Early Access Panel - Developers talk about experience with it

It is so refreshing to hear a well known PVP player say this. Thank you. Prioritize fixing the core mechanics for PVP, instead of just propping up a weak system with window dressing. Hopefully the needed changes are around the corner.

Amen! Both the Ultima Series and UO had a dark & edgy atmosphere that this game lacks so far. SOTA gives me more of a 'tea party' vibe. That's not necessarily wrong. It's just not what I expected or hoped for.

That being said I am far from throwing in the towel on SOTA. I'm still finding enjoyable things to do in-game daily. And I'm still reporting tons of bugs. It's not over yet.

 

I am well aware of that and then some. My suggestion still stands as a bold move to make for the good of the game and the company. Portalarium has a chance to lead the way in killing the scourge of Early Access development.

 

The assumption you appear to be making is that by allowing players to spam the forums with the same point of view either in large endless threads or multiple threads, that will somehow serve the community and the development of this game.

In maybe cases it's the same FEW people that are making these passionate and often misplaced arguments, trapped in their own circular logic, and supported only by their fictional narratives.

I would suggest that these people do not help and instead are often unmovable pillars of needless dissent that does far more harm than good. I would suggest that these people are a distraction we as a community and as a development team do not need. I'm always happy to see those people leave, I'm almost always saddened when they return.

But it's time for me to return to the game I love. I'll leave you and some of the other familiar faces here to continue whatever this discussion is about. I'm sure it will be positive and constructive...

 

I never said that

I am posting for more acceptence in the community of differing opinions without the need to employ marginalization tactics by characterizing personal experience as fictional events in order to dismiss how other people experience the game systems.

Welcome to the 'best gaming community around"...

 

This seems a bit unfair. I remember someone arguing very passionately that Shardfalls and Ruins should be exclusively MPO after Port had already 'decided' these zones were to be open to players in any mode. I'm sure this individual appreciated Port listening and reversing their decision on this. (While most seemed to hate it) But now that this decision has been a flop could the developers, based upon feedback, reverse this decision yet again and implement mode scaling in all zones instead? If it made the game better, wouldn't this be ok?

Not trying to pick on you. I just feel that any aspect of the game should be open to healthy criticism. And we absolutely need some right now. The developers have the right to ignore it if they wish.

 

I still hope one day in the future we get from those who worked on SotA's development a honest and unfiltered post-mortem on early access development, crowdfunding, and microtransaction hell. I'd like to think or I have faith that many secretly view it as a horrible experiment that should never be repeated.

 

The Summery for me of watching that video and what the developers say:

The biggest benefit is also the biggest challenge of Early Access:

The Community Management.

They all had to learn, create processes and cope with a emotional passion they had not been prepared for. In good and bad.
And prepare your staff for the Community . A producer is probably not that bad as you all pictured it in the past.

Take away for all future Developers going the Early Access Road of this Panel - place Community Management on the top priority of your list and have a thought threw System ready and a percentage of budget just for that.
Saving on Community Management for Early Access is saving on the wrong spot.

 

It's not that for me - instead I have noticed lately more threads seem to get locked the moment they deviate even slightly from the original post (even though any natural discussion will evolve over time). Berek seems like a nice person and all and I get when things go wildly off-topic you need to rein it in, but he seems to take a tunnel vision approach to moderation sometimes. Also the whole "One thread for one topic only, ever" thing is a bit weird. No one wants to see ten threads for a particular thing, but at the same time any contentious topic is going to spawn a couple of threads that will go off in different directions.

 

Not a single constructive feedback from a person criticizing combat or the sandbox features has been implemented as long as I have been part of this process here. There have been enough posts about it. I think they need a PR guy.. because what they are doing is like watching amateur hour or karaoke at a pub.
I consulted gaming companies as a player when I played video games for cash during the early days in my job training. I kinda know what I am talking about and I would never claim to know everything, I know right now its not going well. So get over it that someone has a different opinion than you.

That being said I find the thread kinda constructive in itself.

What I would like to add to the discussion is that Portalarium causes a lot of the Doom-saying by not really communicating well with the players.

E.g. how long did it take for them to realize PVP Zones need to be MP to make sense? What a hassle until they realize you need and incentive to PVP flag? Why is there still nothing to do or find in the Open PVP zones? No one goes there really. They created an in itself illogical world, which kinda is the opposite every Ultima game was trying to achieve.

We are missing the grand scheme. Its not there as far as I see it. The impression is they develop on the fly, not thinking how it all connects. If we would know what exactly is planned to be designed, it would definitely calm down things. 3 years into development and none has a clue what sandbox features besides housing for the wealthy we will get.

 

What they did here is implementing sth they had planned before. Mode scaling was a suggestion made by players to have everyone experience the content. They skipped that. Maybe to time consuming to develop.

 

Well i am sure Flynn´s experience with his Gaming Community was more fun. Looking from upstairs down trough his window and seeing them throwing coins after coins into the Arcades with the Games he created.
And just needed to walk down say hello and have fun with them... and maybe take a nice flirt upstairs.....



If only stupid ED Dillinger would not have stolen his Game Developments and pretended them as his... man he would have enjoyed his Gaming Community even more....

 

Well... for once much of the stuff I was poised to say has already been said. To address the OP, I think Steam Early Access does few favours for any game that takes that route.

Generally it's a cash grab -- some of those chaps even admit that openly -- from games that are really nowhere near ready, and they wonder why gamers get annoyed with them?

I'll say one thing, the "democratisation" of games through crowd-funding is nowhere near as good as the old-school publishing system where, if a game wasn't all that, it would just be killed off.

I know we're all supposed to be rebels, supporting a new model, but honestly the more disasters I see coming out of crowd-funded games, the more I think the old system worked best.

If you have a killer idea with mass appeal, people will want to fund it and see it made. Get it made the old way. If it's small and niche and weird, sure, give it a go but don't pretend to be a AAA game.

 

I'll just post a couple thoughts before this is locked (surely soon).

I think that some folks are unrealistic when it comes to what they expect their "feedback" to accomplish. Should Portalarium immediately implement every change suggested by the community? You'll say "Of course not", but that's what it sounds like you expect. Some of you want to debate and fight and defend your positions. That's fine, but Portalarium really doesn't have time to do that for every single issue. Make your feedback and turn away. Portalarium has surely heard it and is considering your complaints. They cannot realistically immediately fix your problem:

• Players often have contradictory or conflicting suggestions
• It takes time and effort (both limited resources) to fix issues
• A player's issue or idea may simply be bad, or unable to be addressed for other reasons
• Changing one system will affect another; this is complex and non-trivial

I think @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos is correct that many of the players assume that the issues or problems that they see, are seen by everybody. This is presumptuous and frankly, rather immature.

I understand that the developers cannot be as actively engaged in the forums as players would like. Just the presence of a post from Starr or Chris or whoever else would make some players feel better. "We know about this issue and are working on it", or even a smidgen of their thought process would be nice and helpful.

However, this would not fix the "problem" that some people have, which is: they think their issues with the game are obvious and simple to fix. They aren't. As I said above, the best thing you can do is give feedback in an calm and reasoned tone, and not devolve into feeling like you have to debate everyone else on the forums and convince people the game is crap (which is why a lot of threads are shut down). It seems that nothing short of implementing their ideas within 24 hours would make these players feel all warm and fuzzy and taken care of.

A note on status of the game: I've been involved in software development cycles. This game is basically in closed beta state, without being closed. Also, this game will not be released before Q4 2017.

EDIT: I edited.

 

Agreed to a lot you say here. But you also have to see that a lot of criticism happens outside of this forum. Read sources where players can comment freely on the game and you get an idea.
I don't think if you are happy here you are reading those reviews.

PVP and guild conflicts where part of the kickstarter promise. So its absolutely ok for everyone to fight to make these features more fun and more complete. To be honest I only still play because of the money I paid here... would have been easier to go and play a different game, which I guess most people do already looking at the player numbers...

I just feel more people would come back if they and their friends could actually achieve sth ingame without paying money to build a POT or sth else. Even those POTs are quite dead.

 

Absolutely. And before a couple months ago, PVP got absolutely no love. And now, I'm seeing threads that are complaining "The developers are too focused on PVP, we need PVE updates!"

Do you see how short-sighted and forgetful people are? Do you see how knee-jerk people are? The developers never ignored the people clamoring for PVP improvements; they noted them and, in time, turned their attention to it. As it should be. And just think, all of the salty tears wasted and keyboard wear because the distraught PVP fans thought Portalarium wasn't listening to them, because THINGS WEREN'T FIXED IMMEDIATELY!

The players saying the game is crap now, should look at that as an example of why pulling your hair out prematurely is a bad idea. No wonder threads get closed; some of these childish tantrums probably detract from the player base moreso than the game not being done yet (which is plastered ALL OVER the website and in-game). Who's being honest, who's being fair here?

 

Thanks the OP for the TL;Dr summary of each game developer. It's interesting how threads that started with mentioning events or situations about other games often end up turning into comparison them with SotA.

Great Monday night forum PvP. You make my morning reading session worthwhile!

 

They are right. Ive been saying PVE has totally been neglected as well. POTs and House building are perfect PVE goals. Here they became a wallet based cosmetic asset.
Virtual world means PVP and PVE intertwines. That's at least what I hoped when I heard Ultima. Not WoW Bgs and PVE Raids with item spiral of doom ^^

Don't get me wrong... things like that can be fun.. But thats not Ultima and never was.

 

Of course they're right. "We need PVP updates" and "We need PVE updates" can both be right. But they cannot necessarily be taken care of at the same time. This is a small team of developers, and none of us (me included) knows their workload or internal work flow. I'm not saying anyone is wrong or right, I'm saying that almost everybody is impatient. And that's fine, just have enough insight into your own psychology to understand this, and give feedback constructively instead of destructively.

Not speaking at you directly, mind...just in general.

 

Before this is locked, I'll say a little bit more about all the comparisons to Ultima Online.

When friends ask me what kind of game SotA is, I usually say "It's like Ultima Online 2" for the sake of brevity. But nostalgia for old games is a funny thing...

Ever gone back and played a game that you used to love, and it's crap now? The game didn't change: you did. People aren't nostalgic about the games themselves; they are nostalgic about the way those games made them feel. And the way they felt had a lot to do with their intellectual and emotional state when they played that old game, what was new, what was interesting to them at that time. We've all (hopefully?) matured and gone through lots of life experience since then; the game hasn't changed. Your perception of it has.

Another thing about Ultima Online...at the risk of minimizing anyone's genius, that was a fluke. UO didn't have super advanced features or well thought out systems. It was one of the first MMOs and by virtue of that fact, very barebones. It was a sandbox that was so under-engineered that players were able to make their own goals. It was terribly fun and exciting, but it wasn't because UO was necessarily a masterwork of software development. It was a one-off, early example of online gaming and just happened to provide enough structure (and enough chaos) to work.

Games have moved on, and while UO may still be fun for some people, such an unstructured experience would be rejected by a majority of video game fans today. People say they want some things, but they usually don't. It's like me with realism and simulation. I feel like I want certain very realistic features, but I am wise enough to know that it wouldn't be any fun to play. Many people don't take the time to gain insight into themselves and their emotions and be realistic about what a game like this needs to act and work like.

 

@Myrcello thanks a lot for posting that video. To provide a sense of history and context, here is the 2014 Steam Early Access Panel. Early Access and KS were still very new then.