Episode 2 - Difficulty

Well, if you have to visit places to finish storyline, there should always be a kind of "normal" tier for casual players to enjoy the game.
And of course there can be hard (and harder ) tiers for high level players at some interesting places.

There are a few parts of Episode 1 I think are way to hard for a player who follows the storyline and wants to do all quest without help of other players:

1. Novia: If I remember correctly, the Grannus Colossus part includes a few hard waves of enemies.

2. Hidden Vale: Ruins of Ravensmoor quest, given by the Mercenery in Owl's Head.

3. Lost Vale: there is at least 1 quest (this one for the banner of Ethos), which is extreme hard.

I couldn't do No. 2 and 3 by my own (years ago). Just with at least another player.
I haven't tried again, but I suppose Spindelskog is more difficult ...

 

Thank you for explanation, @Sannio

I hope the quests will be connected to a little more story content this year to receive more background information.
Starting with the point where we ended up in Episode 1 - when we spoke to Arabella -

 

Note that your #1 is part of the main quest and while it is one of the hardest part of the main quest I think it is solo-able with only a reasonable about of non quest exploration to build up your character level and skills. #2 and #3 are side quests. I don't think all side quests need to be limited to the levels you reach just doing the main story line. It is nice to have quests at various levels of difficulty and I used these quests as goals along the way of developing my character.

 

Thank you for the kind words and offer! Yes I was talking about Episode 1. My main home is in Rift's End, so I liked to visit scenes in Paladis. I could manage scenes up to Tier 4 (except for the walking trees which I had to avoid), and I could manage a few wolves and bears at the entrance of Ulfheim (which used to be tier 5 and is now Tier 8). It has been so long since I have played that I forget exactly all the details. East Sanctus Forest used to be Tier 3 and a glance at the wiki shows me that it was changed to Tier 6. The only place left to me there is West Sanctus Forest. I seem to remember that my main source of gold used to be halberd loot at Serpent's Spine Foothills but they removed the halberds there long before they increased the difficulty of the other scenes, so I had little income. A few times guild mates took me along to high yield areas (like the monkey room or a control point), but it made me feel uncomfortable because I deprived someone else of a party slot and I was more of a burden than a help. So I stopped doing that. I never even got my Shroud in Episode 1 because I couldn't manage it alone. I received kind offers of help, but as I mentioned, I don't feel comfortable accepting.

I love the people here and have only great memories of this game. It is not the game's fault that I have no talent for fighting. I am waiting to see what happens with Episode 2. If it turns out that a brand new player (which I consider myself to be after forgetting everything about this game) can have fun doing beginner content up to a certain point, I may return and do the easy "stuff" (if I'm still alive!). But I won't do anything more in Episode 1 because I can't do it alone.

 

We are a technocrat dominated game who through squatter's rights have continued to have our game develop for, while the many don't find enough sideways development content contentment to stay for.

The squatters are our technocrats, as talented as they are, as helpful as they are, as much as they've added to our game's successful development upward, it's a burnt bridge in development left behind them.

A great deal of our Millions in real world dollar development went into our now inconsiquential and neglected beginning and world simulator building content. Our sideways development simply left behind because of the blinders on our eyes which only see and seek to develop our world ahead of us instead of the girth of our world which lay behind our single directional development, "up".
It's a body building game with no developed legs to stand on. It's unfortunate but true and has a very hard time growing sideways.

We have a massive amount of very well developed forward motion content, "meant" to get those who come play our game to the top as quickly as possible, "because our world of excitement stands on legs made of stilts, with no real sturdy world building legs to it. We are like that body builder in the gym that has a massive chest, yet really skinny legs who can do many pushups yet can't run down the street because his legs were never developed as much as his prideful chest.

Many times and in many ways, technocrat squatters rights win at the expence of early and mid level contentment development.



The way the evolution of our game was made brought us here to this point, and now we develop only enough in legs, so our top content players won't leave. It wasn't long term planned this way, it was short term planned in this way, not being able to stop "upward motivation" for fear of loosing those very talanted, insightful players.

When a player comes to our game, they are set off like a fireworks rocket, they reach their max ability hight and then pop out of existance, leaving our game.

I know our game is trying it's best to continue our journey, yet it's made for "the Avatar", and the Avatar isn't as much of a townie as he is that over developed chest of the body builder.

Players of average talent don't stay because there is not enough for them to stay for once they reach the hight they can on our ever upward trail.

It's further development in daily activities that will gain the player retention content needed to develop further upward successfully.

It's not easy for our developers with all the factors needed to keep the top while trying to increase and retain the base.

The evolution of a player funded game, still remains as an unexplored territory, because our game is one of the first developed in this way and we are really lucky to still be alive, because many games have fallen behind us. There's allot of player funded games that died and we were one of the first in the field of player funded games... "and we haven't died". We do keep finding our way forward.

Technocrat's squatters rights and a world built on stilts, that's what we have.
Constantly checking where we are, is always the best way to navigate ahead.

On a developer level, sota is very much a survival game. We need more game in one!

~TL~ How to get that, I have no idea! It's up to a bunch of our squatter Technocrats

 

Kara, many groups run on things because they enjoy the run and more than anything they want to help players who can't do the content "on their own"!

In Star Wars Galaxies, my entire game play was about going through "instances" aka heroics, death watch bunker, genosian story, mustafar quests where folks needed help. Sure, I might have a chance at finding something rare, but the reason I went was to help others who were just starting to figure these things out to get what they needed for their character. The most exciting thing was to spend hours helping someone get their Master Cloak buffing them up between attempts and enjoying the feedback loop of what they tried and providing suggestions on what they could try to be successful. This was literally a couple minutes of chit chat and 15 minutes of watching them try to solo what they were there to do, watching them get defeated several times...and finally the triumphant win!

My point is, by not accepting you took away the play they could have had with you. Non-powerful players are not a drain, they are the next "generation" who can lead on tough quests by learning the ins and outs, knowing what to look for and how to counter... by gaining experience in-game and in-head to help future players.

So, since my avatar is basically at newb status I'd be looking to you and the guild to help me grow when/if I get into the game again. I left when I perceived that too much focus was being put on neat concepts that weren't feasible with players that want to be able to go everywhere and experience everything until they can find their niche. The crafting restrictions, silly death-zones between areas, XP drain, and constant grinding for coins and stuff to sell was it for me. For all I know that has been greatly modified, but all I do these days is login, check our town, decorate a bit, then logoff. I accidentally waited too long and had to replace my tax free home recently, put in an interesting basement and was reminded, yet again, of the strange scale and layout of interior design of most of the moderate housing. I mean, why is there no good place for a Knight's Benefactor Tabe in the Knight Benefactor Village house? Sure, it fits on the roof! Even the basement I bought (Village Stone Arena Basement) didn't live up to "two levels large sized" as its top level has a large hole in the middle to peer down into the tiny "arena" so even there... barely enough room for the table, but I've made it work. My house is still up on the hill with my RL friend next door.

 

@Bluefire can give this a read on what significant changes have been made to the game here: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ges-to-the-game-for-returning-players.164048/