The POT updates and Cross advertising sounds great! Thank you @Chris Can you please have Body Slam fixed?
Would be great if the placeable NPC's could have custom walking/moving commands and moving access outside of lots with emote system access. "walk here" "kneel in front of gravestone" "run here" etc etc.
I too how to see this level of scrioting for npc. Perhaps using emote system with simple movement set points. Bring on the creation of life in the towns with active npc. Look forward to every once of the fun to come. GM told sound splendid. Thanks @Chris
Very much looking forward to LUA and custom NPC dialog, and of course Ep2 content to explore! Didn't see any mention of the Quest system redesign though!
We could also consider getting player made audio in to the game though provisions for the custom NPC dialogue having an option to include an audio recording... Inevitable?
That's generally how Lua addons function. With World Of Warcraft for example, there are tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of addons you can download from sites like Curseforge (which serves multiples games), that are open to any player, and run from external files. I'm hoping SOTA does something similar to allow the loading/processing of multiple addons.
Generally that's not the case. If implemented correctly (For example how WoW does it), the addons are accessible to anyone, and generally distributed via a site such as Curseforge. If you go to curseforge, you will see there are addons for dozens of games there, and many thousands for WoW alone. Any player has full access to those addons.
Really good stuff coming Chris! Question though.. with ESO and player made add ons.. patches disrupt these all the time and cause lovely bugs.. will we have a way to disable these maybe before coming in game? just in case they cause game crashes and stuck characters and such.
I totally agree about player made content. Too much focus on it with the game still needing so much. It will be great to have fun tools but we are still going to have part of our population not social at all. They will want the game to have its own events embedded in. Such as a call to all avatars to take down the dragons. So Yes players will get tools to help with this but imo the game still needs to provide for example an area as the Wintergrasp daily in WOW did. An event with quests, goals, areas to take over, and a timer to start and end it. Even an onscreen announcement. Then Those shy or by choice loner types can join in by choice and still go back to solo after the event. I don't believe in forced socializing. So fine to give tools to help us create better and interesting events, quests ect but give caution to forcing interactions. Hopefully that makes sense because I truly feel it's important. Also I heard very little mention of a few things that concern me and too much of what I call lack of focus on our core systems. Such as: So cooking has one measly skill and badly needs a masterworking type of skill to improve lower tier recipes to be more useful. Also alcohol should be used in more recipes to make brewing more viable. We really need a raid system. Why was that not mentioned? No word on mounts. Please say they are coming soon. I don't care if some argue because of loading screens we don't need them but I don't agree. They can have many uses such as something to help us carry a bit more, horse racing, and jousting to name a few things. Plus they are basic and missing. Some of the announcement today to me was boring news imo. I wanted to hear of things anticipated forever. Also focus on more, more, more areas when I don't agree most of the areas we have are fun and interesting to bring us back except to grind in after seeing them a time or two. Where is the reasons to do things more than once except to grind xp, resources, and items? Every adventure scene in the game needs to entice the achievers and goalsetters back. Is it because we have an achievement system that tracks everything we do? Well we don't have an in game one at all. Is there a way to have this in the new lands going forward? Achievements provide a lot like being rewarded for almost everything you do such as catching every fish, cooking every food, visiting every scene, climbing every mountain, collecting every something etc. Also trophies for agriculture was good but more than trophies please. Always give more reason to do something than grind please. OK so that is some opinions from me. New lands is a bit upsetting to me when I feel they are put out there to excite and overshadow imo some missing basic work that never got added and enhanced upon. Interesting Details matter. More lands, tools etc is gravy on top of uncooked potatoes. From the announcement I can tell I was not there to whisper in the devs ears because my heart sank to hear going forward change in behavior was not going to take precedence to correct the mistakes that occurred in this project. Lack of focus to get things done like getting almost there and moving on before fun and more interesting details get added all the way. Such as with fishing, cooking, agriculture, crafting, taming, and scene work full of lore dailies, achievements and more. So yes a bit dissapointed here that only a few see through the upcoming new shiny features. Not to say they aren't fantastic and will be wonderful for the game in many ways, but with the lack of man-power, funding issues, and focus this game has suffered from, they will still in the end be just gravy on top of our half-baked systems. That has been one of the worst things about this game as is and will still be there under all the new shiny gravy. So sorry so long. I felt it was important to bring these points up for the good of the game otherwise I would sit back and watch knowing I made no attempt to contribute to the betterment of this game. We cannot do the same old same old lack of focus with incompleteness hitting us the players in the face at every turn. So there you have it. Edited
Lot of interesting ideas, and full of hope update. The hospitallers and former ambassadors are here to help and support GMs if needed Thank you @Chris for this long post.
I'd like to hear more about gameplay, mechanics and content additions going forward. The reliance on players who, with the greatest respect are not game designers generally, to create the required content is not what the game should be reliant on. The giving of GM powers to a handful of players also just seems a bad decision. It feels as though the veteran players are quite often the issue with regards to the changes the game needs to attract a more general audience. Averse to change. If you are a paying customer of a product also, should other players have power over you within the game because however well meaning, it's just a big can of worms and sooner or later someone abuses that. If I thought another player could turn up at any time and just change my experience, I'd just stay in private. Assuming you can still stay in private, will these players be able to access your instance if you are in private? I don't want to trust other players, who should be on the same footing as myself anyway, with my money or experience.
Hmm some interesting ideas but still no mention of sorting out the many incomplete or simply missing core elements of the game. Hopefully these will be addressed and soon otherwise everything else will be pointless.
I do agree with majoria, while Many news that Chris said are excting, is still missing what is important to me, rework of pvp system like has been done for crafting and other system ( from chris's strean i understood the Next to work on was pvp and not LUA or whatever ) and adding of raid sistem with focus on end game content. I am more interested in a game where content are official and not just generated by players, i am not gonna use any LUA tool, i am a gamer and not a programmer, i am afraid other ppl will be advantaged cause they can use those tools i am not able to use. I was waiting for a long time for fixes for the actual pvp game play, like ppl zoning out in combat or typing your name in chat so it becomes blue if you are in the zone, but seems like with the LUA thing coming there Will be much more way to exploit the system and i am not interested in this. I realy hope we focus to finish what we have before to focus in new things. Last point: i am rarely playing cause when i login i spend most of my time afk cause there are no content for me, considering they are not coming next month (as promised) and nothing has been mentioned for the near future, i should consider to stop wait and move on.
I think this announcement is positive in that it specifically targets a disaffected and frustrated player base that thinks it is not being listened to. So for that reason it is a very timely post. I really hope I am correct as personally I am not interested in playing the game as a game builder sandbox myself. That said, I would imagine with this amazing player base that given the tools some amazing content will be created. I am invested in SOTA for RG, Star and Chris and for professionally built content with SOTA broadly being the spiritual successor to UO. Yes I know it isn't UO2, but the Lore and vibe from it is cool and I was (or am) PRIMARILY looking forward to the further development of the Avatar's story from RG and Tracy Hickman. It is these guys that have the 'magic dust' that separates good from great and interesting from fascinating. I am also looking forward to this story being set in this amazingly vivid world with additions and refinements to the unique game mechanics of the core game as Majoria refers to. 'If' this is a change of direction for SOTA, all be it positive and inclusive, to 're invent' it as a collaborative endeavour much like Ryzom (which is one hell of a game), then it is not what I am looking for or here for personally. As I say, I hope this announcement serves one purpose; to re-engage with this unique, committed and talented community and that the core content expansions are simply 'a given' and will be worked on in parallel and delivered in the fullness of time, when they are ready for us. We shall see
