Harder!

@Skyo
Today you said:

You might consider doing a bit of re-reading yourself.
For instance - and I'll start at the very beginning:

10 days ago, you posted:

Now that's quite the boast post !

You begin a thread by telling us and the dev's how you alone have mastered all the content that they have worked on and that you alone can walk into "any zone of the game and crush it" - that you can "literally march anywhere in the game and dominate it."

And you then proceed (based upon your ability to do so) to tell the dev's that they need to work on higher level content for people like you.

9 days ago, I posted:

8 days ago, you posted in response to that:

Well, I admit that - having been to a few control points myself - I was skeptical to say the least.

I then posted:

2 days ago I re-posted the challenge, along with......

Sooo..... If there's any re-reading to be done, perhaps you should look no further than right here.
Is your boast about crushing and dominating everything (your words, not mine) still valid?
Or is it something that, in hindsight, you might have overstated - a bit?

 

You're right, my friend.

I changed my mind.

1/200th.

I don't know what to think.

On one hand, it's ludicrous that in two months we've been able to create and push to endgame three entire cycles of chars. But, well, the breakneck speed is testing, and I could even agree it's a good data pool.

But on release? We REALLY want to create another three-monther, like countless other closed or cancelled projects? I hoped this game was different than the usual instant-gratification charade we're seeing in MMO arena since ages.

"Buy this token and turn your just-created char into a lvl100".

I have a bad feeling about this.

Two actually, but you have a point.

 

My words are absolutely still valid.

Much to the point of many of the seasoned members responding with productive points of view on this thread.

I'm sorry you have an axe to grind with me, but I have never heard of you and I'm sure your name will fade soon enough.

Rest assured that all my "boasting" is done in game. You know.... Where the actual testing takes place.

As I and others like me work to improve this fine game, it is good to have differing opinions. There are many of us that do. However the difficulty is apparently easy for most everyone who plays consistently.

Areas of the game need to be made drastically more difficult.

Content will be put in per Chris's post. That is because it is the overwhelming feedback of the same direction.

 

@Skyo From Personal Experience, You are A Tank and can hit like a truck, But you are Not Themo lock If htere is one person in the game I know that can Hold A CP is themo, That Man has Commited countless hours into Sota, Testing Bugs, Memorising spawn rates For each mob, Best places to stand when fighting bosses Etc, And holding A CP is no easy feat, My questio is, Can you hold a CP While standing out in the Open Fighting Like A Man? ... or Hiding inside a room that allows you to stand on the CP whilst breaking line of sight from the mobs?

 

Enough of this.. how about Skyo and I duel for the title of "Crusher".. if he beats me I will agree he can crush every zone..Be warned @Skyo no holds barred on this one ^^

 

Don't even get on this bandwagon my friend, he was wrong on the CP the first one he did was with us the other night. Last attempt it was bugged he thought 1 wave was the CP.

 

Im just surprised this thread has gone on this long, Many people will have vast and varied oppinions Thats the beauty of sota

 

Ill just kick his ass into submission later if he accepts the Crush duel and we can lock the thread afterwards ^^

 

Deal see you on tonight. I'll post a video of me demolishing you. I assume you will start out invis and use water to its fullest extent but I'm still very excited!

 

Stream it. Ill test how that 120 death attunement feels. Took Sneak attack to GM, probably first on server, im curious to see how a 5 stack treats plate..

 

@HogwinHD and @Insinious FizzleThorpe

I think this thread honestly has value but between all the egos the real point is being lost.

Progression, Mob Difficulty, and Exp/Skill gain is currently in a bad state. The current adventuring portion of this game looks something like this:

Spend 2 days in 1 skull area | Spend 2 days in 3 skull area | spend 182 days in 5 skull area

Once you achieve this last step you may reach the ability to solo world bosses. Is there still difficult content? Sure you could form a group and do CP's but for a solo player if you want any further advancement it's right back to those 5 skull grind area's that you've been at for over 180 days. This is unhealthy. Players will have to play in SPO or Friends only because the mob density wont be there to support 90% of the community grinding in a few select 5 skull zones.

~Wodin

EDIT* Before someone comes in here and says that WELL x4 XP!! That doesn't change the ratio. It'll just be 8 days / 8 days / 728 days; Grossly over simplified, but the disparity in spread out content will remain.

 

If it helps, in his "free" time as he called it Chris made us a new dungeon, it should be out in R28. Said it is the hardest thing we have come across yet.. so im excited to see it.

 

The ONE thing I'll disagree with ya on, (well, maybe not the ONE thing, but the one thing in this thread).

I think this content was coming either way. Us clamoring for content is heard by the DEVS, but they have their own schedule and priorities. It wasn't gonna be just Spiders and Wolves forever and now we are starting to see content come in, and just in the knick of time!!!

I know some folks feel that the DEVS putting effort into 'harder' content is a waste of time at this stage. Its not. Its ALL part of 'development'. The guys that are providing us with harder combat content are not necessarily the guys who are also working on more recipes, or better quest continuity. Many cogs in this machine, and by my estimate they are all running fairly smoothly for an overwhelmed dev team.

 

To confirm this A certain dev was online at about 430 A.M. his time today working on stuff..That itself shows dedication. If we owe them nothing, it is a sincere thank your for the time and devotion they put towards making our vision a reality.

 

I share your concern, but Portalarium has designed the game this way, intentionally.

The fundamental design of the game, currently, and specifically the progression system, demands that players that put in more time & effort will be rewarded with higher levels/personal power quicker.
They have painted themselves into a corner. You can't limit XP per day, that'll kill the game. You can't tie progress to the passage of time (ala PFO/Alganon/Horizons 1.0) because it'll make a niche title already more niche, possibly lowering customer concurrency to the dreaded sub-100 per day death knell. Diminishing returns? Poisons a game so fast, it'll make your head spin. GW2 proved that. (15 minutes per day of normal play, after that, no loot! Enjoy!)
There's an interview, and I've quoted it in the past but can't find it, and it outlined what Richard/Starr/Chris felt were "typical" vs. "hardcore" time commitments in hours per day or hours per week.
IIRC, 1 hour per day was considered casual/typical, for Shroud. Ok, so, many/all of the advancement curves are possibly balanced around that.
Now if >75% of your ~10k customers play 1 hour a day, it will take them a year to GM a single skill, maybe. Maybe it's six months, just as long as you have a target set.
Unfortunately, you have hundreds or a few thousand customers who will play 10 hours a day for 37 days straight, after persistence. Ok, so that's a years worth of 'casual/typical' time condensed into about 5 weeks. Now what?

It's not financially wise to balance your entire game on the actions of less than 20% of your target demographic. That can lead to alienating your larger target demographic.
There are many, MANY ways to create challenge, drive social contact, and extend the longevity of any persistent game. See Pantheon versus Shroud. Unfortunately, the Skinner Box paradigm works too well, and so designers fall back on it, predictably. Thus, the era of post 2005 free-to-play/buy-to-play grinders was born. Those games where you're enticed into a big open world, but the reality is, you're going to spend MORE money than a subscription to advance at a reasonable rate. (We hates them, preciouss!)
I think Shroud's carrot, overall, is intended to be that other activities outside of combat will be the social draw and create permanence. It's not there yet, because those non combat systems aren't developed enough, but they might be by EP2. It might be too late by then, though. It's also possible that the monetary investment will create social permanence, but I have my doubts, personally.

There are other considerations, too. Many in Shrouds ranks know from experience that often, especially prior to public launch, adjustments will be made that significantly impede advancement to higher levels, for precisely these reasons cited. However, during the first few weeks or months after persistence, the support team is still in "data gathering mode", and hesitates to make such massive sweeping changes. So, all the vets take their vacation days and push themselves past the noob threshold so they don't have to endure what the general public will have no choice but to endure. They've seen this all before, and are 100% "gaming the system" or taking advantage, to to speak, in the name of efficiency. This happened during the recent early release access for Elite: Dangerous, for example. If you played enough during the first month, you were set for at least 2 years. Post launch, to reach those same goals would take ten TIMES the investment in effort.

Personally, I think if players are going to "race to the finish" and then leave when they discover there is no finish, you can't stop them. Single Player and Friends Only modes make it possible for someone to play through the primary story line of Shroud in a few dozen hours and then leave the game until EP2. Is it worth punishing or restricting the bulk of the rest of players to try and stop a few that will leave anyway? I'm skeptical, given the evidence history provides.

tl;dr? Traditional persistent progression systems like the one Shroud is using will always permit a subset of the target demographic to proceed faster along the curve than is intended. The exact moment you make that progress/grind "hard enough" that it negatively affects that subset? You've just alienated the larger subset, and effectively strangled your game. There are long term innovative solutions, but the time for that was 3+ years ago, and hubris prevented Portalarium from even considering them at that time.

 

It happened sooooo often during wipes, too.

The insane rewards of the Treasure Cave (the hidden part of Graff Mines that was giving tons of 2K+ g gems, at some point).
The cave wrasse eggs and the pilgrimage at Dragon's Cave.
The awesome prizes in the locked room of Shuttered Eye (the chests overflowing with countless resources, and resettable at will).
The amazing Forest Cave and its endless stream of high level XP.
The respawn mechanics of Ghost Corpion, the first farmable world boss.
The repeatable quest recently exploited.
etc.

If I didn't know better, I was often inclined to believe that devs intentionally add some massively broken mechanic ingame to give an headstart-over-the-headstart to... Uhm... "Creative players". (And usually only to fix them right after *I* discovered them! )

 

Lmao

 

I would never want to see this be anything like Ever Camp.