How many players is SotA going to have?

Ghosts are Vulnerable to Melee at this time. At least the ones in the Eceter(?) crag mines are.

 

I think you didn't read the original quote. You wouldn't be saying this.

He complained he had to read the journal and read NPC text to know what he has to do. To find clues. To understand where to go without a big floating arrow saying "Go there, you idiot!".

Check it again, especially on the part where he says it's boring to read texts.

Of course, you have some of the best story authors in a couple of industries (CRPG and Fantasy novels), and you don't want to read!!! It's like hiring Messi for your soccer team, and then complaining he can't cook or sew. The WTF would eclipse the sun for a couple of days.

I agree that the only reviews that SHOULD count are the ones after release. Unfortunately, the reviews that are written (and read, it seems) include nonsensical ones like the quoted one.

 

He has the right to hate this, you shouldn't call him an idiot because of that. Also go and read that review again and you will notice that he has proposed to include voice acting to make this more interesting WITHOUT adding the markers. He is willing to play like this, but in its current form it's not interesting enough for him. Try to see his point

Also, look at SWtOR. The mechanics and gameplay are booooooooooooring, but the actual story, voice acting, cutscenes and writing are really good and it was the only thing that kept me playing. And guess what? That game has quest markers, clean and tidy journal and it leads you by the hand. So please, don't say that the fact that SotA has some of the greatest writers is the reason why we shouldn't complain about having to read everything and keep the track of it ourselves. Having either the markers or voice acting would not hinder the story in any way.

Personally I'm against markers, like yourself However, we need to understand that some people won't be happy about it

And while we're at it: I have to admit that I skipped some text myself - especially when I saw loooong paragraph not fitting inside my chat window, then I had to scroll up, then the chat window scrolled to the top suddenly for no reason, then I had to scroll down again, then I noticed about 5 keywords that need to get explored, then I got lost in the middle of sentence due to wall of text with no formatting, had to read again, then when I tried to write in the keyword it turned out the chat had no focus and I opened up 4 windows, then I closed them, then I typed in the keyword, then while reading next wall of text I forgot what it was all about and had to scroll up to check on the previous wall of text, then the chat scrolled up to the top for no reason, etc.

...not encouraging to read you know?

Now imagine that you had the text nicely formatted in a separate window in the middle of the screen and you also had voice acting. And that below this message there was an input box that takes over the focus from your GUI (which could get invisible upon getting into conversation anyway). Much nicer vision IMO

I know that current system looks like it does to give you an illusion of talking to real people (you chat like with other players) but that's not really true at the moment. You still have to enter separate conversation "scene" which destroys that illusion.

 

How many players, after launch? I would say 1 million (nice round number), probably not as many as WoWs 10 million (a lot of them I think are 10-13 yo)... But many more than UOs high of 250,ooo...

 

I have read his review and I do mean the things that I've said. He likes the idea but hates the execution. He doesn't complain that he had to read the journal, he complains that the journal barely has any info... considering how very little the NPCs give. Finding NPCs in town (or finding anything at all) is a complete nightmare and NPCs don't have the capacity to reply to "where the !#@#% is the dude you're talking about?".

I remember spending excruciating HOURS roaming around Owl's Head looking for Lord Delbert Enmar because all the guards would say to me is that he's in a building "near the marketplace". "Where the !@#$ is the marketplace?" I asked then, enraged... only to get replies like "I don't understand what you mean." from halfwit NPCs. As it turns out, there are TWO locations in Owl's Head that could be interpreted as a marketplace. Because THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA /sarcasm! Myra is selling fruits and vegetable next to a NPC blacksmith shop and a player crafting area and this is the FIRST AREA you see when you come in town. And before anyone mentions that the marketplace is within a walled area, remember that the first NPC that mentions this is actually outside on the bridge so you have to go through TWO sets of walls.... and a new player has to figure this out somehow without feeling frustrated.

Remember that Tour Guide quest that asked you to explore the sewers? Have you READ that quest dialogue or did you already know where to go because you've (probably) been playing this game for years prior? It doesn't tell you where the entrance to those sewers are (except the name of the towns - and good luck finding those towns on two separate continents) and there are no NPCs that will give you directions. So you're just roaming around like a headless chicken hoping to stumble upon those entrances (and towns); wishing you had at LEAST markers since the devs or your so called "best story authors in a couple of industries" didn't bother to write in directions.

Not everyone likes to look that stuff up on a wiki page. I'm aware that there's this guy that made a StoA app for iOS... I don't want it! I want that stuff in the game. It's either cheating or doing the work that the dev should've done in the first place. If you think the game's so great, why are you using external sources to get your info? Game DESIGN.

Despite being works of art, video games still have to be designed as a piece of software. There are many ways to tell amazing stories in a MULTI-media format; video games have the luxury of using player input, video and sound. Not to mention that there's a small but important difference between reading dialogue and reading paragraphs. So I agree that voice acting will go a long way because, yes, I haven't read many dialogues that have been entertaining so far.

I read books when I want reading to be my primary activity.

I cannot disagree with anything that this particular reviewer is complaining about. As a matter of fact, the way he describes the tutorial is SPOT ON. The difference is that I'm enjoying SotA DESPITE these things and I hope that these issues will be rectified before release.

 

Hmm, I think one thing that should help the 'market square' problem would be if several NPC shoppers regularly traveled to it during the day to do their daily shopping. You'd just follow the walking path of most NPC's, and if you asked any of them where they're going, they'd say,"Excuse me, I'm busy, heading to the market square."

Also, basic districts of any city should become keywords that all NPC's in a town know and can give directions to. (which would also help the graveyard issue).

I really think every scene needs to be visually divided up on its map into 'districts' with each district having a name. Then, every NPC in a scene should be able to give descriptions/directions of each of the scene's districts. When you get a map of the scene, the districts will appear as you discover them, kind of how the POI's do already.

Finally, thought should be given to NPC placement, especially in NPC towns, so that the districts and POI's seem to be functioning parts of the world with NPC's utilizing them for their given purpose. For example, maybe we should see an NPC priest/gravedigger/grave robber/witch traveling to and from the cemeteries. The gravedigger could work there at dawn, talking about how busy he's been lately what with the war. The witch could be there at dusk searching for special herbs. The grave robber could be there around midnight, working for a local alchemist/physician who needs subjects to study the reason behind the undead uprising. The priest could be there midday, preparing sermons for the survivors of the dearly departed.

So far the 'NPC towns' and all scenes really, are severely lacking in content. And this emptiness makes finding things more difficult. Hopefully that will change by launch.

 

I'm already off topic as I am. But this cannot be passed on.

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/game...public-the-story-behind-a-galactic-gamble/#/0

Compare a 200M$ budget game with a 6.6M$ budget game and wonder why that the latter has no voice acting.

I'm driving a Ford Focus, why I'm not going as fast as my friend on a Lamborghini Aventador?

 

I'm not saying that we can afford it. I'm saying he has right to nag about it not beeing there. Wouldn't you like to see voice acting in SotA? I would. I know we can't have it, but that doesn't change the fact people CAN say that the game is worse than other MMO titles when it comes to this aspect. And they are right. And this is how you sound using the example you just provided:

"Hey man, your Ford Focus is way worse than this Lamborghini Aventador I'm driving!"
"You're an idiot! Can't you see my car is just as good as yours (or even better)!? It costs less to produce so you can't say it's worse than yours!"

also seeing the current MMO market you would have to assume most people drive Lamborghini every day and you actually paid more for your Ford Focus

 

Lol you are dreaming

 

When the age of microtransaction hitted us it became irrelevant how many people play a game.
The important question is: will it be able to creat a steady and high enough cashflow?
In my opinion: yes.

 

I think they have almost finished building the land and when they have built the land they can build the towns and add all the content. I think a bunch of trolls whining because they don't understand the concept of a old school sandbox crpg is unimportant as people who troll like that won't provide any real or positive impact to the game world anyway. The things about them building the land then towns and adding places is that when the basics are finished they can keep improving them and adding more stuff.

 

That would definitely make the world feel more alive. This sort of NPC scheduling / AI needs a lot more work, which they've said is coming. But this specific idea -- even for filler NPCs, would be great.

I started to file bugs for every location in every town for every NPC in that town but simply gave up. There's simply far too many (hundreds of locations multiplied by hundreds of NPCs), so I'm going to wait until they finish all the dialog and content for NPCs and then file them all.

We sort of already have POIs on the compass for locations within towns, so doing another pass at this for each town and its zones/districts would be nice. Along with ensuring most NPCs know how to respond / direct you there.

So very true...looking forward to when they implement all those NPC schedules and better AI too.

 

Yes and to be off topic also. We have some wonderful voices in the community already. Just a 'hint' 'hint' to consider. Listen to some of the plays and readings on Caverns.net. This is our community having a voice. Some really nice stuff there. Let's you know who you are experiencing all this with. And to be on topic I think if this game turns into the detailed, fun, interesting, surprising and deeply rewarding experience that is possible who would not want to play it? I know that it could be said to be a niche game but there are plenty of those players out there and perhaps many are not immune to experiencing it.

 

Maybe the game could have a set of 'canned' soundFX dialog. Something you hear when you bump into an NPC, (phrases like 'excuse me' or Watch it!) to generic conversation starters ('what do you want?' 'Hello.' 'Ah, it's you!') The deeper dialog itself doesn't need to be heard, we can just hear these short phrases to give us an idea of their mood and character. This preserves the ability to add-hoc and change dialog on the fly, which is relatively important for this game.

I do still think we should have portraits for characters come up. I don't think NPCs look different enough from each other, for the 'zoom in' effect to help us understand who they are. Also, because we can't zoom in on players when talking to them, it creates too much differentiation. Now, if we could talk to a player just like we do NPC's, and all the above had portraits to show who they are (players would each get their own portraits!) that would add so much to the game.
A player portrait could just be a zoomed in picture of their upper torso, with a pose and clothing selected by the player in settings. The NPC portraits would be the same, poses selected by Lum for each NPC, clothing should be whatever they usually wear. These poses might include two visible held items to help characterize a person's trade or status.

 

That is why I had such high hope back when I thought the Developer tier reward would actually mean writing an own NPC (script). With all the faith I have in Portalarium and their abilities, even if they would have 10 people full time working on NPCs, there's not a chance they could make that happen for every NPC (since there's going to be thousands in towns and more outside). You need numbers to fight numbers and we'd have more than enough Dev+ backers. Yes, I'm well aware of the quality/content control issue, but a neatly organised equivalent to the already existing player based controls (e.g. sound) should be able to tackle the task. It's a lot easier (and faster!) to quality check than to actually write and implement an NPC.
~sighs~ Oh well.

 

As far as directions go.. when told to go to the market square i just figured that the square full of market stalls was the right place, and for sewers i figured that a sewer would would be found down by the water somewhere. The act of thinking about where to look and why is half the fun of exploration.

 

Hes right you know.

Kickstart campaign specifically talked about crowd sourcing.

Now we all seen what music created by the community is like why wouldnt the voice acting be of the same quality? Or anything the crowd come up with?

 

It would be convenient to be able to ask random town NPCs "Which way to Paxlair?", and have them respond "North.". However, almost all the quest NPCs will give a direction so it isn't that big a deal. It would require more work than it was worth, and in the end NPCs would end up with canned dialog.

 

They may very well give such directions in future once the towns are all in place

 

Larian initially had 1.5 million Euros to spend on Divinity: Original Sin and hoped to build it on a budget of 3 million. In the end, the studio spent 4.5 million Euros.

The budget for Divinity Original sin, it has voice acting. Budget isn't an excuse for lack of voices. They could probably even do some of it themselves.

Money isn't an excuse for a lot of this games issues.

As far as how many players? If steam numbers are any indication it doesn't look too promising..

http://steamcharts.com/app/326160

But who knows.