Took another stab at the game, combat stuff is still holding it back.

No, what's silly is you're using as an argument why you shouldn't have carry limits, but not using it as an argument on why you shouldn't have to talk to NPCs, and defeat monsters, and go into dungeons. Its silly because you're using the argument selectively. Now, it would be cool if we could get servants to do things, but those servants wouldn't be freely given to you in a role-playing game, either. They would all require wages. Soldiers get a pay.

On the other hand, I'm betting you'll be able to play SotA without ever buying or selling a single item, if that's what bothers you. Stocking up your bag with items to sell is a choice.

 

Or you could start a guild and a party, and be the leader in your guild or party.

You could also pay other players to run errands for you, and get money by protecting people from monsters on quests. Or getting taxes for your guild or POT. You could theoretically already role-play a general, just not with NPCs. Same way, you could get another player to join you on a dungeon run and ask him to carry extra loot for you because he has a lighter load.

 

so i wonder, is that roleplaying? working around the AI like the o.p. said in the beginning? both? it's mildly fun finding out

The Hendoman

 

It'd be interesting to see mechanical support for that sort of thing, but what I'm ultimately getting at isn't that the game needs a bureaucrat skill tree, but that the game doesn't give you the option to deal with problems like having limited carry capacity in the way that an intelligent person would, so it's absurd to act as though it exists to create challenge. If a system is as painfully half formed as logistics are in this game they shouldn't be used to limit your enjoyment of the systems that do exist.

By the exact same logic you could argue that the game shouldn't have dungeons or monsters because you could just fight other players. But that wouldn't quite be the same would it?


I really don't think you understand my argument. It isn't that you should be able to run the whole world from the comfort of your home, it's that the logistics side of the game is such an unformed lackluster system that it's just painful for it to constantly crash into what you're doing with the systems that are good.

 

I'm not arguing that the game shouldn't have hireable servants, which you can pay with wages or a share of the loot. That would be cool.

Although, I don't think its necessary for a fun game. If you don't like carrying things, leave them there instead of picking them up. If you don't like running out of arrows, don't use them up.

 

See, I would really like the idea of having a few retainers that can handle procurement for you, and you can set them to get different things depending on what you personally don't want to deal with. Maybe you could set up your character to work a simple job while you're not online so that when you log in you're not stuck doing upkeep but rather have a little something to go adventure on. I simply want the ability to deal with the interesting parts with the game, not constantly be bogged down with clerical work and meaningless minutia.

I mean, let's take for example a game like Space Engineers. You constantly need to produce items in that game. You need to fuel your reactors, you need ammo, you need all sorts of parts to expand your operation. The thing is, if you're willing to put the time in you can build a giant industrial ship that sends out automated drones that mine asteroids, dump their ore into a sorting facility that pulls out everything usable, send it down to refineries and assemblers that are set up to produce ammo and fuel rods and then store them in your cargo holds. Doing all of that is a huge undertaking and requires a lot of knowledge and tuning, but the game actively invites you to try and out-engineer your demands.

That's something where I can appreciate the counting of ammo a lot more, because even though the game isn't quite perfect in letting you set up a self sustaining system, it's close enough to where it doesn't feel like you're just constantly doing the same maintenance over and over. It's a game where limited inventory doesn't exist to make you walk back and forth 10 times, but to remind you to build a cargo ship or conveyor system.

 

Hirelings would be cool.

You don't have to walk back and forth 10 times if you don't want to, though. You can stay out in the field for an hour with a lot of arrows and use nothing but arrows -- though there's really no reason you should have to rely on arrows, instead of also using a sword and only use a bow when it's useful. I think archery needs some love to, and stealth needs some love, but that's another issue. If there's loot you don't want to pick up, you can leave it there.

People make a choice to play the game in a certain way, and then complain about the game.

 

so is this going to be a deal breaker for you? You are intelligent. You bring up a good point. it is Valid, and i dont really want you to get burnt out on this. alone. There's a lot of other bugs and systems out there too! your observations can be spent there just as effectively. and with good benefit to us all.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/top-11-annoyances-as-of-r15.22808/unread

i guess i am asking, can you move on to something else, trusting the issue will be resolved in the future, or is this a game over for you? What would it REALLY and simply take to change your mind if so? If I may ask?
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/favorite-moment-in-r15.23002/

The Hendoman

 

That seems like a "You're free to do it wrong" kind of argument to me. The game obviously doesn't reward you in any way for staying in the field after your inventory is full, in fact you're missing out on probably 90% of the loot, and might in fact be losing money because you won't be able to cover repair bills with how little you're earning at that point.

 

There is no wrong or right, its choices on how to play.

I'm personally okay with going back to town, which I find I don't really need to do that often just to earn money. It takes a long time for my armor and weapons to get damaged enough that I have to replace them. If I need a new sword, there are plenty of ways to get one for free, from dead bodies, or just sitting around near enemies.

I play with both a bow and a sword with shield. I ambush monsters with my bow then go at them with my sword. It works for me. I've had conversations with players who say they can stay out with only a bow for between a half hour to an hour of gameplay, which is a decent stretch of time -- its hardly a hardship.

I find going around in circles over and over again farming monsters is boring anyway, so I'm eager to get back to town.

 

Sorry, but that's just a total BS argument you're making. Sure, I can make the choice to run into a group of enemies, then just stand there and repeatedly cast Light on myself, but that doesn't mean that isn't the wrong way to defeat them. There absolutely are wrong choices for accomplishing a certain goal, and the goal of "not being horribly poor and wearing broken gear" is kind of hard to accomplish if you choose to gather only a fraction of the possible loot.

 

You don't need to wear broken gear, you can spend a long time fighting monsters before it needs repair.

What loot are you trying to get?

 

That's really not relevant to the argument. The point is, the second you have any kind of goal in mind there are right and wrong choices to achieving it, and the way the game is currently built the very simple goal of progressing through the game with a character of respectable power while earning experience and gold at a steady rate tends to be very much contrary to not making constant town runs.

 

If I wanted to address your argument, I'd say: there's no wrong way to do something, but there are stupid ways to do something. But its a waste of time to argue about that when you're misrepresenting the game even as it stands right now ,saying you need to fight in broken armor to avoid going back to down 10 times.

 

What i understanded at kickstarter and early stages of games. Richard didnt want hotbar menus,lifemeters and stuff lying on screen. so it would have been clear and easy to look surroundings..
Well.. we got opposite of that 50% of my screen is filled with pop windows, so i can "hear" what people say and forced amount of healtbars etc random stuff. (it is very ugly, and doesnt feel right)

Also Great post overral Aetrion. Good to see people say what they think, and i hope devs listen a bit.
Keep up the good work.

 

I'm saying that when you are fighting enemies that drop weapons and similar items as their primary loot you are losing out on 50-100 gold per enemy you kill without being able to pick up the loot so you can sell it later. That means if you do that long enough the cost of repairing your gear will eventually be higher than the amount of money you make since you passed up so much of your potential income.

There is simply nothing positive about having the system work like that. It's not some kind of deep and interesting challenge to tackle, it's simply "go to town or lose money".

 

Of course you can't carry all the gear of the monsters you slay....that happens in just about every rpg I play....with the exception of diablo. What is the solution other then saying you can only carry so much?

 

It doesn't take more than a few hundred gold to replace your entire set of gear, there'll be blacksmiths doing repairs once the crafting system is fully developed, and I expect repairs to be much cheaper. But even as of now, I still end up with a profit without going to town that often.

There's a fair discussion we could have about what the costs should be, how long gear should last before it breaks... you don't have to go straight to saying all these limits should go away.

 

You're right that the game shouldn't exist without any limits at all, I just prefer limits that can be addressed through more meaningful ingame actions. Camping down inside of a dungeon like you'd do in D&D for example is in my opinion much more interesting than walking back to town. I especially prefer camping to town runs because the only way to make going to town convenient is with a town portal, and I actually really like the idea of not having fast travel in the game so that players have a real relationship to where their characters live and stay most of the time. In UO when I just started the game I considered myself as a citizen of Moonglow, because I didn't yet have the means to teleport to every city within seconds. Later in the game I didn't even know exactly where my guild's home was because I never went there on foot. So, don't think I'm an advocate for over-convenience, UO's overly convenient travel system ruined a lot of the depth of that game.

But when it comes to something like durability I'm definitely not a fan of items that lose durability purely from using them. It may be realistic, but I just prefer a system where durability loss is a consequence to being careless and getting killed, not an unavoidable fact of life.

Similarly I don't like systems where every single arrow and every single spell have a cost. It bothers me when costs aren't something you incur to spend your way past a difficult fight or because you did something wrong, but are simply always there. There is just no real value to a system like that in a game that assumes you never run out of the consumables anyways.

 

The issue with that is I am assuming you will have to travel for the main campaign to follow the story, the majority of players will most likely do that.