Babysitting whales

Taken from this thread:

When I read your title I was reminded of a dev+ post someone let me look at with their account... one of the high level backer dev+ people were throwing a hissy fit because they couldn't used deeds from other accounts during land rush and a dev called them on the phone and explain and calm them down I guess. if you got access you can prob still go read it if it's still there. Developer Digest Dev+ Section.....DRAFT: Player Owned Town & Lot Selection Sequence Update page 17 and 18.....Yah, high level backers don't get special treatments pffft. A dev actually had to call a whale and hug it out with them, sad. It's all about keeping the whales the little people don't matter. You think they'd given a $45 backer that was upset the same phone call? Newp

So...what's up with SotA?

 Yeah, what's up? Haven't heard anything about it for a while. Not like it's popular outside of their little sect of SJW bodypositive fanboys.

Stumbled upon a thread on reddit. It is 10 months old, yet captures the situation in detail - for those of you who want a quick tl;dr on why SotA is shit. Enjoy the read. Meanwhile I'll try to find more detailed reviews.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/3z17iu/discussion_what_are_you_opinions_about_shroud_of/


Here are some more quotes from around the /r/shroudoftheavatar subreddit.

The community is loving but also crazy. They champion things that benefit them but are really bad for a sandbox game.
The game was a mess ever since they tried to cater to PvE, PvP, offline, Singleplayer and MMO players/aspects all at the same time. Just a colossus conflict of interest that is impossible to balance.

Well said. I was one of the early backers who poured almost a thousand dollars into plots for me and my wife. I was drawn in by the Ultima legacy and dreams that were never realistic, and I just drank the kool-aid.
And then, when there was a game available to play, I was deliriously excited and logged in and got going. But I kept wondering when it would become fun. It was lifeless, pointless, klunky, with incessant zoning and the longest load times I'd ever experienced. I kept rationalizing that "it's alpha", "it's beta". The card combat system was unbelievably stupid, taking something that already annoys everyone, RNG, and making combat dependent upon it. What a collosally dumb move. When I spoke up in the forums, I was shouted down by the true believers and whales who were ecstatic about their expensive player towns and their RP events. Dancing on tables and singing songs was ... interesting, but in the end there was no fun to be found.
I was a lucky one. I saw the trainwreck coming early and sold off both our accounts and lots and actually got my money back. This, of course, is possible because the game actually tolerates Real Money Trading.
What a disaster, what a waste. At least I got out undamaged.

Gaming for me is a social thing more than a hobby. Especially the excitement of being in early and helping to build something.. The same as Star Citizen, or Crowfall.
I have invited friends to those games and they have joined.. with Sota they recoiled in horror - And nothing I have described is because the game is "unfinished"... Pay to win cash shop trash, for example, is not a temporary development issue - it is a sign that things are very very wrong with the payment model. Is that likely to change?

they can't even figure out what they want their targeting system to be, much less make a fun and balanced pve/pvp experience. Was supposed to be in beta 2+ years ago, but is still in pre-alpha (with a persistent world.) There is just so much wrong.
I re-installed when i caught wind of the patch notes saying they added a bunch of skills and did a bunch of work on balancing combat. Come to find out the skills they added were mostly meaningless passive or stat buffs, and terrible heals in spell trees that made no sense, along side one lackluster riposte ability.
Subsequently I uninstalled. I'll give it one more go after "final" release, just to know for sure, but as a long time fan of Ultima Online and the cut-throat, cold world, I don't think this game will ever quench the thirst for "UO 2."
SoTA is a disappointment.

"SOTA is meant to be a succesor for UO and Ultima. It appears to be the successor to Ultimate Collector"

Quick, appreciate it before it gets deleted. Both this post in particular and the thread in general. It seems that forum members are finally starting to come out of the woodwork and express their opinions on the matter.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/one-year-later.33781/#post-392679

No Country for Old Men

It's an interesting time we live in. Garriot and Starr are back in the industry...(erm, are they really, seeing how they are making yet another facebook game instead of a MMORPG?), Raph too, the other guys from Crowfall, some of them were on the teams that worked on UO, SWG and Shadowbane (and some stupid Wizard 101 or whatever, wtf is this).

Another excellent post from kb on SotA and the state of the mmorpg market

http://shroudunlimited.boards.net/post/2004

Probably by Owain:

   If UO PvP was broken, it was broken because the developers tried to cater to everyone, which is pretty much always a bad idea. UO PvP was wildly successful in attracting players that liked open PvP, but the devs did a poor job of separating those who like open PvP from those who did not. They wanted both styles of players, but failed to anticipate that some players would use open PvP as a license to kill everything that moved in the game. It was trivially easy to get away with murder, easy for murderers to escape, and there was no real deterrent for mass murder, so UO was a breeding ground for mass murderers.

Something that could make PvP viable (for PvE crowd) and add meaning for the PvP crowd is to make full loot on cosmetic items only (with a twist on loot mechanic).

..and the rest of the OP.
No.
There are no ways to make PvP "viable" to someone who is afraid of losing virtual (and nonexistant in the real word) items without gimping it and taking away basic features that make PvP interesting.

There's no bargain here really, no middle ground.
We, the PvPers, are the minority. You wanna take away the sole reason that could make us play sota? What do you give in return? The possibility to loot your tricorne hat and your trousers? No.
Keep your trousers. I want your head.

 Limiting trade is not a viable solution. It breaks immersion.
Making farming IMPOSSIBLE tho is a good solution.
No powerfarming. No solofarming mihty dragons.
You either go solofarm small drakes for a bunch of leather, scales, teeth and a tiny amount of gold or you gather a huge party and go kill the strong monsters.

So. No cookie-cutter builds for PvE.
No powerfarming. Big monsters with big loots should only be handled by a group of players.

[quote="rune_74, post: 170212, member: 13549"]This is one of the reasons discussions on here go no where.[/quote]

Discussions on here go nowhere because there is no need for a discussion.

There are some people with the right idea of how online roleplaying should be handled in a mass multiplayer game.

And others who only care about being safe and happy in their online grinding casual little game.

It's like in real life. Some people like to travel, to discover, to risk. Others don't appreciate this way of life and prefer to stay home no matter what.

when I hear RG's plans I don't worry about the quality of this game. My question is will other devs/backers try to keep him from designing the game he wants to design. When you hear what is laid out in the forums and the "promises" set in stone it (No "Don't Lawyer me, Bro"?) sounds like a different game then what he describes in interviews. RG isn't a Game Maker he is a World Creator, let him make his world cause his legacy is on the line (and the only reason this game stands a chance at success).

More carebear stuff

Thanks for the clarifications Strider I'm glad you think we might have a similar nerdy past, I'm sorry that I dislike your hidden elitism, I know its not misplaced or ill intentioned but it really goes against a vision we have.

I won't attempt a IRL alegory since we all know it would have varying degrees of implications because IRL has less "tangible" rules than we are expecting out of a well made open PvP system. (we do expect alot of semi-magic rules and hard consequences, not a free-for-all like UO) We know full well that the half programmed UO is all you experienced of it, but the one that exists in our minds still exists even if you deny it.

Someone on panicking and pledges

I was panicking way before... actually after my first two pledges... and we've gone down that path countless times, cause other games pretended to give us what we need. I waited a long while to get a feel of the general opinion and also watched carefully how the monetizing model is built and how the devs speculated about its importance.

More on Immersion

Ristra said: ↑

Also, as a follow up to immersion. How immersion breaking is it when someone logs in to enjoy some event. Say a guild wedding. Very well planned and set up. Only there are tons of people there with no care about immersion, they only want to stab people at a wedding.

Break someone's event just to get your game play while destroying someone else's game play.

If the world itself creates immersion by forcing certain rules (open pvp, full loot, interactive environment, customization of houses and equipment, ability to write and copy books, etc) everything turns into immersion. Sudenly we swim in a sea of immersion, and even the l337_dud3s who like to stab people become roleplayers in our eyes.

That was the magic of Ultima Online. It's only sad you never got it.

This post pretty much sums up what's going on over at SotA forums.

Also, I would like to add something.

That thread shows very well the opinion of the general audience about SotA.

While this forum consists mainly of devoted fanboys and backers, the true crowd, the huge crowd is out there, on forums like that one. So if you want to hear different opinions and see what the people out there think about sota, you guys better visit forums like that one. 

Zealous fanboyism ain't ever a good thing. If the dev team is to know our opinions, it should hear ALL kinds of opinions. And here on these forums mostly they can hear stuff like " Оооh its so great keep going YAAAY DEV TEAM HOOORAY I donated 500 bucks so I gotta make myself believe I like everything the dev team does!".

Portalarium will start charging for access to SotA forums

https://insanemembrain.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/portalarium-fail-to-prevent-spammers-start-charging-community-for-access-to-forums/

Crowfall did something similar not long ago. Their forums are only accessible to backers.

Outrageous. with this only the most insane fanbois will stay on the sota forums. Everyone else will just leave. Holy fuck thats a good plan to get rid of all haters at once.

Author unknown

Oddly enough, I really liked loging on with my Tailor lady on Lake Superior in Moonglow, and craft for a few hours. As I made money (yeah, it was possible to make some even not leaving town at that time in early 98), I started shopping and stated to explore... which was my second most memorable moment. Somehow I made it to the isle of the avatar, and found a spot to place my small house deed... man I was *jumping* all around the computer; my 3rd moment.

Yet another dialogue to prove how stupid carebears are.

I do get it but I have to wonder if you don't get the impact of what you want. It allows other people to impose control on others and puts them in the position that their only choice could be to log off. - bad

Some more rants from SotA's forum

blaquerogue said: ↑

I can vouch for that as well! He is nice. Most of us are, if given half the chance without degradation!  your still my bro, bro!

Thank thee, brethren!

On Immersion

I don't mind getting PKed or being disturbed by whoever. I don't wanna play Hello Kitty and I'm not here on the forums to complain about anything, but I do not see how having to craft arrows/bullets and keeping track of the numbers that you have make this game any more "hardcore". 

It's called immersion. A highly interactive virtual world creates immersion. Immersion makes the game something really worth playing, something memorable. Ask UO and EvE players. Even 16 years after UO died on official servers, they have so many epic stories to tell. Why? Because their game was highly interactive, which allowed for them to create history themselves.

Ammo, reagents, etc are small parts of this immersion. Open PvP and full loot are some bigger parts.

---------------

See? The guy can't even see how keeping track of arrows and bullets makes the game more hardcore. Yet at the same time he tries to convince us he does not want to play Hello Kitty Online. And while I don't have any problems with Hello Kitty, I'm very concerned that mmorpg developers nowadays cater to the loud, hysterical crowd that doesn't even know why a good RPG does not have infinite ammo /arrows/reagents, and doesn't have you run around shoot infinite fireballs out of your ass.

On Trammel and Carebears from InsaneMembrane's forum

Very well said by two members of InsaneMembrane's Site . I'm definitely going to write an article on old Ultima Online (pre-trammel) both in russian and english sometime in the future.
Anyway, visit Insane's site&forum if you want to learn some shocking truths about the Shroud of the Avatar scam and Richard Garriot.

===================

The only problem that needed to be solved about pre trammel was that there were to many lazy, useless, spoon fed sensitive carebears in the world. For me Trammel was the starting point of UO's downfall, pretty much where I lost interest in the game. It went from a hardcore, exciting game to a fag fest with fluff. This topic is one good reason why I don't think RG had much to do with the creation of UO.