Peasant level accounts.

I don't think a 25$ or 45$ paywall will keep gold farmers out... Not with how our economy is designed.

This game is setup to be wildly enticing for gold farmers. The way Single Player Online integrates directly into the MMO economy; no one will ever have to compete for resources... so, basically, anyone can dedicate themselves to farming and harvest/loot 100% of the available resources in game at anytime, all the time. All gold farmers have to do is figure out how to keep taxes high enough that folks would rather buy their gold when faced with the choice of gold over crowns.

Keeping resources ravaged on the multiplayer side will force people to log into SPO just to grind for taxes... and that aint happening with a majority of people I suspect. Who wants to play a MMO in single player mode all the time? So long as buying gold from farmers is cheaper than gold crowns from the add-on store, gold farming will be huge in SotA... 300+ POTs in game for Ep1 + existing lots (+30 overage) = lots of daily tax rates. And the world only gets bigger in Ep2.

 

Geez, the responses.

One side of the mouth waxes poetic about the AWESOME community and the other side of the mouth...

 

It's the Way We Roll...
The hammer is nothing without a stout crowd to hammer it out on ...

~In the Purely Hypothetical World of All This~

If 10 of them, equaled one of us...
Just enough skill to be the one newb everyone needs to protect, or the larger guild of these free players could possibly get deeper into the game if they band together... Maybe even limit their harvesting or crafting ability to a friendly player's lot... maybe keep them at a "20 skill cap"... cause their looting ability to be "unable to loot at all".
I think we could handle that couldn't we ?

Between these two suggested idea openers...

Some added comments of mine...

I think we've seen where such worries that have been presented become moot and unable to thus far knock it down that much...

When Ultima Online had it's greatest first review, it was written by "Wired Magazine", where they brought the reporter into the world of UO, where of course he eventually got killed by a single fireball thrown by a player. As I recall that article's script read something like...
Reporter Escorting Player: "You moron, You just killed the reporter from Wired!"
The Wired Reporter: "Ahh, Road Kill, such a fitting end to this story"...

Within that article the players themselves had taken the Wired Reporter through all the glamorous guilds of M'Lords and M'Ladies, all the way into the much darker side of the Chaos guilds where the ruff and dead bodies of friends were being chopped up on the ground. That article in Wired Magazine as I see it, fits the OP's intent. Many could say that in that one small article in Wired Magazine helped finance @RichardGarriott 's trip into space because that Wired magazine article helped launch UO into and above the stratosphere far above it's competitors. When our @dallas speaks to us about our first mission statement of "friendliness", this too fits the OP's intent to provide a welcome mat platform which could draw other players into our game.

Maybe the ability of inviting such players into our world as described, would be attached to our "Lord's Scepter's Principals", where our Lord level pledge accounts could have a way of providing 5-10 visitor passes given all the above post's restrictions to those free passes. Such passes could have a time limit of say, "one month" before being returned to that Lord's Pledge Account.

We live in a feudal world and in our feudal way, such invitations could open our world, by innovating the way in which all games are best advertised, "by it's own players".
I think within these posts have clearly shown that it's a good idea and a proven way to get our game more noticed.
It's what we've done in our developer's pasts and it the way of our best future.

"I Stand Firm With the OP, It's a Great Idea!" @georgegad !
"Player to Player Advertising"
~Time Lord~

 

I have seen some games offer trial accounts. Apparently it works because I never saw them stop doing it. Perhaps the most common restriction is no trading nor banking. However, spammers and others that would violate the TOS use this as the primary loophole.

Perhaps the most fearful part is the loss of potential players because this game requires more than a cursory look to appreciate. Having a little cash in the game will encourage most to wade through the initial setup.

 

Yes, I have to Agree ... $45 bucks gets you in ....... End~of~Story.

 

At first, I thought this sounded like a pretty cool idea. Then I thought of the cost to build out that system and market it.

Then I thought this ^^

 

With respect. The gentleman directly above you is concerned that he is going to miss out on doing those things, so I think it will be more popular than you imagine if properly managed. Not to mention the farmville you talk about made more money in one year than the entire American agricultural industry, so yes copying that success sounds like a fine plan to me.

 

Keep the vultures at bay is hardly the virtuous attitude you would expect from an avatar. More love, less anger.

 

~Player to Player Advertising Idea Challenge?~

What are we paying for our advertisement now?

How would you go about "Better Player to Player Advertising"? I think that's the basic intent of the OP's suggestion, which does perk my SOTA gaming fan ears up for bringing to the table new ideas
EA games and other larger companies with larger distribution are still beating the pants off us here
(Reminds me of that UO in game book's story of "The Bold Stranger")
~Time Lord~

 

Plz Plz Plz ... There is No Attacks here ... Plz.
The OP made a negatively written Post on <Not wanting to spend RL$$> in Any MMORP game.
"I'm Very Open to the rest of that OP's suggestion" ... Rather, just Not opened to
(please read between the lines in OP's post) ~ Suggesting to me; It's A~Free~For~All and Open for
Boting!!! on All aspects.

 

No Anger Here:

The OP made a negatively written Post on <Not wanting to spend RL$$> in Any MMORP game.
"I'm Very Open to the rest of that OP's suggestion" ... Rather, just Not opened to
(please read between the lines in OP's post) ~ Suggesting to me; It's A~Free~For~All and Open for
Boting!!! on All aspects.

 

Thank you for mentioning the name, I forgot. I only visit Perth now and then.
You make my point quite well. Paying a minimum price and then never paying again you actually arent proudly supporting the game, you are only a few dollars more valuable as a customer than someone who never paid at all. A person who plays for free for ten years and occasionally buys an $8 item actually makes them more money long term the $25 freeloaders do.


Despite the doom and gloom, and angry rants to the contrary for decades, the freemium game concept actually didnt kill the game industry and most games use it to some degree now.

If you were thinking I was campaigning for a free model you are mistaken. The game has a cash shop, there is an expectation at some point there will be a free access option, I am only suggesting a way I think it will tie in well to the game. I was not aware, but as mentioned above Lord British hhas already mentioned plans for a similar concept. Naysayers can feel free to call him an idiot if they like.

You are all aware you never bought the game right? You backed a kickstarter and were given gifts. What you paid was a gift to the developers, the game may still be freemium when it goes live. You havent paid for access, you were given an access guarantee as a gift.

 

Excuse me?
I think you need to go back and reread the post, actually read it rather than jump to your immediate assumption.

The original post Is suggesting a community friendly and roleplay attractive solution to the likeley future addition of free level players And how they could be made into even a greater asset to the community.
In response to which a number of people agreed, and a number of trolls made the same tired complaints about problems that are easily solved in many other games.

There Is no need for any anger, this I an entireley free economy. You have likeley never played a game like It. You are all acting like it would be an issue to have professional groups farming the area and selling their goods. It is not. If you like, we can send a email to the chinese embacy asking if they would like to register a farming guild, it wont matter. We can rent them stalls for ingame currancy. If the designers like the idea they could even set up a trade deal where they give one dollar american for every ten dollars worth of game credit the farmers cash back into. It would empty old money from the pool and encorage new spending.

other games suffer from poor economic planning and have to deal with the issue. This game is seeming to be trying for a complete open economic system. All your old fears are obsolete.

 

As for Sentences (1), (2), and (3) ... see no assumptions there, rather you made yourself completely clear on your position on
(F2P vs. P2P) ~~~ (End of Story) ... Good Nite ... "Say good-night Gracie".

 

The free to play account per RG's comment maybe considered after EP1 milestone is reached. Until then, it will be counter productive to focus on setting up the restrictive free to play account at the moment.

 

~From Our Development's Historical Pasts~

Quite True Sir Roycestein Kaelstrom , but not a better development idea...

One of the things with our developer interactions, is always looking forward and planning and seldom at the spur of any moment, though those do happen from time to time. Most crowd generated or forums generated ideas take months in the considering of all the differing possibilities and then "possibly" getting noted in one of our developers note books. Our Lord British is famous for having such ways. So anytime we are speaking about new ventures instead of modifying old ones, these ideas can then be seen in our not too distant future. Our developers are quite good at what they do and think about doing, yet they also recognize that 1000's of heads are many times better than some, or one. This is why they encourage such ideas coming to light and getting hashed out or pushed about within here in our forums.

I myself have had an idea of "Player to Player Advertisement" which now looks nothing like it's original conception, because I've been planning it for a few odd years. This concept has touched some high points within Portalarium, but as yet taken it's final form.

Our Ep1 is not that long a time to develop new concepts within "How we could better such a free pass" over what other gaming companies have achieved with their own. Those larger company's ideas (EA and such) suffer because innovative ideas are then coupled with a few paid thinking heads instead of crowd sourced ideas involving many heads to consider what could be better, from an enthused player's standpoint. This is why I give two very enthusiastic "thumbs up" to the OP's intent and seeding of the idea for others to consider what they could thing of better of how to accomplish it.

The gruff, frugal and cautious waiting always may seem the brighter on higher ground, yet never offer anything that might truly aide the seed that lay below waiting to grow, "which will possibly survive and thrive", to better enhance our game "from the player's point of view". So if we are to have such players with us and it may seem inevitable that we will, then what would we paying players like to better accommodate it, or at least effect it so it has no harmful impacts on our gaming enjoyment?

Better still, "how could it enhance our paid player experience to become, not just tolerated, but a welcomed addition to our fun" ?
That's the single objective that other games from the larger companies, like EA, have yet to accomplish
~Time Lord~

 

umm what ? No. You didn't buy in when the earlier rewards were available.

The development team is small, this is a community funded game. In the games current state, if you want access you'd be willing to pony up the 45 bucks to help back the game and further the development. Not just jump in play for a week and frig off.

Simply no. You can wait till launch or please help pay for development of the game. Thanks!

 

This is a good comment... not particularly useful for any new idea, but useful for opposing Lord British's look about it...
"But it did get me thinking" because of this comment...

~A Carbon Copy, The Small World~
Our development team has grown quite a bit from the time our "Owls Head" was the only city in the world. Back then we had a very small team and much smaller that it now is. but keeping in the flavor of the comment and considering how some other games have done it, "like Frontier with their Elite Dangerous" they built a small space combat simulator which is/was free to download, yet is just a small place "like our old Owls Head", but ED only has one planet, a few bad guys and some asteroids to shoot at. A carbon copy of our Hidden Vale Island could fill such a place with free players. Whether it's the entire Hidden Vale, or bits and pieces of it, such a thing could fulfill the OP's mission.
~Time Lord~

 

We don't need an onslaught of gold spammers, bot farmers and exploiters hopping from one auto generated account to the next. Plus the developers need to support themselves.

The buy to play wall is excellent and I'll never play another free to play game again.

 

~Fulfilling All Our Paid Player's Requirements~
While I agree that the wall of payment works well, there's the consideration the buyer goes through questioning "can my computer run the game?"... The Frontier Company's Elite Dangerous, provides such a failsafe, as there single "free to play scene or instance" does require the downloader to have an adequate computer to play it. Within our SOTA, if we had such a place (which is not in any way attached to the actual gaming world), then any user could then check their own playability of our SOTA on their system without ever having paid. Yet if their system does meet the requirements (also their internet connection being tested against playing SOTA), then they could enter a small world where a city is provided as well as maybe 2-3 areas of hunting to spur them onward with, to buy the game.
These are not insurmountable problems...
~Time Lord~