Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #353 – #356
Greetings Friends! It has been around a month already since my previous update post on Shroud of the Avatar. A lot has happened in the past month. We had the purchase of Portalarium’s assets like Shroud of the Avatar by Catnip games, which happens to be owned by Chris Spears who was a member of the SotA team. There was the topic of backers no longer getting a print copy of Blade of the Avatar. We already have had a few posts in regards to this topic here on the Ultima Codex, thanks to Withstand the Fury Dragon (WTFDragon). We have had Chris Spears criticize the press coverage of Shroud of the Avatar (highlighted by MassivelyOP). We also just a new release, Release 71, that has dropped.
As so much has happened, some already covered, and some not so much. So today we will talk about the following news:
- Release 71
- Q4 and 2020 Schedule Update
- Book Reward Replacement & Press Coverage Discussion
Release 71
Release 71 launched Wednesday, October 30! There’s some changes and new content to explore, including:
- Tartarus got some new content including bosses, artifacts, and a 2nd entrance that leads to the mines area.
- Despair got updates in regards to door requirements.
- Batch Crafting Improvements
- Wyvern Head Trophies
- Economic Balancing & Player Home/Decoration updates
Q4 and 2020 Schedule Update
One nice thing with the Shroud of the Avatar forums is that Starr Long has regularly posted quarterly schedule information posts. With the recent Shroud Convention, they highlighted plans for Quarter 4 of 2019 as well as for 2020.
Q4 2019:
- LUA Integration (Phase 1)
- New Overworld for Ep 2 (maybe even allowing POT settling?)
- Inky Integration (Phase 1)
- New CS Team Member!
- Cross Promos with other like minded Projects (Crowfall, Pantheon, etc.)!!! (Phase 1)
- Paid Ads (Phase 1)
2020:
Misc:
- LUA Integration (multiple phases, Phase 1 in Q4!)
- Player GMs
- Player Vendor Polish
- More Trophy Data (Agriculture, Trophy Heads from creatures)
- Property Rating System (thumbs up!)
- New Creatures / New Bosses / More Tameables (Nightmares, Unicorns, etc.)
- New Skills
- Cross Promos with other like minded Projects (Crowfall, Pantheon, etc.)!!! (multiple phases)
- Paid Ads (multiple phases)
Ep 2!
- New Overworld
- News Scenes & New Towns
- Quest System Revamp (Inky open source scripting language)
- Journal Revamp (Inky open source scripting language)
- Theater System
- Treasure Hunting with Treasure Maps
- Item Affinity & Reputation
- Taming Expansions: Pet Leveling, Pet Skills, Pet Customization
- Customizable NPCs including Convos (Inky open source scripting language)
- Expanded Permissions system for containers & doors
- In-Game Achievement System
As you can see, some systems that have been in a big need for revamps are scheduled. A number of backers also (myself included) still have not gotten their customized-able NPC. Pluse the Episode 2 content that already was scheduled to be in game earlier this year, is targeted to hopefully be done sometime next year.
Book Reward Replacement & Press Coverage Discussion
The Shroud of the Avatar dev team has a history of bad decisions and mismanagement. In one of my older posts, I referenced a post form Starr Long where he admits of a few failings on their part. However, communication issues still plague the team, despite their own knowledge of it being an issue. Complaints about Customer Service, among other issues have been a sore topic for 2 years especially. Even recently Chris Spears posted that it has been “LONG overdue for us to take CS seriously.” Certainly with many lingering issues from the dialogue system, quests system, combat system, zones that feel incomplete, small player base, etc continuing to plague the game since the “official launch”, it called into question the dedication and “seriousness” of the team to take criticism over these issues for many back3ers.
An example of a recent issue leads us to the first topic of this section, the print book reward due to backers. The Sota Community had many who were upset with the lack of print book of Blade of the Avatar. Backers were told after the decision to have Tracy Hickman write 3 books, that it was Blade of the Avatar that backers would be getting and not Sword of Midras. This was confirmed by Dallas Snell at the time. Not long after complaints arose about the shipping issues with the backer owed physical reward boxes and the book not being included in the box (Sept 2018.), the developers said they were going to self publish it. However in this same post, Starr Long himself treats both books as exactly the same… creating confusion again by the lack of clear communication on this issue. Even then, backers learned they were unable to work out any deal to get copies of Sword of Midras as a replacement for the backer owed book. From this I would assume, the dev team had given up on what Dallas Snell had confirmed as early as 2016. It appears they decided that instead of doing anything with the Blade of the Blade of the Avatar version, they pursued Sword of Midras as a quick work around as it was already published. The main questions I would have is: Did they allocate any money only for the books after the Kickstarter was complete (and added to it as more backers joined); and if so, what happened to that money? Was it “re-purposed” for wages or something else?
Moving on to our final topic, as mentioned above, MassivelyOP is back in the SotA news again. Their own updates and articles on the game have been pretty balanced, if not more positive due to the fact they have not talked about much of the drama that has occurred in the SotA community and in the history of the game’s development. Chris Neal over at MassivelyOP covered Chris’s complaints about Press Coverage in a good way. He showed quite clearly that Chris was inaccurate with his complaints by simply proving a list of articles with title in a list for readers to make their own judgement.
The primary sites continuing to cover SotA are MassivelyOP and the Ultima Codex. While I will admit that at times I have been quite critical of Portalarium, Shroud of the Avatar, and dev team members. I typically cover the important news and tend to not editorialize often. Those times I have editorialized, I have given both criticism and praise. This is because there are some good things in the game. Just like MassivelyOP, feel free to look at my article names and light grey excerpt under them here on Ultima Codex and judge yourself.
Chris’s statement of “That false negative image the game has outside our community is the biggest dragon we have to slay to expand our user base. ” just makes me wonder if criticism of the game is only seen as negative by the devs as is seen by some, especially in the SotA Forums. Chris’s other statement of “A story with a title that suggests some project is screwing its users, near collapse, or that there is some nefarious and intentionally treacherous activity going on is always going to get clicks, comments, and attention.” certainly makes me wonder what articles he is looking at.
My take on the overall reporting of SotA is rather simple and straight forward. SotA is a niche game with a small player base. It isn’t going to bring in many clickthroughs or impressions. The simple fact that even the launch was briefly mentioned by a few is amazing, but as one of the Kickstarter games backed with such a large amount of money, it makes sense that only a token article would be done (with not articles since). I would say there may be some reason for the token article also being done because of Richard Garriott being involved with the game.
Issues like incomplete zones, the dialogue system, and the quest system drove many players away. The lack of transparency and communication drove others away. The heavy push towards MMO drove even more away. Lastly, the mismanagement issues which included the rewards and constant push of micro-transactions and vanity items also drove players away. If what is generally mostly objective articles of what is new and going on with SotA and the community with periodic criticism due to missteps by the dev team, is seen as an overbearing “dragon” that has to be slain, then the devs have not taken criticism seriously. Blaming press coverage and articles, and yes even posts on sites like Reddit and the reviews on Steam, as to why your game has not grown to the size you have wanted, seems to be their stance. I would say there is enough evidence to show that it is the quality of the game that has sadly kept the game from reaching a larger audience.
What are your thoughts? What is the reason you see as why Shroud of the Avatar has failed to reach more gamers? Why has most backers left? Obviously new games always pull in players away from previous games, but what other reasons are there?
“What is the reason you see as why Shroud of the Avatar has failed to reach more gamers? Why has most backers left?”
I think the overarching reason is the length of time. They drifted away from the game described in Kickstarter, had no real plan and just made it up as they went along, and managed backers’ money poorly, but they might have been ok had they released a coherent game in 2015 or 2016. The still unfinished junk they released in 2018 just didn’t cut it.
I would agree that mismanagement of the project and the funds is probably one of the biggest complaints anyone can have. I would go so far as to say it isn’t even really debatable. Not having the funds or basic things planned and confirmed and paid for early on, like the books for backers is just the tip of the iceberg.
Two things about the money.
They worried about getting the most for each dollar, rather than spending the dollars on the things they were supposed to.
They probably thought they were safe doing that because Travian said they were going to put $10 million into the game. However, that money was not forthcoming. Foolish of Portalarium to not get that money under contract.
@Frank given what happened to Travian after, I doubt they had $10 million to immediately commit to Portalarium anyway.
Re: Q4 2019 and 2020 Plans, I consider every item wishful thinking. I’ll believe it when I see it, and expect it to be half-baked upon arrival and never get better. Have they ever stuck to a plan or delivered on schedule?
Let me ask a question. Why did the fact that Chris took over in Jan/Feb have to be kept secret until October?
Also, why did they accusing people who discovered him taking over of being liars rather than admit it at the time?
And why, if this had been in the works for many months, wasn’t astatement prepared for seedinvestors that as far as I know have yet to receive a response from the referred lawyers.
It may be significant that it is 1 year after the Portalarium/Travian split and also 1 year after Richard removed CEO from his title.
Nevermind backers like myself basically getting banned for being upset and demanding some kind of accountability for the outright stealing money and waiting years to actually answer any questions about the book.
In the end, no matter their intentions, they are crooks and liars. Maybe they meant well but they made promises and created their own obstacles to delivering. I could care less about they game but they took money for creating the book which they SOLD and are still selling without providing any physical replacement in return.
RG and his team should be ashamed.
I think you killed the conversation.
That, or everyone is taking the long weekend off.
I’m not sure what else there is to say. Chris continues to work on his vision of a game that is not Richard’s vision of a game. Kickstarter obligations have been cast aside.
Any Kickstarter backers remaining are aware and if they continue to give money they must be happy with the direction.
Chris is focusing on giving tools and GM abilities to players so they can make their own content, because he and his contract employees are unable. Some people will like that.
So… conversation death due to concise summary of extant issues?
What was “Richard’s vision” even supposed to be? He said a million different things and claimed it would be all things to all people and they clearly didn’t have a team that could even remotely execute on it. If they recognized this and went for something simpler and lower budget then it might’ve turned out okay. Instead hey tried to make an MMORPG and a single player RPG and with an epic Ultima-style story and a spiritual successor to both the Ultima game and UO and they wanted player housing and a crafting based economy and blah blah blah. I don’t think the game was intended to be outright fraud but I can see how you can argue criminal negligence from these so called “industry veterans.”
I wonder if he even intended to be heavily involved throughout the entire game’s development or he decided to leave once he saw the mess that it turned into.
It’s just not a very good game. The gameplay, story, graphics, etc. are all mediocre and most other games on the market, both single player and MMOs, do them much better. The game was specifically marketed to Ultima fans and the mismanagement and drama have turned off many of them that wanted to like it, despite all the fundamental flaws with the game.
The highlight of the game seems to be the Second Life-style role playing that goes on in the game and the community built around that. I guess that’s a testament to the players because the original vision of the game as Lord British’s return to RPGs and all the other stuff they talked about in the kickstarter mostly did not happen. LB of course has not been involved with the game for years and they even stopped promoting it as “Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar.” And the company does seem to have stabilized itself financially. If they are actually hiring people then it means they are doing okay.
I remember. He said he wanted to make an online/offline, drop-in/drop-out RPG for smartphone, tablet, and PC… with the Unity Engine. It’s so stupid. Why would he think you could play an RPG the same way on your phone as on a PC? It’s a completely different demographic. And using Unity? Yeah right.
Imagine this timeline. Instead of a 3D MMO built on a shoe string budget, they used the money to make a top down cohesive sandbox RPG in a similar vein to Ultima 7? How crazy would that be? Lets go bonkers! What if, after successfully releasing their nostalgia roller coaster of a game that’s so popular now-a-days. They then took the same engine and built an MMO out of it?
I’d love to see an interview of what Tricky Dick Garriott has to say about the whole project.
Commenters, players, backers, whatever you wish to call them have been banned for pointing out obvious discrepancies concerning Portalarium’s planned actions and observed actions since near day one. Some of them weren’t being upset or demanding.
The Portalarium staff have been shown to be very sensitive. Over time they have been continuously unable to meet their goals thus shrinking the overton window on their forum to Shroud fanatics only. New people may trickle in and it will appear to be one big happy dance party, but they will quickly find themselves outside the norm and on the wrong side of Portalarium’s sensitivity.
I think a lot of people would be willing to forgive if Portalarium was at all, ever, honest about what is taking place. Instead all that is ever displayed is a depressing amount of incompetence which is defended by silence and or lies. This tends to stick with people.
The lack of honesty, self reflect, and ability to take constructive criticism are the 3 primary things that irk me the most. I can accept a mediocre game that I may only play periodically if there are fun people to play with. Case in point, most every MMO I have ever played. But bad behavior on the part of a dev team has proven lately how it can ruin a following, such as Fallout 76. Where even a devout community member, who made one of the best fan made tools for players, threw in the towel and took down his own project.
I agree GolemDragon, the thing I would REALLY like an answer to now, is what happens to those folks who have money “invested” in the SeedInvest? How the heck does that all work now that Portalarium is defunct and CatNip Games owns the SotA IP? Chris said that he would discuss this in detail, but all we have heard is, “If CatNip does well so will SeedInvestors.” This is NOT an answer and is a whole lot of HOGWASH! The only tidbit I have heard is that SeedInvest has been trying to contact them but they haven’t been able to reach anyone at the company. Which isn’t entirely shocking given that they don’t even have an office anymore.
They’re continued attempts to salvage this game are frustrating to say the least. There comes a point where you have to accept a wreck is a total loss, and just send it to the yard. There’s nothing here to save.
It’s sad, but true, and the longer this goes on, the worse those involved look.
The SeedInvest money is gone. The whole thing was basically a scam to begin with. They sold people non-transferable “shares” in the company with so many caveats and restrictions to make any investment in the company not much different than a kickstarter pledge. And they were even offering Kickstarter style perks and rewards. Just another way for Richard and co to steal more money from their fans.
I don’t disagree with that.
I didn’t buy in, because I couldn’t see any way to buy, sell, or trade shares, and no provision to pay dividends.
It seemed very shady from the start.