Thank you for your detailed impressions @milspec, I appreciate you providing such detail. Keep it up!
I only have one slight quibble with what you said. You said ESO was on rails but I believe they changed it recently so that mbs autolevel so you can, as far as I understand it, go anywhere and try any quests. That may not be true for the storyline quests but that’s a small percentage of the game. So I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about there.
This is true. In that sense it’s less on rails in terms of zone progression, but it’s still a quest-driven follow-the-breadcrumbs themepark approach that WoW popularized (although I think ESO does it the best and retains much more feel of a “world” with things to explore than any of its contemporaries).
I can’t speak for @milspec, but I agree with him that this game is much less on rails. I’m probably going to do very poorly in describing what I mean, but Shroud feels much more open in design. While you can go into any zone in ESO now, there’s still more structure there. You follow the ^ on your compass to grab the quests, go to the ^ to complete them. You look for skyshards. Then you move on to the next zone and repeat. This is probably a good thing for a lot of people’s tastes!
Shroud feels wide open. You wander the world map, enter adventure zones, and just kind of explore. Most of the areas that I’ve seen don’t have quests directing you, it’s just exploring and figuring out what might be at the bottom of that cave: maybe nothing, maybe a treasure chest, maybe a locked door you don’t know how to open.
Here’s an example. I was wandering in a zone, mostly looking for a good place to chop pine trees for a carpenter/archer friend who is playing the game as well (he needs the pine for arrow shafts). While I was exploring, I came upon a fortified bandit camp which had guards fighting a bunch of undead that were coming up out of a ravine. This wasn’t a scripted set piece where they’d sit there and bash each other endlessly, this was just a situation where some undead spawned and wandered too close to the camp. Bandits hate undead, thus the fight. A bear even wandered by and tore a chunk of an archer’s butt off while I watched.
Anyway, I took that opportunity to break into the camp. It was hard fighting and I was in over my head, having to retreat a couple times. But I was eventually able to utilize undead and some aggressive fauna to force my way in and kill the bandit captain. On his corpse I found a key, but I had no idea what it was for. In ESO or other MMOs, this key would be marked “QUEST ITEM”. I would right-click it and get instructions. That, to me, is the more “on rails” part. Not the case here: I had a key, but no idea what it went to.
I left the camp and began exploring the woods, and I found a vault with treasure locked behind it. Ah-hah! I went to use my key and… nope. Hmmm. Maybe I missed something in the bandit camp?
I made my way back to the camp (I should mention that in solo/party areas, monsters don’t respawn. Things stay dead when you kill them, so you can work your way through a zone) and explored around some more. I went into the captain’s tent and took a closer look. On the table were a few various items, a candle… and a note. Nothing draws attention to the note, it’s just sitting there on the desk like any other item. But I read it, and it’s discussing the locked vault and how the bandits have each taken a key, so that they can only get into the vault when all three of them can open it.
So now I know how to get into the vault, I just need to find the other bandit captains. I can’t pull up a map to see a highlighted area where they are, I have to do some legwork on my own and find them. And while I was doing so, I found a cool cave that was full of amethyst and diamonds. Shiny! Unfortunately, as I stepped into the cave I realized these orb looking things on the ground weren’t just decoration, they were in fact spider eggs. And when I approached, they burst. Swarmed by spiders, I was doing okay until a giant wolf spider webbed me and made me its dinner. Before I died, I also noticed that the cave went further down… was there something more down there? Oh crap, now I’m completely sidetracked, I was supposed to be looking for bandit camps, but now I want to explore this spider cave!
That, to me, is what makes the game feel much less directed or “on rails”. It reminds me much more of something like UO where I’m discovering my own adventure. Some people (a lot?) might hate the lack of direction, outside the main quest, but I really enjoy that kind of experience.
That sounds really neat, and definitely off the rails.
I can’t remember who was mentioning the long travel distances, but there are at least a few methods to move from one part of the map to another. Granted you still have to walk through a number of zones to get to these longer travel alternatives, but you don’t have to walk each zone to get from one end of the map to another.
I don’t want to really list some of them as they may be considered spoilers in a way.
Looks like tomorrow is when the January update drops? The patch notes are pretty hefty.
Glad to see that client performance and framerates are a top priority up through release, it needs it.
EDIT: This is kind of a big deal for free trial players:
Thank you @milspec, @KevinC and others for sharing your detailed experiences with and thoughts about the game. It’s very interesting to read them. It sounds like there is still a lot of work to be done on SotA, but there are many interesting features you guys talked about that I wasn’t aware were part of the game, so maybe I will have to take a look at the free demo at some point in the next few months.
This quote : "Some supporters have been deluding themselves that ‘80% of the polish takes place in the last 20% of development’” rings so true. As someone who has been a part of MMORPGs since the very beginning (I beta tested Meridian 59!) that deluded belief has been the downfall of more projects than I can even begin to count. I’ve watched so many ambitious MMOs, some of them quite good, launch with only half (or less) of that expected “polish” applied, and the reaction from players/fans is always the same, immediate and negative, so much so that most games that launched that way never recovered.
I sincerely hope that does not happen with SotA. I’d love to see Lord British and the devs score a win with this one, but it seems like they have a long way to go yet.
I don’t know, my feeling is it already has. It has been a super long time in development, and I think original non-whale backers are quite jaded on this based on the state of the game. While you see something free that might be cool to explore some more, some see something they spent $100 and 5+ years on and it does not come close to what they were looking for. Many of those jaded backers paid more money than it was worth, and yes one could pose the crowd-funding argument “it was to try and make it happen” but I think they do have legitimate beefs that will never be resolved and the customer care in this regard was almost nil. I do think the negative impact of this is reflected by the additional funding request last year, which included statements that they were ‘done’. And they just made the minimum and there was a good amount of outcry about it.
I don’t see this attracting a large base, but will it survive as a revenue vehicle? Possibly. But if a time comes where they are not making revenue this will fold faster than Superman on laundry day to steal a Seinfeld quote…
We sort of see the same thing with Star Citizen, but I think the potentially jaded have something a little more to hold onto still.
Appreciate the detailed reports, guys. You’ve made me hopeful - I was particularly concerned about the deck mechanic for combat since I don’t like deck games like Heartstone, but your more detailed descriptions make it sound both malleable and cool.
How do I get my house from the kickstarter if I log in?
It is my understanding that the plot is the problem, not the house itself. I haven’t played in a while, but was there when the first ones were snatched up. They then ran some very large plot lotteries where many more plots were awarded.
Right now your best chance is to probably hook up with someone that owns their own private town/zone with plots available. The guild I was in had people like this and they could set a plot for you wherever they wanted, I believe, within some guidelines I am sure.
I would guess once you had a properly sized plot, you could then place your rent free? house on the plot. I am mostly going from old memory, though, so someone closer and more recent to the situation should probably comment, and I am afraid I am not sure how you exactly acquire your house deed?
That’s a fair question. :-) @KevinC answered pretty well, but here is my experience. I love ESO. I was in late beta, got a bunch of friends hooked and we all played after release for a while. My only major issue was that it was hard to play with people who wanted to explore other realms or were higher level. That eventually splintered our group and people lost interest.
One Tamriel was genius. The scale of the change to allow anyone to go anywhere, with level no longer mattering, was exactly what I wanted. I picked ESO back up and took my Redguard immediately across into the eleven lands and rode until I found a zone that looked interesting.
I was really surprised to find out that I had a negative reaction to One Tamriel. There were minor issues, like questing in zone “4” of a realm assumed you had already completed zones 1-3 and continued you on a plot you had not started.
But my largest reaction was discovering that a) nothing (normal) was too challenging and it was impossible to wander into a regular zone and be in over your head because everything was the same level and b) it felt like the whole world was managed into mini-theme parks, one per realm and split into rides that continued from one zone into another. That wasn’t an intellectual surprise but my emotional reaction to it turned me off from ESO.
It’s an awesome game, I “should” play it instead of Shrouds, but ESO feels too managed and controlled to me. It’s an illusion of freedom over a very specific quest chain progression. With a great combat system, amazingly beautiful zones, a world design that gets your head away from the HUD and into the game, and polished text quests and audio.
Here is another Shrouds update that continues to summarize my mixed experience. (I am still trying to be vague to not spoil anything.)
I decided to put the “travel anywhere” and “do anything” philosophies to the test, looked at the map for somewhere that seemed remote, and picked a quest from my log that sent me on a long trip in that direction. (Your quest log can get pretty long!)
I still have hesitations about the split overworld map, but it does capture the feeling of a long journey quite nicely. I spent about 10 - 15 minutes total on the trip one-way.
There was a mountain pass where I had to cross a 5 skull zone, which was way above my level. Luckily my quest included a soldier that was waiting to escort me safely across the zone - by teleporting me to the far side exit.
I arrived at the port city and had a wander around. The cities look nice but my frame rate always sucks in them (25 FPS on a GTX 980, non-cities sometimes run at 60 FPS) and I’m still free tier I cannot interact with any of the player vendors.
I took a boat (aka zoned) to a large island. There the quest picked up in a new direction and encouraged me to save a knight. I exited into the world map and found the correct close-by adventure zone.
I entered the zone (which said “solo” so I think they instance these based on group size to make it challenging?) and it was a large and well done camp of normally aggressive enemies that allowed me through. I spoke to their leader and he said I had to fight one of them in single combat in order to progress.
I walked down to their arena and the fight began. Ha ha ha too bad for me. I quickly found out I had no chance. I did sort of OK on managing my skills and mana, and remembered my food and spell buffs, and drank some health and mana potions during the fight, but when I was down to 10% health the enemy was still at 50%. I didn’t see anyway to do better, died, and resurrected close by.
So … I had spent 40 minutes crossing the map, exploring, and questing in order to hit a hard stop. Did I have fun exploring? Yes. Did it tell a story I will remember? Yes. Do I appreciate the design philosophy and the game’s dedication to a certain feel? Yes.
Would I have liked some basic indication of the quest level before I set off so I didn’t “waste” 30+ minutes and had the chance to decide to do something more “fun”? Maybe. :-)
A friend and I spoke. We are both sufficiently intrigued and will continue. These final patches in Jan, Feb and March has better be amazing. :-) If they improve the frame rates and optimize most zones and cities so they run smoothly, then I will stay for a while.
I plan to start back up this weekend. I just logged in to grab a few screenshots of the equipment I am wearing that I at least used to be able to craft. If they are good for people, I will see if I can figure out how to make them again, or at least similar gear.
Details of armor in Summary:
Character sheet and Sword:
I wear chainmail. How much for the set? Gives me something to work towards. :-)
Sorry for the delay!
Hmm, I have no idea. I will have to check what I have. It will probably be most efficient to mine the ore ourselves and then have me make it. The last time I played it was pretty hard to amass gold through fighting and the cost of raw materials was high, so I would have to review some things again to see what it would take.
I hope to get some time to play this weekend.
Don’t misconstrue this as me saying it’s good, but the Release 50 update that dropped today made a very noticeable improvement on my performance. I can now move around Aerie without the game feeling chunky and felt much smoother out in other areas, in the little bit that I played.
Well, they’ve got 2 months left-- from reports in this thread it may be coming together! Looking forward to actual release.
I jumped on and played R50 for an hour. This is one of the final “pre-launch” patches, with two more monthly patches to come in Feb then March.
Overall I feel like it improved some of the FPS-related performance issues I was experiencing. It did not fix everything, for example dense city scenes and scenes with overlapping placed lighting still run poorly. But I observed city frame-rate improving from 30 to 40 FPS and more outdoor scenes running at a steady 60 FPS. (GTX 980, i5 6700)
I did not notice a big improvement in load times. To be honest, even a 10 second improvement in load times (they try to load everything in 15-20 seconds) would only help me a minute or two per session. A +10 FPS improvement in all scenes would help me a lot more.
I said I would keep playing if they improved the performance, so far I am happy.
In one hour I:
Zoned back into a city (Resolute) under siege. Restocked on healing potions. Double checked my equipment for damage. Glanced at my skills to see what was close to leveling. Said Hi to the Oracle and took my daily quiz on the Virtues. :-)
Ran across to a nearby intro zone (Highvale Outskirts) and checked a particularly poor section for frame-rate. The outdoors was better (50+ FPS) but the indoors was still bad (20 FPS).
Headed south along the main road, looking for a new and appropriate place for adventure. I found a Tier 2 zone, which is about my sweet spot at the moment, on South Broken Road.
Got my torch out because it was so dark, at first. That meant no shield, so I had to switch back and forth a few times. Anyone know how to bind weapons to the non-combat bar, or automate weapon switching? Digging into my inventory every time to manually equip a torch is slightly tedious.
Had a bunch of good, small fights versus some pretty normal bandits and wolves. They are the right challenge, I can handle 1 or 2 no problem but 3 is too much. It was fun to hunt them down, position myself appropriately, buff and then manage my skills and mana during the fight.
Its an outdoor zone with some rocky ridges above a winding river, with a wide road running through. It ran at a steady 60 FPS for me.
Found a quest along the river, from an NPC Bard who actually went on to play a decent tune. :-) I saved it for later, it gives me a reason to go back.
Stumbled across a few herbs and some ore, and managed to mine probably 6 or 7 times.
Made it out more skilled, with more coins, and looted equipment that was worth a few hundred gold. I think I saw 15% of the zone, so plenty to check out in another session.
Manged to cross paths with probably 6 - 8 players along the way, including two in the adventure zone who checked to make sure I was OK before they continued on their way.
I ended by heading back to the closest large city, confirming I was bound there, then selling my loot and banking the components. I bought a few more skills from things that now met a pre-req. I can experiment with those later.
All in all, a good, quick session. I had a pleasant, if mellow, time and nothing pissed me off.
I checked /stats: Adventurer Level 21, 20 hours of game time, Dex 10, Int 18, Str 25.
Good grief. What is it called when you have alt-itis but only have one character slot? I simply cannot make up my mind on what I’m doing with my character.
I started out as a mage and was really enjoying that. I thought it might be an OK duo with my friend playing an Archer with both of us using Gust to push enemies back, and me stacking a bunch of Root cards in my deck. But man we started running into problems.
We decided to explore a ruined keep. Our first attempt to access it ended in disaster when we crossed a bridge, only to find it guarded by an ENORMOUS troll. He proceeded to flatten us with a club swipe, then when we scurried away he picked up a boulder and threw it at my face, turning me into paste. What the hell, I thought this was a tier 3 adventure area?! What is a troll of that size doing there?
Turns out there was another way into the ruins. Once we sneaked in there, we battled our way through the outer courtyard. It was pretty nasty, with skeletal mages and archers showering pain down on us from the surrounded walls, but we eventually cleared it. Then we tried entering the next part of the keep, which had a small gate we had to open.
Once we flipped the lever, out come out two nasty ghost things with polearms. We were in a real cramped space with little room to maneuver, and those jerks would just whirl around with their polearms and slice us to bits. We eventually had to give up, as we just couldn’t get past them. All the roots in the world weren’t going to help get in there, not with the reach of those polearms…
… and that started me on a schizophrenic dash among every playstyle imaginable. I was actually having a ton of fun with a Halberd I found for sale off of a player merchant. Whilring around a flaming halberd (thanks, Fire magery!) is pretty cool. And the best perk of all: Halberds not only hit 4 people per swipe, they bypass shields!
Let me tell you, there was nothing my friend and I hated more than an asshole with a shield. God damn I hate shields. Power up a big spell or bow attack, let it fly, and… >block<. ARGH. Block, block, glancing blow, all the while they have a ton of hit points and shield bash the hell out of you constantly, stunning and interrupting all your spells. I hate them.
But not with a flaming Halberd. Screw those guys! You think your little kite shield is going to stop this from lopping a limb or two off? I don’t think so, buddy! Oh, you want to come 3 or 4 at a time? NO PROBLEM! Well, it wouldn’t be a problem, except I’m still running around with the cloth armor I had picked up along the way playing a mage.
So now I’m really digging this polearm, but man… I probably need some better armor. But going up to even chainmail has some massive penalties for spells. And I do like my spells, especially my flaming halberd (and Earth has some really nice defense in it). What to do, what to do?
The most powerful weapon in Ultimate V was a magic halberd, no? That’s so nice to yield, I remember equipping everyone with it.
I really need to review my skill trees and decks and figure out a strategy to work on going forward. I can hold my own pretty decent in most zones, but always feel like I am not playing optimized at all. There are also lots of spells in some lines that are good to use while wearing armor like chain, and their fizzle rates set appropriately. Some are more set for pure mages, it seems.
So far I have been focusing on blades (using a 2-hand sword), tactics, heavy armor (wearing all chain), magic in sun, earth and life and I can still get off spells like Banish Undead and even Earthquake, if I really want to. It is mostly about buffing, though, and wading in and using melee skills with some Searing Ray and Banish Undead thrown in if fighting undead. I can also resurrect now, woo!, although my success rate is probably pretty poor.
Don’t forget the Focus tree for the focus bonuses (larger pool, reduced cost), channeling spells while being hit and fizzle reduction skills if you want to be able to cast and wear heavier armor.
Another thing that can be easily overlooked is there are direct passive skills that boost the three main stats, Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity. Dexterity is under the Subterfuge tree and you need to train up Distract to unlock it. Strength is in the Tactics tree and Intelligence is in the Focus tree.
EDIT: Doing a little research, I have some new targets for skill training, but still need to review deck building. For skills, it looks like I am still missing one of the stat buff spells (for Dex in the Air tree), and some resistance buffs that appear to be a big help, especially the Fire resist buff in the Water tree. Fire damage currently eats me up.
