R33 feedback on activity rewards and skill gates

So, post release 33 and here’s my feedback.


First, some clarifications. I am aware this is a game in development. Still, persistence brings with it a responsibility to treat the players time with respect and the making of significant changes, such as the taming nerf or the gold nerf in relation to housing taxes, need to come with better appreciation of the players time.


The taming nerf should of come with a skill book that reset an entire tree. I don’t fully grasp why you would reset one taming tree skill and still have combat or summoning if you were wanting to switch out immediately. This, paired with the selling of additional books for COTO didn’t respect the players. I never levelled taming, but this decision and outcome concerns me when I consider the philosophy of Portalarium in how they value player time.


Please refrain from posting screenshots of the ‘under construction screen’, from appealing to the credentials of certain people, insisting that complaining is ‘pointless’ or snide remarks on how those who are not having fun are somehow not ‘playing right’ or have the right to post negative experiences.


The current game loop ACTIONS.


I will not be dealing with RMT and will be treating the fairness of these aspects as they relate to gameplay. RMT is its own thing.


ACTIONS

GOLD - To get gold, what do you do? Grind the most efficient spots which in my experience have no risk. Consider this COMBAT as well as it levels your combat skills which require no GOLD. MAGIC SKILLS are different.

EXP – To get exp solo, you do action GOLD since it’s efficient use of time because of Magic’s gold requirement

MAGIC SKILL – to level magic skills you need reagents and therefore must do action GOLD

CRAFTING – Before you craft you do action GOLD as you need fuels and tools to process. Also requires GATHERING for pool exp but doesn’t tend to be a roadblock given the amount of gathered items required to craft

RENT – You do action GOLD because you need to pay rent. This consumes the first hour per week before you have built up more gold to do MAGIC SKILL or CRAFTING actions.

HOUSING – Requires GOLD to buy lottery tickets or for owners, GOLD or CRAFTING to furnish. CRAFTING is simply a function of GOLD grinding

GATHERING – Here’s one example of a unique activity since you can GATHER independently of the GOLD action. However, you will need to do the GOLD action to process your items. This goes double for ore and wood which benefit from easy to farm scrap drops


So, right now, all activities that I personally consider options that interest me (No PVP or RP listed as I haven’t participated in that) boil down to converting GOLD into access to that activity. In order to craft, I need to grind mobs for gold. In order to pay rent I need to grind mobs for gold. In order to level magic I need to grind mobs for gold.


Right now the game only recognises your time as valuable when farming the most profitable area. So any other activity is directly ‘fuelled’ by first paying your dues in culling the bandits and undead and ‘converting’ that capital into progress elsewhere. Gathering technically costs because you must give up the opportunity cost of gold to go do gathering and you’ll need gold to either list for sale or process all that stuff anyway so you’re still not really given a choice on how to play.


Is this the vision of the game? Every activity is a gold drain, except for mob grinding. If gathering doesn’t create gold, why does it destroy gold at such a high rate when items are processed?


To put this further, my goals in game for R32 and R33 were this

·Own a taxed row lot

·Be a carpenter

·Practice Fire Magic

All three of these things are achieved in only one way. Grinding gold from whatever that scene is with lots of humanoids for 1 skull. No Risk, all reward in terms of time. That’s maybe 2-3 hours per week of that one activity, just to fund my row house and keep my reagents stocked. This is the single activity that game wants me to do to maintain a zero sum in terms of achieving anything in game.


Even in a small group of friends where we have dedicated miners, we still must stop all other actions to carry out the GOLD grind to do anything with that ore.


This is not immersive. There needs to be a wider variety of ways to earn gold in the game to promote the ‘living world’ Humanoids are the only source of gold creation, but why? Why not have the Blacksmith buy ore at a similar rate per hour for miners to generate capital with which to carry out other tasks? The town inn buying items grown in gardens or gathered from scenes. Even making leather something that can be sold not just crafted so it’s worth skinning stuff if you’re trying to pay for rent.


Gold should passively accumulate at a minimal rate from most active actions, not just killing humanoids specifically. They should be the most rewarding perhaps, but not the only way to keep yourself afloat. I wouldn’t care if maintaining my rent, reagents and crafting took 4-6 hours a week if it was 4 hours of varied adventuring and exploring instead of 2hours in a boring loop of spawn camping.


Let me be very clear here. It is unacceptable that to use an $80 cash shop item, I am expected to specifically grind for 1 hour a week to maintain it. I do not want tax free, but I would not of purchased the add on house if I was aware of the gold burden it came with. I don’t care if in game lotto tax deeds remain at current rates, but store bought deeds need to be lowered to be maintained with very


We are persistent, game loops need to be in place beyond [Humanoid Combat > Gold > Everything else.]


Experience Pool bonus

I do not understand why, with the grind that exists, we are further rewarded by doing a bigger grind to increase out EXP pools to provide more economical skill ups. Don’t level magic until you have hundreds of thousands of pool exp, so your increases are maximised for less reagents. Is this immersive or enjoyed by players? It seems like a deviation from the natural progression of skill up on use since it requires you to ‘game’ the system instead of exploring naturally to ensure exp is spent efficiently.


Is this made clear in game? I only found out a few days ago and it’s one of my current frustrations with the game as there seems to be a lot of assumed knowledge based on what gets shared on the forums.


Stop hiding the Adventurer Level. It directly relates to PvE power so why is it hidden?


Stat Blocks

My opinion is that is a stat is visible on equipment, we should have it visible on a stat sheet. It’s great to make crit weapons but, unless there is a feature I am unaware of, there’s no reference for our characters stats to determine is a +6% crit rate is better than +1.3 damage. We used to have the ‘V’ character sheet, although I forget what details it had beyond the Adventurer level and flat skill numbers.


Capstone Skill Quests

So, why does the quest to access the master fire trainer involve killing an elemental that appears to be so far out of not just my power to overcome, but three level 40-50 players? I attained Skewer with no quests. I was able to kill the lich and lich mage for the summon lich quests in R32 with the same group, plus one character.


The fire Elemental just bounces around and regens to the point that a DPS check is in effect rather than a skill check for the players.


Why is the fire one so far out of the realm of being reasonably attainable, with no warning and with no relation to the other skills?


I was willing to buckle under for the rent. Willing to watch Netflix while grinding humanoids into gold coins to allow me access to the part of the game that are interesting.


This, however. This single quest invalidated my next milestone of seeking my elemental. My expectations were ‘About the same’ as the Lich. The reality however begs the question, what is required to obtain this in Single Player? Must you level Water skills to get enough attack bonuses to win and access the last Fire skills?


This is another reason for a visible adventurer level to give players an expectation of when they can progress because until this quest; the game rewarded me with skills based on use, and now I require to either level profusely to defeat the elemental or just get a carry through a larger group or higher level players, neither of which are particularly rewarding.


But no, the outcome of facing an opponent required to level my chosen abilities that is pretty much untouchable by my play group of four, is to be the last straw for R33. After a few weeks levelling fire, reaching a hard check like this to progress is disrespectful of my player choices and my time as it is an unforeseeable roadblock.


Final Thoughts


If Portalarium wants persistence be populated, I’d suggest they start broadening the rewarding activities that were possible and assess how they gate skills for solo/small group players.


For now, I paid my rent for a few weeks and am taking a break to see how it shakes out.


Remember, if you only collect in game data ‘before release’ you’re not yet looking at ‘average gamer’ data and maybe the people playing now shouldn’t be considered ‘average’. Same mistake of thinking the game is ‘live’ the critics are being accused of in the forums.


This whole post can be summed up with ‘More Carrot, less stick’.

 

Vagabond Sam, welcome to Shrouds. I did catch one point you made especially. (There needs to be more ways to make money in Shroud of the Avatar). Hopefully I am understanding your point . My comment to what I thought I heard is, that there are unlimited ways to earn cash in SOTA. EXamples below:

Put on a play or concert and charge admission.

Start up a newspaper and charge for ads (using our writable paper or books) Use the cache chest for donations

Move to a town that gives access to a lot in the town which gives permission for a residence vendor for residents. (such as Wizards Rest, next to Owlshead in Hidden Vale)

Come live in our homeless shelter to save cash, well that is on the residence lot as well.

Many things will change as we go forward so you provided great feedback of your experiences. I do know about how it seemed at times the 'carrot' dangled. For me coming onboard in 2013 I have an extremely long amount of time to wish for features I want in the game. Finally many things are coming to pass, but of course not even close to everything on the jira list is in the game , and so many incomplete and unbalanced systems, and we don't have a magic wand to get it all in the game sooner. We each deal with that in our ways. For me I really do trust the development team and I just keep talking or is it keep on keeping on and thinking outside the box while we get this game developed.

 

Thank you for the reply Majoria.

My concerns more centre around the mechanics on how gold is created in game.

Player spending in general seemed to have significantly slowed in R33, based on habits in Estgard where one of my comrades has placed a village lot and comission free vendor. I think the choices portalarium have made with gold creation only having one method, humanoid drops, versus a multitude of gold destruction through crafting, repairs and rent, that the economy is slowed to the point that selling items is inconsistent and players are l;ess likely to let go of gold due to instability.

When direct access to gold controls fuels for crafting, waiting for items to move in vendors results in logging off until they sell.

The things you list would be wonderful activites and the type of thing I would be interested in, but I struggle to not note that while they do not have well rounded features in the game, they still implement heavy restrictionms such as rent and level requirements for skills.

If the economy is not developed, rent should be lowered on lots.

If combat is still in development, do not have raid level boss monsters to progress in fire.

I have been here since the count down timer for the announcement of SOTA so I understand that patience is part of the package, but some decisions lately aren;t about the time it takes to deliver, but the direction they are starting to move towards

 

This is an interesting analysis of the different activities in the game and their relationship with gold. You're saying that fighting is the only gold faucet in the game, with every other activity being a gold sink. Quests do provide gold but they aren't really repeatable.

I broadly agree that it should be possible to play as a crafter (or some other service profession) without having to grind mobs in combat as a prerequisite. In the real world a manufacturer can buy materials and convert them into a product that's worth more than the cost of the materials. That's not usually true in MMOs because there are usually better sources of items than crafting (quest rewards, mob drops) and over time a large percentage of the player base becomes fully equipped and doesn't need more items. To stop the market being saturated in this way you need some combination of:

a) a constant influx of new players.
b) have players spread out over a wide and slow progression curve. If everyone can easily get to the level cap like in WoW, then only the top tiers of items are in demand. If players level too quickly then the mid and lower tier items are so temporary they're not worth anything.
c) continually introduce higher tiers of craftable gear (repeatedly scale the whole game up over time).
d) have gear break and need to be replaced.

Shroud has taken point d) further than most MMOs with two levels of item degradation, but since you can repair items with a COTO it puts a cap on the effects. Why pay a crafter for new armor and a weapon when I can just use a COTO?

Money is a token representing value, so anything in the game (reagents, furniture, land, houses, items, etc.) is expected to be represented by some amount of gold. That isn't a bad thing, it just means there's a real economy. There does however needs to be enough demand for non-combat services so they become a viable way to earn gold. That's where the game and item design has a big impact. I think it's fine for only a small number of activities to be producing raw materials/gold as an input to the system, so long as there are services in demand that stack on top of that.

 

This one I considered yesterday and figured out that it is a partial blocker for macro skill gains (like you could in UO with a static per-usage system.)


Maybe I was lucky to be Blade / Death plus massive inate skills early on. Half time fighting/gathering, the rest crafting or refining. Banked a ton of mats and steadily made gold.

My only real income now is dropped coin and selling higher-end gear.

Figured I needed to start out very efficient and got the cushion I needed for T4 spells and r33 weapon drop issues.


Not planning on a home anytime soon. Maybe I will rent a room somewhere lol