Actual number of players in Sota - more than you think

[Crazed Scavenger]

I'm a steady player in the game and so I have a pretty good feel for the actual player counts

Latest leader boards today (6/27/2019):

Player versus enemy (PvE) - probably the best benchmark

1 Day - I'm ranked 145 out of 763 active
7 days - I'm ranked 258 out of 1,864 active
30 days - I'm ranked 322 out of 3,639 active

To get on the board you have to change the default to display your ranking - so these are only the players who have the setting activated. I just activated mine about a month ago after it went live. More players are in game than these numbers show.

Also, I have friends that only craft and sell goods on vendors - so they don't make it into these stats either.

The Steam averages only count the players logging in through steam - there is also a direct login option - I personally use both depending on my computer.

My personal "friends" list in the game is over 1,000 - I get new "friend" requests every day.

Sota has implemented a "Looking for Group" feature that allows a player to join up with others without physically tracking them down - really solid feature and it lets player join up with veterans and new players with one click from a simple pull down. You then teleport to a location to go adventuring.

If you are in a group your player stats go up because of an acceleration bonus for leaning from players at a 100 level or above.

This game is complex and it needs better technology to really have a good experience. I recently upgraded my desktop and got a better GPU and more memory and it was great for Sota (and for other Steam games as well).

In the beginning you had to purchase a real estate Lot for your home with real money in a web store. The prices were very high to finance the game ($250 up to $11,000).

Yes that sounds crazy - but it was a way for the legacy Ultima Players (and the die hards from Tabula Rasa) to kick-in money to help to develop a game that was not under the thumb of a major studio.

The great part of the "player financed model" has been the interaction with the devs and players (regularly every month to this day - you participate through Twitch) though telethons (to raise more funds) as well as regular learning live streams.

Today, new players get a row Lot (and a house) even if you are playing for free.

The game has gotten better with each release (67 so far) - and it now feels more like a major piece of work rather then the early days when everything was being invented as we were playing. The graphics get better every month - and it sometimes feel like you are in a new place or have an even better character when the new polish shows up.

If you are looking for a static out-of-the-box perfection - this is not the game for you - if you like to be a part of an evolving world that is constantly getting better - then you may find a gaming home inside of Sota (especially with the latest releases).

Joining a guild is easy a well - people are constantly recruiting - and it's as easy as asking another player "how do I join?".

My downside for Sota - I do agree with the "empty feeling" you get if you wander around by yourself through certain areas of the enormous landscape.

Some player owned towns (POT) are dead zones because of the "friends of Sota" start-up financing players bought them - but they have not really done much with them yet.

Some of the early lot purchasers (who are not active players today because things were not ready for prime time back then) have created the same issue (not sure how to solve this one - chicken and egg problem).

On the other hand, a big number of larger POTs are thriving marketplaces with daily activity and lots of fellow players. You eventually figure out where the "hot spots" of player action is located (this game is huge - I still have not seen every area and town).

The latest new Sota feature is "player built dungeons" (imagine dungeons and dragons only for real in a game).

These are places to explore and fight - not created by Devs - but by fellow players - some of them are really amazing eye candy and they can be challenging depending on the MOB levels deployed by the dungeon masters as they build their own creations.

Sota is just not really comparable to the highly financed commercial games that we all love to play as well. The game is a work in progress that follows in the traditions of Ultima and Lord British with a huge amount of direct player input.

All of us who love the game and who have helped to shape it are relived by the efficiency measures now being taken by Portalarium (especially Devs now working from home from all over the world).

A new monthly $9 fee option has been introduced to keep important COTOs and potions flowing into player loot chests (at a discount) - which also gets cash flow to sustain the game itself (Win/Win).

Yes - there are bugs - but the responses to the high priority items seem to be sincere and timely - my list is very short these days.

Sometimes "bugs" can also be a misunderstanding around actual game play and the rich complexity of Sota (having an item "locked" in inventory and forgetting to unlock it before use as an example). I see those listed on this forum from time to time.

Anyway - I wanted to get some feedback from an actual long time player into the forums for those who are considering giving Sota a try through Steam.

I hope to see you in the game ... and send me a friend request when you get online.

- Crazed Scavenger

[Crazed Scavenger]

If you take a look at the map at this link you can see all of the POTs created by players (everything on the map with a white name):

https://d2sx9mrt4zumaq.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/R67_Map_of_Novia_POT.jpg

This map is only one of the two major gaming areas (and a third is in the works).

If you consider the POT governors to be "whales" then there are more than just a few - there are dozens and dozens.

Just this month three new POTs were added. A number more were upgraded. Several new fighting areas were released for advanced players.

Does Sota cater their thinking to these players? Yes, absolutely, but these are the players (many of them long time Ultima players) who are financing a chunk of the current enhancements benefiting the rest of us.

I personally don't have a POT so no problem for me if they have a bit bigger voice in the game direction. Their ideas have a lot of credibility.

All games have financial influence and control from somewhere. Either the mega gaming studios, private investors, or in-game "whales". I actually think it's a good thing having the players fund and influence.

It's an interesting and non-traditional way to build a game - but it also has its own player rewards in being a part of this unique community approach to building Sota.

Especially when great ideas from a live stream you log into on Twitch show up in-game six months later (most streams have about 800 to several thousand players tuning in) - a surprisingly committed group.

Obviously the downside is the potential negative reactions from the more traditional commercial game players who don't want to be a part of the Dev process and demand absolute perfection with their limited time (I totally get that feedback).

The other risk is the POT owners who were hoping for more action and volume but the reality of POTs (and the related room leasing system) has been a slow building process. Some POTs are fully occupied and buzzing - others are ghost towns. I go to the busy ones.

I also feel that the whole "lodging" idea is technically there (in rental buildings) - but who really wants to setup in someone else's place?

Now that one to me is a "dead man walking" idea.

I know the rental property idea is a source of frustration for the landlords (probably "whales") who created their potential rental properties - but from what I see - no one is really leasing.

Now that property Lot deeds are given to every player (for free) the idea of players making rental rooms available is much less attractive - I'm sure that was a very tough decision by Sota to give everyone a free deed rather than sticking to the original idea of leasing from landlords (I heard about that decision for weeks).

Personally, I'm all for enabling the increased player base by giving every new player a property and house to start with - the major fun of the game is both fighting and building up your holdings. You can actually do it for free if you want in this game.

I'll accept the gripping (which is totally legit) from the disgruntled "whales" who are not seeing the truth of the new player feedback and dynamic. But personally I'l take the steadily increasing player base and help to figure out ways to help benefit POT governors in other ways. The majority of the POT governors I interact with simply love building cities and watching other players use them. The same goes for the new player built dungeons.

One final thought, the flood of players many were expecting several years ago didn't really happen - but the active base has never really left. Now I'm seeing a steady flow of new players giving it a try - and the Sota Devs continue to enhance those early game play areas to get players though the learning curve and into the mainstream action with some really great content (I go back and explore it often).

This forum is full of four years of amazingly positive feedback from fans, and some distressful negative feedback while the game has been going through development real-time before our eyes - yet the releases keep coming. It's sooo much better than 24 months ago.

Many of us can also see and feel the ever growing active player base in-game which is the true measure of the state of Sota.

- Crazed

[oplek]

Concurrency is a good measure of the health of the game.

A player show logs in to check out the latest release, kills 2-3 things, then logs off... for the rest of the release; this is not a marker of health. To call them "active" is farcical. Yet, that'll show up (as well as dominate) the leader board list. That list only measures how many characters have "touched" the game in the past month. This is not a measure of concurrency.

Beyond that, the game is so unoptimized that it's difficult to have multiple clients going at the same time, so the concurrency numbers more represent unique players.

I'm not sure why people keep equating the Steam numbers to the leader board numbers. They're not even the same units. When we actually translate these leader board numbers to something resembling concurrency numbers, they're abysmal.


"My personal "friends" list in the game is over 1,000 - I get new "friend" requests every day."

How many of those people have stop playing? How many of them do play? My list isn't gigantic, but it's lengthy, and the majority haven't logged in, in at least months, if not years. So the length of the friends list isn't a useful metric.


"On the other hand, a big number of larger POTs are thriving marketplaces with daily activity and lots of fellow players."

The economy is fundamentally broken and dysfunctional, driven mostly by RMTers and speculators. Contrary to how Chris comprehends economies, the COTO price isn't the sole metric. There's key components missing from how the game works, such as the ability to lose items (you can craft endless greenhouses but they never need replacing, so the only way they leave the economy is if the person who owns it, quits).


"Sota has implemented a "Looking for Group" feature that allows a player to join up with others without physically tracking them down"

Yes, if you want to A) go to UT or B) fish. Honestly, I found this feature to be usless without the ability to schedule events ahead of time, so people can plan ahead.


"A new monthly $9 fee option has been introduced to keep important COTOs and potions flowing into player loot chests (at a discount) - which also gets cash flow to sustain the game itself (Win/Win)."

If you like jacked up prices, come to Shroud! You used to be able to buy COTOs for $5. Not anymore!


"if you like to be a part of an evolving world that is constantly getting better - then you may find a gaming home inside of Sota (especially with the latest releases). "

After 3 years, I'm weary of hearing this. The improvements are down to a trickle now.

[oplek]

If Portalarium were to ask the Oracle about their Courage and Truth status, she'd go all Judge Judy on them.

[CipherΞHawk]

Originally posted by Gamer Lady Jules:

Leaderboard will NOT tell anyone player count. I’ve said this so many times it’s starting to really piss me off.

- The leaderboard shows a RANKING system and CHARACTERS, NOT PLAYERS!!!
- You can have several characters sharing the same rank.
- Many players have multiple characters, so many of those could be same player using an alt. Therefore no way to tell what character belongs to what player.

You said yourself -
“Also, I have friends that only craft and sell goods on vendors - so they don't make it into these stats either.” So not all characters are captured.

“The Steam averages only count the players logging in through steam - there is also a direct login option - I personally use both depending on my computer.”

The leaderboard captures certain data regardless of which launcher is used therefore your point is mute.
Also your stating you use both, so doubling figures. That makes true numbers harder to ascertain.

Fact of the matter is the leaderboard is an inefficient way to obtain player numbers.

“If you take a look at the map at this link you can see all of the POTs created by players”

POT maps are known for being out of date.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/please-for-the-love-of-the-virtues-fix-the-maps.155165/page-2#post-1234087

“Player versus enemy (PvE) - probably the best benchmark”

The true definition of PvE is Player vs Environment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_versus_environment

“I'm a steady player in the game and so I have a pretty good feel for the actual player counts.
My personal "friends" list in the game is over 1,000 - I get new "friend" requests every day.”

And how long have you played the game in order to accumulate those ‘1000’ friends?
(Again for others reading the friends list is characters not players, so could be a new player, or equally could be a new alt character of a player.)

“This game is complex and it needs better technology to really have a good experience. I recently upgraded my desktop and got a better GPU and more memory and it was great for Sota (and for other Steam games as well).”

No it doesn’t need better technology, it needs better optimisation and fixes.
Nobody should require to upgrade their machine for this game.
It’s another known issue that the game has memory leaks - [https://]docs.google.com/document/d/1EQczZJxj38npLbysCEjSa_xiWwx7jQ9zFgvX9yPg2xY/pub
(‘Performance - 7. Memory leaks can occur when changing scenes. To the Overworld especially.’)
Optimisation is also noted in those same notes-(‘Performance - 9. There may be framerate issues and slowdown in game, as optimizations are ongoing.’)
Performance is even striked through on the latest release 67 notes, which means it didn’t make that release, further showing performance is an ongoing issue.
([https://]www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=109172

People say it’s graphics intensive, but it isn’t, it just has far too many objects (meshes) to load within each small environment (scene) and therefore glugs CPU power. That’s not the fault of the players computer specs.

“Today, new players get a row Lot (and a house) even if you are playing for free.”

To clarify, as quoted by Spoon on the main forums - ‘What you get from completing an outskirt is a row deed.
What you get from completing the shroud main story is a village deed and a home.’
([https://]www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/public-service-announcement-dont-buy-re-teachable-recipes-dungeons-for-instance.153709/#post-1225486)

“The game has gotten better with each release (67 so far) - and it now feels more like a major piece of work rather then the early days when everything was being invented as we were playing.”

Not exactly true when the main dev is still creating (inventing) new content live on twitch, such as the latest area Tartarus. The leaderboard is a new ‘invention’ etc.
So everything is still “being invented” even to this day.

“The graphics get better every month”

The graphics are the same as they have always been. The only thing that is ‘better’ is that areas are being slowly added to over time with more objects.
Adding shaders, and using graphics injectors doesn’t make things better.

“On the other hand, a big number of larger POTs are thriving marketplaces with daily activity and lots of fellow players. You eventually figure out where the "hot spots" of player action is located (this game is huge - I still have not seen every area and town).”

If this game had as big a population as people like to boast about, it wouldn’t have “hot spots”, it wouldn’t have empty lots and towns, it wouldn’t feel empty, and it wouldn’t be hard bumping into people all the time.

“The latest new Sota feature is "player built dungeons" (imagine dungeons and dragons only for real in a game). ”

Another area of the game started on but not completed.
Again see known issues - ‘Player-Made Dungeons are a work in progress and may have significant bugs and unimplemented features.
You cannot yet obtain “encounter rooms” that include attackable enemies. (Encounter rooms are scheduled for a future release.)’
[https://]docs.google.com/document/d/1EQczZJxj38npLbysCEjSa_xiWwx7jQ9zFgvX9yPg2xY/pub

“This forum is full of four years of amazingly positive feedback from fans”

That’s because for many of those four years any negative feedback was silenced and deleted, and those who gave negative feedback banned from the forums without any kind of warning or chance to appeal. It’s only recently, due to lack of staff (and remaining staff no longer working in an office) that negative feedback has been able to find its way onto the forums without censorship. Now we have the ‘Oracle watcher’ who acts as forum moderator and allows constructive criticisms.

Edit: Steam is being a pain with links. Some links I have had to add [ and ], copy paste the link and remove the [ and ] to make the link work.
I have tested them though, and clicking on the main part of the link seems to work.

Quoted for truth. Man you hit the nail right on the head with this post. Especially the part about having to upgrade your system to even get the game to run correctly.

[Crazed Scavenger]

Actually all these in-game dungeon encounter rooms are all active and functioning:

Troll Dungeon Encounter - Troll Totem
Dungeon Lich Encounter , Hard Converted Stone Dungeon Room (Lich Boss) - Lich Totem
Stone Dungeon Random Encounter #1 Spawning - Kobold Totem
Stone Dungeon Random Encounter #2 Spawning - Lich Totem
Stone Dungeon Random Encounter #3 Spawning - Lich Totem
Rotunda Encounter Room (converted Rotunda OR new loot drop) - Kobold Totem
Stone Throne Room (The Fall) - Lich Totem
Stone Dungeon Room (Owl's Head Sewer) - Lich Totem

You can find working dungeons with these rooms which are in "adventure mode" (meaning you can fight creatures) in places like Brittany Alleys, New Brittanian Market, Silverdale Market, Mediolanum, and many others.

Many other encounter rooms can be built already - but the totems for them have not been activated yet - but you can still collect the materials and add them to a dungeon now (without a totem) instead of waiting until later.


Regarding "Looking for Groups" - I see grouping mainly forming around the following:

- Fighting in Upper Tears
- Hunting Trolls
- Killing Dragons (especially the ancient ones)
- Fishing contests
- Pub crawls
- Running level 8+ areas like the Rise and the Fall
- Newbie runs
- Crafting GM training
- Etc.

Thanks for all the discussion above - see you in the game...

- Crazed

[Urwendor]

I guess all those totems are very expensive to get if you can´t grind for them by yourself?

[Crazed Scavenger]

It takes 100 essences to make a totem.

So the fast path to get those (if you grind rather than buy) is Upper Tears for lich essence, ruined keep (or mountain passes) for troll essence, and high level places like Krul for Kobold essence.

I increasingly see both essence and totems for sale everywhere - and the price will probably go down like everything else in this game as more and more of it becomes available in the economy.