Well, Hello 2022

Yup, that about sums it up for me.

Joking aside, as much as this game can be infuriating at times, I always seem to come back and things finally seem to headed in a positive direction! Stick it out, you won't regret it!

 

In fights where you need more defense, try stacking defensive stance in the tactics tree. Also make sure to try and keep other defensive skills active while you are fighting. Glancing blow, fortify defense, deflect, parry all can work together if you're heavy armor. And if light try dodge, fortify defense, evasion, deflect.

And for groups of skeles, cover is key. And also try and chase down the mages and archers while using cover. If you chase them and kill them first, they will try to run away from you, so they will attack you less. And if done right, the melee skeles will be chasing you too and not hitting you, so you can kill them last.

 

To go back to the initial points about population levels and such, regarding reteachable recipes and things of that nature. I think this is an important thing to consider and something the devs probably should pay attention to. I'm not saying "ohh!!! the game is dying!!!" or anything of that nature, in fact, I see healthy numbers at least in my own circles (friends list, guild, etc. higher than in the past). However, one thing we've learned from games that have stood the test of time and remained online for years and years, vs those that have shut down: They've had to adjust to the changing demands and capability of the playerbase.

For example - older games with dwindling playerbases have had to ramp down some of their "large group content" in light of the fact that playerbase numbers were simply insubstantial to have activities that required 40+ participants, and instead have had to scale things to smaller groups. Many games have also allowed the hiring of NPCs/mercenaries to try and fill the gaps. Not saying this is always done particularly well, but many older games have embraced this to continue to appeal to players when the content absolutely requires a group. We also see a reduction in appeal for heavily group-focused games with queue systems and such that can take hours to matchmake particularly when that group content is the only viable progression.

An interesting thing about Sota is, most groups aren't the sum of their parts. What I mean is, in almost every group I've ever been in, there is always one (or more) persons who are capable of soloing whatever content we are doing. There's very few examples of content that "requires" a group - sure, a group could speed things up (but also slows it down, since Sota does not have individual loot/exp gains as many modern games now do so as not to discourage cooperation). This leads to an interesting conundum - we can take more people, but it splits everything more ways, at which point it would have been more efficient to split the group and do something else for more gold/exp/loots. For almost all scenes except for the few powergrinding xp centres, you are better off not exceeding a group size of 2-3 people or its simply not lucrative. We've all seen it happen - people not doing enough DPS getting kicked from groups or not invited at all - and sometimes this isn't even a matter of malice, its simply a case of, we do not need more people to achieve what we are trying to do, we're already melting the mobs at the fastest possible rate and more bodies isn't going to make us do it any better but it will dilute the rewards for doing so.

I've meandered from my point, which is - in Sota, you can depending on build and gear choices, do just about anything by yourself. However, other systems, such as recipe teachability or, recipes being in supply bundles encouraging trade/market/etc - might need to be evaluated simply due to lack of accessibility. There are certain items I've searched town after town after town and nobody's selling - at any price - and other items that there are so many more producers than consumers that items languish on vendors priced at cost, not moving, for months. The economic impacts of population changes are felt more keenly here than the adventuring/progression/combat impacts. Just as other games have had to take a hard look at what can be done to make it so that content designed for small groups can be done in smaller groups + hirelings, Sota may need to look at the viability of say, trying to collect 128 of an artifact ON YOUR OWN because nobody sells the thing, and even if they did, you can't make any money selling anything because nobody's buying anything - and adjust drop rates or requirements accordingly.

Same thing with recipes. Teachable, reteachable, not teachable - I wish we'd just get rid of all that nonsense and go back to everything can be discovered by putting the correct things on the table. The finding the rare piece of paper nonsense never made any sense and its just a barrier to new players and creates layers of frustration. The piece of paper can be a lazy alternative but shouldn't be the obstacle to learning - having to experiment (or sure, read the wiki, who cares) you still had to physically source the components and make the item to get it in your book. This was a great system and you relied on nobody but yourself - which when population levels are uncertain, is where you want to target things.

 

Couldn't agree more. The way recipes currently work is one of the most annoying things about starting out in crafting. And now there are no-trade recipes for the dread artifacts that only drop off certain cabalists... I really don't get the reasoning for that.