Revisiting after a couple years

As an original backer, I like to take a look at the game every couple of years and give it a couple weeks to see if the game has advanced to the point that it is worth playing.

As a disclaimer, my main damage dealing skill is Ranged, so that is going to color some of my experiences.

The new areas are generally visually interesting. My adventure level is only about 105 and exploration parties aren't really a think at the moment so I didn't really get to see much, but at least they don't appear to be copy and pasted versions of those couple of forest scenes that are all over the place.

Parties are pretty much what the were two years ago, a blend between non-existent and low effort control point farming. I've also seen a few targeting the Breach, but that seems like a high level area and I'm not sure if the enemies are skeletons, which would make me more of a liability assuming it isn't just an "unleash the pets" scenario.

Crafting has improved, the devs reversed course on the whole "adventures should be beholden to farmer" issue that drove me away 2 years ago. I'm not sure if the artifact system that has been implemented is an improvement, it just feels like yet another form of grinding. From what I can see, crafting xp looks like it has swung widely in favor of farmers, which is a bit sad to see.

I still don't get why fishing is so appealing to so many folks, I killed a few hours messing around with it and it is one of the most boring fishing systems I've ever seen, I mostly watched videos in another window while waiting for the animation to finish. Folks get excited over "catching a big one", but that just seems to be bragging rights on the leaderboard. I guess it is the same draw as slot machines.

I am still surprised to see that the devs think that doubling the speed of an animation is the way to show monsters moving twice as fast. I was fencing with the lions in the bottom of a Fall, an absolute chore due to the water, and I almost fell out of my seat laughing at the ridiculous shimmy they do when chasing you.

Targeting is still a mess, I don't know how the game can be as old as it is and still not get that a.) I want to target myself with all off my buffs and heals unless I specify otherwise and b.) I wish to continue targeting the big scary target not the mooks, even if I get caught on a tree and are forced to rotate it out of my sight briefly.

Rubberbanding must be intolerable for players that don't use pets or summons. The amount of times I've jumped or stepped over a terrain feature that "broke" my line of sight on a target is way too high, the only saving grace is that my summon retain the monster's attention long enough that I'm not force to start the fight over.

Loot is still generally garbage, taking down an Ancient Undead or the Archivist and getting worse loot than from their mooks is bizarre. I'm not asking for artifacts raining from the sky, but at least have their gold drop be reasonable, that's one of the reasons the Cabalists are a decent fight, at least you never get completely stiffed on loot.

Finally, the nerfing of Ranged vs. Skeletons is probably a game ender for me. One of my continous complaints about SotA has been the devs determination to have quests end with monsters that you can't defeat unless you can chump every other monster in the quest. The change to ranged makes almost every zone the same, I can't fully explore zones that are at my level since skeleton will wreck me, and if I go back to areas with skeletons I can handle, I am almost oneshotting everything else. Folks say to use magic, but all high level skeletons seem to have enough magic resistance to shrug off GM level banishes and 110 level air magic.

The game has improved, but also regressed for some archetypes, so I don't know, I might give it another week or two, but I have a feeling it will be another couple years before I check in again to see if the game is ready.

 

When you are online more often or at different times you will notice parties for ERG (Eastreach Gap), Vertas Pass, Airship or even training / mentoring in Castle Atos appear relativelly often.

Well, I can´t speak for "so many folks" but for me it ´s difference. Sure it´s nice to strain my nerves trying to get past that big baddy that killed me last time or explore a zone a tier higher than last time but sometimes I just want to spend some time relaxing without paying attention if a fireball comes from the side or a zombie claws it´s way up from the earth below me when I pass too close. Fishing does that. It has meditative qualities. Fishing in a group, for example during a contest adds the incentive of a trophy for my virtual shelf, a price and a group of people who can understand when I mention the XY´th number of cloth gloves I fished up...
Currently we have 3 ongoing fishing contests running so it is in addition some community effort to entertain and have fun. I just wish there would be some test game of gustball again, I seem to have missed the time where it was played more often and only see the empty playing fields in many towns...

You target yourself either pressing F1 or, if you enabled that in the game options, by clicking on yourself with the mouse.
And you can cycle through near enemies using the TAB key so I see no problem there.

Is rubberbanding the same as kiting?

Reasonable? Reasonably I never understood that monsters are supposed to run around with all their gold in their pockets. Some coins, sure - but more? When a player would bring the surplus to his personal chest or the bank, whey would the Undead not have similar services? Imagine the interest gained on an account for 200 years as a Lich...

I can understand that as someone playing an Archer feel like that. When I started my first character I wanted to be a Ranger using a bow as his weapon and it felt a bit harder and using more arrows when going against skeletal undead (bandits or vigilantes or elves were just fine as living targets). My 2nd avatar death was in the "Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine" where a group of 4 skeletal Undead (Whilteguard Fighter, Skeletal WIzard, Skeletal Archer and as far as I remember a Skeleton Footman completely trashed me while my arrows did little damage.

I left, did some other quests and a while later, with more skills raised, using some more magic and using level 2 and 3 range stuff like stacked Aimed and disabling shots instead of mainly auto-attacks saw me victorious.
The proverb I find approbiate is "If all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails." So don´t just rely on your hammer but use something else occasionally. Some Magic for example or a bludgeoning weapon like Cuteberts Mace or the Club of the Bogey Man that do additional damage vs. Skeletons (in addition to NOT being partly resisted like arrows or partly inefficient like Blades Rend attacks).

For the part of the game that I have seen, there is a way for every monster if you don´t singlemindedly try to apply the same arrow to everyone.

 

I have lost count of how many times I've died because I am doing my archer thing and running around like a maniac to find myself needing to heal but my beam hits my summon instead because somewhere in the mess of running and shooting my mouse cursor grazed an enemy, which targeted them, which was immediately untargeted due to my movement, which then default my target to my summon. It is infuriating.

No, rubberbanding is when an enemy decides that it needs to return to its spawn point and does that cartoonish sprint back while invulnerable, it just needs a cloud of smoke and a "meep meep" sound effect. Normally it happens when you pull a monster too far from its spawn, but it can also happen when a monster can no longer target you due to you climbing somewhere, falling somewhere, or because you trip over a tree root.

That a copy and paste job? I am using skills and magic, but up at level 100 or so, the skellies have high enough magic resistance that even GM'd magic skills do 20-30 damage, which is not enough to prevent even green melee skellies from caving my face in. It seems like the intent is to force players to play melee against skellies, which would mean hundreds of hours of respeccing to play a style I have no interest in.

 

You can unlearn skills you want to forget, regaining a bit of the spent XP but you also can use Items of Unlearning that return full xP to be spend elsewhere.

And with Castle Atos +100% learn rate buff and some cookies (g.e. +25% learn rate) with a large XP pool you gain skills really fast.

 

That'd require I completely abandon the mobile archer play style, which works fine on everything aside from skellies and a few bosses. The play style that I find enjoyable.

 

Welcome back! And I hope you continue to play. I am always online, since I work from home. Add Jerim Toulani to your friend's list. I am ALWAYS down for a group adventure.

I do everything I can to keep a party going. New players seem to love the control point parties, so I do a lot of those. I also love an Airship, Spindel, or The Breach group. There are other tier+ sites meant for groups that I play in. Tartaraus is a fun one but I can never navigate to the labyrinth. Lord British's castle is a good one for a group. It is a gauntlet style instance. Spinel is one of my favorite zones because it looks so much different than other zones. It is like a Halloween themed zone. I think it even has aurora borealis.

I love the variety of items to craft. To me, the price for basic crafting items like creote and curing salt is WAY too high. I have gotten all my crafting skills up to 100 and I still can't make a profit. I look at crafting as a necessary evil. No one is ever going to be able to make you the perfect weapon or the perfect armor, except you.

I LOVE artifacts because it is a different grind. Everyone MMORPG is a grind. All of them. Some are better at covering it up or distracting you, than others. I appreciate that there are various grinds and they all seem useful. XP grinding helps with skill development. Crafting grinding helps with crafting skills. Artifact grinding helps you obtain powerful weapons. Artifact grinding might be the best way to make money. Arcane Catalyst grinding for the sieges is fun. Grinding is a part of any MMORPD. I just hope SOTA keeps adding different sorts of grinds with different benefits.

Me neither. I think it started as a joke on UO. Sarcastic players took to fishing like it was awesome as a form of mockery but somewhere along the way the tradition has stuck. I will say that there are some good fish dishes you can cook for good bonuses. Fishing isn't completely useless.

I haven't noticed. I tend not to sweat the small things. I judge a game by if I have fun or not. I am an early Kickstarter backer but I was never able to get into the game over the last ten years or so. I could last maybe five days before I realized I wasn't having fun. I finally started having fun a few months back and haven't stopped. I don't let things like bugs bother me.

I am not sure about this one. I have never had an issue with by buffs or heals applying to me. I think your second complaint might have to do with the auto-attack feature. Personally, I like that it targets what you are looking at. I can just run around control points whacking everything. I wonder if Catnip could create an auto-target toggle. Leave the auto-attack in place but turn off automatic target switching. I think what would accomplish what you want. That would be a good item for the wishlist forum.

This is where Catnip needs more community involvement. From a business standpoint, Catnip needs to have a business case for creating an auto-target switch. How many people want this feature? What is the ROI on this feature? If it doesn't make business-sense then Catnip should just communicate that.

I am not sure what the complaint is. My main character is a tank and if an enemy rubberbands on me it is because I was trying to get away from them. Maybe I am wrong, but what I hear is that players want to break off the attack, go hide in a corner for a minute while they heal or buff, and not have to worry about the enemy healing.

I agree the loot is terrible. Those supply bundles are awful to me as well. How many tomatoes do I really need? But eh, I don't let it ruin my fun.

I am adventure level 125 and skeleton mages, especially hardened skeleton mages, kill me dead every damn time. I have tried everything. I have tried raising my fire magic resistance. I have mastered the Douse skill. I just read recently that enemies can be vulnerable/resistant to certain times of damage. I also read they they can be vulnerable/resistant to certain weapons and weapon materials. I plan to experiment with the skeletons to see what does the most damage. I HATE SKELETONS!

After four months, I am still having a blast. I play all day, every day. I certainly hope you stick with it and will do whatever I can to help you have fun, but no game can make everyone happy. I wasn't here for the exodus from 2016 to 2018 when it seemed a lot of changes drove players away. What I hear from returning players is that they felt ignored, used, and disrespected. I don't have that baggage so I see the game from a different point of view. I don't agree with Catnip's focus on Episode 2 and I want to encourage them to fix a lot of the issues with Episode 1. Until then, it just comes down to if you are having fun or not.

 

The crafting system for XP is geared around many different things. well mining and gathers make some good xp, there are ways through potions and other crafting to get pretty close to the same. the issue generally for xp is the low levels of skills. higher level skills allow for crits on crafting which gain significant xp over non crit. As well things for gathering etc the skills levels many high level crafters pump are Meticulous because it returns the most. Nodes are another thing. there are many tier level of same ore types based on zone hardness. so example low tier zone maybe 5k per mine vs 10k for higher level zones. so its not just geared to the farmers which farming is another way to get xp too.

with Fishing I am with you haha, I am not much of a fishy guy, but a lot of the food systems have fish I use that are hard to get so I need suppliers and or fish myself. there is also the trophy aspect which is fun to mount stuff but over all meh when it comes to getting them... animations are simple and repetitive. there is however the new aquariums which are cool, and rare fish to find for them. that is one reason I fish for deco haha. beyond the food though its not for me either.

They dont poof them that is for sure, the running is funny, wish they just had it more like EQ with no leash at all and walk back killing all on the way back. that would make things more challenging and fun imo. but for line of site which is what you talk about where it runs away it happens when using places that they are unable to get too. it was to prevent ranged people from stand on high points plucking on mobs that cant hit back. there was a major bot issue a while back with that lol.

the f1 is self target, however some skills are target other ie cant heal yourself could be that, or that you didnt have yourself targeted when you hit the skill. usually pets dont get healed when your are self targeted.

Loot at lower levels is not as stellar that is for sure. when you get up to 120+ skills the new places you can farm net you a lot of loot and stuff. So much that a lot of the higher level people actually burn artifacts just for essences. The artifact system was indeed changed to make it more a grind to keep people striving to get the epics but its not end game to have the epics anymore , well some maybe powerful, the top crafters can make some pretty comparable stuff. so it leaves that up the the adventures if they want to spend gold or hunt... at least the drops are more static for what drops what, as well with dailies in the game there are other ways now to get artifacts than hunting.



As to archers, I have a new archer that is about level 100 I have no issues killing undead, however one thing to note even with my lower skills and levels on that archer, I outfitted it with higher level gear and that made a huge difference. Like night and day difference. There is also things to look at far as archers go, there are not buffs that compliment from bard tree etc... so depending on what you use for skills there are many ways to add survival, but end of the day Archers are almost always kite class so expect to move alot when solo.

these are just my thoughts nothing more

 

That's a long way to say "I don't play Shroud as a light armor wearing archer."

 

I'm pretty sure you sent me a request the first day I was back and I've probably been in a group or two with you. You'll have to forgive me for staying a but anonymous, I'd rather not have folks giving me flak in game for me voicing concerns on the forum.

I'll admit I called for more "progress" bar grinding and less "RNG" grinds, even years ago, so complaining about artifacts would be a bit hypocritical, though 256 drops x 5 armor pieces is a helluva grind for a full set of top level Acara armor, and if the common to uncommon stats are representative, not even particularly useful.

Either the devs are unclear on how oceans work or they let folks choose their water types because I've had a heck of a time finding good areas to caught the one fish that I am interested in, as a ranged fighter.

It's mostly a ranged issue, if you just use auto-target, you can hit F1 once and you will reliably target yourself. However, if you ever target something manually, and then kill or lose that target, you revert to auto-target and your actual target flips to your summon or pet instead of yourself. Since it is very hard to notice which you've accidentally targeted an enemy, you either have to remember to hit F1 before any heal or fight without a summon to get reliable healing.

If you play mobile ranged or mage, you notice that sometimes your attacks do a gray 0 for damage. That happens when the engine has determined you're making an attack against an opponent that cannot path to you or attack you with a ranged attack (leading to weird cases where your can spread fire and hit a bunch of ranged enemies and 0 all the melee ones right next to them). It's not particularly realistic, but it is needed so that people don't climb into inaccessible bits of geometry and cheese bosses and the like. The problem is that the logic that determines an enemy "cannot path to you" often kicks in while you are simply walking over a rough piece of geometry, tree roots being the most common in my experience. If the enemy detects that it can't path to you, its "go home and heal" logic tends to fire next and that wyvern you had been fighting for 5 minutes suddenly runs twenty feet and full heals if you didn't have a pet or summon out to hold its aggro.

Generally, I've been around since the beginning, but left originally when it became clear that the devs were determined to kill the mobile playtime. I've come back every couple years to see the game develop, and get told off by the devs for pointing out an exploit they were forced to close a year later. I don't think the game is bad, only that its trajectory fails to exceed the slope of rising quality expectations of general audiences.

 

I'm just saying that I can bust my hump clearing a 10+ zone of all harvestable nodes and earn a few hundred thousand crafting XP for my trouble or I can grow some particular crops and then craft them into a particular product. I was wondering why folks were almost giving that product away for free on vendors

I'm aware of F1, it's losing that self target and SotA defaulting it back to my summon that is the issue.

My gear is a bit old, but most is reasonable quality. I promise you, if I were doing enough damage at AL 100 to wipe skellies in Tier 8+ scenes with close to the same efficiency and I can clear non-skellies, I'd be hunting up at Tier 12, because I'd be one-shotting every non-skelly below there.

 

I pretty much agree with everything you said. For me, the leashing (rubberbanding) is the worst issue.

 

I like clearing sieges, the loots not bad and I'll probably not die if I chat in Universe. That said, your heart just sinks when you are fighting Temna or the other one that makes you move randomly, and you have them down to a sliver only have their ability send you running up a piece of geometry breaking LoS and sending them meep meeping away to heal back to full.

 

Yes. I had a really frustrating time not too long ago trying to kill the air elemental boss in The Breach. I'd get it down to the end of it's health (which would take like 15 minutes) and then it would leash and fully heal. I gave up after a couple of hours because I just couldn't finish it off before it leashed.

 

Welcome Back!!

 

agreed that is what is available most of the time things tend to always revolve around gaining XP as quickly and efficiently as possible whether its a CP, lamech, breach, or spindel. i remember when UT was _the_ XP grind but once it was made a little more challenging (and more fun!) it was abandoned for the easier XP of the CPs. there are so many fun things to do in SotA that give less XP but are sadly bypassed for just that reason.

one of the biggest things we are lacking are folks that are willing to start up an adventure group. i would recommend to everyone reading, if you are looking for adventure start an LFG adventure group instead of waiting for one and advertise on universe chat. people will join and friends will be made if noone joins, just close and try again later. i tend to hop in those anytime i see one to see what is up and if i can contribute as well as open my own as often as time allows. my most enjoyable SotA game time has come from popup adventure groups.

for those looking for an adventure to go on, @Sir.Seggallion started this great post with a list of fun adventures for a party (i have it bookmarked). i know there have been other posts in the past with fun things to do as well.

 

To some degree you can chalk that up to the high XP requirements of leveling passed 120. I'm still getting some of my core skills up to 120 and even a few hours in a control point party is barely going to fuel a fraction of that, if I was adventuring normally, I'd bottom out on XP completely.

 

If you hold ALT while casting a beneficial spell it will target you.

 

Release 52, MARCH 26, 2018.
That's when it was "worth" playing, but others will say it was much earlier than that.

 

It is still worth playing if you are with friends, new or old. It is worth playing if one just appreciates the game for what it is, in its own style. I think it is just fine, but could use a few more folks to share it with.

 

I love how people pretend that a problem isn't really a problem if there is a workaround for it