Online Numbers

Had they held off, the population would likely rarely exceed 100 players.

 

Really? You think the majority of active players are steam purchasers? Could be right, it just seems wonky to me given the negative reviews on steam.

 

One would assume if a major future market like steam was walking away from the game at a rate of 10% per month, for a total loss of over 50% of steam players on average since persistence; a company might revisit the focus they have chosen since release instead of claiming them a success and doubling down on foolish mechanics like Multiplayer only rewards.

Even the telethon event in November wasnt enough to prevent a double digit drop in steam average concurrency.

You might argue that steam users don't matter for Shroud. I doubt that personally as we don't see any numbers of non steam concurrency while all my friends are kick starter backers who all use steam. Anecdotes being more or less useless while steamcharts are actual data points showing scary levels of attrition

 

People will still argue it, of course, as if there's another community of 100 million plus gamers out there which SotA could tap into, instead. Yet those figures are precisely why Steam is important to SotA or any game, really.

I know the savaging Steam users have given SotA upsets people, however, like Rotten Tomatoes and film or any other site that pulls together tons of reviews, you start to get an accurate picture of what a wide number of people are saying.

That's the bit I can never understand. You have almost 800 reviews on Steam, some incredibly negative, yet people will post here that because them and their two mates love SotA, the Steam reviews are worth nothing and Steam people are nuts.

I think it's the opposite. I think Steam reviews of games tend to be more correct, because unless there's some sort of conspiracy at hand and everyone's writing bad reviews just for kicks (they're not!), those sort of numbers are hard to manipulate.

 

My personal favs:
1) "This is a niche game"
2) "You just don't understand the development process"

With that said, they've still raised 10m. Pretty impressive. It's just the 100m that they could've done that is the frustrating part.

 

My personal favorite is it's still in alpha you don't know what that means....like alphas never existed. I think this may be the first time for a lot of people alpha testing because they don't understand most games have an alpha stage you just don't pay to partake you get invited.

 

Yes, but then after persistence they are massively changing around the variables. The economy wasn't done yet, and yet they went live. Maybe they should have had a 6 to 9 month "no wipe" phase while they were still tuning things. I understand what you're trying to say, but testing for a long period and then changing all the variables makes it a moot point.

 

That's actually a good idea. I think the whole bother with single player online/friends online is a sad distraction. I know they can't eliminate it now (and a sizable minority would scream bloody murder if they tried), but maybe fork off a new "SOTA ONLINE!" just like you said. The work's already done, just offer another slightly-different SKU where it's all just MPO and slightly less restrictive PVP. That would draw a lot of players and income (hopefully?) that they could use to fully flesh out the original SOTA. And of course any insights / improvements gained with "SOTA ONLINE" would benefit original SOTA too.

 

I'm always confused/bemused by variations of, "This game is UNIQUE because the devs talk to us about the process of making the game..."

I see that and think, gosh, all those other crowd-funded games where the devs do exactly the same have passed this person by?

Even back in the days of developing a decidedly non-crowd-funded game like Star Wars Galaxies, devs were on that forum daily, talking to us.

So... yeah... that's the one that always causes me to stop and stare. It makes me wonder how many other games (crowd-funded or not), some folk have followed.

 

Actually, I'm not so sure about that. Many games could never have survived for 3 years in this development limbo. The largest demographic of video game players (young people) are generally very impatient and have thousands of options at their disposal.

The SotA community is a bit different in that respect. We have many more mature players, and these players are die-hard. I'm sure they will complain when release is pushed back again, and again, and again...but they will probably stick around. Hopefully long enough (and buying enough) to keep the development funded until 1.0 GOLD can be released, and we get back some of that youthful, impatient demographic that we want around going forward.

 

Bad form.

 

I hope you guys give it a chance...I am not a "hard core" roleplayer, but one thing that makes a great online game for me is folks like your group. I want people like you around...I want people to be able to socialize and role play a bit with... This game needs nice diversions and more "sandbox" simulation features, and roleplayers are a huge part of that.

 

I think, and I believe the devs mentioned, that the majority of new players have been from Steam since the game went on early access. It would be odd if they found the game otherwise, given the lack of advertising. The reviews are bad on Steam because SotA is a bad early access game, good early access games have a cross section of content to chew on, enough to give you a taste, but not not so much as to ruin your appetite, well, at least not permanently. SotA fails that first point rather spectacularly, they opted for a mile wide and an inch deep when Steam EA is best suited for more of a 10' x 10' sampling. Ideally, they could have released a fairly polished Hidden Vale for persistence, with rumors about when the ferry back to Novia would open. The Hidden Vale has plenty of housing for the amount of players actually playing and a Novian land rush could have happened later, around the beta. But ... that would have been less profitably, PoT owners that weren't on the Hidden Vale would have complained, folks would have held off on buying crazy amounts of deeds, etc. so we end up with this.

 

That green box on my screen just says the Release number, so i guess today there are 36 online /giggle.

 

Thanks. That spares me from posting something reasonable!
I will read the next three pages of doomyaddayaddaDOOM and come up with a troll post when I am done ;-)

 

Wow.
Just wow. I am asking myself why I still read this kind of topics.
Poor @Lara of Grimmwold asked a simple question and the same people as always jump the gun and pretty much derail the topic in no time.
I could write a tl;dr for those five pages.
They would look like:
DOOM
NO
YES
NO
YES
and so on. With a bit of SC and game mechanic discussion.
Really people, you don't bring enlightment as you like to pretend.
You are offering opinions. Strong opinions, I will give you that. But opinions non the less.
But that's what happens if blind love turns into mindless hate I guess.
It's really impressive how many people we have that left 5,10 or even more releases ago with a big bang that come back to participate in this kind of **** storms probably without playing a single release since they left.
I know leaving someone you loved is hard but really: let it go. If the game isn't for you and you don't believe in the concept you have all right to express this opinion.
Once, twice and in my opinion even a third time after you 'left' but this starts to be ridiculous.
NOBODY knows how good or bad this game will be accepted by a wider audience. Sure there are indicators. But your bad one is the next guys good one. So it's a mood point.
I, for example, don't believe in SC. I have a gifted account that I got gifted to convince me otherwise and I bought an LTI ship from the secondary market, just for the case I am wrong. But I don't trust Chris Roberts. He has the habit of running away if things get too complicated and SC was a complicated project right from the start.
Obviously 90 million USD (or how much is it now?) spend by backers tell me that the SC community won't agree with me.
Will that make me wrong? Or them right? No of course not.

Tl;dr: Sky isn't falling. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't.

Oh and @Lara of Grimmwold I guess the average is 200-300 people every given time. Problem is that steam online numbers are somewhat off and Portalarium tells us the number of the people who use the launcher maybe one time a year because it is important for a totally different topic at that time ^^
That's roughly 10% of what I would like to see after final launch of sota but it isn't even half as bad as some people here want to pretend.

 

I haven't been a part of SotA very long ( and I am enjoying it by the way) but I have been both an alpha and closed beta tester for a very long time and when I read these forums I feel like there doesn't always appear to be a very good understanding about either the length of time it actually takes or what your role is if you are participating and what you can expect. Here are some of the ones I was involved with myself ( yup, I am THAT old!):
WoW (Blizzard) development took 5 years, closed beta was close to a year. If you want to discuss something that prior to release during testing was pretty scary I have stories.
Rift (Trion) 5 years - and they started in 2006 and were still in alpha in early 2010 for a promised 2011 release.
Star Wars the Old Republic - 5 years to develop, closed beta lasted 9 months to a year.
Shadow Realms - I was asked to alpha test by Bioware. If any of you watched the news on it, it looked promising for an MMO and was cancelled prior to release.
The point being, this is never a fast process and it is never a smooth one. Yes, it can be "I want to drop-kick my computer" frustrating. But if you are participating with developers on games before release it needs to be because you like gaming, like to work with developers and enjoy seeing something new being developed. It is hunting for problems and being able to communicate them to the developers like an adult.It is not going to be a finished game. It is not going to be the game you would write for yourself if you could write anything you wanted. In most games if you are alpha testing you are playing for short periods and then going to a forum and filling out problem reports. I think to be able to come in and actually have a conversation with a developer is pretty unique. If you're getting burned out, it happens. Take a break, go find a game that fits you better.
Also, noting the concern about negative reviews on Steam - I am a long term Steam user also. Read the reviews with a critical eye. If the reviewer is someone who played for many months they may have something to say. If you look at the hours played you are going to see that many of the negative reviewers on any given game are those with very short attention spans who played very few hours and need high gratification to keep playing.
I hope that most of those who feel frustrated now will try to stick it out as long as they feel they can provide constructive feedback - and that doesn't mean it has to be feedback that agrees with one point or another; just that it is constructive.

 

Well, not only have there been a good number of mixed reviews on gaming websites, but we have around 800 reviews on steam of which it looks like only around 60% are positive, so we do have some pretty solid data already.

To say that nobody knows how this game will be accepted by a wider audience, or that its all subjective so the point is moot, is a bit of a disingenious statement.

That said, I agree with many of your other points.

 

I am really interested to see how this game will be marketed...
As a story-driven RPG with a single player narrative and choices with consequences? If so where is all of that?
As "basically soloplayer game with the option to go online" as Richard Garriott said during the Kickstarter campaign?
As a sandbox MMORPG? Which it basically isn't as there are also quests and a storyline.
As a PvP game?
This will be really interesting to see...

 

My favorite: "but those charts are inaccurate".

I'm a KS backer too and use steam exclusively because their dl speeds are far superior. I still don't get why the port dl speeds are still so slow three years in. Oh wait...."alpha"....or "pre alpha".