One fact you may not know about Shroud of the Avatar is that it allows players to stock and operate their own virtual shopkeepers to sell crafted and looted wares. These player vendors are about to get an upgrade from their former drab lives to a much more refined Victorian palate. The devs said that the male shopkeepers will be first in line for the makeover, followed by female NPCs in Release 52.
This week’s developer newsletter revealed the new in-game models for harvestable trees, which come in both pine and maple varieties. The team also continues to power forward with the design for the South Fetid Swamp, a location as charming as its name implies.
Portalarium also let players know that it extended the deadline to March 9th to confirm mailing addresses for physical goods from their pledges and backing.
Release 51 is scheduled for February 22nd.
The story has greatly refined and deepens these last months. I am pleased with it. You may need to start a new character to see it properly. https://t.co/WBX0Fvn6lx
— Richard Garriott (@RichardGarriott) February 19, 2018
The updates are coming fast and awesome now. This Thursday is going to be huge.
I’m excited about a whole bunch of the new stuff, but the huge jump in performance has overshadowed the rest.
Lipstick on a pig.
One fact you may not know about Shroud of the Avatar is that it allows players to stock and operate their own virtual shopkeepers to sell crafted and looted wares… But if you don’t pay real money to buy your own house, and then more real money for the Commission Free vendor, the NPC vendors will charge you 10% of the sale price when it’s placed, and if it doesn’t sell in 7 days, they delete the item entirely and give you a fraction of the NPC value.
And that NPC economy value is deliberately terrible, because like everything else in this atrocious game that I regret ever backing, everything including vending is built to make Real Money Trading the only supportable option.
The Commission Free Vendors only came in the Citizen Pledge and upwards, and certain housing bundles, by the way. That pledge cost $550.
But still, as long as you can rent a vendor in someone else’s home, and reset your items every 6 days so they don’t just destroy them, being a merchant can be great fun, right?!
Oh.
That’s Chris Spears the developer talking about the last Release. Does anyone have the “This Is Fine” house on fire macro to hand?
COTO are the Premium Currency, in case you didn’t know. Yes, they openly talk about manipulating the exchange rate of the Premium Currency in order to keep the price to Gold and thus Real Dollars viable.
But strangely, they’ve not quite grasped that when you are so focused on creating a game for real life rich Sellers, and actively destroy the items of anyone who couldn’t afford a permanent vendor, you don’t end up with many Buyers. Even with an (a-ha-ha-hah) “modest pre-launch population” of a record of 500 concurrent players in Spears own words elsewhere.
But hey! Whiskers!
Drag them to hell
Here is the good news: this game is about to completely fail and never be talked about again unless it is used as a reference point of mocking.
I really wish they would make this game not run like ass at high settings.
It’s looking good that your wish may be granted on Thursday. They’ve updated to a new version of Unity that does something magical, evidently. I gained 20 – 30 fps in every scene I’ve tested, on Fantastic. That puts the slowest scenes (heavy player owned towns) at 20-30 fps, and everything else at about 60.
uhm…strange and sorta looks like old, old visual tech to me.
He looks hilarious.