What I humbly think about SotA

Blackghost · Jun 24, 2018

Hornpipe said: ↑

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Scenes' graphical quality : Shroud of the Avatar has kept the reputation of having outdated graphics.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.

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 :

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.
Click to expand...

You nailed it.
Thank you for taking the time to explain your point of view , I hope that will change something.

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What I humbly think about SotA

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