Shroud of the Avatar [Steam, Official Site], the RPG that has single-player and selective online modes has a big new release out. You can also try it for free for a few days to see if you want to buy it. I tried it again and have some thoughts for you.
To try it free right now, head to this page and follow the instructions. It does have a few caveats like not being able to trade with other players and it's online only for the trial.
I haven't progressed far at all in the game, these are my thoughts as someone who is new to it taking on their new and improved starting experience. After all, initial impressions with huge games like this can kill it or win it in people's minds quite quickly.
First of all, I really do like how they've done the game, with the ability to completely play by yourself, or choose one of the online modes if you want. The fact that it's an RPG that doesn't force you one way or the other is fantastic. That alone makes me really like it.
The new update upgrades their version of Unity to 5.5, so we should see some improvements on Linux thanks to that. There's a ton of other editions, including a continued revamp of the starting experience. You can see the full changelog here.
One issue I had previously was the conversation system, of needing to type out manually your replies to NPCs. This has been fixed and you can now simply click certain words to reply to them, this has made it a lot more accessible than it was previously. That's been there for a while now, but it has been a year+ since I last played it. You also have the options listed to click below the chat box, to make it easier again. In the chat box, they now use different colours between conversational chat and system functions, like chat being white, and it telling you about accessing your journal with J being in a brownish colour. The chat and interactions system on a whole has been vastly improved and it's actually really nicely done now.
The initial start of the game has also unsurprisingly come a long way too. Originally it dropped you into some sort of destroyed village, but now you start off with actually setting up your character in a special starting area. This starting area guides you along a few of the basics like movement and how to use the conversation system. Once ready, you speak to an Oracle who asks you a few questions and you're given a character type as an outcome, but of course, you can choose to go a different path if you so desire. I chose to be a bowman, since I love my bow and arrow in any RPG and it also happened to be the easiest starting path.
Quests in Shroud take on a very different form to other RPGs where it's not obvious right away what you should be doing. You take on quests from conversations, asking anyone and everyone if they need any help. Some obviously don't but some will give you a whole new quest-line to play through. It gives it a very unique feel not found in many RPGs available today, to make you do a little more real exploration yourself with less hand-holding. You don't just get quests from chatting, you can also earn emotes from talking to various people, like a backflip for example.
They do still need to work some more on the starting experience, as I quickly got lost. Part of this is the map items you get have markers on them, are written in Runic text. I get that games want immersion, but forcing Runic text on people is only going to cause issues. It does, as there's many posts complaining about it. I had no idea where anything was or what anything is when looking at map items due to this. I imagine though, the more I walk around the more I will discover as I become familiar with the surroundings. That leads me to one thing: the community. I've only spoken to one other player online and they were surprisingly polite and helpful in directing me. I do suggest checking out the online map though, as it helped remove a little frustration for me.
Travel in the game is done on an Overworld map, where you literally walk across this big map and enter locations if you so choose. You can see other players near you walking across the map if you're playing it online too! I like this, as it gives you a better feeling about the grand scale of the game and it does look pretty decent.
Combat feels very much like you find in World of Warcraft. You have a hotbar of abilities, with it all played out in real time. What I like is that your abilities level up the more you use them (like, say, Skyrim). As a bowman, simply firing off arrows constantly was levelling up my basic bow abilities, for example. My short time in the game ended when three spiders surrounded me and stuck me in place with their web, then a wolf came along and a bunch of skeletons were also approaching. The combat is brutal and actually damn fun.
Death comes in the form of becoming a ghost, you cannot really do anything but wait around until the (rather long) respawn timer finishes counting down. I personally find it to be too long, but I'm sure it's in a long line of adjustments to be made before the final release.
Performance seems as bad as ever though, on my 980ti on Very High settings it really crawled in places. Hopefully they will continue to update their Unity version to take on recent performance optimizations (and perhaps Vulkan as well), as well as do more optimization themselves.
Issues
- It suffers the usual Unity issues with multiple monitors: It seems to select a resolution of combined monitors, although it actually seems like it correctly display at 1920x1080 instead. It might just be a UI bug in the settings page.
- The main map feature you get by pressing the hotkey 'M' is not currently supported on Linux.
Overall, performance issues aside, the developers are crafting a reasonably impressive experience that RPG fans might want to take a look at on Linux. I wouldn't recommend it for the impatient though for sure, it will take quite some time to learn. If you want an easy to understand MMO take a look at Albion Online, but if you want a very in-depth RPG that offer single-player than Shroud of the Avatar is a definite contender on Linux. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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To try it free right now, head to this page and follow the instructions. It does have a few caveats like not being able to trade with other players and it's online only for the trial.
I haven't progressed far at all in the game, these are my thoughts as someone who is new to it taking on their new and improved starting experience. After all, initial impressions with huge games like this can kill it or win it in people's minds quite quickly.
First of all, I really do like how they've done the game, with the ability to completely play by yourself, or choose one of the online modes if you want. The fact that it's an RPG that doesn't force you one way or the other is fantastic. That alone makes me really like it.
The new update upgrades their version of Unity to 5.5, so we should see some improvements on Linux thanks to that. There's a ton of other editions, including a continued revamp of the starting experience. You can see the full changelog here.
One issue I had previously was the conversation system, of needing to type out manually your replies to NPCs. This has been fixed and you can now simply click certain words to reply to them, this has made it a lot more accessible than it was previously. That's been there for a while now, but it has been a year+ since I last played it. You also have the options listed to click below the chat box, to make it easier again. In the chat box, they now use different colours between conversational chat and system functions, like chat being white, and it telling you about accessing your journal with J being in a brownish colour. The chat and interactions system on a whole has been vastly improved and it's actually really nicely done now.
The initial start of the game has also unsurprisingly come a long way too. Originally it dropped you into some sort of destroyed village, but now you start off with actually setting up your character in a special starting area. This starting area guides you along a few of the basics like movement and how to use the conversation system. Once ready, you speak to an Oracle who asks you a few questions and you're given a character type as an outcome, but of course, you can choose to go a different path if you so desire. I chose to be a bowman, since I love my bow and arrow in any RPG and it also happened to be the easiest starting path.
Quests in Shroud take on a very different form to other RPGs where it's not obvious right away what you should be doing. You take on quests from conversations, asking anyone and everyone if they need any help. Some obviously don't but some will give you a whole new quest-line to play through. It gives it a very unique feel not found in many RPGs available today, to make you do a little more real exploration yourself with less hand-holding. You don't just get quests from chatting, you can also earn emotes from talking to various people, like a backflip for example.
They do still need to work some more on the starting experience, as I quickly got lost. Part of this is the map items you get have markers on them, are written in Runic text. I get that games want immersion, but forcing Runic text on people is only going to cause issues. It does, as there's many posts complaining about it. I had no idea where anything was or what anything is when looking at map items due to this. I imagine though, the more I walk around the more I will discover as I become familiar with the surroundings. That leads me to one thing: the community. I've only spoken to one other player online and they were surprisingly polite and helpful in directing me. I do suggest checking out the online map though, as it helped remove a little frustration for me.
Travel in the game is done on an Overworld map, where you literally walk across this big map and enter locations if you so choose. You can see other players near you walking across the map if you're playing it online too! I like this, as it gives you a better feeling about the grand scale of the game and it does look pretty decent.
Combat feels very much like you find in World of Warcraft. You have a hotbar of abilities, with it all played out in real time. What I like is that your abilities level up the more you use them (like, say, Skyrim). As a bowman, simply firing off arrows constantly was levelling up my basic bow abilities, for example. My short time in the game ended when three spiders surrounded me and stuck me in place with their web, then a wolf came along and a bunch of skeletons were also approaching. The combat is brutal and actually damn fun.
Death comes in the form of becoming a ghost, you cannot really do anything but wait around until the (rather long) respawn timer finishes counting down. I personally find it to be too long, but I'm sure it's in a long line of adjustments to be made before the final release.
Performance seems as bad as ever though, on my 980ti on Very High settings it really crawled in places. Hopefully they will continue to update their Unity version to take on recent performance optimizations (and perhaps Vulkan as well), as well as do more optimization themselves.
Issues
- It suffers the usual Unity issues with multiple monitors: It seems to select a resolution of combined monitors, although it actually seems like it correctly display at 1920x1080 instead. It might just be a UI bug in the settings page.
- The main map feature you get by pressing the hotkey 'M' is not currently supported on Linux.
Overall, performance issues aside, the developers are crafting a reasonably impressive experience that RPG fans might want to take a look at on Linux. I wouldn't recommend it for the impatient though for sure, it will take quite some time to learn. If you want an easy to understand MMO take a look at Albion Online, but if you want a very in-depth RPG that offer single-player than Shroud of the Avatar is a definite contender on Linux. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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14 comments
BTW the main map feature is integration with sotamap.com.
With regards to the combat system, the initial setup is a typical hot-bar style affair but you can, and should, be using the dynamic style card system instead of the fixed hot-bar as it is not only faster but it also allows you to combo skills. But I do understand as I still use the initial setup because it's what I'm used to and can't be arsed to change it even though I should.
With regards to the combat system, the initial setup is a typical hot-bar style affair but you can, and should, be using the dynamic style card system instead of the fixed hot-bar as it is not only faster but it also allows you to combo skills. But I do understand as I still use the initial setup because it's what I'm used to and can't be arsed to change it even though I should.
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Nice review, Liam! Thank you. I think SotA was one of the first games I put on my Steam wishlist years ago. I still follow its updates as well, but its nothing like being able to read a good review. I'm glad you did this.
I do wonder about what you said regarding meeting other players online. Is this an instant PvP situation where I'm likely to be trounced for the pleasure of the other player? Or is PvP limited to allocated areas of the map, or a separate server, or sump'in?
I might just go ahead and try it out, although I know I'll one day buy it --- once it's out of beta. Could you tell me, please, how large the download is, and also, if you're still on Antergos, what steps you took to install it. It looks like it's a .deb package, and I've not confronted trying to install a .deb package on an Arch-based distro (Manjaro, in my case).
I do wonder about what you said regarding meeting other players online. Is this an instant PvP situation where I'm likely to be trounced for the pleasure of the other player? Or is PvP limited to allocated areas of the map, or a separate server, or sump'in?
I might just go ahead and try it out, although I know I'll one day buy it --- once it's out of beta. Could you tell me, please, how large the download is, and also, if you're still on Antergos, what steps you took to install it. It looks like it's a .deb package, and I've not confronted trying to install a .deb package on an Arch-based distro (Manjaro, in my case).
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I will try it again, but from my reading over the past few years, it seems they wasted potential here.
Are these correct :
- map is cut is several little pieces with loading screen and no real sense of openworld
- you have to pay for the game, and the cash shop is a huge trap with ingame house costing 200+€ up to 1000+€, rent, deed, and many other things that you "must have" to have a real MMOG experience
- whatever more than a basic gameplay experience, you have to pay with real money
- even for being part of the forum, you need to pay 5€
- Little activity around the game beside the official voices
Are these correct :
- map is cut is several little pieces with loading screen and no real sense of openworld
- you have to pay for the game, and the cash shop is a huge trap with ingame house costing 200+€ up to 1000+€, rent, deed, and many other things that you "must have" to have a real MMOG experience
- whatever more than a basic gameplay experience, you have to pay with real money
- even for being part of the forum, you need to pay 5€
- Little activity around the game beside the official voices
1 Likes, Who?
I've an early access key (I'm backer) and here-and-there play it. I do like what they want to do, but I have a real issue with all the loading screens.
I don't know if they're limited by engine choice, but this does not feel like a "continous" world. It feels like dozens of very-ultra-small areas for certain purposes where you get a 3 minute loading screen between those areas.
I hope for a fantasy / realistic MMORPG for Linux, but that one isn't going to be for me if they're serious about the world map + loading screens to ultra-tiny areas.
Last edited by STiAT on 7 April 2017 at 2:32 pm UTC
I don't know if they're limited by engine choice, but this does not feel like a "continous" world. It feels like dozens of very-ultra-small areas for certain purposes where you get a 3 minute loading screen between those areas.
I hope for a fantasy / realistic MMORPG for Linux, but that one isn't going to be for me if they're serious about the world map + loading screens to ultra-tiny areas.
Last edited by STiAT on 7 April 2017 at 2:32 pm UTC
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Loading screens everywhere and the overworld map are TOTALLY immersion-breaking. Hell, even with zone-loading you can make an amazing online RPG (looking at you Guild Wars 1), but they managed to screw it up with SotA.
Early backer here, really regret having spent 50 euros on this. Also terrible performance for bad graphics... A pitty.
Last edited by khalismur on 7 April 2017 at 3:21 pm UTC
Early backer here, really regret having spent 50 euros on this. Also terrible performance for bad graphics... A pitty.
Last edited by khalismur on 7 April 2017 at 3:21 pm UTC
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wintermute Apr 7, 2017
Part of this is the map items you get have markers on them, are written in Runic text.
There is an option to show English names on the overworld map, you have to turn it on yourself though. For the in game map: Windows and Mac users got SotaMap integrated in this release, Linux users should be getting it next month.
Combat feels very much like you find in World of Warcraft. You have a hotbar of abilities, with it all played out in real time.
It's actually (and somewhat controversially) a bit different, but as part of the improved new user experience it's now all locked down to start with. Talk to a skills trainer to unlock the full deck system.
Death comes in the form of becoming a ghost, you cannot really do anything but wait around
If you look on your compass when you're dead you will see ankh markers (like a stone cross but with an oval for the top bar), head to one of the ankhs to resurrect.
Also, please post your feedback (or even just a link to this) in the new player experience feedback section of the forum.
Last edited by wintermute on 7 April 2017 at 4:03 pm UTC
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Joeyboots80 Apr 7, 2017
I have been playing this title off and on for a year now. It has come a long way since the early alpha days. Nice article Liam, was a good read. Cheers.
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wintermute Apr 7, 2017
- map is cut is several little pieces with loading screen and no real sense of openworld
There are many much larger scenes these days, these are mostly not suitable for a low level adventurer however. They are trying to address this by putting 'outskirts' scenes between the current starting scenes and the first town on your quest path to minimize the number of loading screens in the first few hours of play. However yes, there are still many loading screens.
- you have to pay for the game, and the cash shop is a huge trap with ingame house costing 200+€ up to 1000+€, rent, deed, and many other things that you "must have" to have a real MMOG experience
If you feel that you "must have" a house then there are several options: you can buy a deed in the add-on store; you can win a deed in the monthly in-game lottery; you can buy a deed from another player outside the game with real money; you can buy a deed with in-game gold from a player vendor. There are also a number of people with player owned towns (POTs) who are willing to loan out their surplus housing to new players.
You can buy a house if you want, but you don't need one for a row lot. Plenty of players in game have extra houses from their pledges which are for sale on vendors, there are also seven craftable houses.
- whatever more than a basic gameplay experience, you have to pay with real money
Notwithstanding the free trial, you have to buy the game to play it all. Once you have purchased 'game access' however you can go wherever you want and play how you want without buyiing anything else with real money. The add-on store stuff is mostly cosmetic and/or has in-game craftable equivalents.
- even for being part of the forum, you need to pay 5€
Yes. Though some sub-forums have been opened up for the free trial weekend.
- Little activity around the game beside the official voices
Most of the activity around the game is the players I would say - SotaMap, the various crafting websites, the story writing competition and most of the other events are player driven.
Last edited by wintermute on 7 April 2017 at 4:26 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
wintermute Apr 7, 2017
Sorry, missed this post earlier.
You can flag for open PvP by visiting the Oracle and asking to have your protections removed, you can then be attacked and/or pick-pocketed in any scene. There are also PvP areas, if you enter them you will automatically be flagged for PvP while in them. You can also duel with another player without flagging for PvP. Note that free trial players cannot flag for open PvP and, while you can enter the PvP zones, you won't drop any loot.
In general, talk to other players, they are just about the best content in the game ;)
If you see people with the Hospitaller title know that they have chosen that title to indicate they're willing to help out new players with the game.
The install directory is currently taking up 8.2GB of diskspace for both game and launcher on my laptop. Note that the launcher downloads a bunch of zip files which are then kept in a cache so that you can share them later (it uses bittorrent) which are not actually necessary for playing the game (it's just nice to help other players download faster). The download of the full game is about 4GB, there will probably be a patch or two over the weekend but that will just be changed files.
I do wonder about what you said regarding meeting other players online. Is this an instant PvP situation where I'm likely to be trounced for the pleasure of the other player? Or is PvP limited to allocated areas of the map, or a separate server, or sump'in?
You can flag for open PvP by visiting the Oracle and asking to have your protections removed, you can then be attacked and/or pick-pocketed in any scene. There are also PvP areas, if you enter them you will automatically be flagged for PvP while in them. You can also duel with another player without flagging for PvP. Note that free trial players cannot flag for open PvP and, while you can enter the PvP zones, you won't drop any loot.
In general, talk to other players, they are just about the best content in the game ;)
If you see people with the Hospitaller title know that they have chosen that title to indicate they're willing to help out new players with the game.
Could you tell me, please, how large the download is, and also, if you're still on Antergos, what steps you took to install it. It looks like it's a .deb package, and I've not confronted trying to install a .deb package on an Arch-based distro (Manjaro, in my case).
The install directory is currently taking up 8.2GB of diskspace for both game and launcher on my laptop. Note that the launcher downloads a bunch of zip files which are then kept in a cache so that you can share them later (it uses bittorrent) which are not actually necessary for playing the game (it's just nice to help other players download faster). The download of the full game is about 4GB, there will probably be a patch or two over the weekend but that will just be changed files.
1 Likes, Who?
Wintermute, is the portable aether vibration amplifier working for you? Every time I've tried to play a stream nothing plays, just the initial tuning in static noise.
0 Likes
wintermute Apr 7, 2017
I've not checked in R40. It was working in R38, but it was broken for a while before that. It may be a victim of the upgrade to Unity 5.5.
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...
Thanks for your detailed answer. I've spend some time today in the free trial, and i feel the same as before : my main concern is the claustrophobic feeling. Way too much loading screens, and way too long. I had a similar feeling with Age of Conan in a way, but in SOTA it feels worst.
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wintermute Apr 7, 2017
my main concern is the claustrophobic feeling. Way too much loading screens, and way too long.
Fair enough. This is the new starting area they're building for R41 that is as large as any of the newer scenes, performance work will continue with every release from now on and there will be another free trial next month if you want to check it out again.
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wintermute Apr 9, 2017
However, nothing happens when I click the Play button in the launcher. I could not find the game binary in the file system. I found a 6GB file for the game. Many Steam Linux games works out of box, so very stupid way to distribute this game. I removed the demo and play other games.
What should happen is that the game updates are downloaded by bittorrent as zip files, then they are extracted into the installation folder. It sounds like your client got stuck after the zip was downloaded but before it was extracted.
I have two quests that I have no idea how to complete (one tells me to get an iron sword from somewhere, but going there and exploring doesn’t produce the expected result, and the other tells me to go to a zone I’m unable to return to).
The iron blade is a random drop, keep killing and looting bandits in the Perennial Trail scenes and eventually you'll get it (Bandit Leaders will drop it most often). There are two quests in the Battle of Solace Bridge which if you don't get the required items (Charlotte and Quincy's Broken Sword) while in the scene you will never be able to complete them, but everything else should be possible to return to.
I have no idea if the game has the same concept of groups and instances as WoW.
If you play in 'Friends online' mode then you have to make your party before entering the scene to ensure you end up in the same instance. In multiplayer most of the time everyone will be in the same instance unless we exceed the maximum player count (should be at least 64) or people are on different versions of the client. There are scenes which force 'Solo/Party mode' such as mines and dungeons, for those you should group up before entering.
In WoW you can have 10 characters, which is nice to try different classes, make both male and female characters, etc.
The main argument made against the multiple character slots is that there are no classes as such, you are free to learn whatever skills you want on a single character and switch between them as required. However, I agree, we should be allowed.
Last edited by wintermute on 9 April 2017 at 10:10 am UTC
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