Roving Encouters

RELEASE 8 (original), July 24 - 27, 2014:

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  • • Interactive Areas: Don’t you wish you could move that chair in the tavern to have a better view of the front door? Public areas like taverns will now be flagged as interactive areas. This will allow more freedom in those spaces by allowing the moving but not taking of items. This will also up numerous other possibilities like interactive chess boards.

RELEASE 9, August 21 - 24, 2014:

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  • New Creatures: Several new creatures will come online including clockwork creatures, gremlins and female elves.

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  • • • Player Made Books: For those aspiring writers you can now write books in the game. These original manuscripts will be one of a kind items that can be traded or sold or submitted for publishing for a small fee. Published books will get copied and placed throughout the world.

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  • Overworld Roving Encounters: Encounters will now move around the overworld including monsters, NPCs, gypsy wagons, etc.

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  • Player Housing: Exterior Decorations and Permissions: Do you desire even more from housing? Your greatest desires will be answered with advanced features that greatly expand the player housing system including exterior decorations, house purchase in game, and player lot access permissions so you can control who can visit your space (everyone, friends, or kindred)

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  • Party Loot Rules: Set how loot will be divided amongst party members. Leave the party leader in charge or random distribution? You decide.

RELEASE 12, November 20 - 26 2014 (and then 24/7 starting Dec 1) :

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  • Creatures: Our creature list will continue to expand with Ghosts, Fauns, Emps and Wisps added to the game.

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  • Combat: The cover system will be introduced that modifies attack and defense values when you (or your target) are behind cover.

RELEASE 13, December 18, 2014:

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  • Housing: Permissions for property will greatly expand to better support groups sharing property, including tools to rent rooms and set “per area/room” permissions. Property ownership will now incur regular fees (unless you are using a tax free deed from a pledge). If the fees are not paid the player will lose their claim and their possessions (including the house and decorations) will be moved to their bank. As part of all this, we will also begin facilitating storing and moving houses (with all associated decorations).

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  • Overworld: 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.

--------------------------------------------------Dumdumdum...

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  • Roving Encounters Delayed: All roving encounters have been gobbled up by the Unity 5 transition monster. Until that beast is slain, the map will be sadly devoid of these.

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  • New Creatures Delayed: All new creatures were slain by the Unity 5 transition monster.

RELEASE 18, May 28, 2015:

• Creatures: Our creature list will continue to expand with Chaos Demons and Wisps.

• Overworld: 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.

• Creatures: Dragons will begin appearing in Novia! Burninating will begin. All hail Trogdor, the Burninator!

In the interest of not letting things slip through the cracks, I've included some goals from releases over the past year that have not yet been met. (I know I left out fishing. We should all know it was in there. It's one feature I'm positive Grand Duke Winfield won't allow the team to forget about! ) :-D

-Interactive Areas (like Taverns) - Originally planned last July. Is this still planned to be completed for Launch?

-Creatures: Gremlins, Fawns, Wisps, Chaos Demons, and Dragons. I know two of these are on our new quarterly, just a reminder that some of these we were told about a year ago, August.

-Book Publishing: originally it looks like publishing a book was going to distribute them throughout the world somehow.. is there some thought on implementing this functionality still?

-Roving encounters:

• Roving Encounters Delayed: Our current random encounters are placeholders to prove out the functionality of the system. We have not gone back to improve them for many months and therefore they are more annoying than enjoyable. Adding more functionality via Roving would just increase annoyance. Therefore we are delaying Roving Encounters until such time that we can design better Random/Roving encounters. Instead of just the random “attack by skeletons” we want more situations like these examples:

• Caravan being ambushed by Bandits.
• Undead Army Unit marching down the road.
• Wandering Merchant of rare goods.
• Wandering Trainer of high level spells like Summon Elemental.
• Satyrs driving Fawns to the slave markets.

I'd like to add that the previously mentioned 'Gypsy Wagons' can certainly be involved in the 'Caravan' scenes.

The Satyr/Fawn scene is intriguing, mostly because it means we should soon have 'Slave Markets' to go to as well! I wonder who will be purchasing their own slaves, rather than freeing them?

-Exterior Decorations were planned last August.
-Customizable party loot distribution was originally planned last August.
-The Cover System was originally planned, last November.
-Per Room permissions, and Room renting tools were planned last December.
-House Moving (keeping deco intact) was planned last December.

Thanks for your time! Any information regarding these features/systems and whether we'll get them before/after launch would be fantastic.

 

the patrolling creatures will be in R20

"Encounter Revamp: Random encounters are being reworked to be more engaging experiences, not just ambush scenarios. Additionally, 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."

But with current state of the game (pre-alfa) there is pretty much uncertain what you deliver when ... As a developer I know, how it goes with deadlines in such a project phase.

On the other hand I have to say that I am pretty impressed how much money was already collected and how very few results delivered on the other hand. So far SotA feels to me more like "hundreds thousands project" rather the "more that couple of milion project" ... but what do I know, I am here only past month or two...