Game not ready for release

I actually had to Google this one, I love history and I missed him completly. So, I actually dont know what exactly you ment by writing it...but thank you for making me learn about him! <- serious thank you !
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_II_de_Chabannes_de_La_Palice


Ok...now I read it and understand it...that was actually written on his tomb!

 

While I agree with the general sentiment of the post, the gameplay related things most newcomers complain about are usually the same things many others have complained about for a long time. We have a bunch of threads round here where a new player has said "Playing the game for the first time, I don't like X, Y and Z" and then most of the responses are:

• "I've been complaining about X & Y for two years, see how right I am!"
• "X & Y aren't going to change, we know because you've been complaining about them for two years and they haven't changed!"
• "Z isn't even implemented yet, stop going on about it!"

In order for the complaints to make SotA better there'd have to be some hope of changes coming from those complaints. New posts about the same old arguments tend to just become touchstones for yet another argument.

 

So what now? What's the plan?

 

You have a point there, there are a lot of things I can see people coming in complaining about that many of us have been asking for changes with for some time, yet they still exist, and yes it does get old seeing the same complaints. It's frustrating and I'm sure even more frustrating to a newcomer coming in thinking it's been in development for 3+ years and these problems should have been addressed by now, especially seeing as some people outside this forum is seeing July as a soft launch. Right now Sota doesn't have the best of reputations of being a really good game, and the recent steam controversy over some of our community seeing that community as not important isn't a good image to put out there. It's still pre-alpha/alpha/early access to us, but to others I am not sure what they think to be honest, but just like us they did pay money and have a right to voice their opinions. I am just hoping we can be a bit more nicer and understanding with people and make them feel more welcome when they come to try Sota out.

 

Portalarium? Wake up

 

Wake up to what? The fact that a handful of people are constantly complaining about the game and liking each other's posts to make it seem like the audience is larger?

Is that what you're asking them to wake up to?

 

Its more than a handful. Points have already been addressed here over and over. Its 8:58 AM in Austin... so... TIME TO GET TO THE OFFICE AND WORK ON THE GAME

 

~The Internet is Full of Wearing Feelings on Sleeves~

It's specifics that are rewarding, while generalizations seem soft to the touch...

It's player's preconception that appears the most vital of most complaints from our newer members.
Because there have many before that have stated a, this or that is somehow wrong, does not make it true or false.
Yet when any other would voice an approval rating on our progress, as it's own game, the response seems all the same...
"We came here wanting another game, and not the one they're building"

I also have higher expectations for our game, yet I enjoy specifics because if there are better ideas, then they need to be more clearly stated.

To read some of my own specific complaints within our Dev+ section, you may think of me as a doom and gloomer too. So you're not the only one...

Did someone tell someone else they can't voice an opinion?

A heart, some courage and a forum should be enough to answer such things...

Yet anything can't be everything to everyone...
And everything has yet to be revealed...

"If we only had a brain"
But the brains aren't saying that much right now... because they're working on it...
And when they stop, it's finished... and it's as simple as that...
I came to buy into the game because I love the mind of Lord British...

So Richard Garriott's brains are enough for me... But maybe not for you...
It's just a matter of individual tastes in developers I suppose...
~Time Lord~

 

The problem here is more that people who play games like this are cats and a game dev cannot herd cats. Everybody wants something to work exactly like they think it should work which is completely different then the next guy (our devs are caught in the middle of this all the time and actually say so all the time). One person thinks this game should be hard core PvP, another says they want no PvP at all. They want this one specific variable in the game (of millions) to work one exact way. I've read some crazy ideas here that people have requested which may sound cool but are near impossible to implement. In the IT world we call this the "button" people who want us to make their systems do their job for them while they just sit and press one button (I like to note that we would just automate that one button too and terminate them).

There's the sense of entitlement that an individual person should get exactly what they want. The days of compromising and being more accepting of various things as well as having the mental fortitude to understand that most of these things in game are under heavy development right now are long gone.

Herding cats...

 

Individual taste in developers? You came due to garriots brain being to your liking? whaaaaa?

There is no reason why we both can be happy with this game, your are obviously...and thats nice...for you. All I am saying is:

There is a reason why OP wrote about Ultima Online...cause...hey...its been used yada yada yada back and forth on this very same site...and I miss the 2016 standards.

But thats just me. No complaints and my cash is in this...and you can have all the Garriot brain you want dude, I wont take it from you. Promise

 

~Maybe it's Time to Begin Another Cannibals Thread~

The last one I started got me banned...
~Time Lord~

 

uhhhhh....I'd love to like your post, really...but but but...yurks!

 

Being there and following SotA since 2014, I think that the original sin is that the game was implicitely advertised as a UO / solo Ultimas spiritual sucessor, which leads to :

• A major initial contradiction since UO and solo Ultimas are both very different games
• The impossibility to satisfy the playerbase of both UO and solo Ultimas players, since their expectations are differents
• Players (including myself) who have the feeling that they have been wronged by the RG/UO nostalgia soft-marketing and who don't want to accept that easily that the game will be a complete new game, far from being Ultima Online or Ultima solo.

 

Good thing the game isn't anywhere near release, then.

Seriously, though, the "It's not UO! It's not supposed to be UO" back and forth needs to stop. I really don't care who's right at this point.

So we're either disappointed with the direction of the game or we're fan boys who are happy no matter what. Good thing we can have a conversation on the matter, geez.

 

I'm not saying there are not instances of this, but multi-hat devs definitely defy this.

Chris himself told us in the hangout that the reason we didn't get "The Fall" this release because he had to focus on targeting stuff. I am willing to bet that he isn't the only instance of someone doing work outside of their discipline in a small team such as Portalarium.

Additionally, the ratio of developers to content creators can be varied by the stage of development a game is in. A game nearing pseudo-release should have a dev team more oriented towards polish whereas a team with an unstable game probably needs more people to debug.

 

But people are directly comparing 3D art assets to client bugs.

Lum is the lead writer, but he codes as well. There are some multi-hat employees. But the artists are very likely not working on the client.

And I believe The Fall likely needing coding as well as level design, which is why he would need to be involved, so it is a poor example.

 

The rise and fall are both at least somewhat prototyping for the tools to be utilized by more standard map designers, so yes coding is involved.

I'm not arguing that parallel development that has unrelated employees cannot happen, but that there is still allocation of resources to consider.

They recently hired a modeling person to fix a lot of the armor(and i really like the work he's doing) . Frankly, with persistence in a couple months that timing might be appropriate. However, their stability and core system design feels closer to 4-6 months away from where they need to be at persistence.

Should they be allocating resources according to a timeline that in some ways they are significantly behind?

Even with maintaining content creators doing their continued development, i would vote for another wipe and 3 more releases before persistence.

 

The downside to pledges and early access. The devs really need to stop listening to players and get on with building the game THEY envisioned. If we like the end result, we will play. If not...

IMO, most of the "bad" things I see in SotA are due to devs listening to players and trying to make them happy. POTs are an example of this.

 

~Oh Come On, POTs Are Great and so is our development~
The only thing you can really do with POTs, is to name them and move a few pieces of them around. Other than that, they're just another town and places where we needed housing space anyway. I recently purchased a POT and gave it to one of my friends because he holds a conglomerate POT we all own, yet is on his account because there's not much to POTs, other than places for friends to live around each other. If he sells his account one day, the POT is still there and nothing much changes.

I agree they need to build the game they first envisioned, yet when allot of minds get together, great ideas can happen which were un-thought of before. It's this added Human Gig-Space within their plan that comes from us all, that helps design and even manufacture our gaming content. I know of one player (for only one example), that worked themselves up in pledge level from a common low rated pledge level, up to a Knight's pledge, because of that player's contributions of real life computing work added into our game. The Portalarium Company also saved $ doing much the same thing to have such a wide player made variety of music for our game. Those collective player based outsourcings saved the Company from having to do all that themselves, or having to have outsourced it from other privet companies.



Our Players, Benefactors and Founders are one of our game's largest assets for better content.
This is why it's our content, that has helped build our games unique character.
Other games, just don't have our level amount of input through design.

It's not just funded by players, it has been and continues to be made by our players working along side our gaming company's creator's who hold the greater image of what our game will become. Even players who think they're just playing the game, are actually it's testers and game designers through their willingness to play a game that is as of yet, not fully created...
"We only think it's a game right now", which in a way it is, yet it's only a world full of what's needing to be play tested and not what all the game will later be once it's launched... yet even then is still very much alive with adding even more collective player and producer content.

~How Most Companies Make a Game~
...Theirs is an end product that always has an ending to it...

Our SOTA development is operating well outside of the box, yet continues to be judged as if it's been boxed and ready for our Poralarium to all take a vacation with the all CA$H
Which it never will be...
~Time Lord~

 

@Time Lord your second image appears to be broken.