My opinion

To continue some feedback on Sota and the little frustrations I have about the current state of the game.

After doing some farm runs on the PvE "end game?" content (UT, Mysterious Swamp, The Rise, Control points), the problem is the reward.
There is no reward at all for doing PvE content.. Why is that? All other games since the beginning of time have this, there needs to be a reward for playing content.

Yes it is FUN, but we need to be rewarded for spending all our free time in SotA.
Please do not tell me that its the wonderful exp or trash loot we get. The exp is capped, and the loot is None.

If we fight those few bosses in the game we expect to get something from it...

We killed a dragon! Open the loot, oh wait a few apples, banana and some gold... Why have a looting system in the first place.

We wiped Mysterious swamp, it was pretty tough, at the end of the run, we got nothing!
Reward for doing the messy so called hardest scene in the game was just a very bad experience, not to mention the building in that scene is so poorly created.
Its small, over saturated with mob's, the walls of the building are wobbly and bugged. I can walk through closed doors... and so forth.
Get your **** together and release something that is finished.


Now my opinion about the seasonal bosses and their algorithm AI boss tactics. It is boring. You can not implement the same tactics on all the bosses. It is not cool.
Changing a small functionality in the tactics is not the way to go. All bosses (the few in game currently anyhow) should have their own special tactics.


Another point where I think you guys are failing pretty hard is content releases, everyone has been pointing this out already for months and months.
Release your work when its done! An example is the player created dungeons, or fishing..

Player created dungeons was officially planned for EP2 if I remember correctly.
Then you guys made the decision to just instantly implement a non finished system on production and extend this every month on production.
First of all, you should have done this on QA not production.
This is the way to implement new big features, implement and release every month on QA, let the players that are interested in that feature test on QA. And release it on production when its in a finished state!
I understand you will need to fix a few bugs on that new feature on production, but it should not be big changes to that feature on production.

Second, why prioritize player created dungeons before the quest system anyhow? I still do not understand this decision.
Player created dungeons is (for some) a cool sandbox feature. But without a good reward system, differences in mobs and or dungeon Bosses. The player created dungeon system is going to fail.


Please re-read your own: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=28012
Most of the description is not very accurate to what SotA currently is.

Please do a SCRUM meeting and ask yourself: What is the exact road your going with the game now?

Again, I love SotA. Like all other players here discussing the game on the forum. But the longer I play, the more I am thinking to actually quit the game with how it is going now.
I am sure a lot of the old time players are thinking the same, we stay because we have hope you guys are going take action and implement the systems that we are all hoping/waiting for.
But to be honest, with the size of the team currently that will take years and years.

 

Because: USP. And if i take a look at the last live stream total income: it works.

 

Yes it is all about income. It seems the team has to constantly re-prioritise tasks to earn money to keep the lights on. I understand this totally and the game will die otherwise. It has to be a nightmare for Star, setting development targets that excite the player base, based on projected income and growth, only to find the income growth isn't there or has shrunk.

I'm absolutely certain that the creative minds at Port would much rather be working on a new quest system and new fun content rather than web store trinkets, but unless the game has a miraculous boon in its player base it will remain a constant battle for survival. Port have my sincere respect for the grit and determination in keeping this title afloat. The diversion of resources into working on reducing taxes on deeds, upgrading deeds and giving players a row lot after the tutorials is all about recruitment and retention, aka, revenue. This, and the web-store work is clearly replacing content development man-hour allocations for features that were proposed a while back.

I log in a little less these days, but when I do I see clear but incremental improvements especially in performance; the game for me is getting smoother and in game-play terms, less un-intuitive (as opposed to more intuitive ). Many of the 'QOL' improvements have added genuinely to reducing frustrations and increasing the tendency of players to team up and bugs are reducing, so I see progress, but slowly.

It is truly commendable and impressive how Port and specifically Star are able to balance meagre programming resources into revenue and content/performance work, just to retain a sense of moving forward right now. But I am not sure how long this is sustainable; too much inertia. We need a boost.. episode 2?

 

The loot sucks because (and I know you know this, so I'm stating it rhetorically) to focus on the player crafting. I find it difficult to understand how we can have well-functioning economy without loss. Some item categories are better than others.

Eve does great because it's "half-full-loot PVP". That is, statistically speaking, about half of the cargo, the equipped modules, and the ship itself - are irretrievably destroyed. Those items are removed from the game, which needs crafters to make more. While I'm not clamoring for this kind of system, it would certainly help for this one aspect of the game, assuming it wouldn't drive the playerbase away.

There's about fourteen simultaneous corners we're painted into.

 

The decision to make player made equipment the main source of upgrades, while it appeals to some, locks out any chance of getting good loot from mobs like pretty much every other RPG. So they have removed one of the big reasons that people play these games.

USP for who though. The same small group who keep pumping money into the game? Certainly not new players. I can't see how it can be sustainable.

 

I just answered a question and pointed out it seemed to work.

 

Um so wait a second -

Removed any type of skill cap (decay) . . .

Gave players places used to specifically grind exp to the Nth Degree allowing for the total destruction of any skill cap and the ability to reach unthought of levels . . . .

Kept say loot type tables, even though now each and every boss is a 2 minute drill for those who min maxed the game . . .

Players got EVERYTHIGN they asked for and now they are bored ? ? ? ?

I
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Crafting has gotten more complex and convoluted with each implementation, and specialization is inbound ? ? ? ?

WoW Type Loot is coming, wait already tried it with player made loot in tables, one of my items was a Back Pack LMAO,

 

Indeed!. But still that is where the problem is. I have been searching and trying to find good so called rare/epic player made gear. And its not out there. The only things being sold are left overs crafted gear from bad crafting tries. And with all the prices being dropped everywhere in game. It is just not worth it to craft good gear and sell it for like 1000 gold max. It costs so much more effort to make. Luckily I have a friend that has been crafting gear for me a lot of times, but not everyone has this option.

Also while we are talking about crafted gear, I really think they should add an ADV level requirement to crafted gear.

 

You may be correct, but there are a lot of variables that influenced that. Typically, livestream totals include only 48 - 60 hours. This release included six livestreams for 504 hours. The store also had 50% off most items as well as 2 separate Crown sales.

Your greater point is correct though. Producing things that can be purchased brings in finances that reworking the quest system cannot.

 

It's simple. Crafters are supposed to supply the awesome loot, but expected to do so for free.

Thats it.

You want a badass epic bronze plate piece with more than six durability to drop in loot?

Petition the devs to pay the crafters more than 250 gold for that 100k piece.

Here's the code:

If (crafters get shafted on npc buy prices)
{
loot == wolf hats;
}

 

I have never understood that part. Why would I craft a nice item, and trash it to a npc vendor for a low value.

 

Maybe port can create a mobile crafting game. You can choose to be a kobold, elven, humans, etc.... then create and sell crafted items to npcs. Which will in turn feed the loot tables.
Who knows, maybe that app can be a big hit and earn more money than the actual game.

 

Sounds like a great idea, but then again, they will probably focus the whole development team to develop this app instead of content on SotA
Sorry for being a bit sarcastic, it is not my greatest day today.

 

What might help is for the training for crafting/enchanting/masterworking decoupled from actually producing items. It seems like one person training generates enough spare gear to equip the entire playerbase. If leveling up was some other mechanism, like quests, that might help us be something less than super-saturated.

If we had some kind of "campaign" mode, as numerous threads have brought up, where people can donate gear/furniture/houses/etc for a game-wide campaign against the elements of chaos, that'd be opportunity for crafters to essentially volunteer for the effort, being apprentices.

 

What about rare material drops or something.

I quit playing when I realized I wasn't having fun and just farming exp as I watched a movie. The combat was dull and so was the loot.

 

That pretty much sums up my main issues with the loot.

 

Hey there @Feeyo

I want to say thanks for coming out with my open groups the last few days. Some were successful (Superstition Canyon) and some less so (Mysterious Swamp), but the important thing is that we were out there testing our mettle!

I agree that the rewards are a bit wanting. I've been hitting the control points hard (they're new to me!) and I haven't gotten any kind of renumeration. They're a wild ride, to be sure, and a riot for the first several waves, but the bodies vanish pretty quickly and the loot is uninspiring when you can grab it. The experience can be good (though I lost a bunch last night), but, if that's your game, there are better ways to get it.

The Powers That Be have a heck of a job balancing things out. Some folks walk out of UT with blue bundles, COTOs, and fistfulls of artifacts. Others (like myself and, frankly, everyone I know) are mostly broke all the damn time because 5 hours of grinding begets 5 minutes of crafting.

The balance is off. I don't have a suggestion to fix it, but I'll keep the faith as well as I can while the brains get it figured out.

 

More fish masks!

 

i've dumped 100s of armor/weapon pieces into npc vendors. they were made while leveling master working/enchanting and had less than 20 durability. selling them was worth more gold than scraping them and i like to think some new player was super happy when they got a +10 bow in loot. even if it was only going to last them a month. i assume this is what many others do the same. so, lots of gear with good stats that will easily last through the main quests and beyond. gear that has a perceived value of zero for those players.

once i get one more gm done, i'll primarily only do custom orders. i'm one of those idiots that only wants to sell perfect items (no failures). putting that much effort into an item that will just sit on a vendor forever at 100k doesn't make sense.

perhaps these ideas will balance out the perceived and actual values:

1) increase durability loss and coto consumption for major repairs.
the goal is for the average player replace a gear when it is 4-6 weeks old

2) increase scrap from an item to 50% of the material that went into making it and increase npc prices to match that in gold value
i'm more likely to scrap it to reduce my costs on other items. but, if there is a balance, i would still sell to npc about half the time.

3) provide some way for someone to examine an item to see what went into making it.
let people see the materials that really went into it. non-crafters needs some clues. maybe putting on a crafting table and add info to the popup.

 

Yes exactly, so the system does not really work how it is now. I loot a lot of player created gear, but as you say they are all junk items. What do I do with them? Sell them again to the NPC vendor. And so all this junk gets routed back to the looting tables.
The problem is, that lower players will probably not get these items in the looting table as it is linked to specific Tier scenes. I am doing T5 to T10 and those junk items just should not be in those looting tables anyhow. They should be in the lower Tiers..

They (Port) should make it worth it to sell high worth crafted gear to NPC vendors. Or the current system is a failed system.

Another thing, when we do a high end tiered scene and we find a chest behind a boss. The chest is only being looted by the looter. This also is wrong in groups. Everyone should receive a roll option.
To talk about chests, chests found after killing a boss should have great loot. Not crap how it is now..

It should be excited to find a chest.