Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #315 and #316
Good Morning Friends! This morning we have just a few bits of news on Shroud of the Avatar. For this bi-weekly update on Shroud of the Avatar we have the following news:
- Episode 2 Bundles
- Lot Size Upgrades via Crowns/COTOs breaking Kickstarter/Pledge Promises?
- Player Created Quests
Episode 2 Bundles
As someone who pledged early on, I knew Portalarium would do bundles for each future episode. That is, should they survive to do each future episode. As with any kickstarter game, during the crowdfunding stage, it is difficult to predict whether a game will survive long term or not. Looking backwards, with the need of funding on Portalarium’s end to stay fiscally sound, this is a “no brainer.”
Something interest is these first Episode 2 bundles are “Lords of the Isle” or “Lords of the Manor” equivalent in style bundles. As you can see they are selling 24 of these but the later bundles, despite no difference in what you get, are MORE expensive. The only reason I can think of this is to encourage ppl to buy now instead of later.
Here is exactly what is available as part of the bundle:
Complete List of Rewards:
- UPDATED: Lord of the Isle Place Anywhere Castle Lot Deed: Tax Free Forever (when placed in a POT) and Tax Free for 1 Year (when placed outside of a POT). Placeable on water as well as land!
- Title: Lord of the Isle or Lady of the Isle
- NEW: Unique Lord of the Isle Home (to be revealed later)
- UPDATED: PLUS Choice of any 1 House currently available in the store
- Castle Basement currently available in the store of your choice
- Castle Wall Set currently available in the store of your choice (with enough for Castle Lot)
- NEW: Unique Lord of the Isle Dungeon Room (to be revealed later)
- 1400 Crowns
- 999 Bank Slots
- Pick 12 Prosperity Tools
- 2 Unique in-game items (to be revealed later)
- Early Access to Episode 2
- Episode 1 Box and map signed by the team
- 1 hour one on one with Chris for design discussion (via video-conference)
- One real silver ring crafted personally by Lord British: Numbered 1 – 8
- In-game version of the Lord British ring: Numbered 1 – 8 (including a place-able decoration version)
- Tour of Portalarium Offices
- Fine dinner and drinks with Lord British, Darkstarr, & Atos at a location TBD in Austin or NYC.
NOTE: Digital items that are currently available will begin delivery as soon as Release 62 (Jan 31). Other items will be delivered at a future date TBD.
NOTE: Travel costs NOT covered by Portalarium for Tour & Dinner.
Lot Size Upgrades via Crowns/COTOs breaking Kickstarter/Pledge Promises?
Looking in the Release 62 I noticed the following about upgrading lot sizes (highlighted):
As you can see, lot types can be upgraded but will keep their status (founder, tax free, POT, Water, etc). This was confirmed as I discovered this feature was included in Build 894 back on January 24th.
This calls into question whether or not this violates the promises Portalarium made during the Kickstarter and post-Kickstarter times. During those times, they stated on their own website (see below) and in live streams that Keep and Castle lot sizes would NOT be available online via in-game or addon store. Offline mode doesn’t count in this situation. Now the other methods you could get these sizes were certain bundles they did after KS.
Now obviously future bundles are bound to have these, and so Episode 2 bundles, like the ones we just talked about are nothing out of the ordinary nor do they break any promises. However, offering these sizes via the upgrade feature, despite their exact wording in the past, certainly has me believing they are breaking their promises. They have been selling row through city taxed lots on their add-on store, however they have not sold keep or castle taxed lots, which has at least kept their promise on that end. With how many backers have left SotA, I am certain that many simply just don’t care about Portalarium “losing an eight”.
Does this surprise me that Portalarium would do such a thing and not make any public post that they would go back on their promises? Not one bit… However, one would hope that at the very least, they would make a post apologizing and stating that it was a mistake on their part to ever limit lot sizes available to players in-game for the online mode due to need for funding, growth, etc. I am certain this is done to help continue to bring in funding for Portalarium. As someone who is not invested in SotA anymore, I could see this upgrade system getting them some money in the short term from die hard fans, but in the long term, I don’t foresee this being a system that will bring in many new players.
Player Created Quests
One of the biggest complaints from Shroud of the Avatar is the lack of robust content and NPCs in many zones. In a recent live stream, highlighted as being about “Player Created Quests”, the devs touched on this topic. I would say it is a means to help with their bandwidth issue. Feel free to watch the youtube video below to see the archive of the stream.
Can they just…. stop? Seriously, they’re down to a 23% on the Steam user reviews. That’s pretty much the end right there. Have games turned things around from there? Sure. No Mans Sky (despite being everyone’s favorite disappointment) has actually turned itself around pretty well. Still boring, but a better kind of boring. Monster Hunter World had a rough start, and earned itself some bad scores, but that was mostly server issues. It’s clear those things aren’t going to happen here. SotA is working as intended, it’s just terrible. I really wish they’d just shut it down and be done with it. Just pull the band-aid off in one go, and spare us all the torture feeling each one of the hairs be slowly pulled from its roots.
The good thing about NMS (which coincidentally I’ve just been playing recently too) is that not only did they work incredibly hard to actually honour their previous promises, they’ve done so without any DLC or extra charges. At no point have the players been expected to pay again (and again) to complete the work that they should have already purchased with the box price; Hello Games have simply buckled down and done what was already owed and then patched it in for free.
Far too many developers these days however think that if you can take the money, it’s their right to do so without ever having to be held to account for the results of that spending. “Freeing them from publishers” has come to mean they expect the public to pay for their lifestyle, whilst actual deadlines and content go out the window. I cannot justify all the lies told at the launch of NMS, but they have at least attempted to make the game they promised originally since.
Shroud, of course, was always a lie and never will be what we want, because “Buy to Own” means you can’t keep pressuring the few remaining whales to spend more otherwise the servers go off, and Long and Spears would have to then go get a new job with someone who might demand actual released projects.
Very good point on that last bit. I guess Long worked on some short-lives Disney online games in the years since UO, but I can’t figure out what Spears has been up to. When SotA finally has it’s plug pulled (When, not if at this point. WHEN) they’ll have to go back to working for a living. I suppose making a weekly video begging for money is easier than actually making a decent game.
It’s just so pathetic to watch anymore. I can’t even extract a sense of schadenfreude from it. It’s just sad.