Wow, SoTA On It's Way To Becoming A Classic RPG

Omg, R9 has upped the game yet further, if the developers continue upping their game this way we should see an incredible game.

What they MUST concentrate on:

1: Removing the straight lines in essentially medieval architecture and nature.
2: Make the mini-map editable.
3: Crafting ships and equipping them with cannon etc.

 

I agree.

Shroud Of The Avatar is beginning to glisten with hallmarks of greatness.

I hope the dev's realize how brilliant we know their game is becoming, and that we appreciate and notice everything they pour into it, even though at times we disagree on certain features.

 

The game does have all the hallmarks of a potentially amazing game, I am starting to get that certain 'Ultima' feel for SoTA which is so exciting.
I made my first exploration in the depths of the sewers yesterday and loved every minute, the way you have to swim under fire to gain access to areas, it is the little touches that make SoTA so wonderful; highlighting functioning in-world items like levers, street lights and so forth. I truly hope the devs make everything manipulative.

 

They are working primarily on Combat in this release, so it might be a good idea to share more combat related feedback. We need combat to work for it to be a classic RPG. Right now I believe they really need to make this system a little more user friendly, and resolve some issues before we start praising them about how wonderful their world will be. I have no problem giving them praise. They are a good team, but let's be realistic here, if the combat system is too complex it might be a problem for new players to even want to buy the game.

 

Okay, I can do that too.

 

If you change this to SoTA is on its way to becoming a classic MMO RPG. Yes.
Solo RPG. Doubtful.

Both were promised.

 

Honestly if things don't change regarding the complicated aspects of this game, I think people will play this game for a few weeks at the most and just quit. Single player, or multiplayer. PvP too.

People will be overwhelmed by all the overly complicated combat system, the food system (which is supposed to make you pick the right diet to be effective in your style of play), combos, really a bunch of good features that overwhelm the players. As it stands we have to spend a day or two to make our decks function optimally in PvP. Keep in mind we will not be able to lower and raise our skills at will after the game launches. So imagine all the hours it takes people to come up with this optimal deck... oh and we will have to level up to even get those skills. We see all these seemingly great skills, but we have no way of knowing how they work outside of combat. So how do you know which skills to pick to modify your deck in the first place?

The people who do have good decks for PvP spent hours and hours fighting and modifying their decks to get optimal experiences. they might have started off with seemingly good decks, but I'm certain they modified it many times to make it better. Will a newbie be able to do this after the release? I guess they will have to look up stuff on Wiki's. Even then it takes experience with the system to even know why you need certain skills. I just don't see many people wanting to hang around after all that. If this were a huge 100million dollar ultra highly anticipated game maybe people will stick around, but even then that is no guarantee. IF PvP is a ghost town then people will move on. If vengeance is the only pvp guild then how much fun will that be for them?

This game is far to complicated, and they aren't finished adding all the features yet. Something needs to change before it is on the way to becoming on of the all time classic RPGs.

R8 Was much more fun. When I think about all the layers of additional complication that have been added, and are yet to be added, I get tired, and just turn off the game. I don't even want to test it anymore.

EDIT: For all those people who think this system is great, have you even thought about what it will be like when we have another added level of complexity added when we have to assign our bonus ability scores? Should I get INT for more focus, should I get STR... I didn't have to respec that much in WOW. I got to level 80 and I repeced only 2 times. I was a pure beginner. The skills were obvious as to what they are and do. It made sense to me and I picked the right skills. In SotA we will have to respec at least 20 or 30 times with this system.

 

I guess i would think the same if i get a lvl 90 WoW character and never played WoW before (i have not). What you are missing here is progression. You will be introduced little by little with less significant decisions to more complex ones.

 

What you may not be getting is my point regarding the presentation of skills for characters in WOW were rather self explanatory. You knew how the skills would work when you got them. You didn't have to pick them up and go test them out only to find out they didn't function exactly how you expected.

The fact that I only respeced my character 2 times in all the time I played WoW which was probably 9 months, 6 of which I wondered why I was continually grinding and doing daily quests, but still I didn't have to respec.

ALSO I didn't have to respec in UO either. The skills made sense as to what they do. I would rather have more innate skills, a few combat special attacks and the rest be based upon the auto attack.

Micromanaging the deck system is a pain in itself. Should you use a full deck or lock in one or two card, or what? In PvE I guess it might not matter so much, but in PvP it really does. Even in PvE you're still going to have to get your deck right. Slugs are immeasurably miserable to see for any reason whatsoever. I wish slugs never existed in this game at all.

At this point I miss the Character classes, and traditional combat systems. I honestly miss UO. People love to say how this is not UO2. That's too bad because UO was a good game. SotA has yet to prove itself. So don't say "this isn't UO2 with a superior attitude as if this game is so much better than UO". R8 was fun, but this game will not be judged by pre-alpha release 8 when it is all said and done.

The combat system from R8 could be compared against UO and win. The combat system from R9 is no where near as good as UO or WoW. Yes slight differences make a lot of difference.

Take away the complexity and keep it simple! Bring back R8 style combat. Let it be no more complex than that. Forget these combos, and slugs, and all that jazz.

 

Random Deck combat is the games biggest weakness.

 

Just like old times!! Can double click to start entering a Hex, then go make a cup of coffee & be back before 70%

 

I agree. The fact SotA is geared for MMO means the SP experience is compromised, neglected.

MMO is where the money is unfortunately. You and I are a dying breed, friend. I was here for the SP experience also, but now I realize no developer has the 'balls' to recreate those. They all fake it.

 

It's very obvious this is made to be a mmorpg, not a solo game, not a selective online role playing game because let's face it, the less people playing in this world, the emptier and flatter it will seem. Towns are designed for housing, not for thought out npc locations. The combat system is a blob of complexity...you dont want to play their card game? Fine so deal with frustratingly long cool down times on a locked deck. Potions have to be glyphs? Who the hell cant decide to drink a potion when he/she decides its time to drink one. Reagents as optional bolstering agents for spells? Come on now! The new town ardoris is nice but simply a row housing mill. Where is the character? Maybe that will change with npc schedules but i dont see it changing all that much. It seems like they are implementing systems to try to please everyone...and that never works. Staying hopeful but i feel R9 was a buggier and more frustrating release seeing the direction things are going in, moreso than when R8 introduced the whack a mole card system.

 

For crying out loud. Its an ALPHA. A BIG PHAT TEST!

This is no where near what the finished product will be, its all mechanic testing and seeing what is working as intended and what isnt. Stop being all melodramatic.

We are talking about a friggin team that have produced many games that sit in the fondness of our itty bitty gamer hearts. This isnt some amateur rush job. Have the patience and see where it takes us. If it sucks at release then fire away but for heavens sake not in an alpha. Its not a game yet!

 

Hmmm...how do I weigh in on this?

Do I think it could be something great? Yes.

Do I think it is to complex? No, no more then skyrim....what kind of game do you want? Do you want diablo complexity or real rpg complexity.

Do I think they have a lot to do to make it great single player experience? yes, not sure it is taken seriously enough. Yes, I know they have mentioned they are but proof is in the pudding. I'm taking a wait and see attitude.

 

I understand that it's the 9th alpha release and am commenting on the general trends from the releases and on the systems implemented that aren't appealing to me. Someone mentioned skyrim had just as complicated a system, yet when i played skyrim i never said god this is a complicated system. im not looking for an easy shallow game but some of the syatems implemented at this point are not appealing such as combat

 

Frankly the whole "different diet for different classes" thing was already done in TESO and it's pretty friggen straight forward. This game is hardly as complicated as people are making it out to be. Again, this is a Pre-Alpha there are no tutorials, no in-game explanations, extremely vague tooltips. Once things get hammered out, and presentation becomes the focus a lot of these "problems" will disappear.

 

Have you thought about leveling? Will people with locked decks have to use more INT leaving them with less STR and DEX than others? Food, Item damage, we don't really have any clue what these skills do until we use them. None of this will matter much in PvE, but if you PvP that makes this game complex.

WoW may have been a grindfest, but at least we knew which skills did what. UO was straight forward as well. I never had to respec one time in UO, and I only respeced 2 times during the whole time I played WoW. Unless things change this will indeed be a complex system. If you don't PvP then I don't expect you to truly understand, but In PvP you need to highly tune your skills.

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

So the task then is will this card system, and all the other choices that are involved in creating a good character over creating a mediocre character need to be made so that we can look at the skills on paper and formulate a character progression path. If by the release date there is no other solution other than test out all the skills in advance to see what works, then there will be trouble. How will a level 1 person know what skill path to plan on taking? See what I mean? How can we visualize what our deck will be like at level 20 so we can start building toward having the character we want? What ability scores do we pick, are we going to need any locked slots on the deck? All of these variables.

One thing is for sure we will not be able to adjust our skills at will like we do now, so we have to choose wisely, but as it stands we do not know how these skills actually function until we've tested them. Wasn't like that in WoW, and it wasn't like that in UO, because it was really straight forward what the skills were meant to do.

 

Since, I haven't enjoyed many other games enough to play them for more than a week before quitting because they were the same type of WoW clone (follow the quests and grind your levels) so I don't have any other real end game experience with other MMOs other thant those two, but I think I would say the same for any game that requires you to respec more than 10 to 20 times before you get the right feel.

Also they wanted us to play with multiple decks in this release, but it wasn't practical. We didn't have enough skill points to have a reasonable reason for a multiple deck, and slugs are very annoying. I wish this game did not have slugs, nor limit the speed we can discard which feels like we have to fight the games combat system. Not to mention some of the combos require you to really look at the tool bar rather than your opponent.

If you still think this is not complex then I don't know what else to say. I guess I'm just stupid then. So I make a plea on behalf of the stupid players, because this game isn't as fun for us stupidos.

Then again I guess I could always just ditch PvP and play PvE only and none of this strategy stuff even matters. Although that might mean for me that I will only play for a month or less, and leave. Which kind of sucks at my pledge level.

 

Isaiah you get in these dark moods where you accuse everyone of calling you stupid ecterra. I'm not.

What I am telling you is that right now of course it seems a bit confusing and difficult to unerstand how everything works. That's because everything keeps changing and is flux because what you are playing is a testing alpha. There are no tool tips no help files...not much of anything. If those were in you would have a much better understanding of the systems, at least I believe you would. If the game releases with no tutorial/help then I would agree with you...but at this stage I expect barebones alpha type info...why bother fleshing out help when things are in flux? I guess it would make it more fun to play, but as they have said right now fun is more likely a bug

I'm having a hard time seeing your position because you multi spam these type of posts all over the place. I can't counter anything you have said for fear of you reacting badly to what I say.