Ultima IV is my favorite computer game of all time. I never played UO, went the EQ route instead. I wanted so much to love and enjoy SotA, and hopefully capture some of the old UO magic I've heard so much about. It just doesn't do it for me. I have tried the game several times during the last couple of years, and just find no joy or magic in it.
Except that Starr's done this professionally for a while now. Franky, all these monthly roll outs and no unexpected down time makes me take anything I get from this team really seriously.
Ok this is the thing, this is semi not true. Have you had a crash of the game? Guess what that was the server crashing. This is a pier to pier based game with you only connecting to them for backend things. This isn't like WoW where if the server goes down nobody can connect cause they need to reboot it. You can write a simple server that servers off the back end data to the client. That is all that their server is doing.
When WoW's server has issues its memory leaks or issues handling multiple people doing things and sharing that with the other players. Here that is your machine if your the only one in the zone, which is most of the time. So if your game crashed that is a server crash.
Lord British can keep this one! I backed it early, but it has now been confirmed that this is just a money grab game seeking whales to fund it! Horrible development with little improvement. This game offers the many little to enjoy and asks of the few to keep throwing it money.
@cyxs, you are actually completely wrong. We are not peer to peer and there actually is a central server. I think what you are describing is how we worked when we were prototyping. Not really something you can pretend is true since anyone can run wireshark and verify you are completely wrong and all data goes to a single IP, not peers. Also, players of the game will verify that you can play in online mode, exit the client, start it back up, reconnect and join the scene in progress if they didn't die while they disconnected.
Not here to argue, just clearing up some bad information. What you said is a blatant lie and anyone can verify it. The only thing that runs peer to peer is the patch client which is using a torrent style system.
@catnipgames so this has changed since the issue with people being the zone master? As far as I am aware this still happens. If my client is the master of the zone and something happens to me the zone studders while its handed off to another client to become the zone master. As far as I know your central server just relays data between the host and the server. This can be proven by having a person with an high lag play in friends only mode. This person will have very little lag but when their friend comes into the zone they start getting lag. So the way I view this is your "server" is just a relay for clients to talk to each other not doing all the AI work that a normal server would do.
Editing to make wording better.
If you have someone on a high ping connection they will have little to no lag when in friends only mode and be the only one in the zone. If you have someone join them they are not the zones master any more and it passes to the new person if they have a lower ping to the server. The first person will then have a lag because of the higher ping. Your "server" is nothing more then a relay or proxy for the events going on and controlled by one of the "game clients". You store that in a temp db and purge the "status" of that zone after 5 mins. But your server is in no way shape or form running the AI of the mobs in the zone from the way I have noticed how the game plays. If so why do we have studders or issues when people who were in that zone the longest disconnect via client crash of internet issues?
Except that Starr's done this professionally for a while now. Franky, all these monthly roll outs and no unexpected down time makes me take anything I get from this team really seriously.
Ok this is the thing, this is semi not true. Have you had a crash of the game? Guess what that was the server crashing. This is a pier to pier based game with you only connecting to them for backend things. This isn't like WoW where if the server goes down nobody can connect cause they need to reboot it. You can write a simple server that servers off the back end data to the client. That is all that their server is doing.
When WoW's server has issues its memory leaks or issues handling multiple people doing things and sharing that with the other players. Here that is your machine if your the only one in the zone, which is most of the time. So if your game crashed that is a server crash.
No. Don't think I have. I know some folks have, but I can't think of it ever happening to me. Though, WoW had crashed on me several times.
But it doesn't really matter. The peer to peer piece is just the combat, and that's not normally the part that fails. It's the authentication and player-data portions that tend to crash in MMOs, and that hasn't happened with SotA. It's not like they're really inventing a new system here, either. I don't know that any of the generic technology is proprietary. Unlike CIG, Port didn't decide to screw with someone else's netcode without any actual transport developers on board.
No, you make a good point about a lot of the game being client side, and that probably has a lot to do with stability. Still, the big problems most MMOs have in developer or soon after launch is authentication(login servers), duping, and general server stability. SotA hasn't had any of that, and that's pretty damn impressive in my book.
[edit:]
Just saw Chris post that the peer-to-peer bit isn't true. My fault. I thought the game was exchanging combat info between clients, but I must have picked that up from the prototype.
Though, I would call him out a bit on saying you were lying. Mistaken, obviously. As for me, I'm just assuming you made a mistake similar to how I did and were thinking of something else.
Been playing since last July and SotA gets better with every release.
Kudos to the devs for going strong despite the crazy amount of negativity from individuals who only have themselves to blame for not understanding how early access games work. You guys (the devs) are doing a great damn job!
I've never gotten the chance to be part of a community like this where, not only are they great friendly people but, they have literally raised tens of thousands of dollars for a member for his chemo relief. The devs too are amazing, constantly accepting feedback from us and communicating back. I feel very fortunate to have become part of this project and wish I could have backed earlier.
@Red Thomas - Did you receive this game for free? Do you get kickbacks for writing about the game? I think this is important information to know if you are getting anything for writing this.
@Catnip games - I find your steam numbers to be fishy. There is no way that only 20% use steam as it is a much better experience to patch with. I also think it is a fraction as in 9/10 ot 8/10.
Also, if you think the only thing wrong with the offline play is the economy then you should go back and play Ultima 7. I know you will say that this is a MMO and what should I expect. I don't know maybe what you guys gathered money for in kickstarter...you know the same kickstarter where you told everyone this would not be an MMO. Can't tell that by looking at your website, you know the one you stealth edited to show that IS a MMO. Funny thing about kickstarter you can't edit the page afterwords. I cannot wait to see what happens when you go on kickstarter again for episode 2....something not mentioned here, yep that's right folks they need more money to make the next installment. Think people will trust what you say?
LB came on your reddit page to say he would listen to us and look into our complaints, but it was more false promises to try and silence your vocal critics(who used to be big supporters). Nothing changed, no reach out to your community.
sorry they killed this game with selling player run towns for real money in the cash shop. This game will not last long because the money is drying up.
@Red Thomas - Did you receive this game for free? Do you get kickbacks for writing about the game? I think this is important information to know if you are getting anything for writing this.
@Catnip games - I find your steam numbers to be fishy. There is no way that only 20% use steam as it is a much better experience to patch with. I also think it is a fraction as in 9/10 ot 8/10.
Also, if you think the only thing wrong with the offline play is the economy then you should go back and play Ultima 7. I know you will say that this is a MMO and what should I expect. I don't know maybe what you guys gathered money for in kickstarter...you know the same kickstarter where you told everyone this would not be an MMO. Can't tell that by looking at your website, you know the one you stealth edited to show that IS a MMO. Funny thing about kickstarter you can't edit the page afterwords. I cannot wait to see what happens when you go on kickstarter again for episode 2....something not mentioned here, yep that's right folks they need more money to make the next installment. Think people will trust what you say?
LB came on your reddit page to say he would listen to us and look into our complaints, but it was more false promises to try and silence your vocal critics(who used to be big supporters). Nothing changed, no reach out to your community.
Nope. Not a thing.
Though, I am a Title III investor in Crowfall, so technically SotA is the competition.
But I will defend them on a couple of your points, there. I was around when Star Citizen and SotA were getting going, and covering indie projects out of Austin was kind of my thing at the time, so I was pretty close to the teams as they got going.
So your points about MMOs are true, but not really because of the way you think. SC, SotA, and several other games coming out at the time all were always intended to be mostly online. If you go back and watch those early streams and read early posts, you can easily tell that was the plan. So why didn't they call it an MMO? Well, they were all going through the same PR team, and got the same advice other games got, which was stay wide of the term because it had a really bad rap at the time. A lot of shovelware MMOs had just come out and a lot of people were pretty burned out. Plus, WoW was still strong and seen as competition. So what you're talking about was a marketing choice, not really a design point. Go back and look at original design docs, and listen to how they describe the game as working. Starr's going to shoot me for saying it, but I always got the impression that Offline was a good idea and a bonus, but the online part was the main goal. That's why it was described as the spiritual successor to OU over and over, not Ultima.
Now, as far as LB's ignoring critics... I'm just guessing, but it's probably because the most vocal critics tend to be pretty dumb in their criticisms. For instance, you can complain about them selling houses in the cash shop, but if you don't acknowledge the amount of revenue they get from those and propose a way of replacing it, then that's not really something anyone will listen to, LB or otherwise. So, I'd challenge you to go back to those complaints and look at them again. Did they say what was wrong and propose a solution? Did that solution make technical and business sense? Is it something that uses existing systems and would be easy to implement? I can guarantee you that Starr Long will read valid criticisms and adjust fire if they make sense. Just realize that sometimes it costs too much, it's not something that's actually possible, and sometimes you're just in the minority and there's nothing they can do about that. It's a business. They don't make money if they don't give fans what they want.
The majority of our audience is NOT on Steam and instead just plays through our website and Steam was an after thought that represents about 20% of our audience.
This, this right here is why you have a reputation for dishonesty and elitism.
We'll skip the sneers about other webpages, and the fact that Red Thomas is a close friend of the company, a dedicated supporter of the product, and his own company is one that professionally runs an Astroturf service. We'll skip that your own staff were caught posting Steam reviews without admitting they worked at Portalarium, and that you yourself were caught deliberately mis-representing the review percentages at Steam... apparently Steam is fine when you believe you can use it to drum up support for the game.
No let's just deal with the facts in the above quote, shall we?
2.) There is no "play through our website." You mean purchased through it, and using the stand alone game client launcher, rather than the Steam client launcher; but already you're fudging definitions to try and make a deceptive point, because...
3.) We can actually work out for ourselves the rough percentage of figures, and you're not telling anywhere close to the truth for actual purchases. I detailed the figures here, but long story short, we know approximately 35,000 of the total sold accounts have ALSO been linked to Steam, and thus are being tracked by it, which is over half of all listed pledges.
4.) It's since been pointed out to me that looking at the googledocs tracking of your own public figures, that you no longer release actual sales values. Instead, since the Pledges were expired, the total sales are hidden in the New Britannians value, which also includes anyone who ever registered for the forum. Even IF you take the maximum difference between the NB when Total Backers stopped being updated, and its value today, you've still only sold a maximum of about 9000 new accounts since that date. If every single one of those was done through your webpage and not Steam, making around 71k purchased accounts, 35k linked to Steam is still nearly 50% of that.
5.) What I suspect you're really talking about is the percentage of people WHO STILL PLAY. And gosh, who could be surprised that when you apparently hate anyone who plays through Steam as a company, only those who don't play through Steam feel like remaining? Besides which... 80% of... what? Where are your TOTAL figures? 80% of 10 for instance would be 8 people.
6.) And again, the deception; even if you accept the Free Trial ran through the webpage, and people would naturally upgrade it did so through that webpage and thus wouldn't show on Steam, and that they're in numbers far higher than your own publicly released New Britannians would show... WHAT ABOUT THE STEAM 50% OFF SALE OVER XMAS? People who bought the game then could only have done it through Steam. They WILL have been tracked, and we can see they largely didn't bother. Those who did, didn't stick around.
The 80% you're talking about are the hard core backers who will remain with the product no matter what.
You choose to ONLY listen to those who like your product. You are patronizing and offensive to those who don't, and cherry pick excuses about why they may not. But the reason you're failing on Steam is not because they're bad people; most of them are the very same backers you claim are superior.
It's because you don't have a product that will sell.
Fix that first, instead of going on these unprofessional crusades against critics.
Oh, and clean up your foul community too, whilst you're at it; When are you going to get around to banning those who have taken to trying to threaten people's real life children, and hacking accounts to try and silence critics? Your community mod Berek has received enough reports about it. So too did your Steam forum mods; oh but you chose to put scammers who called all Steam users FPS playing trash before protecting your own playerbase there.
Maybe you wouldn't have such a poor reputation on "other websites" if you didn't allow constant sockpuppeting and harassment on your own, and ended up driving people to righteous anger elsewhere, hmmm?
Been playing since last July and SotA gets better with every release.
Kudos to the devs for going strong despite the crazy amount of negativity from individuals who only have themselves to blame for not understanding how early access games work. You guys (the devs) are doing a great damn job!
I've never gotten the chance to be part of a community like this where, not only are they great friendly people but, they have literally raised tens of thousands of dollars for a member for his chemo relief. The devs too are amazing, constantly accepting feedback from us and communicating back. I feel very fortunate to have become part of this project and wish I could have backed earlier.
Hmm your experience is very similar to any modern cult, seems to have bred similar loyalty.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
More cheerleading from Red Thomas. Red have you even tried to play this turd lately? It's terrible, and I'm not talking about the new player experience that they somehow think is their only problem. It's terrible from the ground up.
This game died as soon as they went persistant last July. Out of over 60k backers, they have just a few hundred people playing now. These guys are afraid to tell how many actual players they got now playing on a monthly basis because it's an embarrassment and they gotta keep the money rolling in still from what few people they still got left that's holding out hope. If they were truly proud they'd have those numbers revealed on their front page like their backer numbers. They don't want who's left to know how bad it really is.
No amount of polishing this turd will save it. It was badly conceived and designed from the beginning and the whales were catered to instead of catering to the story and gameplay for 4 years. They spent too many years letting devs play around with bad game mechanics and pet projects for them to be able to turn this around. These guys were out of the industry too long and didn't keep up with gaming technology and development, and don't have the talent to create a good game, they will have to go back to failed app developing again I guess after they finally stop hiding behind the early access tag and this game is finally called released and is officially a flop.
The majority of our audience is NOT on Steam and instead just plays through our website and Steam was an after thought that represents about 20% of our audience.
This, this right here is why you have a reputation for dishonesty and elitism.
We'll skip the sneers about other webpages, and the fact that Red Thomas is a close friend of the company, a dedicated supporter of the product, and his own company is one that professionally runs an Astroturf service. We'll skip that your own staff were caught posting Steam reviews without admitting they worked at Portalarium, and that you yourself were caught deliberately mis-representing the review percentages at Steam... apparently Steam is fine when you believe you can use it to drum up support for the game.
No idea what Astroturf is. My company does cyber security. It's not in the games industry at all. Well, other than the 1099s I get from these articles.
More cheerleading from Red Thomas. Red have you even tried to play this turd lately? It's terrible, and I'm not talking about the new player experience that they somehow think is their only problem. It's terrible from the ground up.
I haven't played it a lot. I've been waiting for the Path of Truth to get wrapped up, and I'm more of a Civ type guy anyway.
But my opinion and your opinion are really irrelevant. What matters is the opinion of backers who do play. Are they happy? Are they spending enough to keep the company healthy.
People seem to think that a game has to be universally loved to be a good game. It could have one player who liked it enough to pay a couple million a year, and it'd be a successful game.
Not sure why people feel this overpowering need to rip things down. There are a ton of games out there that I don't like. I've never really felt the need to convert fans to my side.
More cheerleading from Red Thomas. Red have you even tried to play this turd lately? It's terrible, and I'm not talking about the new player experience that they somehow think is their only problem. It's terrible from the ground up.
I haven't played it a lot. I've been waiting for the Path of Truth to get wrapped up, and I'm more of a Civ type guy anyway.
That's what I thought you don't actively play this game, you just come here for your Portalarium buddies to try and get some more suckers to back this game. If you played it you'd know how bad it really is. If you're going to write puff pieces and praises for a game, don't you think you should really be playing it, your opinion at least would hold something then? At least the staff here at MMORPG.com actually play the game before making an article about it.
Dude of course the high level backers are gonna say this game is good, they stand to lose thousands of dollars because this game sucks and face planted into the pavement last July. They'll do anything to sucker people to buy this game, you know like they do...High level backers skew polls, they go post positive reviews because sales are low and the game is empty. Shady and greedy
I know what, if Portalarium is really so open and honest with their development, how bout boasting the players numbers playing online at any given time on their main website? Chris come on show us just how many hundreds of people you got left lol. He won't do it, because then people could see how bad it's going and hardly anyone aside from high level backers even play it. He'll keep telling us how grand it is without showing numbers and stay in the fantasy land of Portalarium offices where you can just pretend away this games a disaster while milking backers more with telethons and expensive add-ons. You can go in game at even what people consider prime time hours and never see more than two or three people, hell if you see anyone at all.
It's sad 4 years into this game and all there is to show for it is a clunky mix of unity assets duct tape together to try and resemble a game with an amateurish combat system and gameworld so pathetically awful it's not even worth playing even if it were free....Which will be their last ditch effort to keep their doors open it will go free to play with subscription .,....coming soooooon ,Mark my words it will happen lol.
@Red Thomas - Did you receive this game for free? Do you get kickbacks for writing about the game? I think this is important information to know if you are getting anything for writing this.
@Catnip games - I find your steam numbers to be fishy. There is no way that only 20% use steam as it is a much better experience to patch with. I also think it is a fraction as in 9/10 ot 8/10.
Also, if you think the only thing wrong with the offline play is the economy then you should go back and play Ultima 7. I know you will say that this is a MMO and what should I expect. I don't know maybe what you guys gathered money for in kickstarter...you know the same kickstarter where you told everyone this would not be an MMO. Can't tell that by looking at your website, you know the one you stealth edited to show that IS a MMO. Funny thing about kickstarter you can't edit the page afterwords. I cannot wait to see what happens when you go on kickstarter again for episode 2....something not mentioned here, yep that's right folks they need more money to make the next installment. Think people will trust what you say?
LB came on your reddit page to say he would listen to us and look into our complaints, but it was more false promises to try and silence your vocal critics(who used to be big supporters). Nothing changed, no reach out to your community.
Nope. Not a thing.
Though, I am a Title III investor in Crowfall, so technically SotA is the competition.
But I will defend them on a couple of your points, there. I was around when Star Citizen and SotA were getting going, and covering indie projects out of Austin was kind of my thing at the time, so I was pretty close to the teams as they got going.
So your points about MMOs are true, but not really because of the way you think. SC, SotA, and several other games coming out at the time all were always intended to be mostly online. If you go back and watch those early streams and read early posts, you can easily tell that was the plan. So why didn't they call it an MMO? Well, they were all going through the same PR team, and got the same advice other games got, which was stay wide of the term because it had a really bad rap at the time. A lot of shovelware MMOs had just come out and a lot of people were pretty burned out. Plus, WoW was still strong and seen as competition. So what you're talking about was a marketing choice, not really a design point. Go back and look at original design docs, and listen to how they describe the game as working. Starr's going to shoot me for saying it, but I always got the impression that Offline was a good idea and a bonus, but the online part was the main goal. That's why it was described as the spiritual successor to OU over and over, not Ultima.
Now, as far as LB's ignoring critics... I'm just guessing, but it's probably because the most vocal critics tend to be pretty dumb in their criticisms. For instance, you can complain about them selling houses in the cash shop, but if you don't acknowledge the amount of revenue they get from those and propose a way of replacing it, then that's not really something anyone will listen to, LB or otherwise. So, I'd challenge you to go back to those complaints and look at them again. Did they say what was wrong and propose a solution? Did that solution make technical and business sense? Is it something that uses existing systems and would be easy to implement? I can guarantee you that Starr Long will read valid criticisms and adjust fire if they make sense. Just realize that sometimes it costs too much, it's not something that's actually possible, and sometimes you're just in the minority and there's nothing they can do about that. It's a business. They don't make money if they don't give fans what they want.
Weird, I could have sworn I read about Ultima somewhere when I decided to back this game:
"Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”."
So....so far they have this MMO, questlines are brutal and most don't even work. I dare you to compare this game to Ultima 7 and see if it comes out favorably.
If you say that Starr long and his gang of merry employees always meant this to be an MMO and that some marketing company told them to do the kickstarter and lie to their backers that seems pretty unlawful to take money like that.
You don't play this style of game but you see greatness here? You play any of the questlines? Did you not see any issues?
@Pierrenard, agree completely. Last time we did a free trial, the guilds organized and were feverishly trying to recruit people joining and teach them the ropes. Lots of people do nothing but gather and craft so you'll be right at home.
They were feverishly trying to recruit people because the population is so low, they're desperate for someone else to join the game and hang out in their big $$ towns.
Lol you got that right, I logged in during those free trial on a Sat(yah steam linked so I got stuck with having base game after selling acct). It was deserted everywhere I went, I saw three people the whole time I was logged in maybe hour and half during what is usually considered "prime time" hours.
This game still looks like crap, plays like crap and tedious as hell. Grind, grind, grind Baby! Lol it's like playing a bad terrible cash shop app game. They dint seem to understand the point of a game is to have fun. After 8 hours workday who the heck wants to come home to another job like playing Sota? Talk about the wrong stuff, these Jokers are old, tired, and clueless how to make a proper game.
Psssssst Portalarium, it's 2017, not 2001, people won't put up with mediocrity. Here's your 4th place ribbon for pretending to try lol
That's what I thought you don't actively play this game, you just come here for your Portalarium buddies to try and get some more suckers to back this game. If you played it you'd know how bad it really is. If you're going to write puff pieces and praises for a game, don't you think you should really be playing it, your opinion at least would hold something then? At least the staff here at MMORPG.com actually play the game before making an article about it.
Dude of course the high level backers are gonna say this game is good, they stand to lose thousands of dollars because this game sucks and face planted into the pavement last July. They'll do anything to sucker people to buy this game, you know like they do...High level backers skew polls, they go post positive reviews because sales are low and the game is empty. Shady and greedy
lol I'm more of a Pops guy, but I still have season Symphony tickets, and I can have as an intelligent conversation about Baroque or Classical compositions and composers as I can contemporary.
Besides, you didn't ask if I liked the game or had played it much over all. You asked if I'd played it recently, and I hadn't. I've been OCONUS, and by the time I got home Civ VI had released some new content that's kept me busy. Thus, I hadn't played it much lately. Though, I think you dramatically overestimate the amount of time any writer has for any given game. In fact, I only cover the projects that interest me, so I tend to have more time on the games that I cover than most.
I think you're stretching a bit on the second point. Those folks backed because they were excited about the project. They already lost their money, because it's not like Kickstarter is an investment platform. I've been shoveling cash at Bethesda because I love the Elder Scrolls games. None of the new ones have been as revolutionary as Daggerfall, even a step back for the most part. They're still getting my money because I'm a fan, though. It's not like I'm out here pimping the game because I'm afraid of "losing" money on it. rofl I just think it's a fun series and that other folks would enjoy it, too.
Weird, I could have sworn I read about Ultima somewhere when I decided to back this game:
"Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”."
So....so far they have this MMO, questlines are brutal and most don't even work. I dare you to compare this game to Ultima 7 and see if it comes out favorably.
If you say that Starr long and his gang of merry employees always meant this to be an MMO and that some marketing company told them to do the kickstarter and lie to their backers that seems pretty unlawful to take money like that.
You don't play this style of game but you see greatness here? You play any of the questlines? Did you not see any issues?
Well, yeah. They referenced Ultima a lot when talking about storylines. Richard still does, and it's also clearly the inspiration for the various virtues and a number of other components in the game.
You've probably forgotten how ESO talked about the other Elder Scroll games a lot. In fact, they ALSO made a point of ensuring folks knew there was plenty of solo content in the game (because their pitch was developed in the same time frame as SC and SotA). You might also note that Crowfall isn't really an MMO, or at least avoided the term as much as they could. It's a throne war simulator.
If you're shocked to find that phrasing is a thing and that it matters, you should check out a show called "Archer." Excellent source of education on the subject.
...also, you have a tendency to just kind of hear what you want and not to really consider fully what was said. For instance, I never said that I don't play this style of game. Just said that I'm a bigger fan of strategy, which is my primary love. Otherwise, I've played a the majority of the RPGs and MMOs to hit the western market over the last couple decades and am very fluent with the genres.
Hear what I want? Funny someone could say the same thing about you.
If you have played so many rpg's and MMO's you should be able to tell the quality of this one.
I could easily pick out things I don't like about it. I have in a few articles, but I don't like to write negativity. If I don't like a project, I just don't write about it. I'm sure you could look back through the history of my articles and find popular games that I stopped covering because I don't want to support them anymore.
I happen to like this one, and have enjoyed playing it. I bet I like foods you don't like, too. Probably also music. Having traveled internationally quite a bit, I think it actually allows me to enjoy strange food, music, and such that I probably wouldn't otherwise. I hadn't thought about it, but games are probably similar.
Why in the world do you care so much about what other people like or don't like? Do you run around attacking people in restaurants eating food that you think is gross? lol I ate chocolate covered ants in Korea. I'm sure some folks would think that's gross. Doesn't mean it's not a pretty interesting taste or that some people don't really like it.
rofl Next time I see someone pollute their coffee with cream or sugar, I'll knock it out of their hands and make sure they know that @rune_74 says, "hello!"
sorry they killed this game with selling player run towns for real money in the cash shop. This game will not last long because the money is drying up.
But Lord British can still sell some more of his blood!
Comments
Ok this is the thing, this is semi not true. Have you had a crash of the game? Guess what that was the server crashing. This is a pier to pier based game with you only connecting to them for backend things. This isn't like WoW where if the server goes down nobody can connect cause they need to reboot it. You can write a simple server that servers off the back end data to the client. That is all that their server is doing.
When WoW's server has issues its memory leaks or issues handling multiple people doing things and sharing that with the other players. Here that is your machine if your the only one in the zone, which is most of the time. So if your game crashed that is a server crash.
Can't disagree with you.
Not here to argue, just clearing up some bad information. What you said is a blatant lie and anyone can verify it. The only thing that runs peer to peer is the patch client which is using a torrent style system.
Editing to make wording better.
If you have someone on a high ping connection they will have little to no lag when in friends only mode and be the only one in the zone. If you have someone join them they are not the zones master any more and it passes to the new person if they have a lower ping to the server. The first person will then have a lag because of the higher ping. Your "server" is nothing more then a relay or proxy for the events going on and controlled by one of the "game clients". You store that in a temp db and purge the "status" of that zone after 5 mins. But your server is in no way shape or form running the AI of the mobs in the zone from the way I have noticed how the game plays. If so why do we have studders or issues when people who were in that zone the longest disconnect via client crash of internet issues?
No. Don't think I have. I know some folks have, but I can't think of it ever happening to me. Though, WoW had crashed on me several times.
But it doesn't really matter. The peer to peer piece is just the combat, and that's not normally the part that fails. It's the authentication and player-data portions that tend to crash in MMOs, and that hasn't happened with SotA. It's not like they're really inventing a new system here, either. I don't know that any of the generic technology is proprietary. Unlike CIG, Port didn't decide to screw with someone else's netcode without any actual transport developers on board.
No, you make a good point about a lot of the game being client side, and that probably has a lot to do with stability. Still, the big problems most MMOs have in developer or soon after launch is authentication(login servers), duping, and general server stability. SotA hasn't had any of that, and that's pretty damn impressive in my book.
[edit:]
Just saw Chris post that the peer-to-peer bit isn't true. My fault. I thought the game was exchanging combat info between clients, but I must have picked that up from the prototype.
Though, I would call him out a bit on saying you were lying. Mistaken, obviously. As for me, I'm just assuming you made a mistake similar to how I did and were thinking of something else.
/fakenews
Kudos to the devs for going strong despite the crazy amount of negativity from individuals who only have themselves to blame for not understanding how early access games work. You guys (the devs) are doing a great damn job!
I've never gotten the chance to be part of a community like this where, not only are they great friendly people but, they have literally raised tens of thousands of dollars for a member for his chemo relief. The devs too are amazing, constantly accepting feedback from us and communicating back. I feel very fortunate to have become part of this project and wish I could have backed earlier.
@Catnip games - I find your steam numbers to be fishy. There is no way that only 20% use steam as it is a much better experience to patch with. I also think it is a fraction as in 9/10 ot 8/10.
Also, if you think the only thing wrong with the offline play is the economy then you should go back and play Ultima 7. I know you will say that this is a MMO and what should I expect. I don't know maybe what you guys gathered money for in kickstarter...you know the same kickstarter where you told everyone this would not be an MMO. Can't tell that by looking at your website, you know the one you stealth edited to show that IS a MMO. Funny thing about kickstarter you can't edit the page afterwords. I cannot wait to see what happens when you go on kickstarter again for episode 2....something not mentioned here, yep that's right folks they need more money to make the next installment. Think people will trust what you say?
LB came on your reddit page to say he would listen to us and look into our complaints, but it was more false promises to try and silence your vocal critics(who used to be big supporters). Nothing changed, no reach out to your community.
Though, I am a Title III investor in Crowfall, so technically SotA is the competition.
But I will defend them on a couple of your points, there. I was around when Star Citizen and SotA were getting going, and covering indie projects out of Austin was kind of my thing at the time, so I was pretty close to the teams as they got going.
So your points about MMOs are true, but not really because of the way you think. SC, SotA, and several other games coming out at the time all were always intended to be mostly online. If you go back and watch those early streams and read early posts, you can easily tell that was the plan. So why didn't they call it an MMO? Well, they were all going through the same PR team, and got the same advice other games got, which was stay wide of the term because it had a really bad rap at the time. A lot of shovelware MMOs had just come out and a lot of people were pretty burned out. Plus, WoW was still strong and seen as competition. So what you're talking about was a marketing choice, not really a design point. Go back and look at original design docs, and listen to how they describe the game as working. Starr's going to shoot me for saying it, but I always got the impression that Offline was a good idea and a bonus, but the online part was the main goal. That's why it was described as the spiritual successor to OU over and over, not Ultima.
Now, as far as LB's ignoring critics... I'm just guessing, but it's probably because the most vocal critics tend to be pretty dumb in their criticisms. For instance, you can complain about them selling houses in the cash shop, but if you don't acknowledge the amount of revenue they get from those and propose a way of replacing it, then that's not really something anyone will listen to, LB or otherwise. So, I'd challenge you to go back to those complaints and look at them again. Did they say what was wrong and propose a solution? Did that solution make technical and business sense? Is it something that uses existing systems and would be easy to implement? I can guarantee you that Starr Long will read valid criticisms and adjust fire if they make sense. Just realize that sometimes it costs too much, it's not something that's actually possible, and sometimes you're just in the minority and there's nothing they can do about that. It's a business. They don't make money if they don't give fans what they want.
This, this right here is why you have a reputation for dishonesty and elitism.
We'll skip the sneers about other webpages, and the fact that Red Thomas is a close friend of the company, a dedicated supporter of the product, and his own company is one that professionally runs an Astroturf service. We'll skip that your own staff were caught posting Steam reviews without admitting they worked at Portalarium, and that you yourself were caught deliberately mis-representing the review percentages at Steam... apparently Steam is fine when you believe you can use it to drum up support for the game.
No let's just deal with the facts in the above quote, shall we?
1.) If Steam players are not your audience, it's because you CHOOSE not to see them that way. And your playerbase by the way, far from welcoming Steam arrogantly assert people on Steam are untermenschen compared to them; here's just one thread of some of your remaining backers complaining about Steam, and others saying 'let's not do this again' because it was already such a common attitude by 2015.
2.) There is no "play through our website." You mean purchased through it, and using the stand alone game client launcher, rather than the Steam client launcher; but already you're fudging definitions to try and make a deceptive point, because...
3.) We can actually work out for ourselves the rough percentage of figures, and you're not telling anywhere close to the truth for actual purchases. I detailed the figures here, but long story short, we know approximately 35,000 of the total sold accounts have ALSO been linked to Steam, and thus are being tracked by it, which is over half of all listed pledges.
4.) It's since been pointed out to me that looking at the googledocs tracking of your own public figures, that you no longer release actual sales values. Instead, since the Pledges were expired, the total sales are hidden in the New Britannians value, which also includes anyone who ever registered for the forum. Even IF you take the maximum difference between the NB when Total Backers stopped being updated, and its value today, you've still only sold a maximum of about 9000 new accounts since that date. If every single one of those was done through your webpage and not Steam, making around 71k purchased accounts, 35k linked to Steam is still nearly 50% of that.
5.) What I suspect you're really talking about is the percentage of people WHO STILL PLAY. And gosh, who could be surprised that when you apparently hate anyone who plays through Steam as a company, only those who don't play through Steam feel like remaining? Besides which... 80% of... what? Where are your TOTAL figures? 80% of 10 for instance would be 8 people.
6.) And again, the deception; even if you accept the Free Trial ran through the webpage, and people would naturally upgrade it did so through that webpage and thus wouldn't show on Steam, and that they're in numbers far higher than your own publicly released New Britannians would show... WHAT ABOUT THE STEAM 50% OFF SALE OVER XMAS? People who bought the game then could only have done it through Steam. They WILL have been tracked, and we can see they largely didn't bother. Those who did, didn't stick around.
The 80% you're talking about are the hard core backers who will remain with the product no matter what.
You choose to ONLY listen to those who like your product. You are patronizing and offensive to those who don't, and cherry pick excuses about why they may not. But the reason you're failing on Steam is not because they're bad people; most of them are the very same backers you claim are superior.
It's because you don't have a product that will sell.
Fix that first, instead of going on these unprofessional crusades against critics.
Oh, and clean up your foul community too, whilst you're at it; When are you going to get around to banning those who have taken to trying to threaten people's real life children, and hacking accounts to try and silence critics? Your community mod Berek has received enough reports about it. So too did your Steam forum mods; oh but you chose to put scammers who called all Steam users FPS playing trash before protecting your own playerbase there.
Maybe you wouldn't have such a poor reputation on "other websites" if you didn't allow constant sockpuppeting and harassment on your own, and ended up driving people to righteous anger elsewhere, hmmm?
"My life for you"
Weird
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
2) Have an active cash shop
3) Most importantly, stop wipes
4) Still have the balls to hide behind "early access"
This game died as soon as they went persistant last July. Out of over 60k backers, they have just a few hundred people playing now. These guys are afraid to tell how many actual players they got now playing on a monthly basis because it's an embarrassment and they gotta keep the money rolling in still from what few people they still got left that's holding out hope. If they were truly proud they'd have those numbers revealed on their front page like their backer numbers. They don't want who's left to know how bad it really is.
No amount of polishing this turd will save it. It was badly conceived and designed from the beginning and the whales were catered to instead of catering to the story and gameplay for 4 years. They spent too many years letting devs play around with bad game mechanics and pet projects for them to be able to turn this around. These guys were out of the industry too long and didn't keep up with gaming technology and development, and don't have the talent to create a good game, they will have to go back to failed app developing again I guess after they finally stop hiding behind the early access tag and this game is finally called released and is officially a flop.
No idea what Astroturf is. My company does cyber security. It's not in the games industry at all. Well, other than the 1099s I get from these articles.
But my opinion and your opinion are really irrelevant. What matters is the opinion of backers who do play. Are they happy? Are they spending enough to keep the company healthy.
People seem to think that a game has to be universally loved to be a good game. It could have one player who liked it enough to pay a couple million a year, and it'd be a successful game.
Not sure why people feel this overpowering need to rip things down. There are a ton of games out there that I don't like. I've never really felt the need to convert fans to my side.
Dude of course the high level backers are gonna say this game is good, they stand to lose thousands of dollars because this game sucks and face planted into the pavement last July. They'll do anything to sucker people to buy this game, you know like they do...High level backers skew polls, they go post positive reviews because sales are low and the game is empty. Shady and greedy
I know what, if Portalarium is really so open and honest with their development, how bout boasting the players numbers playing online at any given time on their main website? Chris come on show us just how many hundreds of people you got left lol. He won't do it, because then people could see how bad it's going and hardly anyone aside from high level backers even play it. He'll keep telling us how grand it is without showing numbers and stay in the fantasy land of Portalarium offices where you can just pretend away this games a disaster while milking backers more with telethons and expensive add-ons. You can go in game at even what people consider prime time hours and never see more than two or three people, hell if you see anyone at all.
It's sad 4 years into this game and all there is to show for it is a clunky mix of unity assets duct tape together to try and resemble a game with an amateurish combat system and gameworld so pathetically awful it's not even worth playing even if it were free....Which will be their last ditch effort to keep their doors open it will go free to play with subscription .,....coming soooooon ,Mark my words it will happen lol.
Weird, I could have sworn I read about Ultima somewhere when I decided to back this game:
"Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”."
So....so far they have this MMO, questlines are brutal and most don't even work. I dare you to compare this game to Ultima 7 and see if it comes out favorably.
If you say that Starr long and his gang of merry employees always meant this to be an MMO and that some marketing company told them to do the kickstarter and lie to their backers that seems pretty unlawful to take money like that.
You don't play this style of game but you see greatness here? You play any of the questlines? Did you not see any issues?
This game still looks like crap, plays like crap and tedious as hell. Grind, grind, grind Baby! Lol it's like playing a bad terrible cash shop app game. They dint seem to understand the point of a game is to have fun. After 8 hours workday who the heck wants to come home to another job like playing Sota? Talk about the wrong stuff, these Jokers are old, tired, and clueless how to make a proper game.
Psssssst Portalarium, it's 2017, not 2001, people won't put up with mediocrity. Here's your 4th place ribbon for pretending to try lol
lol I'm more of a Pops guy, but I still have season Symphony tickets, and I can have as an intelligent conversation about Baroque or Classical compositions and composers as I can contemporary.
Besides, you didn't ask if I liked the game or had played it much over all. You asked if I'd played it recently, and I hadn't. I've been OCONUS, and by the time I got home Civ VI had released some new content that's kept me busy. Thus, I hadn't played it much lately. Though, I think you dramatically overestimate the amount of time any writer has for any given game. In fact, I only cover the projects that interest me, so I tend to have more time on the games that I cover than most.
I think you're stretching a bit on the second point. Those folks backed because they were excited about the project. They already lost their money, because it's not like Kickstarter is an investment platform. I've been shoveling cash at Bethesda because I love the Elder Scrolls games. None of the new ones have been as revolutionary as Daggerfall, even a step back for the most part. They're still getting my money because I'm a fan, though. It's not like I'm out here pimping the game because I'm afraid of "losing" money on it. rofl I just think it's a fun series and that other folks would enjoy it, too.
You've probably forgotten how ESO talked about the other Elder Scroll games a lot. In fact, they ALSO made a point of ensuring folks knew there was plenty of solo content in the game (because their pitch was developed in the same time frame as SC and SotA). You might also note that Crowfall isn't really an MMO, or at least avoided the term as much as they could. It's a throne war simulator.
If you're shocked to find that phrasing is a thing and that it matters, you should check out a show called "Archer." Excellent source of education on the subject.
...also, you have a tendency to just kind of hear what you want and not to really consider fully what was said. For instance, I never said that I don't play this style of game. Just said that I'm a bigger fan of strategy, which is my primary love. Otherwise, I've played a the majority of the RPGs and MMOs to hit the western market over the last couple decades and am very fluent with the genres.
If you have played so many rpg's and MMO's you should be able to tell the quality of this one.
I happen to like this one, and have enjoyed playing it. I bet I like foods you don't like, too. Probably also music. Having traveled internationally quite a bit, I think it actually allows me to enjoy strange food, music, and such that I probably wouldn't otherwise. I hadn't thought about it, but games are probably similar.
Why in the world do you care so much about what other people like or don't like? Do you run around attacking people in restaurants eating food that you think is gross? lol I ate chocolate covered ants in Korea. I'm sure some folks would think that's gross. Doesn't mean it's not a pretty interesting taste or that some people don't really like it.
rofl Next time I see someone pollute their coffee with cream or sugar, I'll knock it out of their hands and make sure they know that @rune_74 says, "hello!"
Or other body fluids for that matter.