I don't exactly find Envy's flip-flopping enjoyable to see, but I do find his angst mildly entertaining and the back and forth between him and Starr is hilarious.
Moreover, what really interests me is how out of touch Port continues to be when it comes to the trajectory of their game and the eroding confidence of their shrinking playerbase.
I found the particular exchange exceptionally telling:
The fish stinks from the head, and the SotA team has repeatedly shown how utterly out of touch they are with regard to how they cynically exploited people's sense of nostalgia (and greed, in some cases), but never felt any alarm or culpability when their victims spoke out against such despicable practices.
As
titsup points out, all they had to do is to keep it simple, reskin some of the old magic from the past (with enough differences to avoid lawsuits from EA), and they probably would have earned more money and goodwill than they will ever earn from turning their game into a Second Life v2.0
Instead, they took the most money-grubbing, greedy, shady approach to every aspect of this so-called game's development. The response of TenormanTears says it all.
From the very start, people balked at the add-on store and how oblivious Port was to how damaging the macro-transactions were to perceptions of the game by a broader community.
The weird blood art, the quirky/eccentric/"niche" cultism, the greedy as fuck funding model -- all of these and more contribute to a pervasive sense of disgust and dismay with regard to the game among those who aren't absolute fanboys (i.e., those who aren't "LOYAL BACKERS").
Starr and Port clearly think players coming and going is just a natural part of development (and claim they look at people's complaints upon leaving the game/community for areas where they see they have room for improvement <--- which reads to me more like areas they are willing to improve, leaving out sore spots that they don't want to address). The problem is, for a crowd-funded game which banks so heavily on RG's legend and the past glories of Ultima games, a diehard fanbase backing out of the enterprise like this is a major warning sign that continues to go unheeded.
IDK what to say, don't even know why I started this thread (just saw the initial post on Steam's forums and found it interesting how so many of these things many of us predicted months/years ago are finally starting to come to fruition).
At this rate, I really believe TenormanTears' prediction about the game being empty in 6 months is overly generous. I'd give it 3 months before only a handful of diehards are still playing it.
I think comparisons to Second Life are most apt given the SotA's overall virtual social space vibe, but another game I once "played" for a night or two (after reading some posts by Raph Koster that referred to Dr Cat) really reminds me of the overly "niche" feelings I get from Shroud and the oblivious attitudes of its community and devs:
FurcadiaIt's a totally niche social game, with a very devoted, extremely small player base (the ability to code environments is kind of inventive and cool tbh, but it was not appealing to me in any way shape or form and the people I encountered and interacted with struck me as kind of sad/creepy). It just seemed like a vehicle for people to showcase their e-peens and to be cool in a virtual world, because it was entirely likely that their real lives were unfulfilling. The Ultimate Collector/virtual LARPing aspect of SotA feels like the same thing to me.
Not sure what to say, sorry to start a thread and not really stay on topic (or directly respond to what any of you have said). I just find the whole development process of SotA exceptional, in the very worst way possible. I marvel that Starr can rationalize away the bad decisions and clear indications that the ship is sinking. It's more obvious than ever why this rudderless ship has continued unabated on its doomed trajectory.
