@DracSchnider Again, you said: "There are more than 1000 people on the server at any given time this I know."
I asked, and am asking again, a very simple question: How do you know it? Furthermore, a solid, direct source would be welcome.
PS If you want us to compete in mumbo-jumbo math and wild speculations - I can do that, no problem; Tho I don't see much point
Friends list is the only metric I have that tells me how many people I know are on at once that I have accepted as friends (teleport locations). It also tells me how many are online and offline and for the offline the last time logged in.
wild speculation could be that I should have said 1000 people per day that I know to be accurate in my statement to make it true But I am pretty sure with all the other guilds I encounter every day that there are more then I think there is on at any give point.
I will see if I can get an active pull from all the guilds in our alliance to see how many members they have online on average just so I can back my "mumbo-jumbo math" . you are right I agree until I prove that number it is only an educated guess based on a small sample.
If you bought the game you can post on the forums. Account = forums. Not sure where you are getting this $5.00 from? $5 is all that is needed to get stretch goals from twitch. that does not get you forum access and you are required to have an account to get the stretch rewards.
the forums are locked down to game players. No bots, ads, non players posting garbage. Its moderated as some have posted here. If you post things constructively on what you dislike it stays in the forums. If you however end up in arguments they will lock them after dev team responds. And if you bash the dev team or get angry they wont tolerate it and will close the thread. So basically the forums are play nice and be respectful well you post even if its something you didn't like from a change or stuff you hoped they would put in.
One of the ways we acted on these principles was to create and
maintain public forums, open for the entire world to participate in,
both viewing and posting. We reserved some areas of our forums for
backers only, but we felt it was important there be a community forum
where the dev team, backers, and non-backers could interact with each
other, share ideas and opinions, collaborate, and brainstorm.
For two years, we’ve been able to keep our public forums freely open
for both viewing and posting. Unfortunately, recent abuse of our public
forums by spammers is forcing us to remove free posting privileges. Our
volunteer forum moderators are drowning in the hordes of spam posts that
have recently invaded our public forums. For the past couple of weeks,
our web dev team (i.e. Tassilo Philipp) had to set aside higher priority
game and web development tasks while he endeavored to close the holes
the spammers are getting through.
We on the executive management team felt it was necessary to stop
spending our backers pledge money on the endless efforts necessary to
block spammers, and instead, stop them by making them pay to post. We’ve
anguished over this decision for weeks, as it is a compromise of our
principles, and we will suffer from the loss of ideas that often
resulted from free sharing of opinions in our public forums. However, we
believe this is the best course of action to take at this time.
Please know that we do not consider this a permanent situation. As
our funds and team priorities allow, we will continue to revisit the
integration of automated spam tools that may allow us to re-open our
general forums for free public posting.
In the meantime, starting June 29, 2015, our General Forums will
remain open for everyone to read, but you must be a backer to post. All
existing backers (including Steam Early Access backers) will be able to
post. Non-backers can purchase forum posting privileges with our new $5 Forum Posting Pledge, which can be upgraded to a full game pledge at any time. If you pledged through Kickstarter you will need to link your Kickstarter account for forum posting privileges.
Dallas Snell
COO/Founder/Portalarium
Good to know that is the first I have ever seen that or heard of this. I been playing since 2016.
If you bought the game you can post on the forums. Account = forums. Not sure where you are getting this $5.00 from? $5 is all that is needed to get stretch goals from twitch. that does not get you forum access and you are required to have an account to get the stretch rewards.
the forums are locked down to game players. No bots, ads, non players posting garbage. Its moderated as some have posted here. If you post things constructively on what you dislike it stays in the forums. If you however end up in arguments they will lock them after dev team responds. And if you bash the dev team or get angry they wont tolerate it and will close the thread. So basically the forums are play nice and be respectful well you post even if its something you didn't like from a change or stuff you hoped they would put in.
One of the ways we acted on these principles was to create and
maintain public forums, open for the entire world to participate in,
both viewing and posting. We reserved some areas of our forums for
backers only, but we felt it was important there be a community forum
where the dev team, backers, and non-backers could interact with each
other, share ideas and opinions, collaborate, and brainstorm.
For two years, we’ve been able to keep our public forums freely open
for both viewing and posting. Unfortunately, recent abuse of our public
forums by spammers is forcing us to remove free posting privileges. Our
volunteer forum moderators are drowning in the hordes of spam posts that
have recently invaded our public forums. For the past couple of weeks,
our web dev team (i.e. Tassilo Philipp) had to set aside higher priority
game and web development tasks while he endeavored to close the holes
the spammers are getting through.
We on the executive management team felt it was necessary to stop
spending our backers pledge money on the endless efforts necessary to
block spammers, and instead, stop them by making them pay to post. We’ve
anguished over this decision for weeks, as it is a compromise of our
principles, and we will suffer from the loss of ideas that often
resulted from free sharing of opinions in our public forums. However, we
believe this is the best course of action to take at this time.
Please know that we do not consider this a permanent situation. As
our funds and team priorities allow, we will continue to revisit the
integration of automated spam tools that may allow us to re-open our
general forums for free public posting.
In the meantime, starting June 29, 2015, our General Forums will
remain open for everyone to read, but you must be a backer to post. All
existing backers (including Steam Early Access backers) will be able to
post. Non-backers can purchase forum posting privileges with our new $5 Forum Posting Pledge, which can be upgraded to a full game pledge at any time. If you pledged through Kickstarter you will need to link your Kickstarter account for forum posting privileges.
Dallas Snell
COO/Founder/Portalarium
Good to know that is the first I have ever seen that or heard of this. I been playing since 2016.
That $5 is no longer a thing as was short lived. this is why I never heard of it. it was gone when I started playing.
However, what I found interesting was the number of players who have purchased SOTA via Steam: Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues 50,554
This was from the Steam leak and taken form another post.
There are 255k player accounts of that only 50k form steam based on this information.
using even an estimate of 300 people per hour from steams 50k number and taking the 200k at same value per hour that is 1250 users / hour average.
weekends are the best time to get numbers as all us working folk sitting at our desk not playing don't get on until weekends or evenings. the majority of the numbers are weekends like all other games which is when it spikes up.
Game has been persistent for 2 years, of course you've seen 1000 in that amount of time, they sold almost 70,000 copies in five years, at least 1000 people logged in to look around since 2016.
This:
There are 255k player accounts of that only 50k form steam based on this information.
That is not correct. As has been proven many times there are almost 255k forum accounts and people signed up for newsletters, but there are not even 70k total game accounts (aka: backers). Check wayback to be sure.
This is all official stats from a month after game launched, in three months time since commercial launch maybe they sold a few more game codes but not many - they just had to lay off half their company.
Kickstarter Backers: 22,322
SotA Only Backers: 46,284
Total Backers: 68,606
and Unlinked KS Accounts: 3,452
Steam information posted above from the data scrape was only purchases not account. that would mean that a lot of the purchases were never used. I also don't know if that information includes refunds in the steam data.
New Britannians: 219,261 so I take it then this number is as you mentioned forum users? or perhaps characters? KS accounts have access to multiple characters.
There was a intense thread earlier in SOTA's forum where players were asking where all the players are.
It goes back a year when Seed Invest said there were 150K players, but then a few days ago Richard Garriott told eurogamer that they only had "thousands" of players monthly. Now the dev that locked the thread said they have currently 255,000 players. But when I check Steamcharts there are not even 200 people playing. Can someone help explain? I can't ask on the official forums, people are being banned for asking.
Heavy wordsmithing, as usual. Last time I remember people checking (I don't own the game), it was 96(!) concurrent players via Steam - that is with bots, multiple accounts and all that included; Nobody is playing that piece of...game.
There is couple light years of distance between that and quarter of a million, and even so PLAYERS should be replaced with ACCOUNTS in that sentence.
Now, it's possible that Richie is honest this time i.e. if you add every single player/bot/dual that logged in even just for a second during a full month (why not a year or a century?) you might end up in thousands - where similar games have millions.
There are more then 1000 people on the server at any given time this I know.
Fact. the guild I am in has over 100 active players. Fact, my friends lists has at any given time min 200 - 300 people on it and online.
Last weekend I was at an event with only 6 of our guild members attending out of the 100. There was 120 players in the zone during the event. This was not only an event but to test the server for large scale castle pvp sieges that are coming next patch. The devs also attacked the party with NPC's and boss mobs which all player fought with heavy particles in a heavy decorated metro player city to see how the FPS and server could handle. I did not drop any frames on my laptop which is awesome.
Here is a picture of just a few of the 120 people at the event.:
The game is not going anywhere, and is expanding every month. The people that think otherwise don't play or simply just done like the game as its not what they want it to be. Growth has been increasing every month for the last 5 months. Not at the rate Port wants but its still going up. Steam is not the main launcher for the game and never will be. That said this will never be in the millions of player base but will attract larger numbers interested in the Ultima universe.
with EP2 already starting the stretch goals things are moving forward. The team will grow again when the time to implement the goals comes just like that of EP1.
I have already seen the new lands for EP2 which for all you UO people happens to have the serpent isles this is exciting.
I hate to break this to you...anyone interested in Ultima should be disgusted by this game....it's as if the fellowship made this....
Yeah man I can explain. Its forum registrations not game sales. Google "shroud campaign stats" ya can see where they were gettin those numbers. Actual game accounts was 68000 in may 2018 when they stopped releasing them.
Ya can register on the forums and be counted but not actually post unless you spend $5.
Steamcharts is countin how many are actually playin at any one time. About 100 to 200 these days out of a bit more than 68000 sold.
Hang on are you saying that even if you bought the game you have to pay $5 dollars to post on the forums; or are you saying that if you have not bought the game they charge you $5 to post on the forums? Either way that is outrageous.
If you bought the game you can post on the forums. Account = forums. Not sure where you are getting this $5.00 from? $5 is all that is needed to get stretch goals from twitch. that does not get you forum access and you are required to have an account to get the stretch rewards.
the forums are locked down to game players. No bots, ads, non players posting garbage. Its moderated as some have posted here. If you post things constructively on what you dislike it stays in the forums. If you however end up in arguments they will lock them after dev team responds. And if you bash the dev team or get angry they wont tolerate it and will close the thread. So basically the forums are play nice and be respectful well you post even if its something you didn't like from a change or stuff you hoped they would put in.
OH BS, if you say anything they don't like they will ban you...
a reviewer for a german magazine gave them a bad review and got banned....
Yeah man I can explain. Its forum registrations not game sales. Google "shroud campaign stats" ya can see where they were gettin those numbers. Actual game accounts was 68000 in may 2018 when they stopped releasing them.
Ya can register on the forums and be counted but not actually post unless you spend $5.
Steamcharts is countin how many are actually playin at any one time. About 100 to 200 these days out of a bit more than 68000 sold.
Hang on are you saying that even if you bought the game you have to pay $5 dollars to post on the forums; or are you saying that if you have not bought the game they charge you $5 to post on the forums? Either way that is outrageous.
If you bought the game you can post on the forums. Account = forums. Not sure where you are getting this $5.00 from? $5 is all that is needed to get stretch goals from twitch. that does not get you forum access and you are required to have an account to get the stretch rewards.
the forums are locked down to game players. No bots, ads, non players posting garbage. Its moderated as some have posted here. If you post things constructively on what you dislike it stays in the forums. If you however end up in arguments they will lock them after dev team responds. And if you bash the dev team or get angry they wont tolerate it and will close the thread. So basically the forums are play nice and be respectful well you post even if its something you didn't like from a change or stuff you hoped they would put in.
OH BS, if you say anything they don't like they will ban you...
a reviewer for a german magazine gave them a bad review and got banned....
If you are on the forums you can see a lot of things people don't like and discussions. only the ones that are not constructive get removed, or if in fighting starts. No clue on which German mag review. Only thing I could see is if they did the review pre-release with out explicit permission as per the EULA on pre-access. same goes for talking about patches on the test server. if you talk outside of the test server area you will get banned. That I understand clearly. I am pretty sure that there was some reviews during development that were not approved, that is for sure. there was in general forums discussions on this very thing.
I also know of one player that did get almost banned for a rant on some balance adjustments where he got angry in his post which got him in trouble. most these posts are easy to spot and many of us even though we responded on some of these discussions realize that they will be removed shortly.
Follow the forum rulez and don't get banned , its pretty simple
Are you saying Lord Darkmoon was a troll and deserved to be banned? His review came out months after the game launched...unless that is still prerelease?
Pay lots of money and you won't be banned(unless you go to far, but then only then, will you be allowed to use one of your many money accounts to post anyways)
I don't think you even know what you are talking about....maybe a new player who hasn't been around long enough.
Are you saying Lord Darkmoon was a troll and deserved to be banned? His review came out months after the game launched...unless that is still prerelease?
Pay lots of money and you won't be banned(unless you go to far, but then only then, will you be allowed to use one of your many money accounts to post anyways)
I don't think you even know what you are talking about....maybe a new player who hasn't been around long enough.
Agree. Rufus is a good example of a person that can act pretty much how he like on the SotA forums. If you pledge alot of money you are pretty much bulletproof.
There was a intense thread earlier in SOTA's forum where players were asking where all the players are.
It goes back a year when Seed Invest said there were 150K players, but then a few days ago Richard Garriott told eurogamer that they only had "thousands" of players monthly. Now the dev that locked the thread said they have currently 255,000 players. But when I check Steamcharts there are not even 200 people playing. Can someone help explain? I can't ask on the official forums, people are being banned for asking.
Heavy wordsmithing, as usual. Last time I remember people checking (I don't own the game), it was 96(!) concurrent players via Steam - that is with bots, multiple accounts and all that included; Nobody is playing that piece of...game.
There is couple light years of distance between that and quarter of a million, and even so PLAYERS should be replaced with ACCOUNTS in that sentence.
Now, it's possible that Richie is honest this time i.e. if you add every single player/bot/dual that logged in even just for a second during a full month (why not a year or a century?) you might end up in thousands - where similar games have millions.
There are more then 1000 people on the server at any given time this I know.
Fact. the guild I am in has over 100 active players. Fact, my friends lists has at any given time min 200 - 300 people on it and online.
Last weekend I was at an event with only 6 of our guild members attending out of the 100. There was 120 players in the zone during the event. This was not only an event but to test the server for large scale castle pvp sieges that are coming next patch. The devs also attacked the party with NPC's and boss mobs which all player fought with heavy particles in a heavy decorated metro player city to see how the FPS and server could handle. I did not drop any frames on my laptop which is awesome.
Here is a picture of just a few of the 120 people at the event.:
The game is not going anywhere, and is expanding every month. The people that think otherwise don't play or simply just done like the game as its not what they want it to be. Growth has been increasing every month for the last 5 months. Not at the rate Port wants but its still going up. Steam is not the main launcher for the game and never will be. That said this will never be in the millions of player base but will attract larger numbers interested in the Ultima universe.
with EP2 already starting the stretch goals things are moving forward. The team will grow again when the time to implement the goals comes just like that of EP1.
I have already seen the new lands for EP2 which for all you UO people happens to have the serpent isles this is exciting.
Honestly, going off my experience alone in a zone with just a few mobs to fight, your performance description is absolutely alien.
The game is incredibly poorly optimized. There's no reason a game that looks like this should perform so poorly.
Are you saying Lord Darkmoon was a troll and deserved to be banned? His review came out months after the game launched...unless that is still prerelease?
Pay lots of money and you won't be banned(unless you go to far, but then only then, will you be allowed to use one of your many money accounts to post anyways)
I don't think you even know what you are talking about....maybe a new player who hasn't been around long enough.
I didn't say anything about Lord Darkmoon. I even said that I didn't know what German Mag. you were referring too. I was just giving insight to the forums.
I have owned the game since Kickstarting. Only played since 2016 and on.
Read what he said which is pretty much true from his perspective. I do agree would have been nice to have vocals for the quests... one day I hope.
I don't see why he would be banned over this, which leads me to believe that it was over something else.
As too his review voice would have been awesome! but the budget would never be even close to what is required to have good actors. I could see them pulling off a kings quest 3 lol remember that when the dev team did the vocals... it was something lol. TESO had 300 Million to make the game. We didn't have even close to that during the initial KS.
"Is Shroud of the Avatar Pay2Win? Shroud of the Avatar offers an in-game shop where you can buy cosmetic items. These are mainly used to expand the houses. It is possible to purchase items such as snowmen and Christmas trees for the house, bunny masks for the character at Easter or a pumpkin helmet for Halloween.
In addition, there is the possibility to acquire the in-game currency Crowns of the Obsidians (COTOs), with which you gain potions. These potions grant boosts on your chance to mine resources. In addition, it is possible to combine the COTOs with weapons or armor to restore their maximum durability, which is otherwise not possible. COTOs can also be earned in-game, and the boosts that you earn with them are practical, but not decisive for the war.
In addition, Shroud of the Avatar allows players to officially bid for money through the forum marketplace. That is, you pay a real money player to level up. In particular, the latter is regularly discussed and criticized in the community of Shroud of the Avatar, but the developers prefer such in the forum, as outsource to dubious websites. Such services have always been in MMOs and you can not prevent it anyway. "
Most of it is fluff, Cotos do give a boost for sure in some areas that I agree with , the repair though is limited its called a major repair. after a few the item durability will decrease just like that of regular repairs. However if you GM repair you can get close to the same results. Either way with COTOS in game for a low as 3200gold its pretty affordable, unless you are one that dies all the time at higher levels which really damages the armor.
As to monsters and the like he is correct, however the system has changed since his initial review. they have upgraded a lot of the zones and are now working on tier adjustments. there are up to +10 that I have seen now where our group had issues even. Devs are in a polish mode now until EP2 starts so they are adding new mobs, Ai changes, zone balance, new zone rules (example some pvp zones now cap levels and skills, some make all the same level) Some zones even remove all buffs there are many things happening to change the dynamics of the zones. There are also changes to wandering monsters. Now there is more random things that happen, larger beasts and the likes show up in encounters after you complete certain things. I do think they have a long way to go but this shows they are working towards more content.
Zones are even becoming more interesting, a lot of puzzles , and tasks to get around some. still a lot needs to be done to make it stellar like TESO and others.
As to open world I understand and here is why they went the route they did:
There was a intense thread earlier in SOTA's forum where players were asking where all the players are.
It goes back a year when Seed Invest said there were 150K players, but then a few days ago Richard Garriott told eurogamer that they only had "thousands" of players monthly. Now the dev that locked the thread said they have currently 255,000 players. But when I check Steamcharts there are not even 200 people playing. Can someone help explain? I can't ask on the official forums, people are being banned for asking.
Heavy wordsmithing, as usual. Last time I remember people checking (I don't own the game), it was 96(!) concurrent players via Steam - that is with bots, multiple accounts and all that included; Nobody is playing that piece of...game.
There is couple light years of distance between that and quarter of a million, and even so PLAYERS should be replaced with ACCOUNTS in that sentence.
Now, it's possible that Richie is honest this time i.e. if you add every single player/bot/dual that logged in even just for a second during a full month (why not a year or a century?) you might end up in thousands - where similar games have millions.
There are more then 1000 people on the server at any given time this I know.
Fact. the guild I am in has over 100 active players. Fact, my friends lists has at any given time min 200 - 300 people on it and online.
Last weekend I was at an event with only 6 of our guild members attending out of the 100. There was 120 players in the zone during the event. This was not only an event but to test the server for large scale castle pvp sieges that are coming next patch. The devs also attacked the party with NPC's and boss mobs which all player fought with heavy particles in a heavy decorated metro player city to see how the FPS and server could handle. I did not drop any frames on my laptop which is awesome.
Here is a picture of just a few of the 120 people at the event.:
The game is not going anywhere, and is expanding every month. The people that think otherwise don't play or simply just done like the game as its not what they want it to be. Growth has been increasing every month for the last 5 months. Not at the rate Port wants but its still going up. Steam is not the main launcher for the game and never will be. That said this will never be in the millions of player base but will attract larger numbers interested in the Ultima universe.
with EP2 already starting the stretch goals things are moving forward. The team will grow again when the time to implement the goals comes just like that of EP1.
I have already seen the new lands for EP2 which for all you UO people happens to have the serpent isles this is exciting.
Honestly, going off my experience alone in a zone with just a few mobs to fight, your performance description is absolutely alien.
The game is incredibly poorly optimized. There's no reason a game that looks like this should perform so poorly.
I get good frame rate on a laptop with 1070GTX 8GB video memory. its not stellar but was getting better but last patch it went down a little. the issue I see is the number of objects in a zone and how Unity works. they for sure need to optimize more, especially if they still plan to do the VR stuff which is on their road map.
@DracSchnider Again, you said: "There are more than 1000 people on the server at any given time this I know."
I asked, and am asking again, a very simple question: How do you know it? Furthermore, a solid, direct source would be welcome.
PS If you want us to compete in mumbo-jumbo math and wild speculations - I can do that, no problem; Tho I don't see much point
Friends list is the only metric I have that tells me how many people I know are on at once that I have accepted as friends (teleport locations). It also tells me how many are online and offline and for the offline the last time logged in.
wild speculation could be that I should have said 1000 people per day that I know to be accurate in my statement to make it true But I am pretty sure with all the other guilds I encounter every day that there are more then I think there is on at any give point.
I will see if I can get an active pull from all the guilds in our alliance to see how many members they have online on average just so I can back my "mumbo-jumbo math" . you are right I agree until I prove that number it is only an educated guess based on a small sample.
There are for sure over 1000 people online. I agree with the OP on this one. I run a town that has over 60 people in it alone. Under my town is another nested town that has only around 12 people. There are alone in my area of the map which is congested around 20 very active player towns/markets and and alot of foot / teleport traffic.
My friends list is pretty full, we are talking pages in the window. As to Active its hard to say, there is a date stamp as to last on, but I see always at least 2-3 pages of people always on. The guild we are in has a lot of members but only around 40 Id stay that are really active the others come online once in a while to play, and others just to see where things are at with the state of the game.
With the upcoming 3 Gaming events that SOTA devs are at along with the new Player dungeon stuff that starts end of this month the growth should be pretty big.
Steamcharts shows 205 people playing. Allow some proof of 1000 people or concede. RG has said recently that only a few thousand people total play the game and he is the CEO. If you know any SOTA players you know everyone has multiple alts. It's possible only hundreds of actual people play this game, but they are all whales so it limps along.
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
Not that this means anything saw another person in the forums post when we were talking about the new bind anywhere that is coming in the future. I thought my list of friends was big with around 1000 peoples this guy has a lot more.
Not that this means anything saw another person in the forums post when we were talking about the new bind anywhere that is coming in the future. I thought my list of friends was big with around 1000 peoples this guy has a lot more.
I know. It's very sad. People with friends lists with many thousands of player names listed and still only a few dozen to a hundred or so players online. It's no secret that close to 70k accounts have been sold since Kickstarter but only a few people online at a time.
SotA Trivia: For the players that were here since the beginning, even through all the updates, never has Portalarium wiped or reset a Friend List. The list always carried over, so these players with many thousands of Friends have been collecting names for five years now.
I have already seen the best class design "FFXI" the best housing "EQ2",the best graphics "FFXIV",best overall structure "FFXI",best overall linear questing game "EQ2" and since all of this NO OTHER game has done anything to do any of those systems better,everything since has been half assed game designs,so tell me why i would care what anyone would tell me about numbers? Sorry there was one game that gave it an attempt to do the questing theme better and that was Vanguard but didn't seem to pick a good time to market itself with Wow owning the roost .
I just find it funny now that many gamer's have been around a long time that devs are still trying to fool people with half assed game designs.You can market the hell out of your game,tell us whatever you want,lie,deceive,eventually we will see what your game offers and just look the other way.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I have already seen the best class design "FFXI" the best housing "EQ2",the best graphics "FFXIV",best overall structure "FFXI",best overall linear questing game "EQ2" and since all of this NO OTHER game has done anything to do any of those systems better,everything since has been half assed game designs,so tell me why i would care what anyone would tell me about numbers? Sorry there was one game that gave it an attempt to do the questing theme better and that was Vanguard but didn't seem to pick a good time to market itself with Wow owning the roost .
I just find it funny now that many gamer's have been around a long time that devs are still trying to fool people with half assed game designs.You can market the hell out of your game,tell us whatever you want,lie,deceive,eventually we will see what your game offers and just look the other way.
EQ2 was pretty awesome for what it has. I played that a lot and still think EQ2 is worth playing. FFXI was not bad for character options, although I liked many games that has a mix match of things. I see SOTA with open class now with masteries trying to somewhat force you to eventually decide between 2 in order to get the most out of your core choices.
As to SOTA itself I don't see it the same way you do. I have been there almost since the start and they have added everything up to this point that they promised. I do think the quest system is still lacking in content and as they know and the players the system does need a complete revamp as its not very good. On the other hand Tracey H. has done a great job on the story. The lore and all that has been added to follow the main story is very well done. still has a few minor issues with some bugs but its come along way. I have done the main story 2 times now and now again with an alt as so much has changed on the way to complete.
I don't see the devs trying to fool anyone. They now have the base systems in place and developed so now they are working hard with the community to make it what the players have asked. It does not mean that they take all the input and make it so, but if enough player bases voices it or if the idea of one person sounds like it would fit in they have made good on efforts to bring it in. Take player dungeons for example. It uses the system base system as basements and the same core tools they developed for other parts. Having all the systems in place now allows them to build off them like that of the dungeons. Next release this month in 1.5 weeks will have the next phase allowing players to actually start designing and building the dungeons. The player quest system is also starting to come in which will allow players to have NPC's that are scripted to offer quests and rewards as well animations. The towns will advertise the locations of player dungeons, and there will be system too allow people to see the top player made content. this alone is exciting for a large % of the base players.
I along with many I know are here to stay and keep things moving forward. We want to see the true UO successor in the end. When I started UO when it came out it was about the same as SOTA. It had a lot of issues, and many missing systems. the one thing though I liked about UO which I am still not 100% on is the map / world. I do wish they had done a seamless, but I do understand what this design allows them to do. Looking at a lot of the Square Enix / soft games and how it worked for them with being able to have things just appear over night or on a random chance does offer a lot. having to make major changes to a seamless word is pretty hard. I recall just adding a new zone in many games took many months to years. With this design they can just plunk it down with out having to mesh it all in. and ensure it works. As well for expanding the size this is easier. no need to worry about running out of areas to develop.
Not that this means anything saw another person in the forums post when we were talking about the new bind anywhere that is coming in the future. I thought my list of friends was big with around 1000 peoples this guy has a lot more.
I know. It's very sad. People with friends lists with many thousands of player names listed and still only a few dozen to a hundred or so players online. It's no secret that close to 70k accounts have been sold since Kickstarter but only a few people online at a time.
SotA Trivia: For the players that were here since the beginning, even through all the updates, never has Portalarium wiped or reset a Friend List. The list always carried over, so these players with many thousands of Friends have been collecting names for five years now.
He is talking active players for teleporting. you can't teleport to offline peoples. This is what myself and others were stating that some of us have massive lists of online people. which is why we know along with what Richard has stated that steam is not the primary launcher for the game. I do know why you keep bringing it up as its the only metric you have that you can see, unless you are a player who has a large friends list then you know that 100-300 players from steam are only a fraction of the players. you wont take Richards word for it which he mentioned in Eurogamer mag. that most the players play on the original game client. Whats your ingame name so I can see when you played last or pull up the metrics on you from sota.wiki site
Not that this means anything saw another person in the forums post when we were talking about the new bind anywhere that is coming in the future. I thought my list of friends was big with around 1000 peoples this guy has a lot more.
I know. It's very sad. People with friends lists with many thousands of player names listed and still only a few dozen to a hundred or so players online. It's no secret that close to 70k accounts have been sold since Kickstarter but only a few people online at a time.
SotA Trivia: For the players that were here since the beginning, even through all the updates, never has Portalarium wiped or reset a Friend List. The list always carried over, so these players with many thousands of Friends have been collecting names for five years now.
He is talking active players for teleporting. you can't teleport to offline peoples. This is what myself and others were stating that some of us have massive lists of online people. which is why we know along with what Richard has stated that steam is not the primary launcher for the game. I do know why you keep bringing it up as its the only metric you have that you can see, unless you are a player who has a large friends list then you know that 100-300 players from steam are only a fraction of the players. you wont take Richards word for it which he mentioned in Eurogamer mag. that most the players play on the original game client. Whats your ingame name so I can see when you played last or pull up the metrics on you from sota.wiki site
Do you have any proof? I've heard devs say that Steam numbers represent a third or half of the numbers, but that was prior to commercial launch. Quite a bit more than a fraction, and still not accurate or representative of current numbers.
Portalarium won't provide the means to show current player numbers in real time.
No player has ever produced even a screenshot showing more than a hundred or so players active.
All that really matters is if there are enough players to have an enjoyable experience and if those generate enough revenue for the company to thrive.
No idea on the first part but it’s obvious they are struggling with the revenue.
The revenue part, Portalarium is on record saying they need 50,000 players monthly to be profitable. They said that during the Seed Invest campaign in 2017.
Comments
Friends list is the only metric I have that tells me how many people I know are on at once that I have accepted as friends (teleport locations). It also tells me how many are online and offline and for the offline the last time logged in.
wild speculation could be that I should have said 1000 people per day that I know to be accurate in my statement to make it true
I will see if I can get an active pull from all the guilds in our alliance to see how many members they have online on average just so I can back my "mumbo-jumbo math" . you are right I agree until I prove that number it is only an educated guess based on a small sample.
That $5 is no longer a thing as was short lived. this is why I never heard of it. it was gone when I started playing.
Kickstarter Backers: 22,322 SotA Only Backers: 46,284 Total Backers: 68,606
and Unlinked KS Accounts: 3,452
Steam information posted above from the data scrape was only purchases not account. that would mean that a lot of the purchases were never used. I also don't know if that information includes refunds in the steam data.New Britannians: 219,261
so I take it then this number is as you mentioned forum users? or perhaps characters? KS accounts have access to multiple characters.
I hate to break this to you...anyone interested in Ultima should be disgusted by this game....it's as if the fellowship made this....
OH BS, if you say anything they don't like they will ban you...
a reviewer for a german magazine gave them a bad review and got banned....
I also know of one player that did get almost banned for a rant on some balance adjustments where he got angry in his post which got him in trouble. most these posts are easy to spot and many of us even though we responded on some of these discussions realize that they will be removed shortly.
Follow the forum rulez and don't get banned , its pretty simple
Are you saying Lord Darkmoon was a troll and deserved to be banned? His review came out months after the game launched...unless that is still prerelease?
Pay lots of money and you won't be banned(unless you go to far, but then only then, will you be allowed to use one of your many money accounts to post anyways)
I don't think you even know what you are talking about....maybe a new player who hasn't been around long enough.
The game is incredibly poorly optimized. There's no reason a game that looks like this should perform so poorly.
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
I have owned the game since Kickstarting. Only played since 2016 and on.
Do you have a link to the review?
update found it I think:
https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/shroud-of-the-avatar-zu-viele-genres-verderben-den-spass,3328221.html&edit-text=&act=url
Read what he said which is pretty much true from his perspective. I do agree would have been nice to have vocals for the quests... one day I hope.
I don't see why he would be banned over this, which leads me to believe that it was over something else.
As too his review voice would have been awesome! but the budget would never be even close to what is required to have good actors. I could see them pulling off a kings quest 3 lol remember that when the dev team did the vocals... it was something lol. TESO had 300 Million to make the game. We didn't have even close to that during the initial KS.
"Is Shroud of the Avatar Pay2Win?
Shroud of the Avatar offers an in-game shop where you can buy cosmetic items. These are mainly used to expand the houses. It is possible to purchase items such as snowmen and Christmas trees for the house, bunny masks for the character at Easter or a pumpkin helmet for Halloween.
In addition, there is the possibility to acquire the in-game currency Crowns of the Obsidians (COTOs), with which you gain potions. These potions grant boosts on your chance to mine resources. In addition, it is possible to combine the COTOs with weapons or armor to restore their maximum durability, which is otherwise not possible. COTOs can also be earned in-game, and the boosts that you earn with them are practical, but not decisive for the war.
In addition, Shroud of the Avatar allows players to officially bid for money through the forum marketplace. That is, you pay a real money player to level up. In particular, the latter is regularly discussed and criticized in the community of Shroud of the Avatar, but the developers prefer such in the forum, as outsource to dubious websites. Such services have always been in MMOs and you can not prevent it anyway. "
Most of it is fluff, Cotos do give a boost for sure in some areas that I agree with , the repair though is limited its called a major repair. after a few the item durability will decrease just like that of regular repairs. However if you GM repair you can get close to the same results. Either way with COTOS in game for a low as 3200gold its pretty affordable, unless you are one that dies all the time at higher levels which really damages the armor.
As to monsters and the like he is correct, however the system has changed since his initial review. they have upgraded a lot of the zones and are now working on tier adjustments. there are up to +10 that I have seen now where our group had issues even. Devs are in a polish mode now until EP2 starts so they are adding new mobs, Ai changes, zone balance, new zone rules (example some pvp zones now cap levels and skills, some make all the same level) Some zones even remove all buffs there are many things happening to change the dynamics of the zones. There are also changes to wandering monsters. Now there is more random things that happen, larger beasts and the likes show up in encounters after you complete certain things. I do think they have a long way to go but this shows they are working towards more content.
Zones are even becoming more interesting, a lot of puzzles , and tasks to get around some. still a lot needs to be done to make it stellar like TESO and others.
As to open world I understand and here is why they went the route they did:
I get good frame rate on a laptop with 1070GTX 8GB video memory. its not stellar but was getting better but last patch it went down a little. the issue I see is the number of objects in a zone and how Unity works. they for sure need to optimize more, especially if they still plan to do the VR stuff which is on their road map.
Steamcharts shows 205 people playing. Allow some proof of 1000 people or concede. RG has said recently that only a few thousand people total play the game and he is the CEO. If you know any SOTA players you know everyone has multiple alts. It's possible only hundreds of actual people play this game, but they are all whales so it limps along.
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SotA Trivia: For the players that were here since the beginning, even through all the updates, never has Portalarium wiped or reset a Friend List. The list always carried over, so these players with many thousands of Friends have been collecting names for five years now.
Sorry there was one game that gave it an attempt to do the questing theme better and that was Vanguard but didn't seem to pick a good time to market itself with Wow owning the roost .
I just find it funny now that many gamer's have been around a long time that devs are still trying to fool people with half assed game designs.You can market the hell out of your game,tell us whatever you want,lie,deceive,eventually we will see what your game offers and just look the other way.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
As to SOTA itself I don't see it the same way you do. I have been there almost since the start and they have added everything up to this point that they promised. I do think the quest system is still lacking in content and as they know and the players the system does need a complete revamp as its not very good. On the other hand Tracey H. has done a great job on the story. The lore and all that has been added to follow the main story is very well done. still has a few minor issues with some bugs but its come along way. I have done the main story 2 times now and now again with an alt as so much has changed on the way to complete.
I don't see the devs trying to fool anyone. They now have the base systems in place and developed so now they are working hard with the community to make it what the players have asked. It does not mean that they take all the input and make it so, but if enough player bases voices it or if the idea of one person sounds like it would fit in they have made good on efforts to bring it in. Take player dungeons for example. It uses the system base system as basements and the same core tools they developed for other parts. Having all the systems in place now allows them to build off them like that of the dungeons. Next release this month in 1.5 weeks will have the next phase allowing players to actually start designing and building the dungeons. The player quest system is also starting to come in which will allow players to have NPC's that are scripted to offer quests and rewards as well animations. The towns will advertise the locations of player dungeons, and there will be system too allow people to see the top player made content. this alone is exciting for a large % of the base players.
I along with many I know are here to stay and keep things moving forward. We want to see the true UO successor in the end. When I started UO when it came out it was about the same as SOTA. It had a lot of issues, and many missing systems. the one thing though I liked about UO which I am still not 100% on is the map / world. I do wish they had done a seamless, but I do understand what this design allows them to do. Looking at a lot of the Square Enix / soft games and how it worked for them with being able to have things just appear over night or on a random chance does offer a lot. having to make major changes to a seamless word is pretty hard. I recall just adding a new zone in many games took many months to years. With this design they can just plunk it down with out having to mesh it all in. and ensure it works. As well for expanding the size this is easier. no need to worry about running out of areas to develop.
just my thoughts
He is talking active players for teleporting. you can't teleport to offline peoples. This is what myself and others were stating that some of us have massive lists of online people. which is why we know along with what Richard has stated that steam is not the primary launcher for the game. I do know why you keep bringing it up as its the only metric you have that you can see, unless you are a player who has a large friends list then you know that 100-300 players from steam are only a fraction of the players. you wont take Richards word for it which he mentioned in Eurogamer mag. that most the players play on the original game client. Whats your ingame name so I can see when you played last or pull up the metrics on you from sota.wiki site
Portalarium won't provide the means to show current player numbers in real time.
No player has ever produced even a screenshot showing more than a hundred or so players active.
Please prove everyone wrong, show proof.
No idea on the first part but it’s obvious they are struggling with the revenue.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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