Game Issues

[AmonGwareth]

They can give themselves 30k a year salaries, work 15 hours a week then go to their primary job making another XXX income because this game requires so little. They got it made

I can assure you that we aren't doing either of those things... paying ourselves crazy salaries or only working 15 hours a week. That said, you underestimate the cost of hosting/bandwidth. Neither is cheap and the game may be 11 years old but it still requires a rack of servers for each shard as well as website and support hosting. Hardware does fail and has to be replaced. we spent a lot of money upgrading components a while back. So, no, its not all money in the bank so to speak.

That said, since we aren't funded by a large company like EA or Activision we don't have them breathing down our neck to make millions under threat of imminent shutdown. We're owned by the folks making the game and so there won't be a shutdown anytime soon so long as people are playing (and paying).

Some feedback on other points:

1) Class changing - This gets tricky when you consider experience. Its not a new request, that's for sure. But it's not something we're ready to do yet either.

2) Mining/Gathering - Istaria is not WoW or other theme-park games. Crafting in any MMO has a time-sink. For Istaria that time-sink is primarily in the gathering step. Crafted items are instantly made once you have the necessary resources. In other MMOs, such as WoW, for example, the time sink is split between finding the resources and making the items. Nodes are relatively rare so you have to hunt them down (as opposed to being in fields like here) and then you have a casting-style bar for making the items. One at a time, as opposed to bulk. Hard to say which is better, though certainly the experience itself may feel quicker in WoW... but it really isn't. That said, we won't be changing that as the system is a fundamental core piece of the game.

3) Combat Speed - This is also another aspect that has been discussed for years. And, as pointed out, it would not be an easy switch and would require TONS of play-testing. No tjust for the speed, but for the monster balance and level speed and so on. All of these things are tied together. 11 years in, probably not a good idea to change them.

Thank you all for your feedback. It is appreciated. Keep it coming!

[Vahrokh]

Thank you all for your feedback. It is appreciated. Keep it coming!

May I give feedback too?

I know, half of me says: "why, oh WHY do you still care about an ancient game you barely play?".
But the other half just can't let Istaria go. I am about to renew one of my subs which just expired... I have multiple subs since day zero.

In the other thread I have posted low cost SEO tips about how to make Istaria more visible without expensive marketing campaigns, I suppose you have seen it.

Here instead I'd like to talk about the game.

- The first showstopper is the seemingly endless time required to login. Not sure it can be avoided but I am sure a number of people gave up over this.

- The second is the super-ancient "memory leak" that makes the game crash after few ports around. Then, you have to wait for another long time to get back in game (see above). Why after 12 years we still have this is beyond me.

- Gameplay. I LOVE quests. The more the merrier! But in Istaria, even with maximum sight distance settings, the NPCs with a quest only show up if I go up close them. In a game with huge continents, in a game without expecially crafted "valleys" where you are "meant" (game designed) to find NPCs, then a player looking for quests is really out of luck.
I am pretty sure that even after all these years I have still who knows how many quests to do... I just don't see them.

Couldn't you put a blue dot on the map or something within 1 kilometer of NPCs with a quest? I don't ask to be given the exact spot (although every other game does that) but just to know that, if I search well enough, I may find that NPC hidden under the 33th sand hill in that 40000 squared miles desert.

- Also, I'd love for lore quests, loads of them! I so enjoyed the dragons lore, when you released RoP and ARoP I adsorbed every single character of the quests texts like a dry sponge does with water. You CAN create massively awesome quests, please keep doing it and maybe make it humanly possible to find them .

- Wouldn't it be possible to implement more detailed character textures? I don't mind about revamping the graphics engine, retexturing the whole Istaria or whatever. But dragons have a very small and finite number of available body textures, is it impossible making a better detailed version of their textures? (maybe let people be able to switch them off if their 2003 PC can't handle them).
I am not asking about altering their bones system (I know the software used for that, it'd be OUCH!), just the body textures.
Bipeds would have it harder, because I guess it's not as awesome seeing a bikinis upgrade, they wear stuff and that stuff has the old textures on it and there's a lot of it to redo. But it could be done a bit at a time.

- The last feedback: I know this is hard to change if not impossible. Until some years ago, I felt I had a lot more purpose playing Istaria. I had the rare recipes, I was a renowed spellcrafter who would provide unmatched service (including delivering the crafted spells / gear directly to the buyer, wherever he was).
Now? I am just "another random". Everyone seemingly have everything. It's almost rude to ask to get paid... money is less than worthless anyway (see huge offers for even mildly rare items). Everyone are independent, can do everything, a lot are "Master <enter here every possible title>".
I loved to have to interact with people and vice versa to give each other some services. Now, the only way to get something vaguely like that is to work for building plots. I have done that till I got huge nausea just at cutting another tree.
Isn't anything possible to bring back some of the past freshness and players interaction?

[AmonGwareth]

Vahrokh, your suggestions for the website were passed along to the tech-team. Thank you.

Regarding your other points:

1. Login times - I believe the tech team is aware of these issues and looking into it.
2. Had a player send us a message just the other day saying that they remained logged in and active (porting and all) for hours without memory usage going above 850mb and no crashes using the latest Blight client. So, there is hope. Btw, no issues of this sort are ever straight-forward or easy to fix, much less easy to find in the first place.
3. NPCs - We've added tons of NPCs with quests to the first two tiers. The quests themselves lead you from one to another in the pattern you have described. 99% of the time they follow the roads and give you directions so that you don't need markers on the map.
4. We add lore specific quests when we can. There are six currently: Axe of Dorogath, Birth of the Myloc, Galderos' Heart, Hammer of Kings, Legend of the Burning Archer, and Nyrevin's Apologies.
5. Character textures - I cannot answer this personally so I've passed it along to Victoria and asked that she post here.
6. Purpose - Harder said than done. We've tried to offer more for players with Confectioner, with a Scholar revamp (adding scrolls), and with Crystalshaper. However, with a small player-base nearly everyone already knows everything and will consume any content faster than we can create it. We'll again try it with the Epic items since they will all involve some level of crafting (more complex than before). And we always add small bits here and there, such as special recipes (Island of Ice, Bruttien Homestead, etc). But, there is no one single fix for it all, not with a game that is 11 years old.

Hope this helps. Thanks for taking the time to write up your feedback.

[Vahrokh]

Thank you for replying.

I admire you.


I am not known for saying this to many people.