Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Thou hast been invited to the Release 17 Postmortem!
Please join us Thursday, May 14th at 3:00 PM Central (20:00 GMT) for our next Hangout of the Avatar! Richard, Starr, and Chris (and some very special guests!) will be chatting about Release 17 and looking ahead to Release 18. And, of course, FireLotus will be taking your questions and feedback live in the chat-room and also in advance right here in the comments section.*
Many thanks to Themo Lock for the screenshot. Did someone say that attendance is clothing optional?
We will be giving some really awesome prizes during the 90 minute extended Hangout, and all you have to do to qualify for one is to come hang out with us in the IRC chatroom during the broadcast. As always, the link to the hangout will be posted here directly before the hangout begins.
Question for RG: What would he like to see changed in the current magic and combat system? What are some examples of things we need to “get right”?
What is the timeline for the next player-owned town to begin implementation?
Follow-up: Do you expect to have all the player-owned towns finished by launch, or will they continually get seeded in as time allows, independent of the development cycle?
Can you tell us or when will you have any new information regarding any big meta ideas for PvP in SotA?
Question: Are there plans to give players the ability to knock on doors to see if someone is home or not?
A related question: Will there one day be a way to leave a message for someone while they are away from their home or offline?
Dyes – Yay!
Dyes are currently only working on player crafted cloth, epic plate, and augmented plate. Are there any thoughts/plans on Dying Clothes such as the Elvin, admiral OR….. Wedding dress? ( I get to hear wedding bells once that happens )
oh yes please/waves
Question: Will beds ever have a functional use?
Question: Will Keep and Castle lots have additional wall options to choose from?
Good question!
Can we use fences from the store instead?
Question: While PaxLair is beyond gorgeous, we other PoT Owners anxiously await to begin development of our own towns – when will we have access to the templates from which we may choose?
Can we just take a smaller section of a pre-existing town, like Owl’s Head, that has an appropriate number of lots, and use that to create a template for our PoT as well, or must we use a specific PoT template?
Can you please publish updated information on the pledge level split (how many people paid how much), and the split of the sold POT sizes? TIA
Question for RG: I grow increasingly interested in why the Oracle gives protection (from pvp) by default, seemingly without asking for anything in return. It seems like there should be a point where this protection is no longer free and the Oracle comes to collect on this service. I’m not suggesting pvp would become non-consensual, but can you comment on the idea that protection will not always be free? That choices will have to be made?
Great question, but if this is answered in any detail, please yell spoilers or better yet, hold up a sign when it’s safe to unmute.
Can we have the option to place titles on the same line as the character name rather than above it? For instance, “Sir” looks strange when placed above the name.
I’d like to know why the heavy focus on signs and such all being in runic? I’ve been playing Ultima since I was a kid, but I have absolutely no head for translation, so I end up sitting with my old “Ultima Collection Reference Card” opened to the runic alphabet all the time. And frankly, it gets quite tedious.
Is it possible that an option could be added to either switch the sign texts to English, or have the English translations above/below the signs if you so choose? This would speed things up considerably for anyone like me who doesn’t have a knack for languages.
If you hover your mouse over any of the signs it will show you the English translation.
I’m an idiot that makes maps.
Will the Novia Overland world move so as the /loc origin (ie ground zero) become pertinent to the lore?
Basically, where is the throne?
Awesome question!
With expanding functionality with regards to Lot/house permissions, would it be possible to have, ‘Tenant’ as an Access Level where they have all the privileges of a Trustee accept the house owner cannot access anything in the house. If the owner revokes the ‘Tenant’ status, all objects within the house are packed up and put into the Tenants storage.
Is there any view to do a U-Turn on the limiting the number of points that a player can add to innates.
Followup: And will this limitation exist in single player offline?
(1) When is Chris’ “full loot PVP and stuff” brain dump going to be posted?
(2) Are you happy with how combat has evolved? I’m not.
(3) when will the developer Q&A be brought back?
(4) On what date is the deep dive on Kickstarter goals scheduled for?
(5) Are you happy with the invisible wall around private properties? I’m not.
(6) Will there be a zone to party, or summon to party ability?
(7) When can I upload my CoA image?
(8) Can you please make the TOS and EULA available with my copy of the game, or online?
https://www.portalarium.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=115&Itemid=498
I’m fairly sure we’ll be getting a variation of this… or this exactly.
Thanks Violation. I saw this recently — it’s probably the same, or similar, to one in the game. I wasn’t able to find the EULA online, however.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=47863
Awesome. Thanks
Question about Localization: I want to know what languages are supported for R18 Localization Project?
And I’m really concerning about Japanese is planed to support or not. (and 2-byte font support)
P.S. Anyway I’m really excited for the localization project!
Question for RG and Starr: As you’ve mentioned in past Post-Mortems, your permanent places of residence will not be located on Novia or exist in Episode 1 – that said, will either of you be setting up temporary residence on Novia or the Hidden Vale for Episode 1, and if so, where?
Can we have street names in PoT’s?
I second this question.
Can we have a city wall in PoT’s?
I second this question.
Are you planning to added flowers to the game? Bouquets to equip, vase with flowers to place in homes, flower beds for lots?
Question: Is the current low amount of nodes and yield from nodes just a result of Pre-Alpha testing, or is it set up for add-on boosts later on, such as, extra xp, extra yield bonuses, extra gold drops from mobs, etc. etc?
The Combat FAQ by Chris states that if card combat turns out not to be fun, you will probably try other options. Can you tell us if you are considering other options?
Question: Instead of limiting innate skills, why was there no plan to improve all the skills to make everything more desirable, and therefore giving everyone more choices for deck building, before the decision of limiting innate skills. I think the flaw is in how many of the weak and undesirable skills we have to choose from, making spending points into innate skills better than the skills we have to choose from.
As an avid lover of all things red… my question (if I got one) would have to be…
“Richard, as you like your games to be immersive and more capable of creating an intractable environment that people don’t have hiccups of reality ruining… when do you expect to see damage/trauma/blood effects on targets instead of health bars?”
My questions (if I got more than one) would have to be…
1. When is the plan to flesh out the Chaos tree for realz… like… realllly realllly really. reals.
2. When is the plan to disable /zone completely so people get a feel for what combat will feel like when they have to run to their pvp zones instead of teleporting to them (it will make it a lot harder to get into pvp for some and they haven’t experienced that yet so they don’t know if they’ll be okay with it or not)
3. When is the plan to introduce the rune/teleport system to help fix the above issue
4. When is the plan to completely scrap the whole “you get static points for everything” and try the “you get x points for Focus/Tactics, x points for other stuff” idea that we gave you guys 8 months ago in a community hangout ( https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/community-hangout-skillz-son.14631/page-2#post-246825 )?
4.2 p.s. this means you START WITH A LOT MORE POINTS at lower levels that are automatically filled into some areas to give people a decent starting experience in the game… not like it is now where it actually made it harder for people who don’t understand the system to get going. This also helps with level balancing at lower levels.
5. When is the plan to introduce the friend/enemy lists for sorting players?
6. When is the plan to fix it so people who are banned from your lot cannot access your basement?
7. When is the plan to set subset permissions for Basements so they are different from Plot perms?
8. When is the plan for Portalarium to give it’s employees a vacation? (okay this one isn’t real but really… thanks for the hard work guys!)
Will underground PoTs have restrictions other PoTs don’t have (i.e. no agriculture, entrances located in sewers instead of world map, etc)?
Will we eventually be able to zone to lots we’re trustees of? How will “lot zoning” work in the long run, given the “map hopping / recall through the back door” option it currently represents?
Q> Now lots are reserved for 2 weeks. What about people which are away from game for longer period(travel, work, illness etc) and don’t want to lose there lot? Will you plan something to solve this problem?
Questions:
1.) What is the current thinking on player home storage, as opposed to bank storage?
2.) With the first pass at pets being in, is the context menu for commands the final design, or will we be able to use macros or text commands like “all kill” to control them?
3.) Crafted items are often worth far less than their ingredients when sold to an NPC. Is this intentional?
4.) How do the devs feel about the current skeletal corpse mechanics? Have you been throwing us too many bones?
5.) Will Steam Achievements be wiped before launch?
6.) Cows are just not called Ophelia. They aren’t. What must we do to stop Lum the Mad inflicting this cownage?
A couple of questions for Chris;
1. Are you going to tweak (i.e., raise) the limits on the points allocated to innate skills? (I am NOT advocating removing it completely, as others have suggested above.)
2. Are you going to tweak the skill point allocation per level ? ( Giving more points at lower levels (i.e., levels 6 – 12) – when your character really needs some skills to survive – would make more sense then a big increase every 10 levels.)
3. When can we expect to see more Emotes for couples (i.e., holding hands, dancing together, kissing…) ?
4. Can you update the Friends list to include a column indicating which area your friends are currently in? (That would be most helpful.)
and most importantly…
5. When will archers finally get that love you’ve been promising?
Question: When are the issues with the deck system going to seriously receive attention and be addressed? IE. How distracting deck system is from the game, etc. . .etc. .
What optimizations will you do to the overland camera in terms of the now awkward scaling and the constant auto-zooming? How about a manually adjustable fixed zoom distance without any auto-zooming but objects “in the way” becoming transparent?
Hey What’s Up with all the FIZZLE? I mean it’s Not a Candy or a SotA Water hrm
Questions:
1. Have you considered sort of a voting for the Dev Hangout Questions, like it used to be with the Founders QA thread (questions with most likes got answered)?
2. Could Chris and DarkStarr provide a rough guesstimate on when they plan to provide the lengthy design threads they had announced?
3. Are there plans to allow Combos for the locked deck mode?
I’m late to getting this almost off-topic question in, but I might as well ask it. I’ve started a crusade to try and get Nvidia GeForce to add SotA to its “supported games” list. (Because they have an awesome built-in video recorder that only works with their “supported games.”)
Question: Will Portalarium consider contacting Nvidia and putting in a request that they add SotA to their list of “supported games” so that we may use the ShadowPlay Video Recording option in GeForce?
Chances are Nvidia wants $$$ for that, but it’d be neat.
Greetings excited and very happy to be here!
What is the optimal party size you are shooting for in order to complete dungeons.
Question: How will PvE be balanced for solo versus with a party? For instance if I play online but not with anyone will combat be harder than single player offline?
Q> Will be skill relocation possible when game will be released?
Any chance for something like the black sword from Ultima VII to appear in the game? Was hilarious back then.
Questions.
1. Will we be able to have 2 POT’s one above ground the other underground all in one place. Like a nice above role playing no pvp town with the dark underbelly with role playing and complete PVP.
2. Can you add the weapon Quater Staff to the game, as long time ranger player always wanted to play Robin Hood/Little John type but every MMO never has the required Quater Staff.
Q> Will we see build prototypes from Devs? Something like – tanking build/ Burst DMG DPS build/ Support and so on?
The question is asked because of R17 situation – when I reached Lvl 30 – nothing left to learn in skill tree – magic unusable due to maxed fizzle chance. Active skills not left to learn. And it seems that decision about 50% was made without thoughts of players leveling strategy.
Q> How is it planned to earn money for players? In R15-16 i can get money from leather processing to hard leather stripes. Now craft is changed greatly and it seems that now recipes to earn money left.
Q2> Will we have no decreasing exp for basic crafting recipes as leather? Now craft very hard to level up with items processing – only gathering matters.
Q> Will we have magic adsorption parameter for armor? Now magic is only %-like resist (if i not mistaken)
Q> What do u think about black market? (real money selling gold, items etc…) Will we have something similar to WoW tokens? Which can be used to pay for game (to buy Ep 2,3… , extra content and so on)
Or we only will see bans for attempts of gold and item sell?
Question: What is the “Hooded Statue” option for POTs? Is there anything you can tell us from a lore standpoint about what that is? Any link to the Obsidian Empire?