Dissapointed in the vibe of the promotion

Many of you here know my feeling about this game. I do not hate it, but I am extremely disappointed in what I’ve seen of it to date. Much of the game like many of you are saying is nothing but presentation and not enough core to the game yet. Yep, I still have hope but I also feel like this game is going to require a lot of attention and time before it becomes anything worth looking at. Yes it’s an alpha, but I still think it could have been much better. Right from the start the launcher being what it is was extremely ugly and felt like something that came out of an old school game.

I also funded on KS Divinity: Original Sin. It also is now in Alpha and went live yesterday for us. I can tell you now, that I was very pleased with that game and how it was being presented. All over the game there were insets stating this is a place marker and even when the game sis started it tells you that the game is alpha and everything here is subject to change.

These guys are working off a much smaller budget but the game still looked and played much better than SOA. Everything from Graphics to Char models all looked great in its Alpha state.

Anyway, this game has a long way to go. Only future Alphas and hopefully betas are going to tell the tale of this game in the end.

 

There is a major difference between Divinity: Original Sin and SOTA. SOTA is being built from the ground up using Unity whereas Divinity is using an in-house engine which has already been used to produce games. (cite: http://www.divinityoriginalsin.com/faq.php) lot of the work is already done and why they are further along with less. I am sure episode 2 of SOTA will be an easier affair as well.

Not to mention that is an alpha instead of a pre-alpha. An alpha would be testing a wider range of integrated features whereas a pre-alpha is a bunch of non-integrated features.

By comparison you can look into the SpaceVentue KS, which is a ground up adventure game using Unity. They called their version an "early beta" and even though there were only a handful of puzzles it was awful and broken. I am sure it will get better, but they were struggling building stuff from scratch. Last I heard they were retooling everything to use the 2D tools added with the latest version on Unity.

 

Sorry to hear that you had higher expectations than what you were given access to. But let's be clear, this was not an Alpha. Even on the main game screen are the large yellow words "Pre-Alpha" are displayed quite prominently. Furthermore, we won't be at Alpha until the end of March, at the earliest as we are still getting pre-Alpha Releases through that timeframe.

Also, since you are comparing against Divinity: Original Sin and their recent Alpha release, you should remember that they have already spent the last 3 years developing the game. They used Kickstarter to do the final polish on the game. From the Divinity: Original Sin Kickstarter home page:

At the end of 2010, in no small part thanks to the success of the previous Divinity games, we finally earned sufficient money to start working on our brainchild on our own, and we decided to become a self-publishing studio. Fast-forward two years (big RPGs take time to make). Today we are nearing the end of our development cycle and when looking at what we've created so far, we think that we have in our hands the best RPG Larian Studios has ever created. But, we also have the feeling that our job isn't done yet. The game systems we put in place have a lot of potential and because it took us quite some time to create them, we haven't been able to use them to their fullest yet. That's why we're looking to increase the size of our development team. And because our budget is finite, we decided to come to Kickstarter to ask for your help.

Which is why they only asked for 400k to do the final coats of paint and polish. Is it fair to compare an Alpha that has been through 3 years of development vs. a Pre-Alpha that only had 8 months?

But everyone is certainly entitled to their opinions but Portalarium are far better served when we give detailed, constructive feedback vs simply just comparing against some other game XYZ. In the other threads and posts where backers have gone at length to describe precisely, with screenshots and videos, side by side comparison, etc, the Devs responded to those posts. Simply saying "this game doesn't look good compared to <insert favorite game here>" likely won't garner a response.

Does SotA still need a lot of work and attention? You bet. Are we there yet? No.

 

It appears to me that the vast majority was pleased with how things went. Most people that communicate on this community seem to understand that this was a pre-alpha. In fact the evidence seems overwhelming that this pre-alpha release was an overwhelming success.

If some people want to check out now I think they might want to come back in the future, and they will wish they pledged higher. I have a much higher confidence level now then I did a few months ago about how this game is going to turn out. It's clear that Richard and his team are accomplishing amazing things with such a small group and budget. It will be comparable with the other games that have 40 to 50x the budget.

One thing people are forgetting is you can spend $100M on a project, but you cannot buy creativity. This is a gift that Richard Garriott has. I'm already sucked into the BotA story from Richard and Tracy, and it's only chapter 2 at this point. I thought chapter 2 was very interesting and I can't wait to find out what happens next.

Maybe it's just me but I would rather be excited about the world and the story behind it, then walk into a plastic reality that has the best graphics in the universe, but has a linear quest-line that is no different than any other game on the market.

 

I was just having a similar conversation with Sir Kiron the other day. I feel that SotA is a very niche game and really does not appeal to the majority of gamers. I have followed other games that did not offer many of the things SotA has yet they had a much larger following. In once case information about development was pretty much a biannual event for the first few years. Information was scarce and the developers tended to ignore all suggestions from the community yet they still had a much larger following then SotA seems to have.

In my constant SotA awareness campaign I have run into a common theme among peoples perception of the game. Aspects that keep people from being interested. The game does not seem to appeal to many of the pvp crowd because PVP isn't the games primary feature. The MMO crowd sees it as more of a RPG co-op game and not a MMO by any stretch of the term. And many feel that unless they put forth a lot of money that they are at a sever disadvantage in this game.

Im gonna be honest, I feel that unless the presentation of this game is changed to appeal to more people and not seen as a co-op RPG with no pvp and pay to win that it will remain a small budget niche game that could eventually end in failure like so many other niche games before it.

I guess the real question is how can we present and/or change the game to appeal to more people and help insure a long life for SotA while keeping it true to how we envision it?

 

I don't want to have to say this, but people are like cattle. Most people don't know what they want, and most people really want to be told what to do. Probably the most common thing that is asked to a Christian pastor is "How do I determine God's will for my life?" People in general don't know what decision to make until after they made it, and many times they wonder if they made the right decision.

So really it doesn't matter what the majority of gamers think today, because their thinking might change tomorrow. You don't believe me then look at political opinion polls. People change with the wind.


EDIT: People don't really know about SotA because SotA introduces a lot of new ideas and concepts that most people don't fully understand. If people really understood that Selective Multi-player is different than just creating an instanced game that might change a few minds.

So really I think people's opinions will change when they become more educated, or if somebody writes a good review for the game. People will be influenced based upon what they hear, and by what knowledge they gain. So "the majority of gamers" are still an uninformed group so how can you be worried about their opinion yet?

 

During the Kickstarter period, we were told (the founders) that we'd see alpha access in December. That is what we got. I don't think there really is such a thing as a "Pre-Alpha".

By definition, there is alpha and beta, beta is when it is feature complete but not yet ready for release. alpha is not yet feature complete.

To say something is "Pre-Alpha", like there are well defined and known "Pre" and "Post" states is a little disingenuous to me.

I feel like they just put the Pre text in there because they were concerned about the state of the alpha and wanted to mitigate backlash.

 

Its a documented step in the Software Lifecycle. They called it Pre-Alpha because that's the stage of development it was in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Pre-alpha

 

Okay. I've developed tons of software that didn't have a "pre-alpha" state at any point, but I'll desist since it's really semantics anyway.

I still think it's silly to make a big deal about Pre-Alpha vs Alpha. To me it's more of a confidence thing about where the software is at all. If it was further along you could call it Beta with no problems too.

 

It might be silly, but there is a distinction and it is pronounced for those unfamiliar with software testing at all.

BTW, here is it mentioned in a print book if that is more trustworthy to you.
http://books.google.com/books?id=6SULAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=pre-alpha software development&source=bl&ots=---Jgm1o22&sig=uWOj1LTESEnh1FR3-jImRLcDfs8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MT2yUqC9PNStkAfsmIDIBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CJgBEOgBMAc#v=onepage&q=pre-alpha software development&f=false

I have developed software for a long time as well and the terms change frequently. I liked when my programming methodology was called Extreme Programming; now they call it SCRUMM.

But honestly at my shop we don't usually test software, but when we do we test in production.

 

I guess we should probably just refer to it by R1, R2, R3 etc. anyway.

Or maybe by build numbers

Yeah I hear you Umbrae. TDD, BDD, DDD... Agile, blah blah. Write a couple unit tests and call it a day

 

The Pre-Alpha (or whatever you want to call it) was extremely successful. Let's not forget that. Sometimes I think competitors get people to join these forums just to sew seeds of doubt among the community. I think some of these posts here are just seeds of doubt, and they don't have real substance.

 

The Cake is a Lie!

 

Isaiah, I don't think that's true. I don't think there is a conspiracy by competing games to mess with SoTA's success.

People who supported it just have a high standard - a standard that RG and team himself set in Ultima's V, VI, VII and UO.

Also many of us are hardcore fantasy role playing enthusiasts - we've been doing it for a long time and playing many other games and we know what works and what doesn't work.

I am here because I pledged more money than I have ever spent on a single game in my life because I wanted to help make it real.

I have some strong opinions and honest opinions on where the game should go and I would like to say them, respectfully, here on the forums.

It's come to my attention that, that is dangerous. Especially if you have a criticism. While there is the usual silliness that goes in here that goes on every internet game forum,

I think some of the criticisms are only coming from people that really want this game to be something amazing.

I'm more disturbed by the suggestion recently by DarkStarr that our (the community members') at times critical or realistic posts about where we are and what we are doing might actually be responsible for making the game fail !

This is the other side of the "super open development model" we've adopted I suppose.

 

This just reminds me of rune marking in UO. I had all my favorite places to shop marked. It wasn't bad running around like that. It just depends on how it works in this game. So many ''wait and see's". I do have some concern on how the marketing is going right now. We have only seen a bare persona of what the characters will look like and the game itself. I don't believe that is going to be the selling point at all. I'm sure something more substantial is in the works.

 

Yes I agree that mine are. I don't have a lot of them. I think the waiting makes for a noisy mind sometimes lol.

 

I think it was a great pre alpha (o alpha if you like) .

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...he-pre-alpha-release-1.5288/page-8#post-94116

In the poll, 272 people voted. Of them an 88.2 % gave the pre-alpha 3 points or more. Thats very succesfull to me. I really think that a small % are being very noisy in the forums. Developers reads us, and expressing our opinion only one time is enough. Lets keep this positive

 

Absolutely. This Portalarium team is overwhelmingly impressive. Although there have been the expected flaws, this game is on track to change the game for the future of online multiplayer gaming. Completely thrilled for the next 12 months.

 

If you say in terms of them being able to launch the game as an alpha being successfully, then yes it was. We got to see it, play it and interact with the environment. But in terms of what I saw, Graphics, Models and feel. I would not characterize that as being successful.

But, if the devs look at this and see our concerns and take those to heart and make the game better and fix those issues. Then we have succeeded in getting their attention to do better. Like I said before I may come across harsh about what I thought about the games inner content, but I’m only saying this because I want the game to be better, it’s not because I hate the game and want to see it fail in any way.

 

That quote just seriously scared the crap out of me!!! If I pay 40$ for a game then I should be able to play the damn thing without getting nickle and dimed. I've been so excited for this game and that quote just put a very bad taste in my mouth. What is this 5$ per month he mentioned? I shouldn't have to pay money after buying a game for the features. This is exactly why I don't buy EA crap anymore.