Release 2 Impressions from Chris

Thanks for the information Chris! Shroud of the Avatar is my kind of game, especially since it is NOT based on a movie or comic!

 

Chris, I just wanted to say thank you for doing it wrong and trying to make the game for the players.

Also, regarding jumping...I love the way you guys implemented the jumping. No double jumps. No ridiculously powerful jumps. If you wanted to jump higher you had to give up something in return - time. Just that attention to detail made jumping feel like it wasn't part of an FPS. I'm still looking forward to stamina and focus impacting jumping, and I hope you find the right balance in future episodes.

 

Thanks for sucking!

 

For real tho! DIY all the way!

This is a very refreshing post.

I am glad to be a contributor!

Can't wait to play our game!

 

This may be dating me, but I remember when everquest opened for beta, I got into phase 4, and it really did have this type of involvement from it's fan base and devs as I recall.. ahh, the good ol'days

I remember reading posts from the devs in forums and all this goodness, kinda get goose bumps thinking about it hehe

 

I love that you're doing it wrong! Every dollar I pledged was to enjoy the trip, not just the destination. You and the team are delivering on that everyday and of course our community of 27k plus!

 

Thanks, Chris! Of course I disagree with you about jumping, but you guys are the ones that need to clean up the mess it causes. Everyone else will have to deal with the idiocy of me using it.

 

I'll take "doing it wrong" over the Status Quo.

I've been stating here and elsewhere that the computer gaming industry is coming Full Circle. What started as a small independent business genre is now being served best by small independent businesses.

I love the Ultima series and have been a LONG fan of UO (even still with accounts active), but the breath of fresh air the development of SotA has been compared to UO due to the presence (or lack thereof) of an "overlord" like EA has made all the difference in the world, up to the point, that as of right now, it will be an easy decision in October between the two titles.

I think I would have tried to meet or best Seir *waves to an old UO guildmate* in SotA attendence, but work would not let me this time. R4 will be a different story!

 

I was discussing this with my spouse just the other day! How for years it was almost impossible for little startup individuals to make a name in the gaming industry, but now thanks to crowdfunding, it is becoming possible again!

 

The same thing has already happened in other industries... most notably music thanks to the development of the internet and *gasp!* file sharing. Yeah, of course, it scared the Labels when it started and yes, it started as a less-than-legal pasttime (pirating music), however, it also allowed smaller, independent bands to get their music out both in terms of being listened to in general, and with new technology, able to produce their own albums without being tethered to the Labels themselves.

The same thing is happening; now with Broadband being ever more the norm and with services like Steam, XBLA, and others and, of course, Kickstarter; with computer games.

Now if only there were a way to do it with Movies so that we could have something other than Adaptations, Sequels, and Remakes/Reboots.

 

THANK YOU so much for the jumping; for whatever strange reason, it brought the world alive

I hope you guys continue to be "wrong", it just feels so right and so refreshing. Last thing I'm looking for is the same game I've played 2 dozen times in the past 20 years.

Sorry if I overstayed my welcome; I just didn't want it to end Oh, and found a few extra bugs while I was taking pretty pictures...


Good luck with all the sync points!

 

This is the best game community I've ever been in I would have never dreamed I'd be able to talk to the developers of my favorite games at all let alone a daily basis keep up the amazing work!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

Keep up the good work Dev team, I'm loving the journey so far!

 

One of my favorite indie musicians, Tom Smith, first entered my consciousness waaaay back in the mid nineties with a song called "I Want My Music On Napster", which was saying exactly that.

And movies may well be next! Serenity was about halfway there already; now that Kickstarter exists, things like that may well happen sooner rather than later.

 

Thank you Chris and the dev team. Looking forward to testing R3.

Proudly supporting of Shroud of the Avatar.

 

Thanks Chris for a great post and please keep doing things "wrong" -- we wouldn't have it any other way. Very much looking forward to multiplayer in R3 and hope to see all the Devs in-game so that we can /salute you -- even if I think the animation is robotic

Jumping was a welcome surprise when it was announced that it was actually going to be implemented for EP1 but I'm glad it was done. Granted, it was feature creep and came at the expense of other systems not getting implemented. For what it's worth, the Bartle Test average of all respondents revealed these averages:

Exploration - 68
Socializer - 50
Achiever - 48
Killer - 42

At least among the active forum members who submitted their scores, we love to explore and jumping removed those shackles and let us go crazy. The world that's been crafted so far for us to explore is wonderful. Just imagine the beauty that awaits us on the mainland. That's not to say you should add jumping puzzles, but I think easter eggs here and there would be welcome surprises for the more adventurous players.

And I thought I had Seir beat in terms of hours logged in consecutively! Those timelapses take time to put together

Hope to see everyone in R3 so we can exploit report the multiplayer bugs and find out how many people can sit on the Throne of Bone simultaneously. And since we will have jumping and swimming, I hereby propose the first SotA Decathlon. Can we also get the shot put / javelin throw?

 

As others have stated so well, thank all of you for working so hard to show that "doing it wrong" can go right. Things aren't perfect (nothing ever is), and there will be problems along the way, but every game like SotA that is successfully crowd-funded and developed to completion is another crack in the claustrophobic and confining funding methods of the past. I've enjoyed watching you guys take player feedback into account. In seeing incremental improvements...

I purposefully tried to avoid playing "too much" during R2, because I've burnt myself out on games in the past by playing them too much prior to their official release. Even so, jumping up onto vistas like Seir's picture really felt liberating, especially coming from a "jump puzzle" happy game like GW2. BTW, I don't want GW2's annoyance factor where it feels like you are playing a 3D platformer and you need the vista points/etc. for map completion, but I do welcome the ability to feel like I am "exploring" and achieving something if I get to spots that are hard to reach. Jumping makes it feel like painful and restrictive chains were unshackled. I was even surprised that I half enjoyed the delayed "hold the space bar" mechanic...

FWIW, I think backers are also terrifying "masters" (i.e.,the thought of some of us holding that same sword is pretty unnerving). Still, I guess that the major difference between backers and a publisher is that *most* of our criticisms and brow-beating come from a place of love and dedication to the game. For obvious reasons, publisher's seldom share the same degree of faith and devotion to a project. That's a huge difference and it is everything.

Speaking of which... (sorry OT, can't resist... I will hound you on this issue forever more... it's nothing personal):

Spoiler

Please reconsider the choice that fermented beverages won't give buffs.

What is the point of a food item like beer, and why will people consume it if it has no meaningful impact on the "min/max" side of the gameplay? I get that people will use it to RP and trigger the drunk effects, but that's a pretty niche reason for a skill and items that take up one whole node of the cooking tree....

My rationale for why alcoholic drinks should give a buff:

1. Beer and wine were staples of the medieval diet, and were a major source of calories, something which meant the difference between life and death for many people... (in fact, mead was 'prescribed' as a nutritious and healthy drink for invalids)
2. There were types of beer which had low alcohol content, which were consumed by the young, old, and all between... Wine was also watered down because it was expensive and was consumed more as drink and less as an intoxicant. ("Consumption of weak, low-alcohol drinks at this time has been estimated at around one gallon per person per day." http://www.lordsandladies.org/middle-ages-drink.htm)
3. Many spirits were/are consumed as "digestive aides" (just observe Italians drinking Grappa, a "digestivo", or Germans drinking Schnapps after a meal)

* I am not advocating anything OP. Maybe just something like drinking beer/wine/spirits immediately after eating food extends the duration of the food effect (e.g., a food effect that normally lasts 30 minutes lasts 45 minutes instead).

* For balance, there could be a mild debuff associated with drinking. For example, beer slows focus regeneration by 5%, wine slows hp regen 5%, spirits slow both by 2.5%....

PLEASE!!!

 

Great post Dippy Dragon!

I'm extremely happy with the path the Dev team has taken!

 

You may be doing it all wrong, yet it is all win at the same time.

Very much looking forward to continuing the Shroud of the Avatar journey.