First time player feedback.

Thank you everyone for your replies. I would like to add to the discussion regarding questing in general as it is being developed in Sota. For this I will use another game's mechanic to illustrate my point.

In guild Wars 2 there are points of interest and vista's that you must find to do map completion. There are literally 100's of these to find. Some are very difficult to solve, and it can take quite a while to figure them out (if at all). So what happens? The player starts to get annoyed with the game, it starts to become a chore and is boring, so they gives up and go online to find a guide to the task at hand. Now, many will argue that this does not matter and doesn't effect other players in any way, and this is true, but was the development time and money spent making these puzzles actually worth it? Could the developer have used those resources to make other content instead, content that is more fun that just following a web guide?

So here we are in Sota with a game mechanic this is , by design, unhelpful to the player. I really do believe that having such a feature, in today's world, will put many players off the game.

Here is my question to the Sota Devs - just how niche do you want to be?

 

Okay, my 2 cents!

I'm a fresh player myself with only a couple of hours of gameplay on my account as well. I did play MMOs - both old (I used to love text only MUDs ) and new (GW2, ESO, etc). And I have to say that MY first impressions are nearly opposite of those presented by the OP. The graphics seem outdated to me and the animations are clunky as hell, but I don't mind at all because the game already surprised me more than once with some clever ideas.

My favorite parts have to be the card system and the crafting. Both of them make really bad impressions at first but upon fiddling with them and getting to know them better they become simply amazing (and I already see they are easy to expand too!). The crafting is a little bit too demanding but I'll get to that in a minute.

I see that discussion emerged about walkthroughs and "using your brain" to solve puzzles by yourself and as a die-hard fan of old Point&Click adventure games I had this conversation many times, in many forms. The answer IMO is simple - "let it be". Take a look at Ultima Online for example. There are tons of tutorials, walkthroughs, guides, databases, stats, etc. all over the web. Does it make the game bad? No. Does it break the game? No. People who care to have more demanding experience will ignore such things or look them up only in desperation. This sort of players can't be "forced" to read guides just to "catch up" with other players (min-maxers) because they don't really want to compete with such players anyway. I may be wrong, but trying to be better than everyone else and beating the min-maxers should never be a goal of experience, puzzle and story oriented player.

As for myself - I do like the guides beeing around because getting stuck for weeks was never a fun thing for me. I also like to have the journal that notes everything for me, because I tend to forget names of places and people a lot. Still, I do actually solve the quests on my own so far, not looking anything up, and I don't intend to do so unless I'm REALLY stuck.

HOWEVER, I do actually look up crafting recipes because:

1. I dont know if something is craftable in game yet or not (for example: poisoned arrows)

2. The game doesn't hint the AMOUNT of ingridients that's needed. Discovery is one thing, but guessing the exact number of items you need to put on the crafting table is beyond human comprehention. Let's consider the poisoned arrows. How would you craft it (I don't say that you can...you probably can't yet)?

a) try to make poison and mix it with arrowhead? 1 poison 1 arrowhead? 2 poison? maybe just poison glands from spiders? 1 poison gland? 2? 3? 4? 5?

b) maybe you should add the poison to the whole arrow recipe? again what number of what?

c) maybe you take completed arrows and add poison on that? Do you imagine how freaking much possibilities there are in this last example??? How many arrows should you place? 10? 100? 200? how much poison? 1 for each arrow? 10 for 100? 72?

It's a total gueswork that can be only overcome by using some macros or getting into the game files. You can argue that it's the whole point of guessing the recipe but we're literally looking at milions of possibilities for each item. There should be some hints here. At least to the amount of items. Or at least a freaking "you can craft something new with this but the amount of ingridients seems off" message or something.

I won't try to force such hints though... Because some players will extract such information from gamefiles anyway and I'll be able to look it up. If we force such hints into the game then we will only spoil the fun for those (masochistic) players who want to discover recipes on their own. Same thing goes for questing - no additional hints needed. Why destroy experience for people who enjoy puzzle solving if you can literally alt-tab and look it up if the quest is too hard for you...

Is it worth making that hard knowing people will write the guides? I say yes... Many people at least TRY to solve something before consulting the guide. Anything that makes you exercise your brain is a welcome thing nowadays. And who knows - maybe some people will get better at solving things on their own and won't need the guide after many hours spent in the game

 

Just to make a small comment in regards to crafting.. I believe the ultimate goal is that early recipes are meant to be a hint in regards to more advanced ones. It's been interesting watching the evolution of crafting recipes between releases and seeing what direction they're taking.

 

Oh I do completely agree here. This is the part that makes it awesome. I'm only talking about recipes that you don't know if they even exist or ones that don't have any similar recipes that you already know or at least you can buy/find

 

Guys, I was never telling anyone to take anything away.. I was attempting to have a philosophical discussion but it seems like the case where a man is trying to explain something to a drunk. It just is not worth the time or effort. (not calling anyone anything, just using that as an analogy of people missing the point).

 

I agree! I wouldn't mind at least having a mini map on the interface to have easier navigation.

 

Being a long time RPGer from the 80's onwards, I am actually looking forward to these 'puzzle-quests'. I don't want the Devs to give 'more information' on the quests in-game, but prefer to figure it out myself. But thus far, the quests presented are pretty simplistic. I'm expecting more complex quests when the final is released. If you are genuinely stuck on something, the internet is there at your disposal. Also, in the 80's/90's, people either used a hint book or accessed a BBS (Bulletin board service), which was a precursor to the internet. To me, it's really no different today.

 

Skyrim did have a few puzzles to solve... not entire quests, but inside dungeons. Also areas that were inaccessible that you had to figure out how to get to. I wonder how many players solved them by themselves, rather than look up solutions on the Internet.

 

So, I have played the game more, or should I say tried to play. The game is just a chore. Not knowing where I am in a zone is incredibly frustrating and just makes we want to log out. The learning curve is too steep. You will loose players in the first hour.
I don't like the game in it's current state, it just isn't fun, and feel like I wasted my money.

 

I am sorry that you have not enjoyed your experience in the game so far. I would recommend putting it down for a while and maybe try picking it up again several releases down the road. I have been in since the beginning but I took a leave of the game around release 8 and I just came back for release 18. I have a much greater appreciation seeing how much the game has gotten better. The developers have been pretty open that this is going to be a niche game. The player community in SotA is by far one of the more active and sociable communities in any MMO since UO and EQ days. I read in one of the posts (perhaps your original post), that this game plays more like a SIM then an MMO. I believe that MMO's lost their way and are getting back to being like a SIM. I spent 2 hours talking with people in a pub that I have not seen since early 2000's in UO. We laugh, joked, and shared all stories. On my way to kills mobs, I ran into a well known merchant who I use to supply ingots to. I added him to my friends list and I will again be one of his main provider of ingots. The event calendar has so many interesting player run things to do. That is more then enough to keep me interested. I have complete faith that the main story will be well done because if you know anything about the Ultima series you know Richard knows about story and challenging players to look into their decision making. I also have faith that the combat and mobs will be improved to a point that it will be very fun. I do think that for many modern day MMO gamers, who care nothing about the social aspect that SotA bring might find other games more appealing.

 

Hey I want to add my thoughts on the quest topic. (I'm not a native speaker, so sorry for mistakes)

I played a lot of MMORPGs and I enjoyed a few early wow quests, because you didn't know where to go. The newer systems with map tags for every single thing you could find makes the whole game to a boring all-inclusive tour. For people who rather be hiking and discover the environment it's a reason to deinstall
When I played GW2 for the first time I thought the fresh quest design would be great - but it was worser. The game has other strong elements, but the quest system is a thing you just have to do. It's not fun.

I don't mind if I have to walk through all 3 forest in the north to find the right one, when there are other things I can discover on the way. A great game has the possibility to distract me from the most interesting quest.

 

when it comes to eras, how wild is it that we are thriving in a time were we are throwing feedback into the "void" in hopes that the devs actually see it and act on it AS THE GAME IS BEING BUILT. this is something that wasnt really utilized on a mass scale "back in the day" as was alluded to,(unless your p'n'p, DM buddy needed ideas). i know i didnt feel that i had any input into the creation of UO but i loved being part of that game in my own way; wasnt that part of its greatness? being able to choose your own path and role in a community of seemingly endless play styles. long before the term "sandbox" was ever an adjective, much less a proper noun, as it is these days. furthermore, online game culture has evolved to embrace 3rd party mainstays like wikis, guide content and guild sites. judge it how you want but were i a dev, i would be thrilled that i was compelling others to create satellite endeavors of a game that could only come off as narcissistic and contrived had i encouraged them myself.
my point is this: play and let play. im on board with where the OP is goin, for sure, but i fall in line with the notion that gamers will capitalize on what they want out of the experience. i.e. if you want to use game "cliff notes" in order to "win", then by all means, go ahead. if you want to break everything down into min/max ratios in order to feel "l33t", go for it! personally, i dont play any game with that approach because i enjoy the struggle when the struggle is presented well. im drawn to the challenge of creating enlightenment with little more to work with than a given measure of ignorance. i think the measure of a great game is how it incorporates every approach, both forseeable and not.
now, perhaps there is a measure of discovery in the "cheating" method that is, to some, every bit as appealing and rewarding as using game content exclusively. yes, maybe thats a generational correlation and/or maybe its just plain lazy but, in all honesty, who cares as long as the game is content rich/dense enough to inspire all players to enjoy and define accomplishment in their own way?
a good game is built for the long haul and will naturally incorporate, purge and marginalize the "end game sprinters" and the "min/maxers", in whatever form they take that is most popular in any given week. i am just hoping that this game turns out to be one of those games. i believe it will.

 

I tend to agree with most of Mortan's comments. To your point though Ravicus - I only used the wiki when the game didn't make it clear how to find the info. When I didn't see a logical way to progress in a quest I googled it (still problem solving but just not within the game). It doesn't help that the NPC's are pretty limited right now, and there really isn't a way to ask them follow-up questions or get more info.

In terms of the crafting recipes, I ended up looking up a lot of those as well because it's not super intuitive at this point. If you try to discover with experimentation in game, you're just putting together sets of materials to see what sticks. When I couldn't find any new recipes on the vendors in starting towns, I looked it up. It would be nice if it was more intuitive as a craftsman, for example rather than see what combinations work - having some broad categories which you could select, then pick ingredients and if it's a valid recipe it works, if not the purchasable is consumed, and if you're way off on ingredients have some sort of message.

 

I understand your dilemma. In game I would solve it by maybe asking around for help or going to craft fairs and meeting people. I know that the websites are handy and many people choose to use them, but I turn to look for in game solutions instead of turning outward. By asking for help it makes the person that did discover the recipe's feel good, or the guild that you join feel good. It harnesses community action against individual action and makes a tighter nit community. I do understand some people are loners though and want to do things themselves. I get it. I do understand though because you always get the people that say. "you know you can google it!" *sigh* I tend to back away from those people because they just do not want to help, but there are others that will