1. Here you will find official announcements and updates. These announcements are also linked in the Official SotA Discord server.
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Q1 2016 Schedule Update

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Dec 17, 2015.

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  1. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    Greetings Avatars,

    As we have stated previously, our goal is to once-per-quarter post an updated schedule for our monthly releases. Even though these goals will likely change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to provide you an updated roadmap periodically.

    Our goal continues to be to deliver our backers content each and every month so that we can get feedback and use it to iterate improvements. This continues to benefit the game, with sweeping changes like the change over to use-based advancement. Meeting that monthly goal is our highest priority, but we require flexibility in our deliverables in order to meet that goal. As you have seen in previous releases, sometimes we push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

    The focus of the first quarter of 2016 is to get us as close to Alpha/Feature complete as possible as soon as we can. However we are balancing that Alpha goal with polish, performance, and service hardening to prepare for our final wipe as soon as mid-summer. If we have to make a choice at any point we will favor getting to final wipe over hitting Feature complete. That is why you will not see quite as much content listed as last quarter, despite our increased staff. We feel that it is better to get the game into a more polished, playable, and secure state sooner than it is to check off every single feature.

    As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers.

    RELEASE 26, January 28, 2016
    • Full Wipe: Once again we are going to make some fundamental changes to item and quest architecture that require us to do a full wipe for Release 26. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please note that if you have been waiting to melt down add-ons, this is your chance to do so as long as you do NOT log into the game once R26 goes live (which automatically claims the items and prevents melt down).
    • Spells & Skills: We will continue to make a pass through the skill trees and add new skills, balance existing skills, and replace less useful skills.
    • Story: More polish passes will be made on existing maps for balance and story support. We will also continue to expand the story with new scenes, including the towns of Resolute and Aerie.
    • Player Homes and Player Owned Towns: We will add another town template along with some more tools to customize your town. We will also begin delivery of add-on store buildings.
    • Crafting: Agriculture will expand to include Public Gardens and foods will now have longer term effects (as well as more recipes). We will also create more armor and weapon recipes, including more critical success effects.
    • Creatures: The Chaos Daemon will lay waste to players with his Chaos Magic powers.
    • Metrics and Logging: We will greatly expand the data we record to better inform optimizations, balance issues, and necessary economic tweaks.
    • Performance: Major efforts will be done to optimize performance. This will include frame rate improvements, load time improvements, and memory footprint improvements.
    • Sound Effects: A thorough pass will begin through the starting scenes (Isle of Storms, etc.) to increase overall quality of the environmental sounds.
    RELEASE 27, February 25, 2016:
    • Story: More polish passes will be made on existing maps for balance and story support. We will also continue to expand the story with new scenes, including the town of Xenos and the entrance to the dungeon of Artifice. Scenes in the Vale will start to get polish passes to bring them up to current dynamic spawning standards.
    • Player Owned Towns: We will add another town template and towns will begin to receive blessings based on buildings placed and population density. Music chosen in the PoT submission form will begin to be heard.
    • Roving Encounters: Roving encounters (patrolling creatures) will now appear on the overworld map and can be engaged (pulling you into a scene) or avoided if you wish to sneak past.
    • Crafting: The crafting system will expand with recipes for alcohol and teleportation. Additionally certain recipes can now be taught to other players. More resources will begin appearing in the game as well.
    • Job System: Public and player vendors will now take Job Orders. These jobs describe what players wish to purchase and how much they will pay for them.
    • Interactive Use Logging: Players will be able to view a log that tracks which players interacted with an interactive object (doors, containers, etc.) on a player’s lot or Player Owned Town location.
    • Combat: Balance passes will be made across most parts of combat including PVP.
    • Performance and Polish: Major efforts will be done to optimize performance and polish gameplay. We will also increase the breadth of metrics and logging.
    RELEASE 28, March 31, 2016
    • Story: More polish passes will be made on existing maps for balance and story support. We will also continue to expand the story with new scenes, including the dungeon of Artifice and the Superstition Canyon control point.
    • Castle Defense Scenarios: Castle scenes will appear in the game along with siege weapons to attack and defend them.
    • Town Sieges: Towns will begin coming under siege from the eight Cabalists (also known as the Dark Lords). While towns are under siege players must fight, run, or sneak past the siege lines around the town.
    • Creatures: At least one Cabalist will begin wreaking havoc on besieged towns. Players using Moon magic will now be able to summon Wisps to support them.
    • Skills: The ability to forget a skill will now be available from trainers. Polish and balance passes will be made across all skills and spells.
    • Crafting: Polish and balance passes will be made on resources, recipes, and creature loot.
    • Single Player Offline: While Single Player Offline mode has been working internally since the start of the project, the work of making this available to players will begin. Additionally, features and content specific to Single Player Offline Mode will move into full production.
    • Service Hardening: We will begin a series of passes through the client, authentication, and server to harden the service for security and customer service. Special attention will be paid to the Patcher.
    We continue to be incredibly thankful for the support we receive from this amazing community. While the funding you provide makes all of this possible, it pales in comparison with the faith you have in us, the feedback you provide us, and the content you are making for everyone to enjoy. We are humbly grateful, and we cannot wait to see you again in New Britannia!

    Before I go, I wanted to include an excerpt from my original post about our Early Release Schedule that is important to set the framework for our ongoing schedule:

    As a crowd funded and crowd sourced project, we feel it is incredibly important that we provide our backers with information and access well before game studios would normally do so in a traditional development model. Traditionally, the players are given information and access only after the development team has already decided exactly how things will be done, and at times, even after it has already been implemented. By the time the public normally has access to the product, there is usually no time to meaningfully react to the public feedback.

    Shroud of the Avatar is different than the traditional model, as we intend to offer our backers extremely early access to information and even the game itself. With that said, we also want to be very careful that we only provide access to portions of the game when they are ready for a wider range of feedback. If we can play it internally and we know it is not ready, then there is nothing to be gained by having a wider audience come to the same conclusion. In fact, it could be quite damaging to do so.

    Our strategy over the next few months is to provide you with focused and iterative releases of content. Your feedback during these releases will be critical to making the final product the best it can be, and we appreciate that you are all so willing to devote your time to helping us. With each release, we will have specific tests we will ask you all to make. As we get closer, we will send instructions on how to download, install, report bugs, etc. After each release we will review the results and reevaluate the plan including the duration of availability of each release. Please note that game data will be wiped periodically during early access.

    It is important to note that all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change.

    NOTE: Payment plans have been extended to June 2016

    Sincerely,
    Starr Long
    Executive Producer
    Shroud of the Avatar
     
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  2. Ice Queen

    Ice Queen Avatar

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  3. Moiseyev Trueden

    Moiseyev Trueden Avatar

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    Awesome and appreciated as always!

    Also, good luck on the final wipe goal. That will make a lot of us thrilled.
     
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  4. Bubonic

    Bubonic Avatar

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    I'm pleased and intrigued, thanks for deciding to make this part of the testing process.
     
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  5. Bubonic

    Bubonic Avatar

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    Awesome. Can't wait for both of these things. Will town sieges be an offline mechanic as well?
     
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  6. Lord Andernut

    Lord Andernut Avatar

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    Is there an advantage/disadvantage to Town Sieges? If POT's are immune to them is that a benefit or a drawback of living in a POT?

    I always thought Town Sieges was a pretty interesting feature.

    Looking forward to the polish & load times improvement. I've got a pretty beefy system but a good friend of mine plays on a dated laptop and he'll appreciate it ;)
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2015
  7. Earl Atogrim von Draken

    Earl Atogrim von Draken Avatar

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  8. Noric

    Noric Avatar

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    Big change for a little note. Nice to see this fixed.
     
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  9. Scraps MacMutt

    Scraps MacMutt Avatar

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    Does he look like this? :D

    [​IMG]
     
  10. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    Two Factor authentication?
     
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  11. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    I love this line. It suggests there is content only for SP Offline. I don't think I've heard that before. I wonder what an example of that might be? Also, it paves the way for some content to be exclusive to multiplayer (like pvp zones).
     
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  12. Ashlynn [Pax]

    Ashlynn [Pax] Avatar

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    Not sure if I'm misinterpreting this part but does that mean the last ever wipe of characters and other things will occur at the end of Alpha rather than at the end of Beta/Release?

    I really dislike the constant wipes myself but that seems really... weird to say the least. And an exploiter's dream.
     
  13. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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  14. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    This is the sentence I don't understand. Are we trying to say that we want to be feature complete and so if we need to have additional wipes to do that we will? Or are we saying that at some point we'll say this is a final wipe and even though we may not be feature complete we'll never wipe again? The second interpretation makes me nervous like we'll get to a point where we say "gee golly I wish we could complete this project but we told you we'd never wipe again so, sorry we'll never get that feature into the game." Please advise.
     
  15. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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  16. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    This means that contrary to previous methodology and plans we are striving to stop wiping and make things backwards compatible as much as we can. There are no changes ever that would be blocked by not wiping. It just makes changes harder and longer to implement.
     
  17. smack

    smack Avatar

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    Ok, so then pre-launch players can potentially all be at level 100 by the time the game is officially released? How will that balance with the main story-line quest where you might be such a level that you can just kill everything in one shot by the time that content is released/revealed at launch?
     
  18. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    I would ask how does that ever balance, even 20 years from now? (if people support grinding at launch, why wouldn't they support it in alpha/beta? Time in game is time in game, right?) #devilsadvocate
     
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  19. Moiseyev Trueden

    Moiseyev Trueden Avatar

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    Thanks for the effort to minimize wipes even more so now that I know that it piles on are harder work load for your team. I for one am ok with more wipes if it makes it more efficient and less of a headache for you all, but I know lots of people don't like them.
     
  20. Moiseyev Trueden

    Moiseyev Trueden Avatar

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    I'm pretty confident that it is purely referring to the current pre-alpha wipes. Alpha, Beta, and launch will probably still have official wipes (or maybe just launch will have wipes, but I'd be surprised if Alpha and Beta didn't as well).
     
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