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Out of all the kickstarter campaigns for new MMO's, I feel like SOtA is the Weakest
sludgebeard
Member RarePosts: 788
I know alot of people on this forum are obviously fans of the game, and Im not coming here to say the game looks completely terrible or that I would never play it. I just cant understand what has driven people to put 4 Million into this game, that honestly doesnt appear to have anything original, or eve particularly engaging or interesting about it.
- The character/NPC graphics are very poorly animated, very lifeless looking models, with rough animations to boot.
- The crafting looks more akin to a point and click adventure game than an MMO, and certainly doesnt show a large amount of depth.
- There has been multiple videos now showing off combat, and its "passable" at best IMO. For a game with such a massive amount of crowd-funding I cant believe they cant have something that looks more fun, intense, anything.
- The game lacks originality.
Seriously, from the start this project has just seemed very amateur, and I could stomach it getting a million dollars based off name alone. But when you get 4 million on a project like this its just a shocker. Even the dungeons I saw in the 6-month progress video appeared to be using Stock assets from the Unity Engine, one can buy for a few hundred bucks.
Again Im not saying the game is a scam, Im just wondering what has got people throwing their money at a project like this and not the dozens of other more interesting MMO kickstarters.
If I could say something that looks good about the game it would be the dialogue ala EQ with NPC's but the NPC's themselves in each video havent had anything particularly engaging or original to say in conversation. More cliche Fantasy filler.
Comments
its still pretty early on in development.. combat for instance has only recently been added into the test builds..
Also I guess its not really a true mmo like ultima online or whatever more like a single player rpg but with multiplayer added into the mix as well.
At the end of the day if peopel wanted to back it then dont worry about it as its not your cash
I agree. I mean you look at a game like Gloria Victis that had a failed KS and they still have plodded along using the same game engine Unity and to me looks way more promising. SoA is going to miss its mark on so many levels.
Nothing anyone says on a forum ( good or bad ) really matters in the end. It all comes down to how it plays. The game has a lot going for it, so all they really need to do is make it fun. How many games have you seen get hyped that have everything you could want in an mmo only to launch and disappoint ? Then you have those games that you expected nothing from that some how managed to keep you playing for months or even years.
You never really know until you play it, but having faith in someone that's created games you've loved in the past, to do it again, isn't the craziest thing in the world to do.
Name recognition since many grew up playing his games. When you have 20 projects where 19 wants to make UO and the 20th guy created UO and want to create something new, you go with Richard Garriott.
Its also about the size of the project, everyone knows it takes a lot of money to make MMO's, so its really obvious $100k or less will cover more than a 1/100th of the project costs, and that's why I can't take kickstarters like repopulation or gloria victis seriously.
The last part is that you can't make a competitive MMO without a $30-50M budget, graphics and combat animations costs a lot of money and that's why it doesn't look pretty.
I didn't support SotA, but that's mostly because I don't feel like pitching in money without chance for money return when the guy making it lives in a castle.
Garriott originally wanted a steampunk game, and had a few interesting ideas for that. But the die hard fans and money men wanted 'the same old thing' except updated. So back to standard medieval fantasy fare it went. Hopefully the steampunk bits will get used somewhere.
The crafting design looked tremendously complex to me, but I am not a dedicated crafter, so you could take that with some salt. It certainly seemed deep though.
It is being done by a small team; you aren't going to be seeing quite the flash of a BigCorp production. That budget is not large at all for an MMO style game.
On the downside, Garriott is more of a ideas/concept guy, and isn't a great project manager. He also tends to surround himself with yes men, sychophants, and the like. A few too many people from the Tabula Rasa team that did so poorly that NCSoft snatched control away from them.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
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Yeah I mean Im not trying to bash the game as a whole, I just think its incredible that such a small development team and such a rough design can garner 4 million on name recognition alone.
But hey it could turn out to be decent, I just want to see more.
O and I did check out more of the crafting and it seems to have a bit more depth than I originally saw from the first video, but I dont exactly know if House building and crafting are one in the same.
Aye, totally understand where you are coming from. You have a game like Shards Online that is more polished, being offered in a playable state at the end of their kickstarter and resembles UO more than SotA. Yet, the game is struggling to get funded during their current KS. Baffling really.
Shards obviously put up a good chunk of $$$ before even stating their Kickstarter, I hope they raise enough to continue.
Avoid this game at all costs.
New title : Cash Grab of the Avatar
That turd KS that Brad Mcquaid did with whatever of the Fallen was probably worse.
At least there was no embezzlement after the fact involved with this game.
Edit: not that I would call that a particularly high standard to beat...
In comparsion to what other kickstarter campaigns? Games like Greed Monger? Does that one still exist, is still in development?
It is rather simple.. just look at the history of all mmorpg kickstarter campaign, and you will see that projects with a named game designer, with reputation behind the project got by far the most money.
Examples would be Camelot Unchained with Mark Jacobs, Star Citizen with Chris Roberts(if you want count it as a MMORPG), Pathfinder Online(Ryan Dancy and other Veterans, still to a lesser degree) and of course Shroud of the Avatar with Richard Garriott. At that is foremost the reason, why it was able to get that much money. Because a lot of people still trust in Richard Garriott, still have fond memory to the Ultima Games.
And Shroud of the Avatar has to offer something.
Just look at the house building and decoration option: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8tKuMvUYzY
It is quite advanced, detailed and flexible.. and there are not a lot of MMORPGs offering similar in the open world.
Similar deep is the crafting system and most probably with it the resource gathering, and most probably will be the ingame economy.
Are those features what everyone wants? Most probably not, but enough to get that much interest. Beside that it is still in development and i guess things like combat will improve.. but it will most probably not be the most advanced combat system of all time.
But again.. in comparsion to what other kickstarter campaign.. it really isn't the case that there would be a lot of almost finished one with actually offering a lot of unique stuff.. in most cases they are all pipe dreams waiting to get realized, if it is possible, and if those developera are able to pull it off.. and both is uncertain. Granted.. it is not that different with SoTA or any other Kickstarter Campaign for that matter.. finally those are all just design papers and visions and not a lot more.. the difference again is the people, the reputation behind the projects, and the faith from a few more people that those designers with reputation are actually able to deliver something.
Edit: And another addition.. 4 million is almost nothing for making a MMORPG.. and therefore you can't really expect a lot from almost all those kickstarter games.. even if some like SoTA and CU added additional money from other sources to the game.. you can't barely compare them to regular released MMOs with a lot higher budget.. even more Indy ones like such games as Mortal Online or Darkfall Online wasted more more during development.. not to talk about games like Wildstar, ESO which costs above 100$ million. On another sidenoe a game like ArcheAge development cost was around 35$ million an was one of the cheaper of the recent years.
So i have sometimes to laugh about kickstarters MMOs, which just want less than 1$ million, because it is more or less impossible to develop anything worthwhile for that money. (at least for MMORPGs)
And just a tiny side calculation. Let say a veteran developer would cost $100k/year(and that is at the low end, because a novice developer earns already around $50k/year). With that said you only got 10 developers for 1 year for $1 million.. and you can imagine yourself how far you can get with that... and that are only personal costs.
YES. We can say what we want, but nothing really matters until it's out in the open. If it becomes a hit, we will know it.
So I took a look and yeah, there is house decay in the game, but you only lose your claim to the land. You never lose your lot deed or house as those goes back into your bank / inventory. If you come back to the game after your house has decayed, you will have to find another empty plot of land to claim and place your house there. According to their FAQ, the decay rates are varied for taxable deeds vs non-taxable deeds. Taxable deeds need to be paid monthly. Non-taxable ones gives you 5 months + 1 month for each level you're above Citizen tier.
I'm hoping the character models will improve eventually. If not, this game won't be for me, since I can't stomach the current looks. =/
A shame too, since it has a lot of other things that seem nice. Ah well, too many games to play and too little time as it is already.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
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when it comes to name recognition the success of so called 'AAA' developers is somewhat questionable. Yes those games make money but how much did they get back after investment and how much do those games represent the IP. I would suggest its time for some other method to give it a try becuase in my mind the 'name recognition' of the past is not working.
star wars, elder scrolls, Lord of the Rings etc
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
In SotA's defense, I think that the points you mentioned are pretty much the same as any Kickstarter MMO we've seen (with the exception of Star Citizen), either failed or successful:
- The character/NPC graphics are very poorly animated, very lifeless looking models, with rough animations to boot.
That's how I feel about Camelot Unchained, Pathfinder Online, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, etc. I haven't really followed some of the others, but I'm sure they aren't featuring top of the line animations and graphics. It's just how a game looks though, honestly it should be a very limiting factor in anyone's decision on whether to purchase and play a game. I know it's still early stages on the ones I mentioned above and it could change to be more fluid.
- The crafting looks more akin to a point and click adventure game than an MMO, and certainly doesnt show a large amount of depth.
Again, not seeing any difference between this and other MMOs, Kickstarter or otherwise. Very few MMOs have a more interesting crafting system than taking items and combining them into something new by clicking here. Some require you to discover recipes, but that isn't really new and exciting IMO. The only MMO I can think of that has deep gameplay in crafting is Puzzle Pirates.
- There has been multiple videos now showing off combat, and its "passable" at best IMO. For a game with such a massive amount of crowd-funding I cant believe they cant have something that looks more fun, intense, anything.
The 3 games I mentioned above have combat that looks just as poor IMO. I haven't looked at Repopulation, but I heard the combat is better there, but that really puts SotA no worse off than most of the other Kickstarter MMOs in terms of combat.
- The game lacks originality.
Probably a bit more subjective. I haven't really followed SotA that much, but the way they plan to structure the game seems original enough. I feel like a lot of the other Kickstarter MMOs lack originality also as many of them are trying to harken back to the old days and older MMOs, but I do seem some originality here and there and I'm sure SotA is the same.
How do you know he is not a great project manager? What is the basis for your opinion?
This is a guy who launched one of the most prolific, successful, pioneering MMO's of all time. His team accomplished this feat at a time when dial-up was standard and XP SP2 was the rage.
The very fact that this MMO is being developed/managed by Richard is for many a good basis for investment along with the games dynamics.
I personally am looking very forward to seeing what Richard and SoTA have to offer. I will judge the game when it gives me the opportunity to play first hand. If I find it fun, i will sub, otherwise I will look for other games to enjoy.
Del Cabon
A US Army ('Just Cause') Vet and MMORPG Native formerly of Trinsic, Norath and Dereth. Currently playing LOTRO.