Newbie reactions

Hi All,

I've been off-and-on following SotA for a while now, and after a bout of RPG nostalgia and Youtubing, I bought it on Steam. So because it's under construction, I wanted to give a few of my reactions (especially if launch is coming up.)

So first, a disclaimer: I'm a professional pain-in-the-ass with software (not gaming, though), so I'm also including a list of 'things I noticed' / reflections. Apologies if this isn't the right place for it, and please don't take this list as being overly critical. I grew up on UW1/2, Ultimas 4 - 8, and UO, so I want this to succeed.

Initial player reactions
Opening 'quest' (the burning village) shows promise. I liked starting situation. It could feel a bit more 'alive' / dynamic; I basically knew there was no real timer, despite the 'emergency' situation I was supposedly in, so I opened every crate and explored the burning inn / town. I wouldn't spend any kind of pre-launch time on this, since it's basically the first 10 minutes, though. It was adequate for getting the job done, and it really shouldn't be a priority unless the devs have a bunch of spare time.

The NPCs seem dormant. They have an audio clip that plays over and over (that girl from the burning house's weird groan, especially.) Later, in the Solace Bridge zone, there is a female guard hiding behind a tree by a bridge, and she was playing the exact same sound clip. NPCs are also standing around a lot... they aren't doing anything. There isn't any illusion of life - they seem like interactive placeables. NPCs in UO would at least wander, if not do the whole emergent 'looking to fulfill needs' thing. NPCs in U7 had schedules, and even within specific activities (like hunting), they'd be wandering around actually hunting. These NPCs were standing there, waiting to be interacted with. Enemies spawned at exactly the spawn points (the archers near the Solace Bridge bridge were the clearest example I ran into.)

The UI needs work, and I believe I've read enough on the forums that everyone is aware of it. Nothing is intuitive, and I found myself going through the key bindings to try to see what was possible.

• I opened the player handbook and book of events, but couldn't page through the thing. The dog-ears of the book are on the bottom corners (which is just weird), and the mouse scroll button doesn't paginate, which I guess my instincts told me it would. Hours of TES does that to you, I guess. Also the dogears need to be larger / stand out more. Also, one of the items said "Please see (char-name) for details.". How do I do that? Do I email this person? Hope to find them in the world? From some videos online, there seems to be a in-game mail system, but I couldn't find it. Also, would hyperlinks in books kill immersion? It might bring a lot of convenience and intuitiveness at the cost of a bit of immersion.
• A player waved to me, and I stood there trying to figure out how to wave back. Should emotes appear in the chat box?
• Speaking of chat boxes, is that where all dialog is? Should character conversation appear above their heads? This might already be how it functions (it showed MY text over my head, anyway), but for a game that's doubling down on being social, I like to associate a person's visual representation with what they're saying... the chat box might work for the majority, just not my favorite flavor.
• Also, for the login screen - am I missing something? There doesn't seem to be a 'save my password' option.

The gameplay seems like it could be more interesting after a round of polish.

• It seems very MMO-ish, which I get. Honestly, I'm a single-player gamer more than an MMO player, so this might just be subjective, but it seemed very 'go to this area, fetch 4 maple logs / 5 ore and gain some experience. Further disclaimer: I was exclusively in Solace Bridge, which seems to be the tutorial level.
• Skill trees seem like they need to be re-thought. All of the crafting / gathering trees seem the same (there's one actual gathering skill, one 'find it further away' skill, one 'get it faster' skill, and one 'get more' skill. It might be feature creep at this point, but why not split the tree up a bit and make it wider: 'mammal collection', 'avian collection', 'reptile collection', etc etc, so you open the door to specialist gatherers and more unique craftsmen? Similarly, the combat tree seemed very... average. Again, a fatter tree with multiple, almost-redundant spells to allow for more character diversity might help. What if I don't want to be a fire mage? Can necromancy have an 'unholy glimmer' spell? Can lunar have a 'moon-shine' spell? Even if they're functionally equivalent, it allows my death mage to still have utility spells and be a specialist. Or it allows for unique combinations. My last point about skill trees: some of the prerequisites don't make sense. My character is an archer, and I want to get the skill for 'increased accuracy' - why should I have to gain & level up a skill in 'wasting less ammo'? Shouldn't there be an 'accuracy' branch and an 'ammo conservation' branch? Again, this might be pre-alpha and the trees fill out / reorganize as SotA approaches launch, but it seems like it's setting the stage for cookie-cutter characters to me.
• My character was an archer, but I could circle-strafe wolves and bandits while shooting. Is there a penalty for movement? Shouldn't an archer have to be rooted to the ground, and have other party members / abilities / spells serve as a screen for them?
  
• The crafting system seems really cool. I'm actually exciting to get a character similar to my UO character going (bowcrafting / forestry... kind of a 'self-sufficient woodsman / hunter' thing.) I haven't had much of an opportunity to explore this, but from what little I've seen, it looks like it'll be a major focus for me. I like the range of systems and the three-tiered (gather, refine, construct) groupings, and would love to see more. I found some glass bottles in a hut and hope to see brewing some day

Immersion is huge for me, and a lot of that is going to come from polish. One of my favorite memories of UO was starting in Yew and having my friend start in Britain. I bought food from an NPC, packed all of my stuff, and hiked down the main road - hiding behind trees and staying off the road as I went, since PKs were everywhere and I didn't know what animals might attack. I ended up setting up a camp (I didn't know that was a logout mechanism, but thought it might heal you or keep animals away) and having a wolf howling away in the distance, while I was ready to be attacked. A lot of that comes from ignorance of the game mechanics, in my opinion. But it also comes from an 'anything can happen' atmosphere, which I'm not feeling in SotA. I can basically tell the NPCs that will and won't attack, and there isn't really a mystery besides "Don't go in a zone that's over your head.". I can tell what I can interact with, and I have no anxiety about what might jump out of that collection of trees at night.

• More varied audio / visuals. NPCs have a single sound (that I don't even hear most of the time), and the animations are all lack-luster and unconvincing. There is no way that bandit got hit with an arrow, and no way I was just bitten by a wolf. The NPCs don't move or do anything, they just wait to be triggered, which is kind of unfortunate.
• I want to have a sense of the mechanics, without knowing the specifics of the mechanics. UO had fewer skills but was more interesting; I feel like I can plot out my entire character based on prerequisitives and trainings, when really I want to get better at using a bow by using a bow.
• I feel like the explicit 'this skill allows X.Y% increase' explanations take away from the experience. Using the above, what if my character just levels up camping? Maybe that keeps animals further away, but I have to work that out for myself.
• Add some mystery. Even if it's a GM masquerading as an NPC, have a sense of 'We don't know everything about this game." Or have a few scripted encounters that can happen. Drop a previously unknown landmark in the middle of some place and don't explain it - maybe it zaps passersby? Maybe it emits a beacon at night? As a player, I want to wonder what's coming next, not how many X I can harvest from a zone.

And lastly, polish. This is the most state-the-obvious, since I'm sure this is a major focus for the devs right now.

• Animations
  • The transition from Swimming to Running needs refining.
  • I didn't really notice NPCs doing anything. Do they have idle animations? If so, they don't look like much of anything and make me think they're static.
  • Weapon impacts aren't believable. As I mentioned, bandits don't look like they're getting hurt when I shoot them with a bow and arrow, even if they lose half their health.
• Music / Audio
  • Seems a little repetitive and bland. It got better when I accidentally zoned out of Solace Bridge, and it really isn't a huge priority since most people will probably have it off in a year anyway.
  • NPCs don't make noise, or they make the same noise over and over. The girl in the fire kept doing the same grown. The NPCs by the fire aren't making any noise at all. I attacked a bunch of wolves, and don't remember hearing any sound clips / howls / growling / biting.
• Performance
  • In game performance was fine, but area loads were atrocious. I know this is being optimized, but ~10-15 per area, and I accidentally zoned out of Solace Bridge so I made dinner.
  • For load times, I found that "Building Map", "Coordinating Data", and "Equipping Avatars" were the sticking points. Especially with the last one, could a performance setting use more generic models for other people's equipment, rather than load a mesh / texture / whatever maps just to accommodate someone's red-dyed bucket helm?
  • Lag / jumpiness. I saw NPCs jump around a bit, as their location was corrected.
  • Jumpiness whenever NPCs collide with another mesh. The biggest occurrence was on the beach (near a shack and some oysters in S.B.) where an NPC would walk near a fallen tree and jump back and forth between alternate sides of the tree as it tried to pathfind over to me.

So with all of that, I do want to reiterate that I don't mean this to be negative... please take it all as "an old Ultima fan is doing what he can to playtest." I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product, and I do hope that my observations help in some way. I'm excited to see another Ultima, even if it's in spiritual-successor (and MMO) form. Hopefully see you all out there soon!

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. Your observations on the starting area are especially valuable. As far as being negative, your criticisms are fair and sincere, and that makes them worthwhile.
Hope to see you in-game and if you're ever in Port Phoenix stop by Biggie and Flo's Swampy Bites for a free Crocodile Skewer.

 

Sweet writeup.

 

This is a great place for general new player feedback. If you want to give more specific feedback then each release has a sub-forum for it, here is the R45 one though note that R46 will come online later today. If you want to report a bug type /bug in chat or hit the bug report icon in the row at the top right, a browser window should open and you will have in your clipboard a bug report template including various system information - pick an appropriate sub-forum, review for existing reports then create a new post and Ctrl-V the template to get started.

Here's some tips for some of the issues you came across:

If you're still in the starting areas there is a mailbox on the wall behind the banker in the Soltown inn, in most other towns you will find the mailbox in the bank building on the wall to the right of the teller windows. Click on the mailbox to activate the mail interface, note that you will need to acquire some blank sheets of paper to create substantive messages.

I am not at a computer with the game installed at the moment, but I believe there is an option 'Show chat bubbles' if you look in settings.

There is not, the only way to not have to type your password every time is to click the login through Steam button (assuming your Steam account is linked to your SotA account, which from your post it should be).

There are plans to add more skills to all the trees before release.

The structure of the trees hasn't changed (outside of adding some new skills) since before we switched to a use-based system. I agree that this needs looking at, but I don't think it's part of current plans.

For general information about planned changes check out the following (going from near future to further future):

• Standup Corner - daily dev workload
• Chris' Daily Work Blog - lead dev, upcoming combat and skill changes will usually appear here first
• Q3 Schedule Update - quarterly release plans, specific planned new features (Q4 plan should be appearing soon I think)
• Top 10 Priorities for Launch - as per title
  
• Post Episode 1 Content Plans (aka the 2 year plan) - more speculative future plans

It has good points and frustrations, but I won't get into that here. If you plan to get into crafting then seek out some more experienced players as they will be able to teach you most of the common recipes (rather than having to buy them for 250g each).

 

Hello there,

First of all, thank you for taking the time to write up your thoughts on the game. As stated, your observations were extremely valuable, thought-provoking, and genuine, and it was obvious that you'd rather see the game succeed than fail. You didn't come across as negative at all, and I share your concerns almost completely, despite my love affair with Shroud of the Avatar.

There really isn't a lot for me to add to this post that hasn't already been eloquently laid out, but I wanted to elaborate on the section of your post that suggests that the NPC's seem dormant. This part of your post really struck a chord as I began to think about it. Like many people here, I was also a fan of the Ultima series, including Ultima Online, but having played a lot of MMO's such as World of Warcraft since then, it hadn't really dawned on me just how dormant the NPC's are at present.

I feel that this should definitely be prioritised as part of the ongoing attempts to polish the game, though I imagine it would take a heck load of coding and testing. That said, given the hefty list of things scheduled to be done before launch, (rebuilding zones, adding side-quests, performance, etc.), I'm not sure it's something we'll see improve markedly until some time after release.

I've travelled a little bit in New Britannia since I first logged in perhaps about a year ago, and visited a few towns. I have noticed certain NPC's pull out a book to read in their idle moments, and wander around to close doors and light candles, but it really is in its primitive stages, I would say. Perhaps the occasional yawn, or stretch, a boisterous ushering of the player over to browse their goods for the NPC's standing in markets, having a seat for a short time before standing up again, Barkeepers and Shopkeepers cleaning the bar, a mug, or a display case with a rag, maybe an animation that gives the impression of searching or sorting through shelves, or even smoking a pipe for a few minutes would go a long way to make the NPC's seem less static and more like a living person.

NPC's having schedules really was one of the things that impressed me so much about the Ultima Games as I played through them the first several times. It definitely differentiated from most other RPG's I'd played. And until I had played them almost exhaustively, the simple act of following an NPC around town, (and beyond!) could surprise me in so many ways. While I realise it would be absurd to suggest that every single merchant in Shroud should have their own detailed schedule, some of the above things would go a long way in giving our townsfolk life.

Thank you again for your post! Safe Journeys!