My impression of SOTA R2

My impression of SOTA R2

Biggest thing I did not like, NO first person view and the fact that the cameras POV and the direction the character is traveling were not locked together. I like looking around but not this way.

First off I realize that this is “low budget” and while I would LOVE to see higher details like in Skyrim I won’t be seeing that in release 1 (if ever) unless fans start contributing to that part. (I would love to help but I have no skill in that.)
That being said it was nice. I LOVED seeing the broken moon pass overhead. That was cool. I didn’t see much going on with the volcano but maybe in other releases. Maybe we can see a meteor falling every now and then when the moon passes. This would add credence to the idea of foreign metals that we can find and craft with. Time also seems to go by way too fast. I would consider doubling the day/night cycle.

The parser interface is getting better. I didn’t like getting kicked out of it after each comment but I found a fix for that in the settings, that helped. The speed of the NPC’s text is too fast for my liking and I ended up reading the text box rather than reading the character’s text. For me that breaks some of the immersion. I realize people read at different speeds so a slider bar in the setting to control this would be nice. I also noted that venders were not always looking at your character when they were speaking to them.

I don’t know if it is intended to have full or partial voice acting in the future but I would really like it and it would really give a sense of immersion. Maybe the community could provide voices for the lesser characters. I would love to do that.
Outdoor torches/lanterns/lights were nice to have but I felt that someone should be going around and turning them on and off every evening and morning. Maybe the town crier or the house servant?

Houses do seem a bit small when considering the size of all the items we have to place in them. It would also be nice to hang shields and swords on the well.

I like the spreadsheet idea for inventory but maybe you could over lay the spreadsheet over the open bag to give the impression of going through the bag.

Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to run around with sharp objects?! Seriously though, it would be nice to sheath our sword. In fact they should all be sheath in peaceful locations by default.

Crafting tables. I enjoyed crafting but found that the recipe book did not update unless I closed and reopened it. Also on the crafting tables I sometimes found it difficult to find and grab items that were on the tables, even after the “glow” patch. The loom bobbin is very difficult to grab. Showing a number beside each item so that we can see how many items are in an icon without hovering a pointer over them would be nice. Slots where we can store frequently used items for that station would be nice so that we don’t have to carry them around all of the time but would not interfere with the combining portion of the table would be helpful.

Once we know the recipe it would be nice to just be able to click the recipe while at the station, and if you have the components, your character would automatically make it. This would help reduce some of the repetitive steps.

It is probably too late to adjust the town creation system but I have a few thoughts.
Villages (farm), town, and cities should have different sizes plots each getting progressively smaller but each having their own advantages. Farms would have bigger plots for growing or herding thing and they would have a booth in the nearest town/city’s fresh market. Cities would have little land taller multi story houses that are closer together. They would not have a booth at the fresh market but their first floor would be a store front. I haven’t thought of an advantage for a town size lot but I think you get the idea. Each area would have a limited amount of larger “royal” plots.

Those are my impressions and thoughts of R2. I hope this is helpful in some way. If you need me to expound upon anything please let me know.

Keep up the great work. I look forward to future testing

Sincerely,
Shades

 

I agree with almost everything you say here! I would love to see the camera 'follow' option, and 1st person perspective.

I hated seeing all the guards holding their swords in hand, some even while running and inside buildings.. But I do think sheathing of weapons is in the works.

One point you made I am wary about is voicing the parts.
I think hearing bad quality voicing can be more immersion breaking than simply reading well scripted text, and professional voicing along with translation into other languages would increase costs exponentially.

I really like your ideas for housing plots and how they change between rural and urban settings. I hope to see this kind of variety - varying shapes of plots and varying uses for them would definitely help the flow of the cities as they grow.

 

I found myself reading the text box to help identify which NPC was who by what they said.
Maybe when we target an NPC their name can appear below/above them?

So would I, count me in.

For sure, or player made weapon racks. Armor on crafted armor racks.

Great idea.

I do hope sheathing is implemented as well.

 

There is now doubt that professional voice acting is expensive and poor quality voice acting can be immersion breaking. My hope however is that links could be added to the engine (if they are not already there) for future use and maybe the SotA team would list what is needed for their vision of each character and then a VotA (Voice of the Avatar for lack of a better term) fan organization could be created that could direct and collate the entries for submission. Obviously not every entry would make it in-game but I'm betting with the diversity of the community, both in age as well world regions, we could provide a lot of rolls that SotA could never afford. Let's face it Skyrim's voice acting, while good, had very few actors doing voices for the Whole World and after a while it started to get annoying. I think minor roles could be easily handled by the community and make it feel more diverse.

Anybody up for that challenge?

 

I believe some of the staff would be awesome to voice act...And some of us in the community may have some voice talent? (Raises hand)...But a game without any voice would seem a bit lacking to me. I don't mind mostly text...but would love some random voices thru the game just to make it more interesting...Of course, it would be up to the Dev's and Us to judge if the voicing that was done was any good or just lousy

 

Someone start a thread.

 

General Discussion? Swag? Not sure...I can put a bit down and see how it flies...

Edit: I just posted it in SWAG

 

I highly doubt voice acting is going to happen in SotA. That is a very high expense addition to any game and it's just not in the budget here. If it were, it would come at the expense of other things which is not a good thing.