State of the SOTA address by a veteran player

I started playing Sota two releases before persistence and have played almost a thousand hours since then. The game itself has made tremendous gains in most major areas including stability, content and general game play.

I'd like to take the time to review the progress that has been made since persistence and share some opinions.

It's hard to talk about Sota from a long term perspective without talking about stability. For the first few months it was not uncommon for most of us to crash multiple times a day and some of us almost every hour. On the first day after persistence I personally crashed at least three times just trying to get off the first island. Fortunately they've made incredible gains in this department and most of us can go days or weeks without any crashes at all. The game at this point is stable enough for release and is one of the areas where Portalarium has made excellent progress.

In the last few releases the content has been coming fast and furiously. The new zones and dungeons prove that Portalarium can create amazing worlds with extreme detail and functionality. Their biggest problem is the sheer quantity of content that needs to be redone and the large amount of resources that would take. The newest dungeon for instance is very detailed and has objects that can be picked up much like we'd expect from an Elder Scrolls game. It honestly feels like content from a AAA title.


So we have proof that they can create large dynamic zones that are interesting. Sadly at this time very few players get to see this content before they quit. It's my personal belief that all the beginning content and one skull zones need this treatment. All the tiny beginner zones need to be vastly increased in size. You can't have new players spending 30 seconds zoning into really tiny zones. It gives an absolutely terrible first impression of the game. These beginning zones should be massive and draw people in and make them feel like the zones are big enough to share with other players.

The itemization of the game has been making progress the last few releases and has improved since six months ago. Back then almost every mob dropped the exact same items and there was balance issues in the economy due to vendor sell prices. They've made some progress here and have plugged many of the gold farming issues.

They've added artifacts and recipes to the drop list now, and have created much better itemization for chests. Unfortunately the variety of drops and the sense of accomplishment for low to mid tier players is almost non existent.

The new artifacts have been an amazing addition to the game for higher end players. These carrots are very important for players and drive a sense of purpose and desire to adventure. It is a very slippery slope though because crafting is very fundamental to this game but a good balance should be found, including artifact recipes that require artifact level component drops.

So itemization is headed in the right direction but we desperately need much more of it. We need hundreds of mini artifact items for all adventure levels that drop off regular mobs too. The more these are crafting items the better but unique abilities on items should be embraced too.

One of the most important parts of a multiplayer game is the social interaction between players and having the systems in place to promote it. Unfortunately very little progress has been made here. The game is very lacking in this department and most veteran players use the excuse of joining guilds to hide this flaw.

This is even more prevalent in this game due to the more solitary game modes such as friends only. Currently the world is very lonely due to very few communication channels or systems to help bring characters together. Many of us barely interact with anyone outside our guilds at all. Even with future larger populations this will still be a serious problem without changes.

There's promises of alliances and with that it will probably bring alliance chat, and this might help a bit if you happen to be a part of a very large alliance. It doesn't solve these issues for new players or lone wolves though. Currently if you're trying to find others to adventure with you have little recourse outside the guild system or even in the guild system if you're a member of a small guild.

The skill and advancement system in this game is very unique and it's currently one of the few systems out there for multiplayer games that offer unlimited advancement. This means currently there's no end to advancement and they've struck a fairly good balance with it. It takes roughly eight times as much experience to bring a skill to 120 than it does 100. So a hard core player who plays eight hours a day in the long run would only be around 20 points on average higher than the player who plays one hour a day. It's a good balance and I applaud the developers for creating it.

The current combat and skill system has a strong foundation but is lacking some key features to make it great. The introduction of resistances has created a good system for damage based abilities. While all the damage abilities and resistances do need another full pass due to imbalances they work well and are almost feature complete.

The general combat system has also made great strides in the last six months. Character and mob targeting works orders of magnitude better than when the new system was introduced. Ranged spells and combat issues have largely disappeared.

Non damage skills and roles do need extensive work though. There's not enough roles due to a lack of non damage abilities and some key combat functions.

Currently there's very little itemization or skills that help a tank taunt for a group without resorting to trying to out dps the rest of the party. Taunt management is very important for many roles in a party but unfortunately the skills so far such as escape and taunt don't function very well. Itemization to increase and decrease taunt would add another interesting layer to game dynamics and is highly recommend.

Crowd control by stuns, mesmerizing, slowing, rooting and others are in the game to some extent but are mostly ignored. The developers are stuck in a catch 22 when it comes to these abilities because we can all gain any ability. If they make any of these abilities good they will find themselves in every person's deck.

I suggest that they overhaul their stance system to fix this issue. If stances were made with much higher bonuses and disadvantages it would balance things out and create more roles in a party. If a base stun in the air tree was half a second many people wouldn't put it in their deck. If there was a crowd control stance that increased that to 2 seconds but decreased their damage by 75 percent you'd probably start seeing people exclusively filling that role while not destroying balance.

I believe role stances should be added like this for other builds too. Having taunt/tanking stances, crowd control stances, rogue/backstabbing stances, pet controller stances etc. This will help create build diversity while not affecting balance if the negatives in the stance properly balance the bonuses. Stances already exist in the game they just need to be used to fuller effect to create more build diversity.

While there has been some major strides with optimization for zoning and graphics performance recently I think we all can agree that there's still a lot of work that needs to be done here. I'm really hoping that they can cut zoning times by at least half before release.

Pet taming and summoning has been pretty well broken for a while now. The reason it needed to be nerfed so badly was because of the issue of balance and the fact that everyone can use every skill. If pets were too powerful everyone would always use them and the game would look like a zoo.

There has to be trade offs when it comes to pets and the focus reduction they tried to use to balance it wasn't working or effective. Base pets I believe need to stay somewhat where they are now, but they need to be able to be buffed to become powerful companions but with trade offs.

I believe they need to make it so pet users need to make hard equipment and stance choices to balance this system. If players wanted to have powerful pets in this new system they can now make the equipment choices to do so, while other players wouldn't bother. This would again create build diversity and help on the crafting side too.

I would also create a few pet stances in the taming tree that gave specific bonuses to pets for different situations. The stances would allow for different pet builds. Some people might only want minor disadvantages and bonuses because they still want a powerful character. Other players might want a very crippling stance to have a very powerful pet.

The current deck system has created some polarizing debate where some people love it, some people hate it and many just tolerate it. Over all the system works well but makes the player take their eyes off the world and combat. I would say this system is almost launch ready, but I would consider making it more balanced for people who choose not to use it, so people aren't forced into it.

Quests is a hard topic to discuss for me. So I'll probably mostly skip over this topic even though it's a major part of game development. The interface for quests is not very intuitive and it doesn't encourage talking to npcs in the raw manner they originally envisioned. I would consider changing the format to the choice system many other rpgs use, but I don't want to derail this review. Needless to say the quests in the game are behind on development and might eventually need a revisioning. I like to play in a sandbox myself so this concerns me less than most of you.

A unique feature of this game is the ability to switch modes of play. While many would argue that it creates a less populated feel and creates too many safe zones from interacting with other players few would deny that the switching interface needs work.

Switching between player modes should take place on the fly within the game. Having to exit the game to switch is bad design. If we could easily choose modes when zoning from the main map we'd see more players in multiplayer especially in the cities. If I had the choice to hold down shift when I clicked to enter a city to go into multiplayer, I would probably do that. Even allowing us to right click and pick friends or multiplayer whenever we enter a zone would be so much better than exiting the game.

In conclusion Portalarium has made excellent progress and many people don't give them enough credit for it. While much of the game is still raw, they've proven that they can create a stable, we'll designed game with enough time. If all the content was as well designed as the new dungeon for instance the player retention would go through the roof. The progress has been undeniable to most long term players. Thank you Portalarium for all the effort so far and I hope you can keep up the breathtaking pace of the last couple releases.


Salubrious

 

Nice write-up and I agree that the changes in the past few months have been wonderful. Good call on polishing the 1skull zones - at the end of the day they're not making this game for us... we're already here. They need an experience that captures the attention of new players. My take on artifacts however is a 180 from your point of view. I don't see a slippery slope at all - I see rare artifact drops that are being shelved and collecting dust on vendors because they suck and no one wants to use them. There is no point in grinding for artifacts when I can go down the street and buy a +14 wand, ring, or necklace of complete awesomeness for next to nothing. Artifacts offered a great incentive to get out grind in R38 and those grind returns were injected right back into the economy. People were motivated to party up and take on bosses; now artifact hunting is losing its appeal and we're barely two releases into this new mechanic. Rare artifacts should be OP and not second to anything any player can craft - they should be coveted and promote activity in the game and if they're made to be OP, they'd do wonders for the economy and make combat loads of fun until the artifact wears out and breaks. And it's not just the artifact but all the resources obtained by grinding for them that help the economy. Where mode switching is concerned, for me it's a love/hate thing - I do it out of necessity now and I hate it... I doubt many folks would bother with mode switching if the multiplayer economy was divorced from friends mode and single player mode - it's become something of a sacred cow for almost anyone that mode switches though - without it, most of the high level grinders probably wouldn't be able to maintain the XP gains needed to continue advancing their avatars.

 

In the last telethon, Portalarium devs stated they are building large newbie zones the size of Blood Bay to help new players get used to the game and it's systems (and get hooked) before releasing them to the wilds.

 

I remember them talking about this - it's a great idea too! I was directing my comments on 1skull polish more towards scenes like Kingsroad. I remember hitting that scene as a new character and running laps. Of course sometimes when I got there all the trees had already been dropped or I'd see someone else zone in and then it was a mad dash to the skeletons to see who kill/loot them first. If Kingsroad could accommodate 20 players, that would be incredible. As I recall, having to share that scene with even one other person was a real pain.

 

And when they boat out of them they get dumped into the tiny 1-skull zones, so his point is still valid. If they was going to rage quit over tiny instances, all the new scene will do is not only postpone their rage quit, but magnify it to be even worse, as those 1-skull adventure scenes will now seem even tinier. The only real reason for the tiny scenes is the skull progression thru an area, get rid of skull progression and replace it with skull scaling of a larger scene instances. This will give it more of the open overworld feeling.

 

Wow excellent effort and post, ill add one thought that your post sparked accidently in reguards to pets specifically. And you hit the small starting zone head on, actually I agreed with just about everything you said.

The pet type instead of killing focus and making pets a must have could be ballanced by and this is just an example a negative draw say to magic. Pets could offer negative magic attunment because your focus is on maintaining pet controll. Also there might be pet types that reduce physical effectiveness do to some physical requirements of pet controll this way the pets will or should be tied to a specific play style.

I hate the fact we have a taming system that could be fun, but its been nerfed into uslessness.

 

I agree with you Brass. Having a system with choices and trade offs like you describe would allow people to have pets while maintaining balance. Whether the trade offs were implemented through items that drop (like current artifacts that have effects and drawbacks) or/and through stances that can be trained.

 

Great Review.

Maybe add some Ideas about summoned Pets of the magic Schools and then publish it everywhere!!!

 

I've been debating doing a thread similar to this. Grinding this week to get close to al85.

While you got a lot right.

I don't agree on THE itemization for one. There is very little difference in the loot I was getting on day 1 and the loot I was getting off elite skeletons and krul kobolds this week (the kobolds drop unique looking items for sure, but functionality and value wise they are the same.).

Combat wise I've gotten less powerful vs the npcs of a similar level. More so archers and mages who don't pay as much attention to armor (or buffs). And often you are facing 2-6 enemies at a time in most of the dungeon areas. Their damage has gone up faster than my health and mitigation. And their mitigation has gone up faster than my damage (it also doesn't help that my damage skills range 300% from their min and max damage amounts.

Combining the two if I'm out to either earn good gold or xp I'm grinding in the same two zones that I was in august. I would much rather do an hour or two dungeon crawl (solo, I have no interest in grouping) in something level appropriate and opening a chest at the end with 10k gold of value in in than do the same amount of time stacking up bandits for their halberd or undead for the various things I can sell.

I agree with the above on artifacts. They plain suck as does all dropped loot (10 crafters just reached for the reply button). The only solution I can think of off the top of my head is to make them slot into gear (and be removed) or create an "artifact" inventory slot (basically what belt is currently)

And on that note, I pretty much buy all my armor and weapons from the same smith I did in august and jewelry from the best ads here on the forums. It's almost impossible for new crafters to break in because other than the forums. There is no way for a buyer to discover s vendor other than dumb luck. There are too many cities with too many vendors for there not to be a regional or global search. (Mine Is shocked you found him. And has done about 100k total business since being placed in the land rush).

 

While talking about artifacts and equipment that could be used to fix taming, it reminded me of the Shepherd Crooks that were used in UO. It would be very interesting if they added them to Sota. They would be an item that only has minion stats on it, and is 2 handed and takes both of your weapon slots. When enchanted or mastercrafted it also added additional minion stats only. The base shepherd crooks could even be available on a vendor.

Since the player is giving up his weapon and attunement bonuses, the base stats on the staff could be high for pets, such as doubles the minions health and damage. Then any enchantments on top of that could give other minion bonuses.

We could also see artifacts that further increase pet ability but with downsides. An example would be a ring that increases pet health by 50 percent but also gave -25 strength. A belt that increased pet damage by 30 percent but decreased intelligence by -20. A wolf hat that increased attack speed and health of the pet but decreased all attunement by -15. etc

Adding items like this to the game, would allow taming to become a serious consideration for people who wanted to focus on it, but it would also balance out the fact that they had a powerful pet. Most people wouldn't wear this equipment unless they were serious about taming.

 

I had a very similar experience when I first started. The one skull zones were so small that your first in game experience almost forced you into using friends mode when others arrived. It set a terrible president for the multiplayer aspects of the game right off the bat.

 

Too many DEAD vendors, empty or so outdated that they are a waste of time to click on, making shopping a lot less fun than it used to be.

 

@Chris @DarkStarr @Lord British @Lum the Mad

Excellent read gentlemen! Look into some of this and internally discuss which of these are feasible. Very well written and well thought out post.

 

Great stuff, I agree with 95% of it. The only thing I disagree with is the stuns and such. As someone who was primarily a stunner (blunt and earth) I think I had a lot of notoriety in PvP for being able to chain stun people a lot (it was really my only option as a blunt since it kinda sucks for damage). To this day even as an earth mage, my most powerful skill in PvP and PvE is the heavy armor charge skill. the only real issue still is that people can jump out of a stun.

But I agree with everyone else. People on the forums complain about a lot of stuff, especially "in the moment". I have seen it over the past 15 months. I've said lately that we should go back to posts 8 months ago complaining about a system no being done (like food for example) and respond to them, bring them back.... "look, this game is in alpha and that system was on the road map and now we have it"... unfortunately short sighted people end up quitting over things like that and never see it.


Here is the skinny people. Our main purpose in this game right now as alpha testers in to play it and report the bugs we find and make constructive suggestions about how to change things, give them new ideas. At this point, I find this one of the best things to do in this game, I have been hitting the QA server hard and reporting a lot of bugs. Its awesome that I have the ability to help build this game and over the past 15 months I have seen (even if its very very small), my influence in the game as it is today. Hopefully I can walk around the game when its released and see even more small things that I had my voice in,

 

Great review, you made some excellent points @danjacobsmith! I don't think I found one thing in there that I disagree with.

 

Hmmmm.... good idea.

Completed bumps! That'll also show up in the persons inbox if they quit over it after having posted their sadness.

 

Great thoughts and suggestions!
Thanks,
Richard

 

I have to fully read your post but had to stop here and comment on this... I have argued for a few times over the years and yet to see, a server wide chat channel of any kind... we barely have many players at the moment and a General server wide chat channel would be huge for the social aspect of game. I recommend multiple ones based on topics and to include a Trade channel.

This is a game, not realistic simulation of life... we have computers let us utilize them to bring out the FUN factor of the game... Don't just allow socializing... promote it!

Give us a way to communicate with other players in the game, and we will use it and help grow the game.

Just my opinion.

 

Also, in terms of new, and even us old, players, I push all my chips into the "Maps and Travel" bucket.

What is the point of remodeling zones, if no one can find them and then, even if you do, it takes a forever and a half to get there because of the lack of travel.
A lot of zones are very, very well done. Combat is not as terrible as it use to be and the foundation is there for a great game. However it is pointless if there is no way to go find it.

 

I believe this would be a perfect place to start creating quests... one guy in some town on one side of our (presently known world) has a sister he hasn't seen in 10 years and she lives in the little village he grew up in which is across the known world from him...

"Since you're a traveler with a famous name for venturing all over the known world... Could you kindly carry this gift to my sister in who lives in 'insert strange name here" in exchange for a little of my rare ores I happen to have found recently"... "Thank you kindly when you return I shall reward you"

These Non-Storyline related simple quests should be easy to program and don't require any real zone programming at least none graphical wise. There are NPC's all over the place with "I do not have a name" (Or purpose) yet" Give them names and a purpose.

Heck the next person they hire should be a quest programmer who doesn't go near the storyline who just focuses on simple quests, short quick and to the point.

It would be great if our avatars names could gain recognition by NPC's by doing many quests... or the guy who fishes all the time gets known for bringing in the best fresh seafood catches or who's know for holding the record for largest trout ever caught in some backwater lake town. But I guess thats running off on a tangent I'll sush now... lol