My attempt at a "high-level" solution, to what I think impede some areas in the design of the game.

[Anabolic Man]

Hes east coast tho, has like 120 ping max. Thats a pretty playable ping tbh. A west coast player would have 180-200.

I got told a west coast player 150 Ping. If you have a 200 Ping it is really on the edge. Then you might want to play an MC, MA, MM, Mage, Tamer, Dominater or Archer.

 

[Valoran]

You sure this change was even intended by SV? Havent seen it on any patch notes, for all we know its just a bug that they will fix someday as it breaks their "ping normalization".

I dont agrree on that, becuase the swing after a canceled repost is not faster as a normal repost. It have the same frames. I fought many good US Players and even tested it vs a 200 Ping player. I tested the feints and use them til they are possible to use.

Good US Player and my friends i duel with can block most of my feints and if you see someone using them you can walk backwards or use some tactics to prevent the player from using them. They are very situational. If you overuse them you get punished for that. For example if the player charge a comboswing after a parry from his opponent. Charging a comboswing after a parry from your opponent have a tight frame window, but i have seen many players do that. Especially with heavy weapons. They charge the next swing after you parried, turn 180, try to jump out of therang and turn arround and hit you hard, after you missed the swing or move backwards. You can only use them 3 times in a fight when the opposing player is in turtle mode. That means standing still when he has few hitpoints and tries to parry all your attacks, becuase he have low stamina. I recommend to not overuse the Spin attacks in duels, becuase if the enemy notice that, we will run arround, change his position and punish you for that as for the feints. Fight normal as in the video and add the moves from the video at certain moments/situations to confuse the opponent. Ps this not not my footage !

Here the extreme test with a 200 Ping Player. https://rumble.com/vndq4r-testing-feints-with-a-player-that-have-a-200-ping.html

There are no good US Players ? I don´t think so. Take Petwins as an example !
The difference between EU players and US players is not as big as some assume.

Let´s make the math. We have a ping normalization of 100.
That means we players from Europe have an artificial ping of 100. US players have a 110 to a maximum of 150 ping.

100 Ping means 0,1 Seconds to transmit the Data to the Server.

Let's calculate with a 50 ping difference from an US player compared to an EU player.
That is exactly 0.05 seconds to transmit the data to the server and 0.05 seconds to send the data back.
The US player has a disadvantage, but he should only have 0.1 seconds less reaction time.

The problem are Players with a 130 Ping difference. If you have over 200 Ping i not recommend using melee and go for a Archer, Mage, Mounted Archer, Mounted Combat Build.

Of course, the EU player has an advantage, but it is untrue that there are no good US players and the difference is not as big as is claimed.

Forgive me if I am misunderstanding your post as I admittedly have not read it all, but it looks like you're saying we currently have a normalization system of +100 ping for EU, which is not the case, and not how the normalization system works. There is no artificial increase of anyone's ping server side.

If this is not what you're saying then I apologise, I simply don't have time to read this whole thread right now but wanted to point this out if it was indeed what you're saying.

There is a lot of misinformation knocking around about the details of how the normalization works.

 

[Anabolic Man]

Forgive me if I am misunderstanding your post as I admittedly have not read it all, but it looks like you're saying we currently have a normalization system of +100 ping for EU, which is not the case, and not how the normalization system works. There is no artificial increase of anyone's ping server side.

If this is not what you're saying then I apologise, I simply don't have time to read this whole thread right now but wanted to point this out if it was indeed what you're saying.

There is a lot of misinformation knocking around about the details of how the normalization works.

That's how it was explained to me. I'm not a developer, but I've fought a lot and found out that good US players have no problem blocking my fastest attacks. Respost after a parry when I'm looking at the floor and doing an overhead or my faints after a parry. To land hits, I have to confuse the opponent, always do something different, try to execute the animation from certain angles so that he gets confused and have propblems to read the attack direction and and mix that up with a few feints and sometimes spins. If i just make my fastest attacks i dont see any US players having problems to block those.

 

[Brulogaz]

Forgive me if I am misunderstanding your post as I admittedly have not read it all, but it looks like you're saying we currently have a normalization system of +100 ping for EU, which is not the case, and not how the normalization system works. There is no artificial increase of anyone's ping server side.

If this is not what you're saying then I apologise, I simply don't have time to read this whole thread right now but wanted to point this out if it was indeed what you're saying.

There is a lot of misinformation knocking around about the details of how the normalization works.

Exactly! I hope my previous post did not give that impression.

Increasing the ping artificially for EU players would just worsen the situation for everyone involved.

That being said, most compensation techniques for client/server architectures have some sort of "compensation limit" that you can express in ticks (or milliseconds). Whether it is for hitboxes lag compensation, or for hybrid architectures with lock steps. So it is more than likely that the current implementation will stop compensating for latency past a certain point. Though I don't know the details about the current implementation, even less so what would be that particular threshold. I could not find much detail about it, has it been explained before? "Ping normalization" is not a term in the industry, afaik. So, I assume they rely on some of the common techniques to hide latency. If it is something entirely new, it would be really cool to have a summary of what this entails.

 

[Tuhtram]

I've got a lot I want to say on the topic, I could probably write an entire book on it, but a full decade of it's honestly left me able to predict the counter arguments word-for-word, spelling errors and inability to read past three sentences included. So I'll just focus on one topic.

From the ground-up you'll notice the game has these game design issues that I call "design pitfalls" that, even beyond the topic of 'how fun is it to do this content', has to do with being punished by systems without knowing you're being punished by them until you've already made the mistake of not knowing how the game works ahead of time. One of the ones that I care about the most is that even before you get into the game, the races already present massive game design pitfalls. We're told it's a game without classes and that it's a single-character system so we have to dedicated a lot of time and effort to one character. We're told we can respec if we don't end up liking a choice... except we can't. Someone may understandably want to play a Viking-themed shaman/seer and make some Kallardian witch, only to be slapped in the face with the reality that because of a Kallard's stat limitations on magic-based stats, they're not actually effective mages at all and have 76 INT (same as a Thursar/Kallard, implying that they have the same INT as a Risar), while the highest cap for human INT, Tindremenes, is 104 INT. If my math is right, then Kallards have somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 less INT than a Tindremene. That is huge.

Henrik's mentioned changing clades, which if I'm being honest doesn't sound like a graceful solution. The obvious answer, to me, is to just make race choice not lock you into certain playstyles. I've been suggesting since MO1 to give vastly different stat leveling rates to different races to reflect inclinations, but allowing everyone to hit the same stat caps. Maybe a Kallard spends 2+ weeks to train up their INT doing the same thing as an Alvarin, who it takes 3-4 days for. If the player is willing to put in that work to respec, and if they can only play one character, and if they may have spent hours and hours customizing their appearance with this new face customization system and unlocking various achievements, titles, scars, furniture, skilling up their professions, etc. Why not just let them play a mage if they decide they want to? What's the reason for keeping it locked, aside from players being able to say 'Oh if you're 2/4 Sard 1/4 Tind 1/4 Khur you have the perfect stats for X build'? There's absolutely nothing in lore that says Kallards aren't effective mages, and in fact to the contrary there's actually a powerful Kallardian shaman named and described who was so powerful that she created unnatural winds to quickly escape with an entire trade fleet she'd stolen. Mats has also specified that, for instance, Thursar aren't actually any dumber than Humans, and that Khurites aren't actually born as naturally better horse riders, they just have stats to reflect their culture.

If the issue is believability (like seeing an extremely fast Oghmir) then go the 'hard limitations' path instead of all of this fiddling with numbers.

• Lock Oghmir max running speed below a certain number and give them something else in return, but otherwise leave things open for them.
• Make Alvarin take more damage from physical attacks and give them something else in return, but otherwise leave things open for them.

And as for Thursar, who aren't supposed to be able to cast magic at all in the lore (aside from some mentioned rare shamanistic abilities)? IMO an actual fun solution that'd really add an extremely unique gaming experience would be to lock them from learning magic skills entirely and give the players a pop-up they have to confirm to select Thursar, acknowledging that Thursar can't cast magic aside from some abilities that aren't out yet. If they can still respec into literally anything else, then players who don't have any interest in magic will still sometimes pick them. Yes, that dedication will make them rarer, but they're supposed to be a very rare race because they're (almost) all sterile. It can be countered by giving them abilities/content other races can't access, like once they gain positive standing with Risar they're able to enter the Risar camps dotted across the map and use some for storage, respawning, crafting, tasks, vendors—and maybe even eventually in-town housing like other towns will have. (And in other regions this could be expanded to be camps of Thursar bandits). On top of that they could be given something like unique unarmed combat damage scaling (could be described as 'sharp claws'), which essentially allows them to roll out of respawning and able to do enough damage to kill weak PvE enemies like walking dead and scoundrels without any equipment.

My point is, there are more graceful (and potentially even more fun) solutions than just adding a system to adapt to the flaws of another system that doesn't actually solve the baseline problem of new players rolling a race and being told they have to change.

And it all potentially has to do with the things you said in the OP, imo.

 

[Najwalaylah]

So much truth. I can hardly stand to read it.

I've got a lot I want to say on the topic, I could probably write an entire book on it, but a full decade of it's honestly left me able to predict the counter arguments word-for-word, spelling errors and inability to read past three sentences included.

I'm drying my eyes on my sleeve, over here.

So I'll just focus on one topic.

From the ground-up you'll notice the game has these game design issues that I call "design pitfalls"

.... pitcher plants...

that, even beyond the topic of 'how fun is it to do this content', has to do with being punished by systems without knowing you're being punished by them until you've already made the mistake of not knowing how the game works ahead of time. One of the ones that I care about the most is that even before you get into the game, the races already present massive game design pitfalls. We're told it's a game without classes and that it's a single-character system so we have to dedicated a lot of time and effort to one character. We're told we can respec if we don't end up liking a choice... except we can't. Someone may understandably want to play a Viking-themed shaman/seer and make some Kallardian witch, only to be slapped in the face with the reality that because of a Kallard's stat limitations on magic-based stats, they're not actually effective mages at all and have 76 INT (same as a Thursar/Kallard, implying that they have the same INT as a Risar), while the highest cap for human INT, Tindremenes, is 104 INT. If my math is right, then Kallards have somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 less INT than a Tindremene. That is huge.

That's not quite enough IQ in the Real World to allow for independent living.

Henrik's mentioned changing clades, which if I'm being honest doesn't sound like a graceful solution.

It's almost like the whole system was infected with some idea born in the brain of a RL Scandinavian who hates himself for being one. Not saying that is the case, only that it would explain a lot of things.

The obvious answer, to me, is to just make race choice not lock you into certain playstyles.

Not obvious to Star Vault, though folks have been begging them for, like, 12 years.

I've been suggesting since MO1 to give vastly different stat leveling rates to different races to reflect inclinations, but allowing everyone to hit the same stat caps. Maybe a Kallard spends 2+ weeks to train up their PSY doing the same thing as an Alvarin, who it takes 3-4 days for. If the player is willing to put in that work to respec, and if they can only play one character, and if they may have spent hours and hours customizing their appearance with this new face customization system and unlocking various achievements, titles, scars, furniture, skilling up their professions, etc. Why not just let them play a mage if they decide they want to?

Jante Law? I'm serious.

What's the reason for keeping it locked, aside from players being able to say 'Oh if you're 2/4 Sard 1/4 Tind 1/4 Khur you have the perfect stats for X build'?

Nothing about being able to say that could possibly feel as good for as great a number of players as it would for everyone to be let to play a mage/ or whatever regardless of race.

There's absolutely nothing in lore that says Kallards aren't effective mages, and in fact to the contrary there's actually a powerful Kallardian shaman named and described who was so powerful that she created unnatural winds to quickly escape with an entire trade fleet she'd stolen.

The Lore is constantly mocked, belittled, and put behind barriers in ways both little and big.

Mats has also specified that, for instance, Thursar aren't actually any dumber than Humans, and that Khurites aren't actually born as naturally better horse riders, they just have stats to reflect their culture.

Not sure why what he had to say was ever published, at this rate, if it was going to be denigrated, denatured, and denied in practice.

If the issue is believability (like seeing an extremely fast Oghmir) then go the 'hard limitations' path instead of all of this fiddling with numbers.

• Lock Oghmir max running speed below a certain number and give them something else in return, but otherwise leave things open for them.
• Make Alvarin take more damage from physical attacks and give them something else in return, but otherwise leave things open for them.

... Why *does* Star Vault hate freedom?

And as for Thursar, who aren't supposed to be able to cast magic at all in the lore (aside from some mentioned rare shamanistic abilities)? IMO an actual fun solution that'd really add an extremely unique gaming experience would be to lock them from learning magic skills entirely and give the players a pop-up they have to confirm to select Thursar, acknowledging that Thursar can't cast magic aside from some abilities that aren't out yet. If they can still respec into literally anything else, then players who don't have any interest in magic will still sometimes pick them.

Frankly? A game's races are not that great if players have to be trapped by expectations and investment of time and miney into choosing and/or continuing to play them.

Yes, that dedication will make them rarer, but they're supposed to be a very rare race because they're (almost) all sterile. It can be countered by giving them abilities/content other races can't access, like once they gain positive standing with Risar they're able to enter the Risar camps dotted across the map and use some for storage, respawning, crafting, tasks, vendors—and maybe even eventually in-town housing like other towns will have. (And in other regions this could be expanded to be camps of Thursar bandits). On top of that they could be given something like unique unarmed combat damage scaling (could be described as 'sharp claws'), which essentially allows them to roll out of respawning and able to do enough damage to kill weak PvE enemies like walking dead and scoundrels without any equipment.

I love the above suggestions. So much I need a tissue.

My point is, there are more graceful (and potentially even more fun) solutions than just adding a system to adapt to the flaws of another system that doesn't actually solve the baseline problem of new players rolling a race and being told they have to change.

'Fun? NO. That's *just* what they'd be expecting.'

And it all potentially has to do with the things you said in the OP, imo.

If it's not relevant enough, then it should be its own thread, because it's all good.

 

[Brulogaz]

I've got a lot I want to say on the topic, I could probably write an entire book on it, but a full decade of it's honestly left me able to predict the counter arguments word-for-word, spelling errors and inability to read past three sentences included. So I'll just focus on one topic.

From the ground-up you'll notice the game has these game design issues that I call "design pitfalls" that, even beyond the topic of 'how fun is it to do this content', has to do with being punished by systems without knowing you're being punished by them until you've already made the mistake of not knowing how the game works ahead of time. One of the ones that I care about the most is that even before you get into the game, the races already present massive game design pitfalls. We're told it's a game without classes and that it's a single-character system so we have to dedicated a lot of time and effort to one character. We're told we can respec if we don't end up liking a choice... except we can't. Someone may understandably want to play a Viking-themed shaman/seer and make some Kallardian witch, only to be slapped in the face with the reality that because of a Kallard's stat limitations on magic-based stats, they're not actually effective mages at all and have 76 INT (same as a Thursar/Kallard, implying that they have the same INT as a Risar), while the highest cap for human INT, Tindremenes, is 104 INT. If my math is right, then Kallards have somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 less INT than a Tindremene. That is huge.

Henrik's mentioned changing clades, which if I'm being honest doesn't sound like a graceful solution. The obvious answer, to me, is to just make race choice not lock you into certain playstyles. I've been suggesting since MO1 to give vastly different stat leveling rates to different races to reflect inclinations, but allowing everyone to hit the same stat caps. Maybe a Kallard spends 2+ weeks to train up their INT doing the same thing as an Alvarin, who it takes 3-4 days for. If the player is willing to put in that work to respec, and if they can only play one character, and if they may have spent hours and hours customizing their appearance with this new face customization system and unlocking various achievements, titles, scars, furniture, skilling up their professions, etc. Why not just let them play a mage if they decide they want to? What's the reason for keeping it locked, aside from players being able to say 'Oh if you're 2/4 Sard 1/4 Tind 1/4 Khur you have the perfect stats for X build'? There's absolutely nothing in lore that says Kallards aren't effective mages, and in fact to the contrary there's actually a powerful Kallardian shaman named and described who was so powerful that she created unnatural winds to quickly escape with an entire trade fleet she'd stolen. Mats has also specified that, for instance, Thursar aren't actually any dumber than Humans, and that Khurites aren't actually born as naturally better horse riders, they just have stats to reflect their culture.

If the issue is believability (like seeing an extremely fast Oghmir) then go the 'hard limitations' path instead of all of this fiddling with numbers.

• Lock Oghmir max running speed below a certain number and give them something else in return, but otherwise leave things open for them.
• Make Alvarin take more damage from physical attacks and give them something else in return, but otherwise leave things open for them.

And as for Thursar, who aren't supposed to be able to cast magic at all in the lore (aside from some mentioned rare shamanistic abilities)? IMO an actual fun solution that'd really add an extremely unique gaming experience would be to lock them from learning magic skills entirely and give the players a pop-up they have to confirm to select Thursar, acknowledging that Thursar can't cast magic aside from some abilities that aren't out yet. If they can still respec into literally anything else, then players who don't have any interest in magic will still sometimes pick them. Yes, that dedication will make them rarer, but they're supposed to be a very rare race because they're (almost) all sterile. It can be countered by giving them abilities/content other races can't access, like once they gain positive standing with Risar they're able to enter the Risar camps dotted across the map and use some for storage, respawning, crafting, tasks, vendors—and maybe even eventually in-town housing like other towns will have. (And in other regions this could be expanded to be camps of Thursar bandits). On top of that they could be given something like unique unarmed combat damage scaling (could be described as 'sharp claws'), which essentially allows them to roll out of respawning and able to do enough damage to kill weak PvE enemies like walking dead and scoundrels without any equipment.

My point is, there are more graceful (and potentially even more fun) solutions than just adding a system to adapt to the flaws of another system that doesn't actually solve the baseline problem of new players rolling a race and being told they have to change.

And it all potentially has to do with the things you said in the OP, imo.

Well said.

This is a common design pitfall that will absolutely make the game more niche than it has to be.

To reflect back on what I said in my op, there is a real danger for the devs (and OGs players) to gradually become numb to those punitive and counter-intuitive mechanics over time as they get used to playing/testing around them. It is just fake challenge, in a way, and if that is all you have, then you risk the only players willing to go through it ending up being elitist, telling new players to join a guild or to git gud, but this is not how you drive player retention.

Your last comment is also on point, and something that scream a lack of UX/Gameplay person. Programmers will be inclined to interpret those problems as a need for more engineering, more systems, and it is pretty crazy the amount of resources that can be spent on mechanics that nobody asked for, which does not address the original issue. As I said in a previous post, you can't engineer your way out of all the compromises you don't make. This race thing is a good example. It is a cool concept that they don't want to compromise on, but at what cost.

 

[Piet]

Hes east coast tho, has like 120 ping max. Thats a pretty playable ping tbh. A west coast player would have 180-200.

You sure? I thought he was West coast. I am West and I don't have any trouble at all and I have old man reflexes.

 

[Tzone]

I got told a west coast player 150 Ping. If you have a 200 Ping it is really on the edge. Then you might want to play an MC, MA, MM, Mage, Tamer, Dominater or Archer.

West coast is usually 150 to 190. Ive seen some people go as high as 220 west coast. Central is 120 to 160ish. I get like 160 as central on celluar fixed wireless.

Some areas add like 20-30ms to the normal due to having to connect to a hub 500-1000 miles south of them. Before heading across the country to the undersea cable to london.

 

[Tzone]

You sure? I thought he was West coast. I am West and I don't have any trouble at all and I have old man reflexes.

Solario is a very very good player... and australian. Doesnt mean his ping isnt holding him back.

Its a uphill battle the worse ping you have. If you are aussie you play a completely different game then a EU player. You play based on foot work using things that wont work for a EU player but will work for a aussie. For NA players you usually get the shaft with not being able to use latency to your advantage and not having low latency advantage.

 

[Piet]

Solario is a very very good player... and australian. Doesnt mean his ping isnt holding him back.

Its a uphill battle the worse ping you have. If you are aussie you play a completely different game then a EU player. You play based on foot work using things that wont work for a EU player but will work for a aussie. For NA players you usually get the shaft with not being able to use latency to your advantage and not having low latency advantage.

I mean ya we get the shaft but I still have no issues. And you bring up a really good point some of those great fighters have an advantage because of high ping so we also have to consider the other side of the coin. But my main point was actually just that it's reasonable and not an overwhelming advantage that can't be overcome or anything like that and that the tech they have implemented is impressive because of that fact.

 

[Tzone]

I mean ya we get the shaft but I still have no issues. And you bring up a really good point some of those great fighters have an advantage because of high ping so we also have to consider the other side of the coin. But my main point was actually just that it's reasonable and not an overwhelming advantage that can't be overcome or anything like that and that the tech they have implemented is impressive because of that fact.

Well you cant really over come people hitting you through parries. Its 100% a issue still if you have to work much harder much harder and are not allowed to make mistakes. It will still be a issue with this game being a one world server game but there are things like parry normalization that can help make it a lot better.

 

[Tzone]

Exactly! I hope my previous post did not give that impression.

Increasing the ping artificially for EU players would just worsen the situation for everyone involved.

That being said, most compensation techniques for client/server architectures have some sort of "compensation limit" that you can express in ticks (or milliseconds). Whether it is for hitboxes lag compensation, or for hybrid architectures with lock steps. So it is more than likely that the current implementation will stop compensating for latency past a certain point. Though I don't know the details about the current implementation, even less so what would be that particular threshold. I could not find much detail about it, has it been explained before? "Ping normalization" is not a term in the industry, afaik. So, I assume they rely on some of the common techniques to hide latency. If it is something entirely new, it would be really cool to have a summary of what this entails.

As far as I understand when ping is normalized its usually just delaying a lower ping player serverside. So if a player has 30 ping and another has 90 in MO2 the player with 30 will have 70ms added to their lat when ever they do swings. The entire game is not ping normalized but part is from what we understand.

Players want them to add normalization to parries as well not just attacks. But with this just have a window of frames after a player gets hit to allow a parry to parry successfully.

 

[Tuhtram]

Nothing about being able to say that could possibly feel as good for as great a number of players as it would for everyone to be let to play a mage/ or whatever regardless of race.

Exactly.

Like, what if four years from now after you've fully furnished and decorated a large stronghold and unlocked a massive amount of titles and collected a huge amount of gold/resources, you really like the look of Mentalism when it rolls out but you made the fatal flaw of rolling a Kallard? Or a new weapon type that you love the look of comes out that relies on a combination of DEX/STR for the scaling but oops—you're a Huergar, no fist weapons for you.

The races are over-adjusted to fit very narrowly within a specific role. I'm actually shocked that a Sarducaan has less STR than any Alvarin. They're actually the weakest race in the game. Aren't Humans supposed to be the 'pick this race if you want less benefits but less drawbacks' race? Yet they're all weirdly polarized. Kallards have the same low INT as Thur/Kalls, making them tie for the lowest INT. Sarducaans have the least STR of any race, human or not. Tindremenes have the least CON of any race, human or not. It's just confusing to me and doesn't make any intuitive sense.

The Lore is constantly mocked, belittled, and put behind barriers in ways both little and big.

Not sure why what he had to say was ever published, at this rate, if it was going to be denigrated, denatured, and denied in practice.

I think during the MO1 saga they were just overwhelmed. Based on the way Henrik talks about things, they've been just barely scraping by, money-wise. I'm a bit worried about a few glaring things in MO2, though. I don't want to turn this into a post about the lore, but there's some writing on the wall there that I hope can be explained away by: "It's Beta."

Frankly? A game's races are not that great if players have to be trapped by expectations and investment of time and money into choosing and/or continuing to play them.

I agree. It should be about what lore and/or appearance you like. I think Dragon Age going the route of Dwarves being entirely unable to use magic was actually a good decision, it distinctly set them apart and all it takes is to look at them to know they aren't a mage. It's a way of throwing lore at players even if they aren't looking for it.

If it's not relevant enough, then it should be its own thread, because it's all good.

Appreciated, as always.

Well said.

This is a common design pitfall that will absolutely make the game more niche than it has to be.

To reflect back on what I said in my op, there is a real danger for the devs (and OGs players) to gradually become numb to those punitive and counter-intuitive mechanics over time as they get used to playing/testing around them. It is just fake challenge, in a way, and if that is all you have, then you risk the only players willing to go through it ending up being elitist, telling new players to join a guild or to git gud, but this is not how you drive player retention.

Your last comment is also on point, and something that scream a lack of UX/Gameplay person. Programmers will be inclined to interpret those problems as a need for more engineering, more systems, and it is pretty crazy the amount of resources that can be spent on mechanics that nobody asked for, which does not address the original issue. As I said in a previous post, you can't engineer your way out of all the compromises you don't make. This race thing is a good example. It is a cool concept that they don't want to compromise on, but at what cost.

(accidentally hit post before replying to this one)

I agree, and obviously we see that all over. A lot of people are blind to the issues because the people who could stand it left, and those who couldn't didn't, so in their minds it's well and good. Obviously there's the question of core game design, and while the game will always push some kind of players away (some large percentages, even) there are some systems in place that need to either be entirely removed or entirely changed, massive design oversights, etc. that are just ticking time bombs of negative feedback followed by a dramatic population curve in the wrong direction.

We have some dedicated cooks who put hours and hours into learning it saying to take out cooking and rework it because it just feels unfinished to them. I've started to feel this way about magic, but I know that's not going anywhere. When new-to-MO players who typically play mages (or want to) get their hands on magic and learn it's a school where you can't solo anything in PvE? It's not going to be pretty, and being told 'You might get something months/years from now that'll be another school that won't work that way.' Won't work for most. Either Ecumenical should have been reimagined to be viable in PvE, or they should've chosen another 'starter' school and put Ecumenical out later.

 

[Brulogaz]

(accidentally hit post before replying to this one)

I agree, and obviously we see that all over. A lot of people are blind to the issues because the people who could stand it left, and those who couldn't didn't, so in their minds it's well and good. Obviously there's the question of core game design, and while the game will always push some kind of players away (some large percentages, even) there are some systems in place that need to either be entirely removed or entirely changed, massive design oversights, etc. that are just ticking time bombs of negative feedback followed by a dramatic population curve in the wrong direction.

We have some dedicated cooks who put hours and hours into learning it saying to take out cooking and rework it because it just feels unfinished to them. I've started to feel this way about magic, but I know that's not going anywhere. When new-to-MO players who typically play mages (or want to) get their hands on magic and learn it's a school where you can't solo anything in PvE? It's not going to be pretty, and being told 'You might get something months/years from now that'll be another school that won't work that way.' Won't work for most. Either Ecumenical should have been reimagined to be viable in PvE, or they should've chosen another 'starter' school and put Ecumenical out later.

To expand on your second paragraph about player sentiment, I am absolutely certain that this is what will happen too if the game release in this state. The world of gaming changed a lot in those past 10 years. Players are less likely to give a game a pass nowadays because it is "promising" but broken. Your target audience is getting older, and people have been burned from all the crap titles that were shipped after the Kickstarter craze. There is so much choice now, you won't be getting any business from anyone but those desperate for the full-loot pvp aspect of the game. This genre would be a hard-sell to begin with the broader audience. It will not be very successful if nothing about the gameplay flows. I am not even getting started on the pay-to-sub business model, which I would only expect from a big established franchise at this point. Not to mention a certain other big MMO just launched that is buy-to-play-forever, it's going to be a hard sell.

I like to give the benefit of the doubt, but if those last 10 years of mediocre indie games shown us anything, is that developers who release broken and tedious projects in EA rarely ever end up addressing those issues, even years later. Players will, however, give a pass to incomplete games if the basics are fun. Have a look at Project Zomboid, or Project Gorgon(mmo) for extreme examples of what gamers will put up with, as long as the base is fleshed out.

Here's what I conclude from this, if a game developer is this far in development, with a public build and a release date, and still hasn't made A SINGLE fleshed-out system, then there is no sign that anything will ever get fleshed out, or it would have happened by now. The beta is a very late build by development standard, for those who don't know. This means that we see something that they don't, or that they're unable to prioritize, or that they just have no idea how to make the meat of the gameplay, so they focus on what they're good at, engineering in the case of SV. This shows that there is no plan for gameplay, imo. They have no "benchmark" of quality internally to grade what is a clean and fleshed-out feature to develop against because they never made one. With no gold standard, new features are just released with the same placeholder-ish content that we expect. The UI is all over the place, balancing is inexistent, and most importantly, the feature is not tested to be fun, or to ingrate seamlessly into the rest. UX is an integral part of the design and core of the game. It has to be integrated as soon as your pipeline allows, and it cannot be pushed indefinitely into a later polishing phase. I am not blaming the bulk of the programmers and artists here. I already worked on a similar indie game myself. There is only so much you can do unless you're a decision maker. I am absolutely convinced that this kind of talk happened internally between employees, and it probably pains them not being able to work on the stuff they believe would help the game, but at the end of the day you've got to do what you're being asked, and confronting the decision-makers is sometime just not worth the pay.

This loop back onto the suggestions I made into my first post on the lack of UX, and why this is alarming. It is VERY late to worry about players' experience just a few months before release, but it is not impossible to mitigate the worst issues if some efforts are made. That being said, this would require COMPROMISES. This means not prioritizing the thing you might like to code. This means taking the hard decisions that you've been pushing back. This means cutting stuff from the game. This means taking a hit on your ego, and reverting some of the decisions that everyone is telling you will hurt the player's feedback. And, it means to start doing it now.