Dwindling Confidence

Most definitely.

 

Absolutely agree, in my point of view SOTA is MVP, and Port is startup. And this is a very important point, almost NOBODY will invest in the startup which is focused on hundreds of people who pay hundreds $, instead of this point should be done on thousands of people who can pay dozens $.

Absolutely agree again, episode 2, crafting spec and etc would not fix anything globally it just gives a little bit more time, but the result will be bad. We have many great mechanics which should be polished, we have many bad mechanics which should be deleted at all...

Another point, that those small iterations due to each release force dev to be always late with important things.

What they really should do is sit and think how they could significantly raise player base, if those steps will force cardinal changes which are would inflict veterans/whales leave and an unpopular decisions, they just should don't care about it.

If you would ask me what should they do, my position is pretty known : sandbox MMO focus, pvp is one of the major money sink, competition for resources, zone claiming, huge balance of private mode(significantly increase drop in MP compared with private mode), and EVE type character progression(free XP for login)...

 

I definitely agree that lean startup methodology is the better perspective to be viewing this venture from than traditional game development, but I have a hard time seeing this as having progressed to minimum viable product status yet. Neither the deliverable or the revenue system are to the point of working correctly, so where else is viability going to come from?

I think we're still more at the stage of nurturing a progressive prototype that's supposed to be convincing potential customers and investors that we're closing in on viability if patience can be maintained with the current course, and that's exactly why consumer confidence is critically important right now, because we're not viable without it so it shouldn't be lightly dismissed. But honestly, I don't think too many would be all that bothered if it were admitted that we're a progressive prototype rather than a truly functional launched product. I think people fear more that prototype hasn't yet been functionally achieved and we're just doing expensive R&D. There will still be people willing to invest in a working prototype, but no one wants to invest in arbitrary trial and error.

 

I could be wrong easily and we could be a prototype, same as my thoughts could be completely wrong and my ideas never would work.
What really would be great to see, is the confession of errors after that any open info about how they want to solve issues with SUCH low player base. Finally, we all here want a bright future from SOTA, and imho now if it will be going as it now, the future is not bright and all potential will remain in oblivion.

 

I wasn't meaning to say I thought you were wrong overall. Just that I thought that the state of not yet being viable strengthens your (and others') positions more than would be the case at MVP status, so I thought it a constructive distinction to make. The part about people still being willing to invest in a prototype so long as they feel confident in what's going on with it wasn't directed you personally, but more to say I don't think we need to fear honesty in admitting where we're really at and where we need to go to continue moving forward. So I think you and I are basically on the same page in our thought processes, just maybe expressing in different ways.

 

I disagree that Shroud, as it exists, would only qualify as a prototype. There may be things people don't like, and there may be things that people consider broken, but the game is playable. Hundreds pay it regularly. There are triple A games out there with lots of issues so I don't think a game with issues is considered a prototype. I have played the game for a year, and continue to do so. I don't consider it just a prototype of a game. It might be a prototype if only one or two scenes existed. Or if only combat was in place, but not crafting, etc. It is a full product. One that continues t evolve. It may not be the product you wish it was, but that does not mean it is not a released product. I honestly don't think the issues are that horrific. I am able to play pretty much every day. The quest system has some annoying bugs, but it is usable, and a good number of people have gone through the main storylines successfully. I wish it was more polished. I wish things came faster. I wish all of that because I truly enjoy the game and want it to succeed.

 

Minimum Viable Product is the place where a product becomes what "enough" people want to see to be willing to pay a price that naturally supports its development. A product can be functional without yet being viable, and there's no shame or criticism implied in suggesting that state as it's a very important stage to go through to test market feedback before getting too entrenched in investing in and optimizing the operational systems that will help it reach the viable state.

That's not meant to try to refute your feelings at all. Just clarifying that I was using a specific business definition in my replies to Spinok in case it was confusing to others who might interpret it as meaning something other than I did.

 

I can understand people’s frustration after this release and the bugs and issues it caused. Even though they were small annoyances in most cases, they were a big hit to my confidence in the development.

By now they should have a clean, build, test and release process. These bugs were so blatant they should have been identified during testing and fixed. But they weren’t bugs in test. How does a team lead let an untested publish go out the door. The entire process by now should be almost seamless. You build allow for testing and fixes test again and release a viable update.

 

Greetings all. In the "Everyone has an opinion" category, here is mine. This OP started April 6th and so far has had post up to April 15th. During, and slightly before, Port has had several issues that have impacted game development. Some things were fixed. Some things were added. and somethings were broken badly during this time. But I am sure the following list had some effect on recent patches and deliverables.

Find and move their offices.
Had the fail over internet access at the old place cut off early prompting an all hand on deck to move.
Move/rebuild servers at a new hosting service location.
Get rid of the "New" office location and everyone works from home.
Workforce was down to about 20% due to sickness and travel for the game and the holidays.
ALL of the ad-on store moved into game
Unity upgrade/downgrade/upgrade/Linux support temporarily stopped
One of the worst content patch ever (so bad Darkstarr would not even be part of the Livestream he was so mad).
And several other things I have forgotten or blocked from memory.

Things still were delivered. Chris/AtoS is livestreaming like crazy and fixing small issues while you watch. And then running new patches multiple times during the day. I know there are long standing issues but I have never considered this game to be anything other than a crowd funded, constantly updated, Non A+ game. Which bring the question What kind of game do YOU think this is? I have played so many games over the years and yes Ultima 2/3 will always be my favorite. I have seen A+ games played until end game is accomplished and then played no more and I have seen small time games played and then replayed years later. My criteria has always been been is the game as a whole playable, is there new things to find and do all the time, and is it fun? SotA is defiantly a yes on all of these. If it doesn't meet your expectations maybe you are looking at the game wrong or thinking it is something that it is not. Remember there are a lot of players or at least posters and keeping them all happy is impossible. If you want to be a Dev or part of the design process apply for a position. Everyone is working from home now. If your expectation is just to take what you have and have fun them you will be much happier. BTW SotA comes in at 3rd in my favorite game list.

We are just Game Suggesters not designers​

 

Or here's my 2c. When this game "released", I noted at the time it was generally where I would mark it as a late stage alpha, close to beta. So to me, to see someone say it feels like a polished beta shows there's been a significant improvement in the game since release. I think if you look at the changes that have gone in since the game released, there's been steady progress and improvement to the game. Has everything been a success? No. But it's also very clear that a lot of what is going on on the development side of the game is experimentation and trying to push new boundaries (How many other games let you build and design your own dungeon? Have such an expansive housing system? etc).

In relation to the issue in this release, there was some definite serious breakage, for sure. But there are a number of important factors to consider here as well:

a) The rendering issues didn't show up in their internal builds, only the release build. This is the sort of thing that is a massive headache to debug.

b) The release builds are a 7+ hour process. I.e., just to test if a fix worked, you have 1) The time it takes to track down and hope you found the cause + 2) The 7+ hours to build a release build to see if it was actually resolved.

c) The upgrades related to Unity are going to continue happening -- It's a part of the game's infrastructure. If you want to lay blame on the build/quality process here, then kick it back up to Unity, as many times the issues are bugs in the Unity software that failed to get caught in their release process, and we're the guinea pigs who found them.

I do generally recommend listening to @Chris streams. There are really great fascinating nuggets of information there. For example, I've always found the small sizes of most scenes very disappointing and an area where the game needs significant improvement. If you look at the maps to most scenes, they're a small circle enclosed in a square layout. In a recent livestream, Chris discussed that this was due to a limitation in Unity that is finally being addressed by the Unity programmers. The goal for Episode 2 is to have large expansive scenes, and the long term goal is to be rid of scene changes as much as possible in both the old and new areas. But to be able to move forward on the development of Episode 2 requires the version of Unity in use to be upgraded.

Essentially, this game is two things -- A released game and a game in active heavy development simultaneously. Are the bugs, etc, frustrating? Absolutely. But I've generally come to accept that they are, at least for now, part of the cost of playing.

And as for QA. QA's hard, even when it's well funded. My first position was in QA at (what was then) one of the worlds largest cell phone equipment providers. We had multiple tiers of QA (My group was the third and final QA group). Overall, there were several hundred QA positions all working on the testing of the equipment and software. In contrast here, we have a very small team handling a very large product. The simple fact is, for a very effective QA, they'd need a few dozen more positions filled *just* in that department, which isn't going to happen any time soon. Chris has also made it clear they do add new regression tests when issues are found to help ensure known fixed issues don't crop back up on their end. But that's hard to do for something like Unity, which is not under their control and will have all sorts of odd new behaviors show up any time they update it (which they have to do to keep the game moving forward).

 

This made my monday, thanks.

 

Making larger zones (including infinite zones) is possible right now using an asset like MapMagic. Since MapMagic uses a common seed to procedurally generate a scene, players would be in sync with what he map terrain looks like. You could select a few tiles, build a town or some such on top, then mark that terrain as static...the rest would be generated. Plop a few random spawn generators as part of the terrains...bam, good to go.

 

Once May hits, and vacations are finally done, they will be firing on all cylinders again.

The upkeep of the daily stand ups as a log of what is being focused on was the most direct way of who is keeping up with what. This was usually Chaox’s doing but with him being out, it seems to have really fallen to the wayside.

Expecting Chris doing it is like ... Squirrel!!!
He is already wearing enough hats

 

Whatever happened to playing a game because it's fun?

 

I do not see player dungeons and a Nitch. They are very soloable depending on the level the designer makes it. That said I myself plan to have a dungeon that not only will pull people into it but will reward them in the end. I just need the tools. I think that once the dungeon and player quest system is in place there maybe some competition for the devs are to level design even with the static rooms. only time will tell.

As to Ramping up that means planning and starting on the first few zones that lead to the new lands. Hires will be coming soon enough and when they require. As to diminishing income. I believe it was stated that most of the new income is coming from new players as of the last month which goes to show there is increase in population. myself I have not stopped investing and will continue to do so. I see the progression and understand the long term plans based on what they provided. for the size of the team I think the pace is good.

As to Tweaking, Unity was a poor choice to build on as it has alot of issues and not really optomized. That is why you see that keep moving forward. If you have been here since day one we are light years ahead for optimizations. hehe I remeber when we only got 6-10fps and could only have a hand full of people in a zone at once. Now we have pretty good frame rate, still not 100% and we can have over 100+ people now in a zone. With the new changes to the textures we are seeing faster load times on properties. (I am assuming that is the stream textures could be one of the other new turned on optimization things) I expect this to continue to happen until we are running smooth and not waiting on anything to load into view or only a 5 second load (thats me with hope)

As to row lots and some of the features coming well they may not excite you, it does a large number of people. Rows for example are super cheap in game and out and well having one to live in is great having a garden row now, or ability to build your own setup on a lot at that level is huge for players that can't afford.
Sailing is ep2 and still on track. this also required optimizations as they are still working on how houses that are boats will work with all the deco etc. with out the optimizations they probably could not even offer sailing of a house. you ever tried to move a table with a 100 items on it, try a house with thousands

I have been playing for 4 years+ now and I am a patient person. my friends list keeps increasing so I dont really see the player base the same as you. I dont go by steam numbers I go by ingame numbers. That said I do think long ago there was more players, but as mentioned in 4 streams maybe 6 ago... it was stated that they are seeing the curve slowing going up for new player base and it as been stable. Only time will really tell and I look forward to each patch for content and for bugs and fixes.

Cheers,
Xee

 

They talked about something being in the works on procedural gen. dungeons as well a few other things. I suspect we will start to see a lot more dungeons and things coming once this comes into play.

 

Some people find business and economics in gaming to be great fun, and get a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction out of observing and discussing such topics with others regardless of outcomes or the currently perceived states of things. Just because others don't necessarily find the same enjoyment in such discussions doesn't mean the participants aren't having fun.

 

Yeah, I can say, one of my favorite things to do in WoW back in the day was sit in the auction house, find good deals, buy them out, and relist them for a profit.

 

I think I've said before (though perhaps not with the exact same wording) that while I may not be thrilled with the game's current state as an RPG, I find it endlessly fascinating as a first-person swords-and-sorcery business strategy game.

The latter alone would be enough to hold my attention, but I still try to give feedback on other areas because I know most players probably aren't as eccentric as me.

 

Have any suggestions?