having the fun sucked out of my experience seemingly more and more as things change release to release with balance. I even put off touching the quests for official release to what I had hoped would be a bug free complete experience only to have that be a let down.

Most other MMOs (and MMO players) consider persistence release as well.

 

They were also released in another age where they couldn't be updated easily. They also weren't MMOs. Let's stick to comparing apples and apples.

ie: Shroud competes with the games market of today. What games were doing 20, 30, years ago is a very different landscape to that of today.

 

I mentioned 3 of the "games of today" in my post as well. That are all MMOs.

 

Well, we can talk about those if you like, but the comparisons will throw an even greater light on Shroud via the way games like ESO, BDO, etc, had far more features at launch.

Far more of everything, really. ESOs quests are far too numerous to count and really well done. BDO has the greatest character creation tool in any MMO ever, etc, etc.

The biggest problem I can see is that, with years of development, and a long persistence period, and not even trying to offer as many features, Shroud's still trying to get it together.

 

What would be some examples of these unique systems that other games can barely dream of? I'd love to try these features out!

 

Are you still talking to me? Hard to tell as you didn't quote the text you were replying to. I simply say again, I took a year off and came back at launch.

I'm as fresh as they come, mate. I'm looking at launch with the freshest eyes you can imagine. I didn't even read the updates over the past year, let alone play.

With the character I started when the game went live a few weeks back, and have played sparingly since then? Yeah... that sounds real fair, LOL.

 

Off topic, the bickering is going to get the thread locked.

On topic, this is very disheartening news. Combine this with the revelations of the incomplete/ineffective companions and the overall impression is one of a single player rpg that simply isn't ready for prime time.

 

Seems to be a trend to intentionally lock threads IMO.

 

You know, I think this is an unspoken thing that explains a lot of communication dissonance. The whole point of crowd funding was supposed to be that the developers wouldn't be held hostage to publisher demands and rushed release. It seems that there may be no escape from it.

Overall, I like the game, I actively play it, and I still see the tremendous potential of it. As well, I continue to see an uptick in the number of players online from my friends list and the '0' key. The story/quest system, in my opinion, is currently the weakest link. But I also think that despite what all the communication says (e.g. 'release!'), they are still simply building the foundation of this game. There's probably even another year or two of that.

At this point, for episode 1, their goal should be to streamline and bugfix the current story and add lore to the world. For episode 2, which hopefully will be a point at which all core in game systems are fully developed, their goal should be to really wow us with in depth characters and plot lines. The intrigue of the sandbox and economy will keep me in for a while, but eventually, I do need to feel immersed in this world. I see progress for sure, but the unfortunate situation of having to claim this as 'released' subjects the game to all kinds of judgement it's probably not ready for. I think the lack of advertising indicates the self awareness of these issues.