Hour 21 of new experience from my friend - Muy importante @Devs!

At about hour 20 of his game time I got to join him as my RL travel is over.

After doing some siege battles, which he enjoyed, I finally figured out that his combat deck was still locked! He had no idea what I was talking about with locked/unlocked. We went to Soltown and unlocked his deck.

He was 20 hours in and didn't know he was missing a huge piece of combat!

In theory he should have opened it when he opened the Utility Bar, or seen the book that came with the Utility Bar, read it and said "Oh there's more!" But that's theory, if you have a theory players will break it.

I think unlocked combat is important enough that you've got to get it into the players face at some point, make them know it exists. Pop up text, an NPC running up to them and explaining it, something that can't be missed.

When he got it unlocked and I walked him through setting up a deck, after the start of combat he said "This is a game changer, totally different experience."

A totally different experience he could have played another 20 hours without getting.

 

The big thing is getting enough glyphs to 40 to get 4 cards so there are no slugs.

I also think the focus costs are better with them unlocked.

 

Personally i like the deck part of the combat system.
But im yet to have 1 person who hasnt had to have it explained to them in one way or another.

SOTA is really not the best game for someone to come in solo into still.
And is exactly why there should have been a Starter Guild your opted into at start, that maybe nobles or hospitallers can participate in chat or something like that.

Will never understand why a feature that pretty much every game that has guilds, has... was decided as NO in SOTA.

 

I played for six months (R20-R25) knowing about it (you didn't have to do anything special to unlock it) before I started using it. And this was when there was a severe warm-up penalty for locked glyphs.

At lower levels, you only need 18-20 or so. I don't know what determines the minimum number to avoid slugs, but it does go up by at least 2 or 3 rather quickly with a new character. This also complicates using an unlocked bar right away. There have been recent improvements making locked bars less troublesome, so it's not as bad to stay locked.

It's an interesting idea, using the deck mechanic from CCG card games, but in an RPG environment that isn't turn based, it's not quite a perfect fit. There are some things that you only want to do every now and then on demand (like Immolation to get some extra damage started), and not at random times, and not taking up a slot after you just used it. You can sort glyphs into different stacks (like offensive in one group and healing in another), but the "deck"ness of getting new stuff can cause one sort group to clog the other. (like when you're doing a lot of attacks but don't need much healing, you need to start dumping healing glyphs to get more attack glyphs)

 

Honestly, I think that's a better option in the first 40 hours than having some weak sauce tutorial that leaves more people frustrated.

If we gradually unlocked slots as we leveled, and each time were asked if we wanted to unlock another slot, and got warnings from the game if we tried to save a deck with slugs, it would be more organic.