Save the game? PVP?

It's not that it needs to work like every other game, it's about acknowledging and listing why the current way that SotA's handling PvP is wrong. Always show by example.

With that said, I'm not about to throw away WASD control scheme just because "everybody else does it".

As a PvP veteran, I have little to no interest in SotA's PvP and I doubt any amount of "introduction" is going to rectify the issue or compel me to be an active participant.

Portalarium has something in store for us, so lets see what it is. I'll just say that their stance of "PvP flagging" has made me very skeptical on SotA's success on the PvP front.

You linked Extra Credit's "fail faster" video. Early Access, as nasty as it is, allows the players to communicate to the designers what works for them and what doesn't work; enabling the designers to fail faster and (hopefully) improve on it.

 

We're in the same boat there This is one of the reasons why I feel it's very vital that our game stay the course (whatever that course is of which I have no clue other than copying other games).

Yes, some of these things within that video I don't agree with, and one I would say that allows those start up games to well outstretch their budget, and that's "releasing content in unpleasing states that don't reflect their outcome in entertainment value". Within that video, we heard $60M start up money mentioned as a minimum, yet somehow our SOTA seems to be well on it's way to having an actual launch without such a high cost. I believe the reasons for that are that we have such a competent and well proven staff who taught all following games how to better their own product, which is just another copy of UO. I believe that game companies as EA, don't want such games on the market because they can't then sell other games, because the consumer is already so well entertained that they don't have time to play any other games if a game like SOTA succeeds.

One thing those videos do show however, are many pitfalls that can come our way if we are on the same path as the games they mention within it.

I currently don't see anything that resembles our Portalarium handling anything in PvP, other than having what I hope is only a place holder mechanic in place. I can't say that I don't agree with what they have, because I see them as having nothing, which raise my hopes that they do have something, but have yet to implement it due to either development/implementation backlog or by intent in order to have a big bang for launch time. If they haven't been saving content for that launch time, I believe this would be a mistake. I do have confidence that they do have such unreleased content, because of the need to keep our players working on refining what needs their better attention. If they place a distraction from what needs to be tested in the game, then they loose the ability to more properly look for bugs within that content or gaming mechanic that is still under review.

With what our developers have shown thus far with $10M, I give them allot of latitude when waiting on more fun future content. To rush such a thing would suffer in it's quality and become not only subject for bad public review, but also tipping their hand to an open market which could then head them off at the pass by presenting such content themselves first.

The "Battle Royale" I see as only a quick fix which may damage or cause our combat equipment to become needing replacement which is a good thing for the economy (which all pvp is useful for) because it's currently the only way where we can get any of the gold held by the upper 10% to become consumed. The other thing "that thing on the napkin", could be better than it is as it's an old concept design, yet we have yet to know or be consulted on within it's finer makings.

In short, I don't think we have anything that's PvP to pass any judgments on. I believe that there's ideas out there that could be better and also those that are yet to be thought of that could make or game truly unique and more fun than our competitors.
Since they have yet to make it, I think there's still time to think of it... whatever original "it" we can find to better suggest in their course of future actions.
~Time Lord~

 

Been there done that

 

Only allow flagging at the oracle, only allow healing or buffing flagged players if you're flagged or you're in a solo/party instance. This doesn't have to be complicated. Obviously none of this applies in PVP instances.