Our Impressions... Not ready for launch.. dissapointing

I am going to start this off by saying I am a huge fan of Ultima and really wanted this to be a spiritual successor to UO and the series. I have been a backer since kickstarter and really do want SoTA to succeed.

Having been playing on and off since we could first login to a single scene, it was good seeing the progress being made and at the early stages, although rough around the edges, the core elements of this game were great which was essentially not another, exclamation mark, fast travel, xp/level repeat clone but was actually difficult and challenging to play and required some attention to detail to make progress.

I stopped playing for about a year as I wanted to wait until the game was more polished, seeing that it is scheduled to be released next month myself and a few friends jumped back in to see what has changed and where the game is at. While it is nice some of the UI has been cleaned up, skills adjusted (and completed) and scenes finished it is unfortunately, in our opinion no where near ready for a launch out of early access and I will tell you why.

Firstly, again, the core concept of the game is brilliant, the skills system, character development, freedom of adventuring (vs going to area designated for lvl x, then y, then z). But it is clearly still very rough around the edges and the basic things that every other (and I hate this term) WOW clone has sorted SoTA is lacking in such as:

1. A simple introduction to the game (yes this has improved a lot but for a more recent online gamers not used to older (isometric) games are still confused with much the mechanics.
2. Voice acting for at least the main questline. With a few million raised from crowd funding surely a few people in the office could voice some lines of dialog, hell I am sure the community would do it for free and you just edit it in.
3. Buggy quests. Sure all games have these but SoTA is just crazy with them, even after several years I still can't believe that even the starting quests within the first minutes of the game can still break. I spend more time searching the forums/google on SoTA quests, not how to complete them, but how to get around the bugs I encounter rather than actually playing through the quests.
   
4. Grouping for quests. Playing "online" means playing with friends and there are so many quests in the main quest lines you just can't do as a group. More frustrating the game system does not let you know until either a) you end up in a different instance or b) your quest becomes bugged because you were in a party forcing you to then play the trial and error game of getting it to reset/fix.
5. Ambient noises. While finally getting around to fixing spells/skill actions is an overdue yet worthwhile achievement. The sounds coming from NPCs in towns and shops is ridiculous. Everytime I go into Ardoris I am pretty sure my neighbours think I am watching a porno
6. The UI. Personally I prefer the older minimalist approach and not having heaps of UI elements on the page (quest tool-tips for example). But if you are going to do this and start having things on the screen, let us move them around and place them how we want. I am not asking for big scrolling text and addons (in fact I beg you never to allow this) but let me move my heathbar, the quest tool tips, the toolbar. We can do it with the map but not much else.

In release 26 this kind of lack of basics might of been acceptable but really, for a launch candidate in a months time... It is scary simple things like these are still not working as well as they should.

As an example, I had a friend log on whom had not logged on for almost 2 years. They made a new character and proceeded onto the Path of Courage quests. Starting in the Battle of Highvale, they unlocked the gate and walked through towards the caravan but did not realise they had to click on the caravan so proceeded back towards the keep, back passed the gate. When they tried to leave after they worked out they needed to click on the caravan they found the gate had closed and was unable to re-unlocked because they no longer had the key and the gate refuses to open. After trying to escape the area for 30 minutes (in lieu of exiting to the menu and logging into the world map) they gave up and logged off stating that after years of work the initial moments in the game are still bug ridden and unplayable.

I then went in and started the Path of Courage myself thinking my friend might of missed something and I got the exact same bug and could not continue without logging off and back into the world map. Given this is the first quest a new player would do I just find it so disheartening that this is the state of the game. If this is what new players, with no prior knowledge of the game, experience when playing, then that is quite disappointing and begs the question as to what work has been going on for the past few years.

I will just finish with the point that; I am not making this post to whine about the game, or scream that I am leaving in disgust. I am making this post because I truly want this game to succeed and if you take it out of early access and release it to the general public in its current state all you will do is bury it in a more spectacular fashion than No Man's Sky's opening day. Either, I really hope you have a lot of polish in the next release or if not, please do not publicly release the game out of early access until you do, for the sake of the game's future and the potential for an influx of a new playerbase.

 

I suspect most will agree with most of what you say, most importantly that there is a very good game in here at its heart. My understanding is that Port are out of money for further development and refinement and must launch in order to fund further polish and content. It may be that simple.

What I have seen playing most of the releases over recent months which you will have missed, is the steep upturn in quality and content in the last 2 or 3 releases. What you see now, with its deficiencies, is light years ahead of what we were playing 3 or 4 releases ago, so I have to be optimistic that subsequent releases, including the launch release, will be substantial improvements.

Should they be successful with sales, then much is possible. The concern has to be that in today's consumer market, with highly polished sterile, unimaginative 'dross' becoming available from around the world, much as pay to win or playable only via micro transactions, the user base will demand polish before content or imagination and reject it. Again I have to be hopeful that there is a large enough audience out there to stick with the product, at least for a while.

 

Selling silver and gold scraps.... oh wait...

 

I agree 100%... I even wish they had worked on solidifying the quest experience before performance polishes were done.. many quests have been broken the same way (let's not talk about the mess the Journal/Notes are), release after release, and this has been a problem since forever. Clunky and they break. I have managed to finish the main quests, but it took two releases for one of them to be completed due to bugs.

 

Where did you hear this from? I cannot say I remember the devs ever saying this.

 

I would like to know this too.

 

We would too... please don't spout wild speculations as if they are fact. This is not true.

 

My apologies. I was in fact attempting to support the game, which I am currently very much enjoying and witnessing dramatic improvements.

Perhaps 'out of money' was inaccurate, what I meant was further development requires funding, hence a launch is needed. I assume that's accurate?

In terms of 'wild' speculation, I accept its speculation. The number of pre-launch backers has levelled off somewhat as one would expect at this stage. The kickstarter pump priming is well behind us and Port has been exploring other funding methods. However a good launch and plenty of new players would help enormously.

Is that not fair?

 

Thank you for the feedback. It would be incredibly helpful if you reported the issue with the courage quest as an individual bug in the bug forums in addition to here in this feedback.

 

Mischievous Dragon's TOP-5 list of the "Our Impressions... Not ready for launch.. dissapointing":
1. Few commonly encountered food items such as Apple, Tomato and Potatoe have outdated, ugly and visually non-competitive inventory icons.
2. Your footsteps SFX tech does not support footsteps SFXs for shallow water and bridges. (The footsteps SFXs were better implemented in the commercial launch of Ultima 9.)
3. No voice overs for the On-screen Hints in the Isle of Storms Tutorial. (There is the voice overs for the on-screen hints in the tutorial scene of Ultima 9.)
4. Missing the "Death By Fire" animation from all Avatars: dying to Fire Damage looks dull and non-immersive and not like in 'Crusader: No Remorse' and in Molyneux's games.
5. Missing the "Sir/Dame" titles in gold colored font Pledge Reward from all Royal Founder Knight+ accounts.

 

"As an example, I had a friend log on whom had not logged on for almost 2 years. They made a new character and proceeded onto the Path of Courage quests. Starting in the Battle of Highvale, they unlocked the gate and walked through towards the caravan but did not realise they had to click on the caravan so proceeded back towards the keep, back passed the gate. When they tried to leave after they worked out they needed to click on the caravan they found the gate had closed and was unable to re-unlocked because they no longer had the key and the gate refuses to open. After trying to escape the area for 30 minutes (in lieu of exiting to the menu and logging into the world map) they gave up and logged off stating that after years of work the initial moments in the game are still bug ridden and unplayable."

There's a few corrections that need addressing, here. The first one is that once a player has the key and opens the gate, that's all they're required to do in order to leave the map. Double-click the caravan and off they go. Everything else in the scene is optional - there is nothing preventing him from leaving the scene Next, the key is not removed once used. And finally, all the player had to do was double-click the closed gates from outside and he would have knocked the gate open. Again, everything else within the village is optional, so he didn't miss anything that would prevent him from leaving the scene.

 

1, 2, 4, and 5 are spot on. Should be high priority in my opinion.

We have joked about the ambient sounds, but they really are tacky and down right disgusting at times. I'll take the crocodiles barking over the Ardoris nonsense or the "hmmm" anyday.

One friend will not buy the game strictly because of no voice over.

I planned to play quests in friend mode, but it may be difficult.

Add one more... No actual reason to level up other than to grind something else bigger.

Love the concept, disheartened by some of the decisions.

 

This is bugged, you still have the key but the keyhole rotates down and is no longer able to be activated. I just tested it and verified. Also, as a weird edge case, if elves chase you back inside they can kill Edvard.

To be fair, I liked the addition of the caravan, but I too spent quite a bit of time running around trying to figure out why talking to the farmer wasn't getting me out of the map. And I KNOW that clicking the wagons is a transportation method.

 

I tried to lock myself inside the village, but couldn't. Once unlocked and I wait inside the village for the gates to close, all I had to do is double-click the gate and it opened. Didn't have to use the lock again. As for Edvard, that is a bug and I'll fix it so he's like Edvard in Solace Bridge - basically jacked up and unstoppable (and no, you can't get him to follow you outside the gate).

 

This is an unfortunate statement based on speculation. You may not like where the game is, and you may not like certain aspects of the game (the OP's feedback was informative, if limited to the starter quests), but if anyone reading this takes a more than cursory look they would see consistent monthly releases, and the last four releases alone have been CHOCK full of fixes, additions, etc. That does not inform your statement.

 

Ok, got it nailed down, you HAVE to go out, and break down the gate to come back in. Then you're trapped. No clickable areas on the gate, lock isn't clickable.

Note: If you go back to the main menu and reload after getting trapped, it resets the lock and dead Edvard. But they shouldn't have to do that.

 

Magnus, did you read my post or just take a 'cursory look ? I refer to regular patches, that the OP didn't get to see, and I stated that the recent patches were full of quality updates.

 

Alright, I'm able to repro that exact scenario. Thanks for the clarification. I've entered a bug for that exact systemic problem - #56267

 

More important is there is not that much content except progress grind and no sandbox feeling , no balance between casual and progress gamers, nothing worth to grind for , except you like grinding for higher skills.

 

How about adding a pop-up comment 'are you sure you want to leave explaining you cannot come back'