Need to rekindle my love affair with SOTA

I've been involved in this game since March 2013, i'm a Royal Founder and a regular player, I've got multiple properties dotted around the map with multiple vendors, i'm a mid/ high adventure level and I love the game, the world and the community... BUT.... I think i'm starting to fall out of love with the game.

I find myself logging on, wondering round my house for a while and not really knowing what I want to do with my time in the game and subsequently end up logging off.

How do I get myself back into the game? - what do you guys do when you hit a low spot in interest?

Help me please !!
Any and all sensible suggestions considered!

 

Simply sometimes folks need a break or another game to play, switching things up a bit. variety is the spice of life!
Could also be a factor of how many hours a day you put into the game, total guess on my part, but make sure you have a true balance of gaming and real life. When I'm working a lot, I truly can't wait to get on and play (this goes for any game I'm playing) when I'm off a lot as I am in the winter, not so much. But that's me.

 

taking a break is always a good option.

but, if you really want to spend time in game and are just tired of the xp grind, give exploration a try. there are lots of unique locations with interesting stuff to find. puzzles, side quests, and easter eggs abound!

 

How about creating a new character and starting over again. Spend more time in the lower tier scenes.

Write a journal based on this character, visit and observe those RP players like @Boris Mondragon or @Helvig Ingvildsdottir. Use gears you can afford to lose.

Find and talk to new players, they are major time sink.

 

All great suggestions IMO... a break isn't bad thing. I play other games, as well (just not MMOs since they are so time consuming). When I'm a burnt out, I'll spend at most an hour each day maintaining vendors and that's it.

The game freshens up when you challenge yourself with something new. A re-roll for me would be to start a new character that's a 100% focused on the opposite of my current tree. I would quest, as well, and take that as far as I could. I've avoided it on my main character entirely and it's unfortunate. Diving more deeply into the lore would be satisfying I think. I'd love to know how the rest of the game lives and adapt a different play style, even a new identity within the game.

 

Well we can always use more pirates and allies in Dragomir Mori. Think of a back story for your character and let @CatherineRose or yours truly know if interested. We have our own story going in the fire lotus library forum and plan to do a monthly PvP event to culminate each chapter. Bring your character to life and see how quickly you begin to enjoy the game and your creation. R/Boris/El Pirata/Black Sails Forever.

One Ship, One Path/One Truth

 

LOL that's where I am at.... for me, COMBAT ADVENTURING EXPLORING is what I want, but not fun anymore …. I log in, log right back out because I cannot bring myself to do the same ole grind over and over again.... GL PS I am a soloer …..

 

How about working on some collections? There are a lot of things you can start "collecting" sets of that will give you a little sense of accomplishment every day. You don't have to complete them all at once and some take considerable time investment to complete so you can always have something to work towards. When you start getting close to finishing one... it will give you the drive to complete it.

Here are some examples:

1. Emotes - You may never get all of them (some were given out for pledges or special events and are no trade) but there are plenty you can get from speaking to NPC's, trading with other players (there are some special/rare ones that players can trade to you), or buying from the add-on store. Sotawiki has a pretty updated list of them I believe and shows how to get most of them.

2. Take up fishing and catch one of each type... then make trophies to deco your home.

3. Hunt down various creatures for Pristine Heads and make trophies. Also, many don't know this, but you can make skin rugs from some of them to deco your home as well. That gives you 2 reasons to collect most of the heads!

4. Pets - there are a ton of them! Most are add-on store bought, but you can tame (or have someone else tame) many creatures in the game to keep as pets. Anything from a chicken to a dog to a sheep to a horse (non-combat types) to combat types such as wolves, corpions, bears, and even wyverns! All of these pets can either be companions that follow you around, or be placed on your lot as a decoration.

5. Visit every town/scene in the game. This will give you an opportunity to do two things. First, you will add every scene to your TP to Zone list. Second, if you speak to a new Town Crier in any NPC/PRT/POT, you will get 100 gold for the first visit. Spend a day just popping in and out of scenes to fill your TP list and build up your bank account!

If you've already done all of that, I love the previous suggestion to just do some exploring and find/solve the puzzles that are in just about every scene in the game. I think there is something interesting to discover or figure out in literally every scene in the game!

 

The Black Sails Saga with @Boris Mondragon is a great way to renew interest and excitement.
I've never been a RP but this is fun.

 

I have been in this game since God knows when, BEEN there, Done all that ….. And I don't enjoy fishing ….

 

I guess I'm more interested in what you can do with the stuff, then having the stuff.

• You have a bed. But sleeping on it does nothing.
• I got a teletype that seems bugged. Bugged it long ago. Not sure it's working yet. Barely used it.
• Telescopes in the game... kind of pointless? Maybe do some Myst-style astronomy and quest stuff. Make using a telescope an exploration.
• Kobold tesla coils... maybe they could be used for home defense (if there's something to defend against)
• Baths... maybe do something bath-related (and not just sleeping in mid-air next to them)

I'm a gadget guy, I guess. Not much I can do with a fish trophy.

 

I want the new servers. After playing on the new QA servers, the servers in the "Servers-R-Us" facility are driving me nuts. I can have network warnings just standing there. I still log in to farm (agriculture) or do occasional group things, but I don't bother working on my personal goals (solo the troll, dragon, etc.). Just too frustrating.

 

While exploring and killing things and all of that is fun, its certainly not what's kept me here for all the hours I've played.
The best fun we have is always when we come up with entertaining things to do, using the systems in place to create our own fun.
What do I mean?

Once, Scoffer created minesweeper with boxes and fruit and cleared boxes had prizes in them.


And then there was the time we built the desert wolf sanctuary (back when they were orange!)


Attended any number of roleplaying events.



Helped plan/ decorate and "get stuff" for any number of large scale projects. Giving yourself a long-term goal and working toward it while enjoying the whmsy of the day to day.



Mining Route Optimization!


Finding and reporting bugs, the search for "Unintended Consequences!"


Fish Acquisitions, which is really fun if you're town steward and can move the boat around on the water as you go.


Issuing Deco Citations in town for players who have not got their planters straight...



Made a museum of all the things you could craft in all the styles and all the masterworks/enchants possible that now spans two town lots and continues to grow. Long term projects!


Had a mining competition with Scoffer (Which I always lose...)


Setting things on fire...


Hoarding....


Dabble in agriculture...


Organization of things!


Making memories...



Build a massive army of skulls on top of shovels with mining helmets on. Write backstory about researching reanimation methods and their eventual dig to Elysium. The amount of prep for something like this is a longer term project, and we got lots of people involved who wanted to donate a skull and join the army. We even offered free skull removing services.


There's always something to do, or something to start preparing for.
Being in an awesome guild / community makes a massive difference, also, and is one of the things that's kept me here this long.
There's ALWAYS something on the horizon that's probably going to require crafting hedges which means we need wood which means I have a quest.
The above is only a small sample of the huge variety of things you can do here. Its how I've managed to be playing this many years (nearly 8500 hours) and still manage to not get anything done most of the time. If I wanted to go get max level, get the best gear in game, and then pvp until bored, I can do that in any MMO. But most don't offer the sort of tools that we've got here to truly "live" in an alternate world.

Every single one of the above pictures is part of a story and the laughs we had in the process, the friends we made. Don't limit yourself to "kill things, take their stuff" or you're missing 90% of the game.

 

One thing I've advocated for in the past are "community toolkits" that provided bonus mechanics. Gustball could be considered an example... but more things, like the ability to use spawn dragons wherever you want with a dragon egg, for instance.

One thing I've love to have the ability to do is actually put things into zones. Like going into Solace Bridge, and putting a chest of stuff in some remote corner for someone to find. Anything put down is forced to be public access. I think one of the things that bugs me about the player-made quests in dungeons.... is that they're jailed into dungeons. What if the regular zones (outside of main quest ones maybe) were open to our manipulation (within limits)?

 

@kaeshiva

That post needs to be featured.

 

That's a hell of a story @kaeshiva !

Are you the owner of the equipment museums in Rinzai?

 

My husband and I are the 'owners' though we have had a lot of help!

 

Play other games. Then come back. There are thousands of amazing, some free, games on Steam to please every playstyle. Every MMO player experiences burnout, no matter how great the game is.

Currently I'm playing Cities Skylines and Divinity 2 Original Sin and Strange Brigade.

 

Hello there community and I do appreciate this subject and truly appreciate the examples given so far. As a steward access and manager with Lord Baldrith of Wizards Rest I can appreciate what players are finding to do in this game. For those who have a lot of focus to task oriented things this is the place to be and maybe unfortunately of course that is not all the player base who plays this game. I love so much that we can do whatever we want and like so many here I am aware of missing items that should be basic to this game. Hopefully when these are addressed it touches more of the player base to give a more continued excitement to play this game. What I hear on this thread is a true loyal fan base who has discovered reasons to be here and that is no small thing. We do have so much reason to be here too but not everyone finds those reasons or are excited about those reasons.

For me I am a project person but I do have times when I just don't wanna. Sometimes I want to explore and experience new things but part of what is missing in some of this is ambiance, sounds, and the ease of simple things to do like tasks and achievements I don't have. I can have personal projects and I do but this game still missed the boat on this system by not adding it in imo.

I will continue to do things like I just created a Plant and Play lot for all the residents of town and a Mini Mall Area to try to get some more vendors in Wizards Rest and I do always intend to do something fun with groups regarding the music system but atm I am not doing it.

I also created a Concert Hall in the town and I do have an Inn. In the past and I mean way into the past we had things like a Bingo Event, Name that Tune, and A Wrestling Event. So many of the participants from these events are gone and I see so many now coming aboard who don't know us and many who don't trust us yet. There are a lot of solo players in this game whereas many of the original backers/players had to be a community since there was not much more to do than create events to keep busy while the game was being developed.

So I say as mentioned if you want to stay in the game and want to be loyal to the game do continue to create and find projects that you enjoy doing and rally for the game to continue to give more reason to play for all types of players and that will not just be 'stuff' but real completed and polished up systems that are fun and make you want to just do them over and over to see what will happen. Also as mentioned in another thread hopefully not all are phased with no completion. These will not be just grind systems for collections but they will be little adventures and many or even most should be randomized to change out with progression too. Hang in there everyone. This game still has so much wonderful already and potential to give those reasons to play.

 

Thank you very much for all you have done. It's a fantastic resource! Regards and appreciation to your husband as well.