Mine And Others Barriers To Playing SOTA - Why More People Don't Play

Hey guys,

Kickstart Backer and log time follower of SOTA and lifelong fan of the Ultima series.

I want to play this game so badly, but every time I log on, I usually log off within 10 minutes. This has been the case every single release since like release 20.

I know I am not alone. I try to get my friends to try out the game in hopes we can relive our past Ultima Online fun times, but there are some things that we just can't get over and are a barrier to entry in this game for a lot of other people.

Visually, I like the scenery, the detail in the towns, and the vegetation and all that.
Something about the actual animations, combat, movement, and so on is such a put off.


Lag And Artificial Key-Release Lag
For one, everything seems laggy, all the time. I know that people are working on frame-rate increases and so forth, but its the little things too. For example, why is it that you jump on key release rather than key press. It just makes it seem like the response time is lower and creates artificial "lag".

Other things that are on key release instead of key-press should follow the same and go key-press.

Movement
I know its seen some polish in recent releases, but the movement almost gets to me the most. The character looks so stiff in movement that it makes me feel stiff and uncomfortable. Strafing around feels unnatural and weird. Hand movements on the character while running are odd to say the least. Running with a torch feels like hes trying his hardest to not move the torch at all. Hands should be swinging a bit, especially with weapons while running.

This is the FIRST thing that a person sees when they log into the game, and IMO its the biggest deterrent and should undergo a massive improvement. You can't "sell a game" (not like purchase wise, more like, hey come check this game out) when the first thing someone notices is movement that fails to meet quality conditions.

Again, yes, I know that things are still a work in progress, especially in the last 2 months.

Use this video for reference from WOW. I know the budget is much higher, but these are things players expect in todays games. Movement is just not as nice here as any other games I've played. Even UO movement was better for its time. Strafing, mouse turning, stopping and going, and turning quickly, and just how fluid that all meshes together in the animations are key.

Combat and Spell Animation and Buffs
Charging up certain spells, like fireball should make it seem like you are charging it up. Hold the spell animation almost like charging up a Kamehameha in Dragon Ball, it getting larger the more times you charge it. Spells in general should have better animations to it. When casting a spell, there should be some type of animations for it, instead of just a casting animations. It makes it feel more fluid and just way more polished in general. The same applies for weapon abilities and charge up strikes.

As far as buffs go. Why are there SOOO many buffs. Why do we see people sit and charge up their buffs for 1 minute before doing anything, and who is in charge of the design of that? I understand that this is an open skills system where your deck could have anything, but WHY? No game should allow you to cast 6-7-8 buffs on one character and then go in to fight. Instead, each class should have a main buff or two or none, and your deck should directly be built around a limited amt of buffs. For example, have 4 fire spells on your deck? Then the fire BUFF that you also have on your bar is strengthened (up to a max of whatever amt). Have NO fire spells on your deck but have a fire buff? Then the buff should basically do nothing. Your buff should also be modified again when you switch your decks. If you pop a fire deck and add a fire buff, but switch to air primary deck and have no fire, your fire buff should either be removed or switch to the weaker barely useful buff. It makes playing a character so annoying to be required to buff for a minute before big fights.

Switching it to how I mentioned allows you to be a specific primary tree or 2 and benefit in a group against bosses, and people can buff the grp to achieve all the buffs, not each cast their buffs on themselves in all trees and then fight, and those who want to have access to the buff, must maintain the buff on your deck at all times and take up a spot. Makes no sense how it is now and goes against what buffing actually is and how they should be used.

Targeting
Is there not a way to actually see what your targeting? Can we not have a tab targeting system that cycles through targets on screen, so if I want to cast fireball so something behind something else I don't have to double click it (and not know if I'm actually targeting it for sure). Whatever is nearest to what your camera is looking at would be the target that gets highlighted on tab target, and what you click on becomes the new target with some type of visual so you know? Like a gold border around the healthbar, and possibly a more red glow around the monster or player your targeting.


In Conclusion
Again, I know more polish is coming. To what extent, I do not know. But there's certain things you come to expect in a game today. But there's some things that are a barrier to entry for a lot of people.

Its sad, but everyone I try to show who have played UO with me back in the day, say that it looks really nice, but say ew to the movement animations and combat and spell animations and "fluidity". It feels un-naturally laggy all the time compared to most other games.

Lastly, maybe the streamers can chime in and throw some feedback on this. Streaming this game should be appealing. The premise of the game, the skills systems, deck system grows on you, vegetation and art are coming together nicely, but even watching the game on twitch is not appealing and interesting, and this is a SUPER ridiculously lucrative avenue of advertising. For one, its free, and its a PERFECT target market. Make the game appealing from the on set, especially with movement and combat/spell animations.

 

The longer you hold the jump button the higher you jump.

There is a default key that cycles through targets on the screen. I reassigned that key to tab. There is a red crosshair on the target.

 

Ah alright, well take all my gripes about someone at first glance seeing the game. While I have decent experience playing, these are all things that stand out to me when first starting. I never realized the jump thing, and never knew the targettting thing was there. But I'd still recommend a border around the healthbar, because thats what you focus on more than a red target redicle. Haven't even see that yet or just haven't noticed it.

Perhaps use tab as the default like it is in almost all games.

Again this is taken from a newer players point of few, I may be wrong about some things. But they are reasons why I can't stay logged on over an hour and why I cant get anyone I know to play.

 

Thank you so much for your feedback Punkte. I understand you said it in a good way to help this game. That is very much appreciated. I do agree some movements are not fluid and the character looks a bit stiff. I say don't give up hope for all of this. The very things you mention are in the works now. Combat is getting a lot of re-work right now and I have seen the devs are looking at our characters in the standup notes. Finally things like this are more of the focus getting this game release ready for March.

I don't say every computer will be able to handle this game. It is very graphic intense due to us players love our stuff, so there is much to load compared to other games. Wow does not have a ton of outdoor furniture and so much more to load as we do.

I remember buying the MMO Tera and I had to upgrade my computer to play it. I was so disappointed but I did it. This game will be optimized the best it can for players and true some will have to upgrade their computers to play this game as with some of the newer games. That is just facts and that would be the case for many games already out there if their computer is that old imo. I run on an SSD 1060 Nvidia graphics card which I upgraded in the last year or so. I really don't have too many problems running the game. I know The team is working really hard to get all necessary improvements before launch. And don't worry about giving your feedback, truly the devs need to hear it at this time especially.

So keep checking and hopefully you will visually see the improvements you are looking for in the near future. Also don't forget to hover your mouse over the scenes on the map for a description of what is in that scene before you enter. I love that we finally have this and I love the sparkles to let you know if you have a quest there. Some don't but I do. I think with this game being a hex broken up world we need more direction than a game which had a seamless world would need. So hopefully they keep the sparkles and just keep improving on that system so people are not lost and confused well as much. It is a big world only getting bigger and bigger .

 

Thanks for the reply.

I do have a fast computer with dual r390 gpus so i know I'm more than capable of running the game to its full potential, but that's why I made this post. It still feels a bit laggy even with that, but yea most of the concern is about the fluidity of movement and combat animation in itself.

Ill still continue to check out every release in hopes these concerns are addressed.

 

Thank you for taking the time to post your observations and recommendations.

The targeted enemy healthbar is outlined in red but it's hard to see since the health bar itself is red too. Perhaps a contrasting color would be better to EASILY see the targeted enemy.

Also, have you tried running on the "Fastest" video setting to see if the lag/stiffness is part of the game interface as opposed to slower frame rate? I run on Fastest setting with a mid-power rig and video card and don't have lag problems in PvE or PvP. As far as movement 'stiffness' goes, I'll watch your video when I get home from work to see what you mean.

Cheers,
JkB

 

There is a red border around your current target's health. I turned off the reticle (this is not Modern Warfare, I'm not using a gun scope).

Hopefully they will add charge bars to jump and anything else thtis charge-based. These are the only things that I know of that happen on key-release, so should have an on-screen indicator.

I agree with some of your comments about animations. They do keep getting polished, but some of them are a bit lacking. I expect they will get better over time.

 

Concentration system would be really nice and I like that idea very much.

 

I agree with some and disagree with others but appreciate your honest opinion. I usually respond to performance comments only because I dont have perf issues and really have had none since persistence. But I also have a good rig.

Your comment about charging up a fireball is actually awesome, I never thought about that. you are also spot on about buffs, believe me, its gotten a LOT better but it still needs work. Those buffs that are now 25 minutes for me used to only be 30 seconds long so I was casting 8+ buffs every 30 seconds. But they worked on it and its getting better. If what we have now is the final iteration I would be deeply disappointing. Watch what I have to do for buffing in the Rise (its easy to see me buff because its a mouse click for me):

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/216342329

 

Thanks for the reply Chris, I definitely appreciate all the hard work you do.
As far as the "classless" system. While I understand its classless, that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to follow that model throughout.
It makes sense that if someone is more "in tune" with fire tree that their buff power could increase with a fire buff as well. But you could scale buffs to increase in power the more spells you have of that tree on your deck, and lessen them when there are less spells from that tree on your deck. This way you still allow players to decide whether or not they want to devote some slots to increase their buff effectiveness. The other way you do it, you force each person to be obligated to have a different deck for buffing, and then prebuff and swap to a new deck for damage. It just doesn't seem to 'fit' the theme you guys were gong for.

Classless doesn't need to mean we push you towards having random skills and stats from trees into your deck. But more so give you the option of doing so. Maybe you want more CC utility, maybe you want more ranged damage spells and abilities, maybe you want to be more proficient with buffs and support. Having those options are IMO at least, a way better alternative then giving everyone the ability to buff themselves fully. It also takes care of the 'capping buffs' problem as well. As if someone wants to buff, then throw them on your deck to get full power effectiveness out of it.

Lastly, no the gripes I have with movement aren't really based on engine performance, but rather the animations of those movements. Like I mentioned above, the movement feels still and unnatural, and the animations don' connect well with eachother. Hands moving more when running, weapons and shields swinging back and forth when moving, right now it just looks like he's marching while running and is super stiff.

The movement IMO is essential before launch as you want your free advertisers (youtube, twitch, etc) to promote the game people will look at and be like, "wow, that looks cool!"

 

I have played games and concentration classed before, I found them very fun.

 

Concentration system, like the DAOC buffs?

 

Hey Chris! There are some issues with the avatar running form. A lot of higher level players probably don't notice it much because they are wearing cloaks.

I have done quite a bit of jogging, and had a competitive runner coach me in form. This is what I notice when I run without my cloak on:

- Leaning forward at the waist. The avatar leans forward at the waist to much when moving. For good running form, the back and legs should be aligned straight.

- Butt waddle. There is way to much side to side movement of the hips.

Thanks for all the updates you've been doing! I am seeing great improvements in SotA!

Essential Running Technique Tips for Proper Form

 

Actually you removed stacking all together (for a lot of buffs), there is no point in training 50% of the buffs anymore.

80 for 5 glyphs means NOTHING - stacking or charging = NOTHING the reduced focus and minor boosts are a complete joke. What you reduced was the number of Buffs a player can have and that is exactly what he (We) want . . . .

I have suggested a few methods already, but the removing of the charging / stacking did nothing to fix the actual problem. All it did was remove and incentive or reason to train those Buffs.

 

Regarding the action on key release rather than key press, while jumping was mentioned and addressed, it is the same for combat, since action on press would preclude charging a spell and stacking for a combo (or make both of these more akward, involving extra key presses).

 

I'd love to rebirth my old cleric buff bot.

Edit: Punkte, you still running UOMultiverse?

 

The best part is if your toes are up against something while moving forward, NO JUMP FOR YOU. This was part of their fixes for people jumping all over the place. Some people could climb nearly vertical walls by jumping the right way. They needed to do something about people double/triple/more-jumping, and I guess that was part of it. But I think they went too far with the "no jumping when toes are blocked" thing.

The jumping is counter-intuitive. I do not want to "charge" up a jump, I just want to jump. Still hardly a reason to not play the game. Even worse, even when holding down the space bar, I simply can't jump as high on a low-fps system. This makes using devotionals a pain in the ass, since their radius is now small enough that you have to jump up onto them to use them.

There is and there isn't, but what there is isn't turned on by default. The "old old" way was with an arrow cursor, and right-click would pan your camera. But (and a BIG but), there were too many parts of the screen where you would right-click and it would do something, often something stupid, so you have to constantly watch your cursor (which can disappear with low contrast against backgrounds like a lot of fire) to keep it out of "bad" areas. No, I do NOT want to scroll my chat window with a right-click! (And if you released the right-click outside the window, it would stay in scrolling mode!)

So they came up with the "reticle" system, with tab key switching between modes. The G key switched between targets. But even that was apparently too troublesome, so now tab selects targets, and G does... nothing? Those of us who hated the tab/G version less, simply re-assigned the keys that way. The worst thing about the reticle system is that there is some really bad lag with panning the camera, especially on low-fps systems. It is impossible to target anything with it when the camera has 200-500 ms inertial lag when it starts and stops moving. The arrow cursor has zero inertial lag.

So what I do is use reticle mode for moving around on a system with a trackpad, then hit the tab key when I actually want to click on something. On a desktop, I'm more likely to leave it in cursor mode and right click for camera pan. Back in the old days, I often had to hold right-click while simultaneously left-clicking, and it was really bad for RSI. The worst part was that you had to target an enemy to attack it. Now there is auto-targeting and it mostly works well (aside from the bunnies I mention later) The older versions also depended too much on your camera angle, but auto-target works better about that now.

Then they added the E key which replaces left-double-click in a lot of situations, and things were much better. It also got around the problem where low FPS causes UI issues because of how they handle UI events. (servicing one key/click per frame, throwing away information like time and modifier keys and and mouse coordinates at the time of the click, can really make things hard to use with low fps) The double-click threshold is apparently higher than two frames at 10fps, making it impossible to do.

Okay, but that's not all. You said something about that fireball targeting? Gonna assume you mean fire arrow, since it works more like what people think of when they say fireball. Yeah, well if there's a bunny off to the side that's slightly closer to you than your HARD TARGETED mob, guess what? It's gonna burn the bunny! Bad for the bunny, and possibly worse for you, since your intended target got no damage. And when I said "off to the side", I meant it, there is a surprising amount of angle that will deflect to the bunny, and it can even be off-screen.

The only time it's good is that when you're really pumping spells, you get one ahead, so when the mob dies, one more spell goes off, and it auto-targets something. I often see it lock onto a wolf that was far away in the trees where I literally could not see it, and now he's coming for me. I see that fire zoom away into the distance, it's an oh sh!t moment, unless I see a dead bunny.

That's why effort has been made to optimize performance focusing on high-end video cards first. Specifically so that streamers can have less trouble streaming. Remember, any game in "regular" development, you would never even see at this stage, aside from videos doled out to the press. Even a semi-open beta might still have NDAs.

 

This is one of the more frustrating things in the game.

 

Dual Graphics cards are not always the best setup with all game engines. Some are far better than others.

Also, SOTA is FAR more CPU intensive than GPU intensive.

The game client is also, almost assuredly, running in a debug mode that packages and sends live performance data to the devs. This is super common in alpha and beta games. I remember being involved in so many pre-pre-release Betas and on launch day, a big client update that suddenly provided FAR superior performance.

Also... character movement in UO? Come one now... UO clips and stutters across the screen on even fully updated modern pieces of hardware. I gave it a go not more than a few months back and was expecting a smoother rate of movement and display on screen... Nope, just the same slow ass screen refresh and character movement that I remember when I upgraded to a 200mhz PC some 20 years ago!

Yeah, there are some issues in the game, I completely agree with that. They do keep making it better and in the last few months... for me, It's been consistently playable.