What's It Gonna Take... to Launch a fun and successful game

I think we're gonna need more decay, longer crafting timers, less loot, the same level of moderation, and more dance parties in order to keep the current players interested.

If we want to attract new players, we're going to need caps on just about everything, as well as real (i.e. balanced challenge) pve encounters and pvp scenarios.

 

Make me King

 

Party content and balance

LFG system

Loot balance (i.e. level playing field between high level players and low level players as well as groups versus solo)

Squash the reoccurring and annoying bugs (i.e. cape apron, skills/masterworks not working as intended, etc.)

 

I really have a lot of fun in the game, but thinking about the gaming industry as a whole, there are some "basic" features that new players that are used to playing MMOs expect to find:

- Improved load times
- More character customization
- Mounts
- Achievement system
- Raid system
- "Daily" quests

 

Second this, top on my list!

 

In the mind of one, hardly the mindset of the majority!

 

If i'm wrong, there exists a totally unaccounted for reason why new players aren't being attracted.

 

Firstly, great list majoria! One of the things I have been pushing for is making this game more casual friendly and being able to capture their interests and this is a great list to highlight things we should get as MVP (Agile speak for Minimal viable Product) to give all the new players something to focus on and get interested in.

I would personally amend this to cover uncloning scenes which you encounter along the main questlines to keep them interesting (Which they have been doing). They can always unclone harder scenes later on.

They have been doing this with the scene unclones already. You mean them more content and lore? I personally think that the rewards currently for the puzzle scenes in the recent uncloned areas provide rather lacklustre rewards and need something else (Like adv ex).

Love this idea!

Agree. Even in the uncloned scenes I would expect to find at least a couple of NPCs hiding out from persecution.

10000x YES! Level scaling isn't for everyone but I personally don't get why. I love it as it frees up what you can do and where you can go in the game. It has worked so well for SWTOR and ESO that WoW has followed suit and will include scaling in all zones from patch 7.3.5. This fixes the problem of the story content being stuck behind a grind wall as well.

 

Some very good points in this post. Agree with them, the game has so much potential. Treasure map system would be awesome!

Im quite disappointed and dismayed to see people begging Berak to close this thread though because it has criticisms in it about the game not being perfect. Nothing is perfect, we are a community trying to make it better. Head out of sand please.

 

Well thank you and I am disappointed for some who come to this thread to give their sarcasm instead of helping. I may not always word things in a way that gets my point across even though I try really hard to do this.

The absolute point of this thread is not to put down the very hard work the devs are doing on this game but to help them to get stuff in that is important to show off this game at release. The new and first time users are still struggling to understand the confused state of this game. I tried to push for the tasks and achievements system for so long and was told maybe later. Imo it is later but beside the point.

Again I asked you the community to not use the time on this thread to discuss each other's points but to dig down deep from your heart caring about this game and its success to release and say:

"What's it gonna take in your opinion to release a full featured, fun, and successful game"

I give ideas and truly I have many more that imo should have been implemented before release but I gave examples from my heart caring so much about this game. Don't come on my thread if you don't care about this game and about giving honest feedback. It's not a discussion thread but an opportunity to bridge the gap between:

a "grind game and why again am I grinding game?"

and a "I don't get it game"

Our feedback can help to get more reason to play and reason to keep coming back in this game which is still missing some dynamics for many people as we continue to release. Saying it's their problem is not helpful imo.

Your feedback can get the interesting and fun and challenging in. It can help to bridge the gap in the confusion. Take advantage of making a difference to say what's it gonna take in your opinion.

Edit to note: also this thread is not meant to replace individual great feedback on combat, Quests etc, it just isn't. There are some great conversations going on talking about the details of individual things people are seeing. I'm impressed with the work the community is doing and I hope the devs have time to hear those thoughts as well. It is all important.

 

Fun. The game needs to be fun.

Right now it's a UO AOS / Snail's pace game. Mixing theme park stats with sand never works. It's killed almost every game that's tried it. No one wants to play a 50/50 sand/theme game. Sandbox players will go to a sandbox, theme park players will go to a theme park. Who are we trying to target here? Ultima fanboys? Most of them have either moved on, or are playing UO classic servers.

 

Well yes true some things have gone in all directions. I would like to hear your list of what we can do with what we have already. I did not get it from what you said. It is too late to cry over spilt milk of any directions this game has taken and when all is and done with many more releases still ahead to add and tweak and content coming who really knows what this game will look like after all of that. It really takes something to be able to look at this game and the features it does have and say what are the easy fixes and what are the things that can help, change, and be added now to release a better game?

 

I'll try and type up a list when it's not 7am =p

But the biggest thing they can do is get rid of the God awful skill system. Yes you CAN lock skills, but you get punished for doing so. Even now I never look at the game, I stare at a hotbar the entire time...

Most people I know who try the game are instantly turned off by an over complicated skill system. It's not user friendly, at all. And it distracts you from the game. It's akin to someone who has to stare at a keyboard to type. On top of that it adds way too much dumb luck into the game. How many times have you just stood there in combat doing nothing because literally every slot was empty. Winning/losing a fight shouldn't depend on a literal slot machine mechanic.

It's by far the dumbest system I have ever seen in a game. Sure, they get points for being creative, but WTF? What moron actually greenlighted that system to actually be added to the game?

Sorry if that comes across as super ignorant. I'm just dumbfounded by the fact we are this far along in development and they haven't gotten rid of it yet. Kill the cancer before it kills the game. Because I bet if they polled people who tried the game and left, a large portion would mention the combat system.

 

@Derium you seem to not understand the dynimc skill system, i never have empty slots - NEVER!
I dont stare the whole time at the bar. You sound like you are just not able to handle it, sorry, but if it turns to be point and click my fun is gone, deckbuilding and such is one of the things i like the most about SotA and is what keeps me playing, experimenting, beeing challenged and having fun.
Fun is something dependent from the personal PoV. I accept that you dont have fun with it, but i doubt that making the game more themepark will bring much more players.

 

Stun can you perhaps tell him why you don't have empty slots? This is a feedback thread. Just a *hint* *hint* to keep the thread constructive and not criticize others ok. You give some very good points a lot. I don't have empty slots either, but not the point of the thread. His feedback is still valuable that he struggles with the system and he is not the only one we hear who has this problem. Making it more easy to understand is an important goal this game should have imo. Ok so back on topic of What's it gonna take

 

I don't think the game knows what it is yet.

A simple way to make the game successful is to add the word, "blockchain", to Gold Crowns.
Ride the Crypto wave, nonsense I know but this is the times we live in.

Performance is the one thing that would bring me back, but I think there are issues with this which may not be solvable in the short term or with a wholesale hack of the underlying system.

The game at its core is fun and has not really explored its potential. But unless performance is radically enhanced, it never will. If there is one thing that Port has to fix it's this one.

But it's hard, building a game like this is the hardest thing, so I feel it for the devs.

There is so much I want to do to help this game out, but it is not yet marketable.

 

sure, although i'm maybe not the best at explaining it, but @Derium, try or begin with only 2 dynamic slots, iirc its 9 Glyphs that you then need to not get slugs.
Or do 3 and its 15 glyphs. So you have to have 9 glyphs for 2 or 15 glyphs for 3 dynamic slots in your bar.
Stack 2-x Skills ( Glyphs) on that dynamic slots, For example is use 2 dynamic slots for 4 sword skills because i can combine them.
So i put 2 on Slot 1 and 2 on Slot 2 - as i have these Skills at 80 i have 5 Glyphs of each Skill and these need to be in the right part of the window of your deckbuilding window (i have not the default keybindings anymore, so i cannot say what key it is, to me it is z)
So in the Bar are 2 dynamic slots with 2 skills assigned to each of it and in my right deckbuilding Glyph window are 20 Glyphs (4x5). Thats just an example and maybe not the best one.
Many month before i tend to put all the Glyphs in that window, but thats bad as the redraw becomes very slow. And i also run decks with 5 or even 6 Skills assigned to only 1 dynamic slot, but i then maybe only put 2 glyphs of each skill in that Glyph Pool Window, because if i would put them all into it, some skills would maybe never appear. You can also experiment with having more glyphs of the skill you want to appear more often and less glyphs of the skill what you dont want to show that often- all assigned to only 1 dynamic slot.

it's hard to explain, but i guess there are also some good videos around what expkain that. Just search YT for SOTA Skills Glyphs Combat or whatever, it's really not that difficult to learn it.

If you have enough Glyphs of your Skills the 5-5-18 Deck back in the days was something what let me understand it very well.
5 Slots fixed and with must have Skills and 5 Slots dynamic with 6,7,8,9 or even 10 skills assigend to them like you want where they appear and 18 Glyphs in total to get the fastets redraw on these slots. You wont have empty slots and they will refill very quick if you use a skill/ glyph.
It' learning by doing and hard to explain for me.

 

I want to get away from themepark. The fact we have as many item stats on our gear as we do is insane. SOTA is more themepark then sandbox, they just "hide" it (items stats on gear is for a carrot on a stick method, a sandbox doesn't need a carrot on a stick, because a sandbox won't funnel people into content and force them to do it in order to advance). Like with your characters level, do you still need to look through your game files to find out what level you are? If so, why? They have items in game that add onto your level, but don't display your level on your paperdoll (that I know of, it's been a while). Just funny that I literally have no idea what level I was when I quit playing.

But I'm all ears on learning how to spam spells. Even recently I went youtube hopping to see how high level players did it, they still had empty bars rather often. It seems, random when spells come up? If you're not looking, then how do you know the spell in say, slot #3 will be there when you hit 3 on your keyboard? IF there's a way to have your spells up 100% of the time, then why even have the slot machine system in the first place?

 

I believe you that it might not be hard to get the hang of. But can we really expect new players to have to youtube search how to even activate their skills in game? Just ponder that for a moment. The system is so confusing that you yourself said it's hard to explain. It's just a hotbar... You are suppose to drag skills onto it and then go kill stuff. That's what I mean by it. Players of a game ALWAYS feel compelled to use the system that offers more DPS, it's common to know unlocked skills offer that, but the game offers nothing in terms of giving you a 100% detailed walkthrough of exactly what to do. All other games do, they say "there's your hotbar, here's how it works".

That's what I mean by it. It's terribly confusing, it makes no sense to me, at all. And to new players who "just want to check the game out" will jump ship once they see a hotbar takes a college degree. If a simple thing like that is so confusing in this game, they will assume the rest of the game is just as confusing, if not more. Is it really worth driving new players away by the masses just for a "look at this cool system I made" by a dev member?

Also, sorry, not trying to derail the thread! I just find this to be pretty important, since it's one of my top 5 reasons I sold over $10,000 worth of stuff and left the game and it's the top reason I have personally known many people to have left the game (A while ago when I brought my YouTube fans into the game, it was non-stop complaining and asking how the hotbar worked, I couldn't answer them).

 

SOTA is shaping up to be a great game but still has a few areas that would benefit from improvement before launch:

1. Overland map scenes - The overland is missing something. There is too much reliance on POTs as points of interest, and without them vast areas are uninteresting. Adjusting the avatar's camera POV and increasing the size/prominence of some landmark structures might help too. I look to games like Age of Wonders as being an overland map step up that SOTA could strive towards.

2. Itemization - Solo players still tend to find squat in Tier 1 to 5 scenes other than repetitive crafting resources. Given that other games cater to the loot-finding crowd, some gamers might come to SOTA and be disappointed in this. I think SOTA could solve this by enabling crafters to sell goods to a town merchant, who recycles those goods loot drops for players elsewhere in the world. I think Albion is doing this now.

3. Instancing - Seems like many mines/dungeons are solo/party/friend only instances? I think more 'public' instances would be a better idea to foster community visibility and interaction. The option to go to friends mode would still be there.

4. Fully-baked combat system. Attunement - I still haven't found a reason to really care about it. A complete combo system - where art thou? Final effects for all skills? SOTA has a strong combat system, and finishing it will help make the game shine further.

5. Fully-baked quest system. A ton of progress has been made on this. But is it enough. We know that MMO gamers since time immemorial have gobbled up content like its nothing, then cry for more. Also, I still find that the game does not really lure or make me feel compelled to do any quest beyond the main story arc. Should it. Giving the Avatar more obvious things to do in the quest system after completing the main quest line, even if they are 'virtue daily quests', might help.

6. Virtue consequence - Maybe this is something we will see in the next episode, but while the story is now doing a great job getting the Avatar to ponder virtue, its not clear why it matters in the context of the game world after beyond the idea of it. How did my choices change my actual game play? Arabella is nice. But I really think that Lord British or Darkstarr need to show up as characters in some dramatic effect in a scene that gives the Avatar an idea that there is a bigger battle for Novia ahead. I'm sure there is some reason that LB and DS are AWOL, but is the game missing something for it.