I'm uneasy about the game and have been...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Annah_Sennah, Nov 18, 2017.

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  1. Spoon

    Spoon Avatar

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    Lots of people are eagerly awaiting the physical goods. It is brought up every other hangout or so.

    But there is recent good news and activity. A name not seen before in the standups has been busy with the physical goods lately, which is where you will see it happening:
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?search/23259436/&q=Physical+goods&t=post&o=date&c[thread]=2315

    There we can also see that recently they are finally settling the new version of the cloth map:
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?search/23259605/&q="cloth+map"&t=post&o=date&c[thread]=2315

    There is no point starting working on a new version of the cloth map if they are not ready to start making quotations and purchases for the physical rewards.


    Which means that if they are putting the finishing touches on them now, then order and production will take a while, then when they have been delivered to Portalarium you have a whole lot of signing and then package and post which is a nightmare.
     
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  2. Lifedragn

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    It is all a balance. Every developer requires not only a living wage, but enough of a wage that their passion for this game can compete with potentially higher wages from more stable development houses. Adding more developers to a project does not cause a linear gain in software production speed. Diminishing returns on additional developers is just a general rule of the industry. A larger team might have had it rolled out by now. Maybe not. A larger team also would have likely run completely out of funding before doing so. Keep in mind also, that keeping a game playable for as long as they have here also significantly slows development time. As a game dev insider, I can promise you that most games are practically unplayable for at least 80% of their lifespan. A QA team would be testing builds with trees turned off, no particle effects, and teeny tiny scenes, and only around this point in the game with all of the optimization work they are doing would they be putting everything together to be tested as a whole experience. Last but not least, three to five years is an average length for non-iterative video game development. Good for the guys who are going faster, but they are more rare than you think.

    My concern is more about how much more audience this game will be able to draw after release. I am a bit pessimistic about many new players joining and staying. But the development process itself I feel is pretty solid and working well. Been working in game dev for a major company for twelve years, and am not at all alarmed by their process or output speed.
     
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  3. Koldar

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    I agree it's encouraging to see it in the stand up notes since physical goods are listed as one of their top priorities, but they've been in the stand up notes before. They have been extremely silent about the fulfillment of the physical goods which is what causes so much concern around their ability to fulfill. Communicating a little more effectively (which has always been a struggle since Day 1) would would have the power to change the nature of the conversations around physical goods.
     
  4. Hunter Rose

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    Hard really to compare SoTA to many other titles out there. The challenges creating a title with the various social playstyle options leaves not much out there to compare and has certainly presented unforseen development challenges that are often discussed on this board. Still most non kicktarter games can take up to 5 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to go gold. Crowd funded games are hard to track since most of them fail (Found this on reddit http://www.kicktraq.com/lab/successrates/) Obviously you can conclude a number of other variables affect that production ramp of a crowd funded game. What these folks are doing with the relative small amount of funds they've raised through a passionate community (relative to tripple A titles they are often compared to) is in my opinion impressive.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2017
  5. Last_Crusader

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    I don't see many besides "old" gamers familiar (and nostalgic) about Ultima really coming to this game.
    I think at this point how many of the original backers (like myself) that have just pretty much been not impressed with what they've seen and are awaiting release will actually come back and play, let along NEW players.

    Just feel there is too much competition in the game market today for this game to be widely successful. Not only do they not have the marketing budget for it, it just isn't designed for the masses.

    To a new gamer, this thing will look ugly, dated and play clunky and may try it out with a trial, but doubt it will capture people like say "World of Warcraft" did.
     
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  6. Addison

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    I have all but stopped playing at this point. I log in to keep my row house and that's it. The game just is not fun for me at all in its current state, with the constant "balancing" and decay system. I will wait until the game officially launches and reset everything. If it's better then, I will be very happy, but right now this game is a boring grind and I rightfully have a number of concerns.
     
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  7. Koldar

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    I do not see "Ultima" in this game. I try to keep all nostalgic thoughts of Ultima pushed way down inside to avoid becoming depressed by all the things that Shroud could have been. :(
     
  8. Lifedragn

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    To be fair, not even Blizzard expected to capture people like World of Warcraft did. Back then UO was sitting in the 200Ks and Everquest in the 500Ks and they were still kings of the MMO market. WoW was hoping to land between those numbers, which is why its launch was so horrific.
     
  9. Lord_Darkmoon

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    You also have to see that WoW opened the whole genre to a completely new generation of gamers. Many people who normally never or seldom played games started to play WoW because it was so streamlined and it played so easy and fluidly. This is one of the reasons for the casualization of games. The easier they are to play, to more people play them.

    Now SotA on the other hand is not a game for casual players. So they can't count on this market. SotA is not a game that has exceptionally good graphics (they are ok but you can't compare them to modern AAA games), so people who play games for the graphics will not be attracted by SotA.
    Gamers who are used to play "harder" games might now have families and a job and not much time to play games. So how can they compete? So SotA might not be a game for them.
    What is left? Gamers who are old enough to have adult kids and who still like to play games. At least for me this seems to be a rather small niche. And this niche gets even smaller when you think that out of those players some like SP games and won't get this in SotA, some like open PvP and won't get this in SotA, some simply think that game is not fun etc.

    SotA will be a niche game. And one can only hope that this niche is big enough so that the players can keep the game alive.
     
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2017
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  10. Elwyn

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