The last 20%

You can log into shroudoftheavatar.com/map and make a real nice one for your players.

Maybe so, and fine, go for it! But don't leave it at 80%. Break the habit. Take it to 100%, make it so freaking fantastic that people get into the game JUST to do it, because every reviewer and blogger from here to the Shire is talking about how amazing it is.

And for everyone talking about the quest system, I stayed away from it because it has to be a total rewrite so we're no where near the 80% mark. But when they do start on it, I hope it too doesn't get dropped at the 80% mark. Lets see it go to 100%.

 

In one of my ramblings I mentioned this in the context of moving into final release. Once this product hit final release, which I will argue it never has other than the arbitrary label they placed on it, it should have stopped delivering incomplete systems. When ever they say "in this phase", they should slap themselves. Stop with this phased crap and just release things as they are done. Fishing phase 1... fishing phase 2... horse-puckey! Move to a bug/operational release schedule each month and a feature release schedule every quarter and deliver complete system!

 

• The crafted gear -> NPC -> loot system. The system is in place, great gear could be moving from chests into the loot tables, but instead all we hear are complaints about loot AND crafting. Make it worth it to crafters to put a great Bronze Epic Plate Chest +14 in the loot table. Finish up.

 

I don't really think this system works well at all. I think it is better to change crafting. Have decent gear drop, but have crafters able to use pieces of that dropped gear, along with crafted only enhancements, to make the best possible gear in game. That way they can add cool loot that can still be used in the crafting system.

 

Oh yeah, I absolutely agree... and together with the games housing system it has the potential to be the flagship of this game once fully fleshed out, two systems / features that no other game really has to the extent SotA either presently has, or will have once fully realised.

 

What a fine example of useful and constructive feedback, well done sir.

 

I actually have an idea of what they could do to a current system to make it better and maybe more mass appeal @Chris @DarkStarr . Hear me out. That system is fishing. Now the current improvements have been fantastic with the addition of some very cool looking trophy fish and they have actually inspired me to actually gm most of my fishing skills (I have all gm'd except the specific freshwater, salt water, and fetid water skills. those are at 80) and go out and attempt to catch some rares. I started with lava and over about a number of days and many many hours a day I managed to catch me one of the large crocodile looking beasts and one of the small other more fishy looking rares. I have those mounted and displayed in my home and am a happy camper BUT I will be honest. The hole fishing experience was a mind numbly boring experience and I was only able to do it because I watched movies on my other screen or listened to music. Now that I have my rare trophy's I have no reason to lava fish again except to maybe get one of the LARGE versions of the fishy looking rares which may take me a while but after that, done with lava and move on to the other water types to catch their rares and once I have all the rares mounted (which could well take me a while, i will admit) I will have no real reason to fish again specially since the rare fish are so rare and I don't think its worth it JUST to make the food out of them. That's assuming I don't burn myself out of fishing BEFORE I catch all the rares which is possible. What if fishing was more exciting???????

How about if fishing was a mini game where the current skills effect your efficiency with the mini game but it also comes down to your hand eye coordination and your ability to play the game as well as the type of pole your using and maybe the strength of the line. you get something on your line that the line can't handle it snaps and you loose the fish. you don't play the game right it snaps and you loose the fish. so you would have to pair up the right pole with the right bait with the right line to be successful. also when your getting bites maybe there is a "hook" command to hook the fish.

Also lets take this to the next level. I find it hard to imagine standing willy nilly on the shore, pole in hand having just hooked one of the crocodile looking beasts and just casually reel it in. first your limp noodle arms could never hold the pole. if you have ever watched or done ocean fishing or fishing where your after the big boys, your actually strapped into a chair and go from there so maybe the right pole for those types of fish are some type of tripod, seated contraption that when you initiate the fishing you go through the animations to get into. Now that your in the fishing position and the line is in the water, their is no timer to reel it in. you can either keep the line in as long as you want or you can slowly reel your line in at your leisure.

once you begin getting bites, you attempt to "hook" the fish and once its hooked, the fight is on!! At this point not only does your current fishing skills effect how good you are at the mini game but the type of fish you have hooked also effects it. If you have hooked a tiny little thing than it probably wouldn't be so hard to reel in specially with high skills in the area but if you have hooked one of the big beasts than it could get seriously tougher. Maybe even the fight could potentially go on for minutes for the really big fish. Maybe as your fighting with the fish it leaps from the water a time or two (or from lava. can you imagine that visual of the crocodile looking beast leaping from the lava as you fight with it??) As you slowly win the battle, the fish gets closer and closer to shore and once its close enough and you have tired it out maybe you have some type of bolt gun to finish it off (at least for the really big stuff) These are just rough ideas but I feel that something like this could draw me back to fishing over and over again even after i have caught all the trophy fish...... Just an idea. Another thing. Can you imagine the feeling of having battled it out with a large beast over the course of 5 min or more only to have your line break due to your mess up with the game and the fish gets away????? glorious!!

 

I am not convinced that Portalarium is even aware of many of these constructive threads, despite being pinged in them. In the livestream, it often seems they are completely unaware of feedback and suggestions posted in the forums.
There is usually no response or acknowledgement from the developers in most of these threads. However, I understand that it is very difficult to keep up with all the posts and threads in these forums (I certainly cannot keep up).

I just cannot understand certain decisions that are made by the developers. Why in the world are they using resources to make fish masks when there are far more important things (in my opinion) that need to be addressed?
The entire list of issues in @Vladamir Begemot's first post are prime examples of issues that, in my opinion, have a much higher priority than fish heads.

Alas, I am not a developer, and so it's not my decision. All I can do is hope they see the good suggestions here in the forums and hope they implement many of them.

I agree with your suggestion about fishing. I suggested something similar in this post (summarized below):

1. Add a new fishing skill called "Set Hook & Landing"
2. When a fish is on the line, you no longer automatically get the fish. Instead, this is what happens:
   • SOTA tells you that you have a fish on the hook (but does not tell you what type of fish). All you know is that you have something on your fishing line. At this point, the circular timer on the screen resets, and the timer now measures the time you are fighting the fish and trying to land the fish. While fighting the fish, you can have the Avatar reel-in animation, and perhaps add intermittent bending of the fishing pole and the avatar pulling on the fishing pole (so it actually looks like the avatar is bringing in a fish).
   • There is a chance that you lose the fish. However, the higher your "Set Hook & Landing" skill, the less likely that you will lose the fish (maybe start out at 10% chance of losing the fish with zero level in the skill, and reduces down to 2% risk when the skill is at 100). If you lose the fish, you lose your bait (no chance for recovery).
   • If you manage to reel-in the fish without losing it, then SOTA tells you what type of fish you caught.

 

It was a stretch goal, if I recall correctly. So they were obligated to deliver, because we implicitly asked and paid for them.

... not that I understand many of these stretch goal decisions.

 

Single-player offline... The save game feature, does it still just plonk you at the beginning of a scene with re-spawns when you load? I'm still waiting to dive into my glorious SP role-playing adventure but until things such as this and the questing bugs/UI/Journal/Dialogue box are fixed... I uh... I may be some time.

 

Now, seeing the stretch goal for next month.... would be a good time to throw in a single stretch goal at around 60 to 70 k like : if we reach it were going to finish the dongeon feature for next release (be able to put in mobs!

 

Then it's not really Agile development. I've seen this over and over and over, where teams say they're going to go "Agile", and never finish stuff or put it off until some nebulous "later". This is covered some here: https://medium.com/the-liberators/w...etely-done-software-every-sprint-f7fa3ca33286

I've worked on a lot of Agile projects. It's generally been to the detriment of the software, although I've been on one successful Agile project. And that hasn't been because Agile is "bad", it's because virtually no organization is willing to truly implement what's necessary, in particular the time to finish what they started and the full set of necessary QA resources -- which are costly.

 

Why wait for them to finish the quest system, UI, combat, PVP or anything else when we can buy pirate ships for the pirating system that will one day be completed?!?

 

Completely agree. Make Lunar Rifts great again!

 

...except if you're trying to get to the rift. It would be nice to have an overworld entrance that goes somewhere near it. Right now we have Default (main entrance), a boat landing near the entrance, and third entrance which is the same as Default (WTF?). Or just add a "Lunar Rift" entrance to all three starter zones and be done with it. @Chris

Have you looked at what was happening to cotos after being able to use them to upgrade deeds? That's not a drain, that's a pump.

 

We really out to put the first on the world map. If you're zoning in to travel to a teleporter to zone out again... not the best way to handle it.