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

I'll toss out my next thing that needs to be fixed: Crafting.

There's endless posts on the forums explaining the crux of the issue. But crafting items right now are simply not better than Artifacts.

I cannot believe I'm about to say this... But UO has it right. They did the same mistake SotA did, they introduced artifacts and shot crafters in the foot. However, they finally made what I feel is the perfect crafting system.

Runic hammers: You use one charge (hammers are obtained from turning in bulk order deeds issues by NPCs) and get an item with X properties (depends on how good of a runic it is), those properties are random.

Runic reforging: Don't want pure randomness on your item? You can eat up many more charges on your hammer to narrow down your results. Still up to RNG, but you can pick for example "vampiric" on the item, now the mods will be in the life/stam/mana leeching area.

Imbuing: Don't want any randomness at all? Okay, then just imbue the item and PICK the exact mod you want and how powerful it is (up to a certain pooled cap on the item). But this requires resources from salvaging artifacts and some rare drops. So it's expensive, but you can hand craft exactly what you need for your suit.

Enhancing: Want to change some of the damage properties? Cool, use different colored ores to do so. But wait, the item might break! Don't want it to break? Then use a super expensive item to insure it will not break on your next attempt.

Removing properties: Don't like the fact your sword has a 50% damage increase on it? Cool, you can use an expensive item to delete that stat, freeing up space to add a different weapon mod. But wait, you wanted 50% damage increase still? Not a problem, just imbue it onto a ring. Problem solved.

This system does a few things. It requires crafters to spend time collecting, sorting and filling out bulk order deeds of random items to get the runics. Requires PvMers to get artifacts so crafters can break them down for resources. Oh wait, no, it does NOT require that. That's just your expensive options if you do not want to play the RNG for weeks on end to get what you want. It gives you OPTIONS and a very healthy player ran economy.

Best part is if you want to make the most powerful items in the game? Well, now those items have reduced durability AND they cannot be repaired, so they will break.

This system is completely balanced. You can spend minimal time/resources and play the RNG. Or you can spend more time/resources and get better items, but the exact stats you want. OR you can go nuts and make a super powerful item... That will break over time.

I hate to say it, but UO has done it right. Pvmers can just use the artifacts they find, or then can craft/buy better gear. Plus artifacts vanish non-stop because people need to break them down. So artifacts are not useless and they hold value still, because people still need them, to delete them.

Even if we had HALF of this system implemented, it would go a long way to actually having crafting be a thing on SotA.

 

no, its a mouseover in the character window now - but regarding a good sandbox i agree with that much stats and levels at all - but the most players here would sure disagree with me.
The decision to not show levels was very good and oldsql, but nowadays you cannot win a pottet plant with it (is that correct in english? )
To me no levels, no skillspoints, no map, no blue sparkles would make it a much better game, but that is another story and that horse it out of the barn.

This said abve, to me playing a roleplay game isn't about numbers, it is about immersing into the world - i sure adapt, as they dont let me have any option to do not whatch the numbers, min max to some degree and level stuff, but a good RPG session is not abput this. I often said: The Pen and Paper Sessions and groups while i was a GM (i lead a Rolemaster Party for 7 years and before AD&D and DSA) what were about XP and levelup were lame and not fun. The party what was about RP and in the firt line only RP was amazing, fun and special. We sure used rules, dice and numbers, but most of the time things were decided by common sense and we rarely need to check a lot of values to avoid senes like this
need to/ should start at 30:32

hm, i have the whole screen in my sight and i agree if you assign more than 4 skills to one slot it maybe need too much attention, but if you have only 1-3 skills on each slot it's not that sort of a problem to me - also when a combo is ready for 1+2 for example these skills are highlighted. You can also fix one of the combo skills and jut have the other skill with all glyphs in a dynamic slot to be able to do the combo.
I think some combos are totally worth it to use at least 1 or 2 dynamic slots and to me it's really fun. But sure you don't need to, i also fight a lot with static deck, but sometimes i want the combo's, just because i like it and many say it's stronger, but there are maybe combinations where i would say its equal strong, but i'm the last one who can make a viable statement about this as i do not do any math about min maxing stuff - there are others who can tell you exactly what like and why .

afaik there is a tutorial about skills in all outskirts and the playerhandbook.

because english is not my native language

 

I took my leave from the game when it changed direction from the one pitched during Kickstarter and design decisions such as the introduction of player own towns where introduced. This was a huge disappointment for me as I had put thousands into the game and over time it along with some other decisions ate away at me to the point I could no longer in good faith support the project, so I sold my account. I still have hope that I might get a good single player experience and if SOTA is able to achieve this, there is a small chance that it may entice some of the other players to come back to the game. At any case I filled out the recent survey with a few of my concerns, however I did make mention that I'm no longer playing the game and that the remaining community's vision of the game appears to differ to mine. At least the one thing I can be sure to look forward to is the SOTA crossbow that I'll receive in Star Citizen.

 

I'm not going to repeat the (great) ideas of what others have brought up in this thread and concentrate on POI's (points of interest) - specifically NPC towns. Port took the right step in embedding the new T2 mines in places like Solania, Storm's Reach etc. Right now most towns are just like another - the same merchants, shops and up to a year ago they all looked and functioned pretty much the same.

The uncloning of scenes and introduction of eastern, viking and other cultural styles did a lot to make regional towns unique from each other as well as bringing something extra to existing storylines and lore. Regionalizing the recipes was a painful but necessary next step but more needs to be done.

If gold & copper can be found in abundance in a mine in Storm's Reach wouldn't it mean the gold/copper smiths of exceptional skill would be living there or in nearby towns? Wouldn't there be advanced recipes needing these substances for sale be found there? Shouldn't trade routes exist between these new POI's and other towns that need their products?

The existence of trade routes can be implied (similar to what regionalizing the recipes did) by having prices of products which depend on these raw materials be cheaper in towns on or near the route. And the same "trick" could be applied for agriculture, tailoring, blacksmithing and other crafting areas. Later on, the prices can be dynamic depending on the seasonality of the demand and the availability of the goods.

Weather should also have an effect in terms of product availabilty and cost of transport. There should be plants (coconuts come to mind) that you can't grow out in the open if the regional climate has snow. Greenhouses , in this case, would be required and the additional costs would make the final product more expensive.

Deepening the "personality" of these places would increase immersion and give life to the storylines and lore which are already in place and lessen the feeling of flatness one gets at times during one's travels.

 

dogma

 

That is a great point. Scenes should have a 'personality' that they leave as a lasting impression on the gamer

Scene personality to me is about the story impression it leaves. Why is that scene in game? What did it teach me? Why do I care? Why will I or should I remember it?

Blood River Outskirts is a good example. The Blood River starting scene felt like it had no personality beyond an intriguing red river. Yeah, yeah, another game with evil elves attacking hapless humans I thought (*groan*). But the Blood River Outskirts scene really now gives both that scene and this one personality. I now look back at Blood River as something different than what I thought it was. I look at Aerie differently. I look at the Vertas elves differently. The quests gave the scene, and the game world, memorable personality.

A lot of things make SOTA good. Having more scenes more directly deliver personality like that, tying not just to the game lore today, but the history of Novia more too, would make it great.

 

At least all scenes need to be designed like the Outskirt scenes with questlines and something that connects them also for later gameplay.
Somthing that makes them Scenes in the different Regions and worthwole to explore again, find something, do something.

 

Yeah, the game is really not ready.
The characters have a plastic face vibe and the game NEEDS quests. A lot of them.
Character customization ? There is almost nothing in that regard.
Don't forget the population ..sadly ,the game is really empty .

 

my thoughts towards this.
#1 - bugs
#2 - optimization
#3 - Risk Vs Reward balance
#4 - Improve focus on Crafting, high end 'gear' that is not crafted is disappointing to see. Add optional components to recipes, and have those components be the loot that is dropped.
#5 - Figure out PVE/PVP - having bonuses to PVE content for being PVP flagged is just wrong. If you need more PVP carrots, tie the bonus to the actual PVP activity.
#6 - Reduce Grind, as example the time commitment to obtain all the needed materials to craft a good, but not excellent, set of gear is very high
#7 - Adjust encounters to support group play - Dynamic power/difficulty, loot for all participants, mechanics that push for cooperative play
#8 - dungeons that are fun and engaging more that one time through
#9 - less focus on regular real life cash expenditure for regular gameplay - looking @ you coto's
#10 - more player choice and skill in crafting, more than MC and ENC, base results need variability

 

Greetings, Avatars, thank you Majoria for your Thread!

I wrote a lot of threads about a lot of stuff, so I try to make it short - well ... ok. Sorry - I can't!
I just linked a few threads of mine, as I started to support this game to be a fun and successful game

And I confess, at the moment I am tired of bug reporting and writing threads - it takes a lot of time. And while I am writing, I think: now I know, why I don't have as many GM like others
Reading/Laughing/Headshaking/Writing too much in this forum. May be I should use the time to take part on a contest to receive some Cotos - at last to have the funds to buy a tax free village lot?

MY TOP 4:
- Map - What you see is what you explored - to have fun while exploring the lands and towns ...
How funny and exciting is it to see the whole map, after starting? To exploring the lands could be one of the funny things!
To see on maps, what we explored would help us to know, what we have to explore furthermore! Receiving XP for exploring would be interesting, too

- Death Decay Pool calculation - More fairness for our invested play time - calculate in game time, please
That's MY No. 1 fun - killing - machine. NOT @Chris, @DarkStarr, @Lord British, because I don't want to have a meaning in death, but against an unfair system hurting every player.
I am in game and earn my XP points in game time. When I die, actualy, I loose > 50.000 XP the first death. Coming back next day or two days later, I loose again the amount after my first death.
Why? I logged out - and logged in next day(s). The game counts the death decay pool in REAL TIME. That's unfair - and it most hurts casual players.
I asked about a few times ... may be it was misunderstood? My and other players criticism about isn't the death decay itself - but the calculation time ...

- Providing Chapters in our Journal filtering quests for each path ...
How awful is it to start with the paths and after a few days finding back to - what was it I had to do?)
So many threads of mine - no, I don't repeat them anymore

- fixing unlogical things (Skill behavior, Crafting behavior ...)

Well, a lot of this threads, to help launching a fun and successful game, can be found here:

- Skill system ... and about Master and Grandmaster ...

- Starting with a new Avatar:
Different starter Skills in Novia: Do you know, there is a huge disadvantage starting with the "wrong path?
More about this?
And ever thought of the meaning of our choice at the beginning as an Avatar?

- Crafting: With (Grand)Master we're still not be able to craft a +1 item with a chance >50%! It's still about 30%. ...
With Masterabilities we loose so much crafting stuff (and game time!) for nothing - don't say, we receive "metal scrap" - If we use Silver, there should be "silver scrap" - same for Gold in Alchemy ...
And do you know, after smelting your weight is higher than before?

Different start values also in Crafting skills?

Mysterious Crafting Bonus...

More fun while crafting with crafting quests?

- About Quest feeling killer read here and here again ...

- About Confusing Dialogue System?
- Virtue and Chaos decisions?

- About receiving no feedback for a bug report and unlogical things?
unlogical things?
Vonda, the earth magic trainer is a merchant?
Grigor in Storms Reach
Hiring someone, before we know about to hire him?

- Quests. Problems to find questgivers?

- And what was expected from an Ultima IV-VII successor?

- About the shroud and other cloaks rushing through our clothes ...

- Story Well, I tried a lot for providing constructive feedback.

- And don't forget about housing

Well, beside all of the mentioned things to improve the game:
Three months is a lot of time for fixing mainpoints.

All of us know:
not all wishes can be in until launch.
And all of us know deep in heart, what kind of things have to be fixed asap.
And I think, our Developers also know about
(Well, maybe they find a few more after reading this thread)

And to not forget more positive things:
- The performance since last months raised in a good way!
- Quest improvement was very good. Outskirts are great.
- Have you ever did this spooky quest, Avatars?
- new redesigned places look really great
- Implementing of Virtue Armor was very good. @DarkStarr - You know, we are expecting VIRTUE SHIELDS AND WEAPONS also?
No, not before Episode 2, of Course

- And yes, there are things, maybe a new player would'nt recognize, which can also be unbugged later

Beside all the pinpricks (@Chris!) the game provides a good entertainment.

And I suppose a lot of content will be insert until end of this year - before Episode 2 will starrt.

And to be fair: a lot of wishes (inside this and other threads) weren't promised for Episode 1.
So it really doesn't help to ask for things and to be annoyed about, if it was clear, they won't be in with Episode 1 launch.

Everything was said. Let's see, what will be done until launch.
I am not expecting spectacular things. But I think, it's enough for a new player to have fun while playing a lot of months.
Doing all the questlines and sidequests is a lot of stuff to do ...
And I think, a main part of the game IS the story.

And don't forget, what I have learned at the Wallstreet Institute from my English teacher Bob, as I came late for my lesson.
"Sorry, Bob, I am too late!"
"No, Michael, you're not! You are LATE, not too late!"

It's never too late Too late, in my opinion, it is, if we can't smile about the seriousness of our life and about our narrow-mindedness to insist on things should be the way, we expected them ...
Life is never, what we expected - humans are never, what we expected.
So - why should a game? Made by the same thinking and feeling humans ...

For me the game is successful. If you don't think so, two questions:
- Which (other) game got your attention continuous over the last years?
I can't remember another one, I played constant over years ...
- On which forum do you read / post as often as you did and do here?
I can't remember another one, which was/is interesting like this one ...

I think, this is, because the game and community/forum provides a lot of stuff in a way like no other.
And not only the dance parties

You could say, reading a newspaper for over 20 years can't tell us about the good content of the newspaper and if it really is successful.
Yes - it also is a kind of definition. For me the game gave me a lot of nice hours - and storytelling I don't want to miss.
Sure, the story could be provided in another way. Sure, the graphics could be more spectacular.
But I am not talking abou graphics and resolutions, I am talking about feelings (good-> Story and bad-> decay calculation).
And I also like the music.

At the end, fun is our emotion and success our definition.

And as we're here since Alpha , for most of us a lot of things look common.

Well, as Cordelayne said:

It's a great idea, if you (never) played the whole 4 mainpaths to reset and start with official launch.
I also try to do it this way. But first, I think in offline mode to meet the companions

And please, don't forget to give constructive and concrete feedback to improve the game for those Avatars, entering novia and the paths later in time!

Farewell Avatars - take care of your unique life time in this special year!

 

very impressive @Paladin Michael. For someone who english isn't first language, you sure made amazing progress lately !

Fare thee well

 

Ahuaeynjgkxs,
thank you for this compliment
I try to improve my human skills just as well as my game skills ...

 

What's it going to take? George Harrison sang it best...

But it's gonna take money
A whole lot of spending money
It's gonna take plenty of money
To do it right child

It's gonna take time
A whole lot of precious time
It's gonna take patience and time, um
To do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it
To do it right child

 

lol I love that song

 

1. Ship physical goods
2. balance offline mode
3. add companions to offline mode

 

So due to an announcement from Darkstarr during the Telethon I have edited the OP with this statement. This is such good news.

Edit:

With the news from Darkstarr during the telethon that we will now be getting an in game achievement system which has been one of my big requests that I felt was missing in this game to help provide goals, tasks, and reasons to visit and revisit scenes, and explore scenes. So here is a link for ideas on implementing interesting and great achievement systems.

https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.co...ing-achievements-for-your-games--gamedev-3371

Here is a little preview of what the link talks about if you don't want to click on it.

"An achievement is simply a goal, and all games have goals, whether set in code or left to the player to determine. We often can't quantify these sorts of achievements, but it's important to realize that players will aim for them and that many aspects of achievement design will still apply.

Challenge Achievements
Challenge achievements are the "traditional" achievement. Find a set of legendary weapons. Blow up 10 zombies at once with a grenade. Max all your combat skills. These are objectives that let the player test their skills, and give the "true" gamer an additional layer of challenges to sink their teeth into.

Tutorial Achievements
Tutorials are boring. Players want to get involved in gameplay as quickly as possibly, which is why many games use an introductory level of some sort to let the player get their feet wet and introduce them to gameplay elements one at a time without overwhelming them. However, tutorial levels can only last so long, and eventually players will need to be set free into the "real game".

Progress Achievements
Progress achievements ("congratulations, you have completed the first chapter!") occupy a strange spot in the world of achievement design. There's nothing necessarily wrong with them, but they don't really add anything either. In a linear game like Halo or Half-Life 2, the achievements are unavoidable and will be picked up by the player just by playing the game. If an achievement is unavoidable, can it really be called an achievement?

Other Types of Achievement
There are a few other types of achievement that bear a quick examination.

Fun achievements, which don't necessarily add any challenge but add a little silliness to the game, can be a good way to break up the "seriousness" of gameplay with an interesting little diversion. Things like "kill an enemy with a rotten egg" or "kick a chicken a fair distance", while hardly deep and meaningful, can - used sparingly - make a game a much more enjoyable experience.

Summary
At the end of the day, your game should be fun. Achievements should enhance a player's experience, not trap them into decisions or limit their options. Players should feel like acquiring an achievement is a reward, not something that's been handed to them on a platter. And achievements can be used to expand players' minds, to show them how intricate and complicated your game is, rather than to just reward them for repeating the same old tasks over and over."

*******************

I love this article so I have carried it around and nagged and nagged for us to get a system in this game which to me felt very empty with out it.

So yay for another missing piece getting added to the game and thank you all who have posted so far on the thread. keep your ideas coming and cheers.

 

I never played any ultima game, but have heard a lot about the virtue system of ultima online. I would love to see something like that implemented.

 

Cheers Majoria!

So I've been lurking for the best part of 4 years. Logging on very intermittently to keep my pad safe. But recently I decided to give it a proper good few days playing to see where I'm at re: feedback now that we have an imminent launch date and now that loading and FPS is a lot better.

-----
So caveat; I'm putting the single-player/offline/story stuff aside because it is a BEAST. I will only say this one thing, remove questing from the MMO part, that way the sandbox guys are happy and the single player world can take on BIG changes, such as dragons not re-spawning etc... I'd happily play and re-play "Ultima X" till the end, then start a new char to play "UO2" and go fishing, farming, LFG for a dungeon run etc... Now, here's my list!
-----

1. Finding People!
In any given town, this seemed way harder to do than I thought it would be. I'm talking about skill trainers, merchants etc... The first thing I tried was asking a guard (or anyone really) variations of "where's the skills trainer?", no luck, so then I tried the map which wasn't very usable and leads me to point #2. I just settled on SOTAWiki and running around for ages in the end.

2. Map and parser are broken.
(It is my understanding that the map is being worked on, not sure if they're looking at asking NPCs for directions, I did some mail delivery and the blue glow is VERY helpful. I do wish the guy would stop waving to me for X minutes after I've had a chat to him though...)

3. Crafting Rewards
So this one got me. As I'm not questing I thought I'd get a vendor up and running on my row lot, maybe sell some bows and potions. But I need cash first. So I go and make some leather armor etc... Only to find out I can't make a profit by improving the raw mats into actual stuff and selling to vendors. So I start selling raw mats to vendors but that just feels like I'm grinding areas and selling everything to the vendor. Not great...
(In retrospect I guess this is what the public vendor is for but I guess we need a bigger game population to make that work, so hoping this will work as intended on release)

4. Animations\3D Chars need a lot of polish, tab targeting etc...
This is pretty important for newcomers (and by extension, public vendors haha!), they say don't judge a book by its cover but everyone does. The look of the armor etc... has been steadily improving over the course of the newsletters but the animations need some serious TLC. There was a very good post on this recently on the main forum with videos of people running irl etc...
(Now I was fighting wolves and bears and I saw those two in particular marked for improvement so it looks like this is being worked on, the spells certainly look good now)

5. UI looks fairly poor
I mean the borders around things, the way the windows snap to the edge of the screen when you bring them up initially like there's no default margins. The dialogue box is pretty ugly etc... The icons for a lot of the mats are still HUGE in the backpack. Compare the UO character window to SotA's for a perfect example.
(You can definitely see the improvement in things over the last few years, use of *that* font has increased, town name banners look absolutely wonderful on the overland map, the stained glass window look for some of the icons in the HUD etc...)

6. Single Player Experience
Damn, I said I wouldn't talk about it but it's in my numbered list. Curses! Seriously, just take it out of the MMO part (and I'm saying this as a massive U7 fan). Leave the tutorial areas as they are, so the NUE is good.

7. Those CPs... my God.
Getting around CPs is a monumental pain when I just want to get to where I'm going.

8. Recall Runes! Gates!
Which brings me to these bad boys. Give us recall runes a la UO proper so we can be about our business, moon-gating your group was always fun, or jumping into some random's one at Britain Bank just to see where you ended up haha! I can sort of see what they're trying to do here, with the teleport scrolls, but "force them to play together" has not worked out very well for Elite Dangerous. An LFG system and things like Battlegrounds and Guild Warfare is way more appropriate. Or I dunno, give us Silt Striders.

9. LFG System
So, given my previous example from #3... I can't really craft and sell to vendors, I don't want to grind to sell raw mats... I did some fishing, that was actually pretty pleasant. I wanted to start my taming journey but oh God. OK. I need silver, this will be good, I'll get mats I can sell as a side product of my quest for silver (for taming mats), and I'll use the money to save up for my vendor! After I eventually found the silver mines "near" Jaanaford, I got WIPED straight away. Back to fishing. But a man can't fish forever and this is where an LFG system would *shine*!

10. That intro...
There's a good post about this already. It goes back to well... first impressions are everything. It's like when someone sees a 1-star review (and why those are SO MEAN), instantly you're biased toward a more negative response (given a lack of ratings sure, because it eventually balances given numbers but it sure hurts the potential early birds - which might hurt your numbers). Or like when they have old bad, faded, pictures of meals outside restaurants. Could be the best meal you ever had but you didn't eat there because of the presentation (maybe, I dunno, bad example maybe - seems too subjective, terrible screenshots for an app maybe?).

11. Player Vendor Fees
So, uhm, these seem a bit steep no?

12. Lighthouses
This is a bit fluffy but I feel like a good list has 12 points. I really dislike seeing 5 lighthouses bundled together in a scene. It's vexing. But it's probably too late to do anything about it now.​

tl;dr:

a. Seems hard to make gold.
b. Taming/Going into mines seems mental right now.
c. Game's not making it easy for me to go about my business.
d. Needs animation polish and a re-edited intro, UI borders.

I mean all of the above with the deepest respect to @Lord British and the team at Port. I've just been watching over the years and with release on the near horizon, thought I'd drop my 2c.

 

I dislike the current "xp-pool" and decay system so much it will be a reason for me to never play this game. I just had like 6 skills active and ran out on XP after killing skellies and wolves for about an hour or so..... /quit. I am not interested in hearing how I could have gone more efficient about this and how this will get better later on (I know how the system works ), this is just punishing someone for having a little fun and seeing his skills go up. Do you think a newbie will go to a forum to read extensive explanations on how to game this system to the max? Decay is just so counterintuitive to an RPG. From Rags to (some) Riches (and back to Rags if you want something different).

I honestly do not understand the need for this system: who cares if everybody is max level at every skill at some point? PvP is non existent anyway. Are they afraid that maxed players will get bored and leave the game? How about first luring more people to the game ? Game needs a ton of polish still, and uncloning, but that skill system kindof makes it dead in the water for me. And probably others.

So get rid of that feature and work from there, is my answer.

 

But Majoria is spot on.... sorry, the game needs more fun, needs to feel more rewarding and not so much punishing.... I agree with EVERYTHING she said ....