What is the core of this game, according to you?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by oplek, Nov 25, 2020.

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  1. oplek

    oplek Avatar

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    If you were distill down the game to what it is (or what you think it ought to be), what would that be?

    For me, for what it should be:
    • An immersive interactive world with a story to explore and experience.
    • Character development.
    • Player crafting and economy.
     
  2. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

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    Oh, man. I wanted to be cheeky and post a GIF of a metal grinder running.

    Do not Google "grinding gif."
     
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  3. craftymethod

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    • Novian Citizen simulator/sandbox
     
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  4. Violet Ronso

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    An open world where I create my own adventure with little or no restrictions, a minecraft with less digging and more magic.
     
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  5. Barugon

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    This is the ultimate point.

    [edit] Oh, and decorating.
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2020
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  6. Warrior B'Patrick

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    Greetings all
    To me this world offers a immense opportunity of social interaction and personal growth. There is so much that one can be involved in from story line (not well defined), to skill building (crafting and fighting), group events (Guilds and LFG), Marketing (buying and selling), and even Artistic Design (Lots, homes, and items). Even without following the story line to completion you could spend a long time just exploring and advancing one place in the world. It all depends on what you are here for.
     
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  7. Oakenhammer

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    What is the core currently?
    • A robust housing and player-owned town system
    • Exponential experience character progression with diminishing returns
    • RNG based crafting system

    What would I like the core to be?
    • An immersive living world rich in activities, questing content, meaningful repeatable content, and a strong central narrative
    • A suite of creative tools players can use to create and populate their own environments with challenges, quests, and stories
    • Strong community based on the foundation of interdependence and cooperative objectives
     
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  8. Sorgin Txakal

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    I believe at its core this game is a house decoration and social situation simulator.

    There are many other features this game has that, if further expanded and refined, and the devs can somehow be monetarily incentivized, could become an appealing core element of the game to a broader audience:

    • The combat system is deep and PVP could be something people seek out in this game if there was an economic function/benefit to it or otherwise allowed for deeper player engagement.
    • The dungeon making mechanics so so much potential and this game could cater to fellow dungeon masters if we were just given better tools to make dungeons more appealing in attracting people to them or tying them in with personal-made quests
    • The crafting system is very deep, but only very rare things can be crafted that you feel you have put any kind of personal stamp on and even less of a subset of those can be shown off.
    • The player economy presents the most difficult problem as all the elements are there for a robust and dynamic player-driven economy, but I think a lack of a specific and adhered to vision of how the player economy *should* function has diluted its potential somewhat.

    In Shroud's current state, as it is a sandbox game in nature with much of any feeling of achievement being driven on a personal level, I believe streaming decorating and social interactions are the core gameplay the devs focus on the most, driven by the only mechanism of monetization the game embraces.


    Given these observations, my dream for this games future would be deeper and more player-driven questing tied with dungeon building. I see no reason why the devs couldn't monetize some aspects of dungeon building where relative equivalents already exist (e. g. Pay for a limited amount of rare spawners for more diverse creature types, roaming elites, or bosses in dungeons. Paying for advanced questing functionality, like being able to load up NPCs with COTOs to be given out as rewards under specific conditions)

    These sorts of things could be expanded into player-run-towns to breathe some life into the dead pvp areas of the game if players could pay for things like random visits from the wandering merchant in their town, maybe the ability to upgrade a POT with a wandering vendor that visits all NPC/PR Towns, paying for a dragon or mob spawners to allow NPCs to raid a town if it is set to allow it - possibly an upgrade so cabalist seiges actually take place inside the town to give value to POT NPCs.
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2020
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  9. Echondas

    Echondas Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    The first thing that popped into my mind was the grinder lady from Letterman (but sadly, it didn't show up in that Google search!)
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2020
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  10. macnlos

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    Players create a character and control their life to explore different personalities which change the way the game plays out. Oh wait... that the Sims.
     
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  11. Paulie Walnuts

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    2:47 and on. That's gold.
     
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  12. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    Ultima Online future successor.

    -Be what you want to be!
    -House Sim with extensive deco
    -Interactive world full of adventure and story
    -Player Dungeon creation system
    -Player Markets with supply / demand driven.
    -Extensive crafting system
    -Role play friendly
    -Amazing community
    -Skill based system with caps you will never reach for all your skills for many many years :)

    Things that would make it better:

    -PVP objectives / reason to pvp
    -Finish existing systems (dungeon, player npc's)
     
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  13. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    All above

    plus:

    Episode 2 storyline (continuation of Episode 1 story) - we are still waiting for ...
    Questbook / UI overhaul to get a tremendous feeling: Hey, looks great! Look and feel is great! --> Quality of life?

    Lock the whole map for new players (well, of course one "reset" for old and elder player, who wants to explore!).
    Let us explore the map by our own and only show locations, we visited ...
    and reward it with
    - xp for exploring locations
    - note achievments:
    example --> Exploration of the Perennial Coast:
    - towns
    - dungeons
    - solved quests

    Well, something that rewards our exploration time and our victories. I think this well-created world would have more than deserved it :)

    For player made quests: well, we need a possibility to hand items between npc and player. And an own "player made questbook". And of course a small xp reward, please ;)
    For deco fans: items which are still in game --> step by step into the shop ...
     
  14. Tiina Onir

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    Community, without the community I'd probably have left.

    Unfortunately, I find the story's writing to be both inadequate and poorly presented. Even before persistence I've written about where I thought the story seemed to be merely an outline of a good yarn. There seems to be no interest in going back and dealing with the problems with Ep. 1 content, which I find troublesome, as that's always going to be new players early experience.

    There's a great deal of potential here, but it's up to Portalarium/Catnip to tap it.
     
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  15. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I would describe it as "the game has a lot of evidence of a good story, just little to no proof."
     
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  16. Rat2

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    Endless grind.
     
  17. marthos

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    1. Cash shop for Whales
    2. House/Town decoration sim to drive cash shop sales
    3. Some innovate/cool events like the comet impact destroying a zone and replacing it with another. These are few and far between.
    4. Generic character skill trees (Fire Magic, Water Magic, Swords)
    5. Generic crafting as seen in many other games
    6. Generic enemies (warrior, archer, mage but with different skins)
    7. Below average quest system
    8. Below average story
    9. One of the least immersive worlds ever launched ("under construction signs" in unfinished zones, Jedi Knights with light sabers, etc).
     
  18. ephialtes

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    1. Reinvention of the classic fantasy role-playing experience using state-of-the-art tools and technology
    2. Organically derived game-play responses to player behavior and fundamental virtues and consequence of actions
    3. Fully interactive virtual world - If it looks usable, it should do something
    4. Deep original fiction - Ethical parables, cultural histories, fully developed alternate language text
    5. Crafting system that avoids busy work
    6. Meaningful PVP that also minimizes griefing
     
  19. Superbitsandbob

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    A game that desperately wanted to be an immersive, story driven sandbox RPG but turned out to be a game that caters to a small audience of backers who are more interested in how many lights they can hang up and how much they can sell stuff for than story or game mechanics or game health. All tied to a horribly over-priced cash shop that would make EA blush.

    I can tame a flaming horse though so, there's that.
     
  20. Kara Brae

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    I never played Ultima Online, but I did love the old Ultima series I-VIII, so my hope and expectation was an offline game that was a spiritual successor to the old Ultima series with rich story lines like in Ultima VII and a fascinating and immersive world. I guess my expectation was not very realistic, since the game was going to be both online and offline from the start, and that is an extremely difficult thing to accomplish. In any case, the game turned out to be very different than what I was looking for. There was no rich story line (yes, I read the book by Tracy Hickman but the game itself should tell the story and not need a book to explain things), the quest system was terrible to begin with and although a lot of bugs in quests were fixed, the abysmal quest journal was never changed and it is still the worst quest journal I have ever experienced in any game.

    Regarding game play, I did enjoy decorating my lots (I spent much too much money on an Edelmann and an Ancestor pledge), but I can't say that I found the world immersive. The online game is a hodge podge of different styles and the offline version can't compete with other offline RPG games and is nowhere near as good as Ultima VII. I originally hoped to be able to decorate a whole town in the offline version, but lots were too expensive and it wasn't worth the effort.

    You have to be good at and like combat in order to progress in this game, so for that reason alone, the game really isn't for me. That is not the game's fault, it is merely an incompatibility with my skillset.
     
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