Portalarium's Health

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Mugly Wumple, Sep 9, 2018.

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  1. Brickbat

    Brickbat Avatar

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    The Sota Con's have been crowd/attendee funded - it isn't paid for by Portalarium and they are basically on the hook for Developer salaries so if they assign the Developer to "work" attending the event then yes. Sota Con East used a portion of the raised funds to help pay for travel and lodging for the Developer's Portalarium sent out.

    V/R Brickbat
     
  2. StrangerDiamond

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    All you need is a few Brewtons :)
     
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  3. Brewton

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    Yikes! No wonder it costs so much. Hope those attending get what they paid for. I guess those buying the cloaks who are not going are basically paying to help offset the pay for the developers who attend.
     
  4. StrangerDiamond

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    isn't comparing games like comparing woman ?

    I like facts like @Brickbat brings... but you can't really compare games IMO... in a studio you might have a very prolific programmer but a slow designer, or vice versa, etcetera.

    What I personally enjoy, and my indicator of good health (mental and physical) of a studio is transparency.
     
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  5. 2112Starman

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    They have been saying for years that the game had a month left before it folds, they aint gonna put money down. I personally dont think the company is very healthy but the recent injection of PoT and dungeon mulla with the new small team and possible much smaller offices in the future signal a strong near term outlook for the company. But the flip side is that according to seed invest, there was millions tied up to people in stock that (like a start up) and I dont see them ever getting a returns now. But, one can hope the box's going up on Amazon with a marketing push brings in the population the game needs.
     
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  6. 3devious

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    I went to the first one in Baltimore. I really liked it and is the reason I sit on my leave, guarding it like a dragon sitting atop a pile of gold. I was ready to spend some of it on the launch party when a couple folks on the team woke the dragon and I cancelled my flight and hotel so I decided to crash MGT's party this year except that my guild is hiding from me for some reason and there are no plans to do anything this year except SotACon.

    I'm not sure if I will be able to go to future SotACons too many factors to deal with:
    Will I have the leave?
    Will my health cooperate?
    Will I be reminded why I ragequit the first time when they do something sketchy AGAIN?

    Hopefully the company will be in better shape by 2019.
     
  7. Nelzie

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    Every MMO is altered, changed, enhanced, f'd and fixed or not, many times over the course of a 5 year history.

    I've played so many MMOs at launch, saw incredible changes, then left after another year of play and more changes returning five years later and being blown away at how different the game(s) have been in so many ways.

    Star Trek Online was playable from the start, much like SotA is now, but... since that launch... SO many new systems have been implemented, there's been at least two, maybe three full systems for crafting, two MASSIVE changes in character skill trees and how they interact with the game rules, a whole new secondary crew system that's been revamped once or twice, they added player created stories, expanded the tools on that plus sooooo much more. The game is still being changed and assumptions being challenged today. Is it a finished game?

    UO... holy heck were there changes in that game too. It's completely unrecognizable to me, aside from the still horribly bad interface that back then... I just thought was acceptable as it was the only one out there.

    You can't point to any MMO that's been out for 2, 3, 5, 10 years and say that it is finished NOR is it almost anything like it was when first launched.

    Investment, as in a return on one's money ONLY matters with actual investing. Anything else is an always at the whims of the market speculating. I bought many hundreds of Star Wars action figures... I figured that some might be worth money some day, while others.. will be worth more. Turns out... some that I wasn't aware would be worth much have sold for more than TEN times what I bought them for, others that I thought would be worth some scratch? I've been lucky to break even on a couple of them and "lost" a few bucks here and then on others.

    All in all? I am bringing in more than I spent on all the figures, but I still don't look at them as an "investment".

    That's the only way to look at digital and other "collector's items" as it pertains to this game. Markets on "collector's items" will always be exceedingly fickle.
     
  8. evillego6

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    Because of the seedinvest, their SEC filings are public for the years 2015, 2016, and 2017.
     
  9. Nelzie

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    Yep, by law they have to provide this information.

    Coming up in a handful of months, they will need to prepare a 2018 SEC filing. Maybe then... a current value to the shares can be determined.
     
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  10. Crowell

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    You are covering the fact that before any further implementation and improvement, MMO games must comply with a set a specifications and usually have to pass through some Quality tests in order to be released. That's what "finished" is about for a publisher who is looking for commercializing a game althrough developpers will tell you otherwise, and they won't be wrong, in a way. But with traditional development, a date has to be fixed one day, in order to allow the public to pay & play the game.

    With cloned scenes, graphic inconsistencies (my wife reported to me fake windows on many houses and different water rendering quality in many zones, etc...), bugged quests and journal, unfinished skills/skill trees (control deamon was a blank skill at release, a lunar skill was bugged with heavy consequences, etc...), performance issues (a game which hardly sustain 30 fps on a mid-range setup, reported recurrent stuttering and some lag) and, in my opinion at least, big balance issues, Shroud would not have passed those tests successfully with ANY well-established publisher. Portalarium is lucky to have very tolerant players backing them.

    Not to mention that nowadays, there are many basic features that MMO games have to be released with in order to meet public expectations like (but not limited to) : mounts, PvP with RvR dimension, group content,... things that SotA does not really have when you dig in.

    In other words, regarding to industry standarts, Shroud release was certainly not satisfactory and probably premature.

    Now I know that Portalarium had a limited budget but they are the guys who opted for a fully crowdfunded model when most other games opted for publishers or crowdfunding+publisher (or maybe they did not really had the choice after one of them sued a publisher in a court, I could not know).

    If people can live with it, it's ok and I don't really care, but I hardly see how anyone can compare post release content here with any post release content in the most established MMO like BDO, GW2 or TESO (let's compare apples to apples and MMORPG with MMORPG instead of space opera please). Saying that every MMO evolve during its whole lifetime is absolutely true but it's a manufactured excuse regarding to the situation. If you have any doubt about that, look into what most recent MMO games had to offer when released (especially regarding to the points I mentioned earlier), the population they drew at this time with that and compare objectively.

    One thing I will concede through is that (single player story driven quest not taken in account) Portalarium's work is probably superior to Bioware's CURRENT work on SWTOR but it's not really a feat. At least, here they fix some bugs.

    TLDR : You can't really consider post release content in this game the same way that you would consider post release content in any other MMO out there (see my wall of text for details, sorry about that).
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2018
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  11. GrayFog

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    If things really get ugly Travian easily could take over if they wanted too.
     
  12. Canterbury

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    Correct. I mean, they're already flogging Episode 2, aren't they? And Episode 2 will need a story. Where are all the story people? Oh that's right, they're gone. So how's that Episode 2 story going, folks?
     
  13. Arradin

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    Im confused, i really dont get where all these rumours (outside of reddit trolls) about bad economy are coming from.

    If sales is a sign of economic trouble, then most of the businesses in my area are going out of business.

    We are not in maintanence mode as clearly showed my each livestream and update, we are in building mode heading for Ep2.
     
  14. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    Pssst. Don't try to be resonable!

    [​IMG]
     
  15. Gorthyn

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    Well I would think that Poets own admittance that player numbers are not what they hoped for or need plus the team and office diwnsizind are evidence enough that things are presently not as easy as some would make out. Equally I agree they are still pressing on adding an impressive amount of changes and new features for such a small team so certainly not in maintenance mode either.

    Hopefully it's just a regrouping before pushing ahead with more success than before.
     
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  16. Arradin

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    You are right, but there is a huge difference between " not going as forecasted " and " Economical disaster "
     
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  17. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    I assume side quests will be done like before from different people. @Sannio did good work :) May be the story writer will be hired as soon as the new Episode 2 quest and journal system is done. Well may be after that engine is programmed it is so easy to use that @Lord British himself enters the main story parts? :)
    However, after we reach a very stable Version end of year, someone will do the "job". I am hoping for someone knowing and loving the old Ultima games to be really successful :)
     
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  18. Arkah EMPstrike

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    I thought Richard and Tracy were the story guys?
     
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  19. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    For sure, they write it together, but I think they won't enter it into the quest engine of the game... of course it would be great to improve the story (engine) :)
     
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  20. Arkah EMPstrike

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    And looks like Kieth is workin on quests
     
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