Kotaku article with Richard Garriott interview infos

I agree with you on everything but this

To me, how the game development ways of our past and future have been described, SOTA is a "project", a continual project which has no end to it's improvement because it's a project with no deadline. SOTA has a "living development" which had a beginning and has a possible end after episode 5 if it goes no further, yet has a seamless improvement and time to deliver what we do want and wish for to make it all in it at some point in time. I can wait for quality of both online and offline, yet I do expect it "all" as needing to be fulfilled, each to it's own best custom fitted outcome to it's purposes (both online and offline).

Big PvP battles will come for the online version and I don't see a rush needed for it as long as it's done. Yet this is exactly why offline is lagging behind, is that online demands (with the trolls of fans online to comment demanding it), while the offline single player, becomes the single voice which does not get heard (because their trolls are few or are "offline").

$75.00 USA Dollars Each Month! are slipping through our game's online fingers from many potential offline players there's some potential offline Knight size pledges out there to get Yo! If the offline game is as good, "as an offline game" Advertisement game talking point potential in the extreme PC Gaming economy class of PC Gaming !'...

I'd like to point something out here that's a great talking point "if our offline game were great"
I cannot express and stress enough of what a value SOTA could be for offline play Online carries a cost of having to have an online connection, while offline only needs a connection for downloads, "what a value that is!" No internet bills? I'd be saving somewhere around $75.00 USD a month if I didn't need an internet connection. I'd just barrow someone else's internet, download the game and then maybe have to download updates the same way, without ever clogging up the temporarily barrowed internet connection my friend let me barrow That's $75.00 we're talking about there! And that's $75.00 that I could then have used each month to buy things from our SOTA Add-On Store instead of paying for a constant internet fee!

Think about that game funding for a moment aye? ...
In 3 world nations, this matters!
~TL~

 

Ahhh well I see what you are saying but if there is not reason to play with in game achievements system, daily quests of all types for the quest grinders, exploration quests that give discoveries that lead us in many directions then we have lost many players already.

Bare bones fishing is not ok or bare bones agriculture is not ok to start this game with. It doesn't have to have every single detail that could come later, but baits, types of fish, different fish spawning in different areas, weights of fish, fishing quests and contests, and the same for agriculture, well and more in crafting as well with low level recipes to raise, making something unusual or a 2nd item occasionally, getting some valuable resources back on destruction of an item, and making a better version with higher crafting skills, and surprises to all of them fishing up treasure maps, treasure chests, water creatures.

Really I can go on and on and I will of course. We do not have a real game without these, we have a game that says here you go make it up yourself, but we can only do that so much, we need some tech for the basics.

We cannot launch (commercial release in other words) without basics even tho some fight against delivery quests and dailies we will need them. For some players these are a basic reason to come in game. Some people do not need or want to do these well unless the reward is earning cotos or points that build up to earn cotos.

We need incentive and value to keep people coming back. Cotos or chance of cotos are the perfect reward. Bounty quests are another perfect type of daily quests to provide value and cotos. We don't have these basics that add structure and reasons to play and we cannot release until we get some things added in. I will keep fighting for this until the end.

And i do feel it would help and be a more integrity for Port to just admit they don't have time to make the offline game atm yet, but that they will make it even better when they can focus on it at a later date.. So those people waiting on the offline game don't feel invisible and could have some choice to come back later or just play online in the meantime realizing a better offline experience will be coming one day.

edited
Edited again

 

"Launch" is the strange word when it comes to SOTA development ... Yet the optimal times in timing to sell games are seasonal in marketing nature. we have been launched a long time ago when Owls Head was first made, or when persistence came. I personally find it difficult to find a point where everything would be completed. Some would argue that each and every feature should be all ready for a box to place it in, yet that's not been within our SOTA's development credo. It's a constantly evolving, in constant improvement game to the very end of the 5th episode. The way we are developing is ground breaking not being in the EA or Origins style of funding or development. To that end, there's a need for more unique marketing design, yet we would need to change the world market game buying trends in order to do that "well", so we are stuck with saying the word "launched" in it's more traditional sense.

We just can't wait forever to begin our advertising campaigns or we whither on the vine and fall into a Star Citizen black hole of never being completed for any release. SC has the money to do that with, yet SOTA dose not.

We need allot more than that but what we have is what we have. Those things will come "some day", but not in time and our current player base cannot continually buy bundles enough till the end of those and other developments.
maybe we could hold on for another year without "launch", but my personal outlook on that, is that we need to begin advertisement. We've had many such advertisements before while in earlier development. ~RG & DS~ traveled all over the place talking about our game, and through those travels built what player base we have which has thus far kept us afloat. But armies have casualties and our SOTA army is no different. So, it's time once again for our ~RG & DS~ to set sail out to gather more recruits. I've seen 5 of my close SOTA friends from Kickstarter downsize dramatically by selling vast pieces of/and their accounts at bargain pricing, because their zeal for the game has faltered. I've subsequently purchased 3 of those players almost full accounts worth of things as they downsized for them to reinvest in other games.

We must have more recruitment, more sales and more players, so "launch of what we have" is the best option of talking points, and as more talking points come available, as they are developed within the later part of the game selling season this year leading up to Christmas. This is not due to any failing, it's only due to the way our SOTA is developed, as a constantly developing game, adding more and more features (talking points) as our ball gets rolling along.

Yet all of this, is why the word "launch" is a very strange word to apply when it comes to SOTA, because of the constant development structure we have. It's almost a pea splitting issue when it comes to such English terminology that the word "launch" has, yet we need to begin selling more and we do have the very basic structure of the game completed, which the meaning of the word "basic" is another pea splitting issue for it's translation, within an ever developing game which is constantly adding more features to it and will continue to do so with features yet dreamed of or mentioned, until the end of "at least" episode #5.

Call it a launch, call it a recruitment drive or sales greeting, but ~RG & DS~ are about ready to go and do it... "again" if we want to put it that way
You're not in any way wrong @majoria70 , we just don't have the language which exactly fits what advertising needs demand our ~RG & DS~ to go out and do for our game to become better known. What you mention was talked about by one of our developers (can't remember which one or couple of them they were), but they were saying that we needed to have more for new players not to see us as lacking in content or unpolished. I think they were speaking of the free temporary accounts and how they were testing that. I think we're going to see more within the next 3 releases which will help that situation if everything goes as scheduled.

So let's hope for the best and get some more people in here by advertising our game, "no matter what descriptive word we're calling the reason for advertising it" It would be nice to have more pledging players ~TL~

 

Yes, the truth! This is certainly the place to come for an unbiased opinion...A forum where many of the posters have hundreds or even thousands of dollars invested in the game...Literally tens if not hundreds of times what gamers would have been willing to pay for a fully developed, released game just a few years ago.

I still want SotA to succeed, although I fear it may be shaping up to be the biggest disappointment in my 30+ years in computer gaming. Just saying, this isn't the place to come for an unbiased opinion.

 

How does having $10,000 or $20,000 or whatever invested in a game make your opinion biased or any less?

I have lots of stock in Pepsi and I don't drink Pepsi. Pepsi is gross to me. Didn't make my opinion biased.

 

OK, if you don't think that people are going to be biased after investing significant amounts of money, we just have a fundamentally different understanding of how the human mind works.

 

i was going to say something here..
but realized this is the same person who just tried to claim Steam is accepting bribes to bring SOTA's numbers down from big companies like ESO.. because of threat! .. then i realized this was one of those cases that will lead to me getting banned. lol

 

Couldn't it be interpreted that it would take FIVE episodes to tell these "more compelling" stories? ... I'm just saying, holding essentially 1 game up against 3 isn't fair to anyone involved.

 

Wait, what? I never said anything of the sort. Who are you confusing me with?

 

He wasn't talking about you, but rather the person to whom you replied.

 

Ohhh, OK! I misunderstood.

 

And as someone who had their life significantly impacted by Ultima 4 as a kid and considered Lord British a genius, I assure you that I do not mean my post as trolling. I have invested in SotA on an emotional and nostalgic level, more so than a monetary one. The last thing I want is for it to fail, but I fear it will never live up to most players' expectations.

 

It isn't some conspiracy that Steam is out against SoTA. It goes on in the entire industry. SoTA isn't the only game that gets shafted. This happens to other games as well.
My point stands though, I think someone could invest $100,000 and not be biased. Money doesn't make someone biased.

 

The way I see it, the bias from any type of investment, whether its financial or emotional, influences people in two different ways, as we've seen.

The people who feel the development is going more negatively than positively will highlight the negative and bury the positive, because they'll feel bitter about investing in a product they think will fail. On the other hand, the people who feel the development is going more positively than negatively will the opposite way highlight the positive and bury the negative, because they don't want others talking the product down.

So you get a polarization of viewpoints.

 

I agree. I can't claim to be free of bias. I have a negative view of the development, based on my expectations and experiences in the game. I had hoped otherwise.

 

I'm curious as to whether you have even the slightest shred of proof that other developers are paying Steam to damage SotA because they are somehow threatened by this relatively small, niche game. If you have ANY proof of this, please share it. And I'm not talking about some Reddit post where some random user claims to have knowledge of insider activities. I mean an actual, reliable source that has researched the subject and found evidence.

 

Except your putting in 100k into a project with the intention of seeing it succeed. Your biased from the start. You dont invest in a project you hope fails..

 

That you are biased for. You want the product to succeed. But the reasons aren't.

 

I think we're going to end up spinning our wheels on this one, man.

 

Well said and I totally agree @Lord Ravnos !

There's a time to do everything and do it well and there's a time to keep the money coming in. I can't see our game hanging in limbo as Star Citizen seems to be doing... but they too have something to offer, just not as much as SOTA does right now, but that my opinion which is speculative.

"I like what's being built in SOTA" I see quality and value in what has been built, but we can't wait for a boxed up shelf version while there's the MMO side of the game which needs it's own time schedule because of the nature within it's development.
I remain highly motivated and optimistic in every way about SOTA (offline and online), but they seem to me to be on two different time schedules and need to be that way. UO was great "as an MMO", yet was never what Ultima VII, or the rest of Ultima Prime was.

SOTA is 2 games in one (and arguably 3 with single player online... and it possibly having companions added to it)
~Time Lord~