pay $5 to post

I know what you mean, but in my experience, constructive criticism is welcomed or at least treated with respect even by the most avid supporters of the game. I haven't seen anyone "jumping" on game critics like Edward Newgate or Envy because their criticism is expressed in a constructive manner. There are many critics, however, who express themselves in vitriolic and unhelpful terms, and I think that wears down some people's patience and makes them less accepting of the criticism. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but it is human nature.

 

Your preamble is wrong though. I would have decided the same way you did, given the choice you mentioned, but in reality, there were a couple of other options as well. I mentioned a cheap and easy to work one in another thread, so I'm not going to repeat and derail this one. Your assumption that this would save Portalarium massive funds might be overly enthusiastic as well. They stated it would be a temporary measure (though, I grant you that they could consider the next 10 years temporary ), meaning they have to implement a solid, working solution later on. This could cost them more than doing it right now, given that 'later on' (hopefully) we'd have a lot more and not a lot less players and thus forum traffic. It's like deciding to build a flood gate later on during the flood and not in advance during dry times.

There's a slight misconception on what spam people meant, I'd guess. There has been dozens and dozens of 'selling Indian products' on a daily base on the forum at one point in time. Portalarium had not been prepared and had to invest some developer time to handle the situation.

Licensing fees? I doubt you could even get a License for Bethesda's Creation Engine and if you could, I wouldn't want to know the price tag ^^. That said, I seriously doubt that it would speed the process up by as much as you make it sound, given that (unless you want a second Skyrim), there'd have to be a good deal of changes on the Engine by Portalarium. Unity was, as much as I dislike it, the best choice given their budget.

I'm well aware of how you meant this, but it includes one massive point that might play it's underrated part in peoples subconscious. You are not playing, since there is no game to play. You are testing a sandbox. If your expectations are to play a game, then, yes, you'd be disappointed by sheer definition.

Just that in this case, the paid tester usually is qualified for the task, which is less often the case with Kickstarter backers, hence why they have to 'pay' for the overhead they are causing to the developers with their 'substandard' feedback. Sadly people tend to forget that (or tend to fail at rating their own qualification on the subject). I wish more people (like you) would understand that.

That is one point I hate about this community. People have seriously lost ANY value for their money (and sadly other peoples money as well). $5 buys you dozens and dozens of hours of joy and fun during a Steam sale. I have 'invested' several hundred dollars on SotA, but if one is honest and compares a couple of the price tags, then SotA is EXTREMELY expansive, compared with other games. Yes, you might love the game, so there is no 'competition', but for other players, there is competition and that means they are going to compare the price. This hurts those of us who wish there'd be more than just a few hundred players online. Without us getting more players, it's less likely to meet others online, so we are shooting ourselves right in the leg with that kind of 'elitism'. And no, I understand the financing model, I actually appreciate it! There are some negative side effects (like the delay in shipping The Hendoman mentioned, as a direct result of not having the full fund available on day one, but pouring in slowly and hardly predictably), but there's an incredibly benefit to not having a publisher as well. That doesn't mean that the numbers of that financial modle haven't gone a little loop sided though.

 

As a Developer past 15 years I LoLed ... your description is as vague as mine but I dont think its really that important to go in details :-D

 

Where i have lost in my post a value of money? I said in another post that the prices are realy high? and sorry today every one is spoild every thing should best be free.
To have an activ account of a game to post on a forum is a standard. I allways wanderd wy shroud was so open.
They did as i said befor as a protection. 5 Euros are 5 Euros or Dollers or what ever. If you are interested in this game well its a good way to start with your pledg maby you will buy it later. There are a lot of peaple who wated for a steamsale to grab it for 34 euros or somthing, and play only to get masks/hats. Thats one of the reason wy you dont see so much peaple. And from the 50k bakers we have, chanzes are that 25% are multiaccount users means that from the 50k bakers, there are 12,500k Users that are non existing maby more so you have an playerbase of 38K peaple you can bet that more than 60%-80% are only online for releas to grab stuff or are inaktiv. so one reason wy you dont see so much peaple. this and the time zones and you get the peapl you meat on daly bases

 

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Following this game is like a roller coaster.

I hate the combat system as it's currently implemented. There are certainly other things I dislike at the moment too. Things that need fixed, things that are not implemented yet, things that have been delayed month after month. It's all quite frustrating if you're paying attention day to day, or if you just show up every few months. It's HARD to follow this game. Not because the devs are doing a bad job, but because we're tired of waiting, the devs are human, and the longer it takes, the closer we get to "launch" it becomes more and more an act of faith to believe this game is going to be everything we want it to be. It doesn't mean that can't or won't happen, it just means that until it does the skeptical side of our brains is in the drivers seat.

The feedback given on these boards is taken very seriously by the developers, and month over month there has been great change based on that feedback. Do we have blocking and countering in combat yet? Nope, and I've been screaming about that for two years! So on a personal note, I have every reason to be as upset as anyone else is about where we are now, where we're headed, or where we've been. And sometimes, I get as upset as you appear to have been in the OP, I just try not to post it because it's not very helpful. It doesn't speed things up, it doesn't change things, it ignores the positives, and it's always a moment in time that doesn't give credit to where we've come from and the work that has been done to date.

So two things:

1. If this thread is about paying $5 to post, and I think it was originally, then to me that's a non-issue. The only people that can't post now are spammers, people that use alts to hide behind, or potential new players that haven't decided to put money into the game yet. $5 isn't a very big hurdle for anyone gamer, so if it's important enough to post here in the forums, it should be worth $5. Otherwise, just keep reading and watching the dev hangouts until you feel like you've been convinced to put down $5.

2. If this thread is about the direction of development, there's certainly a way to give that feedback without throwing the baby out with the bath water. It sounds like you've figured that out already so I'll refrain from saying anything more.

I'm all for people having their opinions, good or bad. Just be prepared for people to disagree with you.

 

I'm sorry, but that absolutely isn't true, especially the bolded part. Individual currencies don't have the same Purchasing Power. My currency the UK Pound has far more purchasing power than either the Dollar or the Euro, where as the Euro is weakening against it's own history because of, and currently is outright collapsing in Greece. If you live in a country which is weak against the currencies Shroud accepts, $5 is a huge investment. If you are currently not employed, that $5 could go on far more essential needs too. Dollars are not just dollars and not just the same as Euros.

It's also not about people being "spoiled", and watching that kind of mindset destroy entire countries because people can't get out of the illogic of thinking the economy is either a Morality Play or the equivalent of a house hold budget, it's amazing to see someone using it here whilst not realising it's just going to lead to the same result; you'll strangle your own customers and end up wondering why the income levels for Shroud don't go up.

None of which relates directly to the $5 to post issue; I did see the Spam, didn't bother me too much as I before opening any forum, I just clicked the User Name, clicked Ignore and it was all automatically gone. But that is the reason why they've implemented the pay to post system. Now the rest of the store however... there I totally agree with the wider criticism.

 

Respectfully, this needs to be closed.

 

With the bolded part i ment it doesnt matter in wich currencie you see it (as i was writing a noticed there allsow doller and other currencies besides euro ^^). If you dont have much money and 5 dollers are a huge investment than you shouldnt be thinking to buy a game that costs 45 doller or somthing. I get your point and maby there will be a nother solution
but i guess this was the fastest and cheapest

indiablo.de is a side i allways looked up infos and talk about the game with others, i never looked up blizzards forums. So there are allsow for peaple the community forums if they realy cant /wont invest 5 euros.

 

wy this needs to be cloesd? there are peaple talking repsektfull about the topic?

 

Because despite having an open forum where people can post their opinions and give feedback (good or bad), no good comes from a thread that is basically saying "In 20/20 hindsight, I don't like how this game is being developed!" It's not time for a post mortem on Shroud of the Avatar.

 

No I think it needs to continue. There has ended up being some really heartfelt communication going on here. A thread may start as one thing and then go on discover the true issue. Communication is like that, sometimes when people let their guard down we truly see.

 

First i dont think this thread has broken any rules.
Second Even a thread is critical as long as its construktiv feedback its fine.
What you demand would be like be censureship cous some said somthing negativ about a game you love.

 

Well I don’t feel scammed in the least with SoTA and in general I'm happy with the way the game has funded up to this point with things like the $5 to post having sprung up out of necessity to keep the forums a clean and spam free place to discuss the game. This is definitely not part of some more elaborate evil developer tactic to scam people.

With regards to how the game looks and feels, we all know that things are in constant flux due to development so many things will change and improve vastly before launch although if you can find a game from 2008 that looks like this I’ll be impressed!

 

Good points all.

 

Who would have thought that a requirement of $5 would cause so much upset.

If the $5 serves a purpose (and it does) then I see no problem at all. I mean who really want's to see continuous spam.
Anyone who hasn't pledged for the game has still got access to all the information on here, can still view all the reviews from 3rd part sources, can still view all the YouTube videos, can still access IRC.........

And seriously if you really think $5 is a lot of money then you really shouldn't be buying computer games!

 

I'm actually hoping that they don't try to make the full release at the end of this year. Keep up the monthly releases but don't set an artificial deadline so that things get rushed and then people start checking it out and say,"Oh that's missing, that's not finished." And then the game gets destroyed by reviews and press and dies.

I say take your time and keep up the monthly updates and let's make this the best game possible for Episode 1 and then look forward to more content and features in the future episodes.

 

100% behind what you say, but it happend allready with the last E3

 

Let it happen again. I just don't see how can go from Pre-Alpha to Final in this period of time and I hope we don't pressure them to do so.

It's not like they aren't letting us play the game. It's up 24 hours a day and updates roll in every month. They are working with the community on the game's development consistently. They listen to our feedback.

Nothing to complain about in my opinion.

 

Projects can't just keep going indefinitely burning money. At some point SotA has to launch and only Portalarium know the answer to when it must go live.