Chris' Release 8 Ramblings!

Thank you for these illustrative Informations .
Can't wait to play and test in R9

 

Didn't you track ping values as well? If you did, what was the guy's ping? Would be fun to know. Not that it does matter in that release when things are still client sided.

I'm not sure how much of a barrier 25$ really is, given that they have a couple of days "kill everybody" power as exchange, even less so when in-game currency to real life currency trades come into play. These people could likely make a benefit simply from killing others for ransom/items and then selling off the in game wealth for real life money. That kind of leaves a bitter taste with me

 

I agree that it could provide valuable insights to track people's ping together with other stats to determine what effect some changes have.

You are right, but free is so much worse. I remember when basic accounts in Second Life went from 10$ to free and over night griefing and a drastic drop in player "quality" had a very negative impact on the game.

Before ($10 per account): Very little griefing. Existing players volunteering to stay in the newbie/arrival areas to greet and mentor new players. New arrivals were committed and would likely stay active and play and thus worthwhile investing your time to interact with them and make friends. Great newbie experience. You would sign up to the game and immediately an experienced player would help you and spend time with you.

After (free accounts): Rampant griefing. Existing players stopped volunteering and no longer helped new arrivals because they would not know who was actually committed to the game. Newbie areas flooded with signups. Low commitment, high drop out rate. Quality of the community taking a dive with the integration process for new players badly damaged. Newbies would be on their own and have a hard time to make friends because a) other newbies were often uncommitted and would not last b) other players would often ignore newbies and stay to themselves.

I hope SotA won't become free to play. If it ever does, I hope that players with free accounts are easily recognizable as such and arrive in different arrival areas than those who already committed to the game financially and also won't be able to clog customer support channels used by the paying players. My personal experience, also in other games was that the quality of the community would usually take a dive with FTP.

 

Cant wait for kill some LIBERTY In Game !

Z'allez manger ca chaud en Dieu !

 

SotA is free to play in that there isn't a month to month charge. That is what I think distinguishes a Pay to Play from a Free to Play game. You buy the game, but from then on out, you don't have to pay any more.

 

True. But it is important that players commit financially once. That way you have people in game, including the newbie/arrival zones, who are already committed to a degree, vs merely people checking it out. It also means that there is a cost attached to getting banned and returning with a new account. It is practically impossible to ban griefers and exploiters in a free game. They just keep creating new accounts faster than you can ban them.

 

You will find us in the PvP zones in R9. Unless you are extremely skilled you will be well advised to bring some friends along.

 

There are pros and cons. My wife and I played Lord of the Rings for free for several months. Once we hit lvl 20 or so, and the free content ran out, we became paying customers for over a year. Took it to level 57 or so before it became too repetitive, so the free interval paid off in the end for the company.

 

Early in the R8, you ganked me 5 v 1 in the forest 3 or 4 times into 5 minutes.

Thereafter, I got my revenge for 3 long days.

So that, my clothing was covered whit your blood, it was difficult to clean after all this fun.

 

I remember in paid games like Asheron's Call, early Second Life or UO new players being welcomed patiently by established members of the player community, recruited into guilds, shown around the game and helped in all kinds of ways. This was possible because a commitment has already been made by the new player and there was a relatively high chance that time spent helping him would result in an active friend or guild member later.

I also played Lotro FTP with a friend. We played for a couple of weeks and during all that time, there was not a single player trying to get to know us, recruit us or interact in any meaningful way, other than maybe casually group up to complete some quest faster. Effectively, we were playing a 2-player-coop game, not a MMORPG. Either there was no community or the community that might somewhere have existed in that game had not much interest interacting with new players. This was quite mind boggling if you consider that Lotro was created by the very same game studio that created Asheron's Call, which does have a successful community and still exists as a pay game (even with a monthly subscription) after 15 years. Of course FTP was only one factor in Lotro. The heavy focus on story line questing, level segregation and the mind boggling absence of the very successful allegiance/mentoring system that had worked so well in Asheron's Call to make players form bonds and recruit newbies were also to blame.

Financially, of course FTP can work very well. Actually most of our own games (mostly mobile) use an FTP and item shop model. It is just no a great way to build a committed and tight knit player community for an MMORPG.

 

If you were never spammed in LotRO to join a guild, consider yourself fortunate.

 

You are dreaming.

 

I don't consider spamming a meaningful interaction. There were some people random recruiting every avatar they could find into something they called a guild. Which, after you accepted, would drop you on another casually used chat channel without much of an introduction or follow up. I am sure there are some great guilds in Lotro, but you probably have to actively seek those out. With the FTP model more players than in paid games are very active for a short while, level up and complete the quests, then drop out of the game again. Which, btw, is what my friend and I ended up doing ourselves in that game. It was fun as a coop game.

 

For clothes, yes. Not for the rest.

Anyway, I hope to be placed on your KOS list ... if you have one ...



NB: I killed some KGB too

 

Time for a Firefly quote...

Inara: We should be very afraid.
Jayne: Why? 'Cause this guy beat up Mal? That ain't so hard.

 

LoL


I had the pleasure of joining a group of KGB during the R8. Unfortunately, you were not there. I was on the twitch of leaer group and he invited me. Good communication, Good land use, Full of Big Tanky Full Plate Guys, Very disciplined. The kind of group that can kill double its number. Really nice.

We can see that it's been that you play together.

KGB will be a good group PvP, If he accepts the cards system There was no unanimity in the KGB TS.

 

The guy on Twitch is Donkleaps, one of our most respected commanders.

We tried a group of Big Tanky Full Plate Guys at first, then switched to a squad of mixed templates later on as we got a better feel for the card system, and Combined Arms Tactics actually worked better for us, which is not surprising, since that is how we usually operate.

The KGB was initially very doubtful about Shroud of the Avatar, but as the game has progressed, doubt has changed to enthusiasm for many. Given the results of R8, we should have even more deployed for R9 and beyond.

 

I have not played much in the R8. But I loved it.

It only remains to add the possibility to loot dead coprs to have lots of fun.

 

I want to feast on the corpse.......Muhahaha!

 

muahahha love it.