Newest negative review on steam = best I've seen so far
Jul 21, 2015 23:46:46 GMT
Membrane_on_Vacation, templara, and 2 more like this
Post by kb on Jul 21, 2015 23:46:46 GMT
Titler said:
A potentially good game by a historically great Dev team throttled to death by getting lost in the numbingly cold waters of Whale hunting.
Don't buy this game until it launches and you can see what the actual standard of content your money will get you; Because unfortunately in order to try and pressure people into moving themselves into the Whale spending category, the terms of many pledges are being re-written now, and will lose the most desirable content, unless you upgrade to Ancestor at $275 dollars before an arbitrary cut off date. Check Newsletter #133 for the details of what is being withdrawn, and notice this applies even to Kickstarter backers, or "Royal Founders". If you didn't donate enough by the required time, you will pay the same amount of money as anyone else at higher Pledges, but get far less rewards.
Furre, Newsletter #134 announced that although they noticed this leads to an even more complicated and financially imbalanced Pledge system, the response was not to return it to equality but lock out your ability to seek better deals even faster. #134 also states they knew the number of sales of Player Owned Towns were already above their expected ability to implement on the planned map, but they decided instead to just announce anyone buying after the chosen figure of 230 towns simply wouldn't turn up on the map, and would have to be "Instanced" to someone else's town. The last 10 of the actual Towns as offered in the Store which would do what players were buying them to do, be part of the visible game world, sold out within a day, so now it's too late for you to get one.
Shroud Of The Avatar: Caveat Emptor, unfortunately.
Why do I detail this? Because despite the game time I've put in, the bug reports, the player experience posts to try and help with feedback, it has to be said that there really isn't anything that suggests Shroud is going to actually work out post launch. It has become too focused on responding the desires of a tiny number of players with large amounts of income they wish to pump into the game; I've seen it described elsewhere as "House Of The Avatar", and sadly, despite 2 years of development, this is indeed the only fleshed out part of the game. If you try to play it simply as a game, there's very little "game" actually there there.
Systems remain rudimentary at best, counter intuitive and messy where they do exist, and only where it's not locked off completely because it clashes with items for sale in the store. You will never own a Castle for instance, nor a Town, unless you spend literally tens of thousands of real dollars. Probably not a House boat until the first expansion; movable placement of the house upon your lot will not be included, as the Stretch Goal for that failed, but Town owners can move the location of their plots about and large amounts of development time is going towards supporting this instead. As it currently stands, you won't even be able to get a basic house in one of the specific Row House slums without weeks of serious grinding for gold. Check my play time, and my kill / crafting achievements. Yet that level of play would not have got even me a basic home as priced currently.
Another example: There's no sign the Dev team plan to include a player bought or even crafted steampunk Radio to listen to the in game radio stations that backers can. Constant calls to at least sketch out what systems will be accessible for basic purchasers are ignored for more decoration you can purchase in the store; #134 added real cash trees for instance, but there's no mention of whether a normal person will ever be able to purchase their own vegetation for decoration. Gardening and farming, originally mentioned as part of the Nature to Nutrition design brief hasn't even been hinted at since the early days.
Single player content isn't implemented in order not to spoil the plot supposedly, but actual gameplay only recently became tolerable due to yet another pass at improving combat; there isn't anything much to fight or reason to do so however. Quests so far have only involved "Talk to NPC with this horribly cramped chat system, go to that NPC and say something else." Pledge rewards that originally were "Design your own NPC!" have been reduced to "Name your own NPC!", presumably because even using player content to populate the world requires person-hours the Devs can't spare to read your submissions. Buying this game before it launches will thus be taking a HUGE leap of faith as to the standard of content you get.
Player supported quests, like the famous "Geocaches" only consist of a wooden box you can make public. There is, so far, no plan to allow them to be placed anywhere but inside your home. If you guessed they looked almost identical to player crafted boxes, unless you bought them from the store for $20... There might be a way to get them to pop monsters or do something more than have things put in or out of them later. Maybe.
Crafting involves an ungodly grind with unwilling crafting tables that insist on a myriad of different steps to make a simple item. The wider Player-Based economy isn't implemented and perhaps never can be when you're pricing your own mass audience out of the game with insane economic blindness. Auction houses as currently designed confiscate your items if they don't sell, presumably to populate the stores with goods later instead, but promise to make player trading via an auction house a risk few will want to take. NPCs give you frankly insulting prices for your goods, but as everyone has their own Crafting XP and can be anything they want, the logic is inexorably towards just making your own stuff for production cost only. The only reason people don't do it currently is that the crafting itself is so, so horrible; thus the irony is you can save the Crafting system only to destroy your wider economy.
And the graphics? It's hard for me to say, because the switch to Unity 5 and lack of system optimisation means the game has bloated to the point my old system, which can still run Skyrim on High perfectly, can't run Shroud on it's "Fastest" (worst) settings without appalling graphic lag, memory leaks and lock ups. And on those settings... it's not very pretty at all. Animations bear only the slightest resemblence to wider context, and fights look like two people performing aggressive Punch and Judy shows at each other. That's not the way to do it.
And there's all kinds of weird design issues beyond even this... Accounts get a single player spot upon them, purchasing more on the same account forces them into being "Family" and sharing a surname. Pets so far consist of Star Trek Online style "summons" that trigger from the power bar, but disappear when crossing instances. Have I mentioned Shroud is nothing but small instances outside of the major towns? If the Pet design remains the same, you'll be re-summoning them rather alot. Combat with Pets appears to be from a context menu on the Pet itself; absent even the Ultima Online "All Kill" text commands. This may change, but it's weird it was implemented first, as it ensured no one really tried testing it...
But hovering over all of this still is the main issue;
THE GAME IS ABSOLUTELY BESOTTED WITH PUSHING YOU FOR MORE DONATIONS ABOVE ANYTHING ELSE.
And you can't get the Devs or the remaining player base to understand how this is poisoning everything. It has all the signs now of a Confidence Bubble or even a Cult that people are too invested in to realise is likely heading to disaster, and ever faster as they gouge pledges even more for a cut off date the game is absolutely in no state ready for, and the public aren't going to love it at when they do release it. You don't play Fantasy RPGs to be an unimportant serf. At every possible step currently Shroud batters you again and again that unless you pay real cash, this is what you'll be.
DONT TRUST, WAIT TO VERIFY.
steamcommunity.com/id/Titler/recommended/326160/
Don't buy this game until it launches and you can see what the actual standard of content your money will get you; Because unfortunately in order to try and pressure people into moving themselves into the Whale spending category, the terms of many pledges are being re-written now, and will lose the most desirable content, unless you upgrade to Ancestor at $275 dollars before an arbitrary cut off date. Check Newsletter #133 for the details of what is being withdrawn, and notice this applies even to Kickstarter backers, or "Royal Founders". If you didn't donate enough by the required time, you will pay the same amount of money as anyone else at higher Pledges, but get far less rewards.
Furre, Newsletter #134 announced that although they noticed this leads to an even more complicated and financially imbalanced Pledge system, the response was not to return it to equality but lock out your ability to seek better deals even faster. #134 also states they knew the number of sales of Player Owned Towns were already above their expected ability to implement on the planned map, but they decided instead to just announce anyone buying after the chosen figure of 230 towns simply wouldn't turn up on the map, and would have to be "Instanced" to someone else's town. The last 10 of the actual Towns as offered in the Store which would do what players were buying them to do, be part of the visible game world, sold out within a day, so now it's too late for you to get one.
Shroud Of The Avatar: Caveat Emptor, unfortunately.
Why do I detail this? Because despite the game time I've put in, the bug reports, the player experience posts to try and help with feedback, it has to be said that there really isn't anything that suggests Shroud is going to actually work out post launch. It has become too focused on responding the desires of a tiny number of players with large amounts of income they wish to pump into the game; I've seen it described elsewhere as "House Of The Avatar", and sadly, despite 2 years of development, this is indeed the only fleshed out part of the game. If you try to play it simply as a game, there's very little "game" actually there there.
Systems remain rudimentary at best, counter intuitive and messy where they do exist, and only where it's not locked off completely because it clashes with items for sale in the store. You will never own a Castle for instance, nor a Town, unless you spend literally tens of thousands of real dollars. Probably not a House boat until the first expansion; movable placement of the house upon your lot will not be included, as the Stretch Goal for that failed, but Town owners can move the location of their plots about and large amounts of development time is going towards supporting this instead. As it currently stands, you won't even be able to get a basic house in one of the specific Row House slums without weeks of serious grinding for gold. Check my play time, and my kill / crafting achievements. Yet that level of play would not have got even me a basic home as priced currently.
Another example: There's no sign the Dev team plan to include a player bought or even crafted steampunk Radio to listen to the in game radio stations that backers can. Constant calls to at least sketch out what systems will be accessible for basic purchasers are ignored for more decoration you can purchase in the store; #134 added real cash trees for instance, but there's no mention of whether a normal person will ever be able to purchase their own vegetation for decoration. Gardening and farming, originally mentioned as part of the Nature to Nutrition design brief hasn't even been hinted at since the early days.
Single player content isn't implemented in order not to spoil the plot supposedly, but actual gameplay only recently became tolerable due to yet another pass at improving combat; there isn't anything much to fight or reason to do so however. Quests so far have only involved "Talk to NPC with this horribly cramped chat system, go to that NPC and say something else." Pledge rewards that originally were "Design your own NPC!" have been reduced to "Name your own NPC!", presumably because even using player content to populate the world requires person-hours the Devs can't spare to read your submissions. Buying this game before it launches will thus be taking a HUGE leap of faith as to the standard of content you get.
Player supported quests, like the famous "Geocaches" only consist of a wooden box you can make public. There is, so far, no plan to allow them to be placed anywhere but inside your home. If you guessed they looked almost identical to player crafted boxes, unless you bought them from the store for $20... There might be a way to get them to pop monsters or do something more than have things put in or out of them later. Maybe.
Crafting involves an ungodly grind with unwilling crafting tables that insist on a myriad of different steps to make a simple item. The wider Player-Based economy isn't implemented and perhaps never can be when you're pricing your own mass audience out of the game with insane economic blindness. Auction houses as currently designed confiscate your items if they don't sell, presumably to populate the stores with goods later instead, but promise to make player trading via an auction house a risk few will want to take. NPCs give you frankly insulting prices for your goods, but as everyone has their own Crafting XP and can be anything they want, the logic is inexorably towards just making your own stuff for production cost only. The only reason people don't do it currently is that the crafting itself is so, so horrible; thus the irony is you can save the Crafting system only to destroy your wider economy.
And the graphics? It's hard for me to say, because the switch to Unity 5 and lack of system optimisation means the game has bloated to the point my old system, which can still run Skyrim on High perfectly, can't run Shroud on it's "Fastest" (worst) settings without appalling graphic lag, memory leaks and lock ups. And on those settings... it's not very pretty at all. Animations bear only the slightest resemblence to wider context, and fights look like two people performing aggressive Punch and Judy shows at each other. That's not the way to do it.
And there's all kinds of weird design issues beyond even this... Accounts get a single player spot upon them, purchasing more on the same account forces them into being "Family" and sharing a surname. Pets so far consist of Star Trek Online style "summons" that trigger from the power bar, but disappear when crossing instances. Have I mentioned Shroud is nothing but small instances outside of the major towns? If the Pet design remains the same, you'll be re-summoning them rather alot. Combat with Pets appears to be from a context menu on the Pet itself; absent even the Ultima Online "All Kill" text commands. This may change, but it's weird it was implemented first, as it ensured no one really tried testing it...
But hovering over all of this still is the main issue;
THE GAME IS ABSOLUTELY BESOTTED WITH PUSHING YOU FOR MORE DONATIONS ABOVE ANYTHING ELSE.
And you can't get the Devs or the remaining player base to understand how this is poisoning everything. It has all the signs now of a Confidence Bubble or even a Cult that people are too invested in to realise is likely heading to disaster, and ever faster as they gouge pledges even more for a cut off date the game is absolutely in no state ready for, and the public aren't going to love it at when they do release it. You don't play Fantasy RPGs to be an unimportant serf. At every possible step currently Shroud batters you again and again that unless you pay real cash, this is what you'll be.
DONT TRUST, WAIT TO VERIFY.
steamcommunity.com/id/Titler/recommended/326160/
