My opinion about to get more players!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Stundorn, Jul 9, 2018.

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  1. Stundorn

    Stundorn Avatar

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    Hej, i want to share my thoughts about SotA again and want to explain and describe what i think would atttract more players.
    It's also about my biggest disappointments of the game and some really unpopular ideas i have, but imho these would grant us a big impact of new players what in the future are able to fund future episodes and features. I really doubt they will be able to fund EP2 if im honest.

    sorry for de-nglish and mistakes!

    Ok lets go...

    1. Status of the Game, bugfixes etc...
    Imho Portalarium need to fix EP1 and improve the game further before thinking of fundraising EP2.
    The Game isn't in a very bad state, but its not polished and a lot of minor bugs and annoyances are still around.
    Questjournal, Sparkle fixes is one thing. There are still broken Quests to me and resetting the mainquestline wont't fix it, because it's also true for sidequets, outskirts quests etc. They also need to offer another way to fix mainstory bugs from earlier releases. I dont want to replay the whole story, some parts weren't fun and i'm glad i have already done it. I dont want to redo it and i'm sure it wont solve all my issues with broken journal/ sparkles entries. this need to be fixed asap, because many will experience the same bugs.
    I made a post about it some days ago and it wasn't the first one about the nex thing.
    The Item/ Gear Comparison window what allways pops up if you hover over an rusty dagger obstructing the view of your inventory. Annoying as hell and i dont want to hear that the workaround is to unequip your gear and craft in underpants. Seriously this should have been fixed for years and cannot be that complicated to do. Only show the comparison windwow when press and hold ALT or something like that. Its a standard for years!
    There are more of these little issues the game has, some Books cant lay down for example, we still have no salvaging for Books and patternas afaik, but this is where quality comes from and on what players new or old rate the game for its user friendlness and how much polished it is IN DETAIL.
    You know its like a meal in a restaurant - the details, the tiny little things what arent essential maybe, but significantly increasing the quality of something.
    This game needs to be 150% polished if it wants to get new players that stay longer than 3 month and buy stuff to maintain and develop it further.
    This Game need to convince people who left to come back and see a significant improvement about such little things. If its 150% polished and advertised and they give people some incentive to comeback and try again and the experience is 100% better than before, than this is the way to fix the bad reputation in the WWW.
    Justified or not, the Game has a bad reputation because of these minor bugs or just uncomfortable features or lack of features that make the game more comfortable and ofcourse other things i will adress in the other points i want to make.

    2. Gamedesign
    they should make a clear decision of what Shroud is gonna be regarding a modern or an oldsql MMORPG, a SP RPG or a MMORPG or if they want to stick with selective MP they need to explain that better in their advertising. Like: SotA is a SP RPG, but you can also go online and play cooperative with friends or even in a MMO-like open world. The Endgame is focussed on this MMORPG Part for example. And then explain IN DETAIL again what the SP is about, what the Endgame is about.
    We all would agree that Endgame is endless progession now and to raise as many skills as high as possible at specific spots/ scenes where you can get 1 Million xp/ hour.
    What would you think about a game that is honestly advertised with this "feature"???
    I would think, wow very hones, laugh and click further to search something more interesting.
    Sure some poeple exactly like that. But its "SOME PEOPLE" and not " AL OT OF PEOPLE"!!!!
    significant difference.
    Back in the Days AoC hat the first 20 Levels as a SP RPG Story and then with Level 20 you went online.
    Why not make it like this? Improve the SP RPG Story, let people play it solo offline and if somebody want to play further after completing the story he can do online.
    the Decision of beeing oldsql or modern is also important.
    I think of Sparkles for example or Sotamap Integration and fast Travel System...
    I was against it all in the firt place. To have no Map or only these ingame Maps was immersive and i was lost in many Scenes, i didnt get they were small. When i knew abot SotaMap before it was integrated, it was helpfull, but i used it not that often, because of immersion and such. Now that its integrated i use it way more often and all the miracle of getting lost is gone. You recognize the Boarders of a Scene way more quick and it does not feel that immersive instead it feels restricted where it should not.
    A cool EP2 Stretchgoal would be the old Map system improved and developed! I would pay for that, if other things would change too and i know at least of some former players who share my opinion.
    I disliked the sparkles in the first place and in combination with bad quests descriptions or lets say very hard to figure out where to go next etc. i welcomed it here and there.
    I would make Questgivers waving and have a sparkle on the compass, but no further sparkles where to go then, but instead better quest descriptions and hints where to go and what to do and always make all NPC Guards and Vendors around be able to give you another hint and point you into the right direction.

    2. The Shop and RMT
    I'm not against a Shop or strictly against RMT, i buyed a lot from other players, but...
    funding of EP1 is long done and one of the main features of SotA is Housing and Deco.
    But housing is behind a paywall the majority of gamers does not accept.
    Ok, everybody can get a taxed PoT Row Lot Deed when playing through the story now, but bigger Deeds need to be purchasable ingame for ingame Gold too.
    Plenty of people would like it that way and would have an incentive to play to get their village or Townhouse.
    I would do something really readical and

    A) dont have PoT and PA Deeds, a Deed is a Deed no matter if PoT or NPC City. I have just traded a TF Pot TOWN plus a rare founder House and a TF PoT Row for a TF PA Row and Village. So if i think about an investment i will loose. But to me that diesnt matter, i donated, i didnt invest!

    B) Make all Sizes purchasable ingame for igg. And raise Tax for City and Keep to make them attractive for Guilds only!!!
    These weren't ment for single players iirc. these should be big Guildhouses where every guildmember need to contribute to pay the tax for these large building. They became too normal for some players to have and they use it alone or they even dont use them at all. To maintain a Castle it should need a significant amount of people maintaining it! The lucky ones who have Taxfree Deeds paid thousands of Dollars and fund the initial Game. its ok!
    But i wont sell any TF Deeds anymore, only taxed, Funding is over!!!
    You can sell Deeds for cash, but you should be able to buy them also for igg for those who dont have the time and will to grind the gold.

    C) we need to stop RMT regarding Gold, Materials and XP!!!
    Its ok to re-sell stuff from the Shop, Deco Stuff, but its not ok if i can buy 5000 Silver Ore, or 1 Million igg or 5 Million XP!!! Ok it will happen anyway, but Portalarium saying it is ok, is not good.
    imho the majority of players all over the world just read the hookline, dislikes and went away!
    Thats it and that is what you want to avoid and even more want to fight!
    Honestly to me personally its not a big point, but your reputation in the WWW is broken and in the best case only bad! And its also because of RMT! Deal with it, even if its not your opinion.
    I know all the arguments and i wouldnt even disagree completely, in fact i would maybe agree, but the perception of the people out there is less reflective i guess and it allways becomes a bitter taste.
    See what happened to Battlefront 2 and the Lootboxes and such. You are completely in the same line about that, if not even more bad. correct that, its a chance to advertise that everything in the game can be reached with igg and the Shop is completely optional even if you want to have a castle with your guild.
    I would make City and Keep deeds having requirements such as, you are a guild leader and your guild has at least 10 Members!

    3. Skillprogression, PVP, Groupplay PVE, Interdependecies, Power disparities...

    Ok i know my view is unpopular, but i do it again!
    CAP TREES! CAP SKILLS!! and create a sandbox where everybody can partake and contribute!!!
    Puh, its really hard to try to write it down again, but we strongly need better Group content, better PvP Balance and something other to play for than endless skillprogression.
    We need a virtue System with reputations that matters.
    We need struggle for reds and benefits for blues, we need something in between for greys.
    We need trade routes that are worth the name. We need Bosses that arent soloable giving good reward and what arent farm mobs like dragons, we need rare encounters what are worth to search for, because of rare and rewarding loot.
    We need no powerdisparities in the Endgame for PvP Balance.
    We need a real economy and again interdependecies between harvesters, refiners, producers and professions!,

    why do i think we need all that and why do i think it will attract new players?
    Because i know some that left exactly because of these things, because many people who played UO expected to some degree a more close to the UO sandbox experience.
    See Legends of Aria? People like that. You need not reinvent the wheel, you have defined and embossed a genre already with UO 20 years ago, but the best thing of UO you havent ported into SotA and that was that you could level your Avatar in some Weeks or Month to Endgame and almost everybody could partake and contribute to the sandbox the way he wanted to.
    In SotA i'm as a casual never feel ready to begin playing in ant with the sandbox elements.
    Thats also of courxse there is not that much sandbox elements.
    I dont talk about a free skillsystem or thinks like agricultire what sure are sandbox elements and not that bad, i really like it since you improved watering and gathering. Now you need to improve harvesting water.
    EP2 Stretchgoal? No! Bad!!! why horses, why ships if things like that arent in the game?
    ok back to topic. Sandbox: what i ment is virtue system with a big impact and consequences, people/ guilds claim territory, traderoutes that matter and are dangerous to everybody. reoccurring events and encounters based on the celestial system. the sieges failed, although there were a great idea, but only on the paper.
    Why have it failed, because of too many PoTs having these Shrines and Sieges are nothing special, but all over the place and only annoying, because it's not rewarding to end them, they are just a disturbance and a timesink of 2 loading screens. Sad but true. Same for encounters, but i'm honest here, i know you improved them and i only was into one sincei returned. But what was the experience. I tell you:
    I get soaked in, thought ok, not bad at all, i took it immersive and said: C'mon you ugly Skeleton i will beat you all. I beated them all to have 3 Liches appear killing me in seconds - lol :)
    Where is the measure, some onehits creatures and then 3 Bosses al red to me, hitting me very hard from the distance. An Archer, A Mage and a Melee. Well i think the idea is not bad and it woild be challenging, but when this happened i wished these encounters would be allways dynamicyally adjusted to my level so that i have a challenge, but also a chance.

    Well i wroe a lot and i know i missed something i wanted to write, but time is rare and i need to stop here and let it go into discussion, although i dont want it discussed that much, i just wanted to share my opinion and i'm a little bit like Portalarium here, if you like it or want to add something feel free to do so, but i dont want to hear critics or opposite opinions :p
    I know them already and i accept them, but they havent brought us a lot of players, so i am for some changes in the direction i like it.
    And of course its not the Solution and even these suggestions could not help at all.

    Lets keep friendly and if you believe it or not, i like SotA to some degree and i want it a success and i want to play the Story to EP5.
    But i'm not angry if the quality of this story an the presentation would improve :rolleyes:
    Like i said, i wont spent one more cent, but play the game with what i have already donated, and that was not less money.
    If SotA turns to be more the game i imagined and described above, more casual friendly, less grind, more sandboxish and all that, i sure would support further with money here and there, have a sub maybe or regularily buy stuff from the Shop. But actually no way!

    thanks for reading, have fun - Stun :)
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2018
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  2. Deana Beretta

    Deana Beretta Avatar

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    As much as I agree with your sentiment, I don't believe any of this will ever happen.
    The devs might fix some bugs associated with questing, but the housing will remain inaccessible, and there won't be any balancing or skill/tree caps.

    Right now, the dev team understands what they have (a small playerbase that has contributed a large sum of money, and continue to contribute a moderate sum of money on a monthly basis).
    In order to increase the playerbase, the dev team would need to make significant changes that they may not have the bandwidth to even make. On top of that, they would run the risk of upsetting the current players (potentially losing a lot of monthly income) in exchange for potential new players that might contribute money. To be honest, it's too big a risk to take.

    Here's hoping that Episode 2 can be designed in such a way that it's a little more new player friendly, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
    I'm saying all this as a new player that's found something in this game (mostly the guild that took me in soon after joining), and has been spending the past couple months grinding to purchase a couple of taxed village lots in game.
     
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  3. Barugon

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    How is it inaccessible?
     
  4. Deana Beretta

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    I should have been more specific. The only options for housing that I would personally deem "accessible" are the row lot that can be obtained via questing, and a room at an inn. Anything beyond that is priced too high for someone who is not already invested in the game. I feel that the new user experience is too poor to grab and hold onto a new player, and that few, if any would stick with the game long enough to complete the story. That leaves the free rooms at an inn as the only housing that new players will have access to. And while a room at an inn is great for what it is, it just doesn't have the same draw as owning your own house. In fact, I could see it bumming new players out, to see all the cool and interesting houses that are out there, and then returning home to their bed, table, and single chest.

    I stayed at a room in an inn as a new player. But seeing the new houses only made me want that (housing) more. I actually splurged and bought a tax-free village lot for $280, but I would not expect new players to make that leap. I've since sold back my deeds (and again, got a room at an inn), and have been working towards obtaining housing in game. It has been a grind that I would not expect any new player to make it through.
     
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  5. Woodchuck

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    True. Many “little” things in the game right now require fixing.

    I wish we all could help! If everyone here that cares about this game could each fix one little thing, then imagine how many things could be fixed!

    This is what Portalarium needs right now.
     
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  6. DeadnGone

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    I agree with some of the things you saying, though we may be in disagreement on RMT's, I love the real-money-trade aspect. But I really liked that part in #3. I've been saying it too. If you had sandbox/areas where everyone can jump in and contribute to an event/match, etc, without having to actually group (or it automatically puts you into a temporary group/raid) for the content and then hand out rewards/incentives afterwards, that would be great and you'd probably see a lot more players that way as well. The current sieges are the only thing remotely close to that at the moment, where random people *could* clear it out for the end boss and for the clearing of the siege. Control points are probably the next closest, generally group oriented but still not quite what we're looking for in this regard.
     
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