Shroud of the Avatar - Release #7

Today marks the day, the backers that pledged enough can play Shroud of the Avatar release 7.

[quote]Thank you to our loyal backers of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 7 access for all backers at First Responder level and above begins this Thursday, June 26 at 10:30 AM Central Time. Release 7 access will end on Sunday, June 29 at 10:00 PM Central Time. Starting today, you can begin installing and patching (see instructions below), but login will not be enabled until Thursday morning.



RELEASE 7: June 26 - 29, 2014

<ul> 3D Overworld Map System: We are switching our dual scale navigation system from the 2D version you have seen so far to a 3D version more like what we showed during Kickstarter. This initial release will mainly be about the visuals, so players will still be represented as markers and there will be no random encounters. Since this is first release with this version of the map it is missing many features including visible roads, hex grid, animating avatars, encounters, etc. (all of which you can expect to see in future releases).
Player to Player secure trade: Did you discover something cool you want to give your friend? Need to share some potions with a party member? Did you craft something amazing you want to trade? Secure trade is the answer, and will allow you to make exchanges of goods between you and other players. Note that gold cannot be traded currently but that will come soon.
Water Lots: We will be adding water lot functionality to the game. This includes 7 water based buildings including: Citizen Cabana, Edelmann Cabana, Knight’s Lighthouse, Lord’s Houseboat, Duke Island Castle, Baron Galleon, and Baron Frigate.
NPC Collision / Responsiveness: We will be spending time on polishing NPC collision and general movement responsiveness to combat things like NPC standing inside you, spreading out when attacking, avoiding players while moving, etc. While we did some iterations on this in R7 we still don’t feel this is where it needs to be so we will continue working on this in R8.
Animals: Currently all our animals (bears, wolves, etc.) are purchased assets and the skinning, rigging, and animations for them is not meeting our quality standards, so we are going to reskin and rig them so that we can redo their animations. Stag and Bear are now complete. Canines (wolves and dogs) will start going in Release 8.
Player Housing Built-in Lighting: We have gotten consistent feedback that it is too hard to get player placed lights in the right configuration to really light the player houses. So starting with R7 we will begin placing built in lights (chandeliers, sconces, etc.) to provide a base lighting level for all the player houses. These lights will turn on and off just like regular lights and can be augmented with player placed lights as well. Long term these lights will be decorative objects that can be removed, moved, etc. but currently they are permanent fixtures.
Scenes: A few new scenes will come online, including Player Towns on Islands (to feature water lots) and the first scene on the mainland (The Graff Gem Mines). We also replaced the entrance map to the Ravensmoor dungeon with a new map based on one of Stephen Daniele’s early concept pieces (see below). NOTE: The Lunar Rift in Owl’s Head now takes you to the Graff Gem Mines, NOT Kingsport. Also the Kingsport rift is disabled.
Crafting: We will be adding more ingredients (spider silk, gems, precious metals, etc.) as well as instructions on how to do crafting in the recipe book itself. We also added images to support the instructions and themed them like medieval wood cuts.
Lighting Fine-Tuning: We still have some work to do in order to get the balance right between bright day and dark night.
Character Faces and Skins: We want to update at least one of the player faces and also do more polish work on the skin. While we are doing these upgrades to the faces we are deleting the old faces. For R7 this means you are limited to only one head type per gender.
64 Bit Build: For those of you running 64 bit OS on your system we will now release 64 bit builds (in addition to the 32 Bit Builds) so you can address more system memory. The good news is that we have a working 64 bit build. The bad news is that cloth simulation (cloaks) does not work and sometimes asset loading is slower than the 32 bit build (ironic!).
Promotional Trailer: We were excited to be a featured game at the Plantronics booth at E3. In support of t…More information.

Is this a real game, or just an extended trolling of press releases?

Anyone play any of this?

If anyone does, you think they will admit it? It turned into Kickstarter porn. I'm waiting for the advent of purchasable sex slaves.

Originally Posted by zahratustra
I'm waiting for the advent of purchasable sex slaves.

That would sell really well. Are you reading this, Garriott?

Yes, I've played it. Explored a couple towns (ignored all the player houses), found some NPCs, got some quests, explored a couple dungeons, killed some baddies, found some chests with unique items, some behind secret doors.

Nothing real earth-shattering, but it's not even in alpha state. It just appears weird to outside observers because they are making their development cycle so open and transparent. I'm sure most software projects have monthly milestones that they aspire to complete; all that's happening here is that the resulting build with those milestones are being released to backers in monthly releases. Garriot seems to be getting off on "crowd-development". Whatever floats his boat. But there is real progress being made, and I certainly see the underpinnings of an honest-to-god RPG.

Joking aside, I do like some kind of player housing, or at least a home base. It's a problem I have with Elder Scrolls Online. No home to put stuff. No bonus for staying at an inn. You feel like a complete vagrant.

Originally Posted by Fantasm
Yes, I've played it. Explored a couple towns (ignored all the player houses), found some NPCs, got some quests, explored a couple dungeons, killed some baddies, found some chests with unique items, some behind secret doors.

That's the part I'd like to hear more about - every single update I've seen regarding this game has been about fluff… crafting, player housing, NPCs, etc. These are all nice, but where the hell is the actual game? Or is this just some wannabe medieval Second Life simulator?

Crafting, if don't right, is a game in and of its self. So far it has been fun, and my wife loved the crafting.

The only thing I haven't like about the kickstarter is the money-money-money aspect of more and more housing and housing stuff. I am concerned the single player or earning it legit aspect of the game for housing is going to be non-existent. There can only be so many places to put a house, and real world money seems to be THE deciding factor in housing. It leaves no way for players to work their way out to big stuff, that as far was we know, might be too expensive in game to work your way up to!

I have seen the future and it's funny! Once the proceeds from the players housing will dry up Garriott will start releasing purchasable high class furniture and dresses. So, in a way, Drithius is right. It will be wannabe medieval Second Life simulator/ Sims Medieval. But hey, if so many people are prepared to pay so much money for fluff, Garrett is only too happy to oblige and provide as much fluff as they desire.
It's the original Kickstarter backers that I feel sorry for. They are the victims of the bait and switch scam.

Originally Posted by zahratustra
If anyone does, you think they will admit it? It turned into Kickstarter porn. I'm waiting for the advent of purchasable sex slaves.

Actually, you get servants and vendors at some pledge tiers. So I wouldn't doubt that some of the more "adventurous" players out there will be ERPing these in some in-game prostitution ring. You're asking because you're interested, right?

Originally Posted by Drithius
That's the part I'd like to hear more about - every single update I've seen regarding this game has been about fluff… crafting, player housing, NPCs, etc. These are all nice, but where the hell is the actual game? Or is this just some wannabe medieval Second Life simulator?

There's not a whole lot of content yet to the "game". What you're seeing is the "game" in its infancy and backers are being allowed to play test thew raw, buggy, unpolished skeleton of a "game" currently. The updates are definitely populated with tons of cosmetic things such as player towns, housing, outfits, pets, but that's what's funding the development of the game currently. Sure, it's causing them headaches with public perception, but that's what they've chosen to do likely due to a mix of both catering to those that will pay to keep the development going and due to not having a whole lot of actual content yet.

For those folks that don't care about that stuff, just wait until the end of the year (at the earliest) when the core systems are more complete and then they can actually start adding much more content to the game. Right now it's the barebones basics.

Originally Posted by zahratustra
I have seen the future and it's funny! Once the proceeds from the players housing will dry up Garriott will start releasing purchasable high class furniture and dresses. So, in a way, Drithius is right. It will be wannabe medieval Second Life simulator/ Sims Medieval. But hey, if so many people are prepared to pay so much money for fluff, Garrett is only too happy to oblige and provide as much fluff as they desire.
It's the original Kickstarter backers that I feel sorry for. They are the victims of the bait and switch scam.

This is where you're completely wrong and misinformed. What's happening is that all the "Second Life simulator / Sims Medieval" crowd are the ones primarily paying for the development of the game. If you don't care about that stuff, just sit back, relax, and wait for the rest of the game to be developed for which you don't have to pay anything more than the price of admission. Let others who are willing to pay for the dev salaries for the next year or two so they can deliver the real thing: an epic story-driven RPG that can be played complete offline single-player, or jump online in the multiplayer story, and yes, the sandbox world with player towns and guilds and PvP and housing too.

So if you're narrowly focusing on the current aspects of real estate, player towns, and other "fluff", you're just feeding your own bias about what you think the game is about. It really will be a complete story-driven epic RPG -- that will also contain all those sandbox elements you don't care for.

Originally Posted by smack
Actually, you get servants and vendors at some pledge tiers. So I wouldn't doubt that some of the more "adventurous" players out there will be ERPing these in some in-game prostitution ring. You're asking because you're interested, right?

Nah. If I want porn, I know where to find it

Originally Posted by smack
Let others who are willing to pay for the dev salaries for the next year or two so they can deliver the real thing: an epic story-driven RPG that can be played complete offline single-player, or jump online in the multiplayer story, and yes, the sandbox world with player towns and guilds and PvP and housing too.

Ahhh yes… complete story-driven epic RPG! And complete offline single-player!! AND it will also cure cancer and keep your beer cool!!! Will it has the AWESOME button too?

The money keeps rolling in. So what's the rush?

Originally Posted by smack
This is where you're completely wrong and misinformed. What's happening is that all the "Second Life simulator / Sims Medieval" crowd are the ones primarily paying for the development of the game. If you don't care about that stuff, just sit back, relax, and wait for the rest of the game to be developed for which you don't have to pay anything more than the price of admission. Let others who are willing to pay for the dev salaries for the next year or two so they can deliver the real thing: an epic story-driven RPG that can be played complete offline single-player, or jump online in the multiplayer story, and yes, the sandbox world with player towns and guilds and PvP and housing too.

So if you're narrowly focusing on the current aspects of real estate, player towns, and other "fluff", you're just feeding your own bias about what you think the game is about. It really will be a complete story-driven epic RPG — that will also contain all those sandbox elements you don't care for.

What you are saying sounds promising and hope that this is the intent, but at the same time lacks evidence; particularly for the Kickstarter backers. There is not even a good recent track record to hold on to!

They have chosen the 'fund raising' or 'business' path at the expense of true rpg developer updates path (such as Obsidion and inXile). It must be a worry for them as they have to maintain this 'fluff' PR to keep in the money coming in (yet with the continued fear that it might stop sometime), and maybe losing face to the backers and the world because of these nonesense updates.

It seems like they were aiming very high which did not match the Kickstarter funding, and instead of taking an honest route (which might mean refunding the backers), they instead treated it as a business venture and started this fund raising process.

Will have to wait on this one and, as a backer, hope for the best.

I'm hoping for the best as well. I have to say, it's been a very….err…umm, "interesting" campaign run by these guys. Lots of talk about player housing and what not. But I liked what I saw of the dungeon video. It looked like a real RPG. The crafting and quest system seemed interesting, too, so I look forward to how it all shapes up in the end.

Are Richard Garriott and Peter Molyneux long lost siblings or something?

Originally Posted by zahratustra
Nah. If I want porn, I know where to find it


Ahhh yes… complete story-driven epic RPG! And complete offline single-player!! AND it will also cure cancer and keep your beer cool!!! Will it has the AWESOME button too?

The AWESOME button is going to be the next Stretch Goal for $1 MILLION DOLLARS

Originally Posted by cptbarkey
in short, scope creep. scope creep means a few things like : 1. its never finished 2. project failure.

The new Stretch Goals won't be worked on until after the original KS features and goals are completed. Most people aren't expecting them to be in the game for a year or two…or ever.

Originally Posted by SpoonFULL
What you are saying sounds promising and hope that this is the intent, but at the same time lacks evidence; particularly for the Kickstarter backers. There is not even a good recent track record to hold on to!

They have chosen the 'fund raising' or 'business' path at the expense of true rpg developer updates path (such as Obsidion and inXile). It must be a worry for them as they have to maintain this 'fluff' PR to keep in the money coming in (yet with the continued fear that it might stop sometime), and maybe losing face to the backers and the world because of these nonesense updates.

It seems like they were aiming very high which did not match the Kickstarter funding, and instead of taking an honest route (which might mean refunding the backers), they instead treated it as a business venture and started this fund raising process.

Will have to wait on this one and, as a backer, hope for the best.

Yes, they are taking a negative PR hit but they realize it's a necessary evil to continue funding the game so that everyone else who can't afford the fluff will still get the game, which is so much more than just that.

Obsidian / inXile aren't trying to also create a persistent, dynamic multiplayer sandbox (i.e. MMO) and thus can concentrate on story and RPG-like content. Unfortunately for SotA, they are keeping the entire story secret and thus presents an issue with what they're willing to reveal in their marketing. That's not to say they haven't done anything in the story department. They released an entire novel (Blade of the Avatar) that provides the back history for the game, as well as revealed the entire map of the current game. But all the story-based stuff is lost in the noise of cries of P2W and high priced real estate. It's unfortunate but that's the reality they face.

They're slowly trickling out the content though as they build out more of the mainland (Novia), such as the recent reveal of Ardoris, one of the main cities in the game. So far everything has taken place on the Hidden Vale, the starter island created just for the play tests and largely has nothing to do with the main game / story.