Did anyone catch this news story?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Proteus Tempest, Apr 14, 2022.

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  1. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    How do you suggest they fund their development?
     
  2. Burzmali

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    What, an NFT game? I think the best option there would be to pile up all their computers, light them on fire, strip naked, put on clown make-up and dance around the fire like a bunch of insane apes, that's what they're likely to be remembered as, so might as well get it out of the way early, they could sell tickets to watch to make some revenue. If you mean SOTA, I still like the original funding model, upfront purchase price, each expansion is an additional charge, and supplement the income by selling cosmetics and whatever product placement you can manage. I understand why they abandoned that model, they couldn't produce content of high enough quality and quantity to support it, but I still think that is the best option for a company of their size in 2022.
     
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  3. Barugon

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    No, this game.
     
  4. Time Lord

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    I understand that part, yet was that change made before Portalarium sold SOTA, or one of the conditions in selling SOTA to Catnip, or how long after the sale did those items change?

    What I'm getting at here, is there seems a similarity between how SOTA manages these "no-trade" items and an NFT identification mark.

    The "when" that "no-trade" change happened becomes a question of what was owned, when owning seedinvest stock.

    It's generlly said that seedinvest stock is worthless, yet what was owned of the Portalarium Company was sold, which was the value in Portalarium. If EA Games had purchased Portalarium, it was assumed the seedinvest stock would be bought out or see profits from that sale back to the seedinvest stock holder.

    This leads back to the question of, seedinvest owned/developed programing, being now offered back to those who sold SOTA, ended Portalarium and now making a new game with SOTA programing tech data. I'm not saying that happened, but I'm asking could this be happening? ... and further, what of the data that seedinvest funded had worth in it? Where was or is the value of the stock? The value it funded?

    Wouldn't then by default, seedinvest stock holders have vested interest in this new company which could possibly be benifiting from what those stocks went to fund, aka "the worth of Portalarium".

    I mean nothing bad by the question, but I think it's a worthy question to ask.
    ~TL~
     
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2022
  5. Barugon

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    You're really reaching. One thing has nothing to do with the other.
     
  6. Time Lord

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    Well, when our no trade items can be traced back to the owner's bank, like when a house is changed and there's other player's no trade things in it, those things go back to the owner of those things, when that happens, they, like an NFT are owned "only by that player". It's an owners mark.

    I'm trying to more deeply understand NFTs and what's what about them.
    We say data is owned when it's an NFT, but through seedinvest, wasn't SOTA an NFT?

    It's an innocent enough question of what an NFT actually is.
    ~TL~
     
  7. Time Lord

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    Currently I believe that our game's true value is upheld supported through trade items, as players tend to not want to leave a game, when they have equity that can be resold. I've seen some traders in our game liquadate their trade stocks, then re-enter our game and have to "restock" their trade item collections so that they can enjoy our trade game again.

    It is likely that this new game will be finished or almost totally finished long before our Ep5. It's my view that this new game's NFT values will be directly effected by our own secondary market in SOTA, or our SOTA will have gone full-no-trade, even to the point of no-trade land lot deeds.

    Our land deeds are the last true trade items and will look very ripe for changing them to no-trade for the success of the other game, or we need to free the no-trade items, so our trade supports the value of this new NFT game, just as UO did to make our current trade culture.

    This new game "and our no-trade items" are the same as taking real world currency off the gold standard. It makes it all "funny money" with nothing backing it, actually worthless, unless there is confidence in the market of trade items. However, if our SOTA changes it's no-trade items to trade items, then this, as UO did once for SOTA, provides confidence in changing our real money into game money through the trade of in-game items.

    I think the halt of coto store trade items has underminded our confidence in resale markets. That reason is why this new game doesn't mention SOTA, but continues to point back to UO's resale markets as their best example of success for players to have confidence that a secondary market will thrive in their new game. Yet each time SOTA is pointed to by players of that game, it will undermind that confidence and thus cause this new game to fail. When I say fail, I mean to have just enough initial bang to get some to try it, and then dwindle as SOTA has into this same flat line of low population, due in part to no-trade coto store sales.

    As far as our own secondary markets and trade items, I think any waves in pricing will be seen as each episode is released, with Ep5 seeing what things are truly worth of what's left of the trade items (like land deeds).

    I see our current socondary market trade items as "junk bonds" which will mature to their true value in Ep5, "whenever that is".

    But we will be a thorn in the side of this new game, unless our secondary markets regain their health.
    "Did we ever own anything when owning stocks in seedinvest?"
    Market gamers will forever point to that too ~Time Lord~:cool:
     
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2022
  8. Barugon

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    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token
     
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  9. Time Lord

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    Yep, that sounds allot like how no-trade items are returned to their owner when a co-owned homes is taken down, and come to think of it, that also describes SOTA's sale to new ownership.

    "Hype Funding?":

    This is a review of NFT games which are coming out in 2022

    This is what our Ultima famed Warren Spector thinks of NFTs

    That game was handed off to another complany same sota was.

    SOTA has always been,
    "Non-fungible?"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility
    :D~TL~
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2022
  10. Sulaene Moon

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  11. dayero

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    still zero info on the actual game. nothing on the gameplay and also nothing on the technical details.

    Plus there are still some major misconceptions being reiterated.
    1. Value of in game stuff is increasing. Yeah no. See SOTA, but also pretty much every other game. The long term value of stuff is converging towards zero. So any profit comes from what you call market timing at the stock market. And it's just as much a game for fools in gaming as it is in the stock market.
    2. It's safe because it's blockchain. Absolutely not. It could be, kinda, in theory, if it were perfectly implemented software handled by perfect users. Todays smart contract platforms however are mostly junk and gamers are inexperienced crypto users.
    So in practice the only thing it does is put a huge target on every users back because his/her in-game value can be converted to real world value via blockchain. It's the very opposite of safe and you have a about a metric ton of crypto exchange/wallet/nft and so forth hacks and scams to prove it.
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2022
  12. Time Lord

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    Very interesting interview. They mentioned SOTA, but not the initial funding similarities which link the two, as secondary markets involving making real money were a part of SOTA's promotion.

    (Todd Porter, not wanting their vitual coin to be able to be turned into real money?)
    What's up with that o_O?

    I also find it intertesting the comment Todd Porter made, of their not wanting their vitual coin to become able to be turned into real money. Call me mr crazy, but I thought that was the entire point of alure in any NFT game?
    Yes, I think you are right on all 3 counts.

    Here's a single choice by a game review of his pick for the top 3 NFT of 2022, which has some of the very successful Farmville programers working on it. I find this of interest on two levels, one because it's an NFT and secondly, because this is a game that has taken farming into a more complex time management, which is something I've been advocating for here in SOTA, yet in a wave function dictating NPC sales pricing through the movement of our planets (which I won't re-hash here, because many of our sota technolians tend to hate wave functions effecting anything digital):




    :rolleyes:~TL~
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2022
  13. Enfo

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    Got to wait for more info.
     
  14. kaeshiva

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    To answer an earlier question, I think the shift to "heritage" and "no trade" items is probably unrelated.

    Having been here through the kinda timeline of events, my understanding (and I could be way wrong here) was that while large sums of money were changing hands buying and selling Sota "stuff" none of that money was actually going to the developers of the game.

    For example, player owned towns - completely unavailable to buy from the "source" and yet thousands of dollars being spent since the only way to get one if you didn't get one initially, was to buy one from another player letting one go. After years of waiting for towns to be made available again, I ended up buying one through the secondary market myself, and I'd have MUCH preferred to throw that cash at the devs but there was simply no mechanism to do so.

    There was a time when the only way to get a commission free vendor was to buy a "bundle deal", and you had to buy in about to the $500 mark to get yourself a tax free village deed and a commission free vendor, a house, and a handful of deco items. So people would buy these bundles on disposable accounts, strip the assets, and resell them for a profit, with commission free vendors going for $150-$200 (if memory serves) and the property deeds for about the same, plus itemizing all the other rewards and you could turn a tidy profit.

    So, okay. Dev selling a bundle to a reseller is still selling a bundle, so they get paid. But they only get paid once. That person quits, decides to sell their stuff on - that's another new purchase the devs are denied since a reseller will often offer the items cheaper or piecemeal (rather than only in a bundle which was pretty limiting). And then that person sells it on and so forth.

    And then there was the expiring of things to create rarity, which was quite frankly, shooting oneself in the foot. The scramble of resellers to buy things because they are about to NEVER BE AVAILABLE AGAIN would create a short term surge of income, but then that's it done, never again. However, these assets still have to be maintained (like old houses that nobody can buy that get leaky roofs and need dev time to fix), bugs will happen that need fixing, and there are ongoing costs to maintain all this glut of stuff that can never earn another cent for the devs. It just didn't make sense.

    The other problem was, someone coming to the game new who missed out on pledges and kickstarter and etc. sees all this beautiful stuff everywhere and is saddened by the knowledge that they will never have it unless they cough up megamonies to some third party through potentially questionable transaction means. That or, the cost to entry for a new person in a new game being told they need to immediately unload a few hundred bucks...well, it was off putting.

    So we saw a grandual change.

    Before heritage, we saw devs directly selling things like vendors and deeds, at prices far less than the secondary market.
    While I support this move because I'd much rather my "...omg need the shiny thing impulse purchase..." support the game in some way, I also understand the people who DID buy up loads of things as investments, with the intent to sell them on for profit - for them, this was a breach of faith. Suddenly, the CF vendors and crafting stations that were worht $150 last month are worth $30 this month in unlimited supply from the faucet. At this point, "speculation" purchase, and purchase with intent to resell, dried up significantly.

    I know there's still people who do the real money market thing and make a profit, but I also know that a LOT of those players moved on once it became clear that things could change on a whim and that this wasn't a good investment choice.

    It was then that we started to see heritage items - some original ones, some that were semi-close-but-not-quite-the-same as reward items, and then finally the full vault system which sells functionally identical items other than the "vault edition" tag and the fact that they aren't sellable. And while I personally was, and am still very much against, the concept of heritage items as decorations because of the myriad of problems they cause when trying to do collaborative deco projects and the resultant catastrophic permissions system change (that we are still stuck with, making shared lots or deco-for-hire a thing of the past), I absolutely understand the reasoning behind it at the time, which was, if players want to buy stuff for their personal use, and not to resell, then it shouldn't matter. The no-trade literally seems to have been added for the specific purpose of limiting re-saleability so that if you wanted a shiny beach ball, you had to buy that shiny beach ball from the devs. I'm ok with this.

    Long winded history aside, where we are now is:

    Devs buy/make/adapt assets, put in game
    Players buy assets from dev. Devs get paid.

    This makes sense to me, and is straightforward. But, I'm the sort of player that buys toys to play with them, not to collect them or hope they increase in value later on or as some sort of investment. Am I a little bummed that I picked up a tax free city deed last month for 10% of the price it cost me for one a couple years ago? I guess a little maybe, but at the same time, I got loads of enjoyment out of that deed and it was certainly worth it to me at the time. The fact that I can get MOAR for CHEAPER, from the point of view of a buyer-consumer, is always a good thing. I just assume any money spent on the game is gone. Its entertainment. Like theatre tickets. The fact that I can enjoy my pretty things for years is a bonus.

    I don't need to own the world. I don't need to sell crafted items in an MMO on ebay. And I don't want to worry about nftcryptowhatsit. I just want to play and enjoy the game, buy cats to ride around on, and trees to make my town aesthetically pleasing, and new outfits. It would be nice to gift things to friends to pass them on (I still am not a fan of heritage!) but I think in terms of relative evils, this is the lesser one.
     
  15. Time Lord

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    Does anyone here actually play any NFTs? I think speculating in the blind is a terrible way to find truth. Of what's been posted here thus far, there's allot of seemingly negitive comments on NFTs, but I haven't read any that say they play NFTs. That tempts me to try one, but I have yet to have one grab my attention in enough of a entertaining way to want to play it.
    Game play will have allot to do with whether I will be playing any NFT gam and the same goes for any other type of game.

    I currently play SOTA on a daily basis, but not all day due to many in-game reasons of the variety in play style development not having yet risen to their full potential.

    ~Get us more game in One~
    :rolleyes: I believe we could have allot more!
    ~TL~
     
  16. Barugon

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    Actually, the vault came before heritage.
     
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  17. kaeshiva

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    Fair enough, was around the same period though, I remember a few "no trade" surprises started creeping on to the store (buyer beware situation!) but the explanation given at the time was very much of "so you can't resell it."
     
  18. Time Lord

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    The green no trade items didn't increase sota profits "from me", it only decresed our trade gamer ability to sell things at inflated prices. Our developers could always sell things which our players would rather buy from them. But I'm only guessing that other players may not be as loyal to funding our game as you are or as I am.
    This touches on my drive to apeal for a more consumable sales driven development with development designed to increase those types of coto store sales.

    While I somewhat agree with this, before things were reproduced in a no trade way, those player profits (or investment recoup) were at inflated price due to rarety. If they would just sell the same items without the no trade, then more players would hold what they had purchsed for thier account, not being able to return and replace it without spending more. That's speculation, but we are an episode based game and many players come for the episode then move on to play other games while our development continues.

    I actually would have prefered to have purchased everything I own from our developers, so I don't mind at all them selling the same things again, even if those had been "assumed or otherwise" to have been purchased rares or limited exclusives, but the green no-sale came in and I still don't know why, other than to cause those trade'able items to become rares, but rare not like in the sense that a look alike couldn't be purchased through the coto-store. The difference makes no sense to me on that level, other than I can't hand things off between my mutiple accounts or giv as gift or otherwise sold at below coto shop cost. That to me was a mistake in the same way the social freedom restrictions tend to make people want to move out of oppressive countries. Those same presures apply to games as well. Yet further, those green no trade items take away from one of the many reasons people played SOTA & UO, which is the trade game. It limited our game to more hunting and decorating, having sliced off that sliver of our population that enjoy trade.

    BTW I'm not a trade player. I never had the interest, I just have multiple accounts which causes me problems in hassles in shared deco either belonging to one or another, which causes me to log in here to place there and then relog in to find which account the thing belongs to. It's confusing.

    *Who knows, maybe we will be able to link accounts through some sort of payment to allow two accounts to trade items between them. I have more than 5 accounts, so I'd gladly make that payment so they could all be in "co-ownership" (?) with each other meaning items could be migrated between those linked accounts. Show me a sevice fee for this and I'll pay it @Ravalox :D

    So far, I've never played an NFT, but the way markets have acted in the past, it's all a depreciating asset which dwindles to zero or less than it's worth to sell. But I'm not sure about how some of these NFT games are making their players $100+ dollars for a day of play. Where that money comes from or goes through to get into an actuall physical wallet of the player, is all an undiscovered country to me. But I won't be playing unless it's fun.
    ~Time Lord~




     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2022
  19. Sulaene Moon

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    I follow a few and have tested one so far, but it is still probably years from release. There was one I was about to join, but the early testers showed that it turned into a scam. Unfortunately, most are cash grabs with promises of high returns (which everyone knows if it is too good to be true, then it probably is) Which why a lot get a bad rep.

    So, for now I just stick to trading NFTs on the reputable markets.
     
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  20. Barugon

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    Just to be clear, Vault and Heritage are completely different things. Vault items are former one-offs with "Vault Addition" added to the name in order to preserve the uniqueness of the original items. Heritage items are no-trade.
     
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