My failed expectations on SOtA.

Couldn't agree more, to be honest and without wanting to sound insulting portalarium at all, if you look at what portalarium makes its all money making games (I can not blame on that because every company needs to make money but my point of view is that you can make cash on more lets say "honest" ways, yeah probably a ton less, but still make money and feel better about yourself...). It is still a lot of work to do those kind of things? Probably yes. Is it focused to what we would call "gamers"? Not at all, maybe a casual-gamer not to say its not something for someone that likes cult or hardcore games...

Honestly unless someone here is ludopatic we all know casino stuff is a money making hole where you are loosing your money the 99% of the time because if it wasn't that way casinos would have closed long ago... All that is covered in an aura of "you are playing a game".

And I'm talking about:
Port Casino Poker

I wondered what happened to "Ultimate Collector" it seems like it is no more in zynga....

Yet this question remains to the heads of the project. Do you want to make this game a financial succeed and appear in all the media or make the costumers happy and secondly get enough cash to continue the project?

Btw nice to see that someone gets in here and spends his first post into this thread, it makes me feel that its beeing worth something...

 

I used to post. Got chased off. No room for criticism here.

Came back today on the occasion of the second release test. Glad to see people still fighting the good fight. The game is not up to standard. It needs an overhaul IMO.

Funny that you bring up poker. I suppose investing in a game before it comes out is a lot like gambling. Win some - Star Citizen. Lose some......well.

I played the second release. It is not fun. Ran around in this seemingly empty world and basically did nothing. I must preface that I backed the project through my own mistake. I watched the scene jams with the first person view and saw some potential. I am not really sure why I am here or posting. I believe that barring some miracle the game will fade into obscurity. No matter - it is not getting that much media attention anyway. Disappointing. I am still looking for that great RPG since UO. Maybe it can be Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Maybe it can be Elder Scrolls Online.

Anyway good luck with it all I guess.

 

It looks ok but the bulk of the content is not even ready. There is so much missing this should not have been given out to the public at this time due to threads like this.
Give it some time and after some desperately needed content goes live it should be better, there is nothing really to do other then look around and squash a few spiders. at this time it feels like a fancy version of minecraft
I think they need to focus on some of the following before public test, or maybe at least set clear test objectives for each phase launch.
( experience and leveling system, story, questing, NPC pathing, falling, creatures, PVP, grouping. )
even a short quest guide to get everyone started would be helpful. however that's a finish touch quest line which is at the project end.

Other issues I noted is trying to put too much of everything all in the first city. Every few homes should not have big fancy skeletal chair or stone head in their yard. keep some of the content rare and special. trying to cram too much graphically will kill overall performance and gaming experience new groups of graphics should be phased in at levels( this game may need an option to turn off owners yard crap in graphics as I can see everyone's yard being full of crap like yard sale sunday). Ever hear the saying " keep it simple stupid!" well for this kind of engine (using older small modular zones and a crappy mario world map style) is clearly small instance based. They are very limited and are challanged to keep resources to a minimum. Graphic management could have been organized different to help. I thinks some work will need to be done to manage all the new players gear at the zone entrance, it will likely get very laggy in those points as I even now get some poor performance on an older i7 wit 1gb hd 4800 Radeon.( yes its old but runs WOW like a champ and should not be slowing at all in this stage.)
New MMO server engines use a server side LOD in many separate ways to provide nice seamless zones which are generally much smaller. I don't know the unity engine however i'm curious and have to check as I suspect limitations are due to how it was designed. anyway... that's all for now. look forward to seeing some real content.

 

A lot of the game systems aren't in play yet. If you read the release notes, the full "game cycle" of questing, proper combat, advancement, etc. is not in this release. It will likely be in next month's release.

Just because an alpha pre-release isn't feature complete doesn't mean the entire project is a lost cause. It means it is a pre-alpha release, exactly as it is labeled.

You're saying Star Citizen is a win when all you do is run around in an empty hangar by yourself, but this project is a loss because there isn't much game to play yet?

 

Leroy didn't realize he was the Last Dragon until the very end.

 

I don't think RG understood the magic of pre-trammel UO. A full and open world of possibilities not dictated by arbitrary game mechanics. Consequences yes, limitations no.

 

Of coarse you can. Especially if the first incision severs a vital nerve or artery or if it happens to be on the wrong limb