There Will Be Consequences

Right now, in Eve Online, a key star system in the galactic trade pipeline is having its fate being decided by the players. (Twitch) Whether this foundation of trade falls, depends on players' decision on which NPC faction to support.

That's an example of what I expected the SOTA promise that "your choices will have lasting consequences" would mean. Instead, we have a game where nothing you do really matters.

I wish this game would be more daring.

 

It's one thing that they have sort of failed on that feature. It's another that they still say it like it's a real thing.

 

in EP1 there was very few things that made much difference.. there are some quests you can only get depending on virtue. I do know they stated in ep2 these things will affect you greater as far as how some of the quest paths go. perhaps @Elgarion can weigh in on this if that is still the goal?

 

@Sannio has mentioned that he's planning on virtue playing a part of EP2, so best he chimes in

 

Indeed , all I could recall is it was said a few times in streams. Sannio is pretty awesome I love his zones and the attention to details and story background that he paints in our minds when he is building. look forward to seeing where it all goes.

 

Eve is a proper sandbox with so much of the landscape being determined by players - CCPs event here aside.

This game simply won't ever get to that level....

 

Like Sannio pointed out player decisions impact their story in several places but I don't think there is anything a player can do that impacts the state of the world for other players.

I always thought the control points were a missed opportunity towards having players impact world state. Originally you had to pass through them or pay an expensive teleport toll to bypass. What I had hoped was that players could take the control point by defeating the waves and then for some period of time it would be either open to pass or allow the winners to collect the tolls.

 

^^^^
That is a solid line of thought! I thought that this type of stuff would be in the game where you can affect the world. Our ability to affect anything is essentially nill.

 

The NPC vendors used to raise prices based on supply demand. In Owl's Head, when everyone hung out there, coal would be 40gp+ a piece. There was profit to be made hauling it in from other cities. I haven't seen that happen in a long time. The mechanic is probably still there but the small population is spread out amongst many more towns now.

Control points could be used to generalize the state of trade. When enemies control them, the price of NPC goods goes up reflecting the increased hazard of trade routes. When players liberate them, prices could go back down. Add in a mechanic where the liberating players could instead become the occupiers, and a portion of the money NPCs get instead goes to them until they are removed. This would add a "changing world" feeling, give players a way to truly be evil, and give regions a bit more of an identity.

 

Great idea! Players can form teams to compete for control points to belong to their guild, then the guild leader can choose to give Avatars and NPCs free passage or charge a fee, thus affecting actual prices of vendor goods in affected regions. This is a great PVP opportunity. Throw in the existing PVE spawns and it will be gloriously chaotic lol.

 

I think its still a thing. There was a new deco recipe maybe last year-ish (I don't remember what it was, maybe mannequins) which was stupid expensive on release day, because everyone ran out to buy it.

 

Why compare a clicker game to a non clicker game. Eve has simpler mechanics compare to sotA, if you are looking at the contents Eve probably has the most but then all you need to do is make sure u pick the right options, while in sotA you need to do most of the stuff manually. Physical contact between objects are much much more complex than just putting in options. The codes for making a real time graphic object intractable with players is not simply just tick and untick. Even though the code may be correct in logical sense, but when it interact or interfered by 3rd party, 4th party the code will evolve to other logic, which will be pretty hard for the dev to detect. That's why there is so much Information hard to discussed between players and dev. Though bug report option are available, but not everyone likes to do bug report if they find one, especially there are not much reward to do so. Sota is a complex games needs tonnes of polishing, now I could only hope the dev can dive into the game more as player view point.

Hopefully I am not just spouting nonsense here, just sharing what I really felt about the game. Anyone disregard what I say. End of the day I enjoy what I do, I hope you can find your joy in sotA.

 

Would be cool if the devs addressed the multiplayer part of this post. @Sannio @Elgarion

We need to think of interactions for large groups/factions etc too not just trickery for the single player experience.

Is it planned the virtue system apply to large scale faction activities?

Territories/towns having some kind of flag which players can work towards with tallies somewhere with some territory benefit to the faction like suggested above should very much be considered.

 

I'm not the best to argue this point, as I was mostly PVE over in Eve (shocking), but even based on the 5ish years I played that, I see SOTA as being simpler and less sophisticated. I dare you to posit that assertion over on the Eve forum or subreddit. There's a possibility you'll get a polite explanation. The PVP-related mechanics of combat were honestly too much for me to cognitively track concurrently.

I actually see the games as very similar in mechanics. You target a thing, and you engage an equipped skill/ability until you turn it off, are out of range, or you're dead. You run/fly around in offensive/defensive maneuvers. They're not really physics based combat. About the only difference is that in Eve, most modules can be set to auto-repeat.... but when you do/don't do that is very much a point of tactics and good piloting.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the point of the OP - that your actions in the world should have consequences. I guess since Eve has auto-repeating modules, we can't do that here. Our virtue-based consequences will continue make our cloaks change color.

 

As someone who's played Eve since 2004 (both heavy PvE and PvP) I fully agree and will say SotA is significantly less complex a game. (Not saying that's necessarily bad - I enjoy both.) And also as you say agreed the point is totally off topic on this thread which is about in game actions having consequences (where again Eve is way ahead).

 

Do you need to manually control the ship? Or just additional options to do the menuever base on you selection of choice provided? Eve is complex in the contain, but sotA most players are barely scratching the surface of the real game itself. That's why there is such a huge division of group of different players in combat tiered, decorations, and trading, all these is accordance what they do best, to roleplay themselves in the game. Eve is a good game don't get me wrong, but still the complexity of the controls is much more sophisticated in sotA compare to Eve.

 

Sota has the elements of hack and slash, but also keeping it's core Rpg elements of Rng, dice rolled. I done everything in the game for 9000+ hours actively still I can find stuff to do, the only thing is whether I want it or not. But one thing I can be sure I can play my real inner self in the game with out putting up a mask, I can leave the game 3 months a year or 2, I don't feel left behind when I returned, I can be sure there will be another game like this that really have me that kind of experience again.

 

But then again I do hope sotA will get it's own "consequences" system just have to wait and see