What I humbly think about SotA

Sorry @Corv but I was not able to reply to your thread following your rules, so I decided to post my own ideas here. For those who still don't know me, I'm Ribald Hornpipe in Novia. I've played this game a lot. I enjoyed what SotA has been as a game until the R54 went live. But I stopped playing the game as soon as I didn't had fun with it anymore, some weeks ago. I don't think that Shroud of the Avatar is a bad game, but obviously, it's not attractive enough for the thousands of players out there who chosed to ignore it completely.

I know several reasons that prevented players around me from supporting this project, despite all my encouragements. I will try to expose them without bias, although I share these opinions.

• Scenes' graphical quality : Shroud of the Avatar has kept the reputation of having outdated graphics. This is a criticism that comes up often when I heard things about this game. It's not fair because a lot of progress has been made since the very first version of the game, to the point that the older versions would not be recognizable today. Yet there is still something true with those criticisms. The level of graphics is very uneven depending on the explored areas. And more seriously, the houses that were created during the first years of development are now massively populating all cities while they are filled with inconsistencies (fake windows only visible from the outside), bugs (collisions that cause levitation), or ugly things (poorly designed textures). For exemple, a new player who will have the opportunity to visit the twin-spin manor will be able to realize all these things ... while the placement of such a house costs several thousand dollars (lot deed included). That gives a very bad picture of the game.

• The sky's graphical quality : A part of Shroud has been built around celestial objects and astronomy. I love that. This game allow me to watch the sky. So why the sky has to be so ugly ? Like no word is worth good pictures:

Here is the sky in SotA. Stars are not shining. Some of them look like painted dots. Some celestial objects look pretty basic.

Spoiler: Sky in Novia

Here is the sky in TESO, where I'm actually playing. It's not perfect, but the feeling is different. (note that the ambiant sounds are great too).


I don't know how much work it would require to improve the sky of Novia, but it's certainly worth it. I mean, it's often the upper half part of our screens. The same could be said about the water, although this one has improved a lot in some of the new scenes.

• The character customization : The mirror and the character creation process is one of the first contact players have with the game. I do not believe that leaving this aside was a wise decision. The appearance of the avatars has been redone in 2016, but it is far from satisfactory with regard to what is done among other games. I still think that the reference about that is Black Desert :

Spoiler: Exemple

The situation would be forgivable if we had many options to create a truly unique character, which is not the case. Really, it's a big problem for the game and even when players do not pretend to complain about that, it will always be a negative point in their minds.

• The quests, the dialogues and the journal : I have completed many quests in this game, some at a more or less advanced stage of their development. But there have always been three things invariably disappointing with the quest system: the bugs of the journal, the bugs with the dialogues and the lack of visible consequence for our choices. I could easily provide examples, but I do not think there is anyone here who does not know what I am talking about.

• The skill system, the soft caps, the attunement and the grind : Lots of people posted on those forums to say how painful it was for them to grind endlessly in order to train skills that they don't care about. I repeatedly suggested that magic resistance skills should be placed on the top of the magic trees, or in the focus tree. I repeateadly suggested that people should not be able to use two effects of the same nature at the same time (no cumulative dots with the same -or opposite- element, no cumulative damage avoidance skills, no cumulative movement speed bonus, etc...), because :
  • it would make the balance much more easier to reach for the devs (much less developpement time to wonder how things will cumulate with each others),
  • it would make things easier to understand for everyone, with a simple rule,
    
  • it would force people to do real choices (and not being everything) and bring some diversity,
  • MOSTLY, it would make the soft caps shinier as long as exponential learning curves do not allow to counter those who invest in all the skills of the game. The soft caps are probably one of the best thing this game had to offer : unlimited progression, with exponential learning curves, which prevent anyone to go too far away from the other. The problem is that this ingenious system is not being exploited as it should.

Also I suggested that attunement could be deleted or help with fizzle chance instead of improving spell effects, so that non-magical skills are not compared with spells whose effects can double or triple depending on the attunement (and ruin balance).

• The pay wall : A lot of people still think that you need to spend hundreds of dollars in order to have a house in the game. And we can't really blame then. First, everything has been done to make tax free deeds indispensable (see taxes, below). And secondly, none of the ways to acquire a deed has really been indicated on the website or in any place where a new player (who is not used to search the forums) will logically look for the information. While housing (decorating, not the houses themselves) is clearly the best asset of this game!

• Taxes : I always said that property taxes were too high. Even with a taxed row lot, people won't love to feel forced to connect every day just to talk with the Oracle and get some gold coins, just to maintain the property they already paid for. I think that, in general, the gold sink should be lower because even if the goal is to slow down the richest of us, the fact is that it discourages new players and does absolutely nothing to compensate for the inequalities. The most experienced players will just farm dragons, daemons, monkeys or whatever in order to get more artifacts that they will sell to the others.

• Artifacts : Artifacts are generaly considered as a good thing. However, they are part of the reason why Baron Drocis quited the game. And I will hardly disagree with him. When the objective was to have the objects created by the players as the most powerful things, we gradually slipped to a different semantics where it is the artifacts improved by the players which are often the most powerful. Of course, I see all those people who have ruined themselves to acquire their precious possessions, who will come here to tell us that the artefacts are not the most powerful objects. Sometimes it's true (and I could joke taking the example of the ring of Cat's grace) but the fact is that most of the top players (and when I say most, I'm talking about 90%) that I met in this game had at least one artifact on them. Finally to be more prosaic on this subject, I would simply say that we can not decently try to balance a game and throw to the market objects that allow every average player to double his attunement.

• Meaningless virtue system and unspeakable lore : So far, I don't see what was intended with the virtue system. I don't realize how important it is and I only know it because I have been told about it outside of the game itself. People wear cabalist hoods with anti-virtue symbols everywhere in the game, sometimes along with a white shroud. And even worse, there is no palpable political system or intrigue on an entire continent. Guards are just decorations and those who put you under arrest are mages who can teleport directly on your feet (even if I didn't friend them).

• Meaningless PvP : This game did not define any place for PvP. We only have a tag with a battle royale mode. No factions, no RvR, no real criminal system, no pickpockets, no fun.

I could also speak of the crafting chore, uninteresting fishing and so on but I think other people would do that better than I would do. And by the way, I think it is normal that the best products takes time to be created, then it would be a long unnecessary debate here.

So why, even with all this flaws, I'm still here, waiting for improvements ? I think this game still has many qualities : the housing decoration system (not the houses themselves, but what we can do with those), the social aspects (the emotes), the music system, some mechanics with fighting (even if those are very rare now), the character's progression, the community, the fact that everything is dynamic (even the lights), the fact that this game can easily help with player created content. I think that this game deserves a chance, because it has potential. But I can not say that the latest news gave me confidence about its future... And I know that if nothing is done about the points I mentioned, the game will struggle to attract players who do not necessarily share our enthusiasm at all.

 

You raise alot of good points but I'm still having fun playing the game. Part of that was making a conscious decision to wait to play until after launch, because playing the alpha and the constant changes were annoying me, and it's been alot of fun to come back after not playing since R14 and play a more polished SoTA.

I think you are right about the vast majority of things you raise here and I see some relatively easy fixes, but with a reduced staff, with known amongst them community ambassadors, senior programmers, A.I. programmers, Animation Designers, and others I don't know, I don't really think it's realistic to expect sweeping changes
(like have a Black Desert level character creator) to occur at this point.

Alot of people lost track long ago that this game is very Indie and doesn't bring in or make a whole hell of a lot of dough, which was apparent from the SeedInvest financial disclosures. So, I think players need to you know, be more realistic about what's possible.

 

Very good points. I think they would have fit perfectly in the other thread you mentioned. I don't see any problem. Your criticisms were well thought out.

 

Agreed here, although I came back a bit earlier... mainly around Persistence, then did a quick character reset at Launch to redo everything since it had been expanded and polished.

For me it was that the VERY early releases were a lot of fun because of the potential more than the fullness of the content. R1 was just running around Owl's Head, placing a house and finding stuff to decorate. Then when we went Full Online, it was a tightly knit group because it was such a small world at the time. Then of course seeing crafting and currency put in (and the bugs there). Finally, one of my early Early Release key pieces of fun was to find the areas where we could break out of the intended map area and go to the Edge of the World. Owl's Head, Kingsport, and what is now Moors of Northshore were the best ones at the time. AFter a while, constant ipes and character resets became frustrating and I also spent a good portion of 2016 traveling for my company to work in our Shanghai office (hopefully, I will get the chance to do the same at our new Munich office).

I even saved each Release for the first 7 or 8 screenshots in separate folders and have some shots from our early adventures and adventuring with Lord British as well.

SotA for me has been a lot of fun as well, but I also agree that there is plenty of room for improvement, innovation, and advancement. In the light of the recent lessening of the team size it can be disheartening, but I would advise everyone to keep coming up with ideas, feedback, and bug reports.

 

Speaking of that, here is one. This is sometime around 440 I think.

 

This game has no where near the funding of millions of dollars like TESO. People often forget that. That isn’t a good comparison. Can they possibly borrow design decisions from that? Sure! But it needs to fit within the vision of what this game is about. As well as it’s budget.

 

@Hornpipe may i ask what happened in r54 thst you quit playing?

 

It has not been an easy decision and, by the way, I hope that it won't be definitive. As you probably know that already, I was waiting for further improvements with the combat system in order to make it more attractive and less tedious for those who want to play without having to train every skill. And those changes stopped with the specializations. Also, I waited for meaningful PvP, which was announced to me for Q2 2018, with no satisfaction.

On top of that, two recent things pushed me out.

First, I fought more than one hundred of sieges last month (one siege take me something like 30 minutes to be completed and can be risky for me as my light armor doesn't protect me much against ranged attacks). I grinded this with the hope to keep the loot which is needed to complete the associated repeatable quest. I was expecting to complete the quests during the double XP event as the system clearly allowed that. But with the R54, they changed this repeatable quest into a daily quest (suggesting that I was exploiting the game in the meantime), so I had hundreds of catalysts that I was not able to use anymore with the double XP. They said that the reason was to prevent people abusing experience gains, but in the meantime people were able to earn much more experience that I would have earned myself with this quest, just using the proper skills in the proper places.

Shortly after that, they cut by half the speed movement bonus for combat in order to prevent people with the best bonus (Dash and Fleet flute) to break the AI and the game. Not to mention that such solution sounds like a bad one (some people reported that they fell in the void just because they draw their weapons while jumping) I used some of the worst speed movement bonus myself (Sprint and Berserker stance) and those have been cut by half nonetheless. While all my build was created with the advantage of relative speed against my enemies, avoiding melee attacks in order to survive ranged ones, this tactic was just... cut by half.

With this second blow on my head, I felt like they did not want me to play this game anymore (I know that it's not the case and that I'm not really a "special" victim here but all of this has removed all the fun for me). And without fun, there is no game.

 

Thanks @Hornpipe
I patched overnight, but reading the forums i could save that hdd space, i wont play, because it sounds more of what i've already complained over and over :-D

Have Fun - Stun o7

 

I would recommand that you test it by yourself. We can have very different opinions and maybe some new things could be appealing for you.

 

Yes, you are absolutely right. I said that myself many times. My intent was not to compare TESO and SotA as a whole, but to give exemples of things that could -probably easily- be done in order to dramatically improve our experience in the game.

 

offtopic, but could you please post these somewhere, would love to see these pic's

 

I just remember how disappointed i am with the gap between players and daily Missions to clear sieges solo and double xp and whatnot remember me of the route Sea of Thieves took instead and how satisfying this environment is.
Especially with what i allways said no levels, no vertical progression.

I hope and i'm sure someone will do it in the future for a MMORPG with the housing and socializing / roleplaying features of SotA (emotes, music, deco...) and a SoT like game without levels and things that prevent people from interacting together, but instead make it possible to play, interact, compete, and cooperate from scratch in a fair only about playerskill build experience.

 

Feel free to post those here with a spoiler tag. It would illustrate my first point pretty well with the graphic evolution of the game through the years. So it's totally "ontopic" in my opinion.

Personaly I think good things about this game deserve to be shown as much as criticisms.

 

I will see if I can make some time this weekend to upload the pics in bulk. I see that my imgur account is still there, so here's a quick teaser of the Edge of the World in the early version of the Moors:

Spoiler

Looking at this one and the current game on a separate monitor, one thing I really like the earlier upper right icon menu better than the current one.

Edit: One more found already uploaded... an event with Lord British addressing the gathered subjects:

Spoiler

 

Good news. It's 100% official. Lord British approved to lower the property tax in R55 in today Livestream.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/276358728

Time: 14:50

 

I have been playing the game from the start, frankly there are better games out there with the same genre, BDO to name one, many others are coming in the near future, that this game will not be able to compete against! Basically i just waste time playing this, its a great time killer (probably the best ever) one thing this game does above all others is, take way too much time to do anything! The loot sucks bottom line. There is no curb to how much people charge for stuff in game on vendors, i understand it takes alot of resource to make anything that in itself is a big prob for people, who craft or buy crafted stuff. This game is not as great as i thought it would be! I dont think it will ever be. I play this game to kill time, so much pisses me off about the design of the game as a whole, i could go on and on about. Ill spare you time, so you have more time to actually play the game youll need it. The future does not look great here. Save your "next release or episode" excuses, im tired of hearing the same ole same ole.

 

Thank you for making this post, @Hornpipe

The sad truth of it all is that many (maybe most) of the things you are saying, have been said by various people over a period of some years.

And the answer was always, "We'll get to it..." or "That'll come with polish..." or whatever. And so we waited, and waited... and then waited some more.

And here we are now, with half the staff sacked, and more and more people finally realising what others were saying about the game 24-48 months ago.

I wonder how those people feel; especially those who actively shouted down and attacked people for questioning the game back then, now this has happened?

To not put too fine a point on it, if the people who raised issues 24-48 months ago were listened to, rather than treated so horribly, the game would be better now.

 

"Flaws" is a matter of opinion, and everyone has one, the problem is by following that opinion; how many will be satisfied? UO died, IMO, because they tried to satisfy everyone, and satisfied no one by trying, I hope the Devs don't do it again... Artifacts are a good example; the community wanted artifacts (I think it was a minority opinion), then it outraged a majority (or maybe just alienated), so you really can't win...

I have the opinion of playing the game as presented to me, I may like all of it, I may dislike some of it, but if I want to play it, I should accept it "as is" to begin with, try to learn it, if I really don't like playing it, suck it up and go play something else... Pretty simple...

 

It's great to have you here!