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Partnering with NEVERDIE on their ICO for Etherium Block Chain Tokens

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Lord British, Jul 20, 2017.

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  1. Sheamus McGuinness

    Sheamus McGuinness Avatar

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    @Lord British I would love to hear more about how you and Portalarium intend to "support" Neverdie. Is it through funding? Or?
     
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  2. Spartus

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    I stay away from games like Second Life because they aren't virtual worlds to me, but virtual meeting places for the real world (like a fancy corporate videoconference) along with the same problems of the real world. I do not disagree that those that work on the game be compensated, as with any job. If those that work also build up the "virtual world" behind the graphical facade (including the dynamic elements, interactivity) for those that play, then all power to them, but right now only paid developers have the ability to do this. To my knowledge, the game mechanics and game engine are not crowdsourced, so I am curious to know what people will be paid to do.

    There is a point where you can make a game too real (the uncanny valley of virtual worlds) and you alter the medium instead of the art. In my opinion, there is nothing at all wrong, and it is often desirable, to push the limits of a single medium, working within its constraints to show artistry, rather than develop another medium where the limits (and the language of the art itself) is not so clear. This is feeling an awful lot like a social experiment and not a game.
     
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  3. LoneStranger

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    My questions would be how do you quantify that content, and why can't an existing currency like COTOs be used for rewarding folks? Why do some experimental cross-world thing?
     
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  4. Animosh

    Animosh Avatar

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    As a crowd funded game and a game that is trying to crowdfund more cash through seedinvest, I do not think they should(maybe can) invest in other companies. Think of the riots of people that paid to support portalarium, only to find out portalarium is not spending the money on SoTa.

    Supporting them as in a partnership or mentorship would be cool to see though.


    COTO has no real money value outside of Shroud of the avatar. it is useless to the rest of the world.

    Now if they did a cryptocurrency and called it Coto and all the jazz that goes with that endevour then it would have a world wide value
     
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  5. Merlota

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    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/wtb-300-cotos.95079/
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...y-45-00-per-100-first-come-first-serve.94888/
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-100-coto-bundles-56-taking-buy-orders.78088/

    Looks like cotos have a real world value to me
     
  6. Lord British

    Lord British Lord British SOTA Developer

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    Great questions and thoughts already!

    Don't lawyer us, this is the first step in a future road.
    As noted our #1 Job is make SotA great game, #2 Market that great game, #3 Think about the future episodes which could include stuff like below.
    Our support so far is to express interest, and join the advisory board. We now also have tokens we could and hope to give out in the game eventually.
    This is NOT intended to become a premium currency, rather the idea is to become loot in game and payment in game to players.
    We have discussed seeding the game with some both as drops and in some bundles, but this is just preliminary thoughts about seeding the world (eventually).
    These tokens likely would have use in game (like... as purely an idea, teleport tokens could help with say teleporting in some way).
    Each game might use them a bit differently, but the problem y'all pointed out is huge... how to balance their use between games.
    The tokens are tracked on the Etherium block chain to be sure they cannot be duplicated thus COULD be traded openly between games.
    Since they are on the block chain players could trade or even sell them once they earned them in a game.
    Sure, there are tons of issues, especially intergame balance. But I think its a worthy exploration!

    Most importantly, nothing is currently planned to change about your SotA experience.
    These are discussions about how we can reward players for their "work" in game, not their financial support, but doing good stuff in the game for each other!

    - Richard "Lord British" Garriott
     
  7. LoneStranger

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    I can sell COTOs to someone for cash. That's a real-world value. What's the worldwide value of this new thing? I've never seen any place that took it as currency.
     
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  8. LoneStranger

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    Why not use existing methods like COTOs? I don't understand what the draw is to connect it to other games. If you want to convert currency between systems there is always RMT.
     
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  9. Numa

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    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...chnology-has-geeks-giants-and-hackers-excited

    "To understand what the excitement is about, it helps to start with bitcoin, because without it, there would be no blockchain. Previous attempts to create digital money that could be sent as easily as email ran into a problem: How do you guarantee that each virtual dollar is unique, so the sender can’t spend the same cash more than once? For bitcoin, this is solved with blockchain, which is simply an online ledger book that’s distributed on computers around the world. It tracks and verifies every use of bitcoin. To give people an incentive to maintain the blockchain on their machine, it awards a number of new bitcoins to the first computer to verify a transaction. It’s like a banking system that runs itself—but its main use is just letting people move currency from point A to point B."

    "Ethereum’s ledger does more. It can store fully functioning computer programs called smart contracts: If person A performs job B for company C, it will trigger a payment of D back to A … and so on. As with bitcoin, the ether currency is a lure to get people to lend the system their computing power, and you need it to participate in a contract. Think of Ethereum itself as a way for people to make agreements and automate enforcement, all on a distributed network of computers. Once you can create contracts—which in essence are just operating procedures—you can use them to manage almost any kind of enterprise or organization."
     
  10. Lord_Darkmoon

    Lord_Darkmoon Avatar

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    My thoughts are: Are people going to play SotA because it is a great game or because they can earn cryptocurrency by playing it?
     
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  11. majoria70

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    Thank you for more information for those of us who did not quite get how this would impact the game and we do have lots of loot ideas for you. I am compiling a document I hope will have many ideas from the community on fun and interesting loot for this game, but everything we can do to make playing Shrouds fun and interesting is a step in the right direction.

    Loot is not the only thing that will keep players playing though. Reason to play and reason to explore, fish, craft, do agriculture all have places they can be expanded on as enticing and fun systems for players. We need to feel our progress and we have no achievement system in the game that alerts us when we have achieved something and even further a system that would reward our explorations of the land.

    I am talking in-game achievements and filling the world with discoveries and not focusing on will it break the game but at this point will it make the game more fun finding things and discovering things. Climbing a difficult climb to the top of a mountain and discovering something or getting a ta-da for doing it in some way. So a couple of loot ideas and they are by no means necessarily 'the' loot ideas but just as an example.

    Loot ideas:
    It is not all about more is better regarding loot, it is about interesting loot too.

    Finding something unusual, cursed item that curses us and sends us to see a specific medic to get the cure. We could have a slight lower stat reduction in taking this item shown visually, stagger a little and comments like *you feel ill*. Many interesting ideas for loot and quest rewardsfrom other games.

    Speed bolts: clickable bolts you find in loot that give you a burst of energy to bolt you forward a short distance. They eventually decay and turn red and unusable after a period of time but are fun and useful to use at the perfect moment. They are not tradeable.

    How about sometimes finding pet eggs as loot. Runes of magic does this. Then you hatch them from an egg, train them and unlock features. *add more to this*


    Finding loot that is incentive type loot too can be interesting, like relics you find on bodies and in the world that complete a puzzle someplace and they are not easy to find and even perhaps randomized in where they are so we can't say exactly where they will be at any moment.

    So just my thoughts and thank you so much for yours :) I am behind you and with you for this game to be a success, never waivering. :)
     
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2017
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  12. Myrcello

    Myrcello Avatar

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    Any Game that is currently out there in the Gaming Market you can provide as an example for what you are aiming for with this Richard?

    In what way will this move provide Portalarium an additional income source?

    Will this Partnership show up at the Seedinvest Page as an update with deeper insight providing numbers and estimates what this move may mean financial for the future of Portalarium?
     
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  13. Johnwick

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    I think if your trying to make the game more enjoyable or better, or rewarding, you should scrap this idea, and just make the GAME more enjoyable (adding side quests etc..loot, stuff like that) and make the GAME more better (open a bunch of new add on stuff that appeal to different wants, in turn we will buy them you will have more money to make the game better upgrades etc...) and last but not least make the GAME more rewarding (by putting loot on things you cannot get elsewhere, that make a difference to your character, skill, looks etc... drops you can place on your properties, bring back place "anywhere" lot deeds there's plenty of NPC towns that need people in them and price them fairly low, which will bring more income to port by the quantity of purchases)

    In closing the last thing i want to do is ......get off work come home and log back into work!!!!!!!!!!

    In my personal opinion you need to concentrate on making the game better in a whole and not trying experimental drugs!
     
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  14. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    No. Because it's new. That's why he is doing it.

    @ All
    Guys, really. Yes, yes. I know, change is bad in this community. It's the evil fiend. It's anathema to most ppl here.
    But ffs it's a long term partnership like with Razer.
    So there will probably zero impact from this partnership in short or midterm. And maybe it will never have an impact at all.
    So calm the f*** down.
     
  15. blaquerogue

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    I think you guys should partner with Cyberpunk 2077, and their designers/developer, and some crossover items etc......., I mean just saying.... since the Kolbolds seem to to have technology, and the moon towers, and clock work stuff it seems we are sort of technologically sufficient, in this game already it would make some sense to support each others games.
     
  16. Bow Vale

    Bow Vale Avatar

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    Onto a winner imo then..

    My ideal would be something like this:

    Portalarium invest a percentage of profits( yes i know profits(even other monies) are tight at the moment, into a monthly return into the game), id like the figure to be known as it good advertising ( Press release: Portalarium giving away $100k each month to players!) but understandable if not, but along the lines of approx. maybe $5 per active player per month. This $5 wouldn't be given in totality to each mind, but that's the figure for expected return to very active players. This could be generated in loot drops primarily, or all items in the game have an equivalent [ ' SoTaGoLd'] so would pay say from an NPC 37 gold or 0.002 SoTaGoLd. It would be up to the player to except payment for items in either currency. This currency would also be tradable between players and items purchasable from NPC and other players in both currencies.

    Imo, this would make playing the game very attractive to players, old and NEW. If players can in theory make money from playing a game, so long as they enjoy the game, they will stampede to play it if they have a chance of making a form of RL cash, that can be traded outside of the game as well as in. $5 isn't much or in itself isn't that attractive, most players will just spend what they earn in game to other players, and the active/traders/ones who want to make a few hundred in a month will be able to. Property and real estate, even rare items will have a player set price meaning good locations, items that don't have a fixed price, will be sellable for whatever price they wish.

    Its a gamble doing something like this and would cost, however i think it would be very attractive and attract lots players who would all obviously pay for the game, maybe a sub if that's ever bought in or buy items from the cash shop. The more experienced a player is in time and skill would also increase there earning worth, so in order to make more SoTaGoLd it is best to be equipped as good as possible, have lodgings for downtime( yes we need a performance boost for sleeping in beds etc), a need for food and skill, and most importantly have knowledge of the game.

    Imagine the internet....SoTa giving away $50k per month to players for 3 months to all players....After that it a percentage of profits, disclosed or not....

    'Dude, only X people play it, that's like $XXX per month for playing the game....Where i sign up...'

    3 months later a full world with players being able to still earn a good amount and the $150k invested paid for 10* || 20* || 50* in games bought && it being a ongoing return in cash shop/subs.......Winner.
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2017
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  17. Whitestag

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    Etherium should be looked at as a mothership or backend for anyone that wants to create crypto currencies tokens.
    Check out https://www.ethereum.org/ its open source and you can download their toolkit and create your own crypto currency blockchain token... 8 }
     
  18. ikickbutt

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    Could this be used to fund player created assets? IE quest chains, models, skins etc ?

    There's lots of people out there with skills that would be of benefit, who love the game and want to see it grow (for example :-Umuri) .

    If I remember correctly there where problems with the old sear system in UO related to this :- could this be a way around the who employee/ pay thing?
     
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  19. Whitestag

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    To do so the token would need to have real value, which is basically what a telethon or crowdfunding does. A token could be sold and the proceeds used for development if you wanted to go that route and the tokens used for ingame asset purchases of rare items ect.

    The issues I see is isolated games vs not which would be at the discretion of the developer. Once a game token is created any 3rd party website can handle the trading of these intergame tokens like gold sales to different games or simple trading a game token for a different game token. Seems would be more used as a marketing plus for a publisher of multigames. Still any that use this type of system would be traded on 3rd party websites if any value existed in real money. Its always been easy to trade game currencies between games real money value or not with complete security, I have not run across any game yet that could block this, or even know the who did this activity unless they just didnt care if they got caught or not..
     
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2017
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  20. Merlota

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    What can this do that could not be done with COTO?

    It is said it is not a premium currency (PC) then the example uses are exactly what PC is used for. Are you making that distinction because you are not at this time selling it directly even though someone else will be?
     
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