SOTA's Target Audience is too broad.

I get it, we're in pre-alpha and we want everyone to try out the game. I understand, we want as many people as we can right now and later because that just makes us more diverse and stronger as a community.

I agree with both of those points.

But where I think SOTA fails is in it's oddly attempted design to create game mechanics for large groups of people that don't want the same thing, will never want the same thing, and frankly can't ever have the same thing.

FOR EXAMPLE: Combat and PVP

The current mechanics are very twitchy, more like a shooter than an RPG. What's that mean? It means you have to shoot first and talk later. RPG's are all about talking. Take the talking out of combat and you're not really roleplaying anymore, you're shooting.

But what confuses me about this the most, is that the people that want fast twitchy mechanics are "generally speaking" not the same people that want to roleplay, or at least probably don't have roleplaying on their list of top activities. Yes, there are outliers. But seriously, before you post and tell me you're into FPS combat AND you love roleplaying....remember to tell me what games you can actually do that in effectively (then compare the combat systems). And please be honest with yourself before you reply because I'm guessing the two things have never really mixed well. I mean, sure there are probably a few people that roleplay in Planetside, but how far is that getting them?

Of course, there are other mechanics that work like this too....

Single Player vs. Multiplayer
PVP vs. Non-PVP
Stealing vs. Don't even think about putting stealing in this game.
Casual vs. Hard-Core

My biggest problem is that it's my belief that the people that will really embrace this game over the long haul are going to be of a certain dynamic (primarily Muliplayers that like meaningful pvp, and by most definitions are "hard-core" players, and also enjoy roleplaying to some degree). This is a biased opinion, and honestly I don't know if the game can survive or not if this turns out to be true! But what I do know is that the game isn't being developed for these people. The game is being developed for a very broad coalition of people that have completely conflicting ideas about what is fun and what is not fun.

Which is why I'm so amazed that so many mechanics seem to be casual in nature and support the very people that will probably not be playing this game a month after it launches.

I wish this wasn't the case. I wish the game was more focused and clear on what and who it was for.

 

This is a fairly niche game for a niche market.

They *could* add a pause mode to single player offline if people really can't deal with combat because they fear it is too twitchy. But this is far from the most twitchy RPG I've played.

 

That's a perfect example! For single player, they probably should put a pause mode in. Maybe they will?

But for multiplayer, that's not really an option. Yet, the combat system (and that's not the only thing this thread should be about) is a twitch fest that rivals any shooter out there. The differences are really moot.

 

But that/this has been the case since day one.

All the mechanics/design have been "here is what I want to do. lets talk about it...." with next to zero exposition on HOW to do it. Just what they wanted the end results to be.

Now, one can easily say that is not something we should see implemented, that is their entire purpose as a game maker.

However, we can now see the result, as we play through it.

My arguments have always centered around more communication participation in the design process. Not just we throw out ideas on a wall for them to pick through, but the full fleshing out of those ideas in terms of implementation.

They would handle the technical push back of course, but that there was a well thought out process, up front, to start.

I see a few people who have some knowledge of AGILE poking that into threads now.

That is great, I love agile.

What I dont do, with AGILE, and someone who has done it, please tell me HOW you do it this way:

Throw out an idea
Iterate idea for a week
Implement for a week
go back to idea and iterate for a week
iterate implementation for a week.....

ad nauseum.

We DO have a full road map/design up front (waterfall-ISH!!!) but the implementation details are iterated, and the MINOR ideas within the larger idea is iterated, when we hit walls.

And yes, I can point to examples of the idea iteration happening way too much here.

Overworld Map?
PVP <-- still no clear idea on design
Combat <-- Here is one people will argue is not "done" but tell me what major portions are getting iterated?
Every single stretch goal -- lets make some cool ideas! but have no idea when, or how, or, even WHAT some aspects will be!!!

This is feature creep design.

Compounded with the money "need" aspect, as they cater and change the target based on the overall "majority" feedback.

This is why publisher's get a bad rap. Because they let you start with an idea, and make you STICK to that idea, without this free roaming, too loose design. ** granted that is an oversimplification since they inject their own junk/mess INTO your original idea, but....

 

Yes, it doesn't fit. We have this complex and deep RPG and then this... strange combat system.
I mean will people who like this kind of combat really invest the time to search for quest NPCs in huge cities full of filler-NPCs? Will they really type in words and sentences to talk to NPCs? The combat is made for shooter-fans and I doubt that shooter fans want to type in sentences to talk to NPCs or search for hours in a city to find the right NPC. The other way around, do people who like typing in sentences and searching for NPCs do want to have such a combat system in a game?

The combat maybe works in arenas and thus in PvP but PvP is not all this game is about. PvE combat will not be as fun as it could be because of this combat system (and the skill and spell system, too by the way). So it seems that the focus of the devs is clearly on PvP for SotA (aside from housing) and this is really frightening. Right now it seems that combat (PvP) and the rest of SotA are two separate games.

And maybe that is a big problem. The game is dividing the players in two groups. PvPers and roleplayers. The PvPers want more PvP and more twitchy combat and as they cry out the loudest they are heard and thus the game shifts more and more towards a really strange diversion of PvP playerswho are in for some king of arena fights and roleplayers who scratch their heads not knowing what the combat, skills and spells are about.

 

I don't know if I agree that the target audience is too broad.. but I do have issue with certain mechanics and possibly catering a bit too much to the "casual" player.

RPGs are not games to be played "casually" as it were. Yes it's nice to be able to pop on.. do a little big for a few minutes and pop out before going to work.. but this is a game meant to be played over the long term. What's the rush?

 

@Lord_Darkmoon

I don't think FPS fans will even know SOTA exists for the most part. But I don't see a ton of them trying it out and saying "this is great, just what I always wanted....combat like Call of Duty inside of a The Bard's Tale!"

 

"Target audience is too broad" ...

You do realize they are making this game to make money, not to lose money but make a few select players happy, correct?

 

And realize that diluting it too much means it has slight value to many, and little value to most.

Jack of all trades, Master of none.

/me awaits the arrival of CaptainJackSparrow

 

I totally do, and I want them to make as much money as possible and be hugely successful.

But if we look at the MMO landscape...what's that look like? Can we predict the results?

Is it better to have 1.5 million people for two months, or 200k for 20 years? Did WOW get popular over time because they changed who they were? Or did WOW and really all games that have attracted people, establish a core audience, and then retain and build on that audience?

To me, the core audience of SOTA is not "guy using WASD to solve all his problems."

 

This is strange, I thought I was the target audience.

 

Tahru, from what I understand, you've pledged a significant amount of money into this game and so yes that probably does make you a significant part of the target audience.

Again, I don't know of a lot of Duke level FPS enthusiasts that are playing this game. Perhaps that just means that I'm unaware of them and they dominate from behind the scenes.

 

But that is the problem. If they want to reach as many gamers as possible why have such elements like having to search for NPCs, no automaps and typing of sentences in dialogues?
Garriott wanted to create a game without hand holding which in itself cannot be a game for casual gamers and thus won't reach many gamers.
But now it seems they realized that they will miss out on those gamers and want to win them back with a casual combat system as well as a casual skill and spell system. But this doesn't fit together and will create a game that is divided and will divide the players, too.

 

Exactly!

Per the devs, there are really 3 core (legs of the stool) gaming systems. There's Crafting, Housing, Combat and PVP...and then really holding all that together is the Lore. The devs have said this several times in Dev Hangouts.

So what part of that equation equals "twitch combat"? Where did this idea even come from?



How did you do? If you guessed that one kid was running around all over the place spamming fire arrow while the other kids were trying to roleplay, you picked the right one! Good job!

 

This isn't a FPS. It cannot be compared to a FPS in any reasonable sense.

I flatly disagree that SotA is too twitchy or that the twitch level is comparable to a FPS.

SotA is fairly slow and non-twitchy compared to MMOs. While SotA isn't an MMO and it isn't a copy of MMO combat, it is the comparison most people will make.

Most MMOs have a GCD in the 1.0 to 1.5 second range. So you're activating a new ability every 1.0-1.5 seconds, and sometimes more than that because there are some abilities that don't consume a GCD.

With SotA I find I spend several seconds between activating abilities. I'm also worried about a bar of 8 abilities as opposed to watching closer to 30 when playing SWTOR.

Trust me when I saw SotA is easier, more casual and less twitch based than most modern games in the genre.

We had a forum poster complain recently (and they were quite upset) that this game used WASD movement as if that was new and crazy. I think SotA has brought some old-school RPG players back into the fold who haven't been playing PC games for a long time. They may feel intimidated or have a bit of a learning curve. But this simply is not that twitchy.

 

PVP is twitchy, and I not sure if you're talking about pvp or not.

If you're trying to say that SOTA is not Halo...I agree with that on the PVE side. But on the PVP side, it's not Halo in a bad way. Halo has good FPS pvp, SOTA has bad FPS PVP...but it's still really FPS pvp even though it's bad.

 

Since SotA gives you a massive advantage for standing still now, you stand still in place and press a simple keybind every few seconds. You don't need to manually target or aim. It is slow and requires zero precision. With a locked deck you can literally memorize the time of cooldowns and play with your eyes closed. And it is considerably slower than anything comparable.

And you say that is FPS combat where you must move exceedingly fast, standing still gets you killed and you have to manually aim and respond super-quick. Every action is measured in milliseconds, not multiple seconds.

Clearly they are the same thing.

 

If you look at the age group of the players of this game you have to consider the casual player. Most people in this age bracket have families, jobs, and a lot of responsibility. These are also the people who have the money to fund the game. In my opinion the audience cannot be too broad and that includes casual players.

I dont like the PvP that much either because I dont like jumping around and just clicking. It should be more strategy based, but again, we're in pre-alpha and I think they will correct this with combos and balancing of combat.

 

I'm talking about PVP, enderandrew. If you stand still in PVP you die. There's no stand still option.

 

First off, there is a SIGNIFICANT advantage to standing still right now. Because you don't need to aim, you should be standing still unless you're trying to stay out of range of melee opponent while you fight at range.

Even if there wasn't a massive advantage to standing still now (the silliest mechanic I've seen), every game requires movement. That doesn't make it a FPS. The lack of precision aiming is a massive difference.

You also completely ignore the massive speed difference.

There are zero similarities between SotA and a FPS game.

I can literally play SotA with my eyes closed. You can't do that with a FPS. The comparison is nothing short of absurd.